Evidence for Supernatural Origin of ...
Retorts to Evolutionists' Objections and Criticisms
The following list of creation representations and claims (total of fifteen) are in the words of Rennie, and do not necessarily reflect legitimate creation claims or represent all creationists' positions.
5. Creationists delight in dissecting out phrases from Gould's voluminous prose to make him sound as though he had doubted evolution. Rennie’s answer to: The disagreements among even evolutionary biologists show how little solid science supports evolution.
There is no doubt that evolutionists agree that evolution is a fact. Creationists do not dispute this. The ridiculous claim that creationists quote evolutionists to show that they doubt evolution is nonsense and dishonest. The purpose of quoting evolutionists is to point out the areas of dispute in the field of evolution being studied and to show that dogmatic claims often made like the abundance of transition fossils document descent with modification are in fact disputable or out right false. One would expect a creationist to challenge such claims, but when a believer in evolution disputes such claims, the conflict of interest and hidden agenda is removed.
6. Evolution does not teach that humans descended from monkeys, and parent species may survive indefinitely. Rennie’s answer to: If humans descended from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?
Rennie sets up a straw man concept and not surprisingly answers it with ridicule. The fact is that many non-scientists ask these questions regardless of whether they believe in creation or evolution. This is in part due to the way evolution is taught by evolutionists in the classroom. Many examples in textbooks are obsolete and even teachers may be misstating the principles of evolution. One has only to remember the famous picture of man’s descent from a gibbon to realize that the idea of man from monkeys was first proposed by evolutionists.
Addressing the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Sir Arthur Keith, said: “The evidence of man's evolution from an ape-like being, obtained from a study of fossil remains, is definite and irrefutable, but the process has been infinitely more complex than was suspected in Darwin's time. Our older and discarded conception of man's transformation was depicted in that well-known diagram which showed a single file of skeletons, the gibbon at one end and man at the other” (Sir Arthur Keith, 1927, The Evidence for Darwin is Summed Up, The New York Times, September 4, sec. 8, pp. 1, 10).
Indeed, it is evolution teaching that suggests new species replace the old. Comments such as Agers are common in evolution teaching: "The point emerges that if we examine the fossil record in detail, whether at the level of orders or of species, we find over and over again, not gradual evolution, but the sudden explosion of one group at the expense of another" (Derek V. Ager, 1976, 'The Nature of the fossil Record').
The continuance of this straight line notion of evolution is the fault of evolutionist education not creationists.
7. Creationists sometimes try to invalidate all of evolution by pointing to science's current inability to explain the origin of life. Rennie’s answer to: Evolution cannot explain how life first appeared on earth.
Rennie admits that evolutionists are unable to explain the origin of life. Not surprising, this statement is embedded in criticism of creation and evolution’s wishful expectations and speculations.
8. Chance plays a part in evolution …, but evolution does not depend on chance to create organisms, proteins or other entities…. Natural selection can push evolution in one direction and produce sophisticated structures in surprisingly short times. Rennie’s answer to: Mathematically, it is inconceivable that anything as complex as a protein, let alone a living cell or a human, could spring up by chance.
Rennie apparently believes that natural selection (more accurately natural, chance events of selection) pushes evolution in one direction and is sufficient to overcome improbabilities. However, this view is not shared by others.
First, Gould explains the true role of natural selection, which is to eliminate not to create and drive in any particular direction. He writes, "The essence of Darwinism lies in a single phrase: natural selection is the creative force of evolutionary change. No one denies that selection will play a negative role in eliminating the unfit. Darwinian theories require that it create the fit as well." Gould, Stephen J. (1977), "The Return of Hopeful Monsters", Natural History, Vol. 86, June/July, p. 28
Lovtrup wrote: "...the reasons for rejecting Darwin's proposal were many, but first of all that many innovations cannot possibly come into existence through accumulation of many small steps, and even if they can, natural selection cannot accomplish it, because incipient and intermediate stages are not advantageous." Lovtrup, S. (1987), Darwinism: The Refutation of a Myth, Croom Helm Ltd., Beckingham, Kent, p. 275
"But how do you get from nothing to such an elaborate something if evolution must proceed through a long sequence of intermediate stages, each favored by natural selection? You can't fly with 2% of a wing or gain much protection from an iota's similarity with a potentially concealing piece of vegetation. How, in other words, can natural selection explain these incipient stages of structures that can only be used (as we now observe them) in much more elaborated form?" Gould, S. J. (1985), "Not Necessarily a Wing", Natural History, October, pp. 12, 13
Dr. Robert Macnab of Yale University explained that natural selection and probability are not sufficient to explain intricate complexity.:
"As a final comment, one can only marvel at the intricacy in a simple bacterium, of the total motor and sensory system which has been the subject of this review and remark that our concept of evolution by selective advantage must surely be an oversimplification. What advantage could derive, for example, from a "preflagellum" (meaning a subset of its components), and yet what is the probability of "simultaneous" development of the organelle at a level where it becomes advantageous?" Macnab, R. (1978), "Bacterial Mobility and Chemotaxis: The Molecular Biology of a Behavioral System", CRC Critical Reviews in Biochemistry, vol. 5, issue 4, Dec., pp. 291-341
"From different kinds of eyes in contemporary animals, one may guess how the organ evolved. Many primitive animals even a few protists, have light-sensitive spots. In some flatworms (planaria) the pigmented spot becomes a cavity; if the opening is narrowed, it can form a crude image. Covering it with transparent skin could lead to the making of a lens, and so forth. Darwin, troubled by the perfection of the eye, pointed out such gradations (C. Darwin 1964,186-190), yet the existence of viable stages on the way does not explain how it was possible that many very unlikely genes came along in the right order to direct all the details, while at the same time an immensely larger number of continually occurring deleterious mutations were continually being eliminated." (Wesson, Robert G., 1991, Beyond Natural Selection, MIT Press: Cambridge MA, 1994, reprint, p.62).
Natural selection can eliminate only those features resulting from chance mutations. In addition, natural selection events are themselves chance events.
Rennie’s computational analogy is nothing more than a computer simulation with an end goal designed into the program. Its parameters make the end goal predictable and swiftly attainable.
Evidence for Supernatural Origin of ...