What do you feel are the strongest specific arguments for evolution?

[crawfish]

I was talking to a YEC friend this week. He is an active open-air evangelist, and has been quite proud of participating in Ray Comfort's Origins give-away a few months ago. We got into a discussion on evolution - he mentioned very proudly that he challenged a professor doing a counter-protest to give him one single bit of evidence that would prove evolution, and that professor did not/would not give him one (the professor did offer to meet him for an extended discussion of the subject at another time).

My reply to this was that, while I could not speak for the professor in question, my experience was that the overwhelming proof of evolution to me was not in any individual tree but in the forest, so to speak. It is evidence that builds and supports each other into a very strong whole. This is impossible to convey on any reasonable scale, though, to someone whose entire experience has been from reading ICR and listening to creationist sermons.

What I would like to have is a set of hard-and-fast data that can show the complexity of the subject, and how the facts show the difficulty of the creationist position. I do not necessarily want to "convert" anyone, but I would like to be able to communicate clearly the fact that this is not the simple choice between God's word and man's imagination that many creationists want to portray it as. It is one of the first steps in getting people to want to understand the issues a little deeper. I think creationists know this very well, which is why there is such a backlash when prominent creationists like Kurt Wise and Todd Wood suggest otherwise - they feel like they can "protect" people better if they can keep them from digging too deeply into the confusing and often disturbing information that is out there.

Before you ask, the answer is "yes", I am asking you to do some leg work for me . But I hope that we can all find this type of thing useful. I would like to make a request that only TE's or those who want to add something positive post here. If you want to argue a point, feel free to do so, but start another thread first.

Here is an example of the sort of thing I'm looking for. In a thread on flood geology, there was a challenge that I thought was brilliant to the assumption of why different creatures appear in different layers of sediment: "Why is every single pteradactl fossil buried in sediment lower than the fossils of every single giant sloth?" I want to say it was Mallon who posted this, but to be honest I've read far too much on too many boards to be sure (so please accept credit if you were the source). I thought it was a brilliant observation, very direct so even the most dense creationist could understand the implications.

Thanks in advance for any contributions. I am not a scientist, and many of you are, so I appreciate any insight you can give.

 

[crawfish]

There is one argument that I use often that illustrates why I feel I can trust the conclusions of science in that it is honestly attempting to explain the evidence. Essentially, every single fraud and misstep in science has been uncovered and proven by other scientists. You would think, if there is some high-level conspiracy among secular scientists to hide the weakness of evolutionary theory, that ID or Creationist scientists would be the ones responsible for uncovering them, but at this point I do not know of a single instance.

What does this tell me? Yes, there are scientists that are more than willing to put forth fraud. Yes, the individuals in the scientific community are no more filled with honesty and integrity than the population in general. Yes, there are frequent missteps, bad assumptions and mistakes made along the way. However, the system - otherwise known as the scientific method - creates an atmosphere of competition that rewards those who can prove a hypothesis or theory wrong, and ensures that even if the general path goes off-course that it will eventually right itself. And it assures me that it does this even when those involved are not particularly ethical or moral people.

Note that I'm talking about actual evidence to disprove a scientific claim and not just resistance. If you answer "no" to every question on a true/false exam you should score roughly 50%. Creationists were very quick to point out that Ida was overstated in importance, for instance, but it was scientists with actual data who provide the credible claim.

 

[Mallon]

I always like to ask the following: Why are humans more similar to apes than either group is to dogs? This question immediately shows the flaw in the "common designer" argument (do humans and apes share a designer apart from dogs?). The answer, of course, is that humans and apes share a more recent common ancestor with one another than either group does with dogs. But creationists do not have an answer to this question, which can be extended to encompass any three groups.

 

[kentekent]

I think the strongest evidence for evolution is the fossil records. Through it, you can follow each dino's evolution right up till today. Unless they died out of course

But also the obvious, almost in our face, perfect examples of evolution: the nylon eating bacteria, medicine, SARS, H1N1 (Swineflu) and all other new diseases.
All of those are perfect examples of natural selection in progress.

 

[crawfish]

This thread hasn't gone as well as I'd hoped, but I am persistent.

