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Common Creationist Complaint: How did sex originate?
Common Complaint: How did sex originate? Asexual reproduction gives up to twice as much reproductive success (‘fitness’) for the same resources as sexual reproduction, so how could the latter ever gain enough advantage to be selected? And how could mere physics and chemistry invent the complementary apparatuses needed at the same time (non-intelligent processes cannot plan…
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The Problem with Intelligent Design
Intelligent Design (ID) is a very popular religious belief and one that can sound attractive for those trying to reconcile science and religion. This philosophy argues that science supports an intelligent designer/creator because anything with order, purpose, or design must have come from an intelligent being, specifically the Christian God. This concept was created by…
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Common Creationist Complaint: How did multicellular life originate?
Common Complaint: How did multicellular life originate? How did cells adapted to individual survival ‘learn’ to cooperate and specialize (including undergoing programmed cell death) to create complex plants and animals? [1] Answer: Remember: Evolution does not mean the origin of life; it means changes in population over time. With that understood, we do have multiple lines of…
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Common Creationist Complaint: How do evolutionists know that living things were not designed?
Common Complaint: Living things look like they were designed, so how do evolutionists know that they were not designed? Richard Dawkins wrote, “biology is the study of complicated things that have the appearance of having been designed with a purpose.”Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of the double helix structure of DNA, wrote, “Biologists must constantly keep…
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Common Creationist Complaint: Why is natural selection taught as evolution as if it explains the origin of life?
Common Complaint: Why is natural selection, a principle recognized by creationists, taught as ‘evolution’, as if it explains the origin of the diversity of life? By definition it is a selective process (selecting from already existing information), so is not a creative process. It might explain the survival of the fittest (why certain genes benefit creatures…
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Common Creationist Complaint: How could mutations create all of the information in DNA?
Common Complaint: How could mutations—accidental copying mistakes (DNA ‘letters’ exchanged, deleted or added, genes duplicated, chromosome inversions, etc.)—create the huge volumes of information in the DNA of living things? How could such errors create 3 billion letters of DNA information to change a microbe into a microbiologist? There is information for how to make proteins but…
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Common Creationist Complaint: How did the DNA code originate?
Common Complaint: How did the DNA code originate? The code is a sophisticated language system with letters and words where the meaning of the words is unrelated to the chemical properties of the letters—just as the information on this page is not a product of the chemical properties of the ink (or pixels on a screen).…
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So What is Evolution?
Probably the biggest reason many dismiss evolution is because most people have no idea what evolution actually is. Evolution is defined as a change in a population over time. That’s it. I know. It’s that simple. Which is why it is definitely happening. We witness evolution occurring all the time. Any time the genetic makeup…
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The Facts About Theories
“Evolution isn’t a fact! It’s just a theory!” Oh, if I had a nickle for every time I heard that …. Contrary to what this statement suggests, evolution being a “theory” does not diminish its standing nor the evidence behind it. A theory means an explanation. This is true both in everyday language and in…