A couple comments on the "evidences" provided thus far:
1. We may test on animals which are biologically similar to us in order to determine whether or not the product tested will work on humans. Most would obviously agree with this. The question is, has the ToE shown us similarities between humans and animals, or have the similarities between humans and animals shown us the ToE (at least as evolutionists would interpret it). If evolutionary theory had never been presented by anyone, would we not still have presumed that animals and humans share a number of physical similarities. And would not the discovery of genetics have further allowed us to make the presumption that those animals with the closest genetic makup prove to be the best for testing purposes? As animal testing has been done for millennia, would man not have sought to discover which animals are closest to humans without any underlying motive for proving the ToE?
The TOE
predicts not just similarities between animals, but
systematic similarities: in otherwords the creation of hierarchies of similarities. Without the TOE, there would be no reason to expect such similarities, and thus no reason to look for them. Geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky said in 1973 "Nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution", in the sense of meaning that there would be no reason to expect patterns in nature. Without these patterns, there would, in effect, be no biology, except that accidently discovered. Yes, Flemming might have discovered penicillin after the accidental contamination of the sample, but there would have been no reason to look at other, similar organisms.
2. It seems some things are taken to be exclusively under the umbrella of the general ToE, without any possible existence outside the ToE. Could a moderate form of Natural Selection exist if the ToE were not true? Natural Selection is used as an evidence for the theory that all life originated from a single organism, yes? So if creationism were true, if life could not evolve between species, could not Natural Selection still exist in some form? Would men not have studied Natural Selection and determined the same benefits had the ToE not been introduced?
Why would there have been any concept of Natural Selection without a TOE? Darwin's insight was that Natural Selection was the engine that drove evolution. If yiou have one, you have the other: if you are missing one, yu are missing the other.
This is the still the question I am pressing: If the ToE had never been intoduced, and all mankind believed that God created the universe a mere few millennia ago, with set species which cannot "evolve" beyond certain boundries; would we have not come to many of the technological advances we have today? It seems the arguments then becomes more philosophical in nature; to say the ToE opens men's minds to possibilities which they would not have otherwise been open to. But then we would need to ask whether it was simply Darwin's theory which caused such a change, or if was the underlying philosophical currents of the day. But such questions are better left to the historians, of which I am not. I am simply pondering the possibilities.
Without evolutionary theory we would have no rational basis for determining closeness. Yes, a similarity of body plans would allow an assumption that chimps are more similar than canaries, but only evolutionary theory would allow us to state that we are more closely related to pigs than sheep.
We would have no reason to systematically investigate DNA, for example, or, indeed, any of the other proteins etc, since there would be no reason to expect
patterns.
Without evolution, and the TOE to provide a framework, biology would have remained a neo-science of observation and collection - stamp collecting of species and molecules.
Finally, let's separate evolution from the Theory of Evolution. By Darwin's time most educated people accepted some form of evolution. Erasmus Darwin had come up with a theory a generation earlier, and Lamark's theories were current before "The Origin of the Species". Darwins theory was an attempt to explain Evolution using a naturalistic methodology rather than the then current saltationist (sudden emergence of large changes) viewpoint, which was considered compatible with divine guidance.
For Whigs admit no force but argument.
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