15 (more) Questions for Evolutionists, Answered!

Since our response to Genesis Apologetics' 25 Questions for Evolutionists, we discovered that Creation Ministries International offers its own pamphlet of questions for evolutionists. While Genesis Apologetics' list was intended for early college students in biology and earth science classes, CMI's is "...made available to concerned individuals and churches who wish to help spread awareness of this greatly censored information." While there is some overlap in the questions asked (with some of them even using the exact same wording), the CMI pamphlet provides more information per question and references original content that dives into the questions in more depth. We wanted to offer a charitable response that's thorough and fair, to help anyone who may want specific answers to this set of questions. The list itself is as follows:

    1. How did life originate?

    2. How did the DNA code originate?

    3. How could mutations - accidental copying mistakes (DNA "letters exchanged, deleted or added, genes duplicated, chromosome inversions, etc.) - create the huge volumes of information in the DNA of living things?

    4. Why is natural selection, a principle recognized by creationists, taught as "evolution", as if it explains the origin and the diversity of life?

    5. How did new biochemical pathways, which involve multiple enzymes working together in sequence, originate?

    6. Living things look like they were designed, so how do evolutionists know that they were not designed?

    7. How did multi-cellular life originate?

    8. How did sex originate?

    9. Why are the (expected) countless millions of transitional fossils missing?

    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?

    11. How did blind chemistry create mind/intelligence, meaning, altruism and morality?

    12. Why is evolutionary "just-so" story-telling tolerated?

    13. Where are the scientific breakthroughs due to evolution?

    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?

    15. Why is a fundamentally religious idea, a dogmatic belief system that fails to explain the evidence, taught in science classes?

1. How did life originate?

Evolutionist Professor Paul Davies admitted, "Nobody knows how a mixture of lifeless chemicals spontaneously arranged themselves into the first living cell." Andrew Knoll, professor of biology, Harvard, said, "we don't really know how life originated on this planet". A minimal cell needs several hundred proteins. Even if every atom in the universe were an experiment with all the correct amino acids present for every possible molecular vibration in the supposed evolutionary age of the universe, not even one average-sized functional protein would form. So how did life with hundreds of proteins originate just by chemistry without intelligent design? creation.com/origin

(From our previous response) The origin of life is outside of the scope of the theory of evolution, in the same way that what occurred before the beginning of the universe is outside of the scope of astronomy. Natural selection and biodiversity only begin to operate once life already exists, and can't describe anything before life's existence. At the moment, abiogenesis (the generation of life from non-living organic material) is the best hypothesis we have for how life may have originated. There are some great arguments for it and some great arguments against it. However, evolution as a theory has nothing to do with the origin of life and would be true regardless of whether or not abiogenesis was, so using life's origin as a "gotcha" for evolution isn't the best approach.

2. How did the DNA code originate?

The code is a sophisticated language system with letters and words where the meaning of the words is unrelated to the chemical properties of the letters - just as the information on this page is not a product of the chemical properties of the ink (or pixels on a screen). What other coding system has existed without intelligent design? How did the DNA coding system arise without it being created? creation.com/code

(From our previous response) The best explanation we have for where DNA came from is that it is a development on single-strand RNA, which may have been the dominant predecessor of DNA prior to life's existence, a hypothesis known as The RNA World. (Alberts et al., 2002) (Marshall, 2012) RNA can perform a number of the genetic feats that DNA can but is unstable to a certain degree, though this can be overcome by doubling the strand. By mimicking the structure of DNA in this way, RNA can stabilize itself and operate more efficiently. (Forterre et al., 2013)

However, The RNA World is just a hypothesis and one of several current hypotheses about how DNA came about. No matter how DNA originated, though, it doesn't effect the theory of evolution. As we've previously addressed, evolution only describes life as it exists, and doesn't address how DNA emerged or was integrated into life as a hereditary mechanism. CMI may be entirely correct that DNA has been intelligently designed - the people who discovered DNA thought it was so complicated that it couldn't have even originated on Earth, and we still don't fully understand it. This being proven true wouldn't put a dent in evolutionary theory, since DNA and its origin are completely outside of its scope.

