About a week ago, I took on the task of refuting the claims of Texas creationists. I used the so-called weaknesses of evolution from this page.
For your reference, I’ve included the complete list here. If I do anymore weaknesses of evolution, I’ll add them to this list.
- Origins of Life – the origins of life is not evolution, but chemistry and what are the odds involved.
- Hydrolysis of Proteins – a specific claim that water would destroy all the proteins before they could become life.
- Homochirality – handedness of molecules and why we have all left-handed amino acids and right-handed sugars.
- Oxygen – the toxicity of oxygen and the claim that there was oxygen in the early atmosphere which would destroy organic molecules before they could become life.
- Randomness and Information – the concept of information, how creationist misuse the term, and why evolution isn’t as random as people are led to believe.
- The Cambrian Explosion – the Cambrian time period seems to have produced a greater diversity of life forms, including all new body plans that never before existed, than other time periods and why none of that is really true.
- Transitional Fossils – what a transitional fossil actually is and the evidence for them.
- Change Over Time – how speciation works.
- Induced Mutations – a claim that no induced mutations have ever improved a population.
- Most Mutations are Harmful – this classic creationist falsehood.
- Small Changes – how small changes over time can result in larger changes and how do we know.
- Complete Steps – why we shouldn’t expect to have a complete step-by-step explanation for every single organism and every single protein/DNA sequence.
- Creationist Misunderstandings – the creationists offer some helpful tips to avoid misunderstandings, but seem to have misunderstood the actual science themselves.
- Why are there still monkeys? – an add on ‘weakness’. A creationist asks, “If humans evolved from monkeys, why do monkeys still exist?” We explore a very little bit of how evolution actually works and take a brief look at humans.
If you come across any other ‘weaknesses of evolution’, put it in the comments (and a link to it if available) so we can add it to the list.
Another excellent resource is the Talk Origins Archive”s “An Index of Creationist Claims“.
