PREFACE

I was originally drawn into the evolution/creation controversy in 1982, when I reviewed a draft of the Biology Curriculum Guide of the Columbus, Ohio, public schools. Until then, I had shared the view of most scientists that the creationists were not to be taken seriously. "Just ignore them, and their demands will soon be forgotten," was the attitude of busy scientists who didn’t want to interrupt their research to do battle with the quaint notions of a bygone age -- any more than astronomers should have to trouble themselves to refute the outlandish claims of astrology.

But astrologers are not campaigning to geophistry taught as science in the public schools, and I was shocked to see that this Biology Curriculum Guide, a handbook for high school biology teachers, was about 50 percent creationist. It considered such fundamentalist Christian beliefs as that the Earth is only a few thousand years old to be the scienticic equal of modern radiometric-dating techniques. Along the way, it trotted out the usual creationist chestnuts -- misrepresentation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, distortion of the fossil record, the claim of worldwide flooding, and many other examples of anti-science -- passing them all off as science. The last straw came when, on pages 133 & 137 of the handbook, the National Enquirer was quoted as a scientific reference.

That was when I realized that science education is in trouble! It was clear that the strategy of ignoring the creationists would work to the detriment of both science and society. Apparently, many biologists and other scientists began waking up to the threat at about the same time, and scientists are now writing and speaking out to inform the public that creationism has no scientific validity and is a threat to the growth and spread of knowledge. (See the second reading list following the text for recent books inspired by the creationist attack on science) To allow disguised, fundamentalist beliefs into the science classroom is to devbalue education at a time when our country needs the best scientific minds it can muster just to stay even with the worldwide technological explosion.

To teach students that the foundations of biology, most of geology and astronomy, and a good deal of physics are flawed is to cheat them, shackle their intellectual growth, erode their ability to compete for jobs, and stifle their prospects for a rewarding life.

Creationists, for the most part, are fundamentalist Christians whose central premise is a literal interpretatiion of the Bible and a belief in its inerrancy. In adopting a literal interpretation of the Bible, they differ from nearlyh all other Christians and Jews. Scientists, many of whom are religious, have no wish to deny fundamentalists their own beliefs, but the creationists are determined to impose their views on others. In particular, they are lobbying to have science classes teach the ideas of: a sudden creation from nothing by God; a worldwide flood; a yhoung Earth; and the separate ancestry of humans and apes. These ideas constitute the biblical story of creation and, as such, are inherently religious. And because they depend on supernatural intervention, not natural law, they are also unscientific. There is no scientific evidence, or even an appeal from common sense or experience, to support the creationists’ claims. The few claims that are susceptible to testing, such as a young Earth, are shown by the scientific evidence to be false. Yet creationists do not remove demonstrably false ideas from their pantheon of beliefs. Unlide scientists, they do not subject their assertions to revision based on evidence. Since this pattern of thought is not scientific -- does not require or even condone testing and retesting -- it should not be taught in science cllassrooms in public schools.

The creationists are determined to force their will on society and the schools, through the courts if possible. Their strategy -- ironically enough, considering the moral precepts of Christianity -- is founded in deception, misrepresentation, and obfuscation designed to dupe the public into thinking that there is a genuine scientific controversy about the validity of evolution. No such controversy exists, but it is difficult for the lay public public to distinguish the scientists, who often disagree on the nuances of evolutionary theory (but not on evolution’s existence), from the creationists, who stick together and cloak absurd claims in scientific terminology.

Creationists arguments are discussed in Chapter 5 of this book, and the reader is also referred to Science (1982, 215; 934-43) for the legal opinion of U.S. District Court Judge William R. Overton on the creationists’ claims to be "scientific".

This book has three related purposes. First, it is an attempt to explain evolution to people who are genuinely confused by the claims of creationists, who try to present fundamentalists Christian beliefs as science. Second, it seeks to provide useful ammunition to the high school biology teacher or school board member who finds himself or herself under attack by creationists. Third, it should be a useful supplemental text for introductory college-level classes in biology, zoology, botany, or anthropology. These three purposes can all be served by answering the following question: What should an educated person know about the theory of evolution? I have tried to provide that informatin in this little book.

I am writing for the open-minded reader who does not understand the technical issues of evolution, but would like to, who sees everywhere the signs of a bitter philosophical and educational debate, but does not know what to make of it, or who to believe.