3. How could mutations - accidental copying mistakes (DNA "letters", exchanged, deleted or added, genes duplicated, chromosome inversions, etc.) - create the huge volumes of information in the DNA of living things?

How could such errors create 3 billion letters of DNA information to change a microbe into a microbiologist? There is information for how to make proteins and also for controlling their use - much like a cookbook contains the ingredients as well as the instructions for how and when to use them. One without the other is useless. See creation.com/meta-information. Mutations are known for their destructive effects including over 1,000 human diseases such as hemophilia. Rarely are they even helpful. But how can scrambling existing DNA information create a new biochemical pathway or nano-machines with many components, to make "goo-to-you" evolution possible? E.g., How did a 32-component rotary motor like ATP synthase (which produces the energy currency, ATP, for all life), or robots like kinesin (a "postman" delivering parcels inside cells) originate? creation.com/train

If mutations could be summed up as harm-causing errors in genetic replication, then they wouldn't be a viable means of driving the development of life. A more accurate way of looking at mutations is that they are "changes" that occur as a consequence of exchanging genetic information - the vast majority of mutations are neutral, having no effect either positive or negative on an organism, and are not hereditary (known as somatic mutations). (Cannataro & Townsend, 2018) (Mandell et al., 2023) (Milholland et al., 2017) DNA isn't best represented as an "if-a-then-b" instruction manual - it's variable and capable of compensating for the changes (whether positive, negative, or neutral) that come as a consequence of mutations. (Scitable, 2014) Even in the example of a cookbook provided by CMI, it is possible for changes in the recipe such as additions, subtractions, substitutions, changes in baking temperature, measurements, cooking style, or quality of ingredients to negatively or positively impact the final dish. The recipe may represent the general expectation, but the changes introduced by the cook can represent the mutations and "new information" that can change the outcome. The next question would be, do we see these types of "new information" mutations leading to organisms being better suited for their environment? Yes!

A great example of this is the mutated version of Apolipoprotein AI (Apo-AI) in humans, which is a protein that helps get cholesterol out of the bloodstream and prevent heart disease. In the 1980s a population in Italy was found to have a randomly mutated version of the protein named Apolipoprotein AI-Milan (Apo-AIM) that was more effective than the "default" protein possessed by the rest of the human race, to the extent that those with the mutation had "...significantly lower risks than the general population for heart attack and stroke..." (Lee, 2011) This addition of new genetic information led to the select population that had inherited the mutation being better suited to survive than the general population that had the "default" protein - a key concept in evolution and the primary objection CMI brings up here. (Musgrave et al., 2005) Another example of a beneficial mutation would be changes to the LRP5 protein in humans that controls the density of our bones. Usually, mutations of this protein result in density deficiencies like osteoporosis. (Lee, 2011) However, a family in the Midwest United States was found to have a mutated version of their LRP5 protein that gave them the minor superpower of stronger bones, making them less susceptible to broken bones and general bone deficiency disorders. (Boyden et al., 2002) It's in this way that inheritable changes (not harmful errors) can lead to biodiversity.

It should be noted, though, that CMI's "goo-to-you" or "microbes-to-microbiologist" outlook is slightly misleading since complex organisms and systems don't arise purely by randomly "scrambling" around DNA. The changes in DNA allow for more complex things to come from slightly less complex things - microbes like prokaryotes gave rise to more complex microbes like eukaryotes, etc., and didn't make sudden leaps from the most simple to the most complex. (Cooper, 2000) Both kinesin and ATP Synthase are likely more efficient developments of simpler, pre-existing transport proteins, and didn't just "appear" - which is a difficult view for the "random scrambling goo-to-you" simplification to accommodate since it ignores that DNA can change in major ways as it's passed down. (Abdel-Ghany et al., 2005) (Cross & Muller, 2004) (Mahendrarajah et al., 2023) (Wickstead et al., 2010)

4. Why is natural selection, a principle recognized by creationists, taught as "evolution", as if it explains the origin of the diversity of life?

