Was Darwin Right?

This will explore the actual claims and definitions of the terms of evolution, what would have had to occur for evolution and materialism to actually be the explanation of existence, why classical Darwinian evolution actually has very little evidence in support of it, the disagreements among biologists themselves as to what even is a species, and why the existent claims of speciation are not proof of Darwinian macroevolution, as well as a lot of other things not summarized here.

Intro: The Religion Of Evolution
1. What Actually Is Evolution?
1a. Microevolution
1b. Macroevolution
1c. Natural vs. Intelligent Selection
2. What Does Evolution Have To Prove?
2a. What Is Meant By God?
3. Why Macroevolution Still Fails to Fit The Bill
3a. Spontaneous Life Creation
3b. The First Life Diverging Into All Life
3c. The Anthropic Constants
3d. How Quickly Would Life Have Had To Diverge
4. Refutations to Claims of Darwin's Theory
4a. The Fossil Record
4b. Biological Similarities
4c. Convergent Evolution
4d. Molecular Isolation
4e. Irreducible Complexity
5. But Is There Evidence For Macroevolution?
5a. Speciation Within a Kind vs. Into Different Kinds
6. Speciation Within One Kind Doesn't Prove Macroevolution
6a. Macro Requires Different Results Than Micro
6b. But What About Mutations?
6c. Speciation Evidence Actually Works Against Darwin
7. The Difficulties Of The Definition Of a Species
7a. Different Definitions Of Species
7b. The Domestic Dog Example
7c. Speciation Events Depend On The Definition Of Species
8. Speciation Events
8a. Hybrids
8b. Polyploidy
8c. Human Influenced Speciation
8d. Assortative Mating Experiments
8e. Any Speciation Claim From Before Written History
8f. Speciation Beginning to Occur
8g. Rapid Speciation
8h. Speciation Conclusions
9. Darwin's Theory Conclusions

It was not possible to find a non-biased or secular/atheist source for every claim. This is likely because atheists tend not to make arguments that refute their beliefs. While there are some atheist sources that explain the claims, they tend to go into their own refutations as to why the claims are wrong. If you wish to explore that, then you will have to do so on your own. It seems counter intuitive for me to link to something that attempts to refute something I am claiming to be true without going back and addressing the refutations. While I could, I have had to make compromises with myself so that this writing is not as long as an entire book, so I won't be doing so here.

Intro: The Religion Of Evolution

Darwin's theory of evolution, from its humble beginnings as a controversial origin story, has itself seemed to evolve into a different creature in today's world. For some people, instead of simply being a merely potential explanation of our existence, the theory of evolution has become an unquestionable truth - the explanation of our existence.

Large numbers of people from, atheists to the casually secular - even some religious folk, have simply accepted evolution and materialist views as the true explanation to our, and everything's, existence. Some people have simply taken their parents' and teachers' word for it while others have explored the topic in-depth. There are a great many people who haven't actually pondered the question very deeply who simply accept it because it's what they've been told - a distinct parallel to the people who have not thought very deeply about God, but accept Him because that's what they've been told.

The contention begins when we consider that questioning evolution, even outside of the context of God - just simply questioning it on its own merits, is usually met with complete dismissal or absolute indignation, and anything and everything in between. Professors have been fired - basically excommunicated - for what equates to materialist blasphemy. Perhaps one of the reasons that it appears to only be the religious who dare speak out against the theory is because they do not fear the repercussions of doing so - while others may fear for their livelihood. Unfortunately, this attitude actually appears to make science worse off - as we'll explore, evolution and materialist claims tend to go against existing scientific evidence, studies and theories. Without being allowed to freely question these contradictions without being chastised, people are left believing things that are not true.

There are intelligent design proponents who are explicitly non-religious, and even non-ID supporters, who have dared voice their disagreements and questions about Darwin's theory - these people typically go to great lengths to distance themselves from the religious to ensure others that their dissent does not stem from a belief in a religious doctrine.

It's not even as uncommon as people may assume for specifically non-religious people to have doubts about evolution - some examples of the areas of study in which you are most likely to realize its weaknesses are going to be in biochemistry, physics, astrophysics - many "higher learning" positions. People typically go into these fields believing in materialism, only to find themselves having doubts after diving deeper than just the surface. The belief that opposition to evolution comes exclusively from the religious is simply a rhetoric tool of Darwinists to reassure them that only "irrational" people could even think to question their doctrine.

One of the most well known, non-religious professors against certain aspects of the theory of evolution is Michael Behe, a biochemist who teaches at Lehigh University. It is worthwhile to note that he isn't even against every aspect of evolution - he believes in common descent, but believes that it simply doesn't tell the entire story. Behe escapes excommunication by the safety net of being tenured, but the university where he teaches has its own disclaimer, specifically put up because of him, careful to ensure that they separate themselves from any connection to his blasphemous ideas.

"While we respect Prof. Behe's right to express his views, they are his alone and are in no way endorsed by the department. It is our collective position that intelligent design has no basis in science, has not been tested experimentally, and should not be regarded as scientific."

Their entire statement on the department's position on evolution and intelligent design can be read here.

Even the editor of the Wikipedia article on Michael Behe can't help but unabashedly refer to his work on irreducible complexity as "pseudoscientific". So much for being unbiased.

It is my personal assessment that for a highly educated professor to willingly place himself into a position of being constantly dismissed and ridiculed for his views by basically everyone who surrounds him in his daily life, there must be some rather strong evidence for his beliefs. That's just my opinion, of course, but it's hard to believe that he would endure such a trial without good reason, especially given that he was once a true believer in Darwin's theory of evolution.

There are many others besides Behe who find themselves questioning evolution after years of championing the theory. One good article I've found by an evolution-doubter - notably also a religion-doubter - was one of several reasons I found myself writing this. His piece is much shorter than mine, and I would recommend it if you are of the opinion that I cannot have a valid view on the subject due to my "religious bias." Darwin's Theory of Evolution: Good Science or Fault Philosophy?

Evidence shows that evolution is far from the concrete, proven truth its proponents insist it is. It is within the scope of the meanings of these words to classify an unwavering devotion to evolution and the materialist view of the creation of existence as a faith based ideology - even so far as to classify it as a religion, based on many of the actions and reactions of its followers when their beliefs are questioned. You cannot blame a Christian for answering a question they don't know the answer to with "God works in mysterious ways," if you yourself respond the same way. "We just don't know yet," "the answer is out there somewhere," "I'm sure we'll figure it out some day."

Evolution, in its quest to become a scientific origin story, has in itself become what Darwinists tend to oppose - a religious devotion.

It is an important note to make that while God will be mentioned in this piece, and while I am a Christian, that putting forth a case to prove God's existence is not the focus on this piece. If you choose to read, you'll find that God is mostly brought up in order to make distinctions on what evolution would prove or disprove if x y and/or z claims were true. The purpose and conclusion of this piece is not that, because evolution cannot be trusted, Christianity and its declarations therein are true. While, sure, I am of that belief, I did not come to that conclusion due to the evidence that will be put forth in this writing. All theories must be tested on their own merits - proving evolution to be an unsatisfactory theory would not therefore prove any other theory. There are not only two choices - it is not "God" vs. "Evolution," there could be a third, fourth, or twentieth potential explanation. I will not be using this opportunity to make a case for Christianity - this writing is already incredibly long enough as is. I have also chosen to outsource some claims and explanations to already existing pieces by others in order to shorten the length of this piece.

1. What Actually Is Evolution?

There is little to no controversy as to what the theory of evolution refers to and the concept it describes. Nonetheless, here is the opening of an article by an Evolution Expert named Heather Scoville:

"The Theory of Evolution is a scientific theory that essentially states species change over time. There are many different ways species change, but most of them are based on the idea of Natural Selection. The Theory of Evolution through Natural Selection was the first scientific theory that put together evidence of change through time as well as a mechanism for how it happens."

More specifically, what exactly evolution is can be broken down several ways. The general concept of what is meant by the theory of evolution is stated quite well I believe in the above quote, but there are specific and important distinctions between words used to discuss evolution: particularly micro- and macroevolution. These two phrases have the distinct linguistic advantage of appearing to be related. They appear to be two parts of the same puzzle - making rhetoric much easier for the Darwinist.

1a. Microevolution

When speaking of microevolution, scientists are refering to small changes made within the same species over time for perhaps any number of reasons, but mostly assumed to be due to adaptation to their environment or, as is the case with many domestic animals, selective breeding orchestrated by humans. This position is sound science. It has been proven time and again, it's backed by empirical data, and we see it in our every day lives. There is no case to be made against the claims of microevolution.

Clearly, natural adaptation is what is referred to when speaking of natural selection, but I see a curious subset of people who manage to also refer to the clear-cut unnatural selection of purposeful, human-caused selective breeding as "natural selection". That is to say for example, it's important to note that all of the different breeds of cats and dogs that we see today did not, in fact, occur through natural forces. Hopefully that is obvious!

It's important to note that microevolution can happen naturally and can be simulated by human interference. Experiments and examples of microevolution where humans were the driving force behind the changes cannot, by definition, be considered evidence of natural selection, but there has also been plenty of observed evidence in the undisturbed wild of microevolution occurring.

There is no dispute over whether or not species can experience minor changes over time. The dispute occurs when Darwinists attempt to make a connection between the concept understood as microevolution, and the distinctly separate theory of macroevolution.

1b. Macroevolution

Macroevolution is the cornerstone of the Darwinian theory of evolution - it is the driving force behind what Darwinists believe to ultimately be the cause of what pushed us from one celled organisms into human beings.  Macroevolution in a nutshell is the idea that if you give microevolution enough time, organisms will start to become so different that they split into completely separate, new creatures, and that this is how all life on earth came into being.

That is to say, macroevolution insists that a sort of four legged, carnivorous mammal could change so much over time that different populations of this same animal may start to take on so many new and different characteristics that the species ends up turning into two completely different animals with different biologies, DNA, genetics, amounts of chromosomes, dietary needs, instincts, social habits, breeding habits, and no ability to interbreed between the two of them - we would then end up with canines and cats. These two animals could also continue to spread, change, and diverge into different kinds of incompatible canines and cats.

It's too early to get into now, but further along we'll be explaining why this theory of macroevolution can't be extrapolated from microevolution.

1c. Natural vs. Intelligent Selection

Within this piece, and in a substantially large number of other places, studies and sources can be found that involve human interference. Many people simply assume that natural forces could produce the same effects that human forces do, they just need chance and time. This is not a correct assumption - natural forces do not build things up, they break them down. A house that has been left abandoned for many years does not find itself upkept by nature - it is broken down over time. Even an inhabited home requires tons of upkeep due to natural forces breaking it down under our noses - and that upkeep is specifically human performed. It goes against everything we see from our day to day lives to make this assumption, that natural forces can do what intelligent forces do. We never see it happen. It is not reasonable to make this jump.

It is important to stay sharp in this field of discussion - whether they do it intentionally or simply don't know any better themselves, people find themselves citing examples of intelligent guidance as evidence for natural guidance. This is a false comparison and it must be understood that any attempts to do this all fail for the same reason - natural forces are explicitly not intelligent forces. They are complete opposites. Natural forces do not carefully guide and monitor processes, they do not manipulate themselves into ensuring that conditions are met correctly, and they do not make choices. Only intelligent forces do that.

