Destroying Evolution in less than 5 minutes

[1Tonne]

Destroying Evolution in less than 5 minutes​

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

I see less an actual a destruction of evolution and more of two people gushing over someone throwing out numbers without any understanding of what the numbers mean, the science behind it and definitely no knowledge of what they're arguing about.

So... classic creationist crock if nothing else.

Complete waste of time, I see why you didn't follow forum etiquette of describing the video when you posted it.

 

[1Tonne]

I see less an actual a destruction of evolution and more of two people gushing over someone throwing out numbers without any understanding of what the numbers mean, the science behind it and definitely no knowledge of what they're arguing about.

So... classic creationist crock if nothing else.

Complete waste of time, I see why you didn't follow forum etiquette of describing the video when you posted it.

Thank you for your comment; that is simply dismissive without disproving the point of the video.

Regarding there being no description. I thought that the title explained it enough. I will copy and paste the title into the post to make people happy.

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

Thank you for your comment; that is simply dismissive without disproving the point of the video.

And yet the video did the same: the guy said a load of numbers and then basically said "See!". That did nothing to 'destroy' evolution in the slightest. Just saying that "It's impossible" isn't SHOWING that it's impossible. A huge difference.

How and why is a 20 year gap between a generation an impossibility regarding evolution? How and why is it impossible that mutations occur at more than one mutation per generation, even though the human genome accumulates somewhere between 50 - 75 new mutations per generation, which is roughly 1.1 x 10^-8 mutations per nucleotide site per generation, and we have no reason to assume that our earlier ancestors were any different and if you say they were then you need to explain how and why.

The guy in the clip just throws out numbers randomly with no indication that he actually knows what he's talking about and all we get from the hosts of the clip is just mindless seal clapping.

Regarding there being no description. I thought that the title explained it enough. I will copy and paste the title into the post to make people happy.

The title explains nothing, and is really just flat out a lie but that's entirely something else. A description of the video is describing what the video is about. It explains the video. Copy and pasting the title is just: copy and pasting the title.

 

[Paulos23]

Numbers without good understanding or reference.

One base pair changing does not equal one mutation. It often is multiple per mutation. And not all mutations are beneficial, most are even to slightly bad.

The whole argument is based on numbers and categories that don't match the real world. We have evidence of species changing into a new species. This attempt to prove it as a mathematical impossibility is flawed.

 

[sjastro]

Rather than the video debunking evolution in 2.5 minutes or 5 minutes, the exercise is to find the flaw in the creationist argument in the shortest amount of time. Unfortunately I didn't have my stopwatch but I became aware of the problems after about a minute or so.

What makes this video so patently wrong and it doesn't even require an in depth knowledge of evolution but high school mathematics, its argument is based on a single lineage rather than on a population where evolution occurs.
It's like winning a national lottery where say the odds of any given individual winning the first prize is 1 in 3 million.
If however a population is participating in the lottery, the odds of an individual within the population winning depends on the population size.

To put an evolution perspective on this analogy, evolution is defined as a change in allele frequencies in a population over generations and not a series of changes over one lineage or a single chain of ancestors. Since populations contain alleles or genetic variations, multiple lineages can take on different genetic paths where beneficial mutations can occur and spread across many individuals, not just one at a time.

 

[1Tonne]

How and why is a 20 year gap between a generation an impossibility regarding evolution? How and why is it impossible that mutations occur at more than one mutation per generation, even though the human genome accumulates somewhere between 50 - 75 new mutations per generation, which is roughly 1.1 x 10^-8 mutations per nucleotide site per generation, and we have no reason to assume that our earlier ancestors were any different and if you say they were then you need to explain how and why.

The guy in the clip just throws out numbers randomly with no indication that he actually knows what he's talking about and all we get from the hosts of the clip is just mindless seal clapping.

You raised several points, and I’ll try to respond carefully and respectfully.

