Why Evolution Is True

by Jerry A. Coyne

Introduction

INTRODUCTION (2% to 4%)

Among the wonders that science has uncovered about the universe in which we dwell, no subject has caused more fascination and fury than evolution. That is probably because no majestic galaxy or fleeting neutrino has implications that are as personal.

This is true. Evolution is different than any other topic taught in school. The reason for that is because evolution isn't science but is masquerading as science. It is atheistic religion built on fake scienc and bad logic - as this author will prove in the following chapters.

This was all sorted out in the first few decades of the twentieth century, and since then the evidence for both evolution and natural selection has continued to mount, crushing the scientific opposition to Darwinism.

Is this true? If all opposition has been crushed why is this book necessary? Why do so many still doubt evolution? Does anyone doubt gravity or the existence of atoms? That's because there is actual scientific evidence for it. Name one other scientific "fact' that has so much opposition (half the population).

While biologists have revealed many phenomena that Darwin never imagined—how to discern evolutionary relationships from DNA sequences, for one thing—

Darwin had no understanding of DNA (since it wasn't going to be discovered for nearly 100 years). He significantly underestimated the complexity of life and what it takes to change a living creature. Living things don't just adapt to their envrionment like Darwin thought and then it gets passed down to generations - DNA must change and it doesn't happen from the environment. It happens because God created diversity in existing DNA which allows variety in offsping that can adapt to the environment. The environment selects, it doesn't create.

Today scientists have as much confidence in Darwinism as they do in the existence of atoms, or in microorganisms as the cause of infectious disease.

This is a great example of propaganda that is so common from the side of evolution. "Say it enough and people will begin to believe it". And sadly, it is true. However, this isn't a reasonable statement. Given that you can't see evolution under a microscope, the evidence can't possibly be as strong as atoms. The author shows his subjective bias with this statement alone.

and scientists need no more convincing.

Again, another over generalization. He later talks about how almost 50% of people still don't believe in evolution. Are there no scientists included in that? What about the scientists at Answers in Genesis and the many other pro-creation and intelligent design organizations? Admittedly, the majority of scientists believe in evolution - or at least they will say they do. This may be because any other thought in the scientific community is crushed and you are completely ostracized for descent from the evolutionary agenda.

You can understand why this doesn’t sit well with many people who think that we came into being differently from other species, as the special goal of a divine intention. Does our existence have any purpose or meaning that distinguishes us from other creatures? Evolution is also thought to erode morality. If, after all, we are simply beasts, then why not behave like beasts? What can keep us moral if we’re nothing more than monkeys with big brains? No other scientific theory produces such angst, or such psychological resistance.

This is true. Christians do not like the natural consequences of evolution. If God did not create us, then there is no such thing as morality. No accountability to God. It would be a sad existence indeed. But just because Christians don't like it, this doesn't give it an ounce more evidence. So much of his argument is that Christians don't like it because of religion despite the evidence. Just give the evidence already! Oh wait...you don't have any :).

no such reconciliation is possible if one adheres to the literal truth of a special creation.

One thing we agree on - there is no reconcilation between evolution and Christianity. If men evolved, they were not created by the God of the Bible (or at least the Bible is flawed). Jesus said, “But from the beginning of the creation, God ‘made them male and female.” (Mark 10:6). The book of Genesis teaches that death is the result of Adam’s sin (Genesis 3:19; Romans 5:12, 8:18–22) and that all of God’s creation was “very good” upon its completion (Genesis 1:31). So if death came as a result of sin, and there were millions of years of death before man had a chance to sin, how could that be?

Perhaps the “teach all sides” argument appeals to the American sense of fair play, but to an educator it’s truly disheartening.

If an evolutionist were truly being honest, they would say that even though they believe their evidence to be convincing, it isn't conclusive and therefore other theories that have at least some evidence and haven't been proven false should also be taught. Why not? When talking about the origin of life and the universe, we can never know for sure - what's wrong with teaching several theories? Unless you are simply scared that yours will be discredited and pales in comparison to your competition.

It’s like asking that shamanism be taught in medical school alongside Western medicine, or astrology be presented in psychology class as an alternative theory of human behavior.

Again, all of this propaganda before any real evidence. Let's hear the evidence that makes this fact 100% true. Still waiting.

And some schools in the UK do present intelligent design as an alternative to evolution, an educational tactic illegal in the United States.

Wow! It's actually illegal to teach something in schools? Something that is credible and accepted by a large portion of the population? How could that be? Seems odd...for America...

