Session 5 – Refuting Evolution Pt.1
In this session we will turn our focus away
from addressing the evidence used to
support evolution, and instead look at
scientific evidence against the theory of
biological evolution
Keep in mind there is a lot of depth to these
arguments, and there are many resources on
the topic if you want to dig deeper
We have already discussed many of the
problems with the theory of evolution by
talking about the different “evidences” that
are given, and seeing how many of them
actually cause a problem
For example, we see that mutations don’t
actually produce something new (function
wise) and cannot be the mechanism by
which change and evolution brings about
molecule to man evolution… but mutation is
the only mechanism available
The age of the earth would have great
influence on the topic of evolution
If the earth is young (thousands of years)
there is no way evolution can be true
But we won’t spend much time looking at the
general debate surrounding the age of the
earth, because we have an entire six part
class that deals with that topic (we will
however revisit one of the arguments that
has implications on biological evolution)
Faint sun paradox
There is a false
argument the
earth is young
based on the
sun shrinking,
but there is a
good argument
based on the
composition
changing
The sun produces energy/heat from thermal
nuclear reactions inside it’s core
The suns composition is changing from hydrogen
to helium through this process
The more the sun changes into helium,
the denser the core of the sun gets
When the core of the sun gets dense, the rate
of nuclear reactions goes up, and the
temperature of the sun rises
“if the Sun is indeed 4.6 billion years old, it
should have brightened by nearly 40% over this
time… Evolutionists maintain that life appeared
on the Earth around 3.8 billion years ago. Since
then, the Sun would have brightened about
25%.... we find that a 25% increase in solar
luminosity increases the average temperature of
the Earth by about 18°C. Since the current
average temperature of the Earth is 15°C, the
average temperature of the Earth 3.8 billion
years ago would have been below freezing
(-3°C).” -Dr Danny R. Faulkner
- Decrease in temperature
would cause snow/ice to
cover the planet…
- Increase snow/ice would
increase reflectivity and
drive the temperature
down even more!
This does not prove the earth cannot be that
old, but it does give a problem to life arising
billion of years ago, and fits into our view of
the earth being young
This problem is still so difficult to resolve in
the old-earth view that the Space Telescope
Science Institute hosted a two-day
symposium in hopes of starting to find a
solution to it.
The symposium was entitled “The Faint Early
Sun: Paradox, Problem, or Distraction?,”
“According to standard solar models, at a billion
years of age the sun had something like 75% of
today’s luminosity, and under those conditions…
we would get the earth freezing over and it
wouldn’t recover because it would have a
high albedo.” Dr. David Soderblom:
Responses that have been offered?
Different atmosphere with more green house
gases to warm the earth up
Some suggested that life only was centered
around a very narrow band of the equator
which was able to stay heated (fossil records
doesn’t agree…)
Soft Tissue and Carbon-14
These two items have become very helpful
in falsifying the theory of evolution
Carbon-14 has a small half life of 5730 years,
and because of that it can only last for 150200,000 years before decaying away
Likewise, soft tissue from organisms can only
last in the natural environment for around
10,000 years (although it’s very rare for it to
last even a thousand years without decaying)
Dr. Mary Schweitzer was the first to
demonstrate the existence of soft tissue in a
Tyrannosaurus rex fossil that is supposed to
be 65 million years old
They are optimistic that they will solve this
problem, but they haven’t
One popular explanation has been offered by
Dr. Mary Schweitzer who discovered the first
soft tissue in dinosaurs
The soft tissue they found had blood vessel,
and inside the blood was little pieces of Iron
(which she thought may explain how it
survived that long)
When the organism dies, the Iron is released
into the surrounding tissue which is made of
polymers (building blocks, like amino acids)
It is well know that Iron, when present with
oxygen, can cause something called crosslinking in polymers, which makes them more
resistant to decay
They tested this hypothesis and showed that
it made a great difference compared to
those that were not in the presence of Iron
Did they prove that soft tissue can last for
millions of years? Far from it (although they