First, about the video and Haldane’s Dilemma:
The core of John Harris’s argument is not random number-throwing. He is referencing a well-documented population genetics issue raised by J.B.S. Haldane, an evolutionary biologist and staunch Darwinist himself. Haldane calculated that even with generous assumptions, the rate of beneficial mutations required for the amount of genetic change postulated in human evolution (e.g., from a common ancestor with chimps) would be too high to be biologically feasible given known constraints like mutation fixation time and reproductive limits. This isn't fringe creationist propaganda, it’s an enduring puzzle in evolutionary biology often called Haldane’s Dilemma.

Let’s break down Harris’s simplified math:
1. He assumes 3 billion base pairs in the human genome.
2. He uses a conservative 1% difference between humans and apes (which equals 30 million base pair changes).
3. He generously assumes a 20-year generation span and 10 million years since divergence (this gives 500,000 generations).
4. He assumes one beneficial mutation fixed per generation, which is extremely generous. Most estimates suggest one beneficial mutation fixed every few hundred generations, with the vast majority being neutral or deleterious.

So what’s the problem?
Even under these very favourable conditions, we only get 500,000 beneficial mutations fixed across human evolution, but we supposedly need 30 million meaningful genetic changes. And in reality, beneficial mutations are rare and slow to fix in populations. The real numbers make the problem worse, not better.

You mentioned that the genome accumulates 50–75 mutations per generation, yes, but the overwhelming majority are neutral or harmful. Only a tiny fraction are beneficial, and an even smaller fraction becomes fixed in the population.

So, why is this a dilemma?
Because evolution, as currently proposed, depends on accumulating large numbers of coordinated beneficial mutations over time. But population genetics shows that the time and number of generations available are not sufficient to achieve the needed genetic change, even with extremely, extremely optimistic assumptions. That’s the core of Haldane’s argument, and it hasn’t been satisfactorily resolved by modern evolutionary theory.

Lastly, dismissing Harris as someone who “just throws out numbers” ignores the mathematical core of the argument. Whether one is a creationist or not, the dilemma he summarises has been discussed in peer-reviewed evolutionary literature. Disagreement is fine, but it deserves a thoughtful response rather than mockery.

I’d like to add one more point: Yale physicist Harold Morowitz estimated the probability of a fully functional bacterium self-assembling by chance from basic components, after heat breakdown and ideal reassembly, as roughly 1 in 10^{100,000,000,000} reasons.org. That’s equivalent to rolling snake eyes 64 million times in a row. (Impossble)
Even physicists like Morowitz recognised that such odds make spontaneous life emergence, under random or near-equilibrium conditions, staggering beyond plausibility. Unless we posit non-physical laws or intelligent direction, the chance-based model becomes increasingly untenable.

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

You raised several points, and I’ll try to respond carefully and respectfully.

First, about the video and Haldane’s Dilemma:
The core of John Harris’s argument is not random number-throwing. He is referencing a well-documented population genetics issue raised by J.B.S. Haldane, an evolutionary biologist and staunch Darwinist himself. Haldane calculated that even with generous assumptions, the rate of beneficial mutations required for the amount of genetic change postulated in human evolution (e.g., from a common ancestor with chimps) would be too high to be biologically feasible given known constraints like mutation fixation time and reproductive limits. This isn't fringe creationist propaganda, it’s an enduring puzzle in evolutionary biology often called Haldane’s Dilemma.

Let’s break down Harris’s simplified math:
1. He assumes 3 billion base pairs in the human genome.
2. He uses a conservative 1% difference between humans and apes (which equals 30 million base pair changes).
3. He generously assumes a 20-year generation span and 10 million years since divergence (this gives 500,000 generations).
4. He assumes one beneficial mutation fixed per generation, which is extremely generous. Most estimates suggest one beneficial mutation fixed every few hundred generations, with the vast majority being neutral or deleterious.

So what’s the problem?
Even under these very favourable conditions, we only get 500,000 beneficial mutations fixed across human evolution, but we supposedly need 30 million meaningful genetic changes. And in reality, beneficial mutations are rare and slow to fix in populations. The real numbers make the problem worse, not better.

You mentioned that the genome accumulates 50–75 mutations per generation, yes, but the overwhelming majority are neutral or harmful. Only a tiny fraction are beneficial, and an even smaller fraction becomes fixed in the population.

