Objections to the Doctrine of Evolution

http://creation.com/caring-for-creation

‘Selection, whether it be natural or by man, results in loss of genetic information—breeding discards genes for crooked trunks or low wood production in forestry trees. So selection causes a reduction in the genetic information in the gene pool. In natural selection, if dark moths are “selectedâ€?naturally and light moths die out, then we have a reduction in the genetic information as to the colour of moths. The theory of evolution needs increases in genetic information, but selection (natural or man-induced) results in reduction of genetic information. If evolution were true, then the microbe from which we are all supposed to have evolved must have had an incredibly complex gene pool as it would have to have contained all the genes of every subsequent species, from which all species have evolved by natural selection as the gene pool is reduced. This doesn’t make sense because a living organism with that degree of genetic complexity would hardly be a microbe! Couple this with the fact that mutations cannot create complex genes for new functions (needing new information) and are usually detrimental to the survival or features of an organism, and then the whole argument of evolution doesn’t stand up. Creation makes much more sense.



Objections to the Doctrine of Evolution

Doctrine of Evolution, why it fails

http://www.basfeijen.nl/evolution/macroevolution.htm

Philip Cunningham

Darwinism is a Pseudo-Science
What the vast majority of Darwinists fail to realize (or ever honestly admit to) is that Darwinian evolution is not even a 'real' physical science in any proper sense but that Darwinian evolution is more realistically thought of as a pseudo-science. Even Jerry Coyne himself, the self-appointed Grand Inquisitor of Darwinian evolution, admits that Darwinian evolution lacks the rigor of a proper physical science:

“In science’s pecking order, evolutionary biology lurks somewhere near the bottom, far closer to phrenology than to physics. For evolutionary biology is a historical science, laden with history’s inevitable imponderables. We evolutionary biologists cannot generate a Cretaceous Park to observe exactly what killed the dinosaurs; and, unlike “harder” scientists, we usually cannot resolve issues with a simple experiment, such as adding tube A to tube B and noting the color of the mixture.”
- Jerry A. Coyne – Darwinian professor of evolution at the University of Chicago

The main reason why Darwinian evolution is more properly thought of as a pseudo-science instead of a proper science is because Darwinian evolution has no rigid mathematical basis, like other overarching physical theories of science do. A rigic mathematical basis in order to potentially falsify it (in fact math constantly shows us the Darwinian evolution is astronomically unlikely),,

“On the other hand, I disagree that Darwin’s theory is as `solid as any explanation in science.; Disagree? I regard the claim as preposterous. Quantum electrodynamics is accurate to thirteen or so decimal places; so, too, general relativity. A leaf trembling in the wrong way would suffice to shatter either theory. What can Darwinian theory offer in comparison?”
(Berlinski, D., “A Scientific Scandal?: David Berlinski & Critics,” Commentary, July 8, 2003)
http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/quote-of-the-day-8/

Oxford University Seeks Mathemagician — May 5th, 2011 by Douglas Axe
Excerpt: “Grand theories in physics are usually expressed in mathematics. Newton’s mechanics and Einstein’s theory of special relativity are essentially equations. Words are needed only to interpret the terms. Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection has obstinately remained in words since 1859.”…
http://biologicinstitute.org/2011/05/05/oxford-university-seeks-mathemagician/

Active Information in Metabiology – Winston Ewert, William A. Dembski, Robert J. Marks II – 2013
Except page 9: Chaitin states [3], “For many years I have thought that it is a mathematical scandal that we do not have proof that Darwinian evolution works.” In fact, mathematics has consistently demonstrated that undirected Darwinian evolution does not work.
http://bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/main/article/view/BIO-C.2013.4/BIO-C.2013.4

HISTORY OF EVOLUTIONARY THEORY – WISTAR DESTROYS EVOLUTION
Excerpt: A number of mathematicians, familiar with the biological problems, spoke at that 1966 Wistar Institute,, For example, Murray Eden showed that it would be impossible for even a single ordered pair of genes to be produced by DNA mutations in the bacteria, E. coli,—with 5 billion years in which to produce it! His estimate was based on 5 trillion tons of the bacteria covering the planet to a depth of nearly an inch during that 5 billion years. He then explained that the genes of E. coli contain over a trillion (10^12) bits of data. That is the number 10 followed by 12 zeros. *Eden then showed the mathematical impossibility of protein forming by chance.
http://www.pathlights.com/ce_encyclopedia/Encyclopedia/20hist12.htm

