I’ve been told that natural selection acting on random mutations has enough power to produce every biological trait…including eyes. I’ve put these claims to the test several times before each time with the same result…no evidence…just assumptions:

• Can Evolution Explain Altruism?
• Can Evolution Explain Reason?
• Can Evolution Explain Software?
• Can Evolution Explain Software 2.0?
• Can Evolution Explain The Indonesian Mimicry Octopus?
• Can Evolution Explain the Eye?
• Can Evolution Explain Empathy?
• Can Evolution Explain Morality?
• Can Evolution Explain the Human Brain?
• Can Evolution Explain the Origin of Information?
• Can Evolution Explain the Origin of Minds?
• Can Evolution Explain the Origin of Lungs?

God-deniers believe that numerous successive slight modifications (random mutations)

when culled by the forces of natural selection can explain all biological traits. They do not like to be cross-examined as to how natural selection can preserve non-functioning irreducibly complex systems like biological sight, but they cope with fantastical stories of the mystical powers of evolution. Recently, a God-denier posted a link which he thought provided airtight evidence that evolution is responsible for producing eyes. Let’s put that article under some scrutiny. If it’s evidence, we should expect to see explicit demonstrations of natural selection acting on random mutations to produce information for eyes. If it’s not evidence for evolution, we will see words of assumption like perhaps, possibly, may have, likely & suggest intermixed with some clever story-telling. The God-Denier in question, Alf, has before made grand claims about the power of evolution, but when his claims have been scrutinized by simply reading the articles, it’s clear that what he believes to be evidence is actually a collection of assumptions wrapped in the façade of scientific language

Here’s how this works: The quotes from the article are in red italics and then just below/after the quote, I’ll post my analysis in the default black font. I have added bold and underline to key words from the authors throughout, so this is just a note to say that neither the bold nor underline appear in the original article.

“I do not expect to cover all the details”
“I will present some concepts“
“In the prebiotic soup” – HUGE assumption
“Sight is an evolutionary gift” – Mysticism
“Life probably first appeared”
“was likely the first organism”
“probably became the first”
“probably evolved” – Not 1 but 2 ambiguous guesses
“probably came from a common ancestor”
“Certainly” – ?!?!? Whence comes your certainty?
“gradually evolved” – Just a guess. No evidence
“perhaps“
“these compounds came together in an eyespot” – Guess at best
“evolution co-opted the molecule for sight” – another guess and a reification fallacy
“an organism discovered” – more reification fallacy
“perhaps“
“could proceed”
“Crystalline lenses were added later” – as if evolution could just order crystalline lenses on Amazon and plug them right into the eyespot
“could form”
“would likely have been”
“vast spans of time permitted the tinkering necessary to fashion all manner of eyes”
“Eukaryotes appeared and evolved“
“appeared “
“little is known about its genetics or visual mechanisms”
“believed to have originated”
“or perhaps“
“presumably“
“probably“
“This suggests“
“could be“
“might be considered”
“suggesting that an eye is relatively easy for evolution to produce and that a true brain may not be necessary to its function”
“likely“
“may have arisen”
“may have been”
“probably“
“we currently accept“
“This would suggest“
“he compound eye began, possibly in a worm-like creature”
“There are at least six different models of compound eyes and it would appear that the most likely explanation is that the apposition-style eye came first and radiated into the other forms although this explanation is not completely satisfactory“
“may“
“Perhaps“
“The octopus evolved later” – Evolutionists can’t find evidence for octopus evolution, so they propose that cephalopods arrived on Earth from comets
“Perhaps“
“probably“
“we must rely upon them to help us understand the development of eyes in the early vertebrate lineage”
“Although controversy swirls around the question of whether the hagfish or lamprey is the oldest extant vertebrate”
“has evolved and developed in many ways”
“it evolved from the stock that did come ashore during that period”
“probably represents the transitional form”
“were perhaps the ancestors of all terrestrial animals”
“evolution found a different manner of accommodation” – More reification fallacy
“Although our knowledge of dinosaurian vision is limited, we can make some assumptions“
“would continue to evolve“
“It is not known for certain” – what is known for certain?
“The story of color vision in the marsupials is, as of yet, not fully told”
“probably“
“We know from computer models” – not evidence!
“Eyes may have evolved as many as 40 times”

I hope by this point that you’re seeing the pattern: “may have been” followed by a “probably” and the ever present ambiguous phrase: “it evolved”. Not evidence. Just caveats built on assumptions believed because of the story of evolution.

Yet another article that when you read the headline: “The evolution of eyes”, you are lead to believe it will be packed with evidence for evolution. But when you read the contents of the article, it’s the story that some hard-working scientists conjured up through extrapolation based on their faith in common ancestry. No evidence was actually presented that evolution (natural selection acting on random mutations) could produce eyes or spots or anything else.

Objections

After posting these “Can Evolution Explain…articles, I inevitably hear evolutionists respond with some form of: “get your paper peer-reviewed and only then can you get your Nobel Prize for disproving evolution. Until then STFU!”

To be clear, these “Can Evolution Explain…” articles are NOT intended to disprove evolution. They are simply meant to analyze the assertions of evolutionists to see whether the subject matter is actually evidence for evolution by their own standards or not. It’s an internal critique. What I find in all of these articles is that what’s been proclaimed as “mOuntAinS oF eVidenCe” for evolution is really just story-telling and assumptions. We’ve seen that this article is more of the same bluster devoid of actual evidence.

There will be no shortage of “papers” that the devout evolutionists will propose that I must analyze. I don’t have the time or the desire to expose EVERY single article, but I do analyze the top authors and the articles that evolutionists THINK are actually evidence as shown above. Hopefully, given the example of my analysis, other Christians will be motivated to expose how the “mOuntAinS oF eVidenCe” for evolution are really massive canyons. These articles are not intended to prove creationism or anything else. They are meant to push back against the dominant paradigm rather than just blindly accepting what is being taught. If these works of evolution can survive scrutiny, then so be it, but so far, I’m finding that their claims are impotent.