Lies, Damned Lies, and Creationists

Today we have an article from a new source, The Institute for Creation Research. This article deals not with misconceptions, but with outright lies.

What if all life evolved from a common ancestor by means of gradual changes as Darwin suggested? What evidence would we expect to find?

A wonderful question.

Certainly we would expect to find the fossilized remains of the myriads of ancestral creatures which lived and died over the millenia. At least some of the intermediate forms would have been fossilized. Remains of many varieties of present creatures have been found, including some extinct varieties, but the true in-between forms bridging gaps still elude us. Abundant soft-bodied remains have been found, so the conditions for preservation would always somewhere have existed. Why can't we find those important fossils which document evolution?

Here is where the lies begin. We have found transitional fossils. Thousands of them. This claim is not a misunderstanding. It is not a misinterpretation of the facts. It is not an honest mistake. It is an outright lie. There are thousands of transitional fossils, showcasing the evolution of many complex characteristics. The claim that transitional fossils do not exist is one of the most blatant and persistent lies made by Creationists, and is all the more astonishing for its audacity. In saying that transitional fossils do not exist, one must deny huge amounts of evidence. I would also like to refer you to the wonderful article on transitional fossils over at the TalkOrigins archive.

We might also expect to find evolution still occurring today.

We well might.

Why does it seem to have stopped?

Here we have the second lie. Evolution has not stopped. Scientists have observed the evolution of new species. Thousands of them. Evolution is not something that only happened in the past, it is going on around us all the time. Probably the most obvious example of evolution is the rise of antibiotic resistant bacteria.

Geologists think the present time is marked by rapid change; environments are changing, so why are living things not changing?

It's important to understand something aboutr Geologists; they don't look at time like the rest of us. Geology occurs on scales of millions of years. When a geologist talks about an instant, she may well be talking about a period of ten thousand years! Of course since evolution is going on around us, this point is moot.

They are unquestionably adapting, but this is not by acquiring new genetic traits as required by evolution. Mutations frequently occur, which damage existing genes, some more than others, but nowhere do we observe new genetic information arise by random mutation.

It shouldn't suprise you to learn that this too is a lie. Just look at antibiotic resistant bacteria. Scientists create antibiotic drugs that do not exist in nature. Yet bacteria evolve resistance to them. Clearly this is new information, but the author conviently overlooks even this obvious example. The TalkOrigins article on the evolution of improved fitness describes it in far greater detail than I can here.

Evolution of any basic type into another would require millions of innovative, helpful mutations which add new information to the genome, but these are nowhere to be seen. Instead of new types, we observe misfits and extinction, the opposite of evolution. Natural selection can only select between variants, it cannot act on its own to create novel types, and certainly is not an intelligent force driving innovation.

The author is right in that evolution is not an intelligent force at all. That he thinks it is betrays only his own ignorance. Needless to say, the rest of the quote is wrong. I will again point you to the TalkOrigins article above.

We would also expect to discover a universal trend in science which leads to more complexity in nature, paving the way for an increase in genetic content.

This, at least, is not a lie. It is instead a simple misconception, which is a welcome relief at this point. Evolution does not lead to greater complexity. Evolution leads to organisms that are well adapted to their environment. It is wrong to say that a human is "more evolved" than an ape, because an ape is well suited for the environment in which it lives. No creature is more evolved than any other.

Instead we discover the universal second law of science, which invariably points toward a degradation of quality in every duplication of information, such as in reproduction, and more randomness in every unguided process.

Now he's just making things up. The "second law of science" exists only in the fevered imagination of the author. He seems to be talking about the second law of thermodynamics, which does not say what he seems to think it says.

The complexity of life forms is so unimaginably great that we must account for it, and random changes in the face of a universal law can hardly be the answer.

It's certainly a good thing that evolution through natural selection is not a random process, or evolution would be in big trouble. But it isn't. While natural selection is unguided, it is not random. Mutations, the raw material of evolution, are random, but natural selection uses them to produce evolution.