Another piece of evidence that is strong for me is summed up by the term GIGO: garbage in, garbage out. This was a concept I first learned in high school computer programming courses on ensuring you gather proper data; no matter how perfect your algorithm, if the data coming in is bad, then the output will be flawed. I have found this to be true in nearly every area of life.

Evolution, while in itself theoretical, is used quite often in practical application. By using its claims as a basis, scientists in such fields as geology, biology, medicine and engineering, as well as many others. It has proven to be a strong predictive force.

If evolution were false, then it could not be used to produce consistently good results. If it were garbage, in other words, any process that used it for input would be inherently flawed and end up producing garbage.

 

[Papias]

Crawfish, how about these?

My first response is similar to your forest example, and as such you may not find useful. However, it is this: The fact that evolution has been confirmed by so many fields of study. It's not so much that each of these shows some kind of evolution, but that they all show the same evolutionary scenario, with the same trees (who is descended from whom), the same timelines, and all that, wherever they overlap. The evolutionary findings of geology, paleontology, zoology, comparative anatomy, genetics, botany, and so many more. If all of these fields were wrong in concluding evolution (as the creationists claim), then the odds of them happening to all have found the same wrong answer are worse than remote.

Another one is similar to your GIGO approach. The fact that evolution has made thousands of testable, unexpected predictions that have been shown to be correct is powerful evidence that the modern synthesis of evolution is correct. To give just one tiny example from the thousands out there - Dr. Shubin predicted when a transitional fish/amphibian would have existed, and went looking in rocks of that age. He found Tiktaalik, just what he was looking for, where and when the evolutionary model predicted he may find it.

A third one is similar to the first. Evolution is the undisputed scientific consensus (see project steve). That means that the evidence has gotten hundreds of thosands of scientists, with different religions, different worldviews, and different cultures to agree (when if any of them had evidence to seriously dispute evolution, they'd bring it out to further their careers). How can this be, unless the evidence is literally rock solid? This is best used when creationists claim that ideas in opposition to evolution are suppressed by a vast, dark conspiracy.

For more data specific ones, the endogenous retrovirus data is very good. If evolution were not true, why would endogenous retrovirus DNA tests confirm the same family trees, over and over, confirmed by other methods and predicted by evolution? It can't be "similar design", because endogenous retroviruses are later parasites, not an original "design".

Another is the explanation of the poor designs in the animal kingdom. Sure, good "designs" are consistent with both creationism and evolution, but the poor designs, again and again, are directly explainable by common ancestry, while creationism offers no explanation. Some good ones - ostriches have hollow bones, but don't need them as they don't fly, while bats have solid bones, and do fly. Whales are fully aquatic, yet breathe.....air?!?! What kind of idiot would design that? Sea turtles are fully aquatic, yet breathe air and have to lay their eggs ...... on land?!?! Whaaa? Urination is another good one - we have the kidneys of water creatures, that's why we waste so much water by drinking then urinating it. A better design wouldn't waste this much water - but I'll leave it to a biologist to explain that better.

Atavisms - If evolution were not true, then why are people sometimes born with tails, whales sometimes born with hind legs, and so on?

Embryologic stupidity - If evolution were not true, why do baleen whales develop teeth as fetusus, which are reabsorbed before birth? Why do whale embryo nostrils start out near the front of the head then move to the top? Why not just start there? The same goes for the tails and gill pouches all of us humans once had when we were embryos - why would a designer design us to make these and the absorb them? All of these make perfect sense in light of evolution.

hard to stop, but I will. I'm not sure which I find the most powerful - each is sufficient alone.

Enjoy-

Papias

 

[crawfish]

Papias,

Thanks for the posts. Your posts alludes to the next argument I was going to mention, the invoking of Occham's Razor.

Obviously, Christians have invoked this for years, saying that the "simplest explanation is God". I can't say I don't agree with this assertion. For a TE, though, this is different - it becomes "what is the most likely explanation of HOW God created"?

YEC science's problem is that it does not present a unified picture of what the evidence points to. For instance (according to Table 1 in chapter 7 of "Beyond the Firmament"), YEC dating methods place the age of the universe all over the map. The various scientific dating methods place the age of the universe within a pretty small margin of error from each other. This is understandable - YEC science has typically had the goal of simply casting doubt on mainstream science, so there is no real need to corraborate its many assertions. This presents itself over and over in all of science; evolution provides a well-supported universal view, while creationism does not.

