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Index to Creationist Claims,  edited by Mark Isaak,    Copyright © 2005
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Claim CA202:

Evolution has not been, and cannot be, proved. We cannot even see evolution (beyond trivially small change), much less test it experimentally.

Source:

Morris, Henry M. 1985. Scientific Creationism. Green Forest, AR: Master Books, pp. 4-6.

Response:

  1. Nothing in the real world can be proved with absolute certainty. However, high degrees of certainty can be reached. In the case of evolution, we have huge amounts of data from diverse fields. Extensive evidence exists in all of the following different forms (Theobald 2004). Each new piece of evidence tests the rest.
    Furthermore, the different lines of evidence are consistent; they all point to the same big picture. For example, evidence from gene duplications in the yeast genome shows that its ability to ferment glucose evolved about eighty million years ago. Fossil evidence shows that fermentable fruits became prominent about the same time. Genetic evidence for major change around that time also is found in fruiting plants and fruit flies (Benner et al. 2002).

    The evidence is extensive and consistent, and it points unambiguously to evolution, including common descent, change over time, and adaptation influenced by natural selection. It would be preposterous to refer to these as anything other than facts.

Links:

Theobald, Douglas. 2004. 29+ Evidences for macroevolution: The scientific case for common descent. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/

Colby, Chris. 1993. Evidence for evolution: An eclectic survey. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolution-research.html

Moran, Laurence. 1993. Evolution is a fact and a theory. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolution-fact.html

References:

  1. Benner, S. A., M. D. Caraco, J. M. Thomson and E. A. Gaucher. 2002. Planetary biology--paleontological, geological, and molecular histories of life. Science 296: 864-868.
  2. Mercer, John M. and V. Louise Roth. 2003. The effects of Cenozoic global change on squirrel phylogeny. Science 299: 1568-1572.
  3. Theobald, D. 2004. (see above)

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created 2003-4-21, modified 2005-2-24