Therefore, any experiment or event showing that something occurs while under human guidance - anything, not even just in this topic of discussion - is only evidence that intelligent forces can produce something. For it to be proven that natural forces can produce something, they specifically cannot be influenced by an intelligent force by definition. This should be logically clear.

2. What Does Evolution Have to Prove?

Darwin's Theory of Evolution has a substantial amount of things it claims - and therefore, must prove. The actual theory of evolution doesn't just state that animals can change over time, and sometimes so much that they become different animals, but that all life was formed through this gradual process of changes. The theory explains that, somehow, a first life formed, and then that life diverged into all six different kingdoms of life and from there into all of the different types of life that exist.

The six kingdoms are outlined briefly here: http://biology.about.com/od/evolution/a/aa091004a.htm

Included on the above source is a picture showcasing the belief that all six of these kingdoms arose from a "universal ancestor".

It doesn't stop there - if that was indeed how life began, evolution must also explain how this occurred at all. As in, for a materialist view of the world, everything being created by natural forces randomly with no external Creator, the Darwinian Theory of Evolution must have some sort of explanation as to the First Cause and why anything exists at all. Unless Darwinists want to concede that a cause outside of materialism created the universe, it must make the claim that existence arose from natural causes - this is not lost on them, as they have tried to do so.

Some of their theories follow, along with brief explanations as to how they are unreasonable and links to further reading.

• Insisting that the universe exists infinitely uncaused. This has been disproven by science (see: the Big Bang, second law of thermodynamics, or all the evidence summarized with SURGE).
• The universe was created by an infinite chain of causes, which is logically impossible. Many people have explained this, here is one in-depth explanation. Briefly, if an infinite chain of dominos had to fall before the last one fell and created the universe, it would never fall, as the dominos would be falling infinitely - as in, for literally ever.
• The universe spontaneously came into being from absolutely nothing - a complete absence of any single kind of thing. The argument for this explanation usually goes like this: "the universe spontaneously formed into being from nothing because that is what happened." Suffice to say, nothing cannot create anything. Even the first law of thermodynamics says so:

In its simplest form, the First Law of Thermodynamics states that neither matter nor energy can be created or destroyed.

They cannot both be correct. If you want to claim that a complete and total absence of any single thing could create all time, space, and matter, you have to bring your objections to other scientists, not theists. Further reading can be found here.

• A variation of this argument is that the universe did not come "from nothing" but that there was indeed some material thing before the universe that caused it. This still invokes the question of where that material came from, what caused that material? We have arrived back at the first question, what caused anything in the first place?

I would go into this subject further, but it's one of the things I have decided to cut out in order to shorten the length of this piece. I have supplied other sources explaining the claims I've made which I feel is sufficient.

Suffice to say, if this materialist view can't produce a First Cause, then literally anything else that evolution can prove is irrelevant to the question of God.

This is a vastly important distinction. Even if macroevolution were proven true, even if species could diverge into different kinds over time, if a materialist evolutionary origin story cannot explain how anything at all exists in the first place, then the question of how existence began is still entirely unanswered and any and all other theories are still in the running. It does not contradict the idea that an eternal, personal Creator outside of time, space, and matter created the universe. It also, notably, does not prove that idea. All theories must be tested on their own merits, but it is important to understand that in its current state, the theory of evolution has failed its test.

Another important thing to note here is that materialists appear to believe that if they could prove that humans along with all other life did evolve from a universal common ancestor, it would mean that there is absolutely nothing else outside of materialism. This is a false conclusion, as you still haven't managed to explain how anything at all exists in the first place. While it's possible, persay, that there is an explanation out there somewhere, this would not be the explanation. None of the reasons proposed so far have enough evidence or logic behind them to reasonably believe - believing that evolution proves a natural, materialistic explanation for the existence of the universe is a faith claim.

2a. What Is Meant By God?

It is furthermore important to note that while a discovery of proof that humans came into existence through macroevolution would be a noticeable and perhaps devastating blow toward the truth claims of Christianity, the concept understood as God does not automatically refer to the Christian God. God refers to the Creator - the Uncaused First Cause outside of the time, space, and matter of this universe who willed this plane of existence into being. God refers to the concept that is understood to be God. Whether that God is described best by Christian doctrine, Islam, Buddhist, or Tao doctrine has yet to be tested. That God could be "another universe," one so powerful that it could cause other universes to come into existence. That is precisely what God is. The idea of the specific Christian God of the bible, like all ideas - as previously stated - must be tested on its own merit.

What I will go further into now is how Darwin's theory of evolution even further manages to be the most unreasonable explanation of our existence - why it is unreasonable that macroevolution from a universal ancestor over time could possibly be how we got here. Bear in mind, as previously stated, that I'm not arguing for any specific theory, I am arguing against Darwin's theory of evolution. While other theories may be brought up for comparisons or example purposes, they are not being argued for at this particular time.

3. Why Macroevolution Still Fails to Fit The Bill

For macroevolution to be the explanation as to how humans came into existence, it still has even more to prove. I feel a lot of people don't realize just how heavy of a burden macroevolution still carries just to attempt to prove the classical universal ancestor theory, even ignoring a First Cause.

Here is a heavily abridged list of requirements for the Darwinian theory of evolution, even if we skip over and ignore trying to explain why anything at all exists, to be possibly true:

• Life on Earth had to have spontaneously started, somehow.
• Through some manner of event, a planet of only chemicals - rocks, air, water, lava i.e. no actual life - would have to have spontaneously and naturally created at least one form of actual living existence.
• That one life would have to, in some manner, diverge into all six vastly different kingdoms of life.
• The kingdoms of life are the absolute broadest classifications specifically because all of the life within them are so vastly different.
• All of these divergences of life would have had to occur at exactly the right time and have evolved, propagated, multiplied, and spread around the earth at specific rates.
• This is because all of the anthropic constants that allow life to exist on earth, of which there are hundreds, would need to be maintained in a way that would continue to allow life to exist.
• It has been shown through science - physics and math - that if any sort of number of these anthropic constants were off by specific degrees, there would be a domino effect of disastrous proportions that would disallow any life from existing.
• Finally, all of these six kingdoms of animals diverging and spreading out around the world would need to do so very, very quickly based on scientists' own estimates as to the age of the earth.
• By the theory's own estimates, such dramatic macroevolutionary changes need a substantially large amount of time to produce any new organisms - and as we will see, a larger amount of time than scientists have given themselves.

I'll go into why Darwin's idea of a universal ancestor utilizing macroevolution to populate the earth has to prove all of these things in order to have any validity. Each one of them is important and if the theory fails on any one point, it fails altogether, based on scientists own definitions of the theory.

3a. Spontaneous Life Creation

Even if we pretend to ignore how anything exists at all without a First Cause, assuming that a Creator did not create life on earth, then evolution must show how that first life occurred. Without that universal ancestor, then, quite obviously, no life would have diverged and evolved from it.

Even if we allow room for a First Cause to have created the universe, but not life, which we can concede for the purpose of this writing is still reasonably possible, if evolution cannot provide a reasonable explanation as to how life came into existence through random and natural forces, then it does not hold any real merit as an explanation for how we got here - even if other aspects of it can be shown to be true. If it cannot explain a first life, even if it can prove that large amounts of changes over time create new kinds of organisms, it does not rule out the theory that a Creator designed life purposefully with the intention that it would be able to do so. That theory, as any, would still need to be tested on its own merit. The important distinction here is that to disprove a personal Creator making the first life - along with any other theories - Darwin's theory must explain a first life.

So, why does it fail in the order of explaining that the first life happened through random, natural forces?

Simply put, if life could spontaneously be created naturally out of non-life, it is inexplicable why life doesn't pop into existence anymore - why did it only happen once?

This actually puts an even heavier burden on Darwin's theory - not only does it have to explain how spontaneous life happened only once and never again, but it must explain why we are unable to synthesize life into existence through the manipulation of non-life. It's actually even more complex than that - but I'll get into that later.

This roadblock is not lost on scientists. One theory is the idea that the variables required for life to spontaneously form from non-life were once found on earth, but the environment changed over time and it is no longer possible for life to spontaneously form from chemicals and non-living matter. This theory plays under the assumption that the anthropic constants we see today were different in the past.

Anthropic constants are highly precise and interdependent environmental conditions of our planet that allow it to be life-permitting. There are different claims as to the amount of them that exist, but it is in the low hundreds. Each of these constants must be present and must be precise in their presence. Many of them interlock and work together - meaning if one of them is off, even by a small amount, then many others will fail alongside those, ruining earth's life-permitting environment. The assumption that the constants used to be different attempts to argue the precise conditions required for life to exist aren't actually that precise - which goes directly against the evidence we have today.

This could have one of two explanations. Either the constants that allowed life to form were not good enough to allow it to exist or the constants that allow life to exist are not as strict as the constants that allowed life to form. Both of these explanations have logic and evidence against them. If the first life was a universal ancestor, and all life is similar to it, then assuming it could form but not exist under the same conditions is a far reaching conclusion. Furthermore, the constants, as previously mentioned, are very precise - meaning that attempting to assert that they needed to be more strict for life to form, but less so simply to exist, would require that the constants be even more stringent in the past. Considering they are already incredibly precise - to the smallest fraction - it may not even be mathematically possible for this explanation to be true. Attempting to argue that life could form under different constants, when we know that for life to exist at all the constants need to be what they are today, insists that the universal first life could exist in an environment that all the life that descended from it could not.

While it is not impossible for this to be the case, based on what we do know, it is more reasonable to believe not only that the constants have not changed at all or at least not significantly since the earth began, but also that the constants had to be the same for life to form as it needs to exist. 

Furthermore, even if the variables had naturally been different, and allowed life to form spontaneously, why are those variables not synthesizeable? If the variables of our atmosphere and environments need to be different than they are naturally now, it should be reasonable to find a method of simulating them and creating life from non-life.

The Miller-Urey experiment is usually cited as proof that life could spontaneously arise from organic, non-living chemicals. It has since been discredited and cited as actually being an argument against abiogenesis. Most importantly, the experiment only produced the organic compounds found in life. The process of forming those compounds into life did not occur - i.e., no scientist has ever been able to create life from non-life. Furthermore, if a synthetic, human driven experiment were to create life, would that prove that it could occur naturally? Think about it. If intelligent forces created life from non-living chemicals, that would be evidence for...

"...rather than demonstrating chemical evolution, all the Urey-Miller experiment really showed was that an atmosphere designed for life could be carefully guided to produce one of life's building blocks. In other words, their success depended not on a random and unguided process, but on an intelligently designed and managed experiment that started out with the necessary chemical components."

intelligent design. Urey and Miller actually proved that an intelligent force was required to guide the process. Just like human interference with selective breeding of animals doesn't prove that microevolution happens naturally, creating life in a laboratory would also not prove that life could be created naturally. It has to be observed to occur naturally in order to prove that it could.