Of course, you could say as a YEC that since the method of creation was supernatural, there is no need for any order. In fact, the disparate data may be proof that there is, in fact, no order, and thus YEC is the most viable answer. While it does make better sense than giving credence to YEC science as an explanatory model, it does have two problems: 1) the vast majority of YEC's would not claim this, and 2) the laws of creation have proven to be very predictable and ordered.

Thus, given God, the simplest explanation is that God used evolutionary processes.

 

[lucaspa]

Papias,

Thanks for the posts. Your posts alludes to the next argument I was going to mention, the invoking of Occham's Razor.

Do not invoke the Razor. You cannot use the Razor to determine truth or evaluate theories. What's more, what you call "Occham's Razor" is what William of Ockham argued against. Instead, Ockham's Razor really states: do not add statements to describe phenomena.

For a TE, though, this is different - it becomes "what is the most likely explanation of HOW God created"?

For a TE, the question is "How did God create?" Not "most likely", but actually how did God create. To answer that question, TEs accept evidence from God's Creation. Creationists do not. What's more, you must remember that science falsifies theories. Creationism/ID are falsified theories.

Now, one of the most effective counters to creationism/ID I have found is phylogenetic analysis. The basic claim to creationism/ID is that species, or parts of them, are independent creations/manufacture by God. That means there are discontinuities between groups of organisms. That, in turn, means that DNA sequences between groups of organisms are going to be independent observations, since there is no relation between the created "kinds" or the created IC biochemical systems.

In contrast, the basic claim of evolution is common ancestry. That means that DNA sequences are going to be related by historical connections, not be independent. With that as background:

DM Hillis, Biology recapitulates phylogeny, Science (11 April) 276: 276-277, 1997. Primary articles are JX Becerra, Insects on plants: macroevolutionary chemical trends in host use. Science 276: 253-256, 1997; VA Pierce and DL Crawford, Phylogenetic analysis of glycolitic enzyme expression, Science 276: 256-259; and JP Huelsenbeck and B Rannala, Phylogenetic methods come of age: testing hypotheses in an evolutionary context. Science 276: 227-233, 1997.

Phylogenetic analysis is based on the analysis of DNA sequences, and thanks to new technology of automated DNA sequencers and supercomputers, now large data sets of of hundreds or thousands of DNA sequences, each of which has thousands of nucleotides, are now routinely being analyzed.

"As phylogenetic analyses became commonplace in the 1980s, several groups emphasized what should have been obvious all along: Units of study in biology (from genes through organisms to higher taxa) do not represent statistically independent observations, but rather are interrelated through their historical connections."

Creationism/ID falsified, evolution supported.

YEC science's problem is that it does not present a unified picture of what the evidence points to. For instance (according to Table 1 in chapter 7 of "Beyond the Firmament"), YEC dating methods place the age of the universe all over the map.

Agreed. A reason for this is because YEC is based on a whole set of ad hoc hypotheses. Each ad hoc hypothesis is there to counter a specific falsification of YEC. But the ad hoc hypotheses contradict each other.

Of course, you could say as a YEC that since the method of creation was supernatural, there is no need for any order.

That does not follow. If there is a single creative event in the recent past, then all methods for measuring the age of the earth should give the same age. An example where YECs run into trouble is their attempt to use the salts in the ocean for a young earth. Yes, if you look at one or 2, you get an age consistent with their theory. But when you look at all the salts, you get ages from over 300 million years to 2,000 years. Even with a supernatural creation, all the levels of all the salts should give one age.

Thus, given God, the simplest explanation is that God used evolutionary processes.

Again, the simplest explanation is not necessarily the correct one. You can't use the Razor to evaluate theories.

 

[troodon]

It has always seemed to me the best approach is to falsify young earth creation rather than try to defend evolution. Evolutionary science is active and changing, and lay individuals will always be able to ignore and misunderstand evidence, and point to disagreements within the field, and blindly send you to enormous unsourced articles, in order to preserve their beliefs.

