Evidence Vs Creationism

For the record, I'm lumping Intelligent Design with Creationism in this entry - Same shit, different guise so I'm not going to differentiate them.

Evolution explains. Creationism doesn't do much of that. In light of the evidence, the explanation Creationism offers is simply odd if not completely absent.


Atavism
An atavism is an evolutionary throwback - traits that reappear after disappearing in the lineage's evolutionary history. They occur because the genes for these ancestral phenotypical features are still present in the genome though no longer normally expressed.


Hind flippers in dolphins is an atavism - Evidence of the mammal's terrestrial ancestors. Another example would be teeth in birds. Tails in humans is also one such example.

Creationists make up excuses to account for such evidence. For example, same god, same genes - god may have just put the same genes in animals who don't need them. The excuse falls apart upon scrutiny.

If that was the case, why don't mammals display atavisms of bird traits? Why don't ray-finned fish have atavisms where legs appear? Why don't amphibians have "evolutionary throwbacks" of fur? Why are atavisms so nicely limited to organisms who can display them according to the theory of evolution?

Notice that atavisms are indicative of evolutionary history. These evolutionary throwbacks are limited by the organism's ancestral past. Mammals cannot have atavisms of bird traits because they diverged millions of years ago before their unique traits evolved. The same for ray-finned fish and tetrapods. The same for amphibians and mammals.

The first half of the following video touches on Atavism:

Pseudogenes
Closely related organisms (eg, all the apes including humans) share similar genomes. To illustrate the similarity, take the human chromosome 2. Scientists can identify the two ape chromosomes which fused some time in our evolutionary history because of the great similarity between the chromosomes - The sequence of genes on human chromosome 2 is the same as the 2 ape chromosome attached together teleomere to teleomere.

The same lame excuse: Same god, same genes is proposed. The thing is, we don't just share genes. We share the same useless genes - pseudogenes. Genes which have been knocked out by mutation.

A popular example used to illustrate this is the Vitamin C pseudogene. Human beings as well as our relatives, the primates, have most of the genes necessary to code for enzymes involved in the production of Vitamin C. However, one of these genes, the one which codes for the fourth enzyme in the cascade, has been knocked out by a frameshift mutation. The same exact mutation appears in all our relatives.

See this video which addresses the subject:

The theory of evolution requires this to be true - Descent by modification, so all descendents will have the same error in their genome. It can also account for the reason for our lost of our ability to synthesize Vitamin C.

Creationism doesn't quite account for this. Why did god (or the "designer") do this? Why knock out our ability to synthesize Vitamin C when we're not primarily fruit-eaters? Why does the other apes have the same disability like us? With the same mutation? That makes it look like we descented from a common ancestor with the other apes?


Endogenous Retroviruses
Retroviruses use reverse transcription to produce DNA from its RNA genome then it incorporates the DNA into the host genome. If a retrovirus infects a germ line cell, the organism which develops from the infected cell would have viral DNA in its genome. The viral DNA is known as endogenous retroviruses (ERV).

Although ERVs are nonfunctional, they are relics of viral infections indicative of a lineage's history. If a organism, which has ERVs, reproduces, its offsprings will have the same ERV in its genome.

If common descent is fact, we should find that humans should share ERVs with our ape relatives. Not only that, the ERV insertions should be at the same locations in our genomes when compared to our ape relatives. This is exactly what we find.

Learn more from this video:

If Creationism attempts to address this data, it just seems plain odd if not outright stupid. God, in his infinite wisdom, infected apes with the SAME retrovirus such that they all insert their ERV at the SAME exact location in the genome? That's sure some "wisdom".


Geological Record
The geological record shows a progressive change in species around at the time. Different organisms present in different rock stratas. In the earliest rocks with fossils, we find single celled organisms. Going up the strata, we find more complex multicellular organisms begining with fish. After fish, we have "fish-apods", fish with tetrapod-like features. Then we have recognizable amphibians, followed by lots of reptiles (namely dinosaurs). Dinosaurs suddenly disappears from the geological record, then we have mammals diversifying as well as birds.

If Creationism was right at all, we shouldn't even see the geological record let alone the geological progression of fossils.

Transitional fossils in the record grants weight to evolution's claims. The transitional forms can be predicted by the theory of evolution. For example, if common descent is true, we should find transitional forms depicting the transition from water to land. Not only that there should be such an animal, we should be able to find them in a specific time and specific rocks. This is dramatically illustrated by the discovery of Tiktaalik.

One unusual claim by creationists is that these fossils are god's previous creations. Funny, why did god specifically created transitional forms that conform to the theory of evolution? Why no other animal hybrids, say, like the crocoduck? No bird-fish? No mammal-insect?

The Noah Ark's story doesn't account for the data as well. Check out the following video:

It's not really Evolution Vs Creationism. It's Evidence Vs Creationism. Evidence wins of course.