Evolutionists have little doubt about their idea. Indeed they consistently claim it to be an undeniable scientific fact. As one textbook explained, “The term theory is no longer appropriate except when referring to the various models that attempt to explain how life evolves … it is important to understand that the current questions about how life evolves in no way implies any disagreement over the fact of evolution.” I was trying to explain this fact when I discovered I couldn’t. Quite the opposite, there are substantial scientific problems with evolution. My proposition to evolutionists is that I will help their cause if they will help me understand. I will be an evolutionist if they can explain why it is a scientific fact.

Many evolutionists have responded to my proposition, but their comments make me wonder. One criticized me for not offering an alternative while others blamed me for bias in my beliefs. Another said my purpose is to drive creation/ID and another said I am a Biblical fundamentalist. Yet another said that my basic complaint is that science refuses to work on the assumption that maybe things were magicked into existence. Aside from being false, the main problem with such comments is they leave me no closer to the fact of evolution.

Another evolutionist explained the intellectual necessity of Darwin’s idea:

Science stops when we use the “God made the mosquito” assumption. There’s nothing to be done and nothing more to learn about our universe or ourselves: save listening to the people who believe they have cornered the truth. This critique of evolution is not an effort to further understanding, but to halt it.

This is certainly a popular mandate for evolution, but it hardly makes it a scientific fact. Another argued for why evolution is better than creation or design:

The argument is that evolution—common descent with gradual, opportunistic modification—would produce such effects, and we have no good reason to suppose that a Designer of life—supernatural or otherwise—would choose to do so.

It is another popular argument but, again, it does little to explain why evolution is a scientific fact. Another evolutionist argued that virtually everyone educated accepted descent with modification within a decade or two of the Origin. But given Darwin’s reasoning and the limited state of nineteenth century biology, this point raises more questions than answers about the claim that evolution is a scientific fact.

He further criticized me for ignoring the overwhelming statistical confirmations of common ancestry:

The odds of e.g. morphological and molecular phylogenies agreeing as much as they do (there are sometimes disagreements, but they are statistically minor, at least if you are open-minded enough to actually learn about the relevant statistics, and not just quote mine from people who don’t) are miniscule. The fossil record shows similar statistical agreement. Etc.

But if the disagreements are not statistically significant, they certainly are biologically significant. Massive similarities and differences show up where they shouldn’t be. Perhaps evolution somehow constructed such contradictions, but from a scientific perspective they are not merely statistically insignificant. Aside from speculation, we have no good explanation for the many significant disagreements we find. The argument that they are statistically insignificant and can safely be ignored while maintaining that evolution is a fact ignores the science.

Furthermore, the idea that the aligning of various traits, of various species, makes evolution a fact is a fallacy. A repeated pattern of similarities proves, well, a repeated pattern of similarities. To conclude that evolution or common descent is a scientific fact would we not also need powerful evidence that such disparate populations could somehow follow an evolutionary path, one into the other? But this is a major problem in evolutionary theory.

Another evolutionist compared evolution to heliocentrism, and evolution denial to holocaust denial:

Surely it is in theory possible to explain the evidence in another way, with miracles that alter the relative position of earth and sun in a manner that misleadingly resembles the earth following a gravitational orbit around the sun.

Likewise, it will always be theoretically possible to deny evolution, provided one is willing to posit a misleading miracle where observable natural phenomena and forces would be perfectly adequate to account for what we see.

In the case of evolution, we had pretty reliable evidence even when we simply had the succession of fossils, the evidence of related morphology, and other such data. Now that we have DNA evidence, and can determine relatedness between all living things using genetics, the situation is summed up nicely by Francisco Ayala: "there are no more gaps."

Of course, it will always be possible to deny scientific facts, just as it is possible to deny historical facts. And so the question is whether one wants to follow the most straightforward reading of the evidence, or whether one prefers to engage in something that is to science what holocaust denial is to history.

But the evolutionary explanations are not perfectly adequate to account for what we see, that’s the point. The positing of miracles is irrelevant. Genetics, for instance, reveals substantial problems for evolution. We know there is a genetic resistance to change and we would have to believe that evolution somehow serendipitously created the very mechanisms crucial for evolution itself.

Another evolutionist argued that mutations, recombination and selection create novel traits and speciation, as has been observed in the lab and in nature. But this doesn’t make all of evolution a fact. Even evolutionists agree that the large scale changes required by the theory are not well explained by known mechanisms. And in any case we would have to believe that evolution somehow created recombination itself, so that such evolution could occur. Perhaps so, but such a story is hardly a fact.

