Ugh, I've been seeing a lot of this around the net as of late. Especially from that idiot
shockofgod and the intellectual cesspool
Conservapedia.
They're both advocating this
"Question Evolution!" campaign, which is basically raising awareness of intelligent design by bashing Darwin. They distribute pamphlets with
15 questions they claim evolutionists cannot answer, and thus creationism must be correct.
Besides their god-of-the-gaps thinking, evolutionists can answer them very well and that includes me. And so I'll do it here, a recorded document of an evolutionist adequately answering all 15: (some are somewhat fractured in the text, so please forgive me paraphrasing. I'll try and maintain all original meaning)
1. How did life originate? Biologists do not know exactly the details of the first thing that could be called "life", and we admit that. Whatever it was is largely untestable, and the same is true for every theory that tries to explain the origin of life. However, that is not to say we don't have a very good idea. Whatever it was must have been capable of replicating itself, and could also have the ability to catalyse reactions. Personally, my money would be on enzymes of RNA (ribozymes, go look them up) and I recall Richard Dawkins holds a similar view. And we know similar molecules can arise from the primordial soup, see the
Miller experiment.
The question goes on to say how a cell could arise from molecules, and the answer is in the theory. Research what you reject, please. It arose from natural selection, some of these self replicating molecules may, by sheer chance, may be slightly different and as such perform slightly different tasks. Perhaps they may have produced membranes, metabolised for heat or may have simply just have been faster at reproducing. Molecules working together would also have been selected for and so increase in frequency. This process would've continued to form the first prokaryotic cell.
And even if we didn't know this it is not valid to say that "god did it." Scientists are at the very least looking at it and increasing our understanding of abiogenesis. Unlike religious folk who relentlessly assert intelligent design with no evidence whatsoever. (Dammit, I'm getting carried away! 3 paragraphs on just question 1...)
2. How did the DNA code originate? This answer will be much shorter! See above. DNA bases arose by chance like the first amino acids. It can't be said it was an unlikely chance, the primordial sea was huge, and had millions (if not billions) of years to occur. Eventually, by hugely likely chance these molecules will work together, replicate and increase in frequency. This gradual process builds in complexity until we have a genetic code.
3. How could such errors (mutations the genetic code) create 3 billion letters of DNA information to change a microbe into a microbiologist? The vast majority of mutations have a very small effect on the protein they code for. The functioning shape of the peptide chain is largely unchanged, and many changes are protected due to the degenerate nature of the code. However, in the off chance of a change that makes the protein more efficient or give it a new function (probably a reduntant protein previously) then it will be selected for. It doesn't matter if it beomes x1.1 times as efficient or x1,000,000 as efficient, any positive change will be selected for. Thus largely varying and useful genes can arise.
You make the valid point of the existence of genetic diseases. To that I respond natural selection is not all powerful, negative changes can reproduce. The laryngeal nerve is more than enough proof of that. This is also why varying alleles exist. Not every version of a gene can be the best, yet different genotypes can still perpetuate.
4. Why is natural selection (a principle accepted by creationists) taught as evolution as if it explains the origin of the diversity of life and explains the origin of the traits that make an organism adapted to an environment? Genes have been observed to be duplicated and then mutate, to form a new allele to be passed on that could lead to a whole new phenotype. Natural selection then selects for or against this new phenotype. This mutation in the genome isn't natural selection in itself, yes, but the follow up process makes it very much a "creative process."
5. How did new biochemical pathways, which involve multiple enzymes working together in sequence, originate? I am fairly sure I've covered this in regard to the origin of life and the DNA code, so I'll answer in more emphatically. There are millions of years for these pathways to originate, and small changes to them due to mutation arise over time. Take the electron transport chain for example. In the past it would've produced far less ATP (the energy molecule for life), be less complex and probably have vastly different products/substrates. There is so much time for the random collection of ever-changing enzymes to find a useful function that eventually a useful biochemical pathway will occur, be passed on and eventually refined.
6. Living things look like they were designed, so how do evolutionists know that they were not designed? This is the first genuinely fucking stupid question so far. Because there is no evidence that they were designed! If you waltz in to the scientific community, claiming life was designed it is you who must endure the burden of proof, not us. We have our own theory and our own evidence for it. Besides, your theory makes a move from no complexity to great complexity instantaneously, without explaining the complexity of your supposed designer. Therefore it is improbable. Evolution by natural selection however, provides a slow, steady and (most importantly) probable increase in complexity. Read "Climbing Mount Improbable" by Richard Dawkins, it explains this in great depth.
