In any topic on which there is debate, there are deep and complex arguments, and there's "low hanging fruit". Low hanging fruit is a way of describing the "obvious" arguments. The ones that are so easy to make that if your opponent doesn't expect you to make them, he really hasn't thought about the topic.
With Christianity, for example, a low hanging fruit would be divine hiddenness. Only a complete dunce would argue that divine hiddenness proves there is no God, but it's easy to understand why God's apparent absence is a problem for the Christian faith. Therefore, it's low hanging fruit. It's too easy for an atheist to use it, and if a Christian is caught off guard with it, they aren't ready to start an apologetics themed YouTube channel.
But actually seeing a creator isn't the only kind of valid evidence for their existence. If you find an ant hill, you know it was made by ants, even if the ants moved out a long time ago. If you find a bee hive, the bees could have moved on a long time ago, you still know it was made by bees. A bird's nest is evidence for birds, even if the bird isn't there anymore. A mud hut is proof of human beings, even if they have long since moved out. In the simplest possible terms, design = designer.
With this in mind, a low hanging fruit argument against Evolution is to formulate a scenario in which human designs doubt human existence. A robot who thinks he evolved from a Nokia phone is insane, is he not? It's low hanging fruit.
But to this day, Evolutionists still stumble over the analogy, from the least to the greatest. It's low hanging fruit, not just because it's obvious, but because it's nigh irrefutable. Or is it? Evolutionists would argue that the answer is no. See, robots do not reproduce, whereas living beings do. Thus, they say, it's a false analogy.
This response doesn't hold up, however, as the false analogy fallacy only occurs when the comparison is misleading, irrelevant, or otherwise implausible. In this case, the response is the equivalent of using a flamethrower as a fire extinguisher. This is because if robots could reproduce, that would make the argument significantly worse. If a robot could reproduce, future generations wouldn't be any less well designed, they would be one of the greatest designs we've ever made.
But as it happens, we don't need to speculate on a future wherein man made machinery replicates itself, because we already have the equivalent: Videogames. As a dinosaur fan, one of my favorite videogames is Ark: Survival Evolved, an open world survival game in which the player wakes up in a mysterious environment, almost naked, and must survive by gathering resources, crafting tools, constructing shelters, and most importantly, interacting with the local wildlife.
Within Ark, there are a wide variety of animals, most of which can actually be tamed by the player. Most tameable animals can also be bred. This includes, among others, the mighty tyrannosaurus rex.
Much like in real life, the resulting offspring of a breedable tame does not perfectly resemble its parents. Mutations occur which can change its stats, and its colors. As a result, you may start with a pair of dull rexes who would struggle in a fight against a spinosaurus, and end with a multicolored army, capable of taking on the most difficult of Ark's boss battles.
For all intents and purposes, Ark's t-rexes reproduce, thus removing the "false analogy" claim. But notice how the problem doesn't go away. If the rexes were to contemplate their own existence, it would be absurd for them to look at a piranha and conclude they share a common ancestor. Why? Simply because their only common ancestor is the man made generator that spawned them both into the game in the first place. The rex was designed, the piranha was designed, the fact that the rex was bred many generations after the first rex is utterly irrelevant.
But Evolutionists might object even here, saying that Ark is actually designed to limit how far the rex's evolution can go. Rexes are designed to produce slightly different rexes. But they don't seem to understand quite how realistic that is. Tell me, when a tyrannosaurus rex laid an egg in real life, what was inside the egg? If you answered "the ancestor of the modern chicken", you get an F for effort, because actually, tyrannosaurs produce tyrannosaurs. The only thing known to have ever produced a chicken is... a chicken. That's what reproduction is: re-production.
This is not a rule we have ever seen an exception to, nor can we ever expect to. Unless you're an Evolutionist, who really wants to believe you're the descendant of a furry little crap-flinger who lived and died millions of years ago, you have no reason to believe descent with modification could produce new kinds, much less that they actually would.
But it can't be denied that there are greater changes in the real world than there are in Ark, or indeed any other videogame that allows breeding of animals. But Evolution is actually more realistic in a videogame than in the real world, simply because in a videogame, things can respawn once killed. But nature doesn't give mulligans.
In the real world, we have what's called "natural selection". Natural selection is the bane of Evolution, because it eliminates the "unfit". If an organism dies before it can reproduce, its traits do not pass on to the next generation, and Evolution ends there. Only if an organism has a reproductive advantage, or at the very least capability, can it continue to "evolve".
Some clarification is necessary here. Bible Brain utterly rejects the definition "change over time" for Evolution. It is an entirely useless definition, invented entirely so Evolutionists can equivocate. Equivocation is essential to the Evolutionist's case. Without it, Evolutionists neither have a case, nor appearance thereof, but with it, they can make Christians look like quacks who believe in the fixity of species, even though Scripture itself describes change over time. Thus, change over time is entirely compatible with the Creation account of Genesis.
But Evolution is something entirely different. It isn't just the theory that species change over time, but that certain types of changes, over a given amount of time, will result in entirely new organisms. As Gerald Kerkut, an Evolutionist himself, wrote: "There is a theory which states that many living animals can be observed over the course of time to undergo changes so that new species are formed. This can be called the ‘Special Theory of Evolution’ and can be demonstrated in certain cases by experiments. On the other hand there is the theory that all the living forms in the world have arisen from a single source which itself came from an inorganic form. This theory can be called the ‘General Theory of Evolution’ and the evidence that supports it is not sufficiently strong to allow us to consider it as anything more than a working hypothesis. It is not clear whether the changes that bring about speciation are of the same nature as those that brought about the development of new phyla. The answer will be found in future experimental work and not by the dogmatic assertions that the General Theory of Evolution must be correct because there is nothing else that will satisfactorily take its place." (1).
