Why Evolutionary Theory Is Fundamentally Flawed

[Don McIntosh]

The explanatory logic of evolution, at least as it's commonly stated, fails because it assumes (wrongly) that what is true of the parts of a complex system may be validly inferred to hold for the whole as well. Thus my argument:

1. Evolution posits that the function of any complex biological system can be adequately explained as the accumulation of countless minor functional adaptations of its individual components.
2. To say that a characteristic of the whole system can be adequately explained in terms of a characteristic of its individual components is to say that a whole is equal to the sum of its parts.
3. To say that a whole is equal to the sum of its parts is to commit the fallacy of composition.
4. Evolution is a fallacy.

Note that I am not suggesting that all inferences from parts to whole fail to hold, but that the line of reasoning is fallacious on its face because in fact many such inferences do fail to hold. Given that specifiably complex biological systems are structurally heterogenous, there is no prima facie reason to think that what is true of the parts will be true of the whole. Evolution theorists therefore bear the burden of proof, namely, to explain why anyone should expect such an inference to hold in the case of specifiably complex systems.

Read the entire paper here:
https://www.academia.edu/38735629/Black ... lly_Flawed

Questions for debate: Is evolutionary theory a fallacy? If so, does that make it false?

[Divine Insight]

Imagine that someone asks how my house was constructed. I say, "Well, a concrete worker came out and laid the foundation, a carpenter came out and built the framing, a plumbing contractor came out and arranged the pipes, an electrician put in the wiring...." Etc. By listing out all the various contractors and the work they did, I would effectively explain how each of various subsystems (foundation, framing, plumbing, etc.) came to be. But that would not explain how my house came to be. If those subsystems aren't arranged together in a carefully pre-planned way, there is no house. What my explanation is missing, then, is an Architect and a set of plans.

In principle, natural selection can explain any number of enhanced structures and characteristics of a functionally complex biological system. But a mindless process of natural selection cannot explain the entire functionally complex biological system itself (the whole), any more than the individual contributions of so many subcontractors can explain the construction of my house.

This is no different from carrying a large sign around that says, "I have absolutely no understanding at all of what the theory of evolution is actually saying."

All you are doing is demonstrating that you don't understand how evolution works.

[For_The_Kingdom]

No, that's precisely the sort of thinking that is referenced by the fallacy of composition.

Imagine that someone asks how my house was constructed. I say, "Well, a concrete worker came out and laid the foundation, a carpenter came out and built the framing, a plumbing contractor came out and arranged the pipes, an electrician put in the wiring...." Etc. By listing out all the various contractors and the work they did, I would effectively explain how each of various subsystems (foundation, framing, plumbing, etc.) came to be. But that would not explain how my house came to be. If those subsystems aren't arranged together in a carefully pre-planned way, there is no house. What my explanation is missing, then, is an Architect and a set of plans.

In principle, natural selection can explain any number of enhanced structures and characteristics of a functionally complex biological system. But a mindless process of natural selection cannot explain the entire functionally complex biological system itself (the whole), any more than the individual contributions of so many subcontractors can explain the construction of my house.

Exactly. You won't get a "card mansion" from an explosion at a card-making plant, just like you won't get a functional human body from a "big bang". That just ain't how entropy works and in both cases an intelligent designer (or architect, as you put it) is needed.

[For_The_Kingdom]

[Replying to post 22 by For_The_Kingdom]

Or better yet, stick a male and female dog in a room, and tell me what you will get in a year or less.

A year or less?? Let's see ... the average gestation period for a dog is about 60 days. So that would represent about 6 cycles per year if the dog was continuously pregnant. Do you really think that ToE says that speciation could happen in as little as 6 generations for a dog? Of course you would only get a dog in that kind of time period.

You will only get a dog in ANY time period. Those large-scale changes (macroevolution) are all speculative voodoo. It is science fiction. It has never been observed in nature, and to believe it is to rely on blind faith.

Try a large population of dogs on an island that undergoes sudden (eg. over a few thousand years) drastic climate change as well as drastic changes to the food sources and predator/prey mix.

Those changes will probably amount to a different species of dog...but the end results will always be a dog.

Come back to that island after 1 million years and see what the original dog population has turned into (if it exists at all).

Up. Hold it right there. Did you see what just happened, because I saw. It happened so fast, you didn't even see it. See, what just happened the nanosecond after you typed "come back to that island after 1 million years"...what just happened is; you've left science.

