15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense

Back in 2002, Scientific American published 15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense -- an attempt to rebut "some of the most common "scientific" arguments raised against evolution." Having to refute creationists arguments against evolution isn't a new thing. As SciAm points out, Charles Darwin was similarly challenged in his day by scientists, until evidence from numerous scientific disciplines mounted a bulwark against "creationist nonsense." Today of course, science faces a the challenge of misunderstanding, misinformation and just plain lies. Even the informed is challenged to face the barrage of idiocy.

Here's some help then. 15 common arguments that creationists raise, and answers you could wield to knock them back to the dark ages (let's face it, some will never see the light).

1. Evolution is only a theory. It is not a fact or a scientific law.
2. Natural selection is based on circular reasoning: the fittest are those who survive, and those who survive are deemed fittest.
3. Evolution is unscientific, because it is not testable or falsifiable. It makes claims about events that were not observed and can never be re-created.
4. Increasingly, scientists doubt the truth of evolution.
5. The disagreements among even evolutionary biologists show how little solid science supports evolution.
6. If humans descended from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?
7. Evolution cannot explain how life first appeared on earth.
8. Mathematically, it is inconceivable that anything as complex as a protein, let alone a living cell or a human, could spring up by chance.
9. The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that systems must become more disordered over time. Living cells therefore could not have evolved from inanimate chemicals, and multicellular life could not have evolved from protozoa.
10. Mutations are essential to evolution theory, but mutations can only eliminate traits. They cannot produce new features.
11. Natural selection might explain microevolution, but it cannot explain the origin of new species and higher orders of life.
12. Nobody has ever seen a new species evolve.
13. Evolutionists cannot point to any transitional fossils--creatures that are half reptile and half bird, for instance.
14. Living things have fantastically intricate features--at the anatomical, cellular and molecular levels--that could not function if they were any less complex or sophisticated. The only prudent conclusion is that they are the products of intelligent design, not evolution.
15. Recent discoveries prove that even at the microscopic level, life has a quality of complexity that could not have come about through evolution.