What is interesting to note is that, given the evidence we have for an intelligent design creation story, even proving that the natural components required for life could be formed out of the natural elements of the earth itself would still not disprove a Creator. Depending on your creation beliefs, the general theme is that the Creator used the very same natural non-living components found on earth that scientists are using. The distinguishing factor was that He turned those components from a non-living construct into actual life through a miraculous act. While it is surely impressive for scientists to be able to create proteins found in life, they still fall short of actually finding their own miraculous act with which to form those proteins into an actual living organism.

So, our only experiment shows that while the conditions could possibly have been different, there still would have had to have been an intelligent force guiding the process. Now, if this were the case, then the concern about the constants being different in the past is also less of an issue, since this particular explanation involves an intelligent designer who would be capable of manipulating these conditions. If Darwinists want to avoid this intelligent designer, they need to be able to explain how life formed naturally in certain conditions but still requires different conditions in order to exist - which is directly at odds with other scientific evidence.

Following from that, there is no working theory as to how the first life came into existence out of non-life other than special-pleading arguments that it just happened, okay. The preexisting biases of the Darwinist lead him to this conclusion - after all, it had to have just happened, or else Darwin's theory is false!

Even atheists are compelled by this lack of evidence - and subsequent evidence for a Creator, though they volitionally deny the logical conclusion of the evidence. Considering the following statements from people much smarter than me:

Francis Crick, codiscoverer of DNA and Darwinist, warns, “biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved.” Phillip Johnson, intelligent design advocate, responded “Darwinian biologists must keep repeating that reminder to themselves because otherwise they might become conscious of the reality that is staring them in the face and trying to get their attention.”

Chandra Wickramasinghe, panspermia advocate, mathematician, astronomer and astrobiologist, stated that “The emergence of life from a primordial soup on the Earth is merely an article of faith that scientists are finding difficult to shed. There is no experimental evidence to support this at the present time. Indeed all attempts to create life from non-life, starting from Pasteur, have been unsuccessful.”

Microbiologist Michael Denton, an atheist, adds, “The complexity of the simplest known type of cell is so great that it is impossible to accept that such an object could have been thrown together suddenly by some kind of freakish, vastly improbable event. Such an occurrence would be indistinguishable from a miracle.”

Physicist and information scientist Hubert Yockey writes, “The belief that life on earth arose spontaneously from nonliving matter, is simply a matter of faith in strict reductionism and is based entirely on ideology.”

These quotations are pulled from I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist, and their citations are found there. Also, I highly recommend that book. 

3b. The First Life Diverging Into All Life

Let's give evolution another break and say that maybe it's still possible for a universal ancestor to diverge into all life even without being able to explain a First Cause or first life. After all, maybe we just don't have the right evidence yet.

Let's say a first life did occur, somehow. We have our universal ancestor. We have willed it into existence ourselves.

What we have here is a working universe, galaxy, and solar system, complete with an earth ready for some life to start. We also have one, single life. Perhaps it's a single cell of some kind. We know that there are numerous different kinds of cells and that different kinds of life have different kinds of cells, but we'll just say it's Darwin's simple cell.

We can also ignore that there is no such thing as a simple cell. All life existing on earth is highly complex, even the smallest cells. Darwin didn't know this when he wrote his book - it's not his fault, he couldn't have. He actually theorized that when we were finally able to see cells and small forms of life, that we would find them to be very simple. The exact opposite has been shown - all forms of life contain DNA, which is highly complex in itself. DNA contains the instructions for life - basically, DNA tells a life form what it is supposed to be by instructing it on how to create proteins. Even the first life must have contained it - indeed, if it is the universal ancestor, it must have, or else how would any other life have it?

So, we have our not-so-simple cell, our universal ancestor. For evolution to have a chance at validity, it must explain how this spontaneous and unexplained first life diverged into the six vastly different kingdoms of life.

As stated earlier, there are theories about the earth's conditions being different than they are today. Those theories go a little like this:

Early earth formed an atmosphere over time, originally being a blazing hot, inhospitable fireball of lava - until plants came and saved the day by creating oxygen, which lead to a chain of events which caused earth to allow life to exist. This theory very curiously manages to put an even heavier burden on the universal ancestor - it implies that the first life turned into plants, and then plants turned into animals. This connection skipped right over my head as a middle schooler, but its inconsistency is clear to me today. Biologists want to talk about a missing link - you have to find the link between plants and animals before you can even talk about a link between two very similar species.

This theory does even more dancing around - for plants to exist, they need water. The theories insist that water accumulated by vapor forming in the... atmosphere. While claiming that the atmosphere didn't exist until plants created it by turning CO2 into oxygen. Water can't exist without oxygen, and plants can't exist without water, yet these theories insist that there was no oxygen until plants, which need water to live, created it. Other theories insist that water came before oxygen, perhaps attempting to declare a solution to this circular puzzle, without actually explaining how water could exist on a planet for so long without an atmosphere with oxygen in it to protect it from escaping into space permanently, or how plants could live being pummeled by space radiation without an atmosphere. Some theories insist a first life before oxygen (but after water, which needs oxygen and atmosphere in order to exist if you recall), meaning that it would have been able to live on a planet without an atmosphere. This is a chicken-or-the-egg conundrum - even more radical than that, it's a what-came-first polyhedron, and yet it is somehow accepted in mainstream science as a "working theory".

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_water_on_Earth
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geological_history_of_oxygen

Some Darwinists attempt to toss in a possibility of multiple first lifes. This is a curious tactic, as multiple first lives would actually stand directly in the way of Darwin's theory. Darwin's theory specifically states that there is one universal common ancestor - it is the basis for believing that it's the reason why all life is related, why we have common features, DNA, and genetics. Adding multiple first lifes into this equation changes the game entirely. Especially with the knowledge that even the simplest life is enormously complex, you'd be insisting that natural forces can create highly complex lifeforms out of non-living chemicals very efficiently. Natural forces already naturally simplify and degrade things - to insist that they could create something as complex as life not only once but several times is a substantial leap of faith.

The first obvious issue is of course the insistence that life no longer pops into existence anymore because the conditions required for it to appear are no longer present on modern day earth. How would another first life popping into existence after plants allegedly changed the face of the earth fare against this explanation? If life could just pop into existence so many times left and right, why is it completely impossible to synthesize? Natural forces would prove themselves more capable at creating life than us! We are also struck with the stark reality that Darwinists don't even have an explanation for the first life. If there were even more than one, they will have just as much trouble explaining each and every first life. Multiple first lifes specifically cause more problems for Darwinists.

So, what does all this mean for that first life diverging into all life? What these theories insist is that plants were the first life, and were the only life, for a very long time. It requires that plants evolved into animals, and did so within a time frame reasonable enough that plants did not create too much oxygen. Furthermore, it requires that the first plants were able to exist in an environment that basically lacked an atmosphere until it was created by them. These theories all contradict what we know about plants and about the conditions that need to be met for complex life like plants to exist. What's more, we still haven't seen any reason to believe that this first life could diverge and increase in complexity in the first place.

But first, let's explore the anthropic constants.

3c. The Anthropic Constants

Let's put it this way - plants breathe in CO2 and breathe out O2. The amount of oxygen, an anthropic constant, on our earth is 21% - if it were lower (15%), animals that breathe it would suffocate. If the oxygen level is too high (25%), fires would spontaneously burst into existence. The level of CO2 is also an anthropic constant - too much, and we'd have the greenhouse effect in full force, the basis of the idea behind global warming. Too low, and plants would suffocate. Then, following that, we also would. Furthermore, the amount of both of these in the atmosphere, along with nitrogen and ozone, contribute to another anthropic constant - the composition of the atmosphere itself. This brings into light the atmospheric anthropic constant. If the atmosphere were less transparent, not enough solar radiation would reach us. If it were more transparent, we would experience far too much solar radiation.

Careful attention paid will show that this doesn't add up - how could plants have formed, i.e. life, under these conditions? Furthermore, either geologists and biologists are not on speaking terms, or they simply forgot to update their theories, because it's been shown that plants require oxygen to live. There is simply nothing about this that possibly adds up - the evidence is stacked against it in a large pile of contradictions.

There have even been studies showing that there is no evidence that the earth didn't contain any oxygen at any point in its history. Unfortunately, you have to pay to see the entire study, but the study is said to have shown through sedimentary evaluation that there is no evidence that the chemical makeup of earth's atmosphere has at any point been drastically different than it is today, as these early earth geological theories insist. The evidence shows that it has more or less been the same this whole time.

These theories about the constants slowly coming into existence over time through life interacting with the conditions of our planet also curiously list contradictions - one theory states that oxygen levels were as high as 35% at some points in our history. An increase to even 25% would cause fires to spontaneously erupt - 35% can make even wet environments break out in flames. At other points, it claims oxygen levels to be around 10% - while still claiming there was animal life. These theories are in direct contrast with our understanding of what too high and too low oxygen levels can do - they cannot both be right at the same time. Either these highly fluctuating oxygen levels occurred, or they did not. The evidence is in favor of them having stayed consistent.

We can see in just these few examples how life can affect anthropic constants. Since we know those constants need to stay constant for life to exist, then it follows logically that when this universal ancestor came into existence, it needed to diverge and evolve into all of the six kingdoms in a very specific and exact way that allowed earth to remain life-permitting. This is yet another rather heavy burden - as mentioned earlier, those six kingdoms are so divided because all of the life within them is so significantly different. They are so dissimilar that they must be classified into the broadest possible categories of different forms of life.

We know that evolution is supposed to occur very slowly. Let's say there was just enough oxygen to support plant life, but not animal life. We would assume that animals came into existence, from plants, at precisely the right time to allow them to exist. If we do not assume that animals happened to evolve from plants at exactly the right moment, then we must assume that animals were constantly attempting to evolve from plants until the oxygen levels were finally good enough that they could survive. So, why aren't plants evolving into animals left and right today? Why are animals and plants so distinctly different? It would be more reasonable, in the realm of these explanations anyway, to assume that some plant evolved into the first animal at just the right time to allow it to survive, if it is even reasonable to assume that plants can evolve into animals (it is not - but that will be much later.) Why would they have had to come into existence at just the right time?

If animals, or oxygen breathing life, had not formed at some point while plants were busy making tons of oxygen, then eventually the oxygen levels would have gotten too high and set everything on fire. That would have been quite a major setback - even if a good number of lifeforms survived for the oxygen levels went back down, we're taking away many thousands of years from the already tight schedule of evolution.

Let's summarize then what evolution has to prove for a universal ancestor diverging into all life to be reasonable. It must prove that:

The conditions of the earth were much different, enough to form a first life once but never again, which then turned into plants that created oxygen, oxygen that allowed an atmosphere to form - oxygen and an atmosphere both being something that plants need to live in the first place. While this was occurring, water appeared - plants need that too - somehow, but also didn't disappear despite all of the evidence that it would have without an atmosphere to keep it contained on the planet. Then, when the oxygen levels were just right, plant life diverged into oxygen breathing animal life, which then propagated, spread, and evolved at the right pace to ensure that the oxygen levels didn't get high enough to where the earth erupted into flames. At some point, the other kingdoms of life also appeared, somehow.

