Hi Jeff,
Did
youknow that you shouldn't just trust everything you find on some website?
A great many items on that list are either terrribly misleading or factually incorrect.
-Biological evolution does not say we came from monkeys or chimps.
No, it does not. However, it
does say that we
are monkeys (that being a much larger classification than the species-specific "chimpanzees"), in the same way that we are also apes, mammals, vertebrates, etc. This item is inaccurate to the point of being misleading.
-Charles Darwin never used the word "evolution" in Origin of Species nor did he use the phrase, survival of the fittest.
The final paragraph of Origin of Species says this:
quote:
These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows.There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
Darwin may not have specifically said the exact words "evolution" or "survival of the fittest," but he
did use the word "evolved" and define specifically what "survival of the fittest" means (except that he did so more accurately).
Your list bears the hallmarks of a person who did a casual word search through text for specific phrases and words, but never actually read a single word Darwin wrote.
Just that much tells me to be suspicious of this list, and of course my suspicion is vindicated as the list contains yet more misleading or outright false information:
-The Genesis phrase, And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kind, perfectly matches macroevolution. In other words, macroevolution is actually evolution "within" kinds.
Not by any definition of "kinds" used by Creationists, which is kind of the point. Again, this is misleading and requires significant further explanation. In this case, "kinds" would have to be redefined to match the taxonomic term "clades." Essentially each "kind" would be each subdivision of the nested hierarchy of the taxonomic tree. For instance, all vertebrates would be a "kind," and all vertebrates do in fact give birth to more vertebrates; mammals would be a "kind" within the vertebrate "kind," and all mammals would give birth to mammals, etc.
The part that Creationists tend to not like about that sort of classification (even though it appears to satisfy the requirement that all creatures reproduce after their own "kind") is that it allows for the emergence of new "kinds" after the Creation event is completed. I doubt you'd find argument from less literalist Christians, however.
-The anti-evolution creationist explanation of microevolution is genetically impossible.
No, it's not. Microevolution (meaning genetic variation within a single species) can and does happen, and is in fact the only way that a species can diversify and subdivide into new species. The only impossibility is that Microevolution could ever be restrained from becoming Macroevolution given sufficient generations and selective pressures (and even that's not
impossible - but no such restricting mechanism has ever been found, and Macroevolution has been directly observed to result from small Microevolution changes within a population, so it's just factually incorrect).
-Scripture reveals the exact height of Noah’s flood, Fifteen cubits (only 22 feet) upward did the waters prevail (Gen 7:20), which is in exact accordance with Orthodox Jewish interpretation and archaeology.
...not really. The Flood was supposed to have been world-wide, and there is zero evidence supporting the occurrence of a global Flood of
any extent, whether that be 10 feet or 22 or 100. The global Flood and die-off recorded in the Bible
never happened. There very likely was a
local flood, but that's not what the story is about. You may as well talk about how we discovered the remains of the very real city of Troy; there's still no reason to believe that Achilles was some super-warrior whose only vulnerable point was his heel.
-18th century creationists rejected the possibility of the world's sedimentary rocks being remnant global flood sediments. It is actually biblically impossible.
Yet that's exactly what modern Creationists say, because there would have necessarily been
some global sedimentary layer from a global Flood, and they typically use the global Flood to explain features that require more than the allotted 6-10,000 years of the Earth's existence. Geology tells us that it took millions of years fro the Grand Canyon to be carved out by slow erosion; Creationists cannot accommodate a time-line including millions of years, and so claim that the Flood carved it.
-Creation science’s dirty little secret: The one and only proof of a global flood, all layered sedimentary rocks, finds its origins from the dream of a teenager who claimed it was a vision from God.
That doesn't even make sense. How are layered sedimentary rocks "proof" of a global Flood? No single global layer exists. How would this be a "dirty secret" for Creationists? For them, knowledge through revelation is
sacred, not shameful.
Some of these claims I have not heard before (actually most). How about you? and be honest. This list was created by a Michael Hawley on his evolution/creation website
http://www.searchingfortruthwithabrokenflashlight.com and is the author of a new book that has just come out. He claims that a literal interpretation of the Bible based upon biblical inerrancy and infallibility actually conforms to all discoveries made in science, especially biological evolution. I am especially intrigued by creation science’s dirty little secret. Has anyone ever heard of this?
While Mr. Hawley got a few things right (his comparison of gravity and evolution as theories is spot-on, for instance)...that's not exactly a list I would ever display publicly. Particularly the Darwin bit - the last paragraph of Origin of Species is perhaps the
best-known of the entire text, and it flatly counters the meaning if not the specific wording of Mr. Hawley's claims regarding Darwin's words.
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