And—the ultimate irony—creationism has even established a foothold on the Galapagos archipelago.

What's so funny about this is that what Darwin showed on the Galapogos is how natural selection works. Creationism fully embraces natural selection. Natural selection is fact - it can be observed and is 100% proven. The difference is that natural selection does not lead to macro-evolution. See this page for a walk-through of how natural selection actually works: https://www.thecreationaccount.com/evolution-of-life

the popular press gives almost no background on why scientists accept evolution.

Because they have no idea...they believe it because they are told to believe it. Not because of evidence.

dinosaurs that have sprouted feathers,

That never happened...and there is no evidence that it did...

fish that have grown limbs,

Nope.

reptiles turning into...

Are you talking about when the princess kissed the frog? I think that was a fable...oh wait, this is too!

how one tests the validity of a theory that inflames so many.

Can't wait

Accepting evolution needn’t turn you into a despairing nihilist or rob your life of purpose and meaning. It won’t make you immoral, or give you the sentiments of a Stalin or Hitler.

But it does make you immoral - without God there is no morality.

Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1 (4% to 8%)

The first is the idea of evolution itself. This simply means that a species undergoes genetic change over time.

There are two different meanings of "evolution". They use the same word interchangeably but they are total opposites. Macro-evolution means change from a less complex kind of animal to a more complex or different kind of animal. Micro-evolution means variation within a species. The second one happens, the first does not. Notice how they use one to prove the other.

a species can evolve into something quite different, and those differences are based on changes in the DNA, which originate as mutations.

True, some change can occur very quickly. Populations of microbes have very short generations, some as brief as twenty minutes. This means that these species can undergo a lot of evolution in a short time, accounting for the depressingly rapid rise of drug resistance in disease-causing bacteria and viruses.

A - this is micro-evolution which is a reduction in information. B - you just said that evolution takes millions of years; but now it can happen in 20 minutes? Why? And if it can happen so quickly, why can't you turn the bacteria into a frog?

This tells us that every species goes back to a single common ancestor, an ancestor who had those common traits and passed them on to its descendants.

DNA doesn't at all prove evolution. What it does is show that life has incredible complexity and order - which could never come through random chance. Even outside of that, if God created a system for giving instructions to his creations, it would be logical for him to use the same system...because it was perfect.

Look at figure 1, which shows a sample evolutionary tree that illustrates the relationships between birds and reptiles.

This chart doesn't demonstrate a relationship between birds and reptiles - it's just a made up chart based on what they WANT evolution to look like. It isn't based on any evidence. Birds and reptiles are insanely different. They simply need dinosaurs to evolve into birds because birds are higher in the geologic column. Think about it - does this make any sense? That a T-Rex evolved into a canary? But if they don't make that happen, they have a big problem with their story. Why are birds really on the top strata in the geologic columns? Maybe it's because all of those animals got buried in a global flood and birds were the most able to get away from the water the longest. Nah - that would be using logic and reason. Scrap that.

The common ancestor X is often called the “missing link” between the descendant groups. It is the genealogical connection between birds and modern reptiles—the intersection you’d finally reach if you traced their lineages all the way back.

This is misleading. "X" in the fake diagram isn't the missing link, the missing link is A through Z. You don't have a single connected link in the whole chain. You have a bunch of perfectly formed, independently created links that are only interconnected in the fact that they are designed by the same creator (who is perfect so he used the same perfect parts and design)

we can sometimes discover fossils closely related to them, species having features that show common ancestry.

By "closely related" you mean animals that might look like another one. God created a lot of animals - many of them share characteristics. Lining them up on a chart and showing that they look similar does not prove evolution. How about you rely on observable science and logic to prove your theory?

As we’ll see later, speciation simply means the evolution of different groups that can’t interbreed—that is, groups that can’t exchange genes.

Millions of years later, and after more splitting events, one of the descendant dinosaur species, node Y, itself split into two more species, one eventually producing all the bipedal, carnivorous dinosaurs and the other producing all living birds.