Like, you've completely left science. That isn't what the science is telling you, that is what your presuppositions are telling you.

Science is telling you that dogs produce dogs, cats/cats, fish/fish. That is all you can observe, that is all you can experiment, and that is all you can predict; based upon your observations and experiment.

Now, what you are doing is adding an ADDITIONAL, UNSCIENTIFIC belief/theory...and you are embedding this belief into the science, instead of using the science to confirm the belief.

Tsk, tsk, tsk. You shouldn't do that, but that is consistently the case in the evolutionist's neck of the woods...and it happens so fast, too. LOL.

This is a more realistic example of when speciation might occur

Speciation is not an accurate example of macroevolution (reptile-to-bird). A dog, a wolf, and a coyote are all different species, but they are clearly the same "kind" of animal.

Either way, we can call all three "canines", and leave it there...recognizing that they are the same "kind" of animal.

... not "in a year or less." Seriously?

Yeah, seriously...because the same thing that you will get in a year, you will also get in a million years...DOGS.

Adding "time" to the mix will only get you more dogs than you started with. It won't get you this new "kind" of animal (reptile-bird).

[For_The_Kingdom]

Dogs produce dogs, cats produce cats, fish produce fish. Don't know what part of that isn't being understood, but visit your local farm or zoo for the proof. Or better yet, stick a male and female dog in a room, and tell me what you will get in a year or less.

A variations of the parental dogs, with mutation that may or may not contribute to the survival fitness of the offspring, i.e. exactly what evolution predicted would happen. Why? What do you think would happen?

I don't know, but I will tell you what I DON'T think would happen; and that is a reptile evolving to a bird or a once land-dwelling mammal (whale) becoming an aquatic mammal.

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to post 41 by For_The_Kingdom]

Exactly. You won't get a "card mansion" from an explosion at a card-making plant, just like you won't get a functional human body from a "big bang". That just ain't how entropy works and in both cases an intelligent designer (or architect, as you put it) is needed.

And that is a perfect example of a comment from someone who has no understanding of how evolution (or entropy) works. By that entropy logic, it would be impossible for crystals to form. Evolution producing complex living organisms is not even remotely analogous to an explosion at a card making plant producing a card mansion (or a tornado ripping through a junkyard making a 747, or monkeys creating a Shakespeare play, or any of the many similar bad analogies people who don't understand how evolution works have come up with). If you think it is, then you are in bad need of an evolution 101 course (and pair it up with a thermodynamics 101 course ... especially one that explains closed systems vs. open systems).

Let me ask ... if evolution did not contradict your religious beliefs would you still fight it as a valid theory? If it didn't imply that man evolved from a great ape ancestor of some type would you care one iota about it? If radiometric dating did not disprove a young earth and also support evolution would you argue that radiometric dating was invalid (or care)? That is ... how much of your opposition to evolution is based purely on its contradictions of biblical doctrine, vs. belief that it is actually wrong on its scientific merits?

[For_The_Kingdom]

And that is a perfect example of a comment from someone who has no understanding of how evolution (or entropy) works.

And the fact that you believe in evolution is the "perfect example of a comment from someone who has no understanding of how nature works".

And I've said it dozens of times; whenever someone expressed an unbelief as it relates to the TOE, the person always gets accused of misunderstanding the theory..

"You just don't understand evolution!!"

"Evolution doesn't say that!!"

As if evolutionists are so smart and we (unbelievers) are so dumb. LOL. I don't believe what you believe, and you can't make me.

By that entropy logic, it would be impossible for crystals to form.

Faulty analogy. No one is denying that there are patterns in nature..but nature isn't out there creating "snowmen" or "card mansions"...what is the main ingredient in both cases? INTELLIGENCE.

Evolution producing complex living organisms is not even remotely analogous to an explosion at a card making plant producing a card mansion (or a tornado ripping through a junkyard making a 747, or monkeys creating a Shakespeare play, or any of the many similar bad analogies people who don't understand how evolution works have come up with).

It is analogous. A big bang resulting in life and the evolution of life is analogous to a card factory exploding and resulting in card mansions. If you don't see the latter happing, then you should also have a problem with the former occurring.

If you think it is, then you are in bad need of an evolution 101 course (and pair it up with a thermodynamics 101 course ... especially one that explains closed systems vs. open systems).