So, why is this a dilemma?
Because evolution, as currently proposed, depends on accumulating large numbers of coordinated beneficial mutations over time. But population genetics shows that the time and number of generations available are not sufficient to achieve the needed genetic change, even with extremely, extremely optimistic assumptions. That’s the core of Haldane’s argument, and it hasn’t been satisfactorily resolved by modern evolutionary theory.

Lastly, dismissing Harris as someone who “just throws out numbers” ignores the mathematical core of the argument. Whether one is a creationist or not, the dilemma he summarises has been discussed in peer-reviewed evolutionary literature. Disagreement is fine, but it deserves a thoughtful response rather than mockery.

I’d like to add one more point: Yale physicist Harold Morowitz estimated the probability of a fully functional bacterium self-assembling by chance from basic components, after heat breakdown and ideal reassembly, as roughly 1 in 10^{100,000,000,000} reasons.org. That’s equivalent to rolling snake eyes 64 million times in a row. (Impossble)
Even physicists like Morowitz recognised that such odds make spontaneous life emergence, under random or near-equilibrium conditions, staggering beyond plausibility. Unless we posit non-physical laws or intelligent direction, the chance-based model becomes increasingly untenable.

Even though sexual reproduction in populations renders Haldane’s Dilemma a non issue for evolution since it's not one singular set of genes and one individual every generation. It's multiples of everything. Throw in the various trials, tribulations and changes animal populations experience over generations and boom: evolution via natural selection.

 

[1Tonne]

Even though sexual reproduction in populations renders Haldane’s Dilemma a non issue for evolution since it's not one singular set of genes and one individual every generation. It's multiples of everything. Throw in the various trials, tribulations and changes animal populations experience over generations and boom: evolution via natural selection.

Sexual reproduction and population genetics add complexity, and that evolution operates over large, varied populations, not just linearly from one individual to the next.
But I think John Harris’s argument (based on Haldane’s Dilemma) is raising a deeper concern: even when allowing for generous assumptions, like fast generation times, large populations, and one beneficial mutation fixed every generation, we’re still orders of magnitude short of the number of mutations needed to explain the transition from ape-like creatures to modern humans. Harris gives evolution every advantage in his model, and yet the math still comes up embarrassingly short.
Regarding your point, it’s true that real populations allow for multiple mutations across multiple lineages, but that also introduces genetic noise, competition between mutations, and non-beneficial mutations that get in the way of fixation. In practice, beneficial mutations don’t just accumulate cleanly. They can get lost, counteracted, or overridden. This is one of the reasons Haldane (an evolutionist himself) considered this a real challenge to the standard Darwinian model.
So far, the dilemma remains: How do you get enough beneficial, fixed mutations in the time available, not just any mutations, but ones that make a coordinated, functional change, when the math doesn’t seem to allow it, even under generous terms?

 

[NxNW]

So what’s the problem?
Even under these very favourable conditions, we only get 500,000 beneficial mutations fixed across human evolution, but we supposedly need 30 million meaningful genetic changes. And in reality, beneficial mutations are rare and slow to fix in populations. The real numbers make the problem worse, not better.

You're assuming lineage, not populations.

I’d like to add one more point: Yale physicist Harold Morowitz estimated the probability of a fully functional bacterium self-assembling by chance from basic components, after heat breakdown and ideal reassembly, as roughly 1 in 10^{100,000,000,000} reasons.org. That’s equivalent to rolling snake eyes 64 million times in a row. (Impossble)

Nobody's claiming a fully functional bacterium self-assembled.

 

[NxNW]

The thing is, we see a fairly detailed fossil record going back to the split between chimps and humans, showing the progression. Is it your assertion that there were multiple acts of creation among the way? Because the record doesn't match with a single act of creation.

 

[sjastro]

As mentioned by a number of posters evolution involves populations not individual lineages.
Evolution has somewhat evolved(!?) since Haldane's dilemma proposed in 1957 which is very much outdated and flawed.

