In 2006, the Skeptic's Dictionary published an article describing 10 characteristics of pseudoscience. Although it seems to have been written with the intention of attacking Creationism, even using Creationism as a case in point and aggressively mocking it, the list ironically describes Evolution almost perfectly. Let's go through each one and compare it to Evolution.
"Some pseudoscientific claims are based on an authoritative text rather than observation or empirical investigation."
Although not based on one specific authoritative text, Evolution certainly argues more from authority than from any kind of observation. How often do we hear "99% of scientists believe in Evolution", or some variation of the claim? I've personally had the displeasure of debating a few scientists on the issue, and every single one of them, without fail, argued more from their authority as scientists than from actual evidence. Whether from individual authority, as in the case of these scientists, or from scientific consensus, authority is a very common argument for Evolution, wherever it is debated.
There's a reason Evolutionists argue this way so much. Consensus is a very heavily entrenched argument in Evolutionary apologetics. For example, in an article entitled "WHAT THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY SAYS ABOUT EVOLUTION AND INTELLIGENT DESIGN", the ACLU lists a number of organisations and gives their opinions on Evolution, particularly as it pertains to the educational system. Their entry about the National Academy of Sciences says "Those who oppose the teaching of evolution in public schools sometimes ask that teachers present evidence against evolution. However, there is no debate within the scientific community over whether evolution occurred, and there is no evidence that evolution has not occurred."
Aside from being very wrong (there is a debate within the scientific community, and there is definitely evidence against Evolution), consensus appears to be given equal footing with evidence in that statement. Why should it matter if there was no debate within the scientific community? If there really was no evidence against Evolution, that would be "fine" (although it would shift the burden of proof), and sufficient, but they instead chose to lie, saying that it doesn't exist, but also saying there is no debate within the scientific community. If evidence exists, why should it matter if scientists won't give it the time of day? There was once "no" debate about the geocentric model either.
But really, "no debate within the scientific community" actually means "no debate within the Evolutionist community". This is the No True Scotsman fallacy. i.e. claims that "no debate" happens are sustained only by defining "debate" in such a way that any debate that does happen is not classed as debate happening. There are many scientists who dispute Evolution, but it is precisely because they dispute Evolution that they are not given the respect they deserve.
As you can see, Evolution appeals to, and heavily relies on, the very anti-scientific argument from authority, and thus, although this is not necessarily written down as an authoritative text (unless you count their precious "peer reviewed" journals), Evolution is absolutely based upon authority rather than observation and empirical investigation. Therefore, this element is satisfied.
"Some pseudoscientific claims explain what non-believers cannot even observe."
Two words: Geologic column. Evolution has an explanation for the geologic column, which is convenient, because it is the only religion that can see the geologic column. The geologic column is an entirely fictitious and circular concept. The geologic column does not exist anywhere on earth, and so Creationism does not explain it, but also does not need to explain it, because it does not exist. Evolutionists sometimes even acknowledge that it is entirely hypothetical, and attempt to explain this fact away, along with a number of anomalous fossils that either show up in the "wrong" place, or span through "millions of years" worth of layers.
Evolution, therefore, explains what can only be observed if one already believes in Evolution. This element is satisfied.
"Some pseudoscientific claims can't be tested because they are consistent with every imaginable state of affairs in the empirical world." (...) "Some pseudoscientific ideas can't be tested because they are so vague and malleable that anything relevant can be shoehorned to fit the claim." (separate points in the original article, but both are basically identical).
This describes Evolution perfectly. Not only are there a number of things in reality that should disprove at least one element of Evolution (e.g. soft tissue being found in dinosaur fossils should prove that they are not 65 million years old), but there are actually things which, in times past, were said to be impossible for Evolution to gradually create, and yet they have since been found in nature, but Evolutionists refused to back down.
For example, J.B.S. Haldane said Evolution could not create "various mechanisms, such as the wheel and magnet, which would be useless till fairly perfect." Yet, we now know that extremely complex wheel-like structures exist in single celled organisms, planthoppers use gears, and a wide range of animals use magnetic navigation systems. Has Evolution backed down? Nope. This doesn't mean Evolution is false, it means Haldane was wrong.
