The purpose of this article is to be an introduction to the ideas and reasoning that oppose the theory of evolution, and also to the evolutionist dogma that has been implanted in our society and in the scientific community that there is no valid, logical evidence against evolution. My intent is to inspire the reader to further and more in-depth research, as there are already many resources available that are fare more extensive than I am able to make this article.

Before deciding on evolution's validity, we must understand its claims. According to evolution theory, life began billions of years ago when Earth's environment started to become rich with the chemicals that form the building blocks of life. Over long periods of time, more and more complex organic molecules began to form in nature, eventually culminating in the first single-celled organisms. Over the billions of years to follow, these organisms gave rise to more and more complex life forms, eventually resulting in man and all the biodiversity we see in our world today. This biological advancement took place, supposedly, because once in a great while an organism would have an offspring with a genetic mutation that gave it some new ability that made it more likely to survive and reproduce than the rest of its species. This process is called natural selection, or "survival of the fittest" - organisms with more advantageous genetic traits would thrive, while organisms without them would eventually die out, causing life forms in general to become more and more advanced over many generations as favorable mutations accumulated.

The problem comes when this theory is closely examined, and the details of its workings are dissected. While evolutionists claim this theory is supported by "overwhelming observational evidence", it turns out to be much more like "overwhelming unsupported assumption". Many of the basic processes required for evolution rest solely on unproven or unprovable assumptions and theoretical processes that fall apart upon close examination.

Darwinian evolution offers a theory on how species could have changed and become more advanced and complex, but perhaps the biggest question that evolution philosophy has to answer is that of how life arose in the first place from non-living material (a process known as abiogenesis). If all life forms can trace their lineage back to a single original organism, it must be asked where that organism came from.

Although they're loath to admit it to their creationist opponents, evolutionist scientists know that it's not rational to say that the molecules in a puddle of primordial ooze randomly mixed together to form the first living cell. The theory is that there must be some unknown force of nature that favors the formation and assembly of the building blocks of life under the right conditions (coupled with lots and lots of time). In the 1950s, the Miller-Urey experiments attempted to uncover this force. In addition, there are two basic types of amino acids: left-handed and right-handed, so named because of their molecular structure. The Miller-Urey experiments produced a mixture of both left- and right-handed amino acids. But what many Miller-Urey cheerleaders fail to divulge is that life is made entirely of left-handed amino acids - the left- and right-handed mixture produced in the experiments would never have formed the proteins used in living cells ⁽¹⁰⁾.

In these experiments, scientists replicated what they thought the atmosphere of primordial Earth was like in a test environment, and added an electric spark to simulate the effects of lightening interacting with chemicals in the atmosphere over time. The result was that 13 out of the 22 amino acids that make up the proteins in living cells were (supposedly) formed ⁽¹⁾. The problem here, of course, is that producing a hand full of the amino acids necessary for life is a far cry from producing a living cell from non-living material in the lab. Where are the rest of the amino acids you need to make the proteins found in living cells? And where is the natural process that, once these amino acids are formed, assembles them into proteins, and the proteins into the organelles and other components of a cell, and those components into a whole cell? Claiming this experiment proves abiogenesis is like saying "we've found natural processes that produce rock and iron, and that proves the natural formation of sky-scrapers with no intelligent builders".

This experiment, however, has been proffered as irrefutable proof of evolution in science classrooms for decades. "But evolution has been experimentally verified!" evolutionists have told me, referring to Miller-Urey. The dogma surrounding the Miller-Urey experiments is yet another example of the wide-scale acceptance of evolution being based mostly on popular misconception. Even in the scientific community, there is much doubt over the validity of the these experiments, because some scientists' idea of what Earth's atmosphere would have been like billions of years ago is drastically different than the atmosphere simulated in the Miller-Urey experiments, and would have been far more hostile to the formation of life as we know it⁽²⁾.

