Celebrate Question Evolution Day

Today is Question Evolution Day, so here are some questions around Darwinism and molecules to man evolution that aren’t asked as often as they should be. I have never heard satisfactory answers to any of them. They are in no particular order, just the first dozen questions that come into my head. Please note, these questions mainly concern science and facts, not religious belief. If questioning Darwin raises profound religious and/or philosophical issues, then so does accepting Darwin. There should be a level playing field and no questions barred from being put and considered.

1)      Why is Charles Darwin so often credited with coming up with the idea of evolution when it goes back at least to the ancient Greek philosophers such as Epicurus?

2)      How did the first life appear from non life? NB 'gradually, you dummy....in outer space....science is working on it, you cretin... there are computer models that explain it, you IDiot...etc are not acceptable answers

3)      Why is sickle cell disease used as an example of a beneficial mutation when this is so obviously a case of special pleading, like calling a broken leg or schizophrenia beneficial if they get you out of military service? It’s a DISEASE caused by a deformed and malfunctioning protein for pity’s sake!!!

4)      Why are the Haeckel embryo drawings or at least ideas derived from them (embryology recapitulates phylogeny) still used in our education systems to teach evolution when they were proven long ago (by Haeckel’s university, not Ken Ham) to be fakes produced by a fanatical Darwinist as a deliberate deception?

5)      Why is the Piltdown Man FRAUD that deceived the masses for 40 years routinely dismissed as a ‘hoax’?

6)     ' Why are the rocks not filled with innumerable fossils of intermediate forms?' (a question Darwin himself asked in ‘Origin’). Despite much hyping and overinterpretation of a tiny handful of possible candidates like Archaeopteryx and Tiktaalik, the intermediate forms remain stubbornly absent. If evolution by very gradual change over many thousands of years were true, and if fossil creating events occurred with a frequency of, say, every 500 to 1,000 years or so building the rock layers up gradually over millions of years, we would expect to see the innumerable numbers of intermediate forms that Darwin’s theory predicts. We don't, but are lectured to by the 'experts' as if there was a perfect progression of evolutionary sequences. (NB Dr Vij Sodera's excellent book 'One Small Speck to Man: The Evolution Myth' examines the often quoted supposed whale sequence and shows why its rubbish.)

7)      On the question of the missing intermediate forms, why should we believe that animals could gradually change into entirely different forms by gradual changes, when intermediate quarter formed, half formed 'neither one thing nor the other' etc structures would have conferred no selective benefit and therefore been eliminated by natural selection? Darwin recognised this problem but merely side stepped it with many an ‘I see no difficulty in imagining...may we not believe...who could be so rash as to suppose that this might not have happened?.....’

8)      Why did Darwin assume that because relatively small degrees of variation (in, for example, dogs and pigeons) could be achieved by intelligent animal breeders working with mind, memory, colleagues and purpose, that natural selection left to itself could, although mindless, purposeless and blind, do ‘immeasurably more’? This was his primary argument, and it was based on untestable speculation, not repeatable observation.

9)      ...especially when he himself wrote in ‘Origin’ that plant and animal breeders knew the necessity of ‘roguing’ (removing undesired specimens from the gene pool before they bred) to avoid random breeding undoing the work of selection. Which it is observed to do very rapidly when the designing, controlling hand of the breeder is removed.

10)   Why do critics of Darwin dissent routinely accuse the dissenters of trying to overrule science with religion, when they bring arguments based on logic, facts and reason? (NB this is not to deny that there is an element in creationism whose primary argument is ‘we will believe God’s word, the Bible, whatever you say’. That is a separate albeit related (see point 11) issue. I’m talking about abiogenesis, DNA information, genetic entropy, irreducible complexity, fossil evidence (lack of) etc. Why are these arguments dismissed as religious if not to rig the playing field so that only one answer is possible?

11)   Why is the Christian belief of most (not all) Darwin dissenters used as an argument against them, while their critics’ beliefs are assumed to be neutral when in fact they are anything but? In Stephen Meyer’s book ‘Signature in the Cell’ he described a radio interview with prominent atheist (and evolutionist) Eugenie Scott. In this he was shouted down by the interviewer for being a Christian (therefore obviously biased, so his arguments from mathematics and genetics could be dismissed without a hearing) while Scott was not deemed to be biased towards Darwinism by her well known militant atheism.

12)   Why, given that they have interviewed Muslim and Irish Republican apologists for violence and others with extreme, outlying and unpopular views, won’t the BBC ever interview intelligent design or creationist advocates-for example Michael Behe or Stephen Meyer when they were on recent UK speaking tours?

13)   What do you think happens when we die?

The last question is not directly related to Darwin, but it is one I suggest the reader ought to think about. Because there is a hypothesis based on evidence at least as good as Darwin’s speculations that our personality survives death and we then, in an eternal condition, get to meet our Maker, to give account for and receive recompense for what we did and failed to do during our time on earth. This is what the Christian church teaches, and if it is true then it really is the most important thing we should consider. And there is a hypothesis that the whole Darwin/evolution hypothesis was developed and promoted by deists, atheists and revolutionaries in order to discredit the message of God and Christ in order to clear the way for their preferred beliefs and way of living. Jesus frequently referred to Genesis as history, so if Genesis is discredited, so are the words of Jesus.  

Whatever. Think about it, or don’t, as you see fit. But the facts remain.