The Bible underneath it
Evolution vs. Literal Genesis
It refutes literalism and the design argument. Not theism. Name the target precisely.
Say this first, it matters
The Catholic Church accepts evolution. So do most mainline Protestant seminaries and many believing scientists. John Paul II's 1996 message
The sharp conflict is with young-earth literalism and with a literal Adam and Eve as sole ancestors with no death before the Fall. Name the target precisely and you will be taken seriously.
The status of the science
The National Academy of Sciences: evolution is "one of these well-established explanations," among "the strongest and most useful scientific theories we have," on par with germ theory. Source
Genetics is the strongest evidence, because it is not about fossils
- Human chromosome 2 is two ape chromosomes fused end to end. Great apes have 24 pairs, humans 23. The fusion site still carries telltale telomere sequences in the middle, where they do not belong. PNAS
- Shared endogenous retroviruses. Ancient viral infections insert at random genome locations. Humans and chimps have at least seven at identical loci. The odds of independent insertion at the same spot are effectively zero. Details
- The broken vitamin C gene. Humans and other primates carry the same gene for making vitamin C, broken by the same mutations. Source
Where it collides with Genesis
- Genesis 1 has plants on day 3 and the sun on day 4. Plants before the sun. And birds before land animals, which is backwards.
- No Adam and Eve as sole ancestors. Human genetic diversity rules out a two-person bottleneck. Estimates put the historical minimum in the thousands. Ayala, Science 1995
- Death long before any Fall. The Permian extinction, 252 million years ago, wiped out most life on Earth. Humans appear 300,000 years ago. Berkeley
For a Latter-day Saint this bites harder than for most Christians, because LDS teaching holds a literal Adam, a literal Fall, and no death before it.
Why the design argument fails
- The recurrent laryngeal nerve runs from the brain down to the heart and back up to the larynx. In a giraffe that is a fifteen foot detour to travel a few inches. McGill
- The vertebrate retina is installed backwards, photoreceptors facing away from the light, with the optic nerve punching a blind spot through it. University of Utah
When they say
"It is only a theory." Confuses everyday "theory" with scientific theory. Gravity and germs are theories too. Source
"Irreducible complexity." A federal court examined this in detail and ruled intelligent design "a religious view, a mere re-labeling of creationism, and not a scientific theory." Kitzmiller v. Dover, 2005
"Evolution cannot explain how life started." Correct, and concede it cleanly. Abiogenesis is a separate open question. Rejecting evolution for not answering a different question is a category error.