I understand it, I just don't believe it. You understand the concepts of Christianity, don't you? I'm sure you do..but you just don't accept it as true, correct? Well, the same thing with me and evolution.

I don't reject it based on what I don't understand..I reject it based on what I do understand.

Let me ask ... if evolution did not contradict your religious beliefs would you still fight it as a valid theory?

But it doesn't contradict my religion..ever heard of "theistic evolution"? If anything, Christianity contradicts YOUR religion (naturalism).

If it didn't imply that man evolved from a great ape ancestor of some type would you care one iota about it?

That belief in and of itself doesn't contradict Christianity.

If radiometric dating did not disprove a young earth and also support evolution would you argue that radiometric dating was invalid (or care)?

I'm not convinced that radiometric dating disproves young earth creationism. And I say that as an old earth creationist.

How much of your opposition to evolution is based purely on its contradictions of biblical doctrine, vs. belief that it is actually wrong on its scientific merits?

Man, your questions is based on a whole lot of speculations. Just so you know, the Bible actually supports my view of evolution (micro). So there need not be any incompatibility between my religion and science.

However, your view, on the other hand..

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to post 45 by For_The_Kingdom]

As if evolutionists are so smart and we (unbelievers) are so dumb. LOL. I don't believe what you believe, and you can't make me.

But you did make the analogy that ToE is like a card factory exploding and forming a card mansion. That is definitively not how evolution works so I think I'm correct in saying that this kind of analogy demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of how evolution by natural selection actually does work. It is not a situation where random mutations and other DNA changes happen and somehow a complex biological organism appears purely from that process and nothing else. Natural selection works against these DNA changes to "select" those that are beneficial and weed out those that are not (because that organism can't reproduce at sufficient rates, or at all). Your card factory explosion example has no function like natural selection ... it suggests that a large number of cards randomly fell to Earth from the explosion and a card mansion appeared. That is not a correct analogy to ToE.

I understand it, I just don't believe it. You understand the concepts of Christianity, don't you? I'm sure you do..but you just don't accept it as true, correct? Well, the same thing with me and evolution.

Yes ... I was inundated with Christianity from birth until 18, but eventually decided to study the different religions of the world in my early 20s and realized that the entire premise upon which most of them are based (ie. the existence of one or more gods) was flawed as there is no evidence of any kind that such beings exist now or did in the past. So, unlike ToE where there is physical evidence that it is valid (including what you could call "macro" evolution), there is no evidence that any god or gods exist. That is the difference. ToE can be believed because there is solid and copious evidence for it. Not so for any god that humans have invented over the millennia.

Man, your questions is based on a whole lot of speculations. Just so you know, the Bible actually supports my view of evolution (micro). So there need not be any incompatibility between my religion and science.

Well, that's better than the young earth creationists here. But given that we have mountains of physical evidence, including genetics evidence, supporting ToE including "macro" evolution (eg. fish to amphibians, apes to humans), and zero evidence supporting the existence of gods or humans having afterlives (unless you have something new), I'd argue that your position is the one based purely on speculation (ie. that a god exists) rather than mine.

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to Divine Insight]

You have nothing worthy of debate. Your claims are as absurd as the claims made by the flat-earth society.

Thanks that is a great example of observable science and historical science!!!!

We can prove the flat Earth is wrong by some very simple observations. Like for example, we have pictures taken from the moon. We can take a stick and put in the ground at noon at in one city and it will have not shadow. We can look at the stick in another city at the same time and it will have a shadow and we can even use this shadow to calculate the circumference of the earth. And if all of this fails we can wait for a lunar eclipse and see the round shape of the Earth on the moon.

Now this is different than historical science. In which you gave a great example below.

Apparently you need for all of science to be wrong in order to support an ancient rumor that Jesus was the virgin born son of the jealous God named Yahweh. A mythology that has already proven itself to be clearly false and nothing more than very poorly made up man-made fables.

Good luck with that.

There are scholars that actually study the Old Testament. Some are conservative and many are liberal. Yet 99% believe that Jesus lived and he died on a Roman cross and that Paul was a converted skeptic. 70% affirm that fact that the disciples believe they saw the risen Lord. The proof of Christ is not in the virgin birth. The proof that Jesus Christ is God is not in the Virgin Birth. It is in the resurrection of Christ.