If there is no evidence of a force of nature that favors the formation of life, then we must ask what exactly the chances are that life arose out of non-living "primordial soup", so that evolution could begin it's magic. The excellent article Can Natural Processes Explain the Origin of Life? gives numbers calculated by scientists from several different fields. First, keep in mind that anything with a chance of less than 1 x 10^-50 is considered to be statistically impossible, an event that would never happen. So what are the chances that an average-sized protein would form by itself out of amino acids in nature? 4.9 x 10^-191, which is far, far beyond the "impossible" boundary. But that's just one protein - not an entire DNA strand, and certainly not an entire living cell. What are the chances of a living cell just happening to cobble itself together out of a soup of amino acids? Why, that would be 1 x 10^-40,000, a probability which, according to the article, "could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup". Some evolutionists try to move the location of abiogenesis into the oceans and out of the problematic atmosphere. This also doesn't work, as water tends to break apart amino acids (in a process known as hydrolysis), not cause them to form ⁽¹⁰⁾.

In addition to the mathematical impossibility of life arising from non-living material, the article points out that it is chemically impossible for the building blocks of life to arrange themselves into living matter in the natural environment. Firstly, if there was oxygen in the primordial atmosphere, it would have destroyed any organic molecules that had (somehow, miraculously) formed. So, evolutionists claim that the early atmosphere had no oxygen - despite the fact that there is no physical evidence to support that claim. But even if you go with that unproven assumption, you run into the problem that if there was no oxygen, then there would have been no ozone layer (ozone is an oxygen molecule). In this case, the ultraviolet rays of the sun would have killed any simple life that arose on the earth. So basically, the presence of oxygen means no abiogenesis. And also, the absence of oxygen means no abiogenesis.

The basic process that drives Darwinian evolution is Natural Selection, a.k.a. Survival of the Fittest. The idea is that once an organism has gained a beneficial new trait (such as an ability to better evade predators or better catch prey), that organism is much more likely to survive and reproduce than its competing life forms. The less-well-adapted life forms cannot compete, leaving the more advanced organisms to become abundant. There is nothing wrong with this idea itself, and indeed this "micro-evolution" can be seen in nature (though not nearly to the extent desired by evolutionists). The problem comes when we try to use micro-evolution to explain "mega-evolution", or the changing of one type of life form into a completely different type of life form (for instance, reptiles evolving into birds).

The first big hurdle is that, in order for natural selection to take place, some change in an organism must have already taken place through random mutation. "Evolution isn't based on random mutation," evolutionists have chided me, "it's based on natural selection!" But in the question of the plausibility of evolutionary change, natural selection is completely irrelevant, because natural selection cannot even take place until evolutionary changes have already occurred by random mutation. The question then is not just "Is this change beneficial enough to give this life form a greater chance of surviving?", but also "Is it logical to think this change ever could have occurred naturally?". This is where evolution theory starts to break down… actually, it's more like spin out, hit the rail, and burst into flame. The kinds of changes necessary to turn fish into amphibians, reptiles into birds, and hominids into men - no matter how advantageous these changes would have been to their respective species - are completely beyond the bounds of believability, let alone proven fact.

The odds of a single mutation taking place (that is, a mistake in the copying of a piece of DNA) is about 1 in 10,000,000 (10⁷) duplications^[9]. In order for some feature of a species to undergo a radical, evolutionary change, there must be not just mutations, but mutations in genes that are related to each other with respect to that feature. So what are the odds of two mutations that are related to each other? To determine that, you multiply the probabilities for each individual mutation. So for two mutations, that's one in 10⁷ x 10⁷ = 10¹⁴. Three mutations? One in 10⁷ x 10⁷ x 10⁷ = 10²¹. Four mutations works out to one in 10²⁸. That's one chance in one followed by 28 zeros! And that's just for four related mutations, which certainly isn't nearly enough to explain one feature changing into a completely different feature, such as fins and flippers turning into legs and arms.

