Evolution hasn't been proven (Talk.Origins)

Claim CA202:


 * Evolution has not been, and cannot be, proved. We cannot even see evolution (beyond trivially small change), much less test it experimentally.

Source: Morris, Henry M. 1985. Scientific Creationism. Green Forest, AR: Master Books, pp. 4-6.

CreationWiki response:

Talk.Origins gives a list of the typical so-called evidences for evolution. Note, however, that even if the evidence provided supported evolution, there is no dispute that it does not prove evolution, thus the author's argument against this claim is unsuccessful either way.

Of course, "huge" is the author's opinion. It is the opinion of most creationists that the evidence for evolution amounts to very little.

This is undisputed but not an evidence for evolution. God used similar designs when creating different animals and plants. The only thing that makes one see this as an evidence for evolution is the assumption that God had nothing to do with the process of creation.

Creationists accept the existence of transitional forms between variations within the created kinds, but not between created kinds. So Talk.Origins' ambiguous mention of the existence of transitional forms proves nothing.

Perhaps in the overactive imaginations of convinced evolutionists there are transitional forms between what creationists would consider created kinds, but there are many problems, most notably that the number of supposed transitional forms is much less than it should be (the theory of punctuated equilibrium was invented because of this). Creationists have been able to show how many claims of transitional fossils are not really transitional time and time again, despite the attempts by evolutionists to protect the only hard "evidence" they can find.

The "chronological order" that Talk.Origins refers to is one that is itself part of the same naturalistic philosophy that evolution is based on. According to the creation model, the order is a burial order, not an order of appearance of life forms. The fossil record is perfectly consistent with the creation model if one does not assume uniformitarianism and evolution to start with. The whole reason the theory of punctuated equilibrium was invented was because the fossil record was more consistent with sudden creation than gradual evolution and evolutionists needed an argument to explain it.

Many so-called "vestigial" organs have since been found to have useful functions that they still serve. In humans, the number of so-called vestigial organs numbered over one hundred, but that number has been reduced to zero.

In any case, vestigial organs&mdash;organs which no longer have a useful purpose&mdash;indicate a loss of genetic information, as predicted by the creation model, not a gain as required by the evolution hypothesis.

Or, if one does not assume evolution to begin with, an atavism is just as easily seen as a character present in one animal that God decided to put in another more complex animal. This is yet another example of evolutionists claiming facts support their theory when they can just as readily support the creation model. Or even better support the creation model. If the character genuinely was lost and later reappeared, that indicates that the same character evolved twice, an incredibly unlikely scenario.

This is meaningless, as the very definition of atavism implies an evolutionary throwback. Any change that is not 'consistent' with an organism's supposed evolutionary history will not be considered an atavism, so what does this 'observation' prove?

The so-called "vestigial legs" that whales develop are used in reproduction and probably do not have anything to do with any walking whale ancestors. As for the snakes' hind limbs, the joke is on Talk.Origins, for many creationists believe that snakes did once walk until God cursed the serpent in the Garden of Eden! (a mutation that hinders their proper prenatal development, perhaps?)

It is uncertain how this has anything to do with evolution, although just by reading this we can see once again how, to make this conclusion, one must assume only natural causes to begin with.

Unless Talk.Origins is proposing that all marsupials evolved from an original marsupial (in various forms parallel to similar non-marsupial counterparts), then the evolution model does not explain why most marsupials are to be found in Australia.

This is completely irrelevant, as is the author's next point. Similar structures in species are only evidence for evolution if one eliminates supernatural possibilities in the first place. To creationists, they are simply evidence of a common Designer who used similar features in His creations.

Additionally, if similar structures evolved from an original structure, we should expect that they developed in a similar manner. Yet despite the considerable similarity between human hands and the feet of frogs, they develop in radically different ways. This does not really fit with the evolutionary hypothesis, but is entirely consistent with a Creator creating both of them and reusing some aspects of the design.

This is irrelevant, as one must eliminate the possibility of a Designer in the first place to make this an evidence.

What evolutionists sometimes claim to be "suboptimal design" has often turned out to be good design. Just because an evolutionist imagines that it could be done in a better way doesn't mean that their way is actually better in all respects. Sometimes such alleged suboptimal designs can be a result of degradation since creation as a result of the Fall, however.

This point is not disputed, and is not an evidence for evolution. It's amazing how the evolutionists keep making claims like this when creationary scientists, such as those at Creation Ministries International have been not only acknowledging this, but pointing out that the creation model requires speciation.

Although this would then present an inconsistency in both the theories of punctuated equilibrium and the traditional theory of evolution (since the fossil record contradicts the latter and present data the former), one must make the assumption that radiometric dating (which is supposed to give us the ages of fossils, and thus, the rate at which evolution supposedly occurred) is reliable, which it is not, to make this an evidence. In other words, the evolutionary application of this evidence relies on evolutionary timescales to work.

To count these as valid evidences for evolution, one must assume several things, mainly that species evolved naturally and that there is no possibility that God could have created them directly, but with similar structures. So while the facts are consistent, it is evolutionists' interpretation of the facts that is flawed and illogical.

As is shown above, a number of the evidences put forward do not actually support evolution over creation (they are consistent with both ideas), and if the evidence did "unambiguously" support evolution, there would not be as many scientists as there are that don't see it that way.

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