But concerning the proof for the resurrections there is the following.

Notice how Scripture says that people of Jesus’ hometown, Nazareth, reacted to him after he began his public ministry. On one occasion, after he had taught in the synagogue, the people he had grown up with said, “ ‘He’s just a carpenter, the son of Mary’…They were deeply offended and refused to believe in him� (Mark 6:3). The label “son of Mary� was an unambiguous insult in a society that called children by the name of their fathers—except, of course, in the case of children whose paternity was doubted.

At another time, Jesus’ opponents threw a barb at him when they retorted, “We were not born out of wedlock!� ( John 8:41). The insult and the reference to Jesus as the “son of Mary� and “born out of wedlock� indicate that it was common knowledge in Jesus’ hometown that he had been conceived before Mary’s wedding to Joseph—and without his aid. In other words, it seems very likely that the circumstances of Jesus’ miraculous birth to a virgin caused him to be labeled as an illegitimate child.

No, Pharisee would believed in Christ if it had not been proven that He was born of a virgin and many did. They knew about Mary's claim but many at first did not believe her claim as evidenced above.

Why would the writers place this in Scripture if it were not true? This would not further their cause.

Even if they were trying to replicate Isaiah 7:14, the pharisees still would have and to been convinced that Jesus was born of a virgin otherwise they would not have believed, especially Paul.

And then you have the evidence from Joseph.

When Mary turned up pregnant, what did Joseph, her fiancé, do? He naturally assumed she had had sex with another man and planned to call off the engagement and upcoming marriage. Matthew’s account of the story, however, reports that an angel told Joseph the truth about the conception. And based on that, he believed that Mary’s child had been conceived by the Holy Spirit and went forward with the wedding.

Joseph made his decision fully aware of its implications. At first he did not believe Mary and resolved to break the engagement, just as any good man would do. It shows us he knew full well the implications of violating social expectations about purity and the sanctity of marriage. A good and prudent man, as Matthew calls him, would be very aware of how marrying Mary would mar his reputation for the rest of his life. So why did he go on and marry her? Only one reason makes any sense at all. He knew the truth. He believed the message from the angel and that it was the absolute truth. Mary was indeed a virgin who was bearing in her womb the Son of God conceived by the Holy Spirit.

This was all known about Jesus so why would Saul a pharisee become a follower of Christ? Anyone doubting the virgin birth has to answer the question why a pharisee like Paul and Nicodemus would become followers of Christ.

Let me know when you succeed in destroying all of known science.

I am not sure what science laws you would be speaking of. There is no effect in the virgin birth that does not have a cause.

Now if you want to talk breaking natural laws all one needs to do is to look at naturalistic explanations of the universe and life.

1. The big bang theory breaks both laws of thermodynamics. Unless you believe in some sort of multiverse. But then you have to believe that something has to be eternal. But the second law is still broken.

2. Abiogenesis breaks the law of biogenesis and Mendel's laws of genetics.

3. Evolution breaks the Mendel's laws of genetics. With phyla popping into the fossil record without transitional forms.

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to post 36 by DrNoGods]

When did the first animals with hard structures appear? What fraction of animals that have ever lived are represented in the fossil record at all? Of those, how does the volume of fossils found compare to the total number of organisms in the original population?

A literal reading of the fossil record indicates that the early Cambrian (c. 545 million years ago) and early Tertiary (c. 65 million years ago) were characterized by enormously accelerated periods of morphological evolution marking the appearance of the animal phyla, and modern bird and placental mammal orders, respectively.

Alan Cooper and Richard Fortey, “Evolutionary Explosions and the Phylogenetic Fuse,� Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 13: 151-156 (April, 1998)

Ian Tattersal: “The record jumps, and all the evidence shows that the record is real: the gaps we see reflect real events in life’s history — not the artifact of a poor fossil record.� This conclusion did not come easily, as one scientist who studied under Gould felt the need to implore his colleagues that “[e]volutionary biologists can no longer ignore the fossil record on the ground that it is imperfect.�
Niles Eldredge and Ian Tattersall, The Myths of Human Evolution, p. 59 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982).

