It's a very pretty brochure; it's like candy. And like candy, it isn't very filling and can end up making one feel sick after reading too much.
The early pages about how "perfect" Earth is for life reeks of a sharpshooter fallacy. The next section about the wonderful "design features" of animals gives a false dilemma between intentional design and "blind chance" (the strawman of the comparison). The dumbest part is the "myth" verses "fact" section, which is filled with half-truths and evasions. 1) The claim is never that mutations alone create species, 2) The finches example they cite as failing to show natural selection is of a transitory situation, so of course it would be expected to not duplicate more permanent changes in climate or ecology. Why not show instead the example of the Antarctic icefish which has a clear mutation in its DNA that blocks the production of hemoglobin which would be absolutely fatal to any animal living elsewhere but which not only does not hinder the survival of icefish in the freezing waters of the Antarctic but allows them to thrive better on account of the reduced viscosity of its circulation system, 3) The existence of statis for prehistoric animals over long periods of time is NOT an indication that the fossil record does not document "macroevolutionary" changes. They completely omit any discussion of the fossils showing the transitions referred to in the NAS statement.
On p. 23, "How would you respond to the claim that proof of so-called microevolution is evidence that macroevolution must have taken place." Why is there never a discussion about why there must have been huge amounts of macroevolution occuring in just the past 4,000 years? Do they forget that God stopped creating when he rested on the 7th Day, a Day still running, and so the few number of "kinds" that Noah took into the ark must have over time produced the much larger diversity of life that exists today?? Why do they forget that their own belief in creation requires macroevolution?
On p. 25-26, they continue to claim that creative "Days" were long epochs of indeterminate length. Yet they say after quoting Genesis 1:5, "Here, only a portion of the 24-hour period is defined by the term 'day' ". That's precisely what the "day" means throughout the chapter. On each day the creative work continues until nightfall, then there is evening and morning, and the following day begins. That is the clear sense of the narrative, it is the same thing that repeats throughout the chapter. The day-age interpretation overlooks this cyclic pattern; the Society never claims that there were thousands of years of continuous light followed by thousands of years of continuous darkness on the Earth.
On p. 26, the notion of "the atmosphere clearing up" is imposed exegetically on the creation narrative; it does not arise from the text. It rather has a concordist aim of eliminating features of the narrative that fit rather poorly with modern cosmology, particularly with respect to the firmament.
On p. 27, they specifically reject the notion that God used evolution to produce the vast variety of life. They appeal to the notion that God created original "kinds" which already had the variation in them, but limited to vague "fundamental categories". If this is diversification above the species level, a diversification that involves as they say "adaptation to changing environmental conditions", how is this not macroevolution? And again, no comment on their doctrine of the Flood which is coupled closely with their creationist theory. In order to have enough room for the animals on the ark, the Society usually argues that Noah did not take every species or even every genus into the ark. The Society requires macroevolution in order to accommodate all these animals on the ark, and macroevolution at insanely faster speeds than argued by any evotionary scientist.
