Common Misconceptions Re: Evolution

by cantleave 83 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  PSacramento

  15 Questions summary

  Note to would-be evolution defenders: please read the full brochure and linked articles before attempting to answer the questions, otherwise you will likely be wasting your time boxing at shadows.

  1. How did life with specifications for hundreds of proteins originate just by chemistry without intelligent design?
  2. How did the DNA code originate?
  3. How could copying errors (mutations) create 3 billion letters of DNA instructions to change a microbe into a microbiologist?
  4. Why is natural selection taught as ‘evolution’ as if it explains the origin of 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?
  11. How did blind chemistry create mind/intelligence, meaning, altruism and morality?
  12. Why is evolutionary ‘just-so’ story-telling tolerated as ‘science’?
  13. Where are the scientific breakthroughs due to evolution?
  14. Why is evolution, a theory about history, taught as if it is the same as the operational science?
  15. Why is a fundamentally religious idea, a dogmatic belief system that fails to explain the evidence, taught in science classes?
• 

  bohm

  Thats some really awfull arguments in that pamplet. For instance:

  The pamphlet explains, "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 human self-centered and aggressive – except when it makes them altruistic and peacable.

  Obviously a group of humans where all were maximally selfish would be highly dysfunctional to the point of extinction, and a group where all were maximally altruistic would not be evolutionary stable. Even such a shallow analysis indicate evolved human behaviour must be found between those limits, and evolutionary game theory and psychology could narrow the range of plausible behaviour further down.

  Yet the author of the brouchure insist nature must either restrict its explanation to his impossible extremes, or evolution is wrong.

  "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 university, not even one average-sized functional protein would form," the website explains.

  yet evolution produce new proteines all the time in the laboratory. this argument only show his naive model of random assembly of proteines is wrong -- but his model could hardly be worse, it even neglet something as obvious as nature being governed by physical laws!
• 

  unshackled

  How did life originate?

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

  You got to question the intellectual honesty and motive of this campaign when they include questions like this. Evolution says nothing about the origin of life or abiogenesis. Missing fossils? First, we are very very lucky to even find fossils...they are wanting "countless millions"? Right. Every time a fossil is found, they point to the gap between that and the next fossil and say "where are all the intermediary steps?" ...or..."now we have twice as many gaps!".

  As for some of their other questions - who does have those answers? They might as well question everything we know about the universe because we do not yet know what Dark Matter is. What we don't know yet does not completely negate what we do already know.

  BTW, seen this interesting discovery today...

  http://news.yahoo.com/closest-human-ancestor-may-rewrite-steps-evolution-141606435.html
• 

  PSacramento

  I like the number 7 question, how did sex originate?

  Obviously a picture of Salma Hayek in a bikini would answer that question.