I hate to bang on about this, but creationists REALLY get on my nerves. I'd like to take this opportunity to put forward some counterpoints to some of their arguments I've commonly heard. Just check out Twitter and search #intelligentdesign, #creationism or #yec (Young Earth creationists). Be prepared for full-on madness. They just don't understand evolution. Virtually everyone who does understand it to some reasonable extent will likely be pretty convinced by its explanatory power and predictive capacity.
Charles Darwin was truly a great man.
Oh well, here we go.
1)"Design is everywhere"
No. The illusion of design is everywhere. As Richard Dawkins says, it's "cranes, not skyhooks" that are responsible for the bottom-up development of complexity that is evolution. Seeing design, or seriously asking the question "have you ever seen a painting without a painter?" shows a complete mis-understanding of how biological systems work. Its easy to see an example of design without a designer: a beautiful growth of crystals out of a saturated solution of metal salt such as copper (II) sulphate. The complex architecture of a termite mound, the "designers" of which are tiny insects with tiny brains. These structures are the direct result of completely natural physical processes.
Even if we did accept that elements of the natural world were designed, this does not lead to the conclusion that there is a god, let alone any specific god. I think it was David Hume (pre-Darwin by the way) who first used the argument that there is actually quite a bit of compromise and some faults in biological systems, and that this is more indicative of for example, an agent who was a bit incompetent, or had to design by committee where many agents had a "say" in the design, or had even abandoned a first iteration of his creation as flawed.
2)"Show me observable evidence of a change in KIND"
This is one of Ray Comfort's favourites. No, I shan't Ray. I'm actually quite glad that I can't as well, because if I could, this would mean that evolutionary biologists were actually a bit mistaken in thinking that evolution was a very slow process.
Oh dear, where to begin. The whole notion of "kinds" is a total red herring and utterly misleading. No-one who understands evolution would talk about what you mean in this way. You effectively mean transition from one species to another. But it is obvious that this MUST happen, in order to achieve the biological diversity that we see in the world today. However, creationists have previously shown that they are dissatisfied with "mere" speciation events themselves.
The only other answer of course, is that species started as they are already, because they were created by god and rescued from the flood. Pfft. This possibility is so utterly absurd!
*So how much can a species change before becoming another "kind"? An infinite amount, apparently.
I'm not joking. Creationists never define where one "kind" ends and another begins. As it is physically impossible for a member of one species to give birth to a member of another, the argument of seeing changing "kinds" is self-refuting. If we play along with creationist theory, we have still had 6000 years for species to evolve and they look a lot different now than they did back then. That said, how idiotic do you have to be to think that heading from point A towards point B will NOT eventually get you to point B, no matter how slow you are going? However, this is what they are effectively saying.
What would they expect to see if evolution were a natural process (as it is)? Crocoducks? Get real! Such simplistic features do not define the origins of species.
How much "micro" evolution amounts to "macro" evolution exactly? More than an infinite amount, it would seem. Now that's a weighted deck, if ever I saw one.
These "kinds" apparently have no bounds, and it is therefore intellectually dishonest to ask to see transitions between them.
*Asking to see a video of the murder before being able to convict the suspect, regardless of other evidence.
This is effectively the creationist position for the acceptable standard of evidence to accept evolution. They want the video tapes, dammit! They want to witness the change of a monkey into a man! They want to see the act committed. They want to see the murderer pull the trigger!
Of course, I shouldn't need to tell you that such a detailed proof is unnecessary to accept the proposition that an event very probably happened, and we can say that was how it happened, since all available evidence points to the same conclusion.
In a court of law, the jury doesn't need video evidence of a murder to convict the suspect. Many other forms of evidence are admissible and can lead to a clear picture of events, easily sufficient to convict the suspect. The same is true of evolution.
If was outside the front of my house and am now inside it, it is logical to conclude that I walked through the front door to get there, even if I can't recall doing so and there is no CCTV evidence of the event occurring.
My conclusion is that creationists place no value on inductive logic. But epistemology says otherwise.
If we were to take the creationist approach to evolution proof for everything, we would to believe anything we didn't personally witness and experience ourselves. And nothing would ever get done, no progress would ever be made.
3)"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth"
This is a real classic. The logic of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's famous character Sherlock Holmes, a 19th century sleuth, applied to the "puzzling riddle of the changing species". Sorry, couldn't resist.
Needless to day this did Conan Doyle's credibility no good (although it does not affect the quality of his literary works).