That is, suffice to say, a heavy burden, one which Darwin's theory has failed to carry even slightly. If the logical absurdities in my explanations weren't enough, further ahead we will explain why it isn't even reasonable to assume that a universal ancestor could diverge at all into all of the forms of life we see today.

But first...

3d. How Quickly Life Would Have Had To Diverge

Let's give the first life, and evolution, yet another generous break. Let's say it does manage to diverge into all six vastly different kingdoms, managed to somehow gain enough information to go from a cell into highly complex life forms made of multiple cells, and those lives all spread and diverged further, consistently enough to maintain our life-permitting atmosphere, into all of the different kinds today. How long would that take?

The first life is estimated to have formed 4,000,000,000 years ago. We know that cells, which divide and multiply very quickly, change quickly. Less complex (yet still very complex!) forms of life with much shorter life spans than animals can experience change in a short amount of time. It would be reasonable to assume that the first life, going through changes so quickly, would take less time to evolve into different kinds at first, and then increase in time needed as history continued.

If we do some rough napkin math, using the estimated time it took for our most recent common ancestor to diverge into both chimpanzees and humans, it takes 6,000,000 years for the most complex being (the human being) to evolve into existence. Even if each kind took a little less time each time down that evolutionary line - let's say the first few complex species evolving in as little as a few thousand years - the length of time we have between the first life forming 4,000,000,000 years ago and now would only provide us with enough time for that first life to evolve into a mere thousands of kinds - that's including all six kingdoms. A rough estimate on the number of species of animals alone is in the millions (3 million to 30 million).

It gets worse: a breathable atmosphere, the kind needed for any oxygen breathing life (even water based ones - aquatic creatures don't breathe water they breathe dissolved oxygen in water, which is deposited by the air), isn't estimated to have existed until 2,500,000,000 years ago, which means those 3-30 million some estimated species of animals would have had almost half the time to diverge into all of the species on earth today.

There are even more roadblocks. First of all, we have concluded that there have been five mass extinctions, - this would set the time it would take for all of these kinds to evolve back significantly, having lower populations of the species that survived and fewer species period. There is also the obvious inconsistency between the kinds of animals that existed in between these mass extinction events - considering so many potential links and chains died off in these extinctions, it puts a heavy burden on the existing ones to continue to diverge and evolve into different kinds - anywhere from 3 million to 30 million different kinds, in less and less time.

Interestingly, the last two mass extinctions highly impacted marine life, the last one occurring as early as 440,000,000 years ago. One of them is estimated to have killed off 70% of all marine life. At this current time, the estimate for all of the species of marine life - which does include more than just animals - is around 230,000, and they expect to continue to discover more. So after two major extinction events, as early as 440,000,000 years ago, 230,000 species of marine life still manage to exist today. The evolution of different species of whales is an oft cited example of speciation, and even then it was estimated that it took 750,000 years for these species to evolve. If we apply a very generous time frame of only a few thousand years for some of the "simplest" forms of marine life to evolve, given the time between the last mass extinction and today, there should only be a couple thousand - not hundreds of thousands - of marine species alive today.

This obvious problem faced by Darwinists is often explained away with another just-so: well, clearly, evolution happened really quickly sometimes. If it hadn't, then the theory of evolution couldn't be true! But this assumption is actually directly at odds with the theory itself. If life could evolve into different kinds so rapidly, without any explanation as to how or why it suddenly happened so quickly sometimes, it should be able to be simulated somehow - different conditions, food sources, rapid breeding, etc. It could even be possible to happen across an observable event in natural real-time.

Furthermore, it is very clearly in opposition to their own claims. If rapid speciation were proof of Darwinian evolution, then we should be able to see macroevolution occur in our lifetime. The mantra of evolutionists is that evolution takes "a really, really long time." It's their reason as to why we haven't ever seen a kind evolve into another kind, it's almost a fail safe. These claims cannot both be true - the Darwinist has to concede that something is wrong with the theory, resulting in rapid periods of evolution that cast serious doubt on the theory, or attempt to argue that there was no rapid evolution. Since he is unable to do the latter and unwilling to do the former, he must come up with something else. This is where the Darwinist's faith comes in - because he staunchly believes that evolution is true, he believes that an explanation for rapid evolution within the context of his theory is out there, somewhere.

Darwin's theory hits even more rough waters when you consider that rapid speciation has been shown to occur - the amateur evolutionist may consider this to be great news! But it's at odds with the evolutionary theory. Evolution must take a long time to occur - if it can happen so quickly, then "gradual changes and adaptations over time" is clearly not the explanation for it. In fact, it's proven nearly impossible to find evolutionist viewpoints on rapid evolution - they tend to avoid acknowledging it. The only mentions I found of it explained it very matter of factly - "there were some periods where evolution happened very rapidly," without elaborating or mentioning that there have been recent, proven rapid speciation events. If it was such good evidence for them, they'd be talking about it all the time!

Before we get into precisely why macroevolution does not flow necessarily from microevolution, here are some refutations to purported evidence for Darwin's theory, along with some other scientific evidence directly at odds with it.

4. Refutations to Claims of Darwin's Theory

Contrary to Darwinist's claims, there is not a "wealth of evidence" in favor of evolution. Even ignoring the First Cause and the first life, there is little evidence in direct support of the theory and the "wealth of evidence" appears to actually be in opposition to it. Even things that appear to support the theory are open to interpretation - Darwinists only believe that they support their own beliefs because they have assumed the conclusion based on their prior beliefs - "because evolution is true, then this evidence is in support of it." The following are just a few examples, while links within the examples may provide more examples.

4a. The Fossil Record

Darwinists come out the gate swinging the wealth of evidence from the fossil record. Unfortunately, even if it exists as a concept, it's rather widely agreed upon to be nearly useless as scientific proof of evolution.

Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould (an evolutionist) states:

The history of most fossil species includes two features particularly inconsistent with gradualism:

1). Stasis. Most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappear; Morphological change is usually limited and directionless.

2). Sudden Appearance. In any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and ‘fully formed'.

Stephen J. Gould, "Evolution's Erratic Pace," Natural History 86 1977. Linked here from here.

The fossil record is not considered by a considerable number of scientists - non-religious ones, if you were looking to invalidate them for "bias" - to be any sort of workable evidence for evolution. Even moreso, fossil evidence directly contradicts the idea.

Almost every major group of known, existing animals suddenly erupt into the fossil record, fully formed, in the Cambrian period - which is estimated to have been 500 to 600 million years ago. Jonathan Wells stated, "The fossil evidence is so strong, and the event so dramatic, that it has become known as the "Cambrian explosion", or "biology's big bang".

The quote is found here, which is another article explaining some of evolution's difficulties, though much less verbose than this one.

Not only do the fossil records show a distinct lack of diverse, gradually diverging species, but considering that 99% of an animal's biology is in its soft tissue, classification of these ancient species cannot even reliably be considered. We will go into what biologists use as a means to classify species later, but to summarize, a vast majority of the means used rely not only on things unobservable through dead fossils, but genetics, DNA, and other soft tissue features - all absent with fossils.

It wouldn't be far reaching to assume that everyone has seen an impressive collection of skulls all lined up, showing gradual changes from first one to the next until the first and last ones are impressively different from one another. Unfortunately, this is all conjecture and virtually worthless.

We need only look at modern skulls of living animals to see that skulls quite frequently don't actually look anything like the animal they're inside of. Here is a hippo skull:

Without soft tissue to identify this creature, just imagine what kind of crazy assumptions we could make about the animal this skull was inside of.

Let's take it a step further. Rabbits and squirrels are in different orders. Squirrels are rodents, but rabbits are lagomorphs. Here are their skulls:

Based on the many similarities, but slight differences, I have concluded that these animals were close relatives - an evolutionary link, perhaps one evolved into the other from small changes over time. Current scientific classification, based on these animals' soft tissue and other factors, tells me that I'm wrong.

We don't have soft tissue to make comparisons for animals that have been long dead, so comparing two skulls and claiming you've found a link is an incredibly loose definition of "science".

Fossils on their own can hardly be trusted to paint complete pictures. Here is a short and unbiased explanation about the various ways in which fossils can be incomplete data, can be preserved incorrectly, and can be interpreted incorrectly by their discoverers: http://mygeologypage.ucdavis.edu/cowen/historyoflife/biases.html

4b. Biological Similarities

The similarities in DNA between humans and primates is quoted as anywhere from 85 to 95 percent. Indeed, all life on earth, even the "least complex" forms, share many similarities on a molecular and biological level. This is often cited as very strong evidence in support of evolution. It is also a case of assuming an answer based on your previously established biases.

Darwinists believe that we are all descended from a common ancestor, and therefore that we are all related. They believe that the first life magically formed its incredibly complex DNA randomly and through natural forces, and because we all descended from it, we all share its similarities.

We also share many other biological similarities - we all are made up of different kinds of cells. Most advanced animals breathe oxygen. Every mammal breathes that oxygen through the air with lungs. We all need food and water. There are an incredible number of other things, too.

But, again, the Darwinist is assuming this is because of evolution because of previous biases. It is possible, sure if evolution could be proven reasonably true, that the reason for these vast similarities is because of a common ancestor. But this conclusion is not based on evidence - it's based off of your assumptions. I'll show you how so:

We have so much in common with other forms of life because we were all created by the same Creator. This Creator used the same sort of DNA language and building blocks of life because they were the most viable material with which to create us. Given the environment He created for us and the ways He wanted all life to interact, He found it most reasonable to make our DNA all very similar so that we could all take advantage of the same chemicals, conditions, and environment available to us on this planet, so that everything could work together, interdependently, as He planned.

Now, despite the fact that Darwinists would immediately dismiss this option as an explanation because their faith requires them to, there is absolutely nothing unreasonable or illogical about this explanation if God is the reason for our existence.

It is worth it to note that neither of these statements prove anything. What is simply being demonstrated here is that the reason for our similarities can only be inferred - and through our biases, we infer different reasons.

If God is the explanation of our existence, then it is not unreasonable to believe that DNA is God's Play-Doh, just as, if evolution is the explanation of our existence, it is not unreasonable to believe that DNA reached all of us through our common ancestry.

4c. Convergent Evolution

Organisms can display similarities of sequence, form, or life history that cannot be accounted for by their family tree. Homoplasy is the technical term assigned to such tree-jumping similarities, and "convergent evolution" is the process by which they evolved.

Homoplasy basically shows genetic evidence that many of the similarities between species that were thought to have evolved from each other, accounting for their similarities, actually evolved those similarities independently - they evolved these similarities on their own without having been evolved from each other. Basically, these traits "jumped across trees," rather than following the branches of the trees toward all the other organisms.

This source lists and describes several examples of analogous similarities.

The significance of this piece of evidence is that the belief that different species are similar and have similar traits is due to them all having evolved from a common ancestor does not coincide with this evidence.

Darwinists attempt to explain homoplasy away by saying that "analogous traits will often arise where different species live in similar ways and/or similar environment, and so face the same environmental factors. When occupying similar ecological niches, similar problems lead to similar solutions."

