Is evolution or creationism right?

Answer

From a largely evolution perspective, we can review the evidence:

The case for Evolution

Before looking at the case for evolution, we need to consider the geological evidence for the age of the earth, since evolution by natural selection requires more than a few thousand years. Some creationists believe, wrongly, that geologists used carbon-dating to establish the age of the earth. In fact, several techniques have been developed for establishing the ages of very ancient rock stratas. The various techniques can be cross-referenced, building up evidence for their reliability. If even one scientifically accepted method provided dates entirely inconsistent with other methods, then this would throw the estimated age of the Earth into doubt; but this has not happened. Present estimates put the age of the earth at 4.54 billion years, plus or minus 45 million.

The major evidence for evolution of species has been the fossil evidence. Scientists have pieced together comprehensive evidence of ancient species, with many examples of early, primitive species being replaced in the geological column by more advanced species, a little more similar to the species we see today, until a sequence can be built up to show the evolution of many species.

Amongst young-earth proponents, Lubenow claims to have knowledge that a species can never evolve into two separate species. Evolutionary scientists dispute this position, as being unsupported by evidence.

With the discovery of the genetic code, biologists can now identify the point in time when two present-day species diverged. So, biologists tell us that their analysis of DNA material shows that the earliest humans diverged from the ancestors of chimpanzees about 7 million years ago. The fossil record is closing in on that date. Fragments of the early hominid, Ardipithecus ramidus, have an estimated age of 4.5 million years. Part of a lower jaw, believed to be from an early hominid, found at Lothagam in Kenya, was recently dated to around 5.2 million years ago.

The case for Creationism

Creationists fall into two camps: those who recognise the futility of denying the scientific evidence of the age of the earth, but adhere to intelligent design (old-earth creationists); and those who believe that the world is literally only a few thousand years old (young-earth creationists). The proponents of old-earth creationism include Hugh Ross and others. The proponents of young-earth creationism include Marvin Lubenow, William Dembski, Michael Behe and others.

In order to harmonise old-earth creationism with a literal reading of the Bible, Ross asserts that the early hominids, who lived before God created Adam and Eve, were not really human because they did not possess a soul. Others attempt to establish that the 'days' of Genesis really meant some other, much longer period.

Dembski has attempted to develop various 'scientific' theories and laws to disprove evolution. One of these is his proposed "fourth law of thermodynamics". This proposed law has been found to be flawed and to be in conflict with the second law of thermodynamics, and is no longer widely referred to by creationists.

Meanwhile, Grant R. Jeffrey has unsuccessfully attempted to show that evolution is contrary to the second law of thermodynamics. His arguments could perhaps have some force if living things were closed systems, but they are not.

Behe is a microbiologist, but his main contribution is in putting forward novel probability theories. He proposes irreducible complexity as demonstrating the impossibility of evolution, but his mathematical treatment conflicts with the existing mathematical understanding of of irreducible complexity, given in the algorithmic theory of probability, a chapter of statistical science developed in the 1960s. In No Free Lunch at page 280, William Dembski says, "Behe's idea of irreducible complexity is neither exactly correct nor wrong ... Instead it is salvageable." Thus, we have a creationist's opinion of the difficulties Behe is facing in developing his concept of irreducible complexity.

Conclusion

The evidence for evolution is overwhelming, while the proponents of creationism are struggling to develop plausible proofs of creationism, or even disproofs of evolution. The scientific theory of evolution by natural selection explains how life evolved on earth.

Answer

1. Galaxies wind themselves up too fast

The stars of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, rotate about the galactic center with different speeds, the inner ones rotating faster than the outer ones. The observed rotation speeds are so fast that if our galaxy were more than a few hundred million years old, it would be a featureless disc of stars instead of its present spiral shape.¹

Yet our galaxy is supposed to be at least 10 billion years old. Evolutionists call this 'the winding-up dilemma', which they have known about for fifty years. They have devised many theories to try to explain it, each one failing after a brief period of popularity. The same 'winding-up' dilemma also applies to other galaxies.

For the last few decades the favored attempt to resolve the dilemma has been a complex theory called 'density waves'. The theory has conceptual problems, has to be arbitrarily and very finely tuned, and lately has been called into serious question by the Hubble Space Telescope's discovery of very detailed spiral structure in the central hub of the 'Whirlpool' galaxy, M51.

