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Section 2 - Problems with Evolution
Before looking at the problems with evolution, two observations should be noted about the nature of scientific theories and their tests.
All theories work on paper. Any scientific theory can be described so that it sounds correct. The reason why a test is needed is because on paper a theory can make any assumptions it needs to make in order to work. Often, these assumptions turn out to be false when the situation is evaluated.
Negative evidence is more important than positive evidence. Supporting evidence of a theory can always be found. Usually, this is why the theory was formulated in the first place. If many examples of supporting evidence are found, but only a few pieces of negative evidence are found, it might seem that the positive examples outweigh the negative.
But evidence does not add up this way. A single piece of strong, negative evidence can destroy a theory. Theories are confirmed not primarily by positive evidence, but by a lack of credible negative evidence. There are a few basic problems with evolution, which we would like to mention:
The theory of evolution can assume that whatever amount of time is needed to evolve existing lifeforms was available. However, massive geological evidence exists that the environment of the Earth has been hospitable to the survival (not to mention the appearance) of life for roughly 4 billion years. That may sound like an eternity, until you start considering what has to have happened in that time. Human DNA alone (leaving aside the other complex structures of the cell) consists of about 3 billion nucleotides of genetic instruction. This means that according to evolution, they must have evolved at an average rate of about 0.75 nucleotides per year (not per generation). If the rate was not constant, then there must have periods when this rate was even faster.
Naturalistic evolution is supposed to happen so: Periodically an individual organism will be formed that has a genetic mutation, an error, in its DNA. Probably, this error will be neutral or detrimental, but it is conceivable that a very rare error will be somehow slightly beneficial. Thus, this individual creature will have a slightly better chance of surviving and procreating than its peers will. If this individual survives and procreates, then over many generations, that slight advantage may slowly spread through the population until it is a permanent part of the species.
Is it even remotely conceivable that the naturalistic process described above could support a rate like 0.75 nucleotides per year? Trillions or quadrillions of years might solve this anomaly, but those timespans utterly dwarf the actual time of 4-5 billion years. Evolution fails this test. There are many subset examples. The whale, which appeared about 10 million years after the first mammal, probably has millions of nucleotides of DNA that have nothing to do with being a simple land mammal, and would have required impossible rates of naturalistic evolution to have acquired them in the time available.