Those readers who demand a literal interpretation of the Bible will probably not be swayed by this book, for they have chosen to abandon reason and evidence in favor of dogma and blind faith.

Several scientist colleagues who read this book in one of its 16 drafts admonished me to tone down the bluntness of my statements on creationism, fearing that I might alienate otherwise receptive readers. But it seems to me that scientists have, for too long, teaded too lightly on the creationists, and have thereby fostered the impression that the creationists are a legitimate scientific voice. It is time for candor and clarity.

Much in modern life has become dismayingly technical, and evolutionary theory is no exception, but a generation that has learned to cope with VCR’s, work processors, and instant teller machines should be able to handle the basic facts of evolution. ...

CONTENTS:

Chap 1. What is Evolution?
    Hypotheses & Experiments
    Literal Interpretation and the Scientific Method
    Natural Selection & Evolution
    Nonadaptive Evolution
    Population and Gene Flow
    Reproductive Isolating Mechanisms
    Catastrophes & Mass Extinctions
    Embryology, Morphology, and Biogeography

Chap 2. Geologic Time and the Fossil Record
    Superposition and Faunal Succession
    Radioactive Decay and Absolute Dating
    Reading the Rocks and the Fossils
    Transitional Fossils
    Punctuated Equilibrium

Chap 3. The Explanatory Power of Evolution
    Drug Resistance in Bacteria
    Rabbits & Myxomatosis
    The Peppered Moth and Industrial Melanism
    Sickle Cell Anemia & Malaria
    Convergent Evolution
    Stepwise Adaptation

Chap 4. The Evolution of Life and the Rise of Humans
    The Big Bang
    The Early Earth
    Origin-of-Life Experiments
    Development of an Oxygen-Rich Atmosphere
    Emergent Evolution
    The Origin of Multicellularity
    The Origin of Vertebrates
    The Terrestrial Vertebrates
    Primate Relationships
    The Molecular Clock & DNA Hybridization
    The Australopithecines
    The Origin of Bipedality
    The Genuns Homo and Modern Humans

Chap 5. Science, Religion, Politics, Law, and Education
    The Grim Realities of Science Education
    Evolution vs. Religion
    Some Creationist Claims
    The Scopes Trial
    The Arkansas Balanced Treatment Act
    The Louisiana Creationism Act
    The Inevitable Triumph of Knowledge

[Note- the full text of this book can be read at the reservation desks at the Valle Verde and North West campuses of EPCC. A copy of this book is also  in the personal research library of Dr. Jerry Johnson of the Biology Dept. at the Valle Verde Campus of EPCC.]

Chap 1:    What is Evolution

p3    ... A scientific theory must also be capable of being falsified.  That is, there must be some set of circumstances such that, if they were to occur, the theory would fail to explain the facts.  ... any theory incapable of being falsified, such as that a God exists or that people have souls, is not a scientific one.
On this basis, if mammalian fossils were found in rocks older than those that contain the first fish fossils, then a major element of the theory of evolution -- that mammals arose far more recently than fishes, ... would be falsified.

p4    ... Science, because it is a self-correcting endeavor, is prepared to modify any theory, no matter how cherished, if the data show that to be necessary.
... But a theory in the special scientific sense is not "just a theory," as creationists are fond of saying.  A scientific theory is the endpoint of the scientific method ...

Literal Interpretatiion & the Scientific Method:
    ... the methods and claims of creatinists are not subject to experimentation, prediction, revision, or falsification.  To them, these pursuits are irrelevant, because they believe they possess the "truth" as set forth in the Bible.  In their view, scientific theory or evidence that contradicts the Bible must be in error, because the Bible (actually, their particular interpretation of the Bible) cannot be mistaken.  This view is clearly stated by creationist spokesman Henry M. Morris, Director of the Institute for Creation Research in San Diego, who asserted, "It is precisely because Biblical revelation is absolutely authoritative and perspicuous that the scientific facts, rightly interpreted, will give the same testimony as that of Scripture.  There is not the

