Is Evolutionary Theory Perfect, the Theory that Defeated Creationism?

In this blog post, we’ll explain what evolution is and what it is not.

 

Until the early 19th century, the world was the work of God, and humans were his best creation. Then, in 1835, events began to change that worldview. Charles Darwin’s trip to the Galapagos Islands was the beginning of a revolution in science. While visiting the Galapagos Islands, Darwin realized that the same species of birds existed in different forms on different islands and realized that species change. In 1859, Darwin published On the Origin of Species, which pitted creationism against evolutionary theory. To this day, the debate over whether creationism or evolution is true continues to rage on everywhere. Creationism literally claims that God designed humans (and the world) with a purpose. Evolutionary theory is the exact opposite, claiming that evolution is the result of cumulative changes over a long period of time without a purpose.
Richard Dawkins introduced the creationist argument in The Blind Watchmaker. Creationists argue that just as things like watches are made with purpose by watchmakers, it is reasonable to assume that creatures more complex than watches must have been designed by someone. However, evolutionists, including Dawkins, not only argue that humans as we know them today were shaped by evolution, but have proven it through research. Creationists, on the other hand, recognize the fact of evolution, but claim that it was created by God. But again, evolutionists claim, and have largely proven through experimentation, that life can arise from a primordial Earth from nothing. To this day, creationists continue to present evidence of creation, but it was soon scientifically refuted by evolutionists. The debate between creationism and evolution continues to this day, but as time has passed and research has continued, the facts seem to favor evolution. In the early days of evolutionary theory, there was a lack of evidence, and most of it was hypothetical, so there were a lot of phenomena that could be refuted. However, as research has continued, evolutionary theory has advanced to the point where there is a lot of evidence to end the debate, and there are fewer things that creationists can claim anymore. Of course, the nature of evolutionary theory makes it difficult to prove hypotheses to be 100% reliable facts, but the logic of evolutionary theorists is currently sound enough to be believed. I believe in evolution, not creationism. I believe in evolution, not creationism, because we can witness short-term evolution, such as the evolution of crops by farmers over a short period of time, and the age of the earth, 4.5 billion years, is a very long time. The theory of evolution will only become more solid as time goes on and more observations are made. It seems that creationists now recognize that the phenomena they present are not proof of creation, but they continue to present things that can be associated with creation in order to keep the public’s attention on creationism. What remains to be done in the creationism vs. evolution debate is to teach science to those who believe unconditionally in creation without looking at the science.
But evolutionary theory is not perfect either. Unlike other fields of science, evolutionary theory is a puzzle that requires complete information over a long period of time, from the primordial Earth to the present day. Humans, with our short history compared to the Earth, don’t have enough history to know everything about evolution yet. Evolutionary theory has only gotten so far because we’ve been able to read bits and pieces of information from the past, such as fossils and dating. So, what are the competing hypotheses in evolutionary theory? The most authoritative hypothesis of evolution is Darwin’s theory of evolution by cumulative natural selection. Darwin argued that organisms evolve gradually, and in this gradual evolutionary process, even if an organ is not fully functional, it gives the organism an advantage and favors natural selection. Darwin argues that organisms changed gradually, step by step, in ways that could have happened by chance. Each successive change is simple enough to have come about by chance compared to the one before it. However, these changes gradually accumulate to produce a result that, when the final product is compared to the initial starting point, the entire process could not have happened by chance. Darwin’s theory of evolution by cumulative natural selection argues that this process of accumulation of changes is induced by selective and differential survival. Cumulative selection means that the first result is passed on to the second, and the second to the third, and so on. The final product selected in one generation becomes the starting point for the next generation’s selection, and the process repeats for many generations. There is a big difference in time between one-step selection and cumulative selection. While it takes a lot of luck to get the amino acid sequence of hemoglobin by one-step selection, if a random sequence is created, then selected slightly differently in the next generation, and then selected slightly differently again in the next generation, hemoglobin can be created in a very small amount of time compared to the age of the universe. Dawkins adds to Darwin’s cumulative natural selection by arguing that genes are the key to evolution. Natural selection favors genes that make copies of themselves.
Stephen Jay Gould explains evolution in a slightly different way, and I agree with him. While Darwin describes evolution as the accumulation of very small changes over time, Gould argues that evolution is driven by rapid, quantum leaps. He argues that after a quantum leap, there is a plateau, followed by another quantum leap. Take wings, for example. It is argued that early wings would not be able to fly at all, so there must be a leap forward. And fossils don’t confirm gradual change either, but rather that there are no intermediate steps between evolution. Dawkins, who agrees with Darwin’s gradualism, refutes Gould’s discontinuous equilibrium theory. Dawkins argues that interrupted equilibrium is also a gradual change. It’s just a matter of speed. There is no leapfrog evolution. For example, when the eye evolved, even 5% of the eye would have been better for survival than no eye because it performed 5% of the function of seeing, so it would have evolved by natural selection. In fact, he explains, some single-celled organisms have only a lens or only an eyeball. The lack of fossils of intermediate stages of evolution is explained by the principle of speciation. Organisms are geographically isolated and evolve by natural selection in different environments and differentiate into different species. The organisms in the original area undergo relatively little change in the same environment. Then, the differentiated species are reintroduced to the original area and drive the existing species to extinction because they have an evolutionary advantage over the existing species. This process of evolution, Dawkins argues, is why we don’t find successive fossils. He argues that plateaus in evolution after leaps and bounds are due to the fact that natural selection has already adapted the species to its environment enough that it doesn’t need to evolve. Deep-sea fish, for example.
