Disprove the Theory of Evolution

I thank Con for his succinct, yet rigorous response to my arguments. In the first round, I put forward this following syllogism: 1. If irreducibly complex structures exist, then evolution is false. 2. Irreducibly complex structures exist. 3. Therefore, evolution is false. My opponent has issued a response to this. There are several reasons wrong with his response. First, he misconstrues the notion of irreducible complexity. If an irreducibly complex biological structure, if it exists, cannot have been produced through evolution. This includes the notion of exaptation, which Con raises. Luskin elucidates: “Behe's definition of irreducible complexity was always intended to test a Darwinian explanation where some function is built up gradually over time -- a direct evolutionary pathway.” [1] Really, if he is taking the position that evolution can provide a path towards irreducible complexity, then he would be affirmed Premise One and denied Premise Two. Second, Con must elucidate why potential pathways towards irreducibly complex systems are viable. Simply saying they are possible is not good enough, for Behe’s argument, as Luskin notes: “a direct Darwinian pathway is effectively falsified by the presence of irreducible complexity, not absolutely falsified. Perhaps indirect routes are possible (in the same way anything is possible), but possible does not mean plausible, or likely.” [2] Behe himself writes: “Even if a system is irreducibly complex (and thus cannot have been produced directly), however, one cannot definitively rule out the possibility of an indirect, circuitous route. As the complexity of an interacting system increases, though, the likelihood of such an indirect route drops precipitously. And as the number of unexplained, irreducibly complex biological systems increases, our confidence that Darwin's criterion of failure has been met skyrockets toward the maximum that science allows.” [3] Third, Con’s explanation for the evolution of the bacterial flagellum merely is a restatement of the argument that it could have evolved from the T3SS, through exaptation as advocated by people like Kenneth Miller, without mentioning the T3SS itself. [4] I have already provided a critique of this argument in Round One, when I justify Premise 2 of my syllogism. Con seems to have completely ignored the justification of Premise 2 of the syllogism I provided. In that justification, I have already more or less already raised my second and third criticism this round. In conclusion, my opponent’s arguments against irreducible complexity have not at all stood up to scrutiny. Con also has criticized my argument for the non-existence of Junk DNA showing that evolution is false. Rather than affirm that most of the genome is mostly Junk DNA, he argues that evolution is perfectly compatible with large (or all) amounts of the human genome having a function. He writes: Evolutionary theory does not necessarily require enormous amounts of DNA to be "junk". In fact, organisms that don't have to waste energy producing junk DNA would have the evolutionary advantage, so this argument would actually go to support the theory of evolution... However, such a view is somewhat misguided. Junk DNA, which also encompasses pseudogenes, is a direct prediction of evolution. Coyne elucidates: “…when a trait is no longer used, or becomes reduced, the genes that make it don’t instantly disappear from the genome: evolution stops their action by inactivating them, not by snipping them out of the DNA. From this we can make a prediction. We expect to find, in the genomes of many species, silenced or ‘dead’ genes.”[5] Second, finding that most of the human genome is functional probabilistically supports design, rather than evolution. According to Fanale Raza: “From a creation model standpoint, the response to this question appears to have two facets. One relates to the functional usefulness of junk DNA sequence elements designed by the Creator. The other acknowledges that some sequences of junk DNA truly are garbage originating through natural process.”[6] Given that evidence suggests that most of the human genome is functional, this would support a design hypothesis. The third argument that I am going to raise against evolution is from its supposed incompatibility with the Cambrian Explosion, which shall be defined, for the purposes of this debate, as the process when nearly all animal phyla first appear in the fossil record, occurring approximately 550 million years ago. According to Gish: “In the Cambrian geological strata there exists a sudden, great outbursts of fossils on a highly developed level of complexity.” [7] However, there is a problem. There virtually no clear evolutionary precursors to ancestors of many the Cambrian phyla! Charles Marshall expands on this: “While the fossil record of the well-skeletonized animal phyla is pretty good, we have virtually no fossils that are unambiguously assignable to the basal stem groups [putative ancestors] of these phyla, the first branches that lie between the last common ancestor of all bilaterians and the last common ancestor of the living representatives of each of the phyla.” [8] It gets worse for the ‘evolutionist.’ The Cambrian explosion occurred in an extraordinarily short space of time! Carroll, for instance, argues that the explosion approx. 5-10 million years to occur. Bowring et.al argue that it is unlikely that the explosion took more than 10 million years to occur. [9] The suddenness of the Cambrian explosion is at odds with Darwinian phyletic gradualism, as the below diagram shows: The rise of such complexity, demands an explanation of how the biological information relevant to the species, has been generated, in (relative to geological time) an extraordinary short space of time. Unless my opponent can give a cogent exposition of how this is so, through evolutionary processes, we can only assume that evolution, in the Neo-Darwinian sense, has been utterly falsified, due to the sheer impossibility of a large amount of biological information arising in such a short period of time. Of course, my opponent will likely have explanations; he may argue that Hox genes can explain the Cambrian Explosion, or that the Cambrian Explosion was not a real event, but before I can say any more, I can only wait for my opponent’s response. Finally, contrary to what Neo-Darwinian evolutionary biology predicts, the Cambrian explosion shows a pattern of “disparity precedes diversity,” meaning that virtually all the phyla were present in the Cambrian period, but display little variation between them. This is unexpected, if one were to affirm that evolution was true. Jim Gibson explains: “This pattern is not merely different from what evolutionary biology predicts, it is the exact opposite of the expected pattern. It should take many small changes to add up to a large difference in the new type of animal, but small differences appear in the fossil record after the large differences…Evolutionary interpretations must explain why no new phyla have been produced since the Cambrian fossils were preserved. This pattern contradicts the expectations of evolutionary theory.” [10]In conclusion, none of my opponent’s criticisms previously stand up to scrutiny. Finally, I would like to reiterate that in order for Con to win this debate, he must refute all three of my arguments; I only have to prove that one succeeds. [1], [2] http://www.evolutionnews.org... [3] Michael Behe, Darwin's Black Box, p. 40 [4] http://www.talkorigins.org... [5] Jerry Coyne,Why Evolution is True, p.71 [6] http://www.reasons.org... [7] http://www.sciohost.org... [8] , [9] http://www.darwinsdilemma.org... [10] http://grisda.wordpress.com...