What are some good SCIENTIFIC arguments AGAINST evolution?

Question

First off, I do believe in evolution, and I'm not Christian. My intention here is to raise the bar with these arguments. I've had a lot of stupid arguments over the years with Creationists that had no real scientific basis. However, a Christian friend of mine who was a former astronomy student actually had a few good ones.

1. Interdependent Systems. The human eye and the bombardier beetle are the classic examples. Still not a rock solid argument, but tons better then, "Cause God did it."

2. (The really good one) Stellar Life Cycles. According to the dude, our sun was in a different state when evolution is said to have started. It was giving off much less energy, and, according to him, could not have supported life on Earth. I suspect that it probably just supported much less life on Earth, and when it got to it's current state, there was probably a corresponding 'boom' in life on earth. But, I really can't back that up.

Answer 1

Here is an excellent link to a massive index to pretty much all of the known "scientific" arguments (or "claims") against evolution ... and their refutations.
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html

....

As for your two examples:

#1 is more commonly known as the "irreducible complexity" argument (rather than "interdependent systems") and has long been refuted. Every example of irreducible complexity has been shown to be quite reducible.
The eye: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB301.html
Bombardier beetle: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/bombardier.html


#2 is interesting ... but just doesn't hold water. (The index above answers this claim here:
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CE/CE311.html

The birth of the sun was a sequence of several contractions and expansions, including several explosive expansions that produced the planets. Within a few million years of the birth of the earth, the sun reached an energy output similar to what it is today, and by 1 billion years it was extremely stable. But even before then it was bathing the earth in plenty of energy.
http://novan.com/solar.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_evolution

Second, the atmosphere of the early earth had no oxygen (as there was no photosynthetic life there to release the oxygen). So there was no ozone layer protecting the earth from high-energy UV light ... so if anything there was *more* energy from the early earth (so much so that we wouldn't survive very long).

Third, the early earth had the additional energy source of the cooling earth, which was releasing much more energy than it is now. One of the leading theories are that the first life forms actually evolved near extremely high-temperature volcanic vents on the ocean floor.

So, as I'm sure you know ... scientists are not dumb. They have thought of all these issues and more, and have answers for all of them. If they did not ... if there was a SINGLE argument of piece of evidence that simply could not be squared with current theory, they would abandon the theory and find a better one.

Answer 2

Arguments Against Evolution

Answer 3

Evidence Against Evolution

Answer 4

The usual argument is the one about complexity. There is a mechanism for how the eye could have evolved, but it requires (at least) two 'leaps' which would have to occure from a genetic anomaly. Even with the long times involved, the chances of getting enough mutations, and having enough of them to be actually beneficial are fairly low when you consider the complexity of modern life. (This leads to 'intelligent design' theories.)

The other one is the starting point: how did life start in the first place? I've seen a few theories about this, none of them are completely rock solid, all of them involve a lot of chance.

A christian friend of mine read a book about why scientists became creationinsts, so for a couple of weeks I was bombarded with all their reasons. Most of them were bollocks, so those two are the only ones I remember. I can't remember the name of the book.

AND: you're forgetting the most important part! The bible is the inspired word of GOD! Everything in that overrides whatever scince, logic and common-sense tells you! (There wasn't enough room on the arc for diosaurs, that's why their bones are all buried.

Now for the counter-arguments to the two you mentioned:
1. The most common interdepent system is a flower. Need bees to pollinate them, bees need flower for nectar... Only thing is, some flowers are pollinated by small mammals, which use the nectar as a supplement to their diet, not the whole thing. When bees come along, they start sharing the nectar, and because their more efficient (flying lets them spread the pollen over a larger area) the flowers start adapting themselves to bees.
2. I've never heard of that before, so it could just be made up, but if it is real: some plants grow in full sunlight, some grow in shade. The plants that like shade grew out in the open when there wasn't as much light, then as the sun started giving off more light (a slow process, I'd imagine) the plants either evolved to grow in full sun, or under the plants that like full sun.

Answer 5

This Site Might Help You.

RE:
What are some good SCIENTIFIC arguments AGAINST evolution?
First off, I do believe in evolution, and I'm not Christian. My intention here is to raise the bar with these arguments. I've had a lot of stupid arguments over the years with Creationists that had no real scientific basis. However, a Christian friend of mine who was a former astronomy...

Answer 6

To the person who commented about humans - evolution happens slower than you think and humans are still evolving. We cannot become 'superhumans' in a short amount of time .

