Top Strawman Arguments against Evolution

Apologists have spent decades rehearsing and refining arguments that they can tell Christians and get a positive response. For the most part, these are all strawman arguments where evolution is presented in a particularly inaccurate way such that by formulating the argument this way, it is easy to win. The win is dramatic. Their audience gets the feeling that some profound truth has been delivered. This is what apologists get paid for, and so their job is essentially to create dramatic strawman arguments.

Here is a list of ten of them, and how any reasonable minded person should respond.

"It’s only a theory"

Many make the claim that "evolution is simply a theory, an opinion like any other." But "there is no doubt about the fact of evolution," says Laurent Keller, a biologist from the University of Lausanne, in Switzerland. "Fossils prove that species have disappeared, while current species have not always existed." The misunderstanding could well come from the ambivalence of the word "theory." It implies a personal and speculative idea. But for scientists, a theory designates an explanatory framework that allows them to understand natural processes. As such, the theory of evolution is a real scientific theory, and not just a simple intuition that Charles Darwin once had.

"Evolution is not observable"

We often assimilate evolution processes to events happening over millions of years. "Wrong," says the University of Lausanne’s Tania Jenkins. "The resistance of bacteria against antibiotics is proof that organisms can evolve over much shorter periods of time." Insects, viruses, bacteria. Every organism capable of reproducing at high speed generally evolves rapidly. The influenza virus, which returns every year in a slightly different form, is proof of this.

• House sparrows were brought to North America from Europe in the nineteenth century. Since then, genetic variation within the species, and the different selective pressures present in different habitats have allowed them to adapt to different parts of the continent.
• The Peppered Moth is a famous where they changed from predominantly white, to predominantly black in the late 1800 when soot had blackened the trees they live on.
• The Blue Moon Butterfly (Hypolimnas bolina) evolved to avoid a deadly parasite with a gene that resists the parasite.

"It’s for atheists"

Is it necessary to put aside religious beliefs to accept the theory of evolution? "There’s no need to choose," assures Héloise Dufour, co-organizer of Lausanne, Capitale de l’évolution. "The theory of evolution explains the world around us but doesn’t say anything about beliefs or the existence of God," she says. Evolution and religion actually coexist well, she says, especially "in Switzerland, where most religious people accept this scientific theory."

"Evolution means improvement"

We’ve all seen those T-shirts that display an image meant to illustrate evolution: a small, quadruped monkey walks to the right, progressively standing up straight to eventually become a splendid Homo sapiens as straight as a rod. What this implies is that evolution is synonymous with progress, strengthening and more efficient organisms.

But in reality, the characteristics conserved by natural selection are not always beneficial, as Laurent Keller explains. "A profitable characteristic for an individual can sometimes prove to be harmful for the population in the long term. Consider, for instance, that some male birds have a longer tail than others. While they are better at attracting females, they can’t fly as well. The result is that they reproduce more easily but also pass this characteristic to their offspring. "And, in the end, all birds will not fly as well," Keller explains.

"Humans descend from chimpanzee"

Is the chimpanzee our ancestor? The scenario is tempting: Little by little, the monkey straightened up to become the biped we are today. But this scenario is a naïve depiction and not a scientifically proven fact. First of all, the chimpanzee species, which appeared eight million years ago, is as recent as ours. "It’s not our ancestor but rather our cousin," says the University of Avignon’s Ivan Scotti.

But what about the 99% of genomes that we have in common? This doesn’t prove it is our ancestor. After all, two brothers share a good part of their DNA without one of them descending from the other. "We do have a common ancestor with the chimpanzee, but it was neither a monkey nor a human," Keller adds. "We don’t exactly know who we descend from."

"Life evolves randomly"

How do new characteristics that will consequently be preserved — or disappear — appear during evolution? Through genetic transformations, an eminently random process. With this in mind, it’s tempting to think evolution relies only on chance. But only the "good" transformations, those that allow the organism a better adjustment to its environment, are conserved," Keller says.

In other words, transformations are random, but the processes through which they are kept or not (which is known as natural selection) has nothing to do with chance. In this way, the most complex characteristics observed in nature did not appear by chance. They are the result of a selection that favored the most well-adapted individuals most likely to reproduce.

"It’s a search for the origin of life"

No, the theory of evolution doesn’t aim to explain the origin of life. Not just that, anyway. "It’s a question among so many others that we ask ourselves," Keller says. "But it’s not more important than the origin of sexual organs, proteins, aging, etc. It’s a very broad subject."

"Humans have stopped evolving"

Another common but false idea is that by controlling the environment so much, mankind freed itself from evolutionary pressure. But our recent genetic history proves that we are evolving, as the appearance of lactose tolerance shows. Originally, humans became intolerant to this sugar present in milk a few months after birth. But a transformation that occurred in an individual in Africa some 8,000 years ago changed things, making lifelong lactose digestion possible.

Biologists believe that this transformation could have been selected because populations living at that time had to consume lots of fresh milk to survive. Incapable of digesting the only nutrient at their disposition, those intolerant to it would have perished.

"A theory that legitimizes racism"

The notion that the theory of evolution justifies the superiority of certain individuals over others, opening the way to racism, is an absurdity that Ivan Scotti dismisses. "If it’s true that natural selection sometimes favors competition between individuals, what about when it favors cooperative behaviors, such as when birds work together to build their nests, or when ants renounce on reproducing to clear resources for the sole reproduction of the queen?"

Doctrines advocating competition between races or social classes, which are gathered under the term "Social Darwinism," have no scientific meaning, he says.

"The study of evolution is useless"

"It’s quite the opposite because evolution is everywhere in our everyday lives," says Tania Jenkins. "If we have such a diversity of cheese, beer or wine, it’s thanks to the diversity of bacteria, yeast and fruit!"

And practical applications exist: We are currently seeing the emergence of "Darwinian" medicine, in which treatments that take into account the evolution of humans and germs, which have gone through their own adjustments, are being developed. All this, doctors hope, should make it possible to study illnesses under a new light.

New Species Would Be Too Inbred

Even according to evolutionary theory every species that reproduces by sexual reproduction must ultimately begin with one unique breeding pair.

That is not how evolution works. Instead there is a POOL of individuals, and the entire POOL is what changes from one species to another. The frequency of particular genes changes in the pool as a new gene works its way through the population.

The idea that suddenly, for example, one individual fish would suddenly appear with legs is a distortion thought up by Christian apologists to make evolution seem impossible to their followers. It is even more ridiculous to think that two individuals might suddenly appear so that you have a mating pair.

Think about it: consider a dramatic shift, like the change in coloration of the Peppered Moth from light to dark. Initially you might have one that due to a genetic combination appeared with dark wings instead of light one, and was more able to hide against the smoke darkened tree trunks so they did a bit better. They they still mated with the other light ones and the offspring would be a mix. After successive generations, the ones carrying the dark genes simply start doing better, and that gene becomes more frequent in the pool. Eventually, because it conveyed a benefit, the dark moths would outnumber the light ones, and we can consider the population evolved.