True or False questions: What do you think the theory of evolution is implying (for creationists)?

Question

1. Living things are trying to evolve.

2. Evolution implies progress (over time, organisms will undeniably become smarter and more complex).

3. If one species evolves into another, the original species must die out.

4. Evolution is pure chance.

5. Evolution is "only a theory," meaning it has little evidence, and other hypothesises are equally valid.

6. Evolution is supported only by Atheists.

7. Humans evolved from monkeys.

8. Evolution is not observable.

9. Evolution takes faith.

These misconceptions (I've heard all these and more) are spread by people who think evolution is attacking their beliefs, and instead of finding support for their ideas they conclude that by disproving a well-backed theory it will prove their hypothesis (not true).

If you answered true to any of these questions, you are extremely uneducated on the theory. To make a final conclusion without even understanding evolution is sheer ignorance.

If you would like an explanation to any of these misconceptions, let me know.

I forgot to add a big misconception:

10. We have stopped evolving.



And no, evolution is not pure chance. Mutations largely occur by chance, but natural selection is the major guiding mechanism, which selects the better traits and gets rid of the disadvantageous traits in any given environment. This is anything but chance.

"Environment affects the development of an organism. Are you now calling this evolution?"

No. Evolution is a change in the population's allele frequencies. The change is fact; the theory explains why this happens.

Kiwigal, let me first point out how ridiculous your sources are. You are correct - Piltdown was a complete hoax (and nobody says it isn't). If you are implying this somehow disproves the evolution of man, I don't see the logic in that. If a few priests made up a story about God would that disprove him?

"So how do we ever get to an ordered biological system starting from a simple system?"

Simple. Natural selection. Research it.

Concerning irreducible complexity, this video may help you understand. http://youtube.com/watch?v=LZdCxk0CnN4

However, until Intelligent Designers and the likes try supporting their own hypothesises rather than trying to debunk the theory of evolution, they will be nothing more than speculated assumptions.

Answer 1

well...since my answering these questions will leave me extremely uneducated...how about I let some others who are educated speak for me?

Lee Strobel...Yale law school graduate...Pulitizer Prize winner (sounds a bit more educated than my alma matta....what about yours?)

Francis Collins - Head of the Human Genome Project....betcha he had to have an impressive educational resume to land the job

Best part....both are former atheists who explored the question and came away believing in God...

Have you dared to walk the road they have? Try it...read their books.

Answer 2

You cannot ground the soundness of any scientific theory on the fact that certain people subscribe to an alternative theory which you don't find to be supported by evidence. In other words, even if one could objectively prove Creationism was impossible, this would not make evolution any more likely to have occurred. For both theories could be wrong.

A lot of pieces of evolution fit together nicely; but it also has serious problems.

Evolution really struggles with the "irreducible complexity" refutation first propounded by Behe and other biochemists, essentially stating that certain biological processes are systemic, and by removing one component from any system, you do not get a lesser evolved yet functional system. Instead, you get a non-functional system. A board with a spring would not catch any more mice than just a board. A board with a spring and a screw would not catch any more mice than either of the above. Instead, you need an entire system of interworking components for the mousetrap -- i.e. before a biological function can provide the organism with an evolutionary advantage with respect to the rest of the population (as in the case of natural selection). Granted, evolutionists can always argue that each evolved component of the larger system provided some advantage different than the advantage provided by the system. This, however, is a very tortured argument.

The other Achilles heel of evolution is that it is violative of the second law of thermodynamics. Energy spontaneously tends to flow only from being concentrated in one place to becoming diffused or dispersed and spread out. The law of entropy is similar--generally speaking, order tends to chaos.

So how do we ever get to an ordered biological system starting from a simple system? Many evolutionists engage in some form of hand-waving when trying to escape this implication. For example, from one website:

"it is only the OVER-ALL entropy of a complete, or closed system that must increase when spontaneous change occurs. In the case of spontaneously interacting sub-systems of a closed system, some may gain entropy, while others may lose entropy."

Thus, by this logic, were I to remove the air valve on one of the tires of my car, where most people would expect the concentrated air inside my tires to release and dissipate according to the 2nd law of thermodynamics, under this theory it is possible for the outside air to actually enter in my tire and fill it up! Evolutionists claim they can explain this phenomenon--the car tire was just one subsystem in a much broader system--so the order that you perceive in the car tire is more than offset by the overall chaos created in a broader system interacting with it; thus consistency with the rule is maintained.

Yet to actually subscribe to this argument requires engaging in some form of intellectual suicide. For one thing, evolutionists never provide any contours of what this broader system is. We know it must be a system which is more than a living organism. But what is it exactly? And how is it interacting with the organism?

Of course, this is why devolution is a much stronger argument; that organisms may over time become less adapted to their environment. Copies of copies of copies are never as good as the original.

Of course, devolution does not answer the question of how the originals came about. But neither does evolution.

I agree with the author's general point that many Creationists do not understand evolution well enough to comment on it. In the same vein, I also believe many evolutionists do not understand the theory of intelligent design well enough to comment on it; often mistakenly conflating it with Creationism; pitting it as a theory directly against evolution; and stating that it is not scientific or observable.

At the end of the day, a scientist must have an open mind about all possibilities, and a willingness to admit that they can be wrong -- otherwise, progress will be hampered.

Answer 3

Of all the many lies creationists tell about evolution the lie that evolution is random is the one that bothers me the most.

