Creation/Evolution Debate - Part 1

by Peter Bowditch 

In June, 2005, I represented Australian Skeptics in an online debate against the creationists at Answers in Genesis. The debate took place on the Sydney Morning Herald's Webdiary site and was conducted along the lines of a normal spoken debate, but done in writing with each team producing three papers over a week. The first presentation from the side known as "Us" was deliberately written to try to force the other side to argue the scientific case for their position, rather than the religious argument from authority that "God said that this is what happened so this is what must have happened" or the false dilemma fallacy that "Evolution theory is incomplete so it must be wrong so the world is only 6,000 years old".

I would like to thank Dr Paul Willis, Professor Colin Keay, Barry Williams, Eran Segev, Dr Alex Ritchie, Dr Eugenie Scott, Dr Ken Smith, Martin Hadley and the proofreaders in my family for making suggestions about what should be written and then for making sure that what was written was sensible and accurate.

I would also like to thank Answers in Genesis for their participation and for permission to reproduce their three formal statements.

Both presentations were loaded up to the Webdiary site simultaneously and neither side saw what the other had written until publication.

Second statements | Third statements

Did the universe and life evolve, or was it specially created in 6 days?

Australian Skeptics statement

The question we have been asked to address here could have the simple answer of “Yes”, because the two options are not mutually exclusive. It is quite possible that the universe and life came to where they are today by a multi-billion-year process of evolution following a six-day big bang, but taking this position leaves us nothing to talk about.

This debate then is really about the evidence for two of the many possible scenarios about the origin of what we see around us today. I will call these the Creationist view and the Scientific view. I will repeat that these are only two of many possibilities. Refuting one does not automatically make the other one correct, so what is required is to evaluate the evidence for both and to compare the bodies of evidence to see which more accurately describes reality and accords with what else is known about how the universe works.

Before going on to discuss these two world views, I would like to say what is necessary to turn a hypothesis into a scientific theory. Science requires that any assertion must meet three criteria:

• Testability – This really means that the claims make predictions which can be tested for validity, either by direct experiment or by observation of regularities in what has happened in the past. “Observation” can be indirect or by inference – nobody alive today has ever seen an electron or an ice sheet covering Europe, but the theories about both result in testable predictions.
• Falsifiability – It must be possible to imagine the sort of observation or experimental result which would result in the theory being shown to be false. It is possible, for example, to imagine that under certain circumstances an increase in pressure lowers the boiling point of water. That no such observation has been made does not of itself make the relevant physics theories correct or valid, but the recognition of the possibility allows the theories to be a part of science.
• Corrigibility – Science does not claim absolute truth or complete knowledge, and any theory accepted as being scientific must allow for correction and modification as knowledge is extended and new information becomes available. This allowance must go as far as abandoning a theory completely if subsequent research shows that the observations it was based on were illusory or that the methodology used to investigate it was flawed. Newton’s calculations about gravity are perfectly useful for everyday use, or even for navigating spacecraft to distant planets, but Einstein extended the theory to interactions between objects further towards the ends of the mass scale. Lord Kelvin’s work on thermodynamics has been refined over the years as better measuring equipment and calculating power has become available, but his theories about the age of the Earth (which he corrected himself over the years as better data became available) were discarded completely when radioactive decay was identified as the mechanism maintaining core temperature..

Creationism makes the following claims, among others:

• The universe and everything in it was created somewhere between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago.
• The process of creation took place over six twenty-four hour days.
• The sequence of creation was (Genesis 1):

1. Pre-existing water
2. Light and darkness
3. Heaven as distinct from water
4. Dry land and oceans
5. Plant life
6. The sun, moon and stars
7. Fish, whales and birds
8. Land animals
9. Man and woman

• Except when the order of creation was (Genesis 2):

1. The earth and the heavens
2. Man
3. Plant life
4. Animal life
5. Woman

• There was a world-wide flood about 4,500 years ago

• In this flood, all human, plant and animal life was destroyed except for eight people and the plants and animals which they had managed to load onto a boat and keep alive for just over a year
• All humans on Earth today are descendants of those eight people
• All animals and plants on Earth today are descended from the occupants of the boat
• All geological formations seen today were laid down during the eight to ten months of the flood

I will leave it up to the opposing side to provide evidence for these claims, and to say how they can be tested, the sort of evidence which would indicate that they may be false, and what action would be taken to correct or adjust them in the light of additional evidence.