This is a real cautionary tale for creationists because it shows what an utter fail this "logic" is when applied to real life problems. It's fine when used in crime fiction stories, where the possibilities for the murder are limited by the confines of author's mind. But when we have no clue about what other possibilities could be in play for explaining the change in the characteristics of species over time, we CANNOT simply find a few "problems" with an otherwise brilliant solution, call it "impossible" and then accept another incredibly implausible solution with no mechanistic value, simply because a stupid "rule" tells us to. It's not a game of pick A, B or C. That is NOT how science is done.
"Credulity is not a virtue" as they say.
In real science, we thoughtfully and carefully work our way up from the most basic principles to a hypothesis that explains the empirical evidence to date. Embedded in this hypothesis MUST be a scientifically plausible MECHANISM for the process to operate by (so far, composed of entirely naturalistic means). The hypothesis is tested with new evidence, and subjected to peer review where others try and prove it wrong. Only after surviving this onslaught do we even contemplate calling the hypothesis a THEORY.
A better and simpler rule would be Occam's razor. The most parsimonious answer. The simplest solution, with fewest assumptions, should be examined first and is the most likely to be true.
I do find it rather intellectually dishonest of some people to repeatedly attempt to pick holes in the theory of evolution by using the same tired old arguments which have been refuted over and over. It's not enough to pick holes. That's even if there are holes to pick. They are mainly just things we haven't seen yet. Evolution is studied to improve our understanding of it.You'd need to do a whole lot better than that, to replace evolution with another theory that works even better.
I'm sticking with the current best theory.
4)"So you think life just appeared by accident then"
No, accident implies an agent. No agents are involved, only natural processes. Chance would be a slightly more accurate word. There was much opportunity for abiogenesis to occur. As we don't know what the chances of life not eventually happening are, and we admit that were many millions of years of amenable conditions where life was not created, it should not be difficult to concede that this is very plausible, since only one abiogenesis event was necessary. It all progressed from simple chemical interactions of increasingly complex carbon-based molecules. Just as biology and evolution are chemistry happening on a larger scale, the diversity of species we see today are a result of evolution on a larger scale. There is no "micro" and "macro" evolution. Just evolution.
5)"Order cannot be created by accident"
Again with the accident. Grrrr....Please see above.
Order can be created by natural processes. It's a simple question of thermodynamics. "Order" is related to potential energy (equivalent to enthalpy in chemistry) and Entropy. A system wants to have the most energetically stable arrangement possible, in other words that with the lowest potential energy. However, entropically, it wants to have the greatest number of possible arrangements in which quanta of energy could be placed. In this latter sense, gases are favourable to solids, as gases have less ordered structures and tend to be less dense. However, we know that solids exist. One reason for this is because solids are often much more energetically favourable than gases, with stronger bonds and ordered structures. So we always have these two forces (enthalpy and entropy)competing against each other to determine what chemical reactions occur and what forms the molecules or chemicals take.
If external energy is applied, for example sunlight (which could provide energy in the form of light, or heat) or geothermal energy, then other forms can be adopted by chemicals, and otherwise unfavourable reactions can occur. This can be due to activation barriers being overcome or the product having inherently more energy than the starting materials. Large molecules like DNA can form from simple chemistry when enough energy is applied. We then start to see the basis for self-replication in biological systems.
Saying something like (and I've heard creationists say this, honestly) "I'll believe evolution when a Boeing 747 spontaneously forms in a scrapyard". This really smacks of indoctrination to me. Blind submission to creationist propaganda.
Just as a feature of insanity is repeating the same actions in the same circumstances and expecting a different result, I submit that a feature of indoctrination is the inability to see analogies of a critique that you make, in your own situation, resulting in extreme hypocrisy.
Speaking of indoctrination, I'd like to end with a truly ironic instance of hypocrisy from a famous Creationist advocate. Read and, well, let your jaw drop.
"Ray Comfort. WHAT IF TOMORROW THERE WAS REAL PROOF GOD DID NOT EXIST, WHAT WOULD BE YOUR NEXT PLAN?" Brian Talbot
I would make it a matter of urgent prayer, and ask God to give me wisdom on what to do next.
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Someone who is in a cult will still cling to his beliefs despite evidence to the contrary. Such is the way with the believer in evolution.
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Here are screen grabs if you don't believe me:
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AHEM. So when will Ray Comfort admit that Christianity is indeed a cult, as he so clearly said above?
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* James, what if tomorrow there were real evidence hat God did exist, what would be your next plan?
"I suppose I'd have to start obeying and worshipping him. But I'd have many questions. Firstly, which god is he, then why did he create the Universe just for us and why leave it so long before revealing himself (in the process, letting so much wrongness occur in the world). And I'd also ask why Heaven wasn't bursting at the seams with disgruntled citizens, angry at why so many had been excluded on arbitrary grounds.."
"Word".