By definition it is a selective process (selecting from already existing information), so it is not a creative process. It might explain the survival of the fittest (why certain genes benefit creatures more in certain environments), but it cannot explain the arrival of the fittest (where the genes and creatures came from in the first place). The death of individuals not adapted to an environment and the survival of those that are suited does not explain the origin of the traits that make an organism adapted to an environment. E.g., how do minor back-and-forth variations in finch beaks explain the origin of beaks or finches? How does natural selection explain goo-to-you evolution? creation.com/defining-terms

I can't tell if CMI here is just asking about the origin of novel organisms, or if it's asking about the origin of life itself. If the latter is part of the question, it should be noted that the origin of life is outside of the scope of the theory of evolution, in the same way that anything that occurred before the beginning of the universe is outside of the scope of astronomy. Natural selection and biodiversity can only be working once life already exists, and can't describe anything before life's existence.

In regards to natural selection explaining the emergence of novel organisms, CMI is right - in a vacuum, natural selection itself cannot explain the emergence of new organisms. The death of individuals not adapted to the environment and the survival of those that are does not explain the origin of the traits that make an organism adapted to the environment. That's why the theory of evolution, as it's commonly understood, is described as change driven by both mutation and natural selection. (Gregory, 2009) Without the positive/negative mutations that drive inheritable change, there would be nothing for natural selection to select.

5. How did new biochemical pathways, which involve multiple enzymes working together in sequence, originate?

Every pathway and nano-machine requires multiple protein/enzyme components to work. How did lucky accidents create even one of the components, let alone 10 or 20 or 30+ at the same time, often in a necessary programmed sequence? Evolutionary biochemist Franklin Harold wrote, "we must concede that there are presently no detailed Darwinian accounts of the evolution of any biochemical or cellular system, only a variety of wishful speculations." creation.com/motor (includes animation)

While we aren't able to directly observe the initial emergence of life step-by-step to answer that question, we do know through direct experimentation that the emergence of new biochemical pathways in organisms that don't have them (involving the steps mentioned by CMI) is entirely possible. Some of these examples include: 

• To understand how yeast populations adapt to high ethanol environments, researchers have conducted experiments where populations of Saccharomyces cerevisiae are evolved under increasing concentrations of ethanol. These experiments have shown that yeast can evolve not only an increased tolerance to ethanol but also changes in metabolic pathways that allow them to cope with and metabolize the ethanol more efficiently. These adaptations may involve alterations in membrane composition, upregulation of genes involved in ethanol detoxification, and metabolic shifts that improve energy production in the presence of ethanol. (Yang & Tavazoie, 2020)

• Numerous experiments have demonstrated the evolution of antibiotic resistance in bacterial populations, which is a form of biochemical pathway adaptation. These experiments often involve exposing bacteria to gradually increasing concentrations of antibiotics or looking at ones that have already developed resistance, studying the selective mutations that confer resistance. Resistance can arise through various mechanisms, including the production of enzymes that degrade antibiotics, changes in cell permeability to prevent antibiotic entry, and modifications of target molecules to reduce antibiotic binding. An iconic example is the work done by Roy Kishony and his colleagues in the Mega-Plate experiment which vividly shows the process of bacterial populations evolving resistance to higher and higher doses of antibiotics. (Baym et al., 2016) (Egorov et al., 2018) (Kapoor et al., 2017) (Ojkic et al., 2022)

• Perhaps most famously, the Lenski experiment (known officially as the Long-Term Evolution Experiment) started by Richard Lenski in 1988 involved the cultivation of E. coli in a controlled environment over several decades. The researchers recorded the evolution of new biochemical pathways that allowed the E. coli to metabolize citrate under aerobic conditions, a trait not found in ancestral strains, often referred to as the "Cit+" phenotype. E. coli typically cannot transport citrate across it cell membrane when oxygen is present, which is what makes this event so impactful. The researchers observed other adaptive changes, including alterations in cell size, improvements in nutrient uptake efficiency, and genetic changes conferring resistance to viruses and other stressors. (Callaway, 2022) (Crozat et al., 2005) (Fox & Lenski, 2015) (Lenski, 2017)