2. Comets disintegrate too quickly

According to evolutionary theory, comets are supposed to be the same age as the solar system, about 5 billion years. Yet each time a comet orbits close to the sun, it loses so much of its material that it could not survive much longer than about 100,000 years. Many comets have typical ages of 10,000 years.

Evolutionists explain this discrepancy by assuming that (a) comets come from an unobserved spherical 'Oort cloud' well beyond the orbit of Pluto, (b) improbable gravitational interactions with infrequently passing stars often knock comets into the solar system, and (c) other improbable interactions with planets slow down the incoming comets often enough to account for the hundreds of comets observed. So far, none of these assumptions has been substantiated either by observations or realistic calculations.

Lately, there has been much talk of the 'Kuiper Belt', a disc of supposed comet sources lying in the plane of the solar system just outside the orbit of Pluto. Even if some bodies of ice exist in that location, they would not really solve the evolutionists' problem, since according to evolutionary theory the Kuiper Belt would quickly become exhausted if there were no Oort cloud to supply it.

3. Not enough mud on the sea floor

Each year, water and winds erode about 25 billion tons of dirt and rock from the continents and deposit it in the ocean This material accumulates as loose sediment (i.e., mud) on the hard basaltic (lava-formed) rock of the ocean floor. The average depth of all the mud in the whole ocean, including the continental shelves, is less than 400 meters.

The main way known to remove the mud from the ocean floor is by plate tectonic subduction. That is, sea floor slides slowly (a few cm/year) beneath the continents, taking some sediment with it. According to secular scientific literature, that process presently removes only 1 billion tons per year. As far as anyone knows, the other 24 billion tons per year simply accumulate. At that rate, erosion would deposit the present amount of sediment in less than 12 million years.

Yet according to evolutionary theory, erosion and plate subduction have been going on as long as the oceans have existed, an alleged 3 billion years. If that were so, the rates above imply that the oceans would be massively choked with mud dozens of kilometers deep. An alternative (creationist) explanation is that erosion from the waters of the Genesis flood running off the continents deposited the present amount of mud within a short time about 5000 years ago.

4. Not enough sodium in the sea

Every year, river and other sources dump over 450 million tons of sodium into the ocean. Only 27% of this sodium manages to get back out of the sea each year. As far as anyone knows, the remainder simply accumulates in the ocean. If the sea had no sodium to start with, it would have accumulated its present amount in less than 42 million years at today's input and output rates. This is much less than the evolutionary age of the ocean, 3 billion years. The usual reply to this discrepancy is that past sodium inputs must have been less and outputs greater. However, calculations which are as generous as possible to evolutionary scenarios still give a maximum age of only 62 million years. Calculations for many other sea water elements give much younger ages for the ocean.

5. The Earth's magnetic field is decaying too fast

The total energy stored in the Earth's magnetic field has steadily decreased by a factor of 2.7 over the past 1000 years. Evolutionary theories explaining this rapid decrease, as well as how the Earth could have maintained its magnetic field for billions of years, are very complex and inadequate.

A much better creationist theory exists. It is straightforward, based on sound physics, and explains many features of the field: its creation, rapid reversals during the Genesis flood, surface intensity decreases and increases until the time of Christ, and a steady decay since then. This theory matches paleomagnetic, historic, and present data. The main result is that the field's total energy (not surface intensity) has always decayed at least as fast as now. At that rate the field could not be more than 10,000 years old.

6. Many strata are too tightly bent

In many mountainous areas, strata thousands of feet thick are bent and folded into hairpin shapes. The conventional geologic time scale says these formations were deeply buried and solidified for hundreds of millions of years before they were bent. Yet the folding occurred without cracking, with radii so small that the entire formation had to be still wet and unsolidified when the bending occurred. This implies that the folding occurred less than thousands of years after deposition.

7. Injected sandstone shortens geologic 'ages'

Strong geologic evidence exists that the Cambrian Sawatch sandstone-formed an alleged 500 million years ago-of the Ute Pass fault west of Colorado Springs was still unsolidified when it was extruded up to the surface during the uplift of the Rocky Mountains, allegedly 70 million years ago. It is very unlikely that the sandstone would not solidify during the supposed 430 million years it was underground. Instead, it is likely that the two geologic events were less than hundreds of years apart, thus greatly shortening the geologic time scale.