The science that falsifies a young earth, at its core at least, is much more static, well-tested, and easily explained (IMO). Defending radiometric dating and stratigraphy is so much easier to do than explaining the intricacies of evolutionary history, especially when you're talking to people with little to no scientific background.

Evolution is harder to defend because it's derived from such a huge body of evidence. I can take you out to a single sedimentary outcrop and falsify a young earth, I cannot show you a single organism, or even a single lineage of organisms, and prove evolution. I think that's why young earth creationists have made such an effort to have this battle be fought over evolutionary theory, because it's so much more difficult to explain in a convincing manner than the age of the earth is. A 6,000 year old earth is utterly indefensible.

But to give an actual answer to your question, I think that the fossils of avian dinosaurs and basal birds are the most convincing thing you can point out to someone. Granted, I'm biased, but the line between the two clades blurrs to such a degree that I think it can have a visceral impact on a creationist, even if he tries to ignore it at first. See this thread for what I'm talking about.

Papias' embryology point is a fantastic one too. I need to remember that.

 

[lucaspa]

It has always seemed to me the best approach is to falsify young earth creation rather than try to defend evolution.

This may look like nitpicking, troodon, but it is not. There is a big difference between "creation" and "creationism".

Creation is a theological belief that is outside science.

Creationism is a scientific theory.

You can falsify creationism. You cannot falsify creation. So yes, the approach in science is to falsify theories. And creationism -- particularly young earth creationism -- is a falsified theory.

However, the theories that are currently accepted do have supporting evidence. So it is also necessary to lay out that supporting evidence. You don't hesitate to lay out the evidence supporting geocentrism, do you? Or even evidence supporting the theory that the earth is very, very old. After all, you do say "Defending radiometric dating and stratigraphy" Both of those constitute evidence supporting an old earth. So it is possible to come up with evidence supporting evolution. As you do with the dino-bird transition.

Of course, you run into trouble with that one because there is a small group of paleontologists who think that both dinos and birds share a more distant reptilian ancestor! So they dispute the dino-bird transition. The reptile-mammal transition is also very good, since there are so many transitional species in the sequence.

 

[troodon]

Of course, you run into trouble with that one because there is a small group of paleontologists who think that both dinos and birds share a more distant reptilian ancestor! So they dispute the dino-bird transition.

These days even they don't deny the link between the specimens in question and birds. They've mostly come to explain the fossil record by saying that the more avian dinosaurs are very basal, secondarily-flightless birds, and that they're no more closely related to genuine dinosaurs than any other bird.

So we get this:

With the common ancestor between all three clades being some hypothetical archosaur in the early Triassic.

 

[lucaspa]

-Dr. Alan Feduccia, in an interview with Discover magazine

Do you have a reference to that interview?

Notice that Feduccia is still denying the dino-bird transition. What he is saying that there is a bird-avian dinosaur transition. So you are still going to get creationists that will use these scientists to argue against evolution if your "best" evidence is a dino-bird lineage.

That's a weird cladogram. Birds and dinos are supposed to have diverged from a common ancestor, yet birds have derived dino features that set dinos off from other Archosaurs. What's more, shouldn't there be fossils of full, flighted birds dating before the first avian dinosaurs? I thought the "bird-hipped" dinos were some of the first dinos.

 

[troodon]

Do you have a reference to that interview?

Yep

That's a weird cladogram. Birds and dinos are supposed to have diverged from a common ancestor, yet birds have derived dino features that set dinos off from other Archosaurs. What's more, shouldn't there be fossils of full, flighted birds dating before the first avian dinosaurs? I thought the "bird-hipped" dinos were some of the first dinos.

It is quite weird, and it necessitates two things.
1) A very large degree of convergent evolution between birds and dinosaurian theropods and
2) A ghost lineage of birds that managed to exist for tens of millions of years without leaving any trace in the fossil record.

It's a difficult hypothesis to evaluate because it's nearly impossible to test (#2 is impossible to test). I honestly don't see how any scientist can favor it over the dinosaur to bird model.

"Bird-hipped" dinosaurs, the Ornithischians, were actually not related to birds. It was the Saurischians that birds are descended from, and avian theropods do have an avian-looking hip with the pubis bent backwards.