Darwin’s Doubt – Chapter 12 – Complex Adaptations and the Neo-Darwinian Math – Dr. Paul Giem – video
http://behe.uncommondescent.com/2010/12/the-first-rule-of-adaptive-evolution/

Another primary reason why Darwinian evolution is more realistically thought of as a pseudo-science instead of a proper physical science it that Darwinian evolution does not have any demonstrated empirical basis to support its claims (in fact empirical evidence also constantly shows us that Darwinian evolution is astronomically unlikely),,

“The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution”: Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain – Michael Behe – December 2010
Excerpt: In its most recent issue The Quarterly Review of Biology has published a review by myself of laboratory evolution experiments of microbes going back four decades.,,, The gist of the paper is that so far the overwhelming number of adaptive (that is, helpful) mutations seen in laboratory evolution experiments are either loss or modification of function. Of course we had already known that the great majority of mutations that have a visible effect on an organism are deleterious. Now, surprisingly, it seems that even the great majority of helpful mutations degrade the genome to a greater or lesser extent.,,, I dub it “The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution”: Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain.
http://behe.uncommondescent.com/2010/12/the-first-rule-of-adaptive-evolution/

Where’s the substantiating evidence for neo-Darwinism?
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1q-PBeQELzT4pkgxB2ZOxGxwv6ynOixfzqzsFlCJ9jrw/edit

Waiting Longer for Two Mutations – Michael J. Behe
Excerpt: Citing malaria literature sources (White 2004) I had noted that the de novo appearance of chloroquine resistance in Plasmodium falciparum was an event of probability of 1 in 10^20. I then wrote that ‘for humans to achieve a mutation like this by chance, we would have to wait 100 million times 10 million years’ (1 quadrillion years)(Behe 2007) (because that is the extrapolated time that it would take to produce 10^20 humans). Durrett and Schmidt (2008, p. 1507) retort that my number ‘is 5 million times larger than the calculation we have just given’ using their model (which nonetheless “using their model” gives a prohibitively long waiting time of 216 million years). Their criticism compares apples to oranges. My figure of 10^20 is an empirical statistic from the literature; it is not, as their calculation is, a theoretical estimate from a population genetics model.
http://www.discovery.org/a/9461

Don’t Mess With ID (Overview of Behe’s ‘Edge of Evoluton’ and Durrett and Schmidt’s paper at the 20:00 minute mark) – Paul Giem – video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JeYJ29-I7o

Another reason why Darwinian evolution is more realistically thought of as a pseudo-science than a proper physical science is that the two foundational pillars of Darwinian evolution, Random Mutation/Variation and Natural Selection, are now both shown to be severely compromised as to having the causal adequacy that Darwinists have presupposed for them. For instance, although Darwinian evolution appeals to ‘random mutations/variations’ to DNA as the main creative source for all evolutionary novelty, there are now known to be extensive layers of error correction in the cell to protect against any “random changes” from happening to DNA in the first place:

The Evolutionary Dynamics of Digital and Nucleotide Codes: A Mutation Protection Perspective – February 2011
Excerpt: “Unbounded random change of nucleotide codes through the accumulation of irreparable, advantageous, code-expanding, inheritable mutations at the level of individual nucleotides, as proposed by evolutionary theory, requires the mutation protection at the level of the individual nucleotides and at the higher levels of the code to be switched off or at least to dysfunction. Dysfunctioning mutation protection, however, is the origin of cancer and hereditary diseases, which reduce the capacity to live and to reproduce. Our mutation protection perspective of the evolutionary dynamics of digital and nucleotide codes thus reveals the presence of a paradox in evolutionary theory between the necessity and the disadvantage of dysfunctioning mutation protection. This mutation protection paradox, which is closely related with the paradox between evolvability and mutational robustness, needs further investigation.”
http://www.arn.org/blogs/index.php/literature/2011/04/26/dna_repair_mechanisms_reveal_a_contradic

Moreover when changes do happen to DNA they are now known to be ‘directed changes’ not ‘random changes’:

How life changes itself: the Read-Write (RW) genome. – 2013
Excerpt: Research dating back to the 1930s has shown that genetic change is the result of cell-mediated processes, not simply accidents or damage to the DNA. This cell-active view of genome change applies to all scales of DNA sequence variation, from point mutations to large-scale genome rearrangements and whole genome duplications (WGDs). This conceptual change to active cell inscriptions controlling RW genome functions has profound implications for all areas of the life sciences.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23876611

Shapiro on Random Mutation:
“What I ask others interested in evolution to give up is the notion of random accidental mutation.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-a-shapiro/jerry-coyne-fails-to-unde_b_1411144.html

Having ‘cell-mediated processes’ direct changes to DNA is in direct contraction to the ‘bottom up’ materialistic presupposition of 'randomness' which under-girds neo-Darwinian thought.