As usual, this is satisfying conjecture if you have already assumed that evolution is true. If we take a truly skeptical position, it is clear that convergent evolution could easily have any other cause. Is it necessarily true that "similar problems lead to similar solutions"? There are hundreds of ways to solve one problem - some animals found shelter from predators underground, some found it in trees, some found it with talons and fangs. The solution to the problem of being eaten by sharks because you live in the water wouldn't necessarily be walking on land, but perhaps camouflage or ink squirters - or both if you're an octopus. Insisting bats and dolphins both developed echolocation to solve a similar problem ignores that dolphins actually have great eyesight. Echolocation just allows them to see even ridiculously farther and communicate with one another, while it allows bats to see at all in the first place. These weren't even the same problems - they came up with the same solution to two different problems, in two entirely different environments.

Is it necessarily true that having wings over arms solves any particular problem? Eagles with fierce claws connected to arms rather than wings would still be a deadly predator - insisting that they would develop wings necessarily insists that they somehow had a problem beforehand. The idea that similar problems lead to similar solutions is, all things considered, incredibly short sighted considering the impressive numbers of ways in which animals all solve their problems today, observably in real time.

More importantly, if convergent evolution shows that organisms can evolve similar traits without requiring common ancestry, what does this tell us about the likelihood of all life truly diverging from one first life? It doesn't disprove it by any means, but it shows that it is not necessary. It shows us that similarities between species is explicitly not proof of Darwinian evolution.

4d. Molecular Isolation

We know that our DNA is all very similar. It should really be pretty obvious, considering there are only four "letters" of DNA. There are 26 letters in our alphabet, but depending on the way you order them, you get different words. If all life has a universal ancestor, then the sequences of amino acids present in that DNA should be noticeably transitional between the different classes of animals. Amphibians are generally considered to have been a transitional link to reptiles, and reptiles a link into mammals or birds. If this is the case, we should find evidence of an evolutionary transition within the genetics of these species.

Michael Denton, a biochemical researcher is quoted as saying, "At a molecular level there is no trace of the evolutionary transition from fish to amphibian to reptile to mammal. So amphibia, always traditionally considered intermediate between fish and the other terrestrial vertebrates, are in molecular terms as far from fish as any group of reptiles or mammals!"
 
Basically what is being said here can be explained with a little comparison. As mentioned, all of the words that included here are made up of the same 26 letters. With those 26 letters, we can create vastly different combinations of words. All of those words share in the similarity that they are made up on the same letters, but all mean different things. Some words can change dramatically in meaning just from changing one letter: artistic, autistic; beach, reach. This would be indicative of a transitional evolution - only some parts were changed until it became something new. Some words change dramatically in meaning by rearranging the letters: servant, taverns; grade, raged. These words are similar in that they have the same letters, but are different in their arrangement to a degree where there is no further similarity. Given that DNA only has four letters, it would be reasonable to understand that these four letters would show up very frequently, but in different arrangements.

So, what we see in DNA when we see that humans and primates are 85-95 percent similar in our DNA is attributed more toward the idea that they are anagrams of one another. This does nothing to prove that they naturally descended from a common ancestor - what would show that they descended from a common ancestor was if the arrangement of the sequences of DNA were transitional in nature - if they were almost the same except for key changes. On the contrary, they show a staunch lack of any sort of transitional arrangement. There are gaps in the formation of the DNA code between these different classes of animals, absolutely void of any indication that they descended from any sort of common ancestor.

This evidence doesn't necessarily disprove evolution's universal common ancestor, but it is in direct opposition to it.

4e. Irreducible Complexity

I couldn't not include this, but to save space, instead of writing about it myself, I will concede to simply link to another source, mostly because I found this to be a great, unbiased source. It plainly states both sides of the debate about what irreducible complexity is, and some of the back and forth that has come from it.

Darwin himself is quoted in his book:

“If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down” (Origin of Species, 1859, p. 158).

While evidence of likely irreducible complex systems has been found, the consensus is mostly inconclusive. Like most evidence in this debate, there are cases to be made for both sides since we cannot know for certain whether or not x or y happened, since no humans were alive to study it when it happened. The linked source nicely wraps up a summary on the debate:

While irreducible complexity does not explicitly prove an intelligent Designer, and does not conclusively disprove evolution, it most definitely points to something outside of random processes in the origin and development of biological life.

As with most things, that "something" could be a completely undiscovered, entirely unknown factor.

5. But Is There Evidence For Macroevolution?

These refutations are good to show that our current evidence does not support macroevolution being the reason we're here, but they would be worthless if macroevolution could be proven to occur. The previous claims only show that, unless Darwin's theory can produce better evidence, then it is reasonable to conclude that the current evidence we have makes Darwin's theory unlikely. However, if macroevolution could be proven, then all of these pieces of evidence could be found to have explanations within the theory. If macroevolutionary theory could be proven, then it would only be a matter of filling in the holes.

Darwinists believe that they have proved macroevolution - not directly, but through the extrapolation of microevolution. They cite many examples of speciation and other observable instances of microevolution as "clear proof" that macroevolution is the end result of these observations. An important distinction must be made before we get started.

5a. Speciation Within a Kind vs. Into Different Kinds

"Kinds" is a more fanciful way of basically saying "kinds of animals more different than simply different species of animals." That is to say, kinds refers to the difference between a wolf and a tiger rather than a grey wolf and a red wolf. Grey wolves and red wolves are considered different species of the same kind of animal. If it could be proven that a red wolf is evolved from a grey wolf, it would not be definitive proof of macroevolution. I'll go into why further down.

In fact, the Biological Species Concept, one of many definitions of a species, is the most prevailing definition of what it means for two animals to be of different species. It is not regarded as the best definition by everyone, but it is important to note that it is widely used as the determining factor between species by vertebrate zoologists and most regular people. The BSC defines a species as, essentially, a group of interbreeding natural populations that are isolated from other populations. That is to say, under the BSC, red wolves and coyotes, not usually interbreeding in their natural environments due to living in separate areas, are different species, even though...

Red wolves (Canis rufus), gray wolves (Canis lupus), coyotes (Canis latrans), and domestic dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) are all capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. via. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

We'll go more into the difficulties with the different definitions of species later.

To prove macroevolution, there would need to be definitive proof that a kind could change into a different kind. Now, that is to say, not necessarily that a wolf would transform overnight into a tiger, but one creature would eventually evolve into a completely different creature - to quote myself earlier, with different biologies, DNA, genetics, amounts of chromosomes, dietary needs, instincts, social habits, breeding habits, and no ability to interbreed between the two of them.

It should be quite obvious why there hasn't been proof of macroevolution - if it's supposed to occur over the course of hundreds of thousands of years, then humans, who have only existed for so long, would be hard pressed to be able to catalogue the evolution of one kind to another.

Long story short, we can't definitely prove macroevolution. This conclusion is not very exciting, but it is simply how it is. Until humankind has existed for hundreds of thousands of years, long enough to catalogue the changes over time of one kind into another kind, it cannot be stated to be proven.

I would take the time to note that I am not saying that because macroevolution hasn't been definitively proven that it cannot or could not be proven, but simply that, in light of the evidence against it, without any proof that it occurs, it is not a strong theory. If, in light of this evidence, it is still found to be heresy to speak out against the validity of Darwin's theory, then it has become an ideology. If a Darwinist still wishes to believe that the theory of evolution is true, then that is a faith based commitment, given that there is plenty of reason to believe that the theory is not strong enough to hold up the burden placed upon it.

6. Speciation Within One Kind Doesn't Prove Macroevolution

So, why isn't regular speciation - one kind evolving into another species of the same kind - not proof of macroevolution? Why does macroevolution have to prove that kinds can evolve into other kinds to be proven true? Why can't speciation within kinds be extrapolated to show that macroevolution is definitely possible?

While I will make the case that the very definition of a species is part of the problem, the assumption that microevolution will turn into macroevolution is a false conclusion. We know that microevolution can change animals into different versions of the same animals, but not only does evidence show that it is unlikely that microevolution will lead to macroevolution, but that conclusion does not flow from the evidence. Considering the evidence we have against macroevolution, as explained above, it is not necessarily reasonable to assume that micro changes will lead to a one celled organism turning into a puppy. It is more reasonable, based on the evidence, that microevolutionary changes will not turn a creature into another kind of creature.

6a. Macro Requires Different Results Than Micro

There is scientific and logical evidence against the assumption that microevolution leads necessarily into macroevolution. To start off, the process of macroevolution - especially from a one celled organism into a poodle - requires that the DNA that controls what the organism is somehow acquires new information. For a fish to turn into a land dwelling creature, what is essentially the "code" for the fish needs to somehow acquire the information required to be able to tell the fish to grow legs, lungs, and whatever else that a lizard has that a fish doesn't.

If we're assuming the information for legs and lungs don't exist anywhere, yet, then the DNA code that created the fish needs to somehow gain "leg code" and "lung code". But the code is nowhere to be found, how does it get created? To take it back to the beginning, a one celled organism doesn't have the code to make hair, tongues, eyes, bones, hearts, feathers, scales, etc. How could it have gotten anywhere from where it started? Some means of acquiring new information has to exist for an amoeba to turn into anything, let alone every living thing.

6b. But What About Mutations?

The assumption is that these new codes are gained through mutations. Without mutations, the DNA code that makes a fish will never, ever make lungs because it has no way of acquiring that non-existent information. There is a stark issue with the mutation claim, however, mainly that the vast majority of mutations are completely useless - and even if a mutation ends up being helpful for the creature based on its environment, they result in a loss or at least a degradation of information - not new information.

Even this FAQ on TalkOrigins, which speaks as favorably as possible about mutations, admits (emphasis mine):

Some mutations are fatal or very bad. These mutations get eliminated immediately. Some are silent and don't count. Sometimes a mutation is definitely advantageous; this is rare but it does happen.

As an example of a beneficial mutation, they claim that sickle cell resistance to malaria is a positive mutation under certain circumstances.

This is an example where a mutation decreases the normal efficiency of the body (its fitness in one sense) but none-the-less provides a relative advantage

The fact of the matter is, sickle cell mutation has caused a degradation of information - whether it proves to be advantageous or not in a specific situation doesn't change the actual genetic consequences of the mutation. In terms of whether or not this is a gain or a loss of information, sickle cell mutation is distinctly negative - a loss.

To clarify, geneticists and evolutionists speak of the same terms with different meanings in mind. Evolutionists insist that a mutation can be beneficial if it helps the creature survive better in its environment. It is detrimental if it hinders the ability for the creature to survive, and it is neutral if it doesn't do anything. Geneticists speaking of mutations will say that they are all almost exclusively negative because they are not gauging whether the mutation will help the creature survive - they are referring to the gain or loss of information within that creature's DNA. Even a mutation that helps a creature survive is still negative to the geneticist - it is still a loss or degradation of information.