Let's examine, for further example, how reptiles supposedly evolved into birds. Are we to believe that a lizard laid an egg one day, and a bird hatched out? Certainly not… that's too unfathomable of a random mutation even for evolutionists to believe. Evolution would have us believe that the mutations that could change reptiles into birds happened gradually, one at a time, over thousands or millions of years. So, perhaps what happened is that one day a lizard laid an egg and its offspring simply had feathers instead of scales. But feathers themselves are incredibly complex, highly specialized structures - still far too complex to have randomly mutated into existence all at once. Let's reduce it even further: perhaps one day a lizard laid an egg, and its offspring had just feather stalks instead of fully developed feathers in place of its scales. Allowing for the sake of argument that it's logical to think this mutation would ever happen (it isn't), we must now ask what evolutionary advantage it poses to this organism. What advantage does a lizard with feather stalks have? None. What is the reptile going to do with feather stalks covering its skin? Probably pluck them out! What is it not going to do with feather stalks covering its skin? Attract mates. This mutation is far too fractional to ever be "naturally selected". It wouldn't last long enough to form the foundation for any further mutations that could accumulate into truly beneficial new features for the species. And all of this is on top of still being astronomically improbable in the first place!

The most important thing to note about mutations is that they cannot add new genetic information to a species. Mutations, even the rare beneficial ones, can delete genetic information (such as in species of cave fish who have lost their eyes, which are useless in the darkness), or can duplicate information (such as a calf born with a useless set of extra legs), but a mistake in the copying of DNA cannot somehow insert additional genes that have never been there at all. This means that a species cannot develop a totally new feature that was never a part of its genetic history. Fish could not grow lungs, reptiles couldn't grow feathers, and dumb animals couldn't grow entirely new brain sections that granted the intelligence and self-awareness that are distinctive of man.

Ask almost any evolution believer (not necessarily actual scientists, just your average Joe-descended-from-monkeys) for solid, scientific proof that life is as old as evolution claims, and his answer will be: "Carbon dating! Carbon dating has been used to accurately date fossils of pre-historic life to millions of years old." I can't tell you how many times I've heard evolutionists make this claim.

Carbon dating works like this^[4]:

• In the upper atmosphere, as cosmic rays collide with nitrogen atoms, a certain element called carbon-14 (¹⁴C)^[5] is formed.
• Since this element is in the atmosphere, and all living things take in gasses from the atmosphere (directly or indirectly), all living things have a certain amount of ¹⁴C in them.
• ¹⁴C decays through radioactivity at a known rate. When living things die, they stop taking in ¹⁴C, and so the amount of ¹⁴C in their remains decreases at a certain rate.
• You can compare the amount of ¹⁴C remaining in biological matter to the amount that living things have in them to determine how long ago something died.

You claim to have done research, and even attempt to cite your sources; however, your information on evolution and its postulations is sorely lacking. You are no different than Michael Moore who takes half-truths and spins them to portray anything he wants them to. Having dealt with your kind before, I know it is futile to try and point out the flaws in your arguments about evolution, as you people always find ways to explain away the glaring scientific evidence logical thinkers produce. Instead I would like to send you out to research another topic: I challenge you to go out and research carbon dating, and find and post on your website the closest thing to irrefutable evidence that carbon dating is inaccurate and unreliable. Carbon dating has been used to accurately date biological matter to hundreds of thousands of years and more, handily disproving the Creationist theory that Earth has only existed for a few thousand years. I'd like to see some solid evidence, not wild accusations.

Even when carbon dating says that a life form is tens of thousands of years old, a fundamental flaw remains: carbon dating is based on unprovable assumptions. Carbon dating assumes that we know how much ¹⁴C life forms had in them when they were alive in the unobservable past. We can't just assume they had the same level of ¹⁴C that they do today, either, because the amount of ¹⁴C being produced is changed considerably by shifts in the Earth's magnetic field, volcanoes, widespread use of fossil fuels, atomic weapons testing, and changes in the upper atmosphere or the Sun. Scientists have tried to calibrate the carbon dating scale to account for the changing levels of ¹⁴C production over the millennia, but outside of calibrating by recorded historical events, these calibration methods are again based on many assumptions and allowances for discrepancies. (One of these methods is dendrochronology. See this page for a description of this practice and why its validity is quite questionable.) The simple truth is that we have no way to know with assured accuracy how much ¹⁴C life forms had in them in the unobservable past, and thus no way to know if the dates given by carbon dating are anywhere near accurate.