CAUTION - SWITCH-A-ROO: Notice the trick here again. He used actual reasonable observation when describing how species might split. But then he goes into the realm of imagination and says, ok, in millions of years later - those species turn into new animals. NOTE - an animal that breaks into two different "species" are always the same kind of animal. There are many species of birds - but that just means they can't reproduce together. It doesn't mean they turn into lizards. We observe speciation. And it happens when the animal LOSES information - essentially downgrading it's overall informational capabilities. The mutation or whatever causes the inability to breed, is not additional useful information, it is a loss of information or broken DNA. If you extrapolate this over millions of years you get something more broken with less information. You do not get a new kind of animal with new features. This is the biggest fallacy of evolution and is used to support all of their "evidence".

wouldn’t have looked so dramatic at the time. We wouldn’t have seen the sudden appearance of flying creatures from reptiles,

This is not what world renowned evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould believed? Gould was actually one of the more open-minded evolutionists. I liked the theory but struggled with the fact that there was no evidence for it. So he came up with the idea of "Punctuated Equilibrium". Basically, he believed that new kinds of animals happened quickly, not slowly over time. So one day a dinosaur lays an egg and poof - a bird pops out. This idea is actually more logical due to the lack of evidence. The problem is that it was harder to sell to the public because it made it too easy to disprove (again - no evidence). Check it out here: http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674024441

when selection acted on one lineage to promote flight and on the other to promote the traits of bipedal dinosaurs.

Good grief. Why does a lamen like me know more about natural selection than this guy? Unless the supposed creature evolved fully functioning wings and feathers immediately (as Stephen Jay Gould proposed), then natural selection would work AGAINST a creature that had any non-functioning features. How does half a wing benefit the host? Would they not be selected out? Can natual selection see the future? "Let's save this odd lizard with wings so that in a million years maybe it could fly". That's not how it works. The entire evolutionary concept of random evolution working over millions of years hand in hand with natural selection is illogical dichotomy. Those two concepts are completley opposed to each other.

Closely related species, like closely related people, had a common ancestor that lived fairly recently,

Ha, we agree on this. Closely related species all have a closely related ancestor - because they came from the same "kind".

Thus, the idea of common ancestry— the fourth tenet of Darwinism—is the flip side of speciation. It simply means that we can always look back in time, using either DNA sequences or fossils, and find descendants joining at their ancestors.

We already know that fossil evidence doesn't help evolution - looked at rationally it destroys evolution. It doesn't get any better with DNA sequencing. When you line up your "family tree" just the way you want it to fit your theory, the DNA is going to also have some similiarities because DNA is what creates the traits of a creature. This again is just a diagram created by evolutionists to fit their model. I'm still waiting for all of this evidence that proves evolution is fact like the existence of atoms.

Actually, the nested arrangement of life was recognized long before Darwin. Starting with the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in 1635, biologists began classifying animals and plants, discovering that they consistently fell into what was called a “natural” classification. Strikingly, different biologists came up with nearly identical groupings. This means that these groupings are not subjective artifacts of a human need to classify, but tell us something real and fundamental about nature. But nobody knew what that something was until Darwin came along and showed that the nested arrangement of life is precisely what evolution predicts.

This is interesting. The author is trying to make the argument that because we see similarties in different creatures, and we can easily and objectively classify creatures in those categories, that proves evolution because evolution would predict this be true. This again is cyclical reasoning. Evolution was concocted because this is exactly what is observed in nature. The idea of evolution was created because a combination of observation of nature (similar creatures) and fantasy (creatures ability to morph). Evolution didn't predict this - evolution is a product of this obvious fact. It's like watching a horserace studying the winning horse and why it won, then going back and saying that you predicted the winner. You only studied the horse in the first place because they won. In the same way, the only reason evolution is a theory is because Darwin observed the similarities between animals (as did many others) and noticed change within finches and publicised it. You can't use variables that were inputs into a calculation as an output (or prediction) of the calculation. Again, this is deceptive and a stretch for evidence.

The “natural” classification is itself strong evidence for evolution.

No, it really isn't...at all.

Why? Because we don’t see such a nested arrangement if we’re trying to arrange objects that haven’t arisen by an evolutionary process of splitting and descent. Take cardboard books of matches, which I used to collect. They don’t fall into a natural classification in the same way as living species.

Wow, this is desperate. He is trying to prove why we wouldn't expect to find similarties in animals by saying that we don't find the same kind of similarties in matchboxes? Wow. Not sure how to respond to that. Uhmm, you are comparing the mind of God - who would logically reuse perfected processes and parts in multiple creations - to random people who make matchboxes as evidence? Isn't this Chapter 1? Shouldn't you be starting with your best stuff? Wait - this is your best stuff? Oh wow. This is sad. Ok, well, you are going to do that how about a better example. How about something more complex - like an automobile. Would you find that an auto maker would use the same parts on different models? Actually, yes, you find that Toyota, Honda, Ford, etc - all use the some of the same parts in different models. Why? Because they work! Why reinvent the wheel? This is common sense.