Here is an example picture, taken from this source:

What's being demonstrated here is that a mutation has caused a negative change - a lump on a receptor. It shouldn't be there, but it doesn't kill off the plant because the natural shape of the enzyme puzzle piece for that receptor can still fit in the mutated receptor. However, the herbicide can no longer fit inside of it, giving it an immunity. It's advantageous for the survival of the plant in situations where humans are spraying herbicide, so this mutation, though technically a corruption of previous data, will end up surviving - and thus, mutations end up making the organism's code data corrupted. It is not going to help make the plant more advanced, it won't grant it new information, and it won't allow for the DNA code of the plant to learn to grow legs and walk away.

So what we see is that mutations, from a purely genetic standpoint, make an organism worse off - the DNA code data is corrupted or lost. That means that the only method evolution had to create new information in a creature's DNA basically never does that. Let's say that it sometimes did, though, maybe sometimes a mutation could create a new bit of information within a creature's code.

The problem here is that as animals reproduce, gene pools become more specific. As generations of creatures reproduce and microevolutionary changes happen, the genes that are making up these creatures actually reduce in number - the organisms dispose of code that wasn't being used or wasn't precise enough, meaning that, genetically speaking, the amount of information naturally decreases over time. So even if, on rare occasions, mutations added genetic information, the process of creatures reproducing and specializing - i.e., natural selection, actually causes a loss of genetic information.

6c. Speciation Evidence Actually Works Against Darwin

The very force through which Darwin assumed creatures could become different creatures actually works against them to specifically bar them from becoming different creatures. Darwinists don't incorrectly understand that microevolutionary changes are happening and changing the creatures around us, but they misinterpret the direction in which those changes are headed - they are not moving forward in complexity, but backwards, becoming more simplified. Creatures may diversify, but the chance that they could become more complex is effectively zero.

This means that even examples of speciation through gradual change may not be in support of Darwin's theory - if the creatures are becoming more specialized and their DNA information less complex, then speciation through gradual changes and even mutations may be evidence of something outside of Darwin's universal ancestor theory entirely.

We're about to get into that next. Diversification and speciation do occur naturally, but the processes through which they tend to occur usually don't even provide evidence of Darwin's specific type of evolution.

As a reminder - "evolution" is a broad term. People use the term evolution as broadly as possible either by accident or intentionally - perhaps intentionally so that they can equate different kinds of speciation - as in, speciation that does not occur through the gradual process of changes over time - with Darwin's theory of evolution. Not all speciation occurs through a gradual process of small changes over time - in fact, even the speciation that appears to may have another explanation.

First of all, there are disagreements as to the very definition of a species. 

7. The Difficulties Of The Definition Of a Species

Much of the following information on the definition of species and examples of what is considered to be speciation come from this FAQ on TalkOrigins. This source is in favor of evolution, looking to explain speciation informatively and give examples for it in detail. Other examples of what is considered to be speciation have been gathered from this source, also on TalkOrigins, though further information about these claims may have been gathered from other sources, most likely also linked.

There are many current definitions of what makes one species separate from another. As mentioned earlier, the BSC is most widely used for forms of vertebrate life, but most forms of life are not vertebrate life - there are even many asexual forms of life that cannot even begin to use this concept. There's also the obvious criticisms that just because a species doesn't interbreed, doesn't mean that it cannot. There are definitive overlaps between animals that are considered different species, but can still create fertile offspring. The BSC distinguishes that if the offspring of these two organisms isn't fertile then it is not, actually, interbreeding. There is no question about whether lions and tigers are the same species or not because their offspring are not only sterile, but usually experience other problems. But as we've seen, some "different species" can still naturally reproduce in the wild and create fertile offspring.

This raises an important question. Unless there is a better definition of what constitutes as a species, then how is it definitive that red wolves, grey wolves, and coyotes are, indeed, different species? Could it not be that these creatures are, in fact, the same species, but after large amounts of diversification, they have just been arbitrarily divided for other reasons by biologists?

It's pretty interesting when we look at these species, especially the fact that they include domestic dogs. Red wolves, grey wolves, and coyotes are separated into different species because they look and behave differently enough to be considered a different species... but what about domestic dogs? How can we definitely say that grey and red wolves are not just slightly different looking versions of the same species?

We give such a wide berth to domestic dogs - a species of animal with hundreds of wildly different breeds. We say without question that all of these domestic dogs are indeed the same species, all under the umbrella of "domestic dog" - and yet, when confronted with natural populations, we are led to divide them into the smallest possible subsets, into as many species as possible, based on more or less arbitrary reasons decided by biologists. Biologists do not decide whether two animals are biologically distinct - they either are or are not, and biologists attempt to determine which one it is. Whether they have done so correctly is up for debate.

Here are some pictures to explain what I mean.

The European and Canadian wolves are different enough skeletally, morphologically and lived in vastly different locations, enough differences for biologists to consider them a different species. In fact, in discussions as to why biologists have decided to consider two very similar animals to be different species, they usually say that they are morphologically distinct - along with, perhaps, living in different locations. Well, what is not morphologically distinct about different breeds of dogs?

 Chihuahua skull...

 Poodle skull...

Bulldog skull.

These are skulls of vastly different looking dogs. Not only are their skulls different, but we also know, from evidence of these dogs existing today, that they are highly morphologically distinct. We also know that they can interbreed and create fertile offspring and that they will naturally interbreed if given the chance.

Why haven't we attempted to insist that these breeds of dogs we have created through selective breeding haven't become new species, but we attempt to say that grey and red wolves and coyotes are definitely different species? Because they have different behaviors and live in different territories? Well, interestingly enough, so do some breeds of dogs. I would insist that you not get a Siberian Husky if you live in Arizona, and I would implore you not to leave your very small chihuahua out in a 3 foot snow drift. Many breeds of dogs originate in different regions of the world - the only reason these populations did not stay distinct is because we brought them over the oceans. We also always take caution when planning on getting a dog for a household with small children - some breeds of dogs don't get along well with them, while others absolutely love them.

So if domestic dogs of all breeds are considered the same species even though they have vastly different morphology, behaviors, amounts of offspring, health concerns, skeletal structures, and social behaviors, why are the incredibly similar red wolf and coyote considered to be two different species? They are so similar that people mistake red wolves for coyotes - no one would mistake a golden retriever for a schnauzer.

Biologists define a species arbitrarily. There are rules, sure, but those rules are also arbitrarily decided by biologists - what they think good rules for what a different species truly are. It's all based on human interpretation.

7a. Different Definitions Of Species

My above source summarizes why this is important pretty succinctly:

A discussion of speciation requires a definition of what constitutes a species. This is a topic of considerable debate within the biological community. There are a variety of different species concept currently in use by biologists. These include folk, biological, morphological, genetic, paleontological, evolutionary, phylogenetic and biosystematic definitions.

Another source, linked here, provides some more information that I won't fully be going into, concerning known issues about different species concepts, and some other concepts, like the paleontological, and their concerns.

The Folk Concept is a general concept that basically boils down to "we should be able to just sort of tell if two animals are a different species." The failings of this very casual concept should be apparent.

The Phenetic Species Concept insists that creatures can be divided into "the smallest groups that are consistently and persistently distinct and distinguishable by ordinary means."

This basically means that animals that are morphologically different can reliably be divided into different species. The theory also considers "phenetic characters such as chromosome number, chromosome morphology, cell ultrastructure, secondary metabolites, habitats and other features."

This theory has a distinct lack of concern on two creatures' ability to interbreed. It would therefore go without saying that grey and red wolves would be considered a different species under this definition. I would also bring into question why, then, are all different breeds of dogs still considered the same species? Great danes and dachshunds are much more different from one another than red and grey wolves. This concept should, by its own definition, group different dog breeds as different species.

The Phylogenic Species Concept is a classification concept that insists that the classification should reflect the best supported hypothesis of the phylogeny of the organisms. Phylogenetics is "is the study of the evolutionary history and relationships among individuals or groups of organisms."

What this concept is getting at is that we should group species of animals to the best of our abilities using the evidence we have for their lineage and apparent differences. This one is a little less clear to non-biologist folks (including myself), so I'll quote these two definitions of the concept:

1. A species is the smallest cluster of organisms that possesses at least one diagnostic character. This character may be morphological, biochemical or molecular and must be fixed in reproductively cohesive units. It is important to realize that this reproductive continuity is not used in the same way as in the BSC. Phylogenetic species may be reproductive communities. Reproductively compatible individuals need not have the diagnostic character of a species. In this case, the individuals need not be conspecific.
2. A species must be monophyletic and share one or more derived character. There are two meanings to monophyletic (de Queiroz and Donoghue 1988, Nelson 1989). The first defines a monophyletic group as all the descendants of a common ancestor and the ancestor. The second defines a monophyletic group as a group of organisms that are more closely related to each other than to any other organisms. These distinctions are discussed in Baum 1992 and de Queiroz and Donoghue 1990.

The Paleontological Species Concept, described in the link at the beginning of this section, is how we classify organisms that are not currently alive, those for which we only have fossilized remains. Given the previously explored issues with the fossil record, and fossils in general, this concept is faulty for those same reasons. However, it is paleontologists only concept - there is no soft tissue, no genetics, nothing else that can be used to classify these species. They are doing the best they can - but attempting to create lineages with this species concept - the basis behind the fossil record - is still fallacious.

Why is all this so important? It showcases that biologists can't even decide what constitutes as a different species. What is happening here is that biologists are trying their best, and we are all accepting what they have decided to be good grounds for dividing up what animal is what species. The thing is, not even they agree with each other. Just like anything else, all of this, the entire subject of what a "species" is, could be completely misled.

This is incredibly important. If biologists can't actually, truly determine when one species is another species, then how can we rely on them to distinguish whether or not a speciation event has occurred? Whether or not something can be considered speciation depends on whether or not biologists think the organisms in question can be classified as different species, not whether or not it actually is.

7b. The Domestic Dog Example

But how legitimate is all this domestic dog talk?

I am very obviously not the first person to ever ask questions about why domestic dogs are or are not considered different species. In investigating to find out why, exactly, and what actual scientists have had to say about it, I found out some very interesting pieces of information.

First of all, while scientists are starting to try and divide species up genetically (it's quite the task, I'll give them that), I'm correct in stating that domestic dogs are all currently considered the same species because they can interbreed.

We could then say that we suppose we will find out that domestic dogs are all the same genetically, and will still fall under the same categories, while other similar species - like our wolves - will not. Well, maybe not, because studies show that domestic dogs' wild variations specifically comes from their genetics - so much so, that studying an individual dog's genetics alone can tell you what breed that dog is.

Furthermore, while dogs do differ significantly in their genetics from their ancestors, the grey wolves, that difference is almost completely been chalked up to human interference, as in, nothing about the differences between domestic dogs and their wild counterparts was naturally selected. Even if dogs were a speciation event - whether they were different species or even kinds - it would not be evidence that speciation can occur through natural forces.

7c. Speciation Events Depend On The Definition Of Species

What point I mean to make is that, given the evidence we have about genetics, interbreeding, and human selective breeding, if dogs are not all different species, then these small variations between animals that are considered different species is possibly not even relevant to evolution. If dogs are all the same species but red wolves, grey wolves, and coyotes are not, it casts doubt on the entire speciation debate.

