This post is a partial chapter from the book, God and Other Things.  It takes on the almost sacred topic of Evolution–sacred at least to Evolutionists.  It is a bit less so to me.

Darwinian Doubts

PAUL:  Evolution is adaptation, and adaptation is proven fact.  Insects grow resistant to insecticides every few years, so the chemicals have to be modified.  Bacteria become immune to anti-bacterial agents.  Let’s make it something easier to see.  Lions eat slow gazelles.  Fast gazelles run away to produce more fast gazelles.  Short giraffes starve to death.  Tall giraffes produce more tall giraffes.  Slow or stupid animals die young.  Nature is harsh.  Only the fittest survive to reproduce.  This is simply a fact of nature.  You can’t deny it.

 KAREN:  I don’t deny that natural selection exists, or that it helps maintain a species.  I have no doubt that giraffes and gazelles and lions adapt to their surroundings.  So do insects and bacteria, as creepy as that is. 

 PAUL:  Then where is the disagreement?

 KAREN:  The disagreement is over where the theory goes next.  If Evolution were defined only as change within a species, I would have no problem with it.  But the theory of Evolution goes beyond that.  It claims the mechanism of natural selection can change one species into another.  It claims that gazelles and lions and giraffes all descended from the same source.  That’s an assumption as big as theGrand Canyon, with no solid evidence to support it.  Just because they’re similar doesn’t mean they’re related. 

 PAUL:  Then how do you explain the similarity?

 KAREN:  For the moment, I don’t have to explain it.  We are examining the possibility of Evolution now, and whether it explains the similarities.  I don’t think it does, and we are back to the point where you accept Evolution not because there is reasonable evidence for it, but because you don’t want to consider anything else.

 PAUL:  There is definitely evidence for adaptation within a species.  Would you agree?

 KAREN:  Certainly.

 PAUL:  Then it seems only reasonable to deduce that, given enough time, adaptation to different environments would lead to different species.  The similarity between species only helps lead to that very reasonable conclusion. 

 KAREN:  I don’t see any facts that would lead me to that conclusion.  Only assumptions.  If new species could be created through natural selection, then why can’t artificial selection do the same thing?  Why haven’t breeders developed new species?  They can breed greyhounds, but they can’t turn them into some kind of mutated monster.  Perhaps that is because genetics won’t allow a dog to turn into anything but a variation of a dog.  Not through natural or artificial selection.

 PAUL:  We could argue this all day without reaching a conclusion.  Let me ask you a question that may settle this.  What would it take to overcome your objections?  What one piece of evidence would convince you that Evolution is true?

 KAREN:  I don’t know if there is one piece of evidence that would convince me, but there is one piece you really need.  EvenDarwinadmitted the lack of this evidence would seriously compromise his theory.

 PAUL:  Let me have it.  What do I need to produce?

 KAREN:  Consider this.  If you believe all animals descended from the same source, and they varied through chance and mutation over millions of years to develop into all the different species we now see; if you believe human beings began as ape-like creatures, and developed over millions of years into the attractive, coffee drinking individuals at this table, then there should be museums on every corner full of bones and fossils proving those very facts.  There should be thousands of half-ape, half-human skeletons preserved in ancient mud somewhere.  There should be millions of fossils available to show us how all of those species changed from one to another. 

 PAUL:  I thought you had a gift for being succinct. 

 KAREN:  My apologies.  Let’s just say I call your attention to the curious fact of the fossil record.

 PAUL:  But there is no such fossil record.

 KAREN:  That is the curious fact.

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