8. How did sex originate? You raise two points, firstly the benefits and the future compatibility of evolved sex organs. In regards to the advantages of sex over asexual reproduction is the huge increase in genetic variability due to independent assortment of chromosomes and bivalance while making the sex cells. A more varied population can better adapt to changes and thus survive and become less susceptible to disease (an asexual reproducing population struck by a virus suited to their genotype wouldn't last long).
Secondly, sexual reproduction evolved waaaaaay before genitalia did. Some micro-organisms do it (if you pardon the pun) and there's no such thing as a micropenis! They exchange plasmids instead. Complementary sex organs had so much time to evolve and improve this process. The idea of future compatibility is irrelevant because to evolution non-complementary immediate sex organs wouldn't be acceptable, so the notion of their future state is a foregone conclusion.
9. Why are the (expected) countless millions of transitional fossils missing? This is a stupid question. Every single fossil is a transitional fossil. Creationists quote this from one another, never going to look at the fossils we have at any decent museum/university (or even online). If you wanna know how the reptile became a mammal or fish an amphibian go look, we have a great deal of transitional forms.
But that would never satisfy you! As soon as we plug a gap (which was never there, really) it just creates two more for creationists to point to, thinking it justifies their position. Reading theh follow up text in this question sickens me, they claim the tree of life (below) is the product of imagination. Bull. Shit.
Before Watson and Crick we relied upon geographic and fossil evidence to construct this tree, so yes, there was a degree of guesswork. NOW, however, we have DNA evidence. This allowed us to refine the tree with almost absolute certainty, being confident of the animals placement with an error of less than of one in a million.
10. How do ‘living fossils’ remain unchanged over supposed hundreds of millions of years if evolution has changed worms into humans in the same time frame? For readers who are unaware of "living fossils", it's an informal term used to refer to species that have remained largely unchanged by evolution for a long time. Cockroaches and deep sea sharks are good examples.
And this question couldn't be easier to answer. Evolution can only occur when there is a directionally selective pressure, i.e. acting in favour of a trait's extremity. A crude example would be giraffes, as their ancestors would have been selected for by having longer necks. Directional selection happens in response to a changed enviornment. Living fossils have not undergone this kind of selection because the enviornment they inhabit hasn't changed for millions of years as well, there is no force making them change. You are at huge fault to assume everything evolves at the same rate.
11. How did blind chemistry create mind/intelligence, meaning, altruism and morality? Ancient roaming bands of our ancestors would've easily evolved a societal behaviour, like don't kill your neighbour nor rape their children. The ones who dis such things would've reciprocated the same kind of treatment and become less likely to reproduce. Now that we have advanced culture, we have sophisticated this ideas into what we call morality.
The mind/intelligence bit is because our brains are denser. Better brains, better cognitive awareness, better tool use. Simple.
12. Why is evolutionary ‘just-so’ story-telling tolerated? Because it's probably true based on the observed facts, and there is no better theory. Including intelligent design.
13. Where are the scientific breakthroughs due to evolution? Firstly, there's hundreds. We've mapped life, predicted and prepared for superbugs, understanding of the origin of disease... etc.
Secondly, even if there wasn't any discoveries because of evolution that wouldn't mean it isn't true. It's like a child complaining about what the point is in studying history! It is true there are no practical applications, but we do it anyway! Knowledge of why things around you are the way they are is important. So shut up and learn!
14. Science involves experimenting to figure out how things work; how they operate. Why is evolution, a theory about history, taught as if it is the same as this operational science? Before I explain why you're wrong for the penultimate time I'll turn this faulty logic back on intelligent design. Why is intelligent design put forward as if it is operational science? Can we observe the organisms being designed/created? No, we simply cannot.
You have the nerve to quote Dawkins here, “Evolution has been observed. It’s just that it hasn’t been observed while it’s happening.” The follow-up to this is a full rendition of why we still know. Your quote-mining is sickening. He uses the metaphor of a detective arriving at a crime scene. The detective can still piece together the evidence of what happened to convict the criminal despite not witnessing the events. In the same way we can piece together the evidence for evolution. We never saw Darwin's finches moving from island to island but we can map their genes and geographic distribution, work out who evolved form who and when.
15. Why is a fundamentally religious idea, a dogmatic belief system that fails to explain the evidence, taught in science classes? The thing is, it's not a religious idea. It's a scientific one. It is based on evidence and subject to review constantly, and that's what separates science from faith. By your logic, is Newton's theory of gravitation a religious idea too? Should we be praying to Einstein and Feynmann while we're at it? I find it fundamentally fucking offensive that you dare compare Darwin's beautiful explanation for the origin of species to your own bronze age bullshit.
And there we have it! All 15 answered. Which gives me the idea of writing 15 questions for creationists to answer. Hmmm...