• Several experiments have explored the evolution of bacteria to utilize novel carbon sources. For instance, researchers have evolved strains of Pseudomonas to metabolize compounds that are not typically used as carbon sources, such as pollutants. These experiments reveal genetic and enzymatic innovations that bacteria can acquire to adapt to new environmental niches, like the evolution of enzymes with altered substrate specificity enabling the degradation and assimilation of new novel compounds, showcasing the flexibility of microbial metabolic pathways. (Karve & Wagner, 2022) (Melnyk & Kassen, 2011) (Toll-Riera et al., 2016) (Barrett et al., 2005)

All of these changes involve several adaptations that occur simultaneously or nearly simultaneously. Without assuming abiogenesis or a natural origin of life, we can witness the types of "leaps" in biochemical pathway emergence that CMI is asking about.

6. Living things look like they were designed, so how do evolutionists know that they were not designed?

Richard Dawkins wrote, "biology is the study of complicated things that have the appearance of having been designed with a purpose." Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of the double helix structure of DNA, wrote, "Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved." The problem for evolutionists is that living things show too much design. Who objects when an archaeologist says that pottery points to human design? Yet if someone attributes the design in living things to a designer, that is not acceptable. Why should science be restricted to naturalistic causes rather than logical causes? creation.com/design_legit

Living things were designed, regardless of how you approach it, whether by special or evolutionary creation. But someone believing evolution to be how God designed life isn't claiming that life was not designed. That's the type of design being criticized by Dawkins and Crick - a type of design that doesn't integrate common ancestry and claims that organisms were all designed discreetly and unrelated at the beginning of their existence. Just because that's not how life was created, that doesn't somehow mean that there is no intelligent order behind life's creation. Many people believe that there is no intelligent order behind the universe and claim that life doesn't reflect any purpose or design, but that's a philosophical position and not a scientific one and has no bearing on what it means for evolution to be a mechanism of design.

7. How did multi-cellular life originate?

How did cells adapted to individual survival "learn" to cooperate and specialize (including undergoing programmed cell death) to create complex plants and animals? creation.com/multicellularity

Similar to our response to question #3, the "microbe-to-microbiologist" view leaves out just as many steps as characterizing individual single cells suddenly giving rise to "complex plants and animals", which no one who accepts evolution claims.

The best model we have for explaining how multi-cellular life originated is The Symbiotic Theory, which holds that individual cells began to cooperate together through endosymbiosis in ways that were advantageous to their survival. (Cooper, 2000) This is how single-celled organisms behave in nature, as we've seen in laboratory experiments - in 2021, professor Lutz Becks and his team at the University of Konstanz showed that single-celled organisms not only clump together defensively to avoid predation but also pass this "clumping" down to later generations. (Bernardes et al., 2021) (Schorpp, 2021) (Ratcliff et al., 2012) This type of cooperation likely led to specialization of function where the cells that stuck together would begin to cooperate in different "jobs". In a group, not every cell has to execute every task needed for survival and some may begin to specialize in capturing nutrients, providing better structure, reproduction, etc. This type of efficient, successful specialization has also been observed in the lab, with a specific example being the 2012 Saccharomyces cerevisiae experiments reported in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science that showed that not only does multicellularity emerge in the face of predation, but demonstrated the rapid emergence of a division of labor among the cells. (Ratcliff, 2012) The experiment also showed that apoptosis was a part of this division of labor as a function directed towards the new multi-cellular construct's survivability and proliferation. (Ratcliff, 2012) While this doesn't give us a snapshot of what exactly occurred at the beginning of multicellular life (given that it is thought to have been a complex process that began and ended several times), it does show us that such processes are possible and occur almost by default among uni-cellular populations.