It is my assessment that domestic dogs are all the same species - what I mean to make clear is that the speciation classification currently used doesn't seem concrete enough to really depend on speciation events as evidence of evolution. A problem occurs because while it is clearly easier to divide red and grey wolves up into different species for our purposes, whether or not their differences are significant in terms of evolutionary evidence is in question.

We'll analyze some speciation events based on how relevant they may actually be to evolution and what kind of speciation event they actually are.

8. Speciation Events

The source linked previously (again for your convenience) brings up something very interesting - few people the author asked could actually give an example of a speciation event. The majority of people just assume they're out there. They aren't wrong, as you'll see, but it's quite a show of the evolutionist's faith. People who study evolution and biology tend to believe on faith that there is enough proof that speciation occurs, but are more interested in the whys and hows:

Most biologists are convinced that speciation occurs. What they want to know is how it occurs. One recent book on speciation (Otte and Endler 1989) has few example of observed speciation, but a lot of discussion of theory and mechanisms.

This is a fair assessment because, as we will soon see, there are different kinds of speciation. There are important distinctions to be made because there is only one kind of speciation event that would provide any evidence for Darwin's theory of evolution. There are other observed and documented speciation events that distinctly do not do a single thing to help evolution's case. The differences are distinctly clear, but it seems that many people don't actually think too hard about it and end up believing that any kind of speciation event is evidence for macroevolution.

8a. Hybrids

The first type of speciation event I'll discuss is hybridization.

Let's take another look at our red wolves, grey wolves and coyotes. The red wolf is actually considered to possibly be a hybrid between grey wolves and coyotes - they are assumed to have come into existence because of interbreeding between these two populations of animals.

When something is a hybrid, we don't always consider it to be an example of speciation, usually only if it is fertile, self sustaining, and able to carve out an existence for itself. However, most hybrids are distinctly considered hybrids and not a "new species". A liger - a tiger and lion baby - is not considered a new species and is distinctly referred to as a hybrid.

Furthermore, if a hybrid can interbreed with the parent organism, we have some problems the BSC gave us before. If it's genetically compatible enough to create valid and fertile offspring with its parents, it brings into question the validity of the classification of all the species involved.

But either way you slice it, this type of speciation is useless for Darwin's theory. If two organisms can breed and create a distinctly different organism, is that indicative of gradual changes over time eventually causing one kind of animal to diverge into two other kinds? The answer is hopefully clear - it is no. It is, in fact, directly at odds with Darwinian macroevolution - it requires that two different kinds of creatures already exist in order to create the distinct, new creature. Macroevolution insists a one into two formula, while this is two into one.

Hybridization does nothing to tell us where those first two came from in the first place, so whether or not they can create a new species doesn't help Darwin's theory. Hybridization in fact follows suit to directly oppose Darwin's assumption of an accumulation of new information - much information from the parent organisms is lost when creating the hybrid. The hybrid baby does not retain all of the genetic information from both its parents - it only inherits certain parts from both organisms.

8b. Polyploidy

Polyploidy is a little complex in regards to speciation. Polyploidy refers basically to an organism having multiple sets of chromosomes, as opposed to just two (diploidy), and the process of polyploidization is essentially whole genome duplication - when one organism with so many sets of chromosomes has offspring with more than that. It is considered to be a "mechanism of “instantaneous” species formation that has played a major role in the evolutionary history of plants." There are some distinct "speciation events" that have occurred due to polyploidization, which is only considered to have occurred if the polyploidy offspring can no longer reproduce with the parents due to its extra sets of chromosomes, but can still reproduce on its own (usually asexually):

A new polyploid hybrid (allopolyploid) species Mimulus peregrinus, formed within the last 140 years, was recently discovered on the Scottish mainland and corroborated by chromosome counts. Here, using targeted, high-depth sequencing of 1200 genic regions, we confirm the parental origins of this new species from M. x robertsii, a sterile triploid hybrid between the two introduced species M. guttatus and M. luteus that are naturalized and widespread in the United Kingdom.

More information about this speciation event can be found here. Whether or not this occurred is not debatable - there is for sure a new type of plant in Scotland that diverged from its parent plant due to polyploidy. The question is, can this be considered evidence in favor of Darwinian evolution?

There are some very important points here. This appears to favor Darwinian evolution for two reasons. First of all, this sort of mutation is precisely the sort of thing Darwin proposed could cause a species to accumulate changes over time and diverge. Secondly, what Darwin proposed is essentially happening: a mutation occurs and new species that are genetically separate have formed, which then go on to be their own organism. What could possibly be said against this? Several things, actually.

First of all, it's almost completely exclusive to plants.

Polyploidization distinctly causes problems for organisms like us:

However, higher vertebrates do not appear to tolerate polyploidy very well; in fact, it is believed that 10% of spontaneous abortions in humans are due to the formation of polyploid zygotes.

Furthermore, even though polyploidization appears to let plants make new kinds of plants rather easily, it comes with its own large set of problems, detailed here, including but not limited to infertility - meaning a lot of plants that experience this do not become new species in this way. Polyploidization appears to genuinely be a mutation in the classical, negative sense - even moreso for lifeforms that are not plants. While some fish, amphibians, and insects can survive normally with polyploidy, creatures like us - "higher vertebrates" - cannot.

Additionally, while it does appear very Darwinian in nature, there is another important distinction to make. Polyploidization does not add any new information, it simply replicates all of the existing information into an additional set. Futhermore, since it still tends to cause negative problems for creatures that are not plants, it's still a negative mutation. It simply does not affect plants the same way it affects other creatures, allowing these plants to diversify in this way. This causes a substantial  distinction between plants and animals - possibly a good indication that these two kingdoms of life didn't evolve from the same universal common ancestor.

Now, I am not saying that polyploidy isn't speciation. I'm not saying it couldn't be a method through which some things evolved - but it is unarguably not Darwinian macroevolution. This method of speciation could possibly be evidence for some other theory, but it explicitly is not evidence for Darwin's theory. What's more, in consideration to the fact that polyploidization tends to negatively affect non-plants up to and including causing spontaneous auto-abortions in humans, we can assume that it in no way is evidence for any sort of evolution, Darwinian or not, outside of plant life. It may just be that specifically only plants were designed to diversify in this way.

8c. Human Influenced Speciation

There are several examples of supposed speciation occurring through gradual changes over time in experiments that are conducted and controlled by humans.

While these examples appear to show that speciation can occur through gradual changes over time, they in fact show that speciation can occur through gradual changes over time when intelligently guided by an outside force. Indeed, any experiment where humans selectively breed animals by intelligent means cannot prove that natural forces can do the same thing.

Furthermore, any experiment attempting to show speciation that involves creating hybrid species fails as an example of Darwinian evolution for the same reasons that natural hybridization does - you are using two to create one, not one to create two.

Some of these experiments - usually involving fruit flies - do not truly differentiate between whether these fruit flies were, genuinely, different species of fruit flies. The BSC is used in these experiments, putting the two lineages together and seeing if they willingly interbreed. Considering that these fruit flies always stayed fruit flies, assuming that they were distinctly separate animals because they did not willingly choose to interbreed is not necessarily even evidence of speciation. They could have simply become different breeds that, due to mating behaviors, were not compelled to breed with one another.

As an additional objection to a good number of these experiments, some have passages like this one:

A selective penalty was imposed on flies that switched habitats. Females that switched habitats were destroyed.

Basically, if any animal didn't breed like they wanted them to, they punished or killed them. This is not evidence of natural selection!

Natural selection insists that these speciation events can occur through natural forces. That means that if there is distinct and obvious interference like this, where the humans running the experiment use force - human interference, intelligent guidance - to keep them performing the mating rituals that they want them to for so many generations, it explicitly shows that the speciation was not occurring naturally. If they allowed things to occur naturally, then the flies would not have separated into different mating groups over all of those generations.

These experiments cannot be used as evidence for natural selection or Darwinian evolution for these reasons.

8d. Assortative Mating Experiments

These are also run by humans so tend to fail for the same intelligently guided reasons as above, but are somewhat different than the heavily influenced "kill the ones that don't do what we want" experiments. Assortative mating is basically taking groups of an organism (usually insects), purposefully sorting them into isolated populations based on similar traits, having those isolated populations live and mate uninterrupted for so long, and then reintroducing the two populations and seeing if they prefer the types of mates that they had been breeding with for generations or if they will have no preference.

If the results of an experiment like this show positive for assortative mating, is it usually referred to as a speciation event. It is meant to simulate different populations of the same species changing so much over time that they become distinctly different animals. But does it?

While we could easily just dismiss this on the grounds of it being intelligently guided selection, there are further objections to be made. As stated previously, not only does a population not breeding mean that it can't, or under different circumstances wouldn't (what if they only took one male and put it into the entire group of the females of the other population, would the male choose to not mate?), but whether this is truly a different animal is still up for debate. If the two populations just look different, are they truly different species? Is it really evidence of a truly dramatic change? And what about the parent populations - they never attempted to breed these selective populations with the general population of the kind of creature from which they descended. This could easily have been yet another case of humans breeding different types of the same species.

8e. Any Speciation Claim From Before Written History

I figured I would include this section, but it should go without saying that any speciation claim that involves numbers of years in the hundreds of thousands are not "observed" and cannot be considered "proof" of speciation. Furthermore, any claims that a long dead animal is an ancestor or common ancestor of another or of a group, due to our understanding of the failings of the fossil records along with no soft anatomy to test genetic material, is purely a guess.

For example, orca whales are cited as an example of recent speciation. Here is a quote:

[G]eneticists ... looked at how the whales breed. When they looked at the entire mitochondrial genome from 139 different whales throughout the globe, they found dramatic differences. These data suggested there are indeed at least three different species of killer whale. Phylogenetic analysis indicated that the different species of orca have been separated for 150,000 to 700,000 years. 

As with anything that we haven't directly observed, it's not definitive proof. It's also worth noting that biologists don't know if these species don't interbreed. They had to study their genome because they were unable to see if they can or do interbreed. Furthermore, as we have already fully covered, genetic differences can be dramatic among different subspecies, or breeds, of the same species. While this study may be more conclusive than this quote shows (study found here), there is only induction that these orcas are even actually distinctly different animals - they don't live near one another

8f. Speciation Beginning to Occur

Monarch Flycatchers - this speciation claim is basically that a small group of this bird developed a melanin mutation which caused some of the birds to be a different color. These two differently colored birds are capable of breeding, but choose not to. Because they do not mate, they do not consider the other colored bird to be a problem, and so they don't fight and tend to ignore one another. This is considered to be speciation, and thus macroevolution, having begun to occur - the hypothesis is that these two populations will continue to not interbreed, eventually turning into two distinctly different animals.

Here is the article, summarizing their findings. Basically, what they are concluding is that, because of this melanin mutation, this species has begun the first steps of speciation. They are assuming based on the evidence they have that this species will eventually diverge into two distinct species. Here is the last sentence of their abstract:

Assuming that the signals used in species recognition are also used in mutual mate choice, our results indicate that a single amino acid substitution contributes to speciation.

