The following essay is the entire script for my persuasive speech that I will present on Monday (?). After hearing what Mr Franklin said in class today, and how this girl adamantly insisted that evolution has been proven, I've decided to put this up.
Is Evolution Still Relevant?
We have been bombarded with the idea of evolution ever since the moment we subscribed to Astro and turned on Discovery Channel, showing documentaries on how fossil records show evidence of evolution. “Let the facts speak for themselves!” They say. However, it is a fallacy to believe that facts speak for themselves—they are always interpreted according to a framework. The framework behind the evolutionists’ interpretation is naturalism—it is assumed that things made themselves.
Evolution is a deduction from this assumption, and it includes these unproven ideas: nothing gave rise to something at an alleged ‘big bang,’ non-living matter gave rise to life, single-celled organisms gave rise to many-celled organisms, invertebrates gave rise to vertebrates, ape-like creatures gave rise to man, non-intelligent and amoral matter gave rise to intelligence and morality, man’s yearnings gave rise to religions, etc.
Evolution, of the fish-to-philosopher type, requires that non-living chemicals organize themselves into a self-reproducing organism. All types of life are alleged to have descended, by natural, ongoing processes, from this ‘simple’ life form. The first self-reproducing organism would have made copies of itself. Evolution also requires that the copying is not always completely accurate—errors (mutations) occur. Any mutations which enable an organism to leave more self-reproducing offspring will be passed on through the generations. This ‘differential reproduction’ is called natural selection. In summary, evolutionists believe that the source of new genetic information is mutations sorted by natural selection—the neo-Darwinian theory.
However, there is a substantial flaw in this assumption. Mutations which increase genetic information would be the raw material necessary for evolution. To get from "amoeba" to "man" would require a massive net increase in information. There are many examples of supposed evolution given by proponents. Variation within a species (finch beak, for example), bacteria which acquire antibiotic resistance, people born with an extra chromosome, etc. However, none of the examples demonstrate the development of new information. Instead, they demonstrate either pre-programmed variation, multiple copies of existing information, or even loss of information (natural selection and adaptation involve loss of information). The total lack of any such evidence refutes evolutionary theory.
Another problem with the premise of evolution is that it requires life to spring out of a primordial chemical soup, otherwise known as spontaneous generation. Evolutionists admit that the chances of evolutionary progress are extremely low. Yet, they believe that given enough time, the apparently impossible becomes possible. If I flip a coin, I have a 50/50 chance of getting heads. To get five "heads" in a row is unlikely but possible. If I flipped the coin long enough, I would eventually get five in a row. If I flipped it for years nonstop, I might get 50 or even 100 in a row. But this is only because getting heads is an inherent possibility. What are the chances of me flipping a coin, and then seeing it sprout arms and legs, and go sit in a corner and read a magazine? No chance. Given billions of years, the chances would never increase. Great periods of time make the possible likely but never make the impossible possible. No matter how long it's given, non-life will not become alive.
Let me give you another example: an enzyme, which is the building block for the gene, which in turn is the building block for the cell, and that for the human being. The probability of it randomly occurring is 1 in 10^40,000, more than the number of atoms in the universe, which incidentally is 10^80.
Now the infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting at keys of a typewriter for an infinite amount of time will almost surely produce something coherent, for example the complete works of Shakespeare. If there are as many monkeys as there are particles in the observable universe (10^80), and each types 1000 keystrokes per second for 100 times the life of the universe (10^20 seconds), the probability of the monkeys replicating even a short book approaches zero. That was for a short book. Now imagine the probability for the information from a pinhead sized piece of DNA, which incidentally is 4 billion gigabytes.
The phrase ‘missing link’ is commonly heard when talking about evolution. If living things had really evolved from other kinds of creatures, then there would have been many intermediate or transitional forms, with halfway structures, otherwise known as the ‘missing links’. However, the inability to imagine functional intermediates is a real problem. If a bat or bird evolved from a land animal, the transitional forms would have forelimbs that were neither good legs nor good wings. How would such things be selected? The fragile long limbs of hypothetical halfway stages of bats and pterosaurs would seem more like a hindrance than a help. Besides that, there are no fossil records what so ever of animals in the transitory stage, but overwhelming numbers fossils which show fully developed animals.
Broken boats cannot carry you across the water. Having seen how the scientific and mathematical evidence piles up against evolution, rendering it redundant, I think it is time we find another theory to replace it.
References
Ham, K., & Sarfati, J. (1999). Refuting evolution. Master Books.
VipChannel. (2008). Debating-refuting-beating - darwin dawkins evolution theory. Video posted to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfE6pKCzSTU
