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“Evolution a ‘theory in crisis’.”
The title of a joke book by a man called Michael Denton, who subsequently contradicted himself in a later book.
Stuart
“Universe is fine-tuned for life.”
“Being surprised at the fact that the universe is fine tuned for life
is akin to a puddle being surprised at how well it fits its hole“-Douglas Adams
Stuart
“Transitional Fossils / gaps in the fossil record”
Creationist claim: There are no transitional fossils. Evolution predicts a continuum between each fossil organism and its ancestors. Instead, we see systematic gaps in the fossil record.
Talkorigins gives more evidence than would ever be needed to debunk this creationist canard:
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC200.html
…second line covered…
Stuart
“Teach the controversy / let the children decide”
This one just calls for reference to the Wedge Documentthat outlines a monumentally ham-fisted attempt to slip creationism into science classes as part of some grand moronic plan to force Judeo-christian fantasy stories on people at the taxpayers’ expense, and against the principles of separation of church and state in the US, where its principle promoters live.
Maybe since the scientists in the tertiary institutions have laughed off creationism in all its forms, we can try it on children instead, they thought. Very brave.
Stuart
“Micro not Macro Evolution”
There is no difference, except in the mind of a creationist. There is just evolution. The disproof is in the difficulty of defining the term “species” in some cases.
Stuart
“Random / chance”
Random mutations provide the variation from which non-random natural selection selects. It is a creationist strawman argument to describe evolution as completely down to chance, when it isn't.
Stuart
Quote (Stu @ May 28 2012,21:22) “Quote mine Darwin” Richard Dawkins again.
Stuart
We don't believe him, Stuart.God bless
Ed J (Joshua 22:34)
http://www.holycitybiblecode.org“Newton (or other eminent scientist) a creationist / religious”
This is the Argument from authority,, an amateur mistake and a logical fallacy.
Stuart
“Confuse evolution with abiogenesis”
This page at Talk Origins gives some definitions of evolution that are not creationist strawmen. For example:
“Evolution is a process that results in heritable changes in a population spread over many generations. “
“In fact, evolution can be precisely defined as any change in the frequency of alleles within a gene pool from one generation to the next.”
Also listed are examples of definitions from dictionaries that are not accurate, including this from the Oxford Concise Science Dictionary:
“evolution: The gradual process by which the present diversity of plant and animal life arose from the earliest and most primitive organisms, which is believed to have been continuing for the past 3000 million years.”
Evolution certainly is not abiogenesis, as many creationists dishonestly seek to imply. There is no scientific theory of the origins of life, although there are many plausible models. On the other hand, after the point at which we have a biological population on which natural selection can work, the diversity life is explained by Darwin's theory.
Stuart
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