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

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)

Carbon-14 has a small half life of 5730 years, and because of that it can only last for 150-

200,000 years before decaying away

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 cross-

linking 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

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

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

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?

“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

Altruism

Altruism is an odd things to exist in a

world that is governed by survival

of the fittest

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…

"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)

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)

"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

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 VerseGenesis 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.”