p5    slightest possibility that the facts of science can contradict the Bible and, therefore, there is no need to fear that a truly scientific comparison of any aspect of the two models of origins can ever yield a verdict in favor of evolution" (Morris, 1974, Scientific Creationism, pp. 15-16)  Elsewhere, Morris wrote, "The only way we can determine the true age of the earth is for God to tell us what it is.  And since He has told us, very plainly, in the Holy Scriptures that it is several thousand years in age, and no more, that ought to settle all basic questiions of terrestrial chronology" (Morris, 1978, p. 94).  These views are most definitely not applications of the scientific method or even of common sense.
    Thus the Creationists must ignore or distort the evidence for evolution in order to force it into compliance with their interpretation of the Bible.  For example, creationists interpret the Bible to be saying that the Earth was formed about 10,000 years ago.  The vast array of scientific data pointing to an ancient Earth, drawn from nuclear physics in the form of radiometric dating, is discarded by the creationists because it doesn't fit their view.  This is not a scientific approach, and the term "scientific creationism" is an oxymoron -- a self-contradicting phrase.  Most Christians and Jews are content to see the Bible as metaphor or mystery or allegory, at least in the particulars of the Book of Genesis, but the fundamentalists, the creationists, believe it can be (and must be) interpreted literally.
    A literal interpretation of the scriptures poses problems for the fundamentalists because there are two quite different versions of creation in Genesis.  The first story ("In the beginning ...") starts at the beginning of the first chapter of Genesis and ends early in the second chapter.  The second creation story (The Garden of Eden) begins in the second chapter and continues through the third.  These two stories describe creation events in contradictory sequences and in different terms, and the theological messages are distinctly different.  Which account do creationists claim is literally, historically true?  The other must then be false or at least not taken literally.  A thoughtful analysis of this fundamentalist dilemma is given by Beck (1982).

p6    ... In Nov. 1859, Darwin published "On the Origin of Species", in which he not only elaborated the theory of evolution, but also proposed a mechanism by which it could work.  Today the theory of evolution forms the foundation of the biological sciences and their applied subdisciplines of medicine and agriculture, by providing the conceptual framework for both experimentation and prediction.
...    Darwin ... reasoned that there is competition -- for survival, mates, space, food, shelter, and other resources -- in which the favorable variations tend to be preserved by nature and the unfavorable ones tend to die out.  He called this process NATURAL SELECTION..
...    The consequence of natural selection is biological evolution, which Darwin termed "descent with modification."  This is still, 131 years later, considered a good descriptive definition of evolution.

p31    Chap 2:    Geologic Time and the Fossil Record

    Fossils are the remains or traces of prehistoric life.  ... By studying great numbers and varieties of fossils, we can see evolution in action over far greater time periods than would be possible if we were to restrict ourselves to living groups of plants and animals.  Fossils provide hard evidence that evolution has occurred.

p33    ... a paleontologist (a scientist who studies prehistoric life)
...    When Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, the fossil record was already well enough understood that scientists recognized the "progressive" nature of a very old Earth.  It was clear that some things lay atop others, that some were therefore presumably older than others.  Evolutionary theory supports that observatiion, predicting that when the remains of plants or animals are present in rocks of different ages, then these remains should describe some sensible sequence reflecting the extinction of some groups and the evolution of new groups as time passes and the environment changes.

p34     ... Particular fossils that keep turning up in different parts of the same stratum, perhaps hundreds or thousands of miles apart, are called indicator fossils, because they help geologists recognize the equivalent age of rock formations in separate parts of the world, and thus provide an independent means of arriving at a relative age for each stratum.  Though this procedure cannot establish the absolute age of the rock strata ... it succeeds very impressively in demonstrating that Rock Stratum A is older than Rock Stratum B.
    The principle that fossils in a stratigraphic sequence succeed one another in a definite, recognizable order is called faunal succession.  ... By using superposition and faunal or floral succession, geologists and paleontologists constructed a geologic time table for many regions of the world, a timetable that was essentially established by 1841, 18 years before Darwin published On the Origin of Species.  Thus the groundwork for a theory of change in the living things of the Earth was laid long before Darwin began piecing together a formal theory of evolution.

p36    ... Today ... we are able to determine the absolute age of ancient rocks, whether they contain fossils or not, by means of a technique called radiometric dating.
... The decay of the radioisotope continues over vast periods of time, but at a fixed rate, independent of temperature, pressure, or other environmental variables.  No other process on Earth proceeds at such an utterly constant rate.
    The decay rate that is so dependable in the absolute dating of rocks is expressed as the half-life of the radioisotope; that is the time it takes for half of the radioactive atoms in the sample to decay.