Haldane’s Original Claim (1957)	Modern Understanding / Refutation	Explanation
Only 1 beneficial mutation can be fixed every ~300 generations	Multiple beneficial mutations can spread simultaneously	Selection acts on entire populations, not sequential lineages; beneficial alleles can rise in parallel.
Fixation requires high reproductive "cost" (i.e., many deaths)	Selection can act via small differences in reproductive success	Haldane overestimated the cost of selection; most selection is not lethal, just affects reproductive output.
Each beneficial mutation must fix before another can begin	Multiple mutations can spread at once (overlapping sweeps)	Beneficial alleles don’t need to wait in line; they spread concurrently in large populations.
All adaptation must occur via new beneficial mutations	Selection can act on standing genetic variation	Populations carry pre-existing alleles that may become beneficial when environments change.
Fixation must occur in all individuals	Partial sweeps and polygenic adaptation are common	Traits often involve many small-effect alleles, not single mutations going to fixation.
Limited by time and mutation rate	Population size, structure, recombination boost adaptive capacity	Large populations generate millions of mutations per generation; recombination reshuffles them efficiently.
Dilemma undermines large-scale evolution	Resolved by neutral theory and quantitative genetics	Evolution includes neutral drift, soft sweeps, and gene networks—beyond Haldane’s original scope.

The key scientific fields which contradict the dilemma are:

Field	Contribution
Population Genetics	Demonstrates parallel fixation, genetic drift, and recombination.
Quantitative Genetics	Shows traits evolve through many small-effect alleles (polygenic selection).
Molecular Evolution	Supports the role of neutral mutations and standing variation.
Experimental Evolution	Direct observation of adaptation with multiple mutations (e.g. Lenski’s E. coli).
Genomics	Reveals widespread soft sweeps, incomplete fixations, and gene duplications.

 

[1Tonne]

You're assuming lineage, not populations.

Nobody's claiming a fully functional bacterium self-assembled.

I agree that we’re talking about populations, not a single lineage. But even when we model populations, Haldane’s Dilemma still applies. The point isn’t that there’s only one individual per generation; it’s that there’s a limit to how many beneficial mutations can be fixed in a population over time, no matter how big the group is. Fixation takes time, and beneficial mutations compete, interfere, or get lost in the shuffle. So when evolution relies on thousands of specific, functional changes (like in the transition from ape-like ancestors to humans), there’s a math problem — even with populations in play.

As for abiogenesis, I agree that nobody claims a fully formed bacterium popped into existence in one go, but let’s be honest: we are still talking about life coming from non-life, without guidance, in a stepwise, natural process. And the odds still matter. When Harold Morowitz ran a thermodynamic estimate on the simplest life possible (a minimal cell), he calculated a probability around 1 in 10^100,000,000, astronomically low. That wasn’t for a complete bacterium but for something far simpler. So while the “nobody claims a bacterium self-assembled” objection sounds like a clarification, it doesn’t really solve the issue, it just pushes it back a step.

 

[1Tonne]

The thing is, we see a fairly detailed fossil record going back to the split between chimps and humans, showing the progression. Is it your assertion that there were multiple acts of creation among the way? Because the record doesn't match with a single act of creation.

That is not true. I’m going to push back a little on the idea that there’s a “fairly detailed” fossil record of human evolution. That’s a common claim, but it really doesn’t match what we actually find.
What we have are scattered fossils, often fragmentary, and open to broad interpretation. Many so-called "transitional" fossils are debated even among evolutionary paleoanthropologists, not to mention the number of proposed “missing links” that have later turned out to be dead ends, misidentified, or even hoaxes. Piltdown Man was a deliberate fraud. Nebraska Man was based on a single tooth, which turned out to be from a pig. Ardi and Lucy are often portrayed as clear links, but the reconstructions involve a lot of assumptions and artistic interpretation. And in some cases, bones have simply belonged to apes with deformities like arthritis or unusual size.
Even if you accept every fossil in the hominid line as valid and accurately dated, what you still get is a patchy collection of bones that doesn’t clearly document a gradual transformation from ape to man. There are gaps, not a continuous chain. Interpretation is often driven by evolutionary expectations, not conclusive evidence.
So no, the fossil doesn't record a smooth, naturalistic process of human evolution. It’s a stretch to claim it does. And to your question, I don’t necessarily argue for “multiple acts of creation,” but I do think humans were uniquely created, distinct from animals, which the evidence still allows for. The fossil record doesn’t contradict that view; if anything, it reflects it.

