I'd like to call this a weak argument, but it's not even that. To the biblical creationist, this is a complete non-argument. Natural Selection, adaptation and speciation are a part of the creation model.

It's surprising to see just how much 'evidence' for evolution is nothing more than adaptation.

For more on this topic, see The bait-and-switch.

If I were an evolutionist, I would be embarrassed by the fossil record. Outside of the fact on a large-scale there does appear to be a progression that fits with evolution, the fossil record is too problematic. Creationists believe the fossils were laid down during the flood. And there is ample evidence to support our model over evolution. Consider the following characteristics of the fossil record:

• Stasis - organisms looking the same from first appearance to last.
• Far too many 'explosions' (not just the Cambrian) and sudden appearances of fully formed organisms
• Sudden burial in catastrophic flood events.
• Marine and terrestrial animals buried together, often in environments they don't abide it.
• Marine fossils found on every mountain range.
• Original soft tissue found within fossils.
• Carbon-14 found within fossils.
• Evolutionists' favorite intermediates are unconvincing, let alone the rest in their list.
• Too problematic for building the evolutionary "tree of life"

The fossil records fits nicely within the creation model, and is too problematic to support evolution. Additionally NEVER HAS, and NEVER WILL a 'discovered transitional fossil' have ANY impact on the creation model.

Another example of 1) Cherry picking, and 2) Evidence against evolution

This example almost always comes with a picture of the following pentadactyl structures (which as discussed below is no longer the good example it's been thought to be):

As the argument goes, since we see similar bone structure in these animals, it's due to evolution. As creationists, our first response is simple: God can re-use design. However as it turns out, we don't need to rely on just that response:

Cherry Picking

First, some definitions:

For more on these differences, see here.

It turns out there are too many analogous features to make homology a convincing argument! The ones given are unproved cherry-picked candidates.

This article here shows a few examples of the extremly complicated nature of supposed "Homologous" arguments for evolution. For example:

Homoplasy is now recognized as a ubiquitous phenomenon (e.g., eyes evolved 45 times independently, and bioluminiscence 27 times; hundreds of more examples can be found at Cambridge University’s “Map of Life” website).

As one example of homology's complexity, the article discusses an "extremely incongruent pattern" related to the presence or absence of a third eye:

Therefore, evolutionists need not only the ad hoc assumption of multiple independent secondary reductions, but also a causal explanation for this strange phenomenon.

The article concludes:

We can safely conclude: it is an epic myth, willingly perpetuated by evolutionary biologists, that the similarities between organisms mostly fall in a hierarchic pattern of nested groups and thus suggest common ancestry and indicate phylogenetic relationship. In reality this claim is contradicted by a flood of incongruences and reticulate patterns that shed doubt on fundamental paradigms of evolutionary biology like the notions of homology and common descent.

From a creationist stand-point: If it's obviously demonstrated that analogous structures exist, how many of the supposed homologous structures are analogous? All of them.

Zombie Science

In the book Zombie Science, Wells identifies "Icons of Evolution" that are no longer Icons. Homology is one of them. I won't repeat his entire argument here, but essentially, he shows that scientists have to admit that they can no longer define Homology as definitively due to common descent, and that THEY KNOW THAT. Homology is just something they can only assume. Wells states:

Once homology is defined in terms of common ancestry it can no longer be used as evidence for common ancestry.

...

This is circular reasoning masquerading as evidence

SPEAKING OF Zombie Science, that pentadactyl example pictured above can no longer be used as evidence for evolution. For more, read this article, where you can read the following quotes:

But this prediction is now known to be false as the digit structure in the tetrapods does not conform to the common descent pattern

...

The results of our study join a nascent body of literature showing strong statistical support for character loss, followed by evolutionary re-acquisition of complex structures associated with a generalized pentadactyl body form

It Gets Worse

As eluded to above, Homology starts to serve as an argument against evolution. Partly due to the increasing number of analogous relationships that are appearing, requiring evolutionists to rely further on TODO: finish this convergent evolution. . Articles such as this give a picture that Homology becomes very confusing, with quite a few starts, stops, disappearances, and re-appearances.