8. Fossil radioactivity shortens geologic 'ages' to a few years

Radiohalos are rings of color formed around microscopic bits of radioactive minerals in rock crystals. They are fossil evidence of radioactive decay. 'Squashed' Polonium-210 radiohalos indicate that Jurassic, Triassic, and Eocene formations in the Colorado plateau were deposited within months of one another, not hundreds of millions of years apart as required by the conventional time scale. 'Orphan' Polonium-218 radiohalos, having no evidence of their mother elements, imply either instant creation or drastic changes in radioactivity decay rates.

9. Helium in the wrong places

All naturally-occurring families of radioactive elements generate helium as they decay. If such decay took place for billions of years, as alleged by evolutionists, much helium should have found its way into the Earth's atmosphere. The rate of loss of helium from the atmosphere into space is calculable and small. Taking that loss into account, the atmosphere today has only 0.05% of the amount of helium it would have accumulated in 5 billion years.This means the atmosphere is much younger than the alleged evolutionary age. A study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research shows that helium produced by radioactive decay in deep, hot rocks has not had time to escape. Though the rocks are supposed to be over one billion years old, their large helium retention suggests an age of only thousands of years.

10. Not enough stone age skeletons

Evolutionary anthropologists say that the stone age lasted for at least 100,000 years, during which time the world population of Neanderthal and Cro-magnon men was roughly constant, between 1 and 10 million. All that time they were burying their dead with artefacts. By this scenario, they would have buried at least 4 billion bodies. If the evolutionary time scale is correct, buried bones should be able to last for much longer than 100,000 years, so many of the supposed 4 billion stone age skeletons should still be around (and certainly the buried artefacts). Yet only a few thousand have been found. This implies that the stone age was much shorter than evolutionists think, a few hundred years in many areas.

11. Agriculture is too recent

The usual evolutionary picture has men existing as hunters and gatherers for 100,000 years during the stone age before discovering agriculture less than 10,000 years ago. Yet the archaeological evidence shows that stone age men were as intelligent as we are. It is very improbable that none of the 4 billion people mentioned in item 10 should discover that plants grow from seeds. It is more likely that men were without agriculture less than a few hundred years after the flood, if at all.

12. History is too short

According to evolutionists, stone age man existed for 100,000 years before beginning to make written records about 4000 to 5000 years ago. Prehistoric man built megalithic monuments, made beautiful cave paintings, and kept records of lunar phases. Why would he wait a thousand centuries before using the same skills to record history? The Biblical time scale is much more likely.

13. Evolution is Contradicted by Laws of Science

The Laws of science such as: The Law of Biogenesis (Life only comes from life) and the Second Law of Thermodynamics (sometimes called the Law of Entropy) specifically contradict evolution. The scientific force of these laws is that they have no known exceptions and are also referred to as universal laws for this reason.

Continued deepening of scientific understanding into the sheer complexity of life only serves to heighten the difficulty of evolutionists' belief that somewhere sometime life arose by chance from non-life. The addition of billions of years and the use of fantasy such as 'somewhere in a galaxy far far away' do not make it any less real, as life cannot arise spontaneously in even the best conditions. The fact that man is unable to do so in artificially reproducing ideal condtions only serves to underline its impossibility in the 'real world.' Some have likened this belief by analogy with a salesman, who, although making a loss on each sale, thought he could make it up by increasing his sales volume.

Discussions around the second law by evolutionists suggest that the input of energy into a system can cause an increase in order and a decrease in complexity. Such superficial discussions fail to take into account the necessity of demonstrating how, by evolutionary processes an energy converting mechanism itself evolved where previously there was none. So, for example, plants can make use of sunlight through photosynthesis and thus 'build themselves up' but there needs to be an explanation in evolutionary terms of how such a system evolved contrary to the second law. No such explanation exists.

Instead the second law points to the absolute necessity of 'outside intevention' from a scientific understanding. Creationist Christians know this law as a correct description of how creation was, if you like, a 'scientific necessity'. Or, to put it differently, true science correctly describes the 'world that is' and the way it operates.

Conclusion:

Creationism seems overwhelming and provable as compared to the implausible, evolutionism.

First answer by Dick Harfield. Last edit by PeteNco. Contributor trust: 263 [recommend contributor]. Question popularity: 3 [recommend question]