What is happening here is that a single mutation occurred, causing this species of birds to choose to mate differently, exclusively within one of two distinct camps - fully blue-black birds and blue-black-chestnut birds. They are still the same species, they have all of the same behaviors, dietary needs, genetics, biology - excluding a single melanin mutation. Scientists have concluded from this evidence that these two groups will diverge over time into two distinctly different animals.

There are two important things to note here. First off, this conclusion has been made based on the previously held biases of these scientists. Scientists always simply make conclusions based on information from studies they or others have conducted. Second, as usual, this melanin mutation has not added any new information. It was a switch being flipped, causing the gene to do something differently than it did before. It's not a new gene, there has been no new information introduced. Even if the birds do diverge into a different species of the same bird, they will always contain similar genetics.

Furthermore, it would very easily be possible to conclude that these two camps of animals won't diverge any further. These two groups of birds, though they are not interbreeding, live in the same environment. The "natural selection" forces assumed to cause animals to change over time, enough to diverge completely, generally are cited to be caused by the environment that these animals live in. The species are assumed to accumulate changes over time due to being influenced by their environment. Wolves in Canada would be likely to accumulate heavier coats over time as opposed to wolves who lived in a South American county.

These birds all live in the same environments. This isn't lost on scientists: this type of situation is referred to as "sympatric speciation," two species diverging while inhabiting the same location. Whether or not sympatric speciation actually occurs is not the debate here, however, if it does, it is highly unlikely to occur by the guidelines found in Darwin's theory.

Another example of this claim is cited far more often than the monarch flycatcher.

The Apple Maggot - this speciation claim is one I've seen more than almost any other. What occurred here is that these flies used to breed on hawthorn trees, but after apple trees were introduced, some of them decided they liked apples more and split onto those trees. They live and breed on the same tree their entire lives, so their populations don't interact or interbreed. They are cited as having started speciation due to this fact, the same assumption made from the unwillingness to breed between the aforementioned birds.

The same conclusions and rebuttals apply here.

The problem with these assumptions that these mating differences will absolutely cause divergence is that this could easily have been the first and last step - that they will go further is conjecture. Remember - we have no evidence that they naturally will continue to diverge. All of our experiments involve intelligent guidance from the scientists that performed them. Even if they did become distinctly different species, no new genetic information has been added - there has not even been a mutation. The only change was that some of them preferred apples - there is nothing about them that wasn't there before. Any further changes, if any more occur, will not add new information.

Darwinists take these examples as evidence because they have already assumed the conclusion. Because they believe macroevolution is true, they believe these minute changes in breeding habits are absolutely evidence of what, in hundreds of thousands of years, will cause these animals to possibly turn into completely different kinds of animals. They ignore not only the evidence against the likelihood of this, but they also ignore that other logical conclusions could just as easily be made.

8g. Rapid Speciation

As mentioned earlier, rapid speciation has been shown to occur - within incredibly short spans of time. These speciation claims do occur due to changes over time, but they occur substantially more quickly than Darwinian evolution can support. We already covered why rapid speciation is specifically evidence against the classic Darwinian evolutionary theory, but to recap, Darwin's theory requires that evolution takes thousands of years.

If a species could be shown to emerge in a mere few years, the assumption made previously by Darwinists - that minor speciation events prove eventual macroevolution - actually work against them. Essentially, Darwinists lose their "out" - we haven't seen macroevolution because it takes too long suddenly has no bearing. If rapid speciation can occur, and further divergence into different kinds of animals follows naturally from these microevolutionary changes, then why does it not?

Why did the monarch flycatcher and the apple maggot only just begin to diverge, if it's possible for it to occur so rapidly?

Faeroe Island House Mouse - this speciation claim is recorded to have happened only 250 years ago. Well within humankind's existence on earth, it was actually started by humans. Now, this does not fall under "intelligently guided" because all we did was deposit the house mouse onto the island, probably by accident. The Faeroe Islands "is an island country comprising an archipelago of small islands between the Norwegian Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean," so obviously a species that was deposited here would be an isolated population. It turned out that the mice ended up in even smaller isolated populations due to ending up on each of the small clusters of islands that make up the archipelago.

What happened, of course, was that the isolated populations all became different looking mice. Lots of tests have been done here, as it's a hot topic among biologists. The study I'm referencing summarizes the speciation event thusly:

Faroe house mice are a ‘classic’ system of rapid and dramatic morphological divergence highlighted by J. S. Huxley during the development of the Modern Synthesis.

While there is some disagreement even among biologists on whether or not these mice are simply hybrids and subspecies, if these creatures were found to have become different species, this would be a case of rapid evolution - these mice diverged in just 250 years, way less than the hundreds of thousands evolution requires. If this is a speciation event, it has happened too quickly and is in direct opposition to Darwinian evolution.

There are other examples, some can be found here. The sources of these rapid speciation claims are found on this page, if you question the validity of the source.

8h. Speciation Conclusions

This section was very long, so it has its own conclusion section. What I have done is explained the issues with the definitions of species biologists have provided us and explained the various types of assumed speciation that have been observed, implied, or assumed. The conclusion of this section of evidence can be summarized:

Not even biologists agree on what truly can be considered a different species - the classification of species is done through arbitrary rules made by scientists. Whether or not a speciation event can truly be considered a speciation event depends entirely on the definition of a species. Even legitimate speciation claims tend to either not support Darwinian evolution or be in direct opposition to it. Claims of speciation that claim to follow Darwin's theory are either conjecture based on an assumption (speciation will occur) or actually happen too quickly to be considered Darwinian in nature (rapid evolution).

9. Darwin's Theory Conclusions

What I have covered is that for Darwin's theory of evolution to be true, it must explain a great many things. It must explain:

• A First Cause from natural causes
• A first life from natural causes
• Why a first life only happened once, if at all
• How that first life diverged into all life
• How that first life could have evolved with respects to the environment and conditions of the earth
• How that first life could have diverged using evolution's own rules within the short time it had to do so
• That creatures can even diverge into different kinds at all
• Why all existing forms of speciation don't adhere to or are directly at odds with Darwinian theory
• How natural selection could create new information and kinds when the evidence shows that it does the opposite

The evidence presented here showcases that Darwin's theory of evolution cannot explain any of these things. It cannot explain how anything exists at all, it cannot explain how a first life formed through natural causes, it cannot explain a gradual divergence from a first life that coincides with other scientific evidence concerning early earth, it cannot prove that creatures can diverge into different kinds of creatures at all, it cannot explain why all of the observed forms of speciation do not adhere to its guidelines, and it cannot explain how the very force behind the theory could work to form new kinds when evidence shows that it does exactly the opposite.

To go over what has been shown here, I'll start with what has not been proven.

This evidence does not prove a Creator. This evidence does not prove how old the earth is or is not. This evidence does not prove that creatures cannot change over time. This evidence does not prove that human beings did not come into existence through natural forces. This evidence does not prove that some other unknown explanation could be behind existence.

What has been shown is that the guidelines as demonstrated within Darwin's theory of evolution are all but entirely disproven by scientific evidence, and the vast majority of its conjecture is highly unreasonable to believe at best. Darwin's theory has effectively no bearing on the scientific reality that we see today. Even evidence that appears to support his theory actually does not - it is merely that proponents of "evolution" have not followed the evidence to its conclusion.

Darwin's theory, as it stands, is actually in the way of scientists being able to discover what the reality of ancestry and descent actually are. Due to zealous adherence to Charles Darwin and his original claims, scientists and people of all kinds find themselves at odds with the evidence - instead of recognizing that the evidence does not point toward Darwin's theory, they presuppose that any evidence of some sort of concept that could be referred to as "evolution" is proof of Darwinian evolution.

Instead of people recognizing that things like hybridization, instantaneous speciation, and rapid evolution actually contradict Darwin's theory, thereby perhaps leading them to form new theories, or at least reassess Darwin's claims and clean the place up, they are forming an unorganized pile of contradicting evidence with a signpost stuck in it that simply reads "evolution".

This habit of people and even scientists to wantonly stick an "evolution" label onto literally anything that could be considered even remotely related to change over time is actually muddying the waters. Instead of making things more clear, they are mixing together evidence that is at odds with itself, putting together theories that contradict each other, and trying to put together puzzles with pieces from completely different boxes.

My purpose of this writing has been to hopefully truly enlighten some "freethinkers" into really freeing themselves to think. Darwin's theory being invalidated does not mean you need to go to church this Sunday, though you are welcome to. Don't be afraid to actually think critically about the evidence provided, don't simply look for evidence that supports your beliefs, but read things from all sources - people with different viewpoints and, yes, even biases. Allow yourself to actually have an open mind when reading new ideas - even if they sound ridiculous, understanding why other people believe them can help you better understand the world around you.




Everything linked to from within this article:

http://www.lehigh.edu/bio/News/evolution.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Behe
http://botstudent.net/2014/darwin-evolution-wrong
http://evolution.about.com/od/Overview/a/What-Is-Evolution.htm
http://biology.about.com/od/evolution/a/aa091004a.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics
http://townhall.com/columnists/frankturek/2009/01/14/big_bang_evidence_for_god
http://www.peterkreeft.com/topics/first-cause.htm
http://www.allaboutscience.org/first-law-of-thermodynamics-faq.htm
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/a-universe-from-nothing
https://answersingenesis.org/origin-of-life/why-the-miller-urey-research-argues-against-abiogenesis/
http://www.breakpoint.org/tp-home/blog-archives/blog-archives/entry/4/2455
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_water_on_Earth
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geological_history_of_oxygen
http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=730
http://cjes.geoscienceworld.org/content/13/9/1161
http://animals.about.com/od/zoologybasics/a/howmanyspecies.htm
http://www.fondriest.com/environmental-measurements/parameters/water-quality/dissolved-oxygen/
http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/prehistoric-world/mass-extinction/
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14206-how-many-species-live-in-the-sea/
http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ160937
http://stephenjaygould.org/bibliography.html
https://world.wng.org/2016/02/the_descent_of_evolution
http://mygeologypage.ucdavis.edu/cowen/historyoflife/biases.html
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/04/similarity_happ058601.html
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/05/tangling_the_tr059321.html
http://www.discovery.org/p/521
http://www.gotquestions.org/irreducible-complexity.html
http://www.fws.gov/redwolf/wolvesandcoyotes.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mutations.html
http://creation.com/dogs-breeding-dogs
http://creation.com/the-evolution-trains-a-comin
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/speciation.html
http://mygeologypage.ucdavis.edu/cowen/historyoflife/speciesconcept.html
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/different-dog-breeds-same-species/
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/5006477/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/dog-genes-tell-surprising-tales
www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/Genetics-of-Dog-Breeding-434
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/evo.12678/abstract;jsessionid=53DE4391D240D864278D900A13CC0DB8.f02t03
www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/Polyploidy-1552814
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/science-sushi/evolution-watching-speciation-occur-observations/
https://swfsc.noaa.gov/uploadedFiles/2010_Morin%20et%20al_Genome%20Research_Worldwide%20KW.pdf
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227659179_A_molecular_characterization_of_the_charismatic_Faroe_house_mouse
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/600084
http://creation.com/speedy-species-surprise