The scientific position makes the following claims, again among others:

• According to the latest research, the universe is about 13.7 billion years old. The conditions and events which initially brought the universe into being are unknown at this time, but not necessarily unknowable
• The Earth is approximately 4.5 billion years old
• There are certain rules, processes and constant values which operate across space and apply throughout the universe
• Apart from an extremely tiny period of time following the universe coming into existence, there are certain rules, processes and constant values which operate across time, so that some observations made now have applied to the universe since it began and some conditions of the new universe still apply today
• Self-replicating molecules first appeared on the Earth about 3.5 billion years ago
• All life on Earth is descended from these molecules, although there may have been many originations at different times and in different places
• The enormous variety of life forms on the planet is the result of a very long process of trial and error, with many dead ends and many (but fewer) successes
• Every living organism today, be it plant, animal, fish, bacteria or whatever, has a long line of ancestors who all have one thing in common, and that is that they were able to produce viable offspring which themselves lived long enough to reproduce

None of the above claims is derived from guesswork or wishful thinking or divine fiat. All are based on the principle of Occam’s Razor, that is, they reflect the best interpretation of available data and observations. They are what fits the evidence.

The scientific evidence for evolution does not come from just one source, but is derived from research in many fields of science. Some areas of science are so tightly wedded to the principle that they would cease to exist if the creationists are right. It has been said that evolution is the most important theory in all of science, simply because of its pervasiveness and what would have to be thrown away if it were wrong.

Here are just some of the sciences affected and the evidence they produce:

• Biology – All living matter on Earth shares a common method of coding for the design of the organism and for producing chemicals needed for the organism to survive in its environment. Everything has genes, genes are made of DNA, and genes are shared widely across the spectrum of organisms. Humans share 98% of their genetic coding with chimpanzees, our closest relatives, but we also share a not insignificant proportion of our genes with tomatoes.
• Geology – The physical world we see today has been produced through a long and often repeated process of vulcanism, glaciation, tectonics, erosion, sedimentation and other processes. There are reliable ways of dating both the age and the sequence of historical events.
• Palaeontology – The age and sequence of fossils support both evolution of species and the great age of the Earth
• Anthropology – There has been continuous human occupation of some locations for more than 40,000 years and evidence of the development of modern humans from ancestors hundred of thousands of years in the past.
• Nuclear physics – The mixture of isotopes in rocks and the known decay rates of radioactive elements indicate rocks of a great age.
• Cosmology and astronomy – The universe is a very big place and the edges are a very long way away.

One of the criticisms levelled against evolution is that it is “only a theory”. This criticism is disingenuous for two reasons. First, the word “theory” has a specific meaning with a scientific context and it means an idea which has enough evidence to support it such that rejection would require not just philosophical arguments but disconfirming evidence. Second, it is a straw man argument. Science is always a work in progress. The fact that the theory of evolution cannot provide absolute answers to all questions about the origins of life does not invalidate the theory any more than the fact that research has not yet uncovered a cure for cancer invalidates medicine or the fact that oil companies drill dry holes invalidates geology. The world-wide scientific community exists just because there are unanswered questions. That is what science is and is for. Science does not have a book which states absolute truths - if it did it would be religion, not science.

All science expects of a theory is that it be testable, falsifiable and corrigible. The theory of evolution is all three. Creationism is none of the three. The evidence for evolution is overwhelming. The evidence for special creation is non-existent.

