Ten Questions to Ask

4given Thu 26 Mar 2009, 11:14 am

Ten Questions to Ask Your Biology Teacher about Evolution

ORIGIN OF LIFE. Why do textbooks claim that the 1953 Miller-Urey

experiment shows how life's building blocks may have formed on the early

Earth — when conditions on the early Earth were probably nothing like those

used in the experiment, and the origin of life remains a mystery?
DARWIN'S TREE OF LIFE. Why don't textbooks discuss the "Cambrian

explosion," in which all major animal groups appear together in the fossil

record fully formed instead of branching from a common ancestor — thus

contradicting the evolutionary tree of life?
HOMOLOGY. Why do textbooks define homology as similarity due to

common ancestry, then claim that it is evidence for common ancestry — a

circular argument masquerading as scientific evidence?
VERTEBRATE EMBRYOS. Why do textbooks use drawings of similarities

in vertebrate embryos as evidence for their common ancestry — even though

biologists have known for over a century that vertebrate embryos are not

most similar in their early stages, and the drawings are faked?
ARCHAEOPTERYX. Why do textbooks portray this fossil as the missing

link between dinosaurs and modern birds — even though modern birds are

probably not descended from it, and its supposed ancestors do not appear

until millions of years after it?
PEPPERED MOTHS. Why do textbooks use pictures of peppered moths

camouflaged on tree trunks as evidence for natural selection — when biologists

have known since the 1980s that the moths don't normally rest on tree trunks,

and all the pictures have been staged?
DARWIN'S FINCHES. Why do textbooks claim that beak changes in Galapagos

finches during a severe drought can explain the origin of species by natural

selection — even though the changes were reversed after the drought ended,

and no net evolution occurred?
MUTANT FRUIT FLIES. Why do textbooks use fruit flies with an extra

pair of wings as evidence that DNA mutations can supply raw materials for

evolution — even though the extra wings have no muscles and these disabled

mutants cannot survive outside the laboratory?
HUMAN ORIGINS. Why are artists' drawings of ape-like humans used

to justify materialistic claims that we are just animals and our existence

is a mere accident — when fossil experts cannot even agree on who our supposed

ancestors were or what they looked like?
EVOLUTION A FACT? Why are we told that Darwin's theory of evolution

is a scientific fact — even though many of its claims are based on misrepresentations

of the facts?