Question

Please write an essay using your own words about the following prompt (500 words): In an evolution vs. creationism debate, you have been asked to be the expert witness for the scientific perspective that states that evolution of life on Earth is a fact, and is central to understanding modern biology. Detail your presentation, be sure to address at least 5 major points creationists will put forth to try and say that evolution is “just a theory”.

Answer 1

Creationism does not always have to go against the theory of evolution, although in most cases it is.
There is a creationist current that accepts that, despite the fact that according to them there is a creator, once created, organisms can evolve by natural selection. Most commonly, however, creationists maintain an anti-evolution stance and even wage a fight to eliminate evolutionary teaching in schools.
Among the creationists' arguments against evolution are:
- Evolution is just a theory. This shows that they do not know that it is a scientific theory: it is not something that is not proven, but rather it is a set of concepts and laws that emerge from the observation of empirical data, and that relates them to each other to make sense . But creationists use the term theory as a synonym for "hypothesis" that is not supported by data, but it is not. On the contrary, the theory of evolution is the theoretical framework that best rationally explains the data found.
- Evolution cannot be observed directly. To give an example of evolution that has been directly observed, we can cite industrial melanism in a species of lepidoptera, which changed its color due to the change in its environment.
- Natural selection acts at a microevolutionary level, but never gives rise to new species. Really, microevolution is not a different process from macroevolution: the difference is only the time we are looking at. Gradual differences accumulate until a time may come when the population isolates itself from the others, either physically or because they can no longer reproduce with others, and this is how a new species is formed. At first the species formed in this way can be very similar and that is why there are “twin species”, very similar morphologically but that cannot reproduce between them. The existence of twin species confirms that the species were not created immutable. Also the differentiation of domestic species with their wild ancestor (eg sheep) is an example of speciation.
- There is no fossil evidence of evolution. There are interruptions in the fossil record that mean that there is no continuous record from the oldest to the most recent species, but this is logical since very specific conditions must exist for the organic remains to fossilize. But these “missing links” are continually being discovered, and although there is no continuous record for all species, the fact that it exists for some, such as the horse, already demonstrates that there was evolution. Another example the discovery of Archeopteryx allows to trace the evolution from reptiles to birds without any doubt.
- There is an intelligent design. According to creationists, the "perfection" of human beings or other species, would not be possible only "by chance", but there must be an architect who has devised it. In the first place, evolution does not occur by chance, but is a process led by natural selection, which makes the species adapt to its habitat, because it lives in that environment and not in another. The accumulation of beneficial traits in that environment is what leads to the complexity of the traits, and not the intervention of a creator in the process of evolution. In addition, it is not true that we are "perfect", since for example the human eye has a blind spot that does not have that of cephalopods (then their eye would be more perfect), or the evolution of bipedalism in humans has made childbirth is unnecessarily painful for women. A designer would not have designed it that way.