p37    ... Several radioactive isotopes are used in determining geologic time.  ... we have uranium 238, which decays to lead 206 with a half-life of 4.5 billion years.  Uranium 235 decays to lead 207 with a half-life of 704 million years.  Potassium 40 decays to argon 40 with a half-life of 1.25 billion years.  The potassium-argon system is relatively common in rocks and is therefore more widely used than other systems.  Each of these decay processes (there are several others) offers us a system of dating, and in each case the extent of the decay can be measured in the laboratory with great precision.  ... The theory of radiometric dating is very simple, but in practice the technique is complicated by difficulties in making precise measurements of tiny amounts of isotopes.  Moreover, not all rocks can be used for radiometric dating.  Igneous rocks (rocks that cooled from the molten state), such as volcanic or granitic rocks, are the best for radiometric dating.  Fossils do not occur in such rocks, but if fossils occur between two undisturbed layers of volcanic rock, the age of the fossils has to be between the dates of the two volcanic strata.  Some skeletons, if they have incorporated sufficient amounts of uranium, may be dated directly.  Measurements of the decay of uranium 235 to lead 207, even in very small samples of fossils, are accurate to within 2 percent, but 2 percent of a billion years is a lot of time, and a corroboration from stratigraphy can be valuable.
p38    Radiocarbon (carbon 14) dating can be applied directly to fossils or organic human artifacts (but not stone artifacts) and can be quite accurate.  Unstable carbon 14 is formed in the atmosphere from stable nitrogen 14 by the bombardment of cosmic rays from space.  Because its rate of formation balances its rate of decay, in atmospheric carbon dioxide the proportion of unstable carbon (C14) relative to ordinary carbon (C12) is essentially constant.  Plants take in the atmospheric carbon dioxide from the air, and animals eat the plants.  Thus both plants and animals have a fixed amount of C14 in their tissues while alive, but after death no new C14 can replace the amount lost by radioactive decay to N14.  Therefore, by measuring the remaining proportion of C14 relative to C12, we can calculate the approximate time of death as far back as about 50,000 years ago.  In a sample older than that, the amount of C14 remaining today is too small to be accurately measured (the half-life of C14 is just 5,730 years).  Creationists attempt to discredit C14 dating by applying it to fossils older than 50,000 years, or in other inappropriate ways, and then showing that it yhields obviously erroneous dates.

Reading the Rocks and the Fossils -- How Old Is the Earth, and How Old Is Life?
    By combining the results of the absolute dating method (calculating radioactive decay) with those of the relative dating method (seeing what rock strata lie above and below), we can interpret the fossil record with increasing confidence.  The age of the Earth and Moon has been demonstrated to be about 4.5 billion years.  This is not a guess based upon a few selected rocks.  Over the last 30 years nearly 100 independent laboratories worldwide have published in the scientific literature over 100,000 radiometric ages that support this conclusion.
    The earliest fossils discovered to date are bacteria and primitive plants called blue-green algae, which date back to about 3.5 billion years.  ... Cambrian rocks ... from 570 million years ago (MYA), are rich with the remains of many invertebrate groups,  ...

p39    ...     As one moves forward in geologic time, up into higher rock strata, other groups of animals are encountered.  The first known backboned animals, primitive fishes called ostracoderms, appeared in the late Cambrian, over 500 MYA, the first jawed fishes (placoderms) in the Silurian, the first amphibians in the Devonian, the first reptiles in the Carboniferous.  The Mesozoic is known as the "Age of Reptiles" for its proliferation of dinosaurs and other reptiles.  The first known mammals and birds split away from different reptilian ancestors in the Triassic and Jurassic, respectively.  Primates, the mammalian order to which we belong, arose in the Paleocene and were widespread by the Oligocene, about 38 MYA.
    This sequential appearance of different groups at different times, the more advanced appearing in general later than the more privitive, is predicted by evolutionary theory.  It cannot be reconciled with creationism, which requires all groups to have come into existence essentially simultaneously and fully formed a mere 6,000 to 10,000 years ago.  People once thought that the Earth was flat and that it was the center of the universe.  It is now high time we laid the creationist ideas to rest, as well.