Moreover, Natural Selection, that other great pillar upon which Darwinian evolution rests, has also been undermined as having the causal adequacy that neo-Darwinists attributed to it. Natural Selection is grossly inadequate to do the work required of it because of what is termed ‘the princess and the pea’ paradox. The devastating ‘princess and the pea’ paradox is clearly elucidated by Dr. John Sanford, at the 8:14 minute mark, of this following video,,,

Genetic Entropy – Dr. John Sanford – Evolution vs. Reality – video
http://vimeo.com/35088933

Dr. Sanford points out, in the preceding video, that Natural Selection acts at the coarse level of the entire organism (phenotype) and yet the vast majority of mutations have effects that are only ‘slightly detrimental’, and have no noticeable effect on phenotypes, and are thus far below the power of Natural Selection to remove from genomes before they spread throughout the population.

Here are a few more notes on this insurmountable ‘princess and the pea’ problem for natural selection:

Evolution Vs Genetic Entropy (Kimura’s Distribution)– Andy McIntosh – video
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4028086/

The GS Principle (The Genetic Selection Principle) – Abel – 2009
Excerpt: The GS Principle, sometimes called “The 2nd Law of Biology,” states that selection must occur at the molecular/genetic level, not just at the fittest phenotypic/organismic level, to produce and explain life.,,, Natural selection cannot operate at the genetic level.
http://www.bioscience.org/2009/v14/af/3426/fulltext.htm

Moreover, as if that were not devastating enough as to undermining any credibility Natural Selection might have had as to having the causal adequacy to explain the highly integrated levels of overlapping functional information found in organisms, dimensionally speaking, Natural Selection is now known to not even be on the right playing field in the first place:

The predominance of quarter-power (4-D) scaling in biology
Excerpt: Many fundamental characteristics of organisms scale
with body size as power laws of the form:

Y = Yo M^b,

where Y is some characteristic such as metabolic rate, stride length or life span, Yo is a normalization constant, M is body mass and b is the allometric scaling exponent.
A longstanding puzzle in biology is why the exponent b is usually some simple multiple of 1/4 (4-Dimensional scaling) rather than a multiple of 1/3, as would be expected from Euclidean (3-Dimensional) scaling.
http://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/~drewa/pubs/savage_v_2004_f18_257.pdf

“Although living things occupy a three-dimensional space, their internal physiology and anatomy operate as if they were four-dimensional. Quarter-power scaling laws are perhaps as universal and as uniquely biological as the biochemical pathways of metabolism, the structure and function of the genetic code and the process of natural selection.,,, The conclusion here is inescapable, that the driving force for these invariant scaling laws cannot have been natural selection.” Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini, What Darwin Got Wrong (London: Profile Books, 2010), p. 78-79

i.e. Dimensionally speaking, Natural Selection is not even on the right playing field so as to do the work required of it. The reason why a ‘higher dimensional’ 4-Dimensional structure would be completely invisible to 3-Dimensional process, such as Natural Selection, is best illustrated by ‘flatland’:

Flatland – 3D to 4D shift – Carl Sagan – video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnURElCzGc0

The reason why internal physiology and anatomy operate as if they were four-dimensional instead of three dimensional is because of exactly what Darwinism has failed to explain the origination of. i.e. functional information. ‘Higher dimensional’ information, which is busting at the seams in life, simply cannot be reduced to any 3-dimensional energy-matter basis:

John Lennox – Is There Evidence of Something Beyond Nature? (Semiotic Information) – video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6rd4HEdffw