The notion of the cells "learning" how to do these things is slightly misleading since cells don't have brains or minds and don't think. The integration of these complex processes (cooperation, specialization, apoptosis, etc.) is the consequence of emergent mutations that altered how the cells behaved and reproduced, an unconscious process governed by their genes. (Cooper, 2000) (Plachetzki et al., 2020)

8. How did sex originate?

Asexual reproduction gives up to twice as much reproductive success ("fitness") for the same resources as sexual reproduction, so how could the latter ever gain enough advantage to be selected? And how could mere physics and chemistry invent the complimentary apparatuses needed at the same time (non-intelligent processes cannot plan for future coordination of male and female organs). creation.com/evosex

As of the time of writing, the evolution of sexual reproduction from asexual is "...widely regarded as a major unsolved problem in biology." However, while there isn't a concrete answer, there are several models that explain how sexual reproduction could have arisen from asexual reproduction. As CMI notes, the earliest form of reproduction in organisms was "cloning", with direct fossil evidence of asexual reproduction extending back to 3.5-4 billion years ago in the form of stromatolites (a type of layered sedimentary deposit formed by prokaryotic photosynthetic bacteria). (Pappas, 2022) Sexual reproduction didn't emerge until the first eukaryotes showed up, observed first around 1.8-2 billion years ago among protists. (Redfield, 2001) (Otto, 2008) (Goodenough & Heitman, 2014) (O'Malley et al., 2019) (Gabaldon, 2021)

Despite its cost advantage, asexual reproduction has several drawbacks that make it less likely to be selected for as organisms become more complex, such as a lack of variable offspring and a higher rate of deleterious mutations. (Lovell et al., 2017) (Otto, 2008) (Neiman et al., 2010) I'm not 100% sure what CMI means by asking how physics/chemistry could "invent" the complementary apparatuses needed at the same time as if the natural world should be expected to only produce one sexual partner at a time. Sexual reproduction began at the bacterial level and remained constantly present in eukaryotic organisms from the time it first emerged, first at a very simple level with identically sized gametes in a process known as isogamy, which is eventually selected out in preference of different sized gametes (anisogamy) due to isogamy's inherent instability across time when it comes to reproductive quality-over-quantity. (Constable & Kokko, 2021) (da Silva, 2017) (Togashi et al., 2012) Just like we see in questions #3 and #7, the path from gametes differing in size and specialized organs used by organisms in the transfer of those gametes is a long path with several steps that occurred in different ways in different organisms. (Gannon, 2014) No matter how you look at the circumstances, one sex didn't evolve before the other: both sexes were developing concurrently.

9. Why are the (expected) countless millions of transitional fossils missing?

Darwin noted the problem and it still remains. The evolutionary family trees in textbooks are based on imagination, not fossil evidence. Famous Harvard paleontologist (and evolutionist), Stephen Jay Gould, wrote, "The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology". Other evolutionist fossil experts also admit the problem. creation.com/pattquote

CMI makes a sweeping claim here. What do they mean by evolutionary family trees? Do they mean phylogenetic trees? Because those are not only based on fossil evidence but can be corroborated with genetic evidence that helps make them more accurate despite the fossil record's incompleteness and limitations. (Coiro et al., 2023) (Koch et al., 2021) (Morlon et al., 2011) (Woolley et al., 2022) It isn't helpful to make a sweeping claim that not only isn't true but attempts to dismiss entire fields of data out-of-pocket for no reason.

Regardless, the transitional forms expected to be seen in the fossil record are not missing. To quote the National Academy of Sciences:

"So many intermediate forms have been discovered between fish and amphibians, between amphibians and reptiles, between reptiles and mammals, and along the primate lines of descent that it is difficult to identify categorically when the transition occurs from one to another particular species. Actually, nearly all fossils can be regarded as intermediates in some sense; they are life forms that come between forms that preceded them and those that followed." (National Academy of Sciences, 1999)

(From our previous response) Thinking of transitional forms as "direct in-betweens of fully formed organisms) doesn't do taxonomy justice, because it doesn't integrate all of the relationships revealed by evolutionary biology, which sees all organisms in a constant state of development and not as a "final" product. (NCSE, 2008) TalkOrigins has several articles that go in-depth in addressing the non-rarity of transitional fossils that we highly recommend. (Hunt, 1997) (Isaak, 2004, 2006) You can also check out the Open Tree of Life, a navigable online program that allows you to see the family trees of all life on Earth, to get a better perspective of how organisms are related!