David S. Woodruff, “Evolution: The Paleobiological View,� Science, 208: 716-717 (May 16, 19


Many changes would have been necessary to convert a land-mammal into a whale, including:

Emergence of a blowhole, with musculature and nerve control
Modification of the eye for permanent underwater vision
Ability to drink sea water
Forelimbs transformed into flippers
Modification of skeletal structure
Ability to nurse young underwater
Origin of tail flukes and musculature
Blubber for temperature insulation


Many of these necessary adaptations would require multiple coordinated changes. But as we saw in Problem 3, such simultaneous mutations require extremely long periods of time to arise via the Darwinian mechanism. Whale evolution now runs into a severe problem. The fossil record requires that the evolution of whales from small land mammals would have to have taken place in less than 10 million years. That may sound like a long time, but it actually falls dramatically short, especially given that whales have small population sizes and long generation times. Biologist Richard Sternberg has examined the requirements of this transition mathematically and puts it this way: “Too many genetic re-wirings, too little time.�

List provided courtesy of Dr. Richard Sternberg.

Alan Feduccia, “‘Big bang’ for tertiary birds?,� Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 18: 172-176 (2003).

See Walter James ReMine, The Biotic Message: Evolution Versus Message Theory (Saint Paul: MN, Saint Paul Science, 1983).

Quote:
Evolutions own theories state that there are no transitional forms


No it doesn't ... that is your own made up claim.

That is the whole reason for Punctuated equilibrium. See above

No need to. His paper was only published on a creationist website, and therefore can be ignored because of their statement of faith. Why didn't he submit it to a legitimate science journal? Or did he and it was rejected? Do you think that if he had submitted his "paper" to AIG and it supported a billions of year old Earth that they would have published it? Of course they wouldn't, because it would violate their statement of faith.

The difference between pedigree method and Phylogenetic method of dating is well documented.

When the results
from eight published studies that used a similar approach were pooled with the LHON pedigree studies, totaling
12,600 transmission events, a pedigree divergence rate of 0.95 mutations/bp/Myr for the control region was obtained
with a 99.5% confidence interval of 0.53–1.57. Taken together, the cumulative results support the original conclusion
that the pedigree divergence rate for the control region is ∼10-fold higher than that obtained with phylogenetic
analyses. There is no evidence that any one factor explains this discrepancy,

https://pdf.sciencedirectassets.com/276 ... ype=client

And below are the way each are calculated.

Human pedigree–based mutation rates are estimated by comparing parent/offspring pairs or deep-rooted familial lineages (e.g., Heyer et al. 2001) at particular loci and counting the number of novel mutations per pair, divided by the number of meioses (i.e., number of pair comparisons). This approach has been used to estimate the spontaneous mutation rate for the 1.1-kb mitochondrial control region. Estimates of control region rates, including hypervariable regions (HVR)I and HVRII, range from 0.0 to 2.91 mutations/bp/My (Howell et al. 2003). All mutation rates discussed here will be in the form of divergence rates, the mutation rate along two lineages, unless otherwise noted.

Phylogeny-based rates range from 0.12 to 0.38/bp/My for the mitochondrial control region (table 1). Given the inherent time averaging over multiple generations in a phylogeny and the accumulation of multiple mutations, phylogeny-based rates are less affected by stochastic fluctuations than pedigree studies. Phylogeny-based mutation rates are estimated by first constructing either a gene genealogy or a species phylogeny. In the latter case, one then calibrates the species split with external paleontological evidence. The number of mutations between two groups is subsequently computed, either by averaging the number of differences between species or by taking two sequences with the greatest number of differences.

https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/26/1/217/974367

This is a well known and well documented problem for evolution.

Just to be clear the phylogenetic method uses archaeology to estimate ages not mtDNA.

And we all know the problems with radiometric dating.

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to post 48 by EarthScienceguy]

And we all know the problems with radiometric dating.

The only problem with radiometric dating, for young earth creationists, is that it totally destroys almost everything they believe in. Otherwise it has proven to be reliable when used properly (like any other measurement method) and there are no "problems" with it as you are suggesting.

As for the rest of the post, you're just repeating well know observations of the Cambrian period so nothing new there, and the whale comment is just wrong. All the evidence points to them evolving from land animals.

https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibra ... vograms_03

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science- ... -73276956/

http://www.eartharchives.org/articles/t ... of-whales/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_cetaceans
(and references at the bottom)

I'm afraid you're fighting battles that were lost decades ago. Young earth creationists will eventually become extinct, and a tiny fraction may even leave fossils. Fortunately for humanity, their impact on science will continue to be zero.