100 Refutations To Misconceptions About Evolution

[Tenspace]

(Here's how it works... take a message, and provide a one-sentence refutation to the creationist claim. Duplicates may be noted as such.)

1) ) Evolution gives you what you need
Evolution is a scientific model to explain the diversity and variety of life.

2) We popped out of monkeys one day
Monkeys and Humans share the same ancestors and are not descended from each other.

3) The theory of evolution is tied to the big bang theory
Big Bang theory deals with creation of the universe; evolutionary theory deals with life on Earth.

4) The theory of evolution says random chemicals mysteriously made the first cell
Evolutionary theory does not speak to the origins of life, just to the origins of species.

5) Darwin took back his theory of evolution on his death bed.
Lady Hope, an evangelical who was not present at Darwin's death, made this statement in a 1915 speech, but it had long been refuted by Darwin's children and other witnesses at his side when he died.

21) Physical changes that occur during the lifetime of an organism will be passed on the offspring.

Only genetic changes are passed on to offspring.



24) Kent Hovind is an expert in the fields of evolution, biology, and other sciences.

Kent Hovind is a snake-oil salesman. The success of his lectures are contingent upon the lack of knowledge of his audience. His doctorate is from a degree mill which is not accredited by repectable institutions. Everytime he referes to himself as "doctor" is an insult to everyone who has successfully completed a doctoral program from an accredited university. His dissertation does not even qualify as a dissertation. He doesn't even stick to his thesis and does not provide evidence for his claim. It is a joke. He can't even correctly spell the religions he trashes in his work. Kent Hovind has never published one article in a peer reviewed journal and has no evidence to back his claims. No research by Hovind has been contributed to our knowledge of the natural world.

I wish I had the link of the man who utterly demolished Hovind's dissertation. It is somehwere on these forums.

25) Organisms evolve/mutate during their lifetime if a new selection pressure exerts itself.

Populations evolve, not individuals.

Straight from Kent Hovind's dissertation:

52) Satan created the theory of evolution which caused everything from Eve eating the forbidden fruit, Cain killing Abel, the construction of the Tower of Babel, Islam, and everything else that is bad in the eyes of the creationists!

Charles Darwin is the first to present the theory of evolution to the public in great detail in The Origin Of Species.

23) Only the fittest survive. (In actuality, if an organism can barely get by then it classified into the "fit" category).

The term fit is hard to define when considering whole organism. To be more precise, we must look at the genes. The neutral and advantageous genes make up the popluation while negative genes are filtered out over time through natural selection. Any given organism can contain a variety of the three categories of genes.

It is not the most fit species that survive, but the species most adaptive to change - Charles Darwin

30) Evolution is JUST a theory.

Technically evolution is a theory. However, the word "just" implies that the speaker is using the non-scientific definition of theory which is usually defined as a guess or speculation.

34) Evolution is effectively refuted by 'the Cambrian Explosion'

Earlier organisms were not composed of a complex bone structure; therefore, little or nothing could even fossilize.

[Tenspace]

myst7426 wrote

21) Physical changes that occur during the lifetime of an organism will be passed on the offspring.

Only genetic changes are passed on to offspring.



24) Kent Hovind is an expert in the fields of evolution, biology, and other sciences.

Kent Hovind is a snake-oil salesman. The success of his lectures are contingent upon the lack of knowledge of his audience. His doctorate is from a degree mill which is not accredited by repectable institutions. Everytime he referes to himself as "doctor" is an insult to everyone who has successfully completed a doctoral program from an accredited university. His dissertation does not even qualify as a dissertation. He doesn't even stick to his thesis and does not provide evidence for his claim. It is a joke. He can't even correctly spell the religions he trashes in his work. Kent Hovind has never published one article in a peer reviewed journal and has no evidence to back his claims. No research by Hovind has been contributed to our knowledge of the natural world.

I wish I had the link of the man who utterly demolished Hovind's dissertation. It is somehwere on these forums.

One-sentence refutations, please. And no cherry picking... take them in order and give everyone a chance. :)

Tenspace wrote

(Here's how it works... take a message, and provide a one-sentence refutation to the creationist claim. Duplicates may be noted as such.)

3) The theory of evolution is tied to the big bang theory
Big Bang theory deals with creation of the universe; evolutionary theory deals with life on Earth.

Just a small note: exchange the word creation for something else. If a creationist sees the word creation, he'll enter godcrazy mode which makes them blind to words and logic, moreso than usual that is.

[Tenspace]

skribb wrote

Just a small note: exchange the word creation for something else. If a creationist sees the word creation, he'll enter godcrazy mode which makes them blind to words and logic, moreso than usual that is.

That was my intent. Evolution is not about creation, unless you call speciation creation.

[Sternwallow]

myst7426 wrote

34) Evolution is effectively refuted by 'the Cambrian Explosion'

Earlier organisms were not composed of a complex bone structure; therefore, little or nothing could even fossilize.

Indeed, this failure to fossilize pushes the beginning of life back much farther into the Precambrian.

Tenspace wrote

(Here's how it works... take a message, and provide a one-sentence refutation to the creationist claim. Duplicates may be noted as such.)

14) The theory of evolution says random chemicals mysteriously made the first cell
Evolutionary theory does not speak to the origins of life, just to the origins of species.

While the other parts are true, unfortunately reading Science and Nature articles, scientists have spoken of evolution going to the "Origin of Life." Recently read an article about protein structure that contained that phrase for example in Science I believe. I thought it an idiotic thing to write.

While not dissing evolution, the truth is that design analysis, pattern analysis, probability theory and other aspects of Intelligent Design ought to be looked at intelligently and rationally, and not dismissed because they do not easily fall into a "natural selection" or "natural law" reference frame. Nor should they be dismissed because evolutionary biologists don't use them. There were plenty of electrical engineers in the world when grammer school dropout Edison invented the light bulb, step up/down transformers, breakers, switches, fuses, dynamos, insulators.... And there were great PhDs around when Orville and Wilber Wright (Bicycle shop owners) invented the airplane, wing warping control system, lightened the enginers and developed wind tunnel testing.

The fact that courts have pronounced you can't even mention it in school gives ID tremendous credibility - when have courts and the Vatican gotton science right?

The truth is that for 3.5 billion years bacteria and plant life did a heck of allot of work to convert an atmosphere of CO2 and hydrogen sulfides into the 78% N, 21% O 0.4% CO2 wonderful atmosphere we have today. It does not readily follow that it would have been advantageous at all for plants not to utilize O2 for their own benefit as C + O2 -> CO2 + energy is exothermic, and the endothermic reverse seems to be a difficult and counter-intuitive process from an energy efficiency standpoint. Nitrogen is the perfect cover gas to prevent the atmosphere from burning up vegetation in wildfires.

After all, survival is mostly about energy. Simplistic "natural selection" has allot of holes, and intellectually, many believe it is dead for very scientific reasons. That does not require religion, but it does demand a bit of humility and dispassioned analysis. Mass instinctions followed by rapid speciation is another problem with evolution. Also, Evolution even with genetics, is inadequate for describing collaboration of species. The collaborative aspects of life should be studied more carefully, and applied widely.


andy holland
theist sinner

We can organize the refutations into the numerical order after we get them all. I was concentrating on my own myths mostly.

Mass instinctions followed by rapid speciation is another problem with evolution.

Sources?

Rapid speciation after mass extinction?

The fact that courts have pronounced you can't even mention it in school gives ID tremendous credibility

...because it has no evidence... Schools are in the business of teaching anything unless it is part of science and ID isn't. Under Behe's definition of science, astrology and alchemy should be taught in schools too!
http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/se...miller_342.pdf