Under this scenario, we wouldn’t expect to see species falling into a nested hierarchy of forms that is recognized by all biologists.2

I still don't understand why God would make everything randomly for each new creation he made. That sounds a lot more like what we should expect from evolution - randomness and lack of organization. By the way, why was there only one common ancestor? If life randomly happened from primordial soup once, shouldn't it have happened countless times? Did the first life event create something perfectly? Shouldn't it have created millions if any? What are the chances it just created one living thing and from that, everything else was created? Sounds very magical.

But now we have a powerful, new, and independent way to establish ancestry:

Define independent...

This is done by making the entirely reasonable assumption that species having more similar DNA are more closely related—that is, their common ancestors lived more recently.

It is only reasonable if you assume evolution is true - again, you are creating the rules as you go in your favor - nothing objective or independent about it.

The idea of common ancestry leads naturally to powerful and testable predictions about evolution. If we see that birds and reptiles group together based on their features and DNA sequences, we can predict that we should find common ancestors of birds and reptiles in the fossil record. Such predictions have been fulfilled, giving some of the strongest evidence for evolution.

Dang, I'm disappointed. This is already your strongest evidence. I assumed your strongest evidence would be actual evidence...not a process created by evolutionists to reinterpret obvious facts about nature to make it look like it supports evolution. Can't wait to see the "evidence" that isn't as strong.

it explains apparent design in nature by a purely materialistic process that doesn’t require creation or guidance by supernatural forces.

Again, the author is mixing fact (natural selection exists) with fantasy (it creates new things). Natural selection does not create anything. It acts on something that already exists. You can't "select" if there's nothing there. It isn't called "Natrual Creation" - it only selects. Therefore it can never be responsible for creating improvements - only for making life difficult for those less suited for the environment. The real question is - how do creatures improve and get new information added to their reproductive DNA so that it can be passed down and improved on some more without it getting wiped out by natural selection over millions of years before it becomes functional?

The idea of natural selection is not hard to grasp. If individuals within a species differ genetically from one another, and some of those differences affect an individual’s ability to survive and reproduce in its environment, then in the next generation the “good” genes that lead to higher survival and reproduction will have relatively more copies than the “not so good” genes.

Ok, wow, a pretty good definition of natural selection...so maybe he does understand it...so why is it wrong everywhere else in his book? He wouldn't be using some truth with non-truth would he? Not on purpose! Surely not.

Over time, the population will gradually become more and more suited to its environment as helpful mutations arise and spread through the population, while deleterious ones are weeded out. Ultimately, this process produces organisms that are well adapted to their habitats and way of life.

SWITCH-A-ROO: Ah, here is the old switcharoo again. Give an accurate definition of natural selection - but then mix in fantasy. I do hope he gives some examples of helpful mutations that increase the information in the genome that lead to new kinds of features and an overall improvement in the creature. See how well the famed Richard Dawkins addressed that question here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaKryi3605g&t=23s

Let this process continue over some thousands of generations, and your smooth mammoth gets replaced by a shaggy one. And let many different features affect your resistance to cold (for example, body size, amount of fat, and so on), and those features will change concurrently. The process is remarkably simple. It requires only that individuals of a species vary genetically in their ability to survive and reproduce in their environment. Given this, natural selection—and evolution—are inevitable.

SWITCH-A-ROO: Again, he uses a pretty good example of the wooly mammoth. A better example would like a cat or a dog. In fact, breeders "select" for good traits in cats and dogs and they end up coming up with a dog that doesn't shed for example. This is like natural selection (except fast tracked with intelligence - everything works better and faster with intelligence). But can they ever breed a dog into a horse? Of course not. And guess what. That wooly mamal with long hair now does not have the ability to have children with short hair because it has been bred out as an option - in order to specialize for the cold environment. So the ancestors had the ability to have short and long hair, but now the current wooly mammoth can only have long hair. Is that improvement? Is that macro-evolution? Nope. The new animal has less information than its ancestors. Also, have mutations occured? Nope. Just normal genetic variation from mom and dad designed by God to allow animals to survive in a fallen world.

And since many traits can affect an individual’s adaptation to its environment (its “fitness”), natural selection can, over eons, sculpt an animal or plant into something that looks designed.

That's because it is designed.