As for interdependent systems, these evolve as the organism adapts to an environment. Intraorganism systems are within the organism.

As for the eye, a very good article on the evolution of the eye can be found here: Halder, G., Callaerts, P. and Gehring, W.J. (1995). "New perspectives on eye evolution." Curr. Opin. Genet. Dev. 5 (pp. 602 –609).


Evolution has always been extant, ever since life came about - the sun, when life came about, was in the same state it is now.

Answer 7

There's ZERO evidence of Ev-LIE-ution. In fact, the foundational law of biology (the Law of Biogenesis) refutes evolution from the starting point. ONLY a living organism can make another living organism. This is a fact since all experiments attempting to demonstrate abiogenesis have FAILED miserably. Evolution is refuted by the Cambrian Explosion, Living Fossils, Information Programming Code contained in DNA, the complexity and synchronicity of individual organs, the complexity of cells, the sexual reproduction problem, the LACK of any Pan Prior fossils, Occam's Razor, Genetic Engineering Science, and the fact that Bacteria stays Bacteria......Plants stay Plants......and Insects stay Insects. Over 1000 PhD level scientists have signed the Dissent from Darwin List which is linked below. Many of whom are BIOLOGISTS

Answer 8

Regarding the eye, I would ask my creationists friends why god, who created them in his image, didn't give them the ability to see ultraviolet light as some birds can. Also, humans and most of the great apes share color vision, but humans are losing some of it since 8% of male humans cannot detect red/green. Humans no longer live in the jungle where it is important to distinguish red fruit from green leaves so, there goes the red/green color vision - it's no longer needed.

On your second point, I might ask them if they know anything about tube worms that live under the ocean at underwater volcanic sites. The volcanoes provide warmth and belch out food digestible by bacteria that is in turn digested by the tube worms.

I'm pretty sure you will find creationists know nothing of these things and are merely mouthing words put in their mouths by other creationists. They also have a very narrow view of the world and can't imagine how long a billion years is nor do they have any awareness of evolution at the microscopic level.

Answer 9

I am a Christian and here is my point on evolution.
Throughout all of "evolution" then how come in fossil records there is no sign of "evolving" in all the bones or fossil records. there is still the same. Also if we supposedly evolved from Apes and Monkeys...Then why are they still here? Also believing in evolution is like taking a fossil watch and taking it apart and then shaking it all in a box. then opening it and it is all put together. See evolution cant be real. There is just way too much stuff in the Universe and too complicated parts for it to all have come from "goo" or a big bang. Evolution is not real so all you atheists and non-Christians, quit believing that stuff and turn or burn, because in the Bible it says if you deny God, then He will deny you in front of the Gates of Heaven. You guys all need to watch the movie God's Not Dead. Darwin even said in one of his books philosophy is dead.

Answer 10

The reason that you are getting poor arguments is that you or the people that argue with you are confused. Evolution is a fact, just as gravity is a fact. You cannot have an argument, scientific or otherwise against the existence of a fact.

There have been two main theories of evolution, that is, attempts to explain the observed fact by some kind of rational means.

The first was based on the supposed inheritance of acquired characteristics and was put forward in a vague way in the mid to late 1700s. About the beginning of the 19th century this set of ideas was consolidated by a French natural philosopher (can't remember his name). However it was shown to be incorrect pretty quickly by experiments on generations of rapidly breeding animals.

The second theory of evolution was put forward by Wallace and Darwin in 1859. This proposed that natural mutations occur in animals and that if they happen to be beneficial they are likely to be inherited.

The human eye is actually a good illustration of the random, non-designed nature of evolution. It has a major design flaw. The blood vessels supplying the retina are actually in front of it, which blocks the light which was so carefully focused by the lens and regulated by the iris. If the eye had been designed by a rational being, this would not be the case. The reason that we do not "see" the blood vessels is that the brain automatically compensates for them. Would you put the power supply to the sensitive region of a TV camera between that region and the lens? Thought not.

As for the dear old bombardier beetle, the controversy over it was caused by a deliberate (?) mistranslation of a German scientific paper by members of the Institute for Creation Research about 20 years ago, and the error has never been publicly admitted or corrected by anti-evolutionists.

Virtually all of the arguments put forward by creationists against the fact of evolution or the current Darwin-based theory of it have been shown to be fallacious. This is not the forum for this, the "Talk Origins" pages are chock-block full of this material.

Current versions of the Darwinian theory have nothing to say about the origin of life on Earth, which is also a point that Darwin himself made.