p40    ... The most famous transitional fossil is Archaeopteryx, a crow-sized animal that dates back to the Jurassic about 150 MYA, and is known from skeletons retrieved from the limestone of Bavaria.  Today, Archaeopteryx is classified as a bird, because the fossils clearly show the impression of feathers, but before the feather impressions were noticed, it was classified as a reptile on the basis of its skeletal structure. ... Archaeopteryx is clearly intermediate between reptiles and birds.
p41 ... not to perceive its transitional nature is to be willfully blind to the obvious.

p50    ... Creationists frequently point to the lack of transitional fossils as a weakness of evolutionary theory.  But it is not reasonable to expect every single species that ever lived, or even very many of them, to show up in the fossil record.  There will always be gaps, owing to the nature of fossilization and the chanciness of discovery.  ... transitional forms between species should be rare in the fossil record.  Such a statement is not made to protect evolutionary theory from falsification but to warn how rare such fossils are likely to be.  That even one transitional fossil is found is a sufficient demonstration of evolution and a resounding falsification of creationism.  ... Transitional forms between major groups -- such as Archaeopteryx, which was intermediate between two classes -- do exist, a fact to which creationists close their eyes.
 

p70    Chap 4:  The Evolution of Life and the Rise of Humans

    For the creationists, the task of explaining the origin of life is dazzlingly easy:  it was simply created.  For scientists, who look to hard evidence, observable facts, and critical thinking for explanations, the task is not so easy -- complexities, subtleties, and the immmensities of time intrude. ...

The Big Bang -- How and When Did It All Begin?
    ... Cosmologists (astrophysicists who study the Universe as a whole) postulate that the Universe originated in a gigantic explosion called the Big Bang.  The Universe began as an infinitely hot point of infinite density, which cooled and diffused as it exploded outward.  Science can make no statement about the nature of the Universe prior to that explosion, because the physics of the Big Bang is not yet fully understood.  We know that space, time, matter, and energy existed after the Big Bang.  Einstein's 1916 theory of general relativity, showing that matter and energy are interchangeable, and that space and time are a continuum, forms part of the framework of the Big Bang theory.
    Why do cosmologists think there was a Big Bang?  Practically everything we know about the Universe is based on an analysis of electromagnetic radiation such as x-rays, radio waves, light, etc.  all of which travel at the speed of light.  These data provided the key to the Big Bang theory by showing that the Universe is expanding.  ... most galaxies appear to be receding at great speed, and that only a very few nearby galaxies show blue shifts.  Everything is receding from everything else like spots painted on the surface of an inflating balloon; but there is no center of expansion.
    Huubble eventually demonstrated that the extent of the red shift shown by a galaxy is directly proportional to the galaxy's distance from us.  Calculations based on the rate at which the stars seem to be receding from each other, and allowing for acceleration due to gravity, indicate that the Big Bang occurred sometime between 10 and 20 billion years ago.  Recent studies of star spectra support an age of around 11-12 billion years.  Most cosmologists favor a figure of around 12 to 15 billion.
    In 1964 ... detected cosmic microwave background radiation by using signals reflected from the Echo satellites.  Cosmologists agree that this radiation is the primeval light and heat from the Big Bang itself.

p72    ... The big question in cosmology today is whether the Universe will continue to expand forever, or whether it will begin to contract and collapse into the infinite density from which it originated.  The answer depends on how much matter exists in the Universe.  If the total amount of matter left over from the Big Bang exceeds a certain critical mass, gravitational forces will eventually bring avout a collapse.  If the matter in the Universe equals or is less than the critical mass, the Universe will expand forever.  The calculations of the total amount of matter in the Universe are maddeningly near the border of the critical amount.  The answer continues to elude us.

The Early Earth -- What Was It Like Before Life?

