Forensic science investigates past events, e.g. crimes, by analyzing evidence left behind. This evidence can be in the form of fingerprints, DNA, hairs or other objects and clues at a crime scene. Research into macroevolution, i.e. large-scale evolutionary changes that take place over long periods of time, is also retrospective. This involves relying on evidence from the past to draw conclusions. Scientists reconstruct evolutionary events by piecing together the available evidence and drawing conclusions about how life evolved over millions and billions of years. Macroevolution can be studied by examining fossil records, genetic data, the anatomy of living things and endogenous retroviruses. The evidence shows that if there is a God/Intelligent Designer responsible for the creation of life, it must have worked just like naturalistic processes. He must have worked over incredibly long periods of time, placing related species geographically close to each other, never reviving extinct species, leaving behind life forms with rudimentary structures and DNA for ancestral features, and scattering transitional fossils across the continents.
Astronomers and cosmologists can measure the age of the universe using the cosmic microwave background. It is the first light of the universe, created when electrons settled around the first atoms and produced photons. This light is extremely red-shifted and stretched with the expansion of the universe. They can also study the movement of galaxies, the Hubble flow. By tracing the expansion of the universe, they can see that matter condensed into a galaxy about 14 billion years ago. The relative abundances of hydrogen and helium in the universe are consistent with the nucleosynthesis of the Big Bang. The Big Bang created a certain amount of light elements that slowly condensed into heavier elements inside the stars. They can also observe populations of stars to determine the age of the universe. In our own galaxy alone, there are hundreds of billions of stars that can be categorised as O, B, A, F, G, K and M based on their surface temperature and spectral properties. Astronomers can observe which types of stars become supernovae or turn into neutron stars and black holes. Large stars live fast and die young - red dwarfs live practically forever. With the help of supercomputers, astronomers can also simulate the internal fusion processes of stars, the proton-proton chains. Everything points to the age of the universe being in the billions,or 13.8 years to be precise. So there is clear evidence that if God created the universe, he did so over aeons, even if, as an omnipotent being, he could have done it all in a single day or week, as a Biblical literalist would like to believe.
Creationists argue that God sped up, directed and protected the origin of life.Creationists often argue that God/Intelligent Designer "boosted" evolution in the Cambrian period over half a billion years ago. If they accept that the explosive biodiversity in the Cambrian can be traced from the fossil record, they cannot simply brush aside the five major mass extinction events in Earth's history. The Ordovician-Silurian extinction took place around 443 million years ago and wiped out around 85% of marine species. The Devonian extinction occurred around 372 million years ago and also mainly affected marine life. The Permian-Triassic extinction, about 252 million years ago, was the most severe, wiping out about 96% of marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrates. The Triassic-Jurassic extinction took place around 201 million years ago and paved the way for the emergence of the dinosaurs. Finally, the Cretaceousand Paleogene extinctions some 66 million years ago famously ended the reign of the dinosaurs and many marine species, probably due to an asteroid impact. So if a personal Designer was involved, it must have filled the Earth with life many times, only to destroy it shortly afterwards. He filled the planet with large lizards - only to destroy them all later.
In fact, God would have filled the planet with umpteen different life forms, 99.9% of which are now extinct. Paleontologists are finding billions of fossils on every continent. It is estimated that there have been billions, if not tens of billions, of species in the history of the planet. No one will ever see these species alive. Since purpose is such an important idea for ID creationists, what purpose did these species serve? It seems to make little sense to fill the planet with life and then destroy it again and again. Or does an omniscient being need to learn how to create life first?
Scientists can also find evidence for evolution by studying genetics. Scientists have managed to “switch on” a dormant tooth gene in a chicken embryo so that it was born with teeth like a crocodile. If birds are not evolutionary descendants of theropods, how is this possible? The Chickinosaurus project involves activating dormant genes from dinosaurs to create a chicken with a tail, unfused wings and teeth. In 2009, the paleontologist in charge of the project, Dr. Horner, even predicted in a book titled “How to Build a Dinosaur: The New Science of Reverse Evolution” that scientists would one day be able to turn chickens into dinosaur-like forms.
Why would a Designer insert deactivated genes into organisms that code for these seemingly primeval traits?
Cockroaches and other insects can grow an extra set of wings like their fossilized ancestors. Snakes are classified as tetrapods, vertebrates with four limbs, even though they have no limbs. The gene that produces a protein important for the development of limbs is still present in the DNA of snakes, but is no longer expressed, so that limbs do not form.