It’s important to realize, though, that there’s a real difference in what you’d expect to see if organisms were consciously designed rather than if they evolved by natural selection. Natural selection is not a master engineer, but a tinkerer. It doesn’t produce the absolute perfection achievable by a designer starting from scratch, but merely the best it can do with what it has to work with. Mutations for a perfect design may not arise because they are simply too rare.

So God's design is to create "Kinds" of animals that have a lot of variety in their DNA to help them adapt to the envrionment. What a fantastic design. It adds a lot of beauty and practicality to the world as we know it. But what it does not add is new information. The info was already there. I think where he is going is that he is going to point out some scnearios in which creatures aren't perfect and then use that as evidence that nat selection is also not perfect and therefore not part of God's design. I

Likewise for all cases of extinction, which represent well over 99 percent of species that ever lived. (This, by the way, poses an enormous problem for theories of intelligent design (ID). It doesn’t seem so intelligent to design millions of species that are destined to go extinct, and then replace them with other, similar species, most of which will also vanish. ID supporters have never addressed this difficulty.)

Let's start with where the 99% comes from. Currently, it's estimated that there are 8.7 million species on earth. So as far as I can tell to understand where this insane number came from, if you use evolutionary precepts and assume that the earth is billions of years old, and that creatures have been living and dying for that long, you would calculate that there are 100 times more species that must be in the ground somewhere. So the starting assumption is false (at least only as supported by the "evidence" in this book so very weak at best). However, even if it were not, the world we live in is not the perfect creation God made it. It is the result of sin and the fall. Intelligent Design tries to focus on the science of life and the universe and how it fits the profile of design and not randomness. The movement isn't trying to answer religious questions about why something happened in history. However, Creationism is origin science with the Bible as its starting point. The Fall and the Flood as outlined in Genesis explains why God's creation is broken.

Female sea turtles dig their nests on the beach with their flippers—a painful, slow, and clumsy process that exposes their eggs to predators. Having more shovel-like flippers would help them do a better and faster job, but then they couldn’t swim as well.

The author assumes that God created animals with the purpose of being perfect in all ways. If that were true, then He would have had to create more of Himself! This is a short-sighted view. God created animals and creatures for man's benefit. To show evidence for God (Romans 1:20) and for His glory. There are a lot of incredible things about sea turtles. They are not supposed to be as good at digging as, say a mole. Nor are they able to climb trees or fly - which would also be helpful in many situations. Nor can they change colors to blend into their environment - which also would be handy. Can you think of anything on this planet that couldn't have some additional feature that would help it in some way? What a ludicrous argument.

Mutations are changes in traits that already exist;

Uh, no, that's not what mutation is. Mutation is a copying error when DNA is being used to create new proteins. The author again, is trying to confuse the reader to make them think that mutations and the natural changes we see through the reproductive process are the same. They are not. One is designed and results in diverse life (within their kind) and one scrambles the perfect code that God created (mutations). For more on mutations: https://www.thecreationaccount.com/evolution-of-life

they almost never create brand-new features. This means that evolution must build a new species starting with the design of its ancestors.

I'm confused. If evolution is responsible for all of life...how does it almost never create brand-new features? This doesn't make any sense. Maybe it takes a long long time, but it should create new features, right? Weren't the "ancestors" referenced a product evolution?

The testes, however, begin development in the abdomen. When the fetus is six or seven months old, they migrate down into the scrotum through two channels called the inguinal canals, removing them from the damaging heat of the rest of the body. Those canals leave weak spots in the body wall that make men prone to inguinal hernias. These hernias are bad: they can obstruct the intestine, and sometimes caused death in the years before surgery. No intelligent designer would have given us this tortuous testicular journey. We’re stuck with it because we inherited our developmental program for making testes from fishlike ancestors, whose gonads developed, and remained, completely within the abdomen. We begin development with fishlike internal testes, and our testicular descent evolved later, as a clumsy add-on.

This is a typical attack on Creation and ID. For years, the argument that there are "poor designs" and "vestigial organs" that are useless within organisms has been used to support evolution. In 1893 anatomist Robert Wiedersheim listed 180 organs in these categories. Over the last few decades, most, if not all have been proven to have function. I don't personally know about the "testes" argument - and I'm not going to waste my time with it because it's another lame attempt to deter people asking about actual evidence for evolution and not theological arguments about what God would and wouldn't do. Article for more information: https://creation.com/vestigial-arguments-remnants-of-evolution