Creationism's False Weaknesses

Anti-evolutionist literature does not make this clarification. Instead it tells the reader that evolution is supposed to explain abiogenesis (see this example). The literature then quotes scientists saying that they don't know how life originated. The reader sees this as the scientists saying that evolution can't explain something that it is supposed to explain. This argument confuses the reader about the distinction between abiogenesis and evolution and convinces the reader that evolution has “weaknesses.”

There are scientists that are trying to get evidence about how life got started. However, there is only limited agreement about the details of this area of research. At this point the most accurate statement is that we do not yet know how life got started, but we have some ideas that may be useful in understanding how it might have occurred.

The claim that there are no transitional forms is clearly wrong, but it is important to note that there are some significant gaps in the fossil record. This makes it important that we understand some basic facts about fossilization.

Only a minute fraction of organisms that die end up as fossils; most of them decay or are eaten by scavengers fairly soon after they die. To become a fossil you must die and very soon be covered up in a way that will preserve at least some of you (or your tracks). Of course getting fossilized is only a part of the story. Once you have been buried, your preserved parts, which generally undergo a process of mineralization (having tissues replaced with minerals, making you into a rock), have to be found before the rock you are in gets eroded away or subducted into the Earth's magma.

Now suppose that you are a member of a fairly small transitional population. The chances that you will end up in a museum display as an example of a transitional fossil are extremely small. In fact, it is somewhat surprising that we have as many transitional fossils as we do.

Despite the odds against it, evolutionary scientists have found and described numerous examples of fossils that share traits of what are now considered to be distinct and different types of organisms—transitional fossils. The classic example of this is Archaeopteryx, a fossil specimen that has features of both dinosaurs and modern birds. In fact, several of the fossils remains were classified as small dinosaurs until the discovery of specimens with clear impressions of feathers—feathers that were clearly attached to the specimen.

Anti-evolutionists sometimes admit that some transitional fossils exist, but this is admitting to evolution. It only takes one transitional fossil sequence to demonstrate that evolution can happen.

We will never find fossils for all transitional species. Consider that few animals become fossils when they die, that Earth's churning crust can destroy fossils, and that we have to find whatever fossils remain. By the logic that a majority of all possible fossils have to be found, evolution is wrong no matter how many are found.

This argument teaches students to win an argument by defining success beyond what is reasonable. Since anti-evolutionists require almost every single fossil, it also teaches students that one unanswered question in science renders all of the rest of the science in doubt.

Creationist Andrew Snelling visited the site and admitted that the whale lies entirely within one layer of strata that was oriented diagonally. Geologic forces had upended the strata. However, some anti-evolutionists continue to repeat this story, reinforcing the idea that strata are always horizontal.

Anti-evolutionists also claim that some fossil trees pass through different layers, when, in fact, the trees were buried by river floods bearing large amounts of coarse sediment that covered the trees while they stood upright. In other somewhat similar circumstances where the trees are in sediments that are more fine-grained, the tops of the trees are missing because the fine sediment took a long time to settle, allowing decay of the exposed upper portions.

Irreducible complexity ignores the fact that parts can change function over time. Nature provides some obvious examples of this: flying squirrels use the skin between their legs as wings, and penguins use their wings as flippers. In the case of the flagellum, the Type-III secretion system may have been its precursor, as it shares much in common with the flagellum. This system secretes proteins out of a cell. Nick Matzke proposed how flagella might have evolved this way.

Flagella also are not irreducibly complex because most of the parts (proteins) they're made of are also found outside the flagellum, existing in various assemblies. We are close to determining how flagella evolved, and it's irresponsible to teach students that it cannot be explained.

Even so, irreducibly complexity, as Behe defines it, is not a problem for evolution. Behe assumes that systems can't change functions as they evolve, but they can. After all, the flippers of penguins evolved from flying wings.

Much research has been done on the evolution of the immune system since Behe brought it up, and we now have a reasonable understanding of immune system evolution. Behe had declared that because he could not see how it could have evolved, it therefore could not have evolved. This line of reasoning teaches students that the unexplained is unexplainable and it diametrically at odds with how science works.

