Skepticism of Evolution

This is a post I submitted for an online "Environmental Science" class. I thought it worth sharing. (Also, I finally managed to access my blog, obviously.)

A definition of the terms:

Evolution: comes in two forms:
Micro-evolution: The changes within a species, such as breeding animals. A common day, reproducible occurrence.
Macro-Evolution: The change over time from one species to another, as a result of natural selection and survival of the fittest.

Creationism:
The idea that our world did not create itself out of chaos, but was created by a supreme being, in a state comparable to now.

Intelligent Design:
The acceptance of the theory of Evolution, but with an affirmation that God led the evolutionary process.

I hope to make a small case for Creationism in this submission.

I will start with this quote from Carolyn Peters (that’s our instructor…):
“Most biologists believe in evolution. It is a logical format for biological succession. It would be difficult to teach biology without believing in evolution. I believe in evolution. I however do not mix my religious beliefs with scientific fact. It is really too bad that evolution has had this type of following.”

With all due respect, this kind of a statement is implying that any defense of creation must be by a religious fanatic (“this type of following”) who doesn’t understand a thing about science (“I however do not mix my religious beliefs with scientific fact”).
Two other statements are that “most biologists believe in evolution”. Oddly enough, our very own textbook explains why a large number of supporters do not make a claim valid – the same way that perhaps 99% of the scientific world supported the flat earth theory. Majority is not a basis for truth.
And lastly, the comment makes no distinction between the changes within a species (which is of course the basis of much of biology) and the changes from one species to another.

Now, here is a famous quote by Harvard geneticist Richard Lewontin:

“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.” (quoted from Phillip E. Johnson’s book “Defeating Darwinism”).

I bring this up to demonstrate that even among some of the most highly regarded scientists, science does not lead them to the acceptance or denial of God’s existence, rather, they have a PRIOR commitment to fitting any evidence they find into an atheistic view, no matter how awkward it is.

I will not argue the rest of this with quotes and statistics (which tend to only lead in circles, stacking statistics on both sides to see who has the bigger pile). [Edit: I think that honest research would show less evidence for evolution than modern claims to its general acceptance might suggest, but I prefer, in a short essay, to argue through logic, which doesn't require a large amount of references.]Instead I will present just two thoughts that are more than enough to convince me:

1. Information. It is not uncommon for scientists to include “information” as a third essential part of the universe, together with matter and energy. The interesting thing about it is that, as our chapter discusses, energy goes from more useful to less useful (or more dispersed) forms. Similarly, information has never, in any way, be known to create itself. Yes, experiments recreating the “early earth” have produced some of the amino acids necessary to create a cell, but a few acids do not contain information – the information of hundreds of books necessary for one strand of DNA, which would be necessary to make the leap to a cell, the smallest possible unit of life.
2. Continuity. There is an often ignored assumption embedded into Evolution that there is a stream of mutations that are CONTINUOUSLY beneficial all the way from a cell to any living being. That means that, at any point in Evolution, it was always beneficial to move towards the “next” species, not back. Imagine it as a mountain-climber. He starts in the valley as a cell, and spends millions of years climbing the first hill. When he gets to the top, he sees the real highest point of the mountain, but he has to go down a little to get there. Now, Evolution cannot get there, because it is blind – besides, that little valley might take 100,000 years to cross, in which time the species would be less likely to survive, and survival of the fittest would destroy it. Or, A prime example: Someone mentioned in a different discussion that we come from apes and so do monkeys. Monkeys gained tails over time. Nice. My question is this: During the first 2000 or so years when monkey were developing their tail, and it was 1 inch long… um. What use was it, and how did it help them survive? Why would the monkeys with the little mutation of a stub on their rear reproduce more?

Given my second thought, one could take it to simply support Intelligent Design, not creationism. Although I doubt that after admitting that God can have direct influence on the world there would still be sufficient evidence for any cross-species development to support an evolutionary theory.