    After the Big Bang, matter aggregated into glowing masses (stars) that clustered together via mutual gravitational attraction into assemblages of stars (galaxies) scattered across space.  Our own island of stars is the Milky Way Galaxy.  It is made up of some 100 trillion stars (that's 100 followed by nine zeros) scattered across a disk roughly 100,000 light-years in diameter. ... The disk of stars is slightly over 2,000 light-years thick.  Nearly all the stars we see with the unaided eye are in the Milky Way.
    Eventually, our rather ordinary solar system formed in the Milky Way Galaxy about 4.5 billion years ago (BYA).  It condensed out of a cloud of dust created by the Big Bang.  One can observe stars forming today in the same manner in the Orion Nebula.  The planets, including Earth, formed out of the aggregated matter from the dust cloud around the Sun.  For eons and eons, water would have existed on Earth only as superheated steam that rose to the upper atmosphere, condensed, and fell as rain, which then became hot vapors again.  By 3.8 BYA at most, the Earth had cooled sufficiently to allow rock formation, since that is the earliest date reflected by the radiometric dating of Earth rocks.

p73    Moon rocks brought back by Apollo 11 & Apollo 12 proved to be about 4.5 billion years old.  Eventually the Earth's surface would have cooled sufficiently to allow standing bodies of water to accumulate.  These pools would offer sites for chemical evolution.
    The early Earth rocks suggest an oxygen-free atmosphere (today almost 1/5 of the atmosphere is free oxygen).  The presence of great amounts of ferrous iron in the early banded iron formations indicates that free oxygen was unavailable in the atmosphere.  (If oxygen had been present, the iron would be in the ferric state -- that is, it would have oxidized, or rusted.
    Gasses escaping from the hot interior of the Earth, through volcanic vents, may have produced an atmosphere composed of some or all of the following gases:  carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, hydrogen sulfide, ammonia, methane, hydrogen, and water vapor.  Geochemists are currently debating the relative amounts of these gases that may have been present in the early atmosphere, but free oxygen was not one of them.  Carbonate minerals in early rocks indicate that these rocks formed in an atmosphere of carbon dioxide rather than methane.  ...
 

p120    Chap 5:  Science, Religion, Politics, Law & Education

    The evolution/creation debate is ostensibly about science, but that is simply what the fundamentalists want us to believe, for a great deal more is at stake, and they are well aware that creationism is not science.  The goals of "creation science" have far more to do with religion, politics, law, and education, and to whatever extent the scientific trapping of "creation science" are accorded credence, by the schools or by the courts, much will suffer:  freedom of thought, an informed, open-minded American public, the vitality of science and technology, and the fate of our society in an increasingly competitive, increasingly educated world.

p121    ... In a survey of undergraduates in 3 states (excerpted in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Nov. 19, 1986, p. 37), more than half said they were creationists and 1/3 or more believed in ghosts, communication with the dead, extraterrestrials, aliens, Big Foot, etc.  The prevalence of such pseudo-scientific beliefs is an indictment of current science-educatiion practices, which seem less effective than education via supermarket tabloids.
    The survey also revealed that those who accepted creationism were less likely to read books and had lower grade-point averages than the noncreationists.

p122    ... it suggests an anti-intellectual suspicion of knowledge on the part of those sympathetic to creationism.  ... pseudoscientific beliefs about the past.
... Several other opinion polls have revealed a public sympathy toward teaching creationism along with evolution at both the high school and the university level.  Even university students fall prey to the equal-time argument, notwithstanding that the creationist interpretation of life is on a par with the idea of a flat Earth.  In spite of a trend toward greater acceptance of evolutionary theory with increasing biological education, well over half the biology graduate students surveyed at the Ohio State University favored teaching creationism in public schools.
... In an equally alarming survey of 730 Ohio school board presidents ... which brought 336 responses, 53 percent felt that "creation science" should be favorably taught in public schools, and most of this group felt it should be presented in biology or science classes.  ...

p123    ... That the central unifying theory of a major discipline, accepted almost without exception in the rest of the educated world, must be smuggled in the back door of the classroom, for fear of offending the creationists and the fundamentalists, in an incredible commentary on the state of public education in the U.S.
    ... Republican presidential candidate Ronald Reagan held a press conference at which he was asked if he thought the theory of evolution should be taught in public schools.  He replied, "Well, it's a theory, it is a scientific theory only, and it has in recent years been challenged in the world of science and is not yet believed in the scientific community to be as infallible as it once was believed.  But if it was going to be taught in the schools, then I think that also the biblical theory of creation, should also be taught" (Science, 1980, 209; 1214) ...

