MICHAEL ALLEN'S PRESENTATION ON CREATIONISM AND EVOLUTION

• Intelligent Design and Evolution: Main Presentation (PDF 4.5MB)
• Handout 1: Tabled Comparison of Origin Theories (PDF 172KB)

Handout 2: Misconceptions About Evolution

Misconception:

Transitional fossils have not been found, or they have been misinterpreted as being a common link. Common analogy used to illustrate this idea: "if everything descended from a common ancestor how come we don't find fossils which are part human, part oak tree, and part rat?"

Answer:

Transitional fossils have been found, but evolution doesn't predict transitional fossils between radically different species, rather, transitional fossils among similar branches with similar traits. For instance; hominids (apes and man or ceteans (whales and dolphins). Archaeopteryx is a good example of a transitional fossil. It is not really a bird, nor is it truly a reptile. It is its own unique specie which from the mechanisms of evolution, speciated to something closer to modern birds. This new species in turn speciated again and this is how the various species of birds formed. Not all branches led to modern birds, most died out. The differences between parent and daughter species are sometimes so subtle that they are hard to notice. Fossils have undoubtedly been misinterpreted. Nothing in science is absolute. But the chance of ALL the transitional fossils being misinterpreted is fairly low, and gradually diminishes as we find more and more transitional forms. Think about how drastically a person's appearance would be altered if many small changes were made. Make someone's nose a little wider, a little shorter or a little longer, their eyes a little larger or smaller, closer together or further apart; their hair a little darker or lighter, a little curlier or straighter. With just small changes like this a human face can go from someone you know to a perfect stranger. This was just a handful of superficial changes what happens when we start making thousands or tens of thousands of changes to bone structure in addition to superficial features? How dramatically would the appearance of the face be altered from the one we were familiar with? This analogy applies to how mutation results in speciation. At first glance these small genetic changes don't seem to be powerful enough to go from something like a sperm whale to a gopher, but as we have shown the leap from a whale to a dolphin seems a bit easier to accept. With a few thousand small changes we can grasp the leap from whale to dolphin. How about a few hundred thousand changes? What about a million or more? Over long time periods, with all these genetic changes and dynamic environmental factors, the leap from whale to gopher looks a little less problematic.

Misconception:

Evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics, which states that nature has a tendency to move from organized systems to disorder over time. How can a highly organized system like a biological organism evolve if all systems tend toward disorder?

Answer:

The second law of thermodynamics is often misunderstood. It only applies to closed systems. Within a closed system the amount of energy remains constant. Earth is not a closed system. The sun is continually pumping energy into our biosphere allowing the formation of highly ordered forms and structures.

Misconception:

Evolution has never been observed.

Answer:

Yes, it has, on more than one occasion. Examples include: Antibiotic resistant bacteria, HIV, pesticide resistant insects, speciation in houseflies observed in laboratory, and speciation in the wild. Evolution is a consequence of natural selection, genetic mutation, genetic drift, and environmental conditions. To use an analogy: We use pesticides to kill off annoying insects. Most of them die, but a few which had immunity or were only mildly impaired by the chemical had offspring. The offspring were also resistant. We spray the chemical again and with the increased dosage most die, but a few survive and so on until a strain of the insect appears that is totally immune to the chemical used. This is natural selection. The environment was such that the insects possessing a resistant to the chemical managed to have offspring who also passed that trait on. In some ways natural selection can be thought of as "selective breeding", but it isn't guided by anything except environment and circumstance and has no ultimate goal in mind, unlike selective breeders.

Misconception:

Evolution is only a theory, it has never been proven.

Answer:

No theory is, or ever will be, "proven" in the sense that we know it is 100% accurate because we can never overcome Plato's cave argument and Descartes. In the strictest sense Evolution is a theory. It provides mechanisms for how it proceeds and makes quantifiable predictions, which can be tested. The theory of Evolution does not propose to explain everything about the origin of life; but lack of data does not mean the model is invalid. The only thing we can ever hope to achieve is to either refine our current model of evolution or replace it with a new model. The new model would have to account for all the data and observations our current theory does, but in a simpler and further reaching way. It would have to make quantifiable predictions, which could be tested and verified.

Misconception:

Evolution proceeds by random chance. If this is so, then how could incredibly complex biological machines, such as human beings or other mammals ever occur? The odds of it happening are overwhelmingly against their formation.

Answer:

Evolution doesn't proceed by random chance alone. Random genetic mutations in a population provide the raw material or foundation on which natural selection acts. The members of a species containing a set of mutations or a single mutation giving them a better opportunity to reproduce will tend to survive while the others of the species lacking the mutations will fade out. It is natural selection, which molds or shapes a population, not random chance alone. The traits favored by natural selection depend on environmental factors. The environmental conditions and mutations leading up to any one animal species are very specific and the chances of them reoccurring naturally are literally impossible.

Misconception:

Macroevolution verses Microevolution: Many anti-evolution proponents don't disagree that what is commonly referred to as' micro-evolution' takes place. Microevolution is often illustrated by contrasting various species of birds, or antibiotic resistant bacteria verses normal bacteria. Where as Macroevolution is seen as the evolution of something similar to a humpback whale into a grasshopper. They maintain that microevolution can cause a single parent species of whale to speciate into various types of different whales but not something like a grasshopper.

Answer:

The mechanisms behind `micro-evolution' and `macro-evolution' are one and the same. Natural selection, genetic mutation, isolation, and genetic drift all result in microevolution. But on MUCH larger time scales, these same forces turn microevolution into macroevolution. Put another way, macroevolution is the result of thousands, ten of thousands, or millions of instances of microevolution; it is the accumulative effect of microevolution. Calculations have shown that an animal the size of a rat could achieve the size of an elephant within 40,000 years with the correct amount of environmental pressures favoring a larger size.