One event that would have had a huge impact on ¹⁴C levels was the Great Flood described in Genesis. Creationist scientists think that the atmosphere was far better at blocking cosmic rays before the Flood than it is today, which means that far less ¹⁴C would have been produced before the Flood. This would make life forms that lived before the Flood appear far older than they really are by carbon dating. (And of course evolutionist scientists don't factor the Flood into their carbon dating calibration assumptions.)

While it can't be proven that carbon dating is accurate, it can quite easily be proven that it is inaccurate. There are many recorded instances where carbon dating has given very widely varying dates on the same specimen. For instance, carbon dating one part of a baby mammoth discovered in 1977 yielded a date of 40,000 Radio Carbon Years (RCY); carbon dating another part of the same animal yielded 26,000 RCY; and some wood found around the mammoth was dated to 10,000 RCY ^[6]. Also, substantial amounts of ¹⁴C are often found in fossils supposed to be millions of years old; remember that there shouldn't be significant amounts in anything older than about 60,000 years. Even coal, which is supposed to have been formed by decomposition of organic matter that died up to millions of years ago, still has ¹⁴C in it^[7].

Other methods are used to date rocks, such as argon-argon dating^[8]. (The age of rocks is in turn used to date fossils found in those rocks when the fossils themselves are supposed to be "too old" to date by carbon dating.) We know how long it takes certain isotopes to radioactively decay into certain other isotopes, which then decay into other isotopes, and so on in a chain. Supposedly, then, we can look at what isotopes are present in a rock, and determine how long it's been since the rock solidified and was at the "top" of the radioactive decay chain. But this assumes we know, for instance, that only the "top" isotope was in the rock when it formed, and none of the isotopes that come later in the chain were present at formation or added later from some outside source. Just like carbon dating, these dating methods are based completely on unprovable assumptions.

For decades, evolution has been touted as being scientific fact, proven beyond any reasonable question by solid evidence. And that is exactly how any evolution believer will defend his beliefs. The most common argument trotted out against their creationist opponents is that “virtually all scientists believe it, so it must be true”. But as we have seen, prying into the science and logic underlying the actual events that must have occurred if Darwinian evolution really created all the life on Earth today reveals that the “overwhelming evidence” is little more than a house of cards, a collection of wild assumptions buried under lots and lots of good public relations.

Evolution is a faith – an atheistic world view that requires belief in the unproven and extremely improbable. Evolution was dreamed up by men in the 19th century who had no knowledge of genetics. As our knowledge of genetics and cellular biology improved, the more outlandish the claims of biological evolution had to become to explain the astounding complexity and marvelous design of life. The most basic claim of “proof” of evolution is still that we can see similarities between species, living or extinct, that seem to form “steps” of progression. But this is no real kind of evidence. You can point out the similarities between various species and the supposed progression of complexity in the fossil record all day long, but you still need some logical way in which one species could transform into another in the natural world. This is where evolution theory falls flat on its face. And in science – real science – if you form a hypothesis that cannot be proven or fails experimental verification, you turn to a different explanation, rather than dogmatically trying to uphold a failed theory.

Human DNA is so complex that it's taken entire industries years and years of research to map the whole thing. The human brain is so advanced that we are still a long, long way from fully understanding it. Our systems are so complex and well organized that it should be obvious, and indeed is only logical, that we are not the product of random deviations based on literally impossible odds, but we are the product of the design of unfathomable wisdom. Evolution wants me to believe that all of this just cobbled itself together, defying all physics, logic, and probability? Sorry, I don't have that much faith.