“One of the things I do in my classes, to get this idea across to students, is I hold up two computer disks. One is loaded with software, and the other one is blank. And I ask them, ‘what is the difference in mass between these two computer disks, as a result of the difference in the information content that they posses’? And of course the answer is, ‘Zero! None! There is no difference as a result of the information. And that’s because information is a mass-less quantity. Now, if information is not a material entity, then how can any materialistic explanation account for its origin? How can any material cause explain it’s origin?
And this is the real and fundamental problem that the presence of information in biology has posed. It creates a fundamental challenge to the materialistic, evolutionary scenarios because information is a different kind of entity that matter and energy cannot produce.
In the nineteenth century we thought that there were two fundamental entities in science; matter, and energy. At the beginning of the twenty first century, we now recognize that there’s a third fundamental entity; and its ‘information’. It’s not reducible to matter. It’s not reducible to energy. But it’s still a very important thing that is real; we buy it, we sell it, we send it down wires.
Now, what do we make of the fact, that information is present at the very root of all biological function? In biology, we have matter, we have energy, but we also have this third, very important entity; information. I think the biology of the information age, poses a fundamental challenge to any materialistic approach to the origin of life.”
-Dr. Stephen C. Meyer earned his Ph.D. in the History and Philosophy of science from Cambridge University for a dissertation on the history of origin-of-life biology and the methodology of the historical sciences.

In fact, matter and energy are now both shown to reduce to ‘quantum information’. In fact an entire human can now, theoretically, be reduced to quantum information and teleported to another location in the universe:

Quantum Teleportation Of A Human? – video
https://vimeo.com/75163272

Thus not only is Information not reducible to 3-Dimensional a energy-matter basis, as is presupposed in Darwinism, but in actuality energy-and matter both reduce to a information basis as is presupposed in Christian Theism:

Why the Quantum? It from Bit? A Participatory Universe?
Excerpt: In conclusion, it may very well be said that information is the irreducible kernel from which everything else flows. Thence the question why nature appears quantized is simply a consequence of the fact that information itself is quantized by necessity. It might even be fair to observe that the concept that information is fundamental is very old knowledge of humanity, witness for example the beginning of gospel according to John: “In the beginning was the Word.”
Anton Zeilinger – a leading expert in quantum teleportation:

Verse and Music:

John 1:1-4
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.

http://www.icr.org/creation-enzyme/

Amino acids must also be activated in order to be linked together to form proteins. Activation requires more enzymes to form the amino acid chains necessary to make proteins. Proteins must also be folded into the correct shape or they will not be functional, requiring additional information for what is the correct shape for a specific protein.

DNA and proteins work together to make a cell function normally. Changes in the DNA code called mutations can lead to changes in the amino acid sequence in proteins. Just one change in the amino acid sequence in a protein can cause diseases such as cystic fibrosis and sickle cell anemia. These mutations do not lead to more advanced organisms but to organisms less fit for survival.

http://scienceagainstevolution.info/v13i8f.htm

What Are We Talking About?

Here is Coyne’s definition of evolution:

In essence, the modern theory of evolution is easy to grasp. It can be summarized in a single (albeit slightly long) sentence: Life on earth evolved gradually beginning with one primitive species—perhaps a self-replicating molecule—that lived more than 3.5 billion years ago; it then branched out over time, throwing off many new and diverse species; and the mechanism for most (but not all) of evolutionary change is natural selection. 1

Notice that he intentionally excludes the origin of life. He postulates the existence of a single kind of living thing, “perhaps a self-replicating molecule,” upon which all subsequent changes build. Because of this definition, he avoids all discussion of how a lifeless Earth produced that first living thing.

According to Coyne, evolution begins with a living thing that already contains a mechanism for obtaining energy from the environment, a mechanism for storing that energy, converting the energy to other forms, using that energy for useful purposes, the ability to grow, the ability to reproduce itself, intrinsic genetic information, and has a method for expressing that genetic information as physical features. This living thing came about by some natural process which we can’t even begin to imagine, but isn’t of any real importance to answering the question of how we came to be on this Earth.

Clearly, the origin of that first living thing is vital to the theory of evolution. Why doesn’t Coyne include the origin of life in his definition of evolution? You know the answer. He can’t begin to explain it. Defining evolution as he did gives him an excuse to not even try.
Excuses

If you are expecting a book with the title, Why Evolution is True to contain proof for the theory of evolution, you will be disappointed. What it really contains is excuses why evolutionists can’t prove evolution is true, why it is unreasonable to expect evolutionists to provide proof, and why you should believe in evolution anyway. Let the excuses begin!
Why We’ve Never Seen It

Nobody has ever observed macroevolution in the laboratory or in nature. Here is his excuse for why we have not.