Evolutionist, Günter P. Wagner, studied the topic of Homology in-depth. You can read about what we've learned form his research in a book review here.

But the most interesting statement he makes is the following:

There is no consensus, nor even a narrow consensus on the subject of homology and its mechanistic foundations. … Every biologist will agree that homology is a confused and confusing subject (Emphasis added)

- Homology, Genes, and Evolutionary Innovation by Günter P. Wagner, (p. xii)

In this article we read:

What researchers in each of these fields often find, has greatly undermined the homology concept. So many exceptions now exist that molecular biologist Michael Denton concluded that the homology theory should be rejected. His main argument is that genetic research has not shown that homologous structures are produced by homologous genes and follow homologous patterns of embryological development. Instead, genetics has found that homologous structures are ‘often specified by non-homologous genetic systems’ and furthermore, the homology ‘can seldom be extended back into embryology

(emphasis added)

Conclusion

If one were to decide upon evolution vs. creation based on Homology alone, one would cleary side on creation. It is truly ironic to creationists that evolutionists list Homology as part of their "Overwhelming evidences".

"Darwin-of-the-Gaps Argument"

Goes like this:

We don't know what this organ is used for (gap in knowledge), therefore it's a left over from Darwinism.

"If-I-were-God Argument"

Goes like this:

This feature looks like a bad design. If I were God, I wouldn't have done it like that. Therefore God didn't.

Serious Cherry Picking

The actual number of even slightly convincing examples given here is so small, it's a wonder that evolutionists don't stop to pause before giving this argument. Higher life forms such as humans and giraffs have such incredible design, it's almost comical to see evolutionists having to get out the fine-tooth comb to find supposed 'bad design'. Good design is everywhere!

Talk about missing the forest for the trees...

There's a pattern here

There are AMPLE responses to this argument and I won't re-hash them here. Many times evolutionists will offer up an example of a supposed 'vestigial' organ, or bad design that in time gets reversed as we learn more.

Bad Design? Think again. Engineers are always needing to account for design trade-offs due to the fact that that there are multiple influential factors involved. As we have seen, biological design is no different. We have seen cases were further research on a supposed bad design has revealed a reason for what we're observing.

There's definately a pattern with this supposed argument: Scientists discover something, declare it 'vestigal' or 'bad design'. Over time the argument gets over-turned.

More like an argument AGAINST Darwinism.

For every example given, creationists simply respond: "We'll wait and see." So far, history has proven us well here.

With that in mind, to a creationist THIS NOW BECOMES AN ARGUMENT AGAINST DARWINISM.

Darwinism relies on Natural Selection, which has turned out to be We now know that NS is not very effective in removing small slightly deleterious mutations. Meaning, it's not as effective at 'removing junk' as once thought. less powerful than previously hoped for by Darwinists. If all of life was formed through a such a in-effective process, we would expect to see a great deal of left-over-junk, and poorly design features. The question is: WHERE ARE THEY ALL??

Conclusion

Since informed creationists see this as a reason to reject Darwinism, it's pretty ironic this topic is included in that list of "Overwhelming evidences" for evolution!

Biogeography is defined as the branch of biology that deals with the geographical distribution of plants and animals around the globe.

Evolutionists site examples of biogeography as support for evolution. However once again, this is an exercise in cherry-picking. There are sufficient counter-examples to render this category as unsupportive of evolution, as German paleontologist Günter Bechly points out (see here):

However, it is far from true that biogeography unambiguously supports common ancestry, or that patterns of biogeographic distribution always align well with the pattern of reconstructed phylogenetic branching or the supposed age of origin. Indeed, there are many tenacious problems of biogeography and paleobiogeography that do not square well with the evolutionary paradigm of common descent.