This particularly bothers me because Natural Selection is the furthest thing from being random and because I am a Mathematician I actually know what random means.

Note Mutations are random but Natural Selection is absolutely NOT. It is the fact that Natural Selection is highly non-random which is the driving mechanism behind information increase in biological systems. Evolution is absolutely NOT random. Anyone who claims it is is either being moronic or lying or has absolutely no idea what the word random even means.

In a process all it takes is one non-random subprocess to make the entire process non-random. An example is the following process.

1. Start with six thousand rolled dice.
1. Roll the dice again ( this is random since the distribution will roughly be the same given enough tries )
2. Take the rolled dice and throw out all the dice which didn't turn up six. This is highly non-random since the distribution is radically different.

The result of this will will be somewhere around one thousand dice with six turned up ( clearly non random since we have selected only sixes. While the original distribution has roughly equal numbers of each result.)

This is a lot like evolution. Mutation is random but Natural Selection takes the result and non-randomly selects only winners. So the total process is extremely non-random.

Answer 4

Some aspects of it, yes... everything and everyone evolves at some point or another. Read "The Case for Faith". Lee Strobel dedicates a chapter to this and interviewed Walter L. Bradley, PH.D. These are just some of the points he made: - "..the mathematical odds of assembling a living organism are so astronomical that nobody still believes that random chance accounts for the origin of life. Even if you optimized the conditions, it wouldn't work. If you took all the carbon in the universe and put it on the face of the earth, allowed it to chemically react at the most rapid rate possible and left it for a billion years, the odds of creating just one functional protein molecule would be one chance in a 10 with 60 zeroes after it." - "...the probability of linking together just one hundred amino acids to create one protein molecule by chance would be the same as a blindfolded man finding one marked grain of sand somewhere in the vastness of the Sahara Desert - and doing it not just once, but three different times." There is much more information in his book. Even it you are a non-believer, it's a good read.

Answer 5

1. F- it just happens naturally, bad genes are removed when the weak link is removed from the gene pool (hopefully without reproducing)

2. F- the undeniably part poses a problem here...

3. F (that's just stupid)

4. F (see 3)

5. (see 3)

6. F Evolution is supported by realists- religious or not.

7. F Humans are apes

8. F HAHHHHHAHAHAHAHAHA not even CLOSE to the truth.

9. F... that's just silly

Answer 6

Yeah Evolution is only a theory and it actually has no REAL evidence. Let me give u a few examples:

1. The Ape man - Evolutionists all over the world said that this must be the missing link. Creationists took a closer look, and discovered it to be one of the greatest ever hoax in history. The "Ape-man" was buried only about 100 years ago, and it was made of lots of different animal parts, all put together.

2. Sediment, and the Flood. Evolutionists say that it takes"millions" of years for sediment to fall. How do we get Fossils on top of Mount Everest? Sediment falls EXTREMELY quickly burying everything in its path. People say that their r supposedly buried forests from "millions" of years ago. Well, When Mt. St.Helens erupted, it buried a village in sediment in a matter of a couple of hours. (Do a Google search on any of these examples and you will find them to be true) I can't off the top of my head Remember where, but there is a place in The United States where they have discovered Dinosaur footprints, right next to human footprints, perfectly fossilized.

If you want any more examples just send me a message.

Answer 7

As stated by most atheists here, evolution says that there is no God, or at least the Bible does not tell us the truth about God and how He created the physical universe.

One thing that they will say that the 7 days of creation are really 7 periods of millions of years.

But the Bible says that God made the plants and the next day He made the sun!

This means that every thing would have to have lived for millions of years in the dark!

How many people are going to believe that?

This would mean that the Bible is wrong!
Or that God did a miracle and kept every thing alive for millions of years.

If the Bible is wrong on this point (right at the beginning) how many other things is it wrong about?

But if you believe that God did a miracle to keep things alive for millions of years, why can't you believe He made every thing in 6 days?

Answer 8

Do we really prove anything in science about evolution?

God has left many things so that we have a choice.

Environment affects the development of an organism. Are you now calling this evolution? Why have evolutionists completely changed from their original theories? Who created the lies of Pilt Down man and some of the others?

Answer 9

i will respond to your flamebait.

the only one i would agree w/is #9. Evolution take faith. as you cannot design and run an experiment to prove/disprove evolution. You can do experiments showing mutation/adaptation/differentiation/speciation, but not evolution. Evolution is still a theory. one that has a significant amount of evidence that can be contrived to support it, but still just a theory, as is the Big Bang Theory, or the theory of panspermia.

if you want to do something to convince people they are mistaken, support you argument. disrespecting and calling ignornat the views of others does nothing but cause the rift to widen and people to dig in their heels and resist any good point you may make.

you do what you are telling others not to do...attack beliefs you disagree with instead of providing support for your own ideas/hypothesis.

from you question, you appear to be just as bigoted, ignorant, and unwilling to consider alternate theories as the worst of the creationists.

Answer 10

To say that an unproved theory is a fact is sheer ignorance.

Evolution is a man made concept that is getting more absurd as we go. But if I suddenly decide that evolution is true and correct, then what happens? How will my life or yours be any better?

Studying evolution and natural selection is like majoring in Shakespeare, great to know but of little actual value.

Answer 11

Psalm 2:1 Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?
2 The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying,
3 Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.

edit:

The theory of evolution is man fulfilling what the bible says about the godless.