At the least we should find a mechanism for evolution firmly in place. Mutation and natural selection are often cited, but these are deteriorative and conservative, not innovative and thoughtful. A theory of everything which has no mechanism is a weak theory indeed.

Are you tired of the lies yet? I know I am. This is simply not true. The vast, overwhelming majority of scientist agree that mutation and natural selection work very well to produce evolution. Note that the author gives us no citation for his claim that mutation and natural selection are deteriorative and conservatice, so we have no way of knowing where he got that piece of information from. It almost seems like he's just making it up.

Thus we do not find the expected evidence that evolution of basic types has taken place. Surely we can be excused for looking elsewhere.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, there are none so blind as those who will not see. The ability to overlook such massive quantities of evidence simply astounds me. The evidence is right here, dear reader. I trust that you can make the right decision.

None So Blind

Today's post also comes from Answers in Genesis. The old saying goes that there are none so blind as those who will not see, and this article illustrates that perfectly. The AiG writer has the evidence for evolution right in front of him, but refuses to believe it. The article is called Eyeless fish in caves.

'We read about fish that live in caves. They can’t see, and they have scars where most fish have eyes. Were they created like this?’

No. Mutation and selection have changed them from a state in which they had eyes to one in which they don’t. The following is almost certainly what happens in such situations.

A population of fish that have eyes begins to live in underground environments that have no light. Their eyes are then useless to them. However, organs do not ‘degenerate’ just because they are useless. The information to produce eyes is copied and passed on, generation after generation.

Even fish that live in light occasionally have copying ‘mistakes’ as this information is transmitted. These ‘mistakes’ are called mutations. They corrupt and damage the information. When a fish living in a light environment has such a mutational defect which causes its offspring to have no eyes, this defect does not have very much chance of being passed on generation after generation.

The reason is simple—a fish without eyes is normally at a tremendous disadvantage. Sight helps fish catch their food and avoid being caught for food themselves. Natural selection will thus tend to eliminate this defect.

But what about those fish that have come to live in caves? Sooner or later, the same eyeless defect will occur here as well. Only this time, it does not give any disadvantage, so it is not eliminated. In fact, it gives advantage. The fish that have eyes can bump into things and injure their eyes, also they can get diseases of the eyes, both possibly leading to death. The fish that carry the eyeless (defective) information can’t get any of these problems. These eyeless fish thus have a greater chance of passing on their genetic information (carrying this defect) and so in time, natural selection will ensure that all the fish are eyeless.

All of this information is basically true. There are indeed such fish. The writer has gotten so much right, but watch as he blows it all in the last paragraph.

Note that this is a ‘downhill’ change. Complex, functional information coding for eye manufacture has been corrupted or lost. Such a decay process gives no evidence at all for the belief that complex organs have arisen by such processes—it only shows how this information can be lost in a fallen world.

D'oh! So close, and yet so far. This last paragraph shows that the author doesn't know much about evolution. This is not, as the author claims, a 'downhill' change. For one thing, the information coding for eye manufacture has not been lost. Blind cave fish begin to develop eyes before they are hatched, but then something actively stops the process and causes flesh to grow over the malformed eyes. Even when the eye lens from another, sighted fish is transplanted into the blind fish, it is covers over in the same manner. (Science 289 (28 July): 631–3) No trait has been lost, instead a new one has evolved.

Even if the genes for growing eyes had been lost in the cave fish, this would still be an example of evolution. Evolution is undirected, it follows whatever path maximizes the ability of an organism to reproduce. Evolution cannot go backwards, only forwards. Even when a trait is lost, evolution is still going forwards. The irony is that the first part of this article is, as far as I can tell, completely accurate. It demonstrates evolution in action. But the author has completely missed the point. The blindest of all are those who see, and then avert their eyes to deny their sight.