Answers in Genesis statement

Schools, universities, and the media assert that all life is the result of billions of years of evolution - i.e., no Creator was involved or necessary. Creationists who take Genesis as Jesus Christ did, i.e. literal history, and claim the universe was created in six days around 6,000 years ago, are derisively dismissed as being (at the very least stupid; or unthinking; or blindly ignoring facts. But this doesn't stand up in the light of the many highly-qualified creationists awarded PhDs and other science-based degrees from highly-regarded universities. Their views on the origin of life, age of the earth, etc., are usually dismissively (and often emotively) ridiculed without careful consideration. So we appreciate this opportunity to at least present a brief case.

A very different starting point

The idea that science is just a bunch of facts that speak for themselves is not taken seriously anymore by modern philosophers of science. Facts always have to be interpreted within a framework paradigm), which is built upon starting assumptions (unprovable beliefs). Because the past is not accessible to direct observation or experiment, historical science (e.g. paleontology) is severely limited compared to operational (experimental)science which has given science its deserved reputation for public benefit in e.g. transport, communication, health, etc. Both creationists and evolutionists have the same facts (though unfortunately it is always possible for inconvenient ones to be ignored), but different assumptions.

Today'ss dominant paradigm is built upon the unstated assumption that any action by the miracle-working Creator God of the Bible must be excluded from even the definition of science, regardless how the facts might fit (that would have been news to the creationist founders of modern science, like Newton). Modern historical geology was built on philosophical assumptions which excluded the biblical notion of a recent global watery catastrophe - by definition, rather than observation.

Aware of the impossibility of knowing the past with certainty without an eyewitness historical account - which is what the Bible claims to be - a Bible-believing scientist starts with an alternative set of beliefs. They would argue that if you start from the assumption that our Creator really has spoken through His prophets (Hebrews 1:1; 2 Timothy 3:16) then what we see around us ought to fit with what the Bible says about how it all got here. And it does.

Evidence for the Creator God of the Bible

1. Natural law

The Laws of Thermodynamics are the most fundamental laws of the physical sciences.

1st Law: The total amount of mass-energy in the universe is constant. 2nd Law: The amount of energy available for work is running out, or entropy is increasing to a maximum.

This means the universe cannot have existed forever, otherwise it would already have exhausted all usable energy. The 2nd Law implies that no natural process can increase the total available energy of (i.e. 'wind up') the universe. So it must have been 'wound up'; (high available energy) by a Creator 'outside' (and greater than) the universe.

2. Life itself

The evolutionary world view must explain the origin of first life, for evolution to even start. So materialists have faith that life began from non-living chemicals ('chemical evolution'), then try to find evidence for it. Yet observational science shows that life arises only from life (the law of biogenesis), with no known exception. Even the simplest life needs much elaborate machinery, including the ATPase electromotor, to use energy and make copies of itself. Since natural selection involves differential reproduction, it cannot be responsible for the first self-reproducing cell. There are vast hurdles for non-living chemicals to overcome to form life, because real chemistry works in the opposite direction. Interestingly, the world's leading atheistic philosopher, Antony Flew, abandoned atheism last year - one major reason was that Darwinian evolution presupposes an entity "which already possessed reproductive powers", yet every discovery of molecular biology underlines the impossibility of such an entity arising spontaneously.

3. Biological changes

Observed changes in living things head in the wrong direction to support evolution from microbe to man (macro-evolution).

Textbook examples of adaptation by natural selection (first described by the creationist Edward Blyth, pre-Darwin) always involve loss of genetic information. Mosquitoes may adapt to a DDT-containing environment by becoming resistant, because some already have the genes for DDT resistance. But overall the population loses genetic information (any genes not present in the resistant ones are eradicated from the population, since the non-resistant mosquitoes killed by DDT cannot pass on genes).

Information science leads us to expect that random changes during the transmission of information (e.g. reproduction) would generate 'noise' and degrade the information. A vast number of experiments and observations show that this is overwhelmingly what mutations (genetic copying mistakes) do - the opposite of what evolutionary belief requires.

