Evolution Makes More Sense Than Creation

I’ll start off by summarising my opponents opposition to Evolution and Cosmology. 1) Science, Cosmology and Evolution, only answers how, and does not answer why. 2) The watchmaker analogy, but with an iPhone. 3) Creationism and Evolution are just unprovable theories. 4) We cannot observe the big bang, or evolution. “Why” is a wonderful scientific question. I suspect the reason for the abuse of the word why is rooted in the dismissive hypocritical response Richard Dawkins, and people like him, give when confronted with it[1]. All of science is rooted in that simple question of “Why”. It was Darwin who asked the simple question of “Why do all these finches have different beaks? ” that lead to the Theory of Evolution. Just because Cosmology, and Evolution are good descriptions of how things are does not exclude them from being a part of the answer to “Why we’re here? ”. Good examples would be “Why do we have five fingers? ”, or “Why does the Earth orbit the Sun? ”. Those are both good, and valid, questions for an Evolutionary Biologist, and a Cosmologist respectively. As much as Science is unable to answer the Leibniz’s Philosophical questions of “Why is there something rather than nothing? ” Creationists are at a loss to answer it as well. To phrase it another way. Why is there a God rather than nothing? I’ll warn you now. Dismissing the question with God “just is”, and is “supernatural” would be no less hypocritical, or ironic than Richard Dawkins dismissing “Why do we exist? ”. The only truthful answer to it is that we don’t know at this point in time, and as long as there are unanswered questions Science continues in the pursuit of those answers. Your analogy using iPhone is just a rephrased version of the watchmaker analogy. It’s interesting that you’d use it because it’s a bit ironic. In order to understand the flaws you would have to understand the prerequisite for Biological Evolution. In order for Biological Evolution to occur an organism must be able to self replicate, and occasionally change between generations. For some organisms this self replication is called Sexual Reproduction, and requires a minimum of two parents. For others, Asexual reproduction can occur where there is only one parent like in the case of bacteria. It should be obvious at this point the primary problem with your analogy. If you put two, or any combination of, iPhones in a box you’ll never get them to reproduce a new iPhone. The irony of your claim that iPhones didn’t evolve is that they did evolve[2]. It’s called the evolution of technology. iPhones may not be able to reproduce on their own like biological organism, but they are reproduced by us. Each time the design is modified and sent to the market sales figures help determine which traits survive for the next generation of phone. This may sound like a good argument for Intelligent Design, but that would neglect biological sexual, and asexual reproduction as the primary method for biological reproduction. It’s odd that you would claim that the Big Bang is an unobservable event. Unless you’re going for a deeper philosophical definition of observable there is a problem with your claim. When I observe a pen fall what I observe is the light reflected off of the pen. Because light does not move instantly the light is only a reflection of the past state of the pen. Because the Universe is so huge the big bang is still be observable. The earliest observable part happens to be the MBR, Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, which is used to date the age of the Universe. We can even see the earliest formed galaxies with the hubble telescope[3]. What is unobservable is anything prior to the big bang. This is all possible because the speed of light is not instant. YEC, Young Earth Creationism, is a falsified hypothesis. I asked that you narrows which Creationism you were going to argue for your own good. When you made the claim that Biblical Creation could have happened in any period of time you contradicted the YEC claim. YEC claims that the earth and the whole of creation was created in 6 literal 24 hour periods[4]. They also claim that the earth and all of creation is only 5 to 10 thousand years old. Your particular argument falls under Day-Age, or Gap Creationism[5], and not YEC. I would suggest you read some works by Ronald Numbers because he’s the leading historian on all versions of Creationism. Your claim that Evolution cannot be observed is also false. If you had stayed focused on the past you might have been able to play a semantics word game, or a deep philosophical debate about the nature of reality, but you dragged in the present into this. To name a few of the organisms that have been seen evolving: the peppered moth, three-toed skinks, italian wall lizards, cane toads, and lets not to leave out all those nasty hospital thriving bacteria[6]. I find the three-toed skinks to be the most interesting because it’s a lizard evolving the ability to give live birth[7]. Arguing the evolution of the past can be a bit tricky because of the fuzziness of the fossil record, but the present is another story. As a programmer, my favorite demonstration of evolution isn’t biological evolution. You simply take the rules for biological evolution, and apply them to computer program. This is called a Genetic Algorithm, and when applied to Artificial Life it gives us a way to watch evolution on fast forward. My personal examples are probably far too complex to understand in a short period of time, but HSW has an excellent example that you can run yourself[8]. In as little as ten generations you’ll see an artificial life form go from hardly being able to move to zipping around eating all the food it can in its little world. Big Bang Cosmology, and Evolutionary Theory are Scientific Theories because they are observable, and have falsifiable tests to their claims. Falsifiable meaning that if a test of a claim came back negative the Theory would be proven false. Creationism, on the other hand, is cluttered with falsified claims, and claims about the supernatural that are unfalsifiable. Falsified meaning that they had a test to their claim, ie the age of the Earth, and were proven false. Unfalsifiable meaning that no test exists that could be done to falsify it. Thank you for your patients. [1]. http://youtu.be... [2]. http://money.cnn.com... [3]. http://www.firstgalaxies.org... [4]. http://www.missinglinkthemovie.com... [5]. http://blogs.agu.org... [6]. http://listverse.com... [7]. http://news.nationalgeographic.com... [8]. http://math.hws.edu...