Further, we shouldn’t expect to see more than small changes in one or a few features of a species—what is known as microevolutionary change. Given the gradual pace of evolution, it’s unreasonable to expect to see selection transforming one “type” of plant or animal into another—so-called macroevolution—within a human lifetime. Though macroevolution is occurring today, we simply won’t be around long enough to see it. Remember that the issue is not whether macroevolutionary change happens—we already know from the fossil record that it does—but whether it was caused by natural selection, and whether natural selection can build complex features and organisms. [italics his] 2

There is a process known as “microevolution” that really does occur. Microevolution is the variation within a species that occurs because of loss of genetic information. But he is talking about “macroevolution,” which is the creation of a new kind of living thing resulting from genetic information that previously did not exist.

He asserts, without proof, that macroevolution is occurring today, while admitting that one can’t see it happening. That is, genetic information is supposedly arising spontaneously that will create a new kind of creature. He just knows it, even though nobody can actually see it. The alleged reason nobody can see it is because it happens so slowly.

For one thing, natural selection in the wild is often incredibly slow. The evolution of feathers, for example, probably took hundreds of thousands of years. Even if feathers were evolving today, it would simply be impossible to watch this happening in real time, much less to measure whatever type of selection was acting to make feathers larger. 3

The real reason why nobody has ever seen it is because it hasn’t happened! Genetic information doesn’t just magically appear.

He thinks he sees macroevolution in the fossil record. This is remarkable because he spends so many pages trying to explain why there are no missing links in the fossil record!
Why There Are No Missing Links

We don’t find any missing links in the fossil record but, according to Coyne, we should not expect to find any.

Taking into account all of these requirements, it’s clear that the fossil record must be incomplete. … we can estimate that we have fossil evidence of only 0.1 percent to 1 percent of all species—hardly a good sample of the history of life! [italics his] 4

What should our “missing link” with apes look like? Remember that the “missing link” is the single ancestral species that gave rise to modern humans on the one hand and chimpanzees on the other. It’s not reasonable to expect the discovery of that critical single species, for its identification would require a complete series of ancestor-descendant fossils on both the chimp and human lineages, series that we could trace back until they intersect at the ancestor. Except for a few marine microorganisms, such complete fossil sequences don’t exist. And our early human ancestors were large, relatively few in number compared to grazers like antelopes, and inhabited a small part of Africa under dry conditions not conducive to fossilization. Their fossils, like those of all apes and monkeys, are scarce. This resembles our problem with the evolution of birds from feathered reptiles, for whom transitional fossils are also rare. We can certainly trace the evolution of birds from feathered reptiles, but we’re not sure exactly which fossil species were the direct ancestors of modern birds.

Given all this, we can’t expect to find the single particular species that represents the “missing link” between humans and other apes. We can hope only to find its evolutionary cousins. Remember also that this common ancestor was not a chimpanzee, and probably didn’t look like either modern chimps or humans. Nevertheless, it’s likely that the “missing link” was closer in appearance to modern chimps than to modern humans. We are the odd man out in the evolution of modern apes, who all resemble one another far more than they resemble us. 5 [italics his]

We will return to this issue of humans being so different from modern apes later; but let’s stick to the impossibility of finding missing links for the moment.

Clearly, he is talking out of both sides of his mouth. He says that complete fossils sequences don’t exist, except for a few microscopic marine organisms. Microscopic fossils are controversial because scientists don’t always agree that they even are fossils. But, let’s suppose they really are fossils. Just because they look similar doesn’t necessarily mean that they are biologically descended from one another. Even if they are descended from one another, they are all still just microorganisms which demonstrate variation—not evolution. So, actually, the alleged microscopic fossils don’t really show evolution.

Human and bird fossils allegedly provide the best (although incomplete) sequence of fossils, but even they don’t really show a clear pattern of evolution, so Coyne remains in full-blown excuse mode.

Although far from complete, the record of human evolution is one of the best confirmations we have of an evolutionary prediction, and is especially gratifying because the prediction was Darwin’s.

But a few caveats. We don’t (and can’t expect to) have a continuous fossil record of human ancestry. Instead, we see a tangled bush of many different species. Most of them went extinct without leaving descendants, and only one genetic lineage threaded its way through time to become modern humans. We’re not sure yet which fossil species lie along that particular thread, and which were evolutionary dead ends. The most surprising thing we’ve learned about our history is that we’ve had many close evolutionary cousins who died out without leaving descendants. It’s even possible that as many as four humanlike species lived in Africa at the same time, and maybe in the same place. Imagine the encounters that might have taken place! Did they kill one another, or try to interbreed? 6

After saying they unable to tell how the different fossils are related, he next admits they aren’t even able to classify the fossils with any degree of certainty.