In spite of all their attempts to redefine Evolution for sake of equivocation, when we talk about Evolution in the context of the origins debate, we are talking about Kerkut's "general" theory of Evolution. This, he adequately distinguishes from speciation, the "special" theory of Evolution, and acknowledges the difference in the type of change. He also acknowledges the weakness of the supporting evidence, a problem that Evolutionists still have not solved to this very day.
But even Kerkut's confession pales in comparison to Darwin's own prediction. He said "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not have been formed by successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down." (2). That's not just about the evidence for the "general" theory of Evolution (hereafter referred to as "Evolution") being too weak to consider it more than a working hypothesis. That's a method of falsification. If this piece of evidence exists, this theory is wrong.
I submit that if Darwin had taken a single modern biology class, he would never have included this statement in his book, because he would know that there actually isn't such a thing as a complex organ that can be formed by successive, slight modifications. My go to example is the heart, not only because my diagram of it is the only one from my college days that I actually managed to save, but also because it's just the most obvious. Everyone knows that the heart is absolutely essential to survival, for "...the life of the flesh is in the blood..." (Leviticus 17:11). Damage the heart, damage the organism.
But the heart isn't some silly blob like the typical love heart. It's more like this diagram:
As you can see, the heart is divided into four chambers: The left and right ventricles, and the left and right atria. Deoxygenated blood flows from the body into the right atrium through the vena cava, then from the right atrium to the right ventricle. From there, it flows out the pulmonary artery towards the lungs. Once it has received oxygen, it flows back through the pulmonary vein into the left atrium, then into the left ventricle, and finally it makes its way through the aorta to delivery oxygen to the body.
In the diagram, you will also see a system of valves. These valves have flaps, which open and close once per heartbeat, ensuring the blood flows in one direction. This system is essential to health and survival. The result of damage, or "modification", to the system is an inherently less fit organism.
Unfortunately, this isn't mere speculation, as heart valve disease is a very real phenomenon. Sufferers experience a range of symptoms, from fatigue and shortness of breath, all the way up to death.
Needless to say, the heart is a very important organ, but it is also a complex one. An irreducibly complex one. What this means is it is simply impossible for it to have developed by successive, slight modifications. These modifications are both detrimental and lethal. This means even if you start with an otherwise fully developed organism without a heart, or even with a different type of heart to our own, any and all "transitional forms" would be unfit, and would be naturally selected against. In other words, by Darwin's own falsification criteria, Evolution has been falsified.
What's worse for him is that it's not even logical to begin with a fully developed organism. Biological Evolution begins with Chemical Evolution, a theory long ago refuted by Louis Pasteur. This is ironic, as we actually have a far greater equivalent to the original analogy here. As the aforementioned Pasteur said, "...there is no circumstance known in which it can be affirmed that microscopic beings came into the world without germs, without parents similar to themselves." (3). In other words, whatever life supposedly evolved from originally does not reproduce, much like man made objects. This erases the argument from false analogy entirely, even without pointing out that reproductive systems would only multiply the problem!
For all of these reasons, the evolving robot analogy, while it is low hanging fruit, is utterly impossible for Evolutionists to get around. They can point out a range of differences between human beings and human inventions, but the similarities between the scenarios are significant enough that this is not a false analogy.
Perhaps one of the greatest ironies is that there is a far more glaring difference between a man and a robot. Robots typically do not reproduce, but they will never be able to contemplate their own existence, even if they can be programmed to appear otherwise. It seems strange, then, that Evolutionists would focus on the reproduction aspect.
Mankind can do many things. In the future, it is not entirely inconceivable we could create self-replicating robots. But from God's perspective, we are the self-replicating robots, and we have been designed "so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.’" (Acts 17:27-28). Our unique philosophical capabilities were literally designed to enable us to relate to God on a personal level, in ways none of our designs will ever be able to do.
But we failed. Like an iPhone that plays Angry Birds when you told it to call your mother, we have all fallen short of our purpose. As we read in Isaiah 53:6, "All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way...". But God is too pure of eyes to behold evil (Habakkuk 1:13), nor can evil dwell with Him (Psalm 5:4). We are in serious trouble, having rebelled against our Creator, earning destruction for ourselves.
But in His love for us, God provided a solution. He actually entered creation to become one of us. But unlike us, He never turned aside from the path. He never lied. Never coveted. Never stole. Never blasphemed. During His life, Jesus obeyed every last aspect of God's Holy laws. Yet, He was punished as a sinner. He died on the cross, receiving the full wrath of God, and making propitiation for the sins of the whole world. Because of this, He offers complete forgiveness of all sin to everyone who believes in Him, and confesses Him as Lord. The reward for this is eternal life in His Kingdom.
References
1. Kerkut, Gerald A. - Implications of Evolution, Pergamon, Oxford, UK, p. 157, 1960 (link)
2. Darwin, Charles - On the Origin Of Species, 1859
3. Translation from The Life of Pasteur p. 142 - Soirées scientifiques de la Sorbonne (1864)
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