p124    Evolution vs. Religion __ What Do the Creationists Hope to Achieve?
    ...     The only Christian religious groups that have problems with evolution are the Protestant fundamentalists, who insist on a literal interpretation of the Bible ...
...Protestant fundamentalists reject theistic evolution ... It is the fundamentalists who are trying to infuse their brand of religion, taught as science, into public school classrooms.  Having failed in the past to have evolutionary theory banned from the classrooms, the fundamentalists have adopted a new strategy, the promotion of a patchwork enterprise they call "creation science."  Their goal is to have the biblical version of creation taught alongside evolution; and to disguise the essentially religious nature of creationism, they have dressed it up in scientific terminology.  Since they have no persuasive arguments of their own, or even intuitively satisfying suggestions, their plan is to attack selected particulars of science and pretend to a science of their own.

p126    ... the creationists' arguments are not only anti-biology but also anti-physics, anti-astronomy, and anti-geology.  In short, they reject all scientific knowledge that does not fit their view of the world.  ... they question the integrity of science.  ...

Some Creationist Claims __ Do They Raise Any Legitimate Doubts?

    1. Evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics.  Entropy (disorder) is always increasing.  Since order does not arise out of chaos, evolution is therefore false.
          Evolutionist Rebuttal =  ... you can get order out of disorder if you add energy.  ... The Sun is the source of energy input to the Earth's living systems and allows them to evolve.  ... sunlight, via photosynthesis, provides the energy input that propels evolution.  ... What does represent an increase in entropy, ... is the diversity of species produced by evolution.

    2.  The small amount of helium in the atmosphere proves that the Earth is young.  If the Earth were as old as geologists say, there would be much more helium, because it is a product of uranium decay.
        Evolutionist Rebuttal =  Helium, used to suspend blimps in air, is a very light gas and simply escapes into space; like hydrogen, it cannot accumulate in Earth's atmosphere to any great extent.

    3.  The rate of decay of the Earth's magnetism leads to the calculation that the Earth was created about 10,000 years ago.
        E. R. =  The Earth's magnetic field does indeed decay, but it does so cyclically, every few thousand years, and it is constantly being renewed by the motion of the liquid core of the Earth.  The "fossil magnetism" recorded in ancient rocks clearly demonstrates that polar reversals ... have occurred both repeatedly and irregularly throughout Earth history ...

    4.  If evolution were true, there would have to be transitional fossils, but there are none; therefore, evolution did not occur.
        E. R. =  There are many transitional fossils,  including the ape-human transitional form,  Australopithecus.  Eusthenopteron shows marvelous intermediate characteristics between the lobe-finned fishes and the amphibians.  The transitional fossils between amphibians and reptiles are so various and so intermediate that it is difficult to define where one group ends and the other begins.  Archaeopteryx is clearly intermediate between reptiles and birds.  ...  the creationists attempt to deny the transitional fossils out of existence.

    5.  Fossils seem to appear out of nowhere at the base of the Cambrian; therefore, they had to have been created.
        E. R. = The earliest microfossils date back, in fact, to the Precambian, about 3.5 billion years ago.  A variety of multicellular life appears in the fossil record about 670 million years ago, which is 80 million years before the Cambrian.  The Cambrian does seem to explode with fossils, but that is simply because the first shelled organisms, such as the brachiopods & the trilobites, date from the Cambrian; their resistant shells fossilize far more readily than their soft-bodied ancestors of the Precambrian. ...

    6.  All fossils were deposited at the time of the Noachian flood.
        E. R. =  There is not a shred of evidence in the geological record to support the claim of a single, worldwide flood.  Geological formations such as mountain ranges and the Grand Canyon require millions of years to form, and the fossil record extends over several billion years.  The time required for continents to have drifted into their present positions is immense.  These things cannot be accounted for by a single flood lasting a few days or years.

    7.  There are places where advanced fossils lie beneath more primitive fossils.
        E. R. =  Earth movements such as faulting and thrusting produce these discontinuities; the older rock has simply been pushed over on top of the younger rocks ... These places are easily recognized and explained by geologists.  They cannot be explained by the creationists' belief that all fossils are result of Noachian flood.  ...

    8.  The chances of the proper molecules randomly assembling into a living cell are impossibly small.
        E. R. =  Simulation experiments have repeatedly shown that amino acids do not assemble randomly.  Their molecular structure causes them to be self-ordering, which enhances the chances of forming long chains of molecules.  ...  The stepwise application of cumulative natural selection acting over long periods of time can make the improbable very likely.