did show how it can last longer than normal)
They showed that blood vessels (from
ostrich in the experiment) could survive two
years with the Iron and oxygen (240x longer
than those under normal conditions)
There is still a far gap between those
numbers and millions of years (75 million)
The temperature was kept steady over the
whole experiment, which is not realistic (and
fluctuations in temperatures can cause
deterioration of the cells)
Finally, not every soft tissue find has Iron in
it to begin with, other fossils (A Triceratops
fossil for example) supposed to be millions
of years old do not contain Iron
There needs to be a lot more research
before they have anywhere near a
convincing argument that Iron can keep soft
tissue around for millions of years, the
evidence that we have so far says it can’t
Brachylophosaurus canadensis fossil
(supposed to be 76 million years old) also
has soft tissue
Triceratops Fossil (supposed to be 65 million
years old) shows strong evidence of having
soft (original) tissue
Samples were also sent to Dr. Alexander
Cherkinsky at the University of Georgia’s
Center for Applied Isotope Studies for
Carbon-14 dating to be done
Dr. Cherkinsky’s lab found high levels of
carbon-14 which gave a date of 41,010 ± 220
Why are there high levels of Carbon-14 in
this fossil if it’s millions of years old?
Sabellidites
cambriensis is
another problem
Its fossils are found in Ediacaran rock, which
is supposed to be on the order of 550 million
years old. But, It has chitin (soft tissue)
Sea scorpion fossil that
are supposed to be 417
million years old has
soft tissue found in it
Even Leaf Fossils Contain
Original Remains After
Sitting for Supposedly 50
Million Years!
More examples of soft tissue exist, but let’s
look at C-14 now
Pieces of fossilized
wood in Oligocene,
Eocene, Cretaceous,
Jurassic, Triassic, and
Permian rock layers
supposedly 32–250
million years old all
contain measurable
radiocarbon ,
equivalent to “ages”
of 20,700 to 44,700
If the geologic
column is not an
accurate picture of
time, the theory of
evolution falls apart
Fossilized ammonite shells in a Cretaceous
layer, supposedly 112–120 million years old,
contained measurable radiocarbon
equivalent to “ages” of 36,400 to 48,710
Carbon-14 is also found in coal layers all
around the world which are part of the
geologic column and supposed to be millions
of years old (but they can’t be)
Most fossils have not been tested for C-14,
but what we have tested, has it
Some creatures abilities are hard to explain
Birds have instinct
when they are born
that is non-physical
(their ability to know
where to migrate to
without being shown)
Birds are born knowing how to fly in
formation which makes them capable of
traveling far distances
Fire Flies and lightning bugs
have the ability to glow
The light is different from
the light bulb, because it
doesn’t produce much
heat (just light)
The Mimic Octopus is
another example of a
creature with an amazing
ability to blend in to it’s
surroundings
Caterpillars can do something many creatures
cannot, go into a cocoon and be reborn
The duckbill platypus is
a funny looking guys
He’s quite the character
to explain
The platypus has fur, is warm-blooded, and
suckles its young as do mammals. It lays
leathery eggs, has a single ventral opening
(for elimination, mating, and birth), and has
claws and a shoulder girdle as most reptiles
do. It can detect electrical currents (AC and
DC) as some fish can, and has a bill somewhat
like a that of a duck – a bird. It has webbed
forefeet like those of an otter and a flat tail
like that of a beaver. Males platypus can
inject poisonous venom like a pit viper
Symbiotic relationships
There are many
organisms that are
dependent on one
another, and need each
other to survive
Termites are one
example of a symbiotic
relationship with a
creature that lives
inside and helps digest
There are larger
examples of symbiotic
relationships between
the plant and animal
kingdoms
Symbiotic relationships would be expected if
God created everything in the time period
that the Bible says, he can make organisms
that are dependent on one another, because
they come about at the same time
Fossil out of Place
The Coelacanth
Evolutionists claimed
this fish evolved legs
and went on land 70
million years ago
And then in 1938 a living one was found in
South Africa by fishermen, it turns out that
when brought near the surface the
Coelacanth soon dies
The Wollemi pine
For a long time, this plant
was assumed to have gone
extinct during the Jurassic
period, about 150 million
years ago
That was the case until a grove of trees was
found just 100 kilometres west of Sydney,
Australia, in the Blue Mountains.