 

[_JJM]

When people laugh, they sound like monkeys.

 

[shernren]

My personal favorite is GULOP, or the GULO pseudogene:

http://www.christianforums.com/t4109582/

Things I like about it:

1. It's relevant. We all know about vitamin C and scurvy.

2. It's obvious. Gene broken in the same way in all primates and in guinea pigs in a completely different way. Evolutionary explanation easy.

3. It's a good introduction to the problems with Goddidit. Sure, you can postulate that a gene broken in the exact same way was magically introduced introduced into primates and not other animals - but for the love of God (literally), why? Good introduction to Bayesian statistics too.

4. It's surprisingly deep. If you follow the thread, you will see that the single base substitutions along the broken GULO gene sequences in primates actually follows the hierarchy we'd expect to see - macaques and orangutans as the more remote outgroup and the chimp-human split being the most recent.

5. It's accessible. Anyone (well, anyone with too much free time) can compare nucleotides. And feeling like you're actually in control of the scientific process is a key attraction of the creationist mindset.

6. It involves people. The (unlikely) creationist response "well, it's alright for dumb brute animals but not for us!" is immediately exorcised.

The fact that ERV phylogenies replicate known / expected hierarchies is also one of my favorites, for much the same reasons.

 

[lucaspa]

Yep

Thank you. I found this statement by Feduccia interesting:
"Evolving flight from the ground up is biophysically implausible. "

It appears that Fedducia has not heard of, or chooses to ignore, the work of Dial: Kenneth P.Dial, Wing-Assisted Incline Running and the Evolution of Flight. Science, 299: 402-405, Jan 17, 2003.

Not only is it plausible, but it happens in individual birds during development.

It is quite weird, and it necessitates two things.
1) A very large degree of convergent evolution between birds and dinosaurian theropods and

More than that. It necessitates identical features. What Feduccia ignores is that some fossils of Archeopteryx, that Feduccia calls " the earliest known bird", were identified as dinosaurs when those fossils lacked feather impressions and the only data was the bones. The placental wolf and the Tasmanian wolf -- examples of convergent evolution -- are not so close in the skeleton that one would be mistaken for the other.

BTW, Archie is not really a "bird" as we know it. It is classified as Aves because its descendents are birds. Feduccia is misusing the classification system. At the end of the interview Feduccia seems to forget what he said earlier and says "Archaeopteryx is half reptile and half bird any way you cut the deck,"

2) A ghost lineage of birds that managed to exist for tens of millions of years without leaving any trace in the fossil record.

Possible, but unlikely. That lineage must have had several families at least. You'd think one of them would turn up.

It's a difficult hypothesis to evaluate because it's nearly impossible to test (#2 is impossible to test). I honestly don't see how any scientist can favor it over the dinosaur to bird model.

#1 is possible to test. I did so a bit by looking at other examples of convergent evolution. Convergent evolution does not produce identical structures, such as the avian hip.

"Bird-hipped" dinosaurs, the Ornithischians, were actually not related to birds. It was the Saurischians that birds are descended from, and avian theropods do have an avian-looking hip with the pubis bent backwards.

Uh, the sources I read say Saurischians have the pubis pointed forwards. However, the Saurischians are the oldest known dinos (Eoraptor and Herrerasaurus) dating to 230 million years ago. Even Feduccia does not have his putative avian lineage go back that far.

 

[troodon]

Uh, the sources I read say Saurischians have the pubis pointed forwards.

Yes, hence the name. Some Saurischians in the Jurassic independently evolved a backwards-pointing pubis, converging with Ornithischians in that regard. It is from these Saurischians that birds are descended.

However, the Saurischians are the oldest known dinos (Eoraptor and Herrerasaurus) dating to 230 million years ago.

They're the oldest known dinosaurs, but by the nature of their definitions (being sister taxa) Ornithischia and Saurischia first appeared at the same time.

Even Feduccia does not have his putative avian lineage go back that far.

Well, no, but the Triassic to Early-Middle Jurassic Saurischian ancestors of birds wouldn't have been full-fledged birds. They would have looked like any other early Theropods.