And the names of ancestral human fossils can’t be taken too seriously. Like theology, paleontology is a field in which the students far outnumber the objects of study. There are lively—and sometimes acrimonious—debates about whether a given fossil is really something new, or merely a variant of an already named species. These arguments about scientific names often mean very little. Whether a humanlike fossil is named as one species or another can turn on matters as small as half a millimeter in the diameter of a tooth, or slight differences in the shape of the thighbone. 7

It is important to remember that when paleontologists talk about “human fossils” they generally aren’t talking about complete skeletons. Often they are talking about one or two bones, a partial skull, or a few teeth. One can’t even be sure that the teeth and bones go together. This is why there are so many arguments. The models of our “human ancestors” that are displayed in museums are based on a few bones and a lot of speculation based on the presumption of evolution.

Here is his self-contradictory summary.

Looking at the whole array of bones, then what do we have? Clearly, indisputable evidence for human evolution from apelike ancestors. Granted, we can’t yet trace out a continuous lineage from an apelike early hominid to modern Homo sapiens. The fossils are scattered in time and space, a series of dots yet to be genealogically connected. And we may never have enough fossils to join them. 8

It is indisputable and yet unproven. How can you argue with “logic” like that?
For the Birds

Coyne makes general claims that the evolution of dinosaurs to birds, and the origin of flight, is well documented in the fossil record. But when he gets to specifics, he just makes excuses for why they don’t really know anything at all about the evolution of birds.

Because reptiles appear in the fossil record before birds, we can guess that the common ancestor of birds and reptiles was an ancient reptile, and would have looked like one. We now know that this common ancestor was a dinosaur. 9 [italics his]

Coyne so easily goes from “guess” to “know.” Even if the fossil record showed that a particular reptile died before a particular bird, it doesn’t prove that the bird is a biological descendant of the reptile. It is an indisputable fact that Big Brown (the horse that won the 2008 Kentucky Derby) died in 2008, and President George Washington died in 1799. Does that prove that Big Brown was a biological descendant of George Washington? Of course not!

We want you to get the full impact of Coyne’s explanation about bird evolution, so here is a long passage. As always, colored highlights are ours, but the italics for emphasis in the quote are his.

But if feathers didn’t arise as adaptations for flying, what on earth were they for? Again, we don’t know. They could have been used for ornamentation or display—perhaps to attract mates. It seems more likely, though, that they were used for insulation. Unlike modern reptiles, theropods may have been partially warm-blooded; and even if they weren’t, feathers would have helped maintain body temperature. And what feathers evolved from is even more mysterious. The best guess is that they derive from the same cells that give rise to reptilian scales, but not everyone agrees.

Despite the unknowns, we can make some guesses about how natural selection fashioned modern birds. Early carnivorous dinosaurs evolved longer forelimbs and hands, which probably helped them grab and handle their prey. That kind of grabbing would favor evolution of muscles that would quickly extend the front legs and pull them inward: exactly the motion used for the downward stroke in true flight. Then followed the feathery covering, probably for insulation. Given these innovations, there are at least two ways flight could have evolved. The first is called the “trees down” scenario. There is evidence that some theropods lived at least partly in trees. Feathery forelimbs would help these reptiles glide from tree to tree, or from tree to ground, which would help them escape predators, find food more readily, or cushion their falls.

A different—and more likely—scenario is called the “ground up” theory, which sees flight evolving as an outgrowth of open-armed runs and leaps that feathered dinosaurs might have made to catch their prey. Longer wings could also have evolved as running aids. The chukar partridge, a game bird studied by Kenneth Dial at the University of Montana, represents a living example of this step. These partridges almost never fly, and flap their wings mainly to help them run uphill. The flapping gives them not only extra propulsion, but also more traction against the ground. Newborn chicks can run up 45-degree slopes, and adults can ascent 105-degree slopes—overhangs more than vertical!—solely by running and flapping their wings. The obvious advantage is that uphill scrambling helps these birds escape predators. The next step in evolving flight would be very short airborne hops, like those made by turkeys and quail fleeing from danger.

In either the “trees down” or “ground up” scenario, natural selection could begin to favor individuals who could fly farther instead of merely gliding, leaping, or flying for short bursts. Then would come the other innovations shared by modern birds, including hollow bones for lightness and that large breastbone.