Insofar as the Gould quote they reference and the Patterson quote they discuss in the link they included, both are examples of quote mining. The Gould quote is taken out of context from a quote where Gould is discussing punctuated equilibrium as opposed to gradualism (where he addresses the apparent lack of transitional fossils under gradualism and claims elsewhere that transitional fossils are not rare and are found often in the fossil record). (TalkOrigins, 2006, #3.2) The Patterson quote is fairly well-known within creation-evolution circles and is taken from a letter Patterson wrote on why paleontologists can't label a certain fossil organism as the direct ancestor of this-or-that lineage. (Edmonds, 2024a, #9)

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?

Professor Gould wrote, "the maintenance of stability within species must be considered as a major evolutionary problem." creation.com/living_fossils

(From our previous response) Organisms remain unchanged over long periods of time by being incredibly well suited for their environment, to the extent that they face very little pressure to adapt (undergoing what is referred to as stabilizing selection). Richard Fortey of the American Museum of Natural History describes the horseshoe crab (which has existed almost completely unchanged for nearly 450 million years) as incredibly well-built for survival: they are dense, dardy, well-defended, they can eat nearly any organic matter, a unique blood that clots when it encounters bacteria, and they can survive in low-oxygen environments. (AMNH, 2012) They are essentially the ultimate embodiment of an archetype known as carcinization, the tendency for organisms to develop crab-like morphologies. (Hamers, 2023) If an organism has no need to adapt to an environment, it will maintain morphological stasis.

This second Gould quote is also a quote-mine, as Gould is discussing advocates of gradualism coming to view his and his colleague's model of punctuated equilibrium in a more positive light due to the problems it can solve as opposed to gradualism (i.e., the maintenance of stability within species is a major evolutionary problem for gradualism, not for evolution as a whole). (Gould & Eldredge, 1993)

11. How did blind chemistry create mind/intelligence, meaning, altruism and morality?

If everything evolved, and we invented God, as per evolutionary teaching, what purpose or meaning is there to human life? Should students be learning nihilism (life is meaningless) in science classes? creation.com/chesterton

No aspect of the theory of evolution teaches that "we invented God". The idea that blind processes created mind/intelligence, meaning, altruism, and morality is a philosophical position not dictated by the theory of evolution / has absolutely nothing to do with it. For more, check out our article on differentiating between evolution as a science and philosophical epics that adopt evolution as a facet of their worldview.

12. Why is evolutionary "just-so" story-telling tolerated?

Evolutionists often use flexible story-telling to "explain" observations contrary to evolutionary theory. NAS (USA) member Dr Philip Skell wrote, "Darwinian explanations for such things are often too supple: Natural selection makes humans self-centered and aggressive - except when it makes them altruistic and peaceable. Or natural selection makes virile men who eagerly spread their seed - except when it prefers men who are faithful protectors and providers. When an explanation is so supple that it can explain any behavior, it is difficult to test it experimentally, much less use it as a catalyst for scientific discovery." creation.com/sexstories

Skell's quote has been mined from an article in which he is critiquing a specific aspect of Darwinian evolution, specifically its applications in experimental biology. (Skell, 2005) While Skell was skeptical about the theory of evolution, he not only appreciated Darwinian contributions to biology but also said that his "just-so" criticism in no way refuted Darwinian evolution. (Skell, 2005, 2009) 