Unfortunately, anti-evolutionists stick to their arguments regardless of what transpires in the interim. When Behe testified at the Dover trial in 2005, he still claimed that the immune system is irreducibly complex, despite all the new literature on immune system evolution that he prompted. When asked whether he had read that literature, he responded that he had read very little.

“Survival of the fittest” seems tautological because the fittest are those who survive. This would make it read, “survival of those who survive,” which really is tautological.

Herbert Spencer coined the “survival of the fittest” phrase in 1864. He intended it to describe natural selection, but it isn't an accurate description. “Survival of the fit enough” is more accurate, but it still misses how evolution works. Evolution is about traits spreading through a population. It's about more helpful traits gradually replacing less helpful ones. The fittest organisms can die in accidents, and the least fit organisms can get lucky. On average, though, certain traits prove more helpful and gradually take over.

Characterizing natural selection as “survival of the fittest” just reinforces the misunderstandings people have about how evolution works. Unfortunately, the new anti-evolution textbook Explore Evolution, written by Stephen C. Meyer, et al., does exactly this (pp.126-127). This is intentional miseducation.

Morris is ignoring the effect of natural selection. In nature, one beneficial trait gets duplicated many times over when organisms reproduce. There are many chances to tack on a second beneficial trait, and then a third, and so on. In fact, beneficial traits rack up so fast that computers can use evolutionary algorithms to find solutions to complex problems.

This argument only works because it never mentions mutations, which are also part of evolution. Mutations are a source of change and potential new genes. Just the existence of mutations completely invalidates the argument. The very next chapter of the book introduces mutations and never points out that it just rendered the previous chapter's argument invalid.

Students who study this textbook will learn by example that in science, you argue using only supporting information.

Even multi-cellular life long-predated the Cambrian explosion. The Cambrian period is novel because this is when life invented hard bodies like shells. Shells preserve much more frequently and for a longer time than soft bodies. The Cambrian period isn't so much an explosion of life as it is an explosion of the fossils remains of life. Life had begun experimenting with hard bodies.

Anti-evolutionists also like to argue that all of the major groups of organisms—or phlya—appeared during this time, but this argument has two problems. First, it's not true. Many phyla don't appear until later. Second, of those phyla that do appear, few of those animals look like animals we have today. Even if the phyla did appear then, life has since evolved.

Ian Musgrave and at least four other scientists have since duplicated Kettlewell's results, and with much more confidence. Even so, anti-evolutionists continue to explain that if any one thing is staged, then everything is staged.

We again have a case of an anti-evolutionist confusing an illustration with evidence. (The peppered moth is another example.) It is also a huge leap to conclude that one person's misdeed invalidates all of a science. But this is what Wells' “weakness” argument teaches. Wells' book did have one benefit, though: Haeckel's drawings have since been removed from most textbooks.

In any case, teaching that one person's hoax can undermine all of a science falsely teaches that science is very fragile and based on little evidence. It also falsely teaches students it is scientific to generalize from one thing to everything on the basis of one data point.

The number of species that ever lived is so enormous that it's impossible to find fossils for every one. No matter how many fossils scientists find, scientists will fail this Explore Evolution test.

Moreover, the authors ask the reader to draw conclusions about evolution from this false analogy. Scientists don't draw conclusions about the world from off-the-cuff analogies. Scientists draw conclusions from evidence.

Suppose we did have dogs the sizes of glasses and horses, but that these were the smallest and biggest dogs. Imagine what Explore Evolution would have said instead then: “Evolution has limits because we haven't bred dogs the size of mice or dogs the size of elephants.” There is always a smallest dog and a largest dog, so this argument is nonsense.

This argument teaches students to appeal to the listener's naivety or intuition. Consider that the domestic dog is descended from wolves. In just a few thousand years of artificial selection we have achieved pretty dramatic differences betweens wolves and dachshunds.