While we may speculate about the details, the existence of transitional fossils—and the evolution of birds from reptiles—is fact. 10

The only real science here is the study showing that wings can help birds run uphill. All the rest is, as Coyne admits, speculation—and therefore an undeniable fact!

We don’t have space this month to point out all the times Coyne makes bold general claims about the fossils, and then makes excuses for why the fossil data doesn’t support the general claim. We hope we have given you enough examples to prove our point, and hope that you read his book to find more examples for yourself.
Not Like Apes

Earlier in this essay we did promise, however, to examine Coyne’s statement about humans being so different from apes. This is important because evolutionists are stuck in the middle. On the one hand, they need to prove that we are so close genetically to apes that we must be biologically related to them. One the other hand, they need to explain how such a small genetic difference can produce such obvious, significant differences between men and apes.

That oft-quoted 1.5 percent difference between ourselves and chimps, then is really larger than it looks … More than 6 percent of genes found in humans simply aren’t found in any form in chimpanzees. There are over fourteen hundred novel genes expressed in humans but not in chimps. … Despite our general resemblance to our primate cousins, then, evolving a human from an apelike ancestor probably required substantial genetic change. 11 [italics his]

He is pretty close to the truth here. We’ve shown before that the allegedly small genetic difference between apes and man is a fictitious result of some artful mathematics. 12 There really is a substantial genetic difference between apes and humans which evolutionists don’t like to admit because it weakens their argument that we share a common biological ancestor.
The Discontinuity Problem

The most basic problem with the theory of evolution is staring us right in the face, but it is so obvious that it is often overlooked.

Indeed, perhaps the most striking fact about nature is that it is discontinuous. When you look at animals and plants, each individual almost always falls into one of many discrete groups. When we look at a single wild cat, for example, we are immediately able to identify it as either a lion, a cougar, a snow leopard, and so on. All cats do not blur insensibly into one another through a series of feline intermediates. And although there is a variation among individuals within a cluster (as all lion researchers know, each lion looks different from every other), the clusters nevertheless remain discrete in “organism space.” We see clusters in all organisms that reproduce sexually.

These discrete clusters are known as species. And at first sight, their existence looks like a problem for evolutionary theory. Evolution is, after all, a continuous process, so how can it produce groups of animals and plants that are discrete and discontinuous, separated from others by gaps in appearance and behavior? How these groups arise is the problem of speciation—or the origin of species.

That, of course, is the title of Darwin’s most famous book, a title implying that he had a lot to say about speciation. … Yet Darwin’s magnum opus was largely silent on the “mystery of mysteries.” And what little he did say on this topic is seen by most modern evolutionists as muddled. 13 [italics his]

If the theory of evolution were true, then plants and animals really would blur together without clear distinctions. It really is a problem for which Coyne has no good answer.
No Excuse for Sex

The origin of sex is one of the hardest things for evolutionists to explain. Coyne doesn’t have an answer. As usual, he just punts.

The question of the number of sexes is a messy theoretical issue that needn’t detain us, except to note that theory shows that two sexes will evolutionarily replace mating systems involving three or more sexes: two sexes is the most robust and stable strategy.

The theory of why the two sexes have different numbers and sizes of gametes is equally messy. This condition presumably evolved from that in earlier sexually reproducing species in which the two sexes had gametes of equal size. 14

False Claims

On those rare occasions when Coyne isn’t attacking creationists or making excuses for why there isn’t any real proof for evolution, he makes false claims about evidence for evolution. Here are just a few.

If we know the half-life, how much of the radioisotope was there when the rock was formed (something that geologists can accurately determine), and how much remains now, it’s relatively simple to estimate the age of the rock. 15

Geologists have no possible way of knowing how much radioactive material was in the rock when it formed.

Several radio-isotopes usually occur together, so the dates can be cross-checked, and the ages invariable agree. 16

No, they don’t invariably agree, unless you throw out the ages that don’t agree! The discordant dates of the Apollo 11 moon rocks are typical. (Only 10 of 116 measurements agreed with the “accepted” age of the moon. 17)

The fossil record documents the gradual loss of toes over time, so that in modern horses only the middle one—the hoof—remains. 18

This story about horse evolution has been debunked by evolutionists themselves for years! Even the Chicago Field Museum admits it. 19 20 How could Coyne not know that?
Getting His Haeckels Up

Coyne even goes so far as to try to defend Ernst Haeckel’s biogenetic law, sort of.