What about the innumerable transitional forms Darwin predicted would appear in the fossil record? He blamed the incomplete fossil record, and the fact that wholly soft organisms could not fossilise (which was known to be false even in his time), for the non-existence of such fossils. Yet despite having fossils of wholly soft organisms and a relatively complete fossil record, we don't have many possible transitional forms. Thus, Stephen Jay Gould came up with the theory of punctuated equilibrium. Effectively, we see no evidence for Evolution, therefore Evolution must have happened too quickly to have left any evidence behind.
Because Evolution is so malleable, it's not falsifiable. In other words, every imaginable state of affairs in the empirical world is consistent with Evolution, satisfying this element.
"Some ideas have been empirically tested and rather than being confirmed they seem either to have been falsified or to require numerous ad hoc hypotheses to sustain them."
Uniformitarianism is a principle of geology that states that the way things are happening now is the way it has always been. "The present is the key to the past", we are told. This principle, designed by Charles Lyell to "free science from Moses", was instrumental to the acceptance of Evolution. Yet, recently, it has fallen into disrepute. Warren Allmon even described it as "snake oil" simply because it rejected any evidence of catastrophes on the basis that they are not gradual processes.
In a desperate attempt to maintain the freedom from Moses that Lyell bought for science, modern Evolutionists have resorted to Neo-Catastrophism. That is, Uniformitarianism, but with the occasional reference to a local catastrophe. But Noah's flood is still out of the question!
Uniformitarianism has been tested and falsified, and rather than accept that, Evolutionists just tacked on the occasional catastrophe. This element is satisfied.
"Some pseudoscientific ideas rely on ancient myths and legends rather than on physical evidence, even when the interpretations of those legends either requires a belief contrary to the known laws of nature or to established facts".
This is the first of only two characteristics described in the article that Evolution does not directly satisfy. That being said, there are examples of ancient myths that closely resemble Evolution, which suggests that although modern Evolution does not rely on these myths, it could well have drawn from them.
For example, Anaximander (610-546 B.C.) taught that human beings initially resembled fish. Epicurus taught that God is not necessary to explain the universe, it came from a chance movement of the atoms. Democritus (460-370 B.C.) taught that humans "gradually articulated words" after originally speaking unintelligibly. The list goes on. So prominent were ideas similar to Evolution that there were actually Creationists defending the same view of the Bible we do today against some very similar objections.
Which does bring me to a noteworthy phrasing in the paragraph. "even when the interpretations of those legends either requires a belief contrary to the known laws of nature or to established facts" The author of this article is apparently not just trying to attack Creationism as is found in Genesis, but even promulgate the idea that this isn't even what Genesis teaches. As a side note, the author evidently does not understand the relationship of nature and the spiritual. Creationism ought never be attacked as unscientific, simply because it was never supposed to be scientific. It was a miracle, as was the flood. Thus, while it left natural evidence, it is not supposed to follow "the known laws of nature". By contrast, Naturalists (Naturalism being an unproven and unprovable axiom) must follow the known laws of nature. Yet, they do not.
This element of pseudoscience, while it is not satisfied, does come very close. To be as generous as possible, I will not count it. However, I do want it to be known that the modern Evolutionist religion has many ancient counterparts, and that you could possibly gather together all the ancient pagan religions and reconstruct modern Evolutionary mythology almost perfectly.
"Some pseudoscientific ideas are supported mainly by selective use of anecdotes, intuition, and examples of confirming instances."
Evolutionists are expert story tellers. For example, on the right, you see a famous picture of Richard Dawkins standing beside a whale Evolution display. Ironically, despite supposedly showing how whales are related to hippos, there is actually a ghostly figure at the bottom of the tree, showing that not only do Evolutionists selectively use anecdotes, sometimes the anecdotes they use are so weak, only a child could fall for them.
Selective examples of confirming instances are also common arguments. Blind cave fish, for example, have a pretty good chance of being brought up in debate. But this ignores the fact that even Creationists believe that species change. These examples are given in place of the examples that are actually required, mainly to cover up the fact that these examples do not exist, nor could they.
Thus, Evolution is supported mainly by selective use of anecdotes and examples of "confirming" instances, satisfying this element.
"Some pseudoscientific ideas confuse metaphysical claims with empirical claims"
This is the second of the two elements not directly satisfied by Evolution. That being said, although Evolution does not make any direct metaphysical claims, it does have metaphysical implications. Richard Dawkins, ironically, summed it up best by saying the universe has "no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference." Purpose, good, and evil are all metaphysical claims.