The truth of God's creation is found in the Bible, in Genesis, the first book of the Bible (Genesis means "beginning"). God created the universe in six days, and rested from creating on the seventh day. The universe was in a perfect state when God created it, before humans sinned, but when sin was brought into the picture, the universe started to decay. Man became mortal. We badly needed some kind of redemption, which came in the form of Jesus Christ the Son of God to forgive every person of their sins. One day, God will vanquish evil forever, and the universe will be restored to a perfect state.

God created each specie of life on the Earth to reproduce "according to its own kind", not to reproduce genetically deviant mutants that defy the laws of physics and evolve into more advanced life forms. We are the children of God when we put our faith in His Son Jesus Christ, not the children of mud and amoebas. With God we have purpose and life; with evolution life would be a pointless accident, there would be no absolute right or wrong, and when one dies, one would simply cease to exist. God has given us eternal life; if we put our faith in Him, we will enjoy eternity with Him in His perfection.

Here is a quick summary of God's creation process, which can be found in Genesis chapters one and two:

Day 1	The universe and the Earth are created. Earth is formless and useless, and covered with water. Light, and thus Day and Night are created, but the Sun, Moon, and stars do not yet exist.	Day 4	God made the Sun, Moon, and stars to shine in the sky, to give much light during the day and a little light at night, fulfilling the creation from Day 1.
Day 2	God made the atmosphere, separating the water on the surface from the vapors in or above the atmosphere.	Day 5	God made the sea creatures and flying creatures, fulfilling the creation from Day 2.
Day 3	The waters covering the Earth are gathered into the oceans, revealing dry land. God created plant life on the dry ground.	Day 6	God made the land animals, and then created Adam, the first human. This fulfilled the creation from Day 3.

Many people believe that the waters above the atmosphere which the Bible talks about was a water vapor or hydrogen crystal canopy that surrounded the Earth's atmosphere. This canopy was destroyed in the Great Flood and rained down on the Earth. Such a canopy would have provided protection from the rays of the Sun that cause harm to life forms, which would explain how people could have lived for close to 1,000 years before the flood. After the flood, as per the words of God Himself, man's life span dropped over several generations to about 100 years. It should also be noted that it did not rain before the Great Flood; instead, a mist came up from the ground to water the plant life.

The Great Flood, in which Noah built an ark of God's design to save all the species of animals and his family, accounts for the layers of rock found all over the Earth, and the quick fossilization of so many life forms. Such a flood would lay down many layers of sediment rather quickly, but not necessarily in the same uniform order all over the world. It would bury many life forms quickly. It also could create such geological phenomena as the Grand Canyon. The Bible gives indication of massive activity in or under the Earth's crust and in the atmosphere at this time; Genesis 7:11 records "...the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened." This would seem to indicate that the seas were flooded by subterranean water sources, which raised the seas and flooded the land, and whatever water was being kept in the atmosphere came down. Although the Bible does not give specific information about where the water "receded" to when the flood ended, some of it obviously evaporated into the atmosphere to form clouds, and thus the "water cycle" that we see today began. As for the rest of the water, it could have receded back into the subterranean areas it came from; or, some theologians think, the ocean floors could have fallen while land masses were pushed up to form the present ocean depths from the flood waters.

1. See the Wikipedia article Miller-Urey experiment

2. See the Wikipedia article Miller-Urey experiment

4. See the Wikipedia article Radiocarbon Dating

5. See the Wikipedia article Carbon-14

6. http://www.allaboutarchaeology.org/carbon-dating.htm

7. http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2002/carbon_dating.asp

8. See the Wikipedia article Argon-Argon Dating

9. http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/cfol/ch2-mutations.asp

10. Can Natural Processes Explain the Origin of Life? If you'd like more great Creationist web sites, check out these links:

Creation Science Center
Reasons To Believe -- Astronomical Evidences for the God of the Bible
The Revolution Against Evolution