Humans also have a number of genes that code for a tail, but they do not function. Sometimes a child is born with a tail.
The Designer must have artificially introduced remnants of ancient viral infections that have integrated their genetic material into the genome of their host organisms into life forms. An endogenous retrovirus is a piece of DNA that was created when one of your ancestors was infected with a virus. They are inert in the genome of an organism. They are said to be parasitic junk sequences derived from viral DNA. Scientists can find inactivated retroviral remnants in closely related species, which allows them to determine approximately when our common ancestor acquired the virus. Endogenous retroviruses are found in both apes and humans.Many argue that the likelihood of apes and humans being infected with this DNA at the same location in our genomes is so low that it must be something that happened in our common ancestor. Or did the intelligent Designer artificially insert the ERVs into our DNA?
Many creatures also have vestigial structures, remnants of earlier evolutionary traits. Baleen whale fetuses have teeth that are absorbed as the fetus matures, so adult baleen whales have no teeth. Whales have a bone structure that is more similar to that of humans than that of fish.
Fully aquatic animals such as sea snakes, dolphins and whales must rise to the surface to breathe air, indicating their past as mammals. There are moles that have eyes under a layer of skin, as well as blind cave salamanders and cave crabs with eyeless stalks. In contrast to most snakes, boa constrictors have small, rudimentary hind legs.
Crabs have small, useless tails under their broad, flat bodies, remnants of a primitive form. The frigatebird, a non-water bird, does not benefit from webbed feet. In flightless birds, the number of useful limbs is reduced from four to two, and there are two non-functional limbs. Penguins have hollow bones, although they do not have the same minimal body weight requirements as flying birds. If evolution has not occurred, God must have artificially inserted pelvic bones into whales and given wings to ostriches and toenails without toes to seals. But why would a Designer do this?
The fossil record is consistent with the idea that life formed in long-lasting naturalistic processes. God/Identity must have arranged living things in a logical temporal and geographical order - as if they were the result of naturalistic processes. It seems that new species evolve from existing species, rather than simply appearing as special creations of God. One can determine that a species lived in a particular area. The animal forms most closely related to it, as determined by either by fossil analysis or genetics, are those found in later strata and in the same region today. So, God must have left each fossil in a logical geographical order. He made sure, for example, that polar bears are not found at both poles of the planet. There are no known exceptions to the law of biogeography.
The fossil record follows the law of succession of animals; they are in a logical chronological order when evolution has taken place. The morphology of fossils from a particular layer lies between the morphology of fossils from the layers immediately below and above it. As Biology for a Changing World (2014, W.H.Freeman, page 357) puts it, “prokaryotes appear before eukaryotes, single-cell organisms before multicellular ones, waterdwelling organisms before land-dwelling ones, fish before amphibians, reptiles before birds”. No "Precambrian rabbits" have been found. And once an animal species was extinct, it remained extinct - God did not revive any of them.
A simple counterexample to this rule would be if humans were found buried next to dinosaurs. The coexistence of humans and dinosaurs is still a widely held belief among creationists. Anthropologists have found no evidence that humans hunted dinosaurs or vice versa. Anthropologists study the collections of bones found in caves and find bones of deer, elephants, aurochs, horses, bears, pigs, etc., but not a single dinosaur bone. There is absolutely no evidence that humans hunted dinosaurs - or vice versa.
Furthermore, God/Designer never created chimeras like crocoducks, seven-headed dragons, centaurs or mermaids. Naturalistic processes could hardly create these, but a personal God could have.
If an intelligent designer was responsible for life, he must have created all life with the same basic DNA and RNA system and never switched to anything else. Life is based on genetic information that flows in one direction: from DNA to RNA to protein. DNA is first transcribed into RNA, which is then translated into proteins that do most of the work in cells. God never reversed this "central dogma", although he clearly could have.
If God created life directly, or even directed evolution from the outside, he has left no clear evidence that he did so. God, who supposedly has been involved in the creation of life for billions of years, has left so little evidence of his creative activity that no palaeontologist or biologist recognises it. If God created life on purpose, he did so in a manner so similar to naturalistic processes that no one can tell the difference. It is almost as if God made it appear that natural processes created life by disguising his work as naturalistic processes. Starting with the solar system itself, which he must have created full of loose rocks, asteroids and comets. This suggests that the arena of biological evolution, the solar system, condensed from a protostellar disk as a result of naturalistic processes. Is God a kind of gaslighter, a trickster who wants to give the impression that everything came about in meandering, naturalistic processes?
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