Most retarded arguments against evolution

[Lord of the Abyss]

Wait a minute. If everything was so uniform before hand, and thus nothing required evolution to adapt, why the fuck are there animals that are adapted to things like desert or arctic conditions?

One "explanation" I've heard for that is that God planned ahead and designed those animals for life in harsh environments after the Fall. Just like he designed animals with sharp carnivore teeth despite there being no meat eating before the Fall. So, there were plant eating Tyrannosaurs in the Garden of Eden.

[Ilya Muromets]

Yeah, that too. More often than not, they also flip flop between the different reasons and don't find them contradictory.

[Anguirus]

"The whole theory of evolution is predicated on one book, The Origin of Species, which studied the types of BILLS on BIRDS in the GALAPAGOS NOWHERESVILLE ISLANDS and reached conclusions about EVERY FUCKING SPECIES ON EARTH as a result?"

Wait, wait, wait, wait.

Dude.

I know you're "semi-serious" but just to let everyone know, I read On the Origin of Species in 12th grade and am now starting to read it again for an evolution class. There is a HELL of a lot more evidence in there than "just finches." In fact, I believe there's even more material on pigeons than on finches in the book.

The reason why the first edition of the Origin is still relevant in the evolution vs. creationism debate is because no creationist argument is robust enough to take it down, even without adding ANYthing else to the equation. In the first four chapters he constructs an irrefutable proof of the existence of evolution by natural selection; if you accept the premises, you must accept the conclusion. The premises are 1) Variance exists within species, 2) More organisms are created than can survive, 3) Variance is inherited, and 4) Variance leads to some individuals being better-able to survive. Note that this leaves lots of questions unanswered, makes no statement on the origin of life, and also leaves open the question of to what extent it can act, but most deniers don't even get this far.

That was the first four chapters. The rest of the book is evidence and examples. And it's a helluva thick book. Supposed creationist dealbreakers like the evolution of the eye are neatly fielded HERE, in 1859. You have to remember, before he even published was the pre-eminent naturalist of his day, and in 1859 that meant that the average Englishman had heard of him. What it also means is that possibly no one else on the planet had as broad a range of familiarity with organisms as he, and since we don't really train naturalists anymore that makes him probably the all-time great. He was also a ridiculous genius.

Later editions of the Origin actually become less-right, because he was barking up the entirely wrong tree when it came to inheritance and he died before ever reading Mendel's paper. Actual evolutionary biologists have moved beyond Darwin (though always standing on his shoulders) with a much more mature understanding of evolutionary rates and mechanisms. Creationists have not. You can knock down ID with Darwin's writings without breaking a sweat. The Creationists are whole lot dumber than the anti-evolutionist naturalists of Darwin's day who devoted themselves to shattering his theory and completely failed.

[Witch]

Later editions of the Origin actually become less-right, because he was barking up the entirely wrong tree when it came to inheritance and he died before ever reading Mendel's paper. Actual evolutionary biologists have moved beyond Darwin (though always standing on his shoulders) with a much more mature understanding of evolutionary rates and mechanisms. Creationists have not. You can knock down ID with Darwin's writings without breaking a sweat. The Creationists are whole lot dumber than the anti-evolutionist naturalists of Darwin's day who devoted themselves to shattering his theory and completely failed.

Just for the record, Mendel was not actually responsible for everything that is ascribed to him. Mendel's project was quite different from what scientists later made of him - his project was, quite reasonably as he was a priest, a religious one. While his work was no doubt important, the reason he has received so much credit for it is because there were several scientists who independently discovered genetics at the same time, at the beginning of the twentieth century. These scientists wanted to avoid a controversy about priority, and hence decided to ascribe the credit to Mendel.


As an aside, one has no need for Darwin to knock down ID, although one does need him for building up an alternative. Kant and Hume have established wonderful arguments against any form of teleology or intelligent design, and they both did so before William Paley had even offered his watchmaker analogy.

[Channel72]

The Argument from Design was put forth well before Paley, most notably by Thomas Aquinas. To this day, scientists and atheists alike tend to underestimate the raw, intuitive power of the Argument by Design. Aside from pure religious delusion, the Argument from Design, in all it's various forms, is literally the most persuasive argument against evolution in the mind of the general public. That's why you hear it repeated over and over again; sometimes it appears as a simple appeal to common-sense, other times it appears dressed up as a sophisticated philosophical, or scientific argument, such as the "fine-tuning" argument.

And it doesn't matter how many times it's refuted; the refutations never come off as convincing to most people. The fact is, human beings have a very hard time understanding how such overwhelming biological complexity, seemingly imbued with function and purpose, (complex organs, etc.) can possibly be the result of blind, natural forces. This is totally counter-intuitive to the way our brains operate, which seek to find purpose and meaning in everything.

Ironically, the Argument from Design is it's own worst enemy; it's easily refutable because if applied consistently, it would entail that God himself must be designed. In fact, it would apply doubly-so to God, since God as conceived by Judeo-Christian tradition is presumably a vastly more complex entity than any biological life form. But just try and explain that to an even moderately religious person, let alone a Young-Earth Creationist. They simply don't care. It's easier for them to accept that a complex, super-intelligent entity like God exists for no reason, than to accept that a bacterial flagellum originated through a natural process.

Personally, I think the reason for this (again, aside from pure religious delusion) is that God is usually conceived as some kind of immaterial, cosmic mind; people seem to have no trouble accepting that something "immaterial" (whatever that even means) can exist without cause, probably because it's natural and intuitive for a person to consider their own mind and consciousness as something "immaterial". But complex, functional, physical apparati simply scream "designed" to the average person.

[adam_grif]

I'd say it has a lot to do with the way theists tend to treat God in their minds. God isn't a rigidly defined entity, it's just this kind of vague fuzzy thing with the property "that thing that explains everything" slapped on the front. Any attempt to question it is met with "you can't possible understand god" or "you can't put god in a test tube", as though that somehow means it makes sense. They rebut arguments with non-arguments, and their central tenant is "don't think about it because he's beyond your puny human mind".