At this point in time—2014–six observations are apparent and are based on rock-solid evidence regarding evolution and specifically, the evolution of humans. No evidence by any detractor or detractors from the world of science or the realms or religion has ever been evinced with supporting evidence to contradict the following observations:
- DNA analysis experiments, including hundreds of large-scale studies, overwhelmingly confirm the reality of evolution. The title of a highly respected scientist’s book states the reality. The professor was a lifelong devotee of the Russian Orthodox Church: T. Dobzhansky, Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution, American Biology Teacher 35:125-129, 1973.
- The vast amount of DNA sequence information now available allows scientists to reconstruct evolutionary relationships among species currently alive on earth.
- Conclusions derived from DNA analysis can be integrated usefully with information from earlier and current traditional studies of anatomy, physiology, the fossil record, archeology, and geology to decipher the history of life on earth—an ongoing study.
4. Evolution is not a “theory in crisis” as anti-evolutionists are quick to opine. It is a robust, well-documented, satisfactory theory–approaching the level of a biological law–it is the truth. The theory is no longer being challenged by mainstream scientists. Charles Darwin stated, “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.” The Darwinian Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection has not “broken down”, not in 150 years of effort. The work on evolution now involves the “how”, “when”, and “import” issues of the discipline.
5. The National Academy of Sciences, the most prestigious and respected group of scientists in the United States, and the one that presidents and legislators depend on for the last, best opinion on any scientific subject, stated without reservation: “It is no longer possible to sustain scientifically the view that living things did not evolve from earlier forms or that the human species was not produced by the same evolutionary mechanisms that apply to the rest of the living world.”[Emphasis, the present author’s]. (National Academy of Sciences, Teaching About Evolution and the Nature of Science, National Academy Press, p. 16, Washington D.C., 1998.). 45% of Americans accept the view that a Creator or Designer created humans in a single act less than 10,000 years ago (Gallup Polls). Many people are willing to accept that other animals evolved but draw the line at human evolution—only 12% were of the opinion that evolution without the involvement of a Creator was the correct conclusion. Both of the first two opinions regarding a Creator/Designer are unsupportable archaic opinions—the intellectual equivalent of denying the existence of gravity—that fly in the face of overwhelmingly convincing evidence to the contrary.
6. It is true that science cannot prove beyond all doubt that the young earth view is wrong, nor can it produce Absolute Truth; that is the purview of religion. What science can and does do well is to observe, to formulate hypotheses, test, experiment, and verify. The evidence that the earth is old includes several verifiable observations:
a) A count of the rings of a tree gives an accurate number of years the tree lived. The oldest known trees, bristlecone pines, live in the mountains of California. By the ring count of some of those living trees, they are 4,500 years old. By matching rings between recently felled trees and those of old, downed trees, the age of the examined trees exceeds 8,000 years.
b) Continental drift is an early twentieth century observation based on a continuity and inter-locking match-up between the eastern coastlines of North and South America and those of Western Europe and Africa. An even better match-up is present for the continental shelves. There is a very close match-up between certain interlockable locations in Africa and South America and in Europe and North America. This is taken to be reasonable evidence that the continents were drifting apart from each other. Achievement of the 2,500 mile separation of the continents, moving at the rate of two centimeters a year, had to require a time of 200 million years to reach that distance.
c) Magnetic pole reversals contribute evidence of continental drift by providing a magnetic record of their movements. Molten rock, magnetized by the earth’s core, oozes up into the Mid-Atlantic plate, cools, and freezes its magnetism there. Sophisticated and delicate magnetometers dragged on the ocean’s surface can measure the magnetic polarity of the rocks on the ocean floor. The magnetic field of the earth reverses itself approximately every 500,000 years on average. This is a reliable technology for the most recent segment up to 5 million years ago based on direct radioactive dating of sequences of lava flows. A reliable estimate of the earth’s age, based on this technology, approaches 4.5 billion years.
d) Radioactive dating relies on data that measures the half-life of unstable atomic nuclei which break down at random, but at a known and fixed half-life for each element. Half of the element will be present at that time, half of that when another half-life time passes, and so on. These radioactive elements thereby serve as accurate atomic clocks. Lunar rocks have been found to have ages of 4.5 billion years. There are few rocks on the earth older than 2.8 billion years. Analysis of that sort of evidence leads to the conclusion that the bodies of our solar system formed over 100 million years beginning about 4.6 billion years ago, a very old earth indeed.
e) Radiocarbon dating is important and accurate over relatively short periods of geological time—about 50,000 years. Carbon 14 is a radioactive trace element that decays to hydrogen with a half-life of about 5,730 years. The accumulation stops at death, and decay begins with a half-life of 5,730 years. Radio carbon, or rather, how much carbon 14 is left, can be detected with radiation counters. This technology is especially useful for measuring the age of fossils or bones of fairly recent origin and is useless for determining the age of such distant creatures as dinosaurs. Using radiocarbon dating, there have been found a plenitude of animals and plants that existed far in excess of 6,000 years ago.
f) The fossil record includes tens of millions of studied specimens throughout the world. The relative sequence of index fossils is based on the superimposition of horizontal geological strata, not vice versa. Biostratigraphy is based on three laws: the Law of Initial Horizontality, the Law of Superimposition, and the Law of Biotic Succession, the explanations of which are too lengthy to present here. None of these laws have anything to do with evolution, i.e. one need not pre-suppose the fact of evolution to accept the above stated laws. The chronology of fossils derives from the rocks and is not imposed on them by an evolutionary theory bias. It follows invariably that, in undisturbed rock strata, the fossils found in them are of the same age. Using radiometric dating, it is possible to assign a number of years to the rocks on the global chronostratigraphic time scale, an interval scale.
Gottfried Leibnitz (1646-1716), the inventor of infinitesimal calculus (independent of Newton) and the binary system–which is the foundation of all modern computer architectures–was one of the most brilliant minds in history. He attacked the law of the attraction of gravity by describing it, “as subversive of natural, and inferentially of revealed, religion.” It would be accurate to state that no modern scientist and virtually no rational person or even a convinced religionist would subscribe to that point of view regarding what is probably one of the greatest discoveries every made by man. Leibnitz’s opinion bore important sway in his time, but it was wrong on the level of absurdity. Many evolutionists feel the same sense of frustration at being unable to convince even thoughtful and educated people about the truths of evolution as the 16th century physicists who were proponents of the principle of gravity must have felt.