 

[Hans Blaster]

Rather than the video debunking evolution in 2.5 minutes or 5 minutes, the exercise is to find the flaw in the creationist argument in the shortest amount of time. Unfortunately I didn't have my stopwatch but I became aware of the problems after about a minute or so.

What makes this video so patently wrong and it doesn't even require an in depth knowledge of evolution but high school mathematics, its argument is based on a single lineage rather than on a population where evolution occurs.
It's like winning a national lottery where say the odds of any given individual winning the first prize is 1 in 3 million.
If however a population is participating in the lottery, the odds of an individual within the population winning depends on the population size.

To put an evolution perspective on this analogy, evolution is defined as a change in allele frequencies in a population over generations and not a series of changes over one lineage or a single chain of ancestors. Since populations contain alleles or genetic variations, multiple lineages can take on different genetic paths where beneficial mutations can occur and spread across many individuals, not just one at a time.

I watched far enough to see who made the video. I can say a nice thing about Eric Hovind -- "He is not his father."

Then I dipped in for a few seconds and in that brief time the speaker (not Hovind) managed to claim that genetic difference between creationists and chimps was now 15% not 1%. This is a lie.

It was quick. I took more time to ID a critical flaw than to type this sentence.

 

[NxNW]

Ardi and Lucy are often portrayed as clear links, but the reconstructions involve a lot of assumptions and artistic interpretation.

Absolutely false. I've seen Donald Johanson speak more than once. Multiple examples of the Lucy species have been found. There is no question about the completeness of the fossil.

And in some cases, bones have simply belonged to apes with deformities like arthritis or unusual size.

Nonsense.

Even if you accept every fossil in the hominid line as valid and accurately dated, what you still get is a patchy collection of bones that doesn’t clearly document a gradual transformation from ape to man.

Except it does.

There are gaps, not a continuous chain. Interpretation is often driven by evolutionary expectations, not conclusive evidence.
So no, the fossil doesn't record a smooth, naturalistic process of human evolution.

Except it does.

It’s a stretch to claim it does. And to your question, I don’t necessarily argue for “multiple acts of creation,”

How many were there?

but I do think humans were uniquely created, distinct from animals, which the evidence still allows for.

No, it doesn't.

The fossil record doesn’t contradict that view; if anything, it reflects it.

The fossil and genetic records don't support the creation of humans apart from evolution.

 

[1Tonne]

Absolutely false. I've seen Donald Johanson speak more than once. Multiple examples of the Lucy species have been found. There is no question about the completeness of the fossil.

While there are many fragments from hundreds of Australopithecus afarensis specimens, Lucy herself is only about 40% complete, not a near-intact skeleton. More complete individuals like “Selam” and “Little Foot” exist, but they belong to different individuals and come with their own uncertainties. So the claim of “no question about the completeness” is misleading. At best, A. afarensis is one of the better-represented early hominins, but that still doesn’t show a clear, continuous lineage or remove the need for interpretive assumptions.

 

[Bradskii]

While there are many fragments from hundreds of Australopithecus afarensis specimens, Lucy herself is only about 40% complete...

When do you think she lived?

 

[1Tonne]

When do you think she lived?

Lucy is generally dated to have lived about 3.2 million years ago. This is based on the volcanic layers in Ethiopia’s Afar region, where her remains were found, using radiometric dating techniques like argon-argon dating.
So yes, the mainstream scientific estimate is that she lived roughly 3.2 million years ago, though I think it’s also fair to say that interpretations of the fossil record and the conclusions drawn from it can vary depending on one's assumptions or worldview.

 

[Larniavc]

Destroying Evolution in less than 5 minutes​

Oh dear. The maths of a ten year old does not an argument make.