Brief exchange with an Atheist Evolutionist

Below are some brief replies I made to someone who was arguing that biblical creationism is anti-scientific and anti-intellectual:

Atheist Evolutionist, you said: “There was no Adam or Eve. Humans evolved from lower forms of life. It is written in the genetic code of every eukayrotic (sic) cell in your body. You simply refuse to accept it.”

No one commenting here would argue with the scientifically observable fact that human genetic material and that of animals is very similar. However, to observe this fact and then deduce that this similarity of genetic material is due to evolution from a common source is not fact but theory, pure and simple, as it has never been observed. Another plausible theory is that the genetic material of humans and other species are similar because they were designed by the same Creator who chose to use the same building materials. My living room floor and my kitchen cabinets are both made of oak but it doesn’t necessarily follow that they both evolved ultimately from my neighbour’s book shelf. I tend to think they are similar because they are different products that were all made from the same type of tree.

Atheist Evolutionist, you also said: “Every day, science reveals more evidence that evolution is a fact.”

 

This statement has become a slogan or creed of evolutionism, and most people who pronounce it are just accepting on faith and repeating something they heard a prominent evolutionist say…I’m guessing this is so in your case as well, AE, but I may be wrong. This is a common assertion made by evolutionists, but these so-called “evidences” for evolution are only evidences to those with the requisite intellectual precommitments and who hold to atheistic and anti-creationist presuppositions. A creationist could just as easily look at new facts and interpret them through our lens as evidences for our own position. Your come-back would be that we are just blind to the facts.  But we are looking at the very same facts, just interpreting them differently. Let’s take the fossil record, for example. An evolutionist comes across a fossil of a species that no longer exists and sees evidence for an intermediate or transition species, something between what used to be and what we have now.  He/she has no way of proving this assertion, however, because the actual process of transition has not been and cannot be observed. A creationist looks at the very same fossil of a species that no longer exists and sees evidence for a species that God designed and created but which is now extinct. The evolutionist and the creationist can agree on the fact that the fossil represents a species that has died out. However, the evolutionist has a much harder time because he has to further prove that it was a transition species whereas the creationist can stop at saying that it is evidence for a species that is no longer in existence.

Whenever I listen to Dennett, Dawkins, Harris, etc., their arguments are not from evidences to conclusions but from conclusions to evidences. Dawkins begins with the assumption there is no God and then reads all the data (and pseudo-data) through that lens. That isn’t science, that’s philosophy and it is philosophy poorly done. Examining the world around us, there is reasonable warrant for belief in a Designer or Creator since our experience of reality teaches us that complexity, order, high functionality and interdependency don’t normally occur by accident or ultimately come out of nothing.