Novel traits have been observed to emerge rapidly and via complex mechanisms that respond to the environmental need. Yes, adaptation is observed, but it makes little sense under evolution. How did evolution create adaptation mechanisms that respond to environmental challenges with rapid design changes? The explanation that “such mechanisms increase fitness, so it is no surprise they evolved” is more dogma than science.

I would gladly accept and promote evolution, but it has substantial scientific problems papered over with strident claims of being a fact. Is there evidence for evolution? Certainly. But in each case there are profound subtleties and problems. Whether or not evolution, in one form or another, actually occurred is difficult to say. But what is clear is the state of the evidence. Evolutionists dogmatically claim the idea is a scientific fact, but they don’t show why.

A child once informed his friends his toy bulldozer could dig all the way through the Earth. But wasn’t the Earth too big? No, look at the Grand Canyon—it is proof of what such small shovels can do. Such childish logic, amazingly, shows up repeatedly in evolutionary “theory.” It is a treasure trove of bizarre and silly claims and justifications which rises to the surface, as with the child’s reasoning, when the evolutionist is questioned about his convictions. Consider, for example, the oft heard evolutionary mechanism of random mutation followed by natural selection which, like the toy bulldozer, apparently can do just about anything. When queried about this most amazing idea, the underlying evolutionary logic is revealed.

One response evolutionists give when confronted with their own extraordinary claims about random mutation and natural selection is to complain that mutations aren’t really random, and any such notion is clearly erroneous. They don’t just happen willy-nilly but in fact reveal non random patterns both across the genome and across time.

But this is an equivocation on the word “random,” which is used with reference to something. When evolutionists speak of random mutations, they mean that the mutations are random with respect to the need of the organism. There is no plan or intelligence behind mutations—evolution has no final causes.

When questioned about their bizarre claim that the entire field of biology is a consequence of such Lucretian bloopers, their rebuttal that mutations actually aren’t random after all reveals how shallow is their thinking.

Evolutionists are the ones who claimed mutations are random (with respect to the need) and the fact that mutations are not random over space and time does not change that Epicurean claim. (By the way, this is yet another evolutionary expectation that turned out to be false. That became clear when the empirical evidence caught up with evolutionary speculation.)

Another response evolutionists give when questioned about their startling ideas of the power of random mutation and natural selection is to focus on the latter. Mutations may be random but evolution certainly is not, for selection pressure brings out the winners.

Of course this is false. Selection “pressure” is another evolutionary euphemism. The only thing Darwin’s natural selection can do is kill off the faulty or inferior designs—it does not induce helpful mutations to magically arise. All evolutionary creations must arise from those random mutations.

Yet another revealing response evolutionists give when queried about their heroic claims of random mutation and natural selection is to complain that such a query is nothing more than a strawman rendition of evolution.

Random mutations, after all, are only one of a great many evolutionary mechanisms. One professor has listed almost fifty different so-called “engines of variation” that work together to build biology’s wonders. How silly to think random mutation was the sole artist in Darwin’s montage.

For example, biological variation can arise from changes in the expression levels of genes, which in turn can arise from changes to sequences that control such expression levels, or changes to the protein machines that bind to those sequences. And there are far more involved examples, such as the various forms of symbiotic mechanisms. The professor concludes:

So, next time you hear or read a creationist or IDer cite "RM & NS" as the sole explanation for evolutionary change, point out to them and everyone else that there are at least 47 different sources of variation

But does this really rescue random mutation from its overachiever status? No. Once again the evolutionary logic has bubbled up to the surface for all to see. The most obvious problem here is simply that biology’s various engines of variation are, according to evolutionary mandate, ultimately the product of, yes, random mutation.

Of course RM/NS is the ultimate explanation for evolutionary change. The fact that biology reveals incredibly complex adaptive and physiological changes does not give evolutionists license to invoke them as evolutionary starting points, without reference to their own origin.

Indeed, with evolution what we must believe is that its blind mutations just happened to create phenomenal mechanisms which, themselves, not only are astonishingly complex but become crucial agents of evolutionary change. The heroics continue to mount at an astronomical pace as evolution, we must believe, creates evolution. If a toy bulldozer can dig through the Earth, then why not?