Examples of biogeography challenges to Darwinism:

• A fossil platypus from South America (Pascual et al. 1992)
• A fossil hummingbird from Europe (Louchart et al. 2008)
• From here: Marsupials are restricted to Australia and South America, yet metatherian [marsupial] fossils from the Late Cretaceous are exclusively found in Eurasia and North America

Creationism and biogeography

It is true that both sides have challenges related to biogeography. Both sides also acknowledge naturally floating rafts as an option. Fortunately for the creationists, we have an excellent source of natural rafts due to the global flood. In addition, the singular large Ice Age following the flood would have lowered sea levels, exposing more natural land bridges.

For more on this topic read this article.. It discusses natural floating rafts as means of bio-dispersion. Here's a good quote from the conclusion:

The creationist rafting model appears much superior to the evolutionist model of continental drift.

Conclusion

The biogeography arguments are not very strong to begin with. When you add the many exceptions and anomolies, we as creationists wonder why evolutionists even bring this up. Their cherry-picked examples really only again highlight a category that includes arguments against evolution.

The argument goes: Because biologically diverse life forms can be organized into nested hierarchies, they all derived from common ancestors in a tree-like fashion.

If that's true, then everything in my kitchen evolved. I can walk into my kitchen right now and place everything into a 'nested hierarchy'.

Our answer: Nested hierarchy examples are good...except when they aren't. And there are too many "aren'ts" to take this seriously. There are plenty of counter-examples of organisms that refuse to fall into the nice tree-like pattern that neo-Darwinism requires. Counter-examples that evolutionists must continually cognitively ignore.

Conclusion:

Not only is this another classic example of "good" evidence within a "bad" category. The very notion of the tree-of-life is actually one of the strongest arguments against evolution.

Again, it's ironic that evolutionists will try to use this as "Overwhelming" evidence

I won't go into a great deal of detail on this topic; it's too large to address here, and being a relatively new scientific discipline, changes too rapidly. But this topic can be summarized rather easily.

First, this no doubt has become an exciting topic for creationists as we watch genetic research wreaking havoc on neo-Darwinism. For brevity, I won't offer examples here (perhaps in Part 2). I have confidence that from what I'm seeing so far, the years ahead will no doubt yield more and more problems for neo-Darwinism.

As for any modern genetic 'arguments for evolution': we can confidently respond with "give it time." We have repeatedly seen 'strong' genetic arguments turn weak with further research. Examples include:

• Junk DNA
• Pseudogenes
• "Adam and the Genome"'s argument of humans coming from a population of 100k individuals (Venema)
• Human/chimp 98% similarity

Conclusion

Wait, watch and see. Time will reveal that to the creationist, genetics will be spelled 'vindication'.

This category is similar to Homology and nested hierarchies, but worth mentioning. I occasionally see 'common ________' offered as evidence for evolution. This could be anything from phenotype features to DNA.

Bottom line: These commonalities fit perfectly fine within the creation model.

Pure Zombie Science: a dead argument that refuses to die.

I almost considered dropping this one since I don't see it as often, but earlier today (as I'm working on this article), I saw this argument again! Bless their hearts, evos just won't let this one die... and leaves us creationists marveling at their ignorance, or intential deception (we wonder which).

NOT Evolution!

Without question, this absolutly fails as evidence of the kind of evolution needed to turn microbes into men. This is not upward evolution in the least, it's an example of loss-of-function. At best it's an example of natural selection, which is NOT evolution.

These listed are in the small category of supporting evidence that are exclusive to evolution. That is to say, according to the creation model, we should not see these, but should see them if evolution were true. It's these categories of arguments evolutionists need in order to try and win over creationists.

Having said that, any intellectually-minded creationists who wants confidence in our model must be will to look at these topics head-on, and respond to them.

And that is exactly what we are doing.

