As a kind of response to the recent heart-breaking polls, I present a classic article from Scientific American, 15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense, which in turn presents 15 common anti-evolution arguments and then proceeds to answer and refute each one.
Here’s the list of “common arguments” that are answered:
- Evolution is only a theory. It is not a fact or a scientific law.
- Natural selection is based on circular reasoning: the fittest are those who survive, and those who survive are deemed fittest.
- Evolution is unscientific, because it is not testable or falsifiable. It makes claims about events that were not observed and can never be re-created.
- Increasingly, scientists doubt the truth of evolution.
- The disagreements among even evolutionary biologists show how little solid science supports evolution.
- If humans descended from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?
- Evolution cannot explain how life first appeared on earth.
- Mathematically, it is inconceivable that anything as complex as a protein, let alone a living cell or a human, could spring up by chance.
- The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that systems must become more disordered over time. Living cells therefore could not have evolved from inanimate chemicals, and multicellular life could not have evolved from protozoa.
- Mutations are essential to evolution theory, but mutations can only eliminate traits. They cannot produce new features.
- Natural selection might explain microevolution, but it cannot explain the origin of new species and higher orders of life.
- Nobody has ever seen a new species evolve.
- Evolutionists cannot point to any transitional fossils–creatures that are half reptile and half bird, for instance.
- Living things have fantastically intricate features–at the anatomical, cellular and molecular levels–that could not function if they were any less complex or sophisticated. The only prudent conclusion is that they are the products of intelligent design, not evolution.
- Recent discoveries prove that even at the microscopic level, life has a quality of complexity that could not have come about through evolution.
You can read all the answers (either to prepare yourself for debate, or out of an honest curiosity) at the article, but here’s an example, answering the question about the continued existence of monkeys:
This surprisingly common argument reflects several levels of ignorance about evolution. The first mistake is that evolution does not teach that humans descended from monkeys; it states that both have a common ancestor.
The deeper error is that this objection is tantamount to asking, “If children descended from adults, why are there still adults?” New species evolve by splintering off from established ones, when populations of organisms become isolated from the main branch of their family and acquire sufficient differences to remain forever distinct. The parent species may survive indefinitely thereafter, or it may become extinct.
Let’s all do our bit to spread a little fact, shall we?