Skell's specific criticisms are low resolution because he doesn't seem to factor in the role that behavior and competence play in natural selection or that natural selection can select more than one facet of a set of behaviors at the same time. Natural selection has helped to make humans both egotistic and altruistic because both aspects of temperament are needed at separate times and may spring from the same source as co-related motivations for action. (Kago & Venkataraman, 2023) The same is true for Skell's second example: evolution selects for virile men who eagerly spread their seed, because when the sex that disperses said seed is more "impulsive" in spreading it (so to speak), the likelihood that they'll leave greater offspring is by default increased. However, human females are more sexually selective and less sexually impulsive than men, because mating and reproduction disproportionately inhibit their chances of survival, meaning that they want to find men who are faithful protectors and providers. (Janicke et al., 2016) (PhilosophyInsights, 2020) From an evolutionary perspective, children raised in a pair where one parent can care for them and one can provide/protect them are more likely to survive than one that is born to a single parent who can care for them but has no source of provision or protection. (Fromhage & Jennions, 2016) (Opie et al., 2013) Models of natural selection are not "just-so" - they often explain multiple (even sometimes seemingly contradictory) domains under one umbrella.

13. Where are the scientific breakthroughs due to evolution?

Dr. Marc Kirschner, chair of the Department of Systems Biology, Harvard Medical School, stated: "In fact, over the last 100 years, almost all of biology has proceeded independent of evolution, except evolutionary biology itself. Molecular biology, biochemistry, physiology, have not taken evolution into account at all." Dr Skell wrote, "It is our knowledge of how these organisms actually operate, not speculations about how they may have arisen millions of years ago, that is essential to doctors, veterinarians, farmers..." Evolution actually hinders medical discovery. Then why do schools and universities teach evolution so dogmatically, stealing time from experimental biology that so benefits humankind? creation.com/science#relevance

The scientific breakthroughs due to evolution are genuinely too many to list: developments of antibiotics and understanding antibiotic research, advancements in vaccine development, cancer research and treatments all depend on our understanding of how organisms are related under models of common descent.

"Evolution, in addition to being a solid science, provides us with a practical and powerful toolkit. Applied techniques based on evolution play central roles in the biotechnology industry, and recent advances in genomics and drug discovery. Bioinformatics, the application of computers to biology and one of the hottest career opportunities in science, is full of evolution-based computer code. Tens of thousands of researchers in the multibillion-dollar field of biomedical research and development use evolution-based discoveries and concepts as a routine part of their important work. (McCarter, 2005)

Evolutionary thinking is central to farming and human/animal medicine even if it isn't widely discussed. In human medicine, understanding evolutionary processes can provide new insights into major diseases, enable an integrated understanding of human biology and medicine, help us understand how our evolutionary history contributes to disease risk, how natural selection selects for fitness and not health/longevity, etc. (Gluckman et al., 2011) "The use of evolutionary principles is not new in agriculture (e.g. crop breeding, domestication of animals, management of selection for pest resistance)...biotic interactions involving pests and pathogens as exemplars of situations where integration of agronomic, ecological and evolutionary perspectives has practical value." (Thrall et al., 2011) "...(Evolutionary) biology principles can enhance our understanding of numerous veterinary issues. Equally important, evolutionary biology provides a solid framework that greatly simplifies categorization of the vast amount of information we must cope with as veterinarians." (LeGrand & Brown, 2002)

The lack of discussion around the importance of considering evolutionary contributions to experimental biology fields is the exact issue Kirscher was discussing in the quote that's been mined by CMI. As pointed out by Tara C. Smith (2006), Kirscher isn't claiming that evolution hasn't contributed to molecular biology, biochemistry, or physiology, but that those in those fields tend not to be as well-read on evolutionary theory as those in the field of evolutionary biology. The characterization of evolution as "failed" or not a valid field of science that makes positive contributions is rebutted by biologist and young earth creationist Todd Wood:

"Evolution is not a theory in crisis. It is not teetering on the verge of collapse. It has not failed as a scientific explanation. There is evidence for evolution, gobs and gobs of it. It is not just speculation or a faith choice or an assumption or a religion. It is a productive framework for lots of biological research, and it has amazing explanatory power. There is no conspiracy to hide the truth about the failure of evolution. There has really been no failure of evolution as a scientific theory. It works, and it works well...There is evidence for evolution, and evolution is an extremely successful scientific theory. That doesn't make it ultimately true, and it doesn't mean that there couldn't be viable alternatives." (Wood, 2009)

Evolution is a foundational aspect of all fields of biology. It does not hinder medical discovery in the slightest and is taught as relevant to specific subjects, not "dogmatically" shoe-horned into them to the detriment of the human race.