So… Why is it still here?
Another example, on Vancouver Island
(Canada) in the late 1990s, a paleontologist
found a sponge that he called Nucha
vancouverensis in the Upper Triassic layers
which are supposed to be 220 million y/o
But it turns out to be identical to another
found in Australia named Nucha Naucum
from the middle Cambrian rocks (520
million years old) why isn’t it in the strata
between these times? Why is it in strata
hundreds of millions of years later?
Altruism
Altruism is an odd
things to exist in a
world that is
governed by survival
of the fittest
“If perpetuation of one's genes is a biological
imperative, why would any creature sacrifice
its resources or even its life in order to help
others?” - Brian Thomas M.S
Evolution of Language
in Humans
Language is not
automatic, it must be
learned from others
Language is a tricky one to explain by
evolution (understandably so) because
language cannot be detected in the fossil
record or understood from fossils
The Bible makes sense of language
Transitional forms are missing
Even if we assume that every claimed
transitional fossils is transitional like they
suggest (which we can easily show they are
not) evolutionists are still missing tons of
intermediates that need to exist for
evolution to be true
There are many evolutionists who
acknowledge this problem, and different
theories have been presented to explain it
"It is as though they [fossils] were just
planted there, without any evolutionary
history. Needless to say this appearance of
sudden planting has delighted creationists.
...Both schools of thought (Punctuationists
and Gradualists) despise so-called scientific
creationists equally, and both agree that the
major gaps are real, that they are true
imperfections in the fossil record. The only
alternative explanation of the sudden
appearance of so many complex animal…
types in the Cambrian era is divine creation
and (we) both reject this alternative."
(Dawkins, Richard, The Blind Watchmaker,
W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1996,
pp. 229-230)
"Links are missing just where we most
fervently desire them, and it is all too
probable that many 'links' will continue to be
missing." (Jepsen, L. Glenn; Mayr, Ernst;
Simpson George Gaylord. Genetics,
Paleontology, and Evolution)
Punctuated Equilibrium
"The absence of fossil evidence for
intermediary stages between major
transitions in organic design, indeed our
inability, even in our imagination, to
construct functional intermediates in many
cases, has been a persistent and nagging
problem for gradualist accounts of
evolution." (Gould, Stephen J., 'Is a new and
general theory of evolution emerging?' Paleobiology,
vol 6(1), January 1980, p. 127)
Punctuated Equilibrium
proposes that evolution
happens very quickly at
very specific times (and
because it’s quick,
those intermediate
organisms would not be
fossilize nearly as much
as would be expected
with gradualism)
The theory has
problems with it
The amount of mutation needed to change
these creatures from one kind to another (in
this small gap) would be to drastic
Also, why would these mutations suddenly
increase and evolution happen very quickly
at certain times, but not at other times?
What is regulating when evolution happens?
Most evolutionists today are gradualists, and
do not hold to this fast punctuated
equilibrium view presented by Gould
The Bible says that God created life here on
planet earth, we have it detailed in the book
of Genesis that on day five and six of
creation (and three if you count plants) life
was created, and it is evidence of God and
he should get the glory for it
Romans 1:20: “For his invisible attributes,
namely, his eternal power and divine nature,
have been clearly perceived, ever since the
creation of the world, in the things that have
been made. So they are without excuse.”
Memory Verse
Genesis 1:24: “And God said, “Let the earth
bring forth living creatures according to their
kinds—livestock and creeping things and
beasts of the earth according to their kinds.”
And it was so.”