I believe that stochastic equilibrium is a valid hypothesis, based on evolutionary theory’s belief that the probability of something happening is that it did happen, and I don’t think there’s any debate about it. That doesn’t mean I’m advocating that wings suddenly appear out of nowhere. I don’t think it evolves from 0% to 1%, 2%, … , 100%, but rather from 0%, 33%, 66%, 100%, and so on. If you think about the evolution of the eye, it doesn’t make sense to me that 1% of the eye would have 1% of the function when there was no eye. Can a 1% eye really be 1% functional? I don’t think it’s possible. Dawkins argued that the fact that there are creatures with only a lens or only an eyeball supports the theory of gradual evolution, but I think this is evidence that the theory of interrupted equilibrium is correct. It seems reasonable to think of evolution as a process of going from nothing performing the functions of an eye to a lens that can perform 30% of the functions of an eye to an organ like an eyeball that can perform another 30% of the functions of an eye. I believe that the 1% leap in evolution over a long period of 4.5 billion years is a fact that we can now directly verify, but it is not always a 1% leap, but only a different degree of leap in evolution each time, which is why we cannot observe it now because the probability of a large leap is small, and the probability of a small leap is relatively large, which is why we still observe it now. As for Dawkins’ claim that we don’t see successive fossils due to speciation, I think we should see successive fossils when we combine the fossils of the surrounding areas where speciation could have occurred.
My endorsement of Gould’s theory of interrupted equilibrium does not mean that I agree with all of Gould’s arguments for evolution. He argues that Darwin and Dawkins did not survive by natural selection because they had a survival advantage, but simply because something changed and the organism adapted to that change and its environment. For example, kiwi birds lay eggs that are incredibly large for their size compared to other birds of their kind. Darwinian evolutionists argue that natural selection has given them large eggs because they have a survival advantage. Gould explains that the kiwi bird evolved from a large bird, the gongzo, which became smaller as it adapted to its environment, and the rate at which it became smaller was relatively slow, resulting in large eggs for its size. Similarly, giraffes don’t have long necks because eating high leaves is an advantage for survival, but because they adapted to an environment that allowed them to eat high leaves. So he argues that there is no progressivity in evolution, as opposed to Darwin’s idea of progressivity, which is evolution in a direction that favors survival. Evolution is not a process of climbing upward, but rather a process of varying the number of forks in the road.
I disagree that evolution is only the result of adaptation to the environment and agree that natural selection allows individuals with survival advantages to survive and evolve. The idea that a giraffe could eat taller leaves because some change lengthened its neck sounds a bit awkward. That change would be natural selection for the advantage of being able to eat taller leaves. Similarly, if you claim that the kiwi bird became smaller because it adapted to its environment rather than because of natural selection, it seems plausible to think that its smaller size, which gives it an advantage in surviving predation, was selected for by natural selection. The argument of adaptation to the environment seems insufficient to explain why evolution has occurred from the primitive Earth to the present. Dinosaurs seem to be a prime example of natural selection. We still don’t know exactly why dinosaurs became extinct, but they must have been very unfavorable to the environment in which they lived. Therefore, species that were not favorable to survival would have naturally died out, and species that were favorable to the environment at the time would have survived through natural selection. The largest periods of biological change in Earth’s history are the best evidence in support of natural selection.
Hypotheses that explain how and why evolution happened continue to be debated. The debate over the cause and direction of evolution is ongoing, with each side making its case and then being challenged by the other side’s arguments and revising their claims. I am not an expert in evolutionary theory, and I am not qualified to refute the opinions of evolutionary experts who have studied and debated evolutionary theory. Nevertheless, I share my limited knowledge of evolutionary theory in the hopes that readers with a similar level of knowledge to mine will disagree or agree with me. While most scientific theories have the same correct answer no matter who you ask, evolution is a theory that can have different answers depending on who you ask. The completion of the theory of evolution is a matter of how many years it will take to complete the last 4.5 billion years of history. If it is not possible to reconstruct the past, then at least the last 4.5 billion years or so of evolutionary history will have been written down so that we can witness and observe it once again. The how and why of evolution will be debated for a long time to come, but the evidence for evolution is overwhelming. Evolutionists use countless examples of evolutionary evidence to argue that their theory is correct. Evolution is an irrefutable scientific fact supported by a large body of evidence.