The 'last nails in the coffin'

Truth be told, these topics helped me finally put evolution completely at rest. I say that because when I first came across these, I knew I was faced with evidence directly opposed to creation. And it made me uncomfortable....at first.

Over time I've watched these arguments fade...and even start to be arguments against evolution.

Human Chromosome Fusion

Surprisingly, evolutionists still list this a strong evidence for evolution. This is becoming an argument against evolution as more research is done. Evolutionists need this fusion to have occurred. It's becoming a serious challenge evolutionists must try and explain.

I'd list articles to support this, but then I'd have to keep coming back here and adding to it as more evidence comes out. I'll merely say: "Wait and see". Feel free to quote me on this:

In the years ahead this 'overwhelming evidence' will migrate even more into 'evidence against' evolution.

Junk DNA

Evolutionary creationists have a lot of apologizing to do...

This topic has become my absolute favorite evolutionary blunder. Evolutionists are still reluctant to give up this gem. And understandably: Not only does junk DNA fit well into the evolutionary model, the model really needs it.

For those not familiar with Junk DNA, scientific consensus as of the 90s 'confirmed' that our DNA contained something like 98% junk (in the 'noncoding regions'). Unused left-overs from our evolutionary past.

Many in the evolutionary creationist (theistic evolutionary) camp used this 'fact' (along with the next topic 'pseuodogenes') as convinsing evidence for evolution. As a result, unfortunately too many Christians bought into this and began accepting evolution as 'scientific consensus'.

However all that has been changing. By 2003 in Scientific American (Gibbs, 2003), John Mattick wrote:

“The failure to recognize the full implications of this — particularly the possibility that the intervening noncoding sequences may be transmitting parallel information in the form of RNA molecules — may well go down as one of the biggest mistakes in the history of molecular biology.”

Today that 98% number continues to drop, and more and more evolutionists are (reluctantly) having to let go of one of their best arguments. I wonder if we'll ever get that apology...

Psueodgenes

This was once a strong argument...back in the day. Now, they're starting to be called "pseudo-pseudogenes". It's now in the growing category of 'arguments for' becoming 'arguments against' evolution. Particularly when you examine orphan genes.

Here are a few articles for more on this topic:

Pseudogenes Are Going the Way of Darwin’s “Rudimentary Organs”
Nature Reviews Genetics — Pseudogene Function Is “Prematurely Dismissed”

Endogenous retroviruses (ERVs)

Some evolutionists are still claiming ERVs as strong evidence for evolution. However this argument is becoming less convincing over time.

Here's one article in particular, but there will certainly be more to come!

Waste Not: Research Finds that “Far from Junk DNA,” ERVs Perform “Critical Cellular Functions”

DNA copy mistakes

Initially this sounds rather convincing: "Why would two unrelated organisms have the same DNA copy mistake? Only evolution can explain that."

However with further examination, this argument doesn't have as big an impact as it sounds. Some questions arise: How do you know they are mistakes? There's still a lot to learn about the 'language' of DNA. Perhaps they're not copy mistakes. Also, could these simply be common because they appear in mutational hot-spots?

Another issue with this topic is that fact that I don't hear a lot of these mentioned. Science must consider both existing data, and missing data. Missing data is evidence. Which leaves me wondering:

Why is it so hard for you to find these supposed 'copy mistakes'? If evolution were true, there would be a LOT of these.

I don't see them coming up with very many of these. With that, this to me has the potential to be an argument against evolution!

Hand me the hammer...

...because it's time to put the last nail in the coffin, and evolution to rest. The topics you see listed above are the very types of arguments evolutionists need to convince creationists to accept it. Over time, each has become (at best) less-than convincing, and (at worst) starting to become a challenge for evolution.

These also sets a president for all future arguments put forth based on genetic information. Genetics is far too young a field to be swayed but the next 'new argument'. As always...give it time. As an excellent example, see Dennis R. Venema's book.