    9.  Dinosaur and human footprints have been found together in Cretaceous linestone at Glen Rose, Texas.  Therefore, dinosaurs could not have preceded humans by millions of years.
        E. R. = This Fred Flintstone version of prehistory is one of the most preposterous and devious claims that the fundamentalists make ... The "mantracks" seen by creationists stem from two sources.  One is wishful imagination, whereby water-worn scour marks and eroded dinosaur tracks are perceived as human footprints.  The other source is deliberate fraud.  Creationist hoaxers obscure the footpads of dinosaur tracks with sand and photograph what remains, the dinosaur's toe impressions.  When reversed, the tip of the dinosaur toe or claw becomes the heel of a "human" print.  These prints are shown in poor-quality photographs in creationist literature and films.  Because the stride length (7 feet) and foot length (3 feet) exceed any possible human scale, the fundamentalists call these the giants mentioned in Genesis.  ...  legitimate dinosaur footprints at Glen Rose.  This area has since been extensively studied by paleontologists,  ...  No genuine human tracks exist there ...

    10.  Biologists have never seen a species evolve.
        E. R. =  On a small scale, we certainly have.  Using allopolyploidy and artificial selection, scientists have manufactured crop plants and horticultural novelties that are reproductively isolated from the parental stock.  ...  Major evolutionary changes, however, usually involve time periods vastly greater than man's written record; we cannot watch such changes, but we can deduce them by inference from living and fossil organisms.

    11.  Evolution, too, is a religion, and requires faith.
        E.R. =  ... Biologists do not have to believe that there are transitional fossils; we can examine them in hundreds of museums around the world,  ... Scientists do not have to believe that the solar system is 4.5 billion years old; we can test the age of Earth, Moon, and meteoritic rocks very accurately.  ...  Science exists because of the evidence, whereas religion exists upon faith -- and, in the case of religious fundamentalism and creationism, in spite of the evidence.

    12.  The number of humans today would be much greater if we have been around as long as evolutionists say we have.
        E. R. =  This notion makes some very naive assumptions about birth and death rates, and the fecundity of early humans, and assumes that populations are always growing, when in fact most animal populations are at a level somewhat lower than the carrying capacity of their environment.  Such stable populations remain stable for long periods of time, held in check by environmental constraints.  It is only our own species' recently acquired ability to modify our environment that has allowed our numbers to get dangerously out of control.  ...

    13.  The current rate of shrinkage of the Sun proves that the Earth could not be as old as geologists say, because the surface of the Sun would have been near the Earth's orbit just a few million years ago.
        E. R. =  This simplistic view neglects the fact that stars, such as our Sun, have life cycles during which events occur at different rates.  ...  we know a great deal about the Sun, and we know that it has not been shrinking at a constant rate.

    14.  A living freshwater mussel was determined by Carbon 14 dating to be over 2,000 years old; therefore Carbon 14 dating is worthless.
        E. R. =  When used properly, Carbon 14 is a very accurate time-measuring technique.  The mussel in this example is an inappropriate case for C14 dating because the animal had acquired much of its carbon from the limestone of the surrounding water and sediment.  These sources are very low in C14, owing to their age and lack of mixing with fresh carbon from the atmosphere.  Therefore a newly killed mussel in these circumstances has less C14 than, a newly cut tree branch.  The reduced level of C14 yields an artificially older date.  ... one must understand the technique to use it properly.

    15.  The influx of meteoritic dust from space to Earth is about 14 million tons per year.  If the Earth and Moon were 4.5 billion years old, then there should be a layer of dust 50 to 100 feet thick covering their surfaces.
        E.R. =  This estimate of dust influx is simply out of date.  Space probes have found that the level of dust influx from space is about 400 times less than that.

    16.  Prominent biologists have made statements disputing evolution.
        E. R. =  The out-of-context quote is one of the most insidious weapons in the creationists' arsenal ...  Biologists do not deny the fact of evolution.  We do, however, debate its mechanisms and tempo.  The debate reflects the vigorous growth of a major scientific concept; it is what goes on routinely in all healthy, growing branches of scholarship.  Creationists dishonestly portray this as a weakness of the theory of evolution.

    These 16 points are just a few of the creationists' arguments.  There are others, but they are all of the same character -- scientifically inaccurate, willful, oor devious.