Objections to evolution

[2] Darwin's contemporaries eventually came to accept the transmutation of species based upon fossil evidence, and the X Club (operative from 1864 to 1893) formed to defend the concept of evolution against opposition from the church and wealthy amateurs.

[3] At that time the specific evolutionary mechanism which Darwin provided – natural selection – was actively disputed by scientists in favour of alternative theories such as Lamarckism and orthogenesis.

Lord Kelvin led scientific opposition to gradualism on the basis of his thermodynamic calculations for the age of the Earth at between 24 and 400 million years, and his views favoured a version of theistic evolution accelerated by divine guidance.

Although evolution itself was scientifically unchallenged, uncertainties about the mechanism in the era of "the eclipse of Darwinism" persisted from the 1880s until the 1930s'[7] inclusion of Mendelian inheritance and the rise of the modern evolutionary synthesis.

[9] In Britain, while publication of The Descent of Man by Darwin in 1871 reinvigorated debate from the previous decade, Sir Henry Chadwick (1920–2008) notes a steady acceptance of evolution "among more educated Christians" between 1860 and 1885.

In 1996 Pope John Paul II labelled evolution "more than a hypothesis" and acknowledged the large body of work accumulated in its support, but reiterated that any attempt to give a material explanation of the human soul is "incompatible with the truth about man".

This occurred relatively early, as medieval madrasas taught the ideas of Al-Jahiz, a Muslim scholar from the 9th century, who proposed concepts similar to natural selection.

[citation needed] The natural theology of the early-19th century was typified by William Paley's 1802 version of the watchmaker analogy, an argument from design still deployed by the creationist movement.

[19] This position has been adopted by denominations of Christianity and Judaism in line with modernist theology which views the Bible and Torah as allegorical, thus removing the conflict between evolution and religion.

However, in the 1920s Christian fundamentalists in the United States developed their literalist arguments against modernist theology into opposition to the teaching of evolution, with fears that Darwinism had led to German militarism and posed a threat to religion and morality.

For example, in common usage theories such as "the Earth revolves around the Sun" and "objects fall due to gravity" may be referred to as "facts", even though they are purely theoretical.

This goal followed the Institute's "wedge strategy", an attempt to gradually undermine evolution and ultimately to "reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions.

The scientific consensus of biologists determines what is considered acceptable science, not popular opinion or fairness, and although evolution is controversial in the public arena, it is entirely uncontroversial among experts in the field.

[45] Creationists have argued for over a century that evolution is a "theory in crisis" that will soon be overturned, based on objections that it lacks reliable evidence or violates natural laws.

[64][65] In contrast, creationist explanations involving the direct intervention of the supernatural in the physical world are not falsifiable, because any result of an experiment or investigation could be the unpredictable action of an omnipotent deity.

Rather, they dispute the occurrence of major evolutionary changes over long periods of time, which by definition cannot be directly observed, only inferred from microevolutionary processes and the traces of macroevolutionary ones.

Much of the evidence for evolution has been accused of being fraudulent at various times, including Archaeopteryx, peppered moth melanism, and Darwin's finches; these claims have been subsequently refuted.

For example, it is argued that radiometric dating technique of evaluating a material's age based on the radioactive decay rates of certain isotopes generates inconsistent and thus unreliable results.

[112] Hoyle was a Darwinist, atheist and anti-theist, but advocated the theory of panspermia, in which abiogenesis begins in outer space and primitive life on Earth is held to have arrived via natural dispersion.

[129][130] This class of objections is more radical than the above, claiming that a major aspect of evolution is not merely unscientific or implausible, but rather impossible, because it contradicts some other law of nature or is constrained in such a way that it cannot produce the biological diversity of the world.

The only prudent conclusion is that they are the products of intelligent design, not evolution.Modern evolutionary theory posits that all biological systems must have evolved incrementally, through a combination of natural selection and genetic drift.

To falsify such a claim, a scientist could go into the laboratory, place a bacterial species lacking a flagellum under some selective pressure (for mobility, say), grow it for ten thousand generations, and see if a flagellum—or any equally complex system—was produced.

If that happened, my claims would be neatly disproven.In the years since Behe proposed irreducible complexity, new developments and advances in biology such as an improved understanding of the evolution of flagella,[140] have already undermined these arguments.

[158] An example of opinions involving the commonly cited rise in oxygen Great Oxidation Event from biologist PZ Myers summarizes:[159] "What it was was environmental changes, in particular the bioturbation revolution caused by the evolution of worms that released buried nutrients, and the steadily increasing oxygen content of the atmosphere that allowed those nutrients to fuel growth;[160][161][162] ecological competition, or a kind of arms race, that gave a distinct selective advantage to novelties that allowed species to occupy new niches; and the evolution of developmental mechanisms that enabled multicellular organisms to generate new morphotypes readily."

Dramatic examples of entirely new and unique traits arising through mutation have been observed in recent years, such as the evolution of nylon-eating bacteria which developed new enzymes to efficiently digest a material that never existed before the modern era.

Organisms are open systems as they constantly exchange energy and matter with their environment: for example animals eat food and excrete waste, and radiate and absorb heat.

[190] Pastor D. James Kennedy of The Center for Reclaiming America for Christ and Coral Ridge Ministries claims that Darwin was responsible for Adolf Hitler's atrocities.

[200] Michael Shermer argued in Scientific American in October 2006 that evolution supports concepts like family values, avoiding lies, fidelity, moral codes and the rule of law.

[201] He goes on to suggest that evolution gives more support to the notion of an omnipotent creator, rather than a tinkerer with limitations based on a human model, the more common image subscribed to by creationists.

[218] Traditionalists still object to the idea that diversity in life, including human beings, arose through natural processes without a need for supernatural intervention, and they argue against evolution on the basis that it contradicts their literal interpretation of creation myths about separate "created kinds".