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Writer's pictureBible Brian

Convergent Evolution: When Evolution becomes unfalsifiable


One of the key arguments for Evolution is homology, and it can effectively be summed up as similar design = similar Evolutionary history. Of course, you can see this in the typical Evolutionary diagrams. They take some organisms that are vaguely similar, invent a couple of non-existent transitional forms to fill in the blanks, and say creature A evolved from creature B. But of course, it goes far deeper than that. Evolutionists, for example, will compare the human hand, the bat wing, and the whale flipper, and suggest that, since they are fundamentally similar, they must all be a result of a common ancestor we all shared millions of years ago.


The standard response to this is that it's a complete non sequitur. Common design is not evidence of common ancestry, and in fact is greater evidence of a common designer. We can show that human designs share homology, too. It doesn't mean a Ferrari is descended from a unicycle.


But Evolutionists have their own standard responses, starting with the very existence of reproduction. Human designs to not reproduce, therefore common design is evidence of a common designer. Living organisms, however, do reproduce, and that somehow means we can use homology as an argument for common ancestry.


Aside from being another weak response, given that reproduction only adds to Evolution's problems rather than solving them (especially when it comes to sexual reproduction), it turns out you actually don't need to line up human designs to make this argument. See, there are living organisms with similarities that cannot be attributed to a shared ancestry.


As an example, the placental mouse and marsupial mouse are quite similar, but even by Evolutionary reckoning, this is not the result of a shared Evolutionary history. Rather, by astonishing coincidence, Evolution created such similar designs independently. This, they call "convergent Evolution".


"Convergent Evolution" is really just a rescuing device designed to account for similarities between organisms, such as those between the placental and marsupial mice, that do not fit the Evolutionary narrative. Without the PR talk, convergence is really just a way of saying "Evolution didn't work the way we said it does this time, so we're going to invent a whole new story that allows us to account for these particular similarities a different way".


This makes Evolution unfalsifiable, as there is no conceivable reality in which it can be refuted. Homology is supposedly evidence for Evolution, except when it absolutely cannot be, at which point... it becomes evidence for Evolution. Therefore, Evolution is considered true in every given scenario.


A far more logical explanation is that, just as we use similar designs for similar creations, so also does the Lord. Why should God reinvent the wheel just to satisfy the insatiable? If homology convinces you, it's because you wanted to be convinced. Even with their similarities, natural structures are noticeably different, but more importantly, they are noticeably functional. They work for the purpose for which they were designed, and thus changing the design just to rob Evolutionists of their incredible ability to attribute it to Evolution is silly.


But what is less silly is using the same design that works, and then doing so again and again until it's fairly obvious that similar design = similar designer, not similar Evolutionary history. If you want to make up a new story that can account for these similarities within the Evolutionary worldview, you are going so far beyond the evidence that it's clear you never cared about the evidence.


Of course, our actual Creator has accounted for this. In His word, we see not only that He created us, but also that we have rebelled against Him. As a species, we have rejected our place in the natural order and sought to be gods ourselves. We have gone our own way instead of His way, and as a result, we are owed a fate worse than Evolution.


However, while we inherited a tendency toward rebelling against God from our common ancestor, Adam, there is hope of redemption. The Son of God Himself took on human flesh, entering the world through the womb of a virgin named Mary. During His life, Jesus never once sinned, yet He died as a sinner. He died for our sins, ensuring we, through faith, can be forgiven.

 

An attempted Evolutionist response


I once debated an Evolutionist who took issue with my claim that Convergent Evolution makes Evolution compatible with every conceivable reality. He proceeded to conceive of a reality in which genetic information is not passed down to one's offspring, claiming that this would disprove Evolution. I do not have his exact quote, so I had to summarize his argument.


The reason this doesn't work as a response is simply because of what we mean when we say "every conceivable reality". I take it for granted that completely imaginary scenarios are off the table. The human imagination has virtually no limits. Obviously, there are some things we can't imagine. Colors we have never seen before, contradictory items such as round squares, the end of an infinite universe, things like that. But we do have very powerful imaginations, as is shown by the large number of movies in our culture. We can conceive of a world in which genetically engineered dinosaurs run rampant in a theme park (Jurassic Park), or in which three cognitively gifted people are utilised by the police force to predict murders before they happen (Total Recall).


Because we have such active imaginations, we can imagine literally any world, including that which would falsify even the craziest of Evolutionary rescuing devices. However, because they are not realistic, they simply aren't considered. To add a flip side to this, let's point out that Evolutionists also claim that Creationism is unfalsifiable. Yet, I can conceive of a world in which gravity simply switches off on a whim and we all float off into space. This would falsify Creationism, because God is supposed to be maintaining a consistent and predictable universe. If the universe suddenly becomes unpredictable, that would falsify Creationism (and Christianity as a whole). In similar ways, Muhammad imagined a world in which Jesus comes back to Earth as a Muslim, breaks all the crosses, and tells Allah that He never commanded Christians to worship Him. This would also falsify Creationism, or at least the Judeo-Christian version.


Because neither of these scenarios are realistic, they are not counted as "conceivable realities", because they are not conceivable as realities. In the same way, the Evolutionist's "conceivable reality" in which genetic material is not passed down from parent to offspring is just not realistic, and so his scenario of this falsifying Evolution does not change the fact that, because Evolution is compatible with just about any organism we could find, regardless of how much it messes up Evolutionary cladograms, Evolution is simply unfalsifiable.

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