Below is the standard index to problems with evolution. It is written in a dense reference format. Click on links to get more detail on a point, or check out our complete creation index.
The Big Bang
Where did matter come from?
Evolutionists do not know where matter came from in the first place. The first law of thermodynamics indicates that matter/energy can be neither created nor destroyed. Without God, then, the universe must be eternal since it could not have been created apart from a miracle. However, the second law of thermodynamics indicates that matter and energy in a closed system tend toward entropy, or the loss of usable energy. No matter how large the universe is, if it were eternal, usable energy would have been infinitely decreasing overall (including for all open systems within the universe), and so we should have none left. However, we do still have usable energy, indicating that the universe had a supernatural beginning. Evolutionists cannot explain this.
Why is the universe so finely tuned for life?
Evolutionists cannot explain the fine tuning of our universe’s physical laws. For instance, the fine structure constant and the proton-to-electron mass ratio must all be within a very narrow range to allow for life, and they are. Additionally, the earth itself is also finely tuned for life: its axis tilt, carbon dioxide levels, crust thickness, distance to the sun, gravity, magnetic field, oxygen-to-nitrogen ratio, ozone levels, rotation speed, water vapor level, the sun’s mass, and the sun’s color, must be within a narrow range to allow for life, and again, they are. Even assuming the big bang, the cosmological constant would have to be within an extremely narrow range for life.
Evolutionists respond using the anthropic principle, stated in different ways (tautological, metaphysical, and lame), each with its downfall.
Why are natural laws reliable and consistent?
The natural world is logical and orderly. If the universe were the result of an explosion and chance random processes, we should not expect this
Age of the Earth
Many scientific discoveries are incompatible with an old earth, even according to evolutionary dating methods. For instance, carbon-14 has been found in fossils, coal, and diamonds, setting a maximum age of 90,000 years when evolutionists say these items should be much older. Additionally, soft tissue in dinosaur fossils, surviving DNA in ancient-dated bacteria, helium in radioactive rocks, the amount of sediment on the seafloor, salt in the oceans, earth’s slowing rotation, the young faint sun paradox, galaxy wind-up time, earth’s magnetic field, Niagara falls erosion rate, short-lived comets, the number of supernova remnants, and the short account of human history and agriculture supports a young earth and universe, not an old one.
The First Life
The most basic form of life known to us is much too complex to have arisen by chance. For instance, the odds of just one hundred life-like polypeptides simultaneously forming, each 100 units long, is 1 in \( 10^{16,000} \), and this is only a fraction of what would be required for a fully functional modern cell, no matter how simple (see a perspective on chance here). This forces evolutionists to say the first life was completely unlike modern life, merely a self-replicating molecule. In reality, evolutionists do not know how life started as each of their proposed scenarios has scientific problems. Without evidence, to say it arose naturally is a faith position for them.
Common Descent
Darwinian Evolution
Once the first life is here, Darwinian evolution can (theoretically) begin. Darwin claimed finch beaks were examples of evolution. However, variation in finch beaks are merely pre-programmed genetic options that are turned on or off. Options in the gene are extensive, including beak size, height, weight, color, etc. Because these are pre-programmed options, they never add brand new information. Therefore, modern evolutionists must say that mutations (or mistakes), filtered by natural selection, are the cause of brand new information.
Research shows that mutations do not add new information. First, a mutation that has added brand new information to an organism has never been observed, ever. Even beneficial mutations, like the blindness of cave fish or the ability of bacteria to grow on citrate, remove information or activate existing information. Second, harmful mutations outnumber beneficial ones by a million to one, and so even if mutations could sometimes cause brand new information, the overall direction would be steeply downward. Mutations cause tragedies like cancer, genetic disorders, and aging, not brand new information. For instance, the human population is genetically declining toward genetic death. A conservative estimate says that humans have about one hundred mutations per person per generation. Natural selection could only keep up with about one-third mutation per person per generation in optimal conditions, but certainly not one hundred.
Putting all these problems aside and assuming that an information-adding mutation occurs every generation, there is still not enough time for evolution (Haldane’s dilemma) because natural selection takes time. Natural selection has to kill off the less fit, slowly bringing in new beneficial mutation of the more fit.
Ignoring all of these problems, there is another: irreducible complexity. Nature has many incredible features that have no gradual, step-by-step path to them: they must be fully complete, or they will not function at all. Since natural selection selects what is best for right now, and not for the future, it cannot account for irreducible complexity. Examples include human blood clotting, cilia, bacterial flagella, and the human eye.
“Tree of Life”
When evolutionists try to draw an evolutionary “tree,” they run into problems. They have to say that some things evolved more than once (known as convergence). For instance, they must say that the eye (in different forms) evolved between 40 and 60 times independently! They must also say that the duck-like bill on the platypus evolved independently of the duck’s bill. Many other examples of convergence exist, and they are awkward for evolution to explain. Why would a duck bill evolve two times independently?
Philosophy
Besides having scientific problems, evolution conflicts with who we are. If evolution is true, then many things in life we take very seriously are just illusions. For instance, there would be no life after death, no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning in life, no human free will, no real beauty or music (they’re just chemical reactions and illusions). This conflicts strongly with our born intuition that we are spiritual beings, and that there is more to life than just matter.
Additionally, if evolution were true, we have no control on what we believe or how we think: these are merely the result of evolution and our environment. This is because our brains would be the result of chance random processes and natural selection, and our thoughts would be merely reducible chemical reactions. Therefore, the belief in evolution itself would be unreliable, since some may believe it only because it helps us survive somehow, not because it is true.
Conclusion
Evolution has serious scientific problems and also conflicts with our common sense. People accept it because it provides an excuse for them to reject their responsibility to their Creator, Jesus Christ.