Today is what’s being called Darwin Day, in honor of the scientist Charles Darwin, whose theory of evolution is taught in every public school in America.
The Darwin Day movement enlists schools to spend the day, Darwin’s birthday, educating children about the naturalist’s theory and science in general.
While I’m all for science education, what’s almost always lacking from teaching about evolution is recognition that it is a theory, not proven fact, and it’s a theory with some serious problems at that.
1) It’s untestable. A scientific theory has to be testable. No one has ever successfully tested evolution under controlled conditions.
2) It doesn’t match observations. No one has ever documented a case of a species evolving. It’s important to understand that evolving is not the same as adapting. Adapting simply means that a species either changes its behavior to accommodate changes in the environment, or that certain characteristics that already exist in the species are favored by environmental circumstances. Evolution specifically is the development of advantageous characteristics that did not exist in the species previously. Evolution has never been seen in nature or proven in the fossil record.
3) Failed predictions. Darwin observed hundreds of species during his time in the Galapagos Islands. Evolution theory suggests that at least some of the species in the Galapagos would have evolved over the course of the century and a half since Darwin’s visit. Not a one has.
4) Flawed logic. At the heart of the problem with the evolutionary theory is that Darwin’s concept of natural selection does not answer the key question of how a species can acquire a trait it doesn’t already have. Natural selection, often called “survival of the fittest,” can only explain how certain already-existing characteristics might be favored by particular environments. Mutation, the current supposed mechanism for developing new traits, in real life almost always proves detrimental. French evolutionist Pierre-Paul Grasse noted that, “No matter how numerous they may be, mutations do not produce any kind of evolution.” There are no X-Men in real life.
5) Unanswered question. Evolution theory says nothing about how life arose from inanimate matter.
Now having said all that, I’m going against a whole host of assumptions held by … well, just about everybody. Every student who’s been in a biology classroom, every professor who has based his work on the idea that evolution is true, every textbook publisher and liberal lawmaker will be feeling the urge to smack me around and call me names right now.
That’s fine; that’s human nature.
But here’s a question for you to ponder: If I, a layman, can notice some of the problems with evolution theory, then what’s the real motivation for the almost rabid promotion of the idea? Perhaps the support for evolution has little to do with the quality of the science and more to do with politics.
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