Noting this principle, Ernst Haeckel, a German evolutionist and Darwin’s contemporary, formulated a “biogenetic law” in 1866, famously summarized as “Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.” This means the development of an organism simply replays its evolutionary history. But this notion is true in only a limited sense. Embryonic stages don’t look like the adult forms of their ancestors, as Haeckel claimed, but like the embryonic forms of ancestors. Human fetuses, for example, never resemble adult fish or reptiles, but in certain ways they do resemble embryonic fish and reptiles. Also the recapitulation is neither strict nor inevitable: not every feature of an ancestor’s embryo appears in its descendants, nor do all stages of development unfold in a strict evolutionary order. Further, some species, like plants, have dispensed with nearly all traces of their ancestry during development. Haeckel’s law has fallen into disrepute not only because it wasn’t strictly true, but also because Haeckel was accused, largely unjustly, of fudging some drawings of early embryos to make them look more similar than they really are. Yet we shouldn’t throw out the baby with the bathwater. Embryos still show a form of recapitulation: features that arose earlier in evolution often appear earlier in development. And this makes sense only if species have an evolutionary history.

Now, we’re not absolutely sure why some species retain much of their evolutionary history during development. The “adding new stuff onto old” principle is just a hypothesis—an explanation for the facts of embryology. 21 [italics his]

In summary, embryos look similar during development, except when they don’t; and this only makes sense to evolutionists. They don’t know why this happens. They don’t know why it only happens in some species. But it explains the facts of embryology!

We don’t know why Coyne thinks Haeckel was “unjustly” accused of faking the drawings. There is no question that he did fake them. His guilt has been known for decades.
Ignore the Contradictions

The theory of evolution is full of contradictions, resulting in debates and arguments among evolutionists. Coyne says these controversies prove how strong the theory is.

Critics of evolution seize upon these controversies, arguing that they show something is wrong with the theory of evolution itself. But this is specious. There is no dissent among serious biologists about the major claims of evolutionary theory—only about the details of how evolution occurred, and about the relative roles of various evolutionary mechanisms. Far from discrediting evolution, the “controversies” are in fact the sign of a vibrant, thriving field. What moves science forward is [sic] ignorance, debate, and the testing of alternative theories with observations and experiments. A science without controversy is a science without progress. 22

This is just amazing! There are controversies precisely because the theory is wrong. He says all the people who believe in evolution really believe in evolution (they just believe other believers in evolution are wrong). The fact that there is so much ignorance and controversy about evolution proves how true it must be.

If it is true that debate about evolution promotes scientific progress, why is it that evolutionists go to court to prevent debate about evolution from being discussed in American public schools?

The more you read about evolution, written by evolutionists, the less you will believe it!

http://creationsafaris.com/epoi_c05.htm

Tracy Kreckman I've seen this same tactic used by religious cults to indoctrinate people into erroneous thinking - take baby steps through a process, each of which seems reasonable on the surface, but have buried assumptions or incorrect facts at any or all steps along the way.

The HUGE problem here is that no matter what step you finish at, if there's disagreement, the response to the inquirer is "you don't understand". This makes the correspondingly HUGE assumption that the theory of evolution is correct and that there are no problems with the theory.

One hidden assumption is that mutations are generally beneficial or neutral for a population. If necessary, evolutionists may nod to the fact that a mutation may be detrimental, but shrug it off and talk about how natural selection will simply do away with organisms that have developed a defect. Anyone who has seen photos of babies born near Chernobyl after the disaster knows that not a single one benefitted from genetic mutation. Law firms thrive on cases of birth defects caused by chemical exposure. I'm unaware of a single known instance of an improvement in a human caused by random genetic mutation. The more complex the organism, the more likely a random mutation results in crippling damage rather than improvement.

Another related hidden assumption is that random mutations can produce the infinite variety of possible combinations and permutations of DNA that have resulted in the 1,000,000+ species of plants and animals that exist today. Need to grow lungs to get out of the slime? Evolution can make them! Need to grow wings to escape predators? Evolution will build them! Obviously I'm being flippant and facetious, but given the generally harmful nature of random mutation, even the evolutionist's magic wand of "millions of years" simply isn't powerful enough to bring about such successful diversity.

There are a lot of other problems, but simply put, there's a fourth option to the above that's completely ignored, and that the theory of evolution comes to the wrong conclusion about the observed facts.

http://www.ichthus.info/Evolution/evol-vs-creation.html

http://www.campaignfortruth.com/Eclub/170310/CTO-evolutionordesign2.htm