You cannot scientifically determine purpose. The very question "what is this for?" Assumes design, whereas if we are merely evolved, our bodies have no purpose. We can describe what things do, if anything, but we cannot determine that they were specifically intended to do so.
Good and evil are also undetectable. You cannot scientifically prove that an action is "good" or "evil". Really, every moral deed is just chemistry and physics. We cannot say a shooter is evil any more than we can say the gun is evil. We cannot say a charitable deed is good any more than we can say a coin is good.
Thus, although Evolution does not directly make metaphysical claims, it does have metaphysical implications. I'm going to be kind and say this element is not satisfied, but I want it to be known that it came close.
"Some pseudoscientific ideas not only confuse metaphysical claims with empirical claims, but they also maintain views that contradict known scientific laws and use ad hoc hypotheses to explain their belief."
The law of biogenesis is a triumph of science over paganism. And yet, Evolutionists insist that the law of biogenesis is not actually a law, it's just a general principle, and it's technically impossible to prove that life cannot come from non-life, so it's possible that it did. They even sometimes trumpet the Miller Urey experiment, even though this did not create anything even remotely close to life (despite the fact such life would have been intelligently designed).
Thus, Evolution satisfies this element, as it directly contradicts the known scientific law of biogenesis.
"Pseudoscientists claim to base their ideas on empirical evidence, and they may even use some scientific methods, though often their understanding of a controlled experiment is inadequate."
The key to the unique success of science at producing true knowledge is “The Scientific Method”, which, on the standard account, involves formulating hypotheses, making predictions, and then going into the laboratory to perform the crucial experiment. In contrast, the work of many evolutionary biologists involves the reconstruction of the past. The methods they use do not conform to the standard view of “The Scientific Method”.
The above is not a claim I have plucked from the air. Indeed, it is not even my own words. Rather, I have used a tactic I call the "silent quote", wherein I appear to be using my own words, but really I'm quoting a hostile source. The original quote is by the National Center for Science Education, who were lamenting the fact that students "naively" fail to "understand" and accept the "fact" of Evolution. In other words, the National Center for Science Education readily admits that Evolution does not conform to the scientific method, which involves controlled experiments.
This is because as many instruments as we have to observe the natural world as it is now, there is no such thing as a pastometer or a timeoscope. Evolution is a myth about history, not an observable fact about science, and so there are no experiments that could possibly confirm or deny Evolution. We can't even draw the comparison between Evolutionary "science" and forensic science, because whereas forensic science at least depends on things that can be observed to possibly reconstruct the past (and even then this can lead to false conclusions), Evolution does not do this. Much of Evolution relies on things that take too long to ever be observed.
What's even more embarrassing for Evolutionists is that no, these things don't take that long at all. Almost everything Evolutionists either used to claim, or continue to claim must take millions of years has now been observed to occur extremely quickly. New species becoming established, the formation of canyons, fossils, stalactites, diamonds, opals, oil, this has all happened within a few centuries, and we've seen it, proving millions of years are not required. All of this is another example of the above element of falsifiable elements having been falsified.
Thus, while Evolutionists do rely on some science, and dogmatically assert that there are "mountains of evidence" for Evolution, the fact is there is no controlled experiment that can confirm or falsify Evolution. This element is satisfied.
We see, then, that although Evolutionists insist Evolution is science and Creationism is pseudoscience, Evolution satisfies 8 out of 10 elements of pseudoscience provided by the Skeptic's Dictionary. Evolution, far from being settled science, is a pseudoscientific religion with about as much evidence in its favour as Astrology.
Meanwhile, far from being pseudoscience, Creationism was never intended to be scientific. Creationism is a claim about history, and therefore is not intended to be repeated. More importantly, Creationism is part of a much larger philosophy, namely Christianity. Christianity is all about the God who created the heavens and the earth. As human beings, we have all sinned against Him, and yet He loves us enough to seek to free us from the punishment of that sin. The punishment is death, but He offers us the free gift of eternal life through faith in the death, resurrection and Lordship of His Son, Jesus Christ. This is a metaphysical claim, not a scientific one, and yet it is 100% true, and far more worthy of belief than the idea that we're descended from fish.