Mutations cause several thousand human diseases. Even where a mutation is beneficial (e.g. wingless beetles on windy islands) biological complexity is virtually always destroyed, not increased.

This observed downhill trend of heritable changes in living things (mutations, selection, adaptation - even to the extent of speciation - and extinction) is consistent with the concept of original created gene pools - with high initial variety - being depleted since. To suggest that the informationally downhill 'micro' changes one observes (routinely but erroneously used as 'proofs of evolution') can accumulate over time to give the required (uphill) changes for microbe-to-man evolution is like a businessman arguing that many small losses will produce a profit, given time. The observed changes do, however, fit a Creation/Fall model well.

4. Fossils

Although Darwin expected vast numbers of transitional fossils to be found, only a handful of disputable ones are cited. While it is always possible to maintain faith in evolution by postulating unobservable mechanisms, the systematic paucity of the anticipated evolutionary 'links' on a global scale is powerful, positive evidence for biblical creation.

5. The age of things

The evidence for a 'young' earth/universe is, by definition, evidence for biblical creation, because naturalistic evolution, even if possible, would require eons. There is much evidence consistent with a relatively young age of the universe, such as the decay of the earth's magnetic field, including rapid paleomagnetic reversals; fragile organic molecules in fossils supposedly many millions of years old; too much helium in deep zircons; not enough salt in the sea; carbon-14 in coal and oil supposedly many millions of years old; polystrate fossils that extend through strata supposedly representing many millions of years; inter-tonguing of non-sequential geological strata; the small number of supernova remnants; magnetic fields on 'cold' planets; and much more see What about carbon dating?).

Elapsed time extending back beyond one’s own lifetime cannot be directly measured, so all arguments for either a long or a short age are necessarily indirect and must depend on the assumptions on which they are inevitably based.

Young-earth arguments make sense of the fact that many fossils show well-preserved soft parts. This requires rapid deposition and rapid hardening of the encasing sediment. Observations of e.g. multiple geologic strata and canyons forming rapidly under catastrophic conditions in recent times indicate that the entrenched slow-and-gradual, vast-age thinking may well be markedly in error.

6. Cultural-anthropological evidence

Hundreds of traditions about a global Flood, each with features in common with the biblical account, are known from indigenous peoples around the world. These provide evidence of the reality of that account. Molecular evidence has revealed a previously unrealized genetic closeness among all the 'races'; of people (see How did all the different 'races'; arise?), consistent with a recent origin from a small population source. This denies the previously widely held (and racism-fostering) belief that human races evolved their characteristic features during long periods of separate 'evolution';

7. Design and complexity

Incredibly complex coordinated biological systems are known in which no conceivable part-coordinated, part-functioning, simpler arrangement would be other than a liability. Some examples are the blood-clotting cascade, the avian lung with countercurrent exchange, the photosynthetic apparatus, and the metamorphosis of caterpillars to butterflies. Examples abound in living things.

The immense complexity of the human brain—its consciousness, creativity and power of abstract reasoning, with capacities vastly beyond that required for sheer survival, is perhaps the most 'obvious' evidence for intelligent creation.

We have seen that life is characterized by incredibly complex information-bearing (programmed) systems. No spontaneous physico-chemical process is known which could have generated such programs in the first place without outside intelligence. And as information is transmitted, it is overwhelmingly observed to degrade, not build up.

The most reasonable inference from such observations is that outside intelligence (vastly surpassing humanity’s) was responsible for an immense original store of biological information in the form of created populations of fully functioning organisms. Again, this is powerfully consistent with the Genesis creation account.

A challenge for Skeptics:

Since the 'big picture' of the evidence in the world today fits so consistently with the Bible’s account of our origins, what tangible basis is there for anyone to reject the claim that there is indeed a Creator who has spoken by His prophets in the Bible?

(Note: The statement above originally included many links to information on the Answers in Genesis web site. Please see that site for expansion and clarification of the argument.)