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?

You cannot do experiments, or even observe what happened, in the past. Asked if evolution has been observed, Richard Dawkins said, "Evolution has been observed. It's just that it hasn't been observed while it's happening." creation.com/notscience#distinction

This specific point was addressed in our last response, in Question #3 - all the way down to the same interview with Dawkins being used as a source for the same type of question. While there we do address that evolution is not purely historical and is observable in the present, I want to address the "historical/operational" distinction made by CMI. While you can't do experiments in the past, but you can do experiments on the past. The classic "historical science vs observational science" line towed in many creationist circles, where the former is somehow less valid than the latter, doesn't work because the claim is asserted when there is no clean division provided between the two categories. (NCSE, 2019) (Hesp, 2017) (Rusbult, 2004)

"Observational science is presented as more objective and much less worldview-dependent than historical science...However, as many have pointed out before me, 'observational' vs. 'historical' science is a misleading distinction. Hypotheses about the past can generate predictions that can be tested against observations in the present. And conversely, present-day observations and experiments spur new hypotheses about the past. In this way, observation, hypothesis, and prediction exist in a perpetual 'feedback loop', giving us greater and greater clarity about the course of natural history." (Hesp, 2017)

15. Why is a fundamentally religious idea, a dogmatic belief system that fails to explain the evidence, taught in science classes?

Karl Popper, famous philosopher of science, said "Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical [religious] research programme..." Michael Ruse, evolutionist science philosopher admitted, "Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today." If "you can't teach religion in science classes", why is evolution taught?

Because, as young earth creationist Todd Wood also points out, evolution is not a religion, is not a belief system, does not fail to explain the evidence, and is sound science. (Wood, 2019) Evolution as science and evolution as a philosophical or teleological epic are two completely different things. A lot of people make a lot of claims about evolution, but that doesn't make their subjective ideas around the theory the end-all-be-all of the discussion. Michael Ruse doesn't define what evolution is. Teilhard de Chardin claimed that evolution was fundamentally theistic, while Jerry Coyne claims that evolution is fundamentally atheistic/anti-theistic. (Coyne, 2017) (Edmonds, 2024b) CMI has chosen a specific perspective in order to negatively characterize evolution, even though all three positions are, on the surface, equally outside of evolution as a strict science.

It should also be noted that Karl Popper completely reversed his opinion of evolution as metaphysical two years after he had made the above-quoted statements, and found that the theory was entirely scientific - the quote, however, is still used within creationist circles even though it didn't accurately represent the theory of evolution. (Brush, 2008) (Cole, 1981) (Sonleitner, 1986)

"In 1976 Popper said, "Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory but a metaphysical research program." But Popper is not an expert in the biological sciences or their history. Furthermore, he is not the only philosopher of science in the world with anything to say on the subject of evolution. Philosophers often disagree with each other more than scientists do. And, to top it off, Popper has recently changed his mind on his earlier pronouncement against evolution. In 1978 he wrote, "I have changed my mind about the testability and logical status of the theory of natural selection, and I am glad to have the opportunity to make a recantation." (Cole, 1981)

Conclusion

CMI could be commended for its desire to get rarely or under-discussed information into the hands of the public, but any positivity regarding that effort is watered down by making false claims, using out-of-context quotes and incorrect information to prop up their efforts. 15 Questions for Evolutionists comes off as being compiled by someone who doesn't have a thorough comprehension of the theory of evolution and thinks that the only reason that they aren't being taken secretly is that "the big bads" of evolutionary biology have helped to censor opposing views. But in the words of Todd Wood, there is no conspiracy to promote evolution. This is a tragedy for those young earth creationists who do want to be taken seriously and share their views of Christ, His love, and their views of creation without being ridiculed, and rightly so. In pursuit of that aim it's recommended they not follow the CMI's approach and making sure they have a firm grasp of the material involved in the creation/evolution dialogue, which makes conversations much more efficient and productive.

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