Providing evidence for evolution | Skeptoid

Providing evidence for evolution

Posted on February 16, 2013 by Chad Jones

 

Last week I pointed out some common misconceptions about evolution and arguments that  are often used to support creationism. This week I would like to share some of what I feel to be the strongest evidences for evolution. I feel like too often in debates about evolution the focus seems to be on refuting creationism instead of correctly presenting evolution – and the science is really awesome. With the evidence I present here I seek to answer the following questions:
What is the fossil evidence for evolution?
What can we learn about evolution from living animals?
Does evolution present any testable predictions?
What is the fossil evidence for evolution?
One of the common arguments against evolution is “where are the transition fossils”. This is perhaps the weakest of all arguments against evolution. The transition fossils (or casts of the fossils) are available in every reliable natural history museum. Wikipedia has an extensive list of transition fossils. These fossils include the human evolution of Australopithecus to Homo Habilis to Homo Erectus to Homo Sapien. They include evolution of invertebrates to fish. They even include the evolution of insects.
The fossil evidence is extensive, and the argument that we don’t have fossil evidence is tired. Creationists quickly say things like “just show me the transition fossils” or “where is the missing link”, but we actually have quite a bit of fossil evidence. Just this last week Dr. Steven Novella wrote a great article on feathered dinosaurs – an excellent example of transition fossils.
Unfortunately, each time new evidence of this type is presented creationists treat the new fossil like the hydra from greek mythology – finding one transition fossil just creates two new transitions whose fossils haven’t been found yet.
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Skepticblog » Junk DNA and creationist lies

Junk DNA and creationist lies

by Donald Prothero, Feb 27 2013 

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One of the common tropes you hear among modern creationists is the denial of the idea that there is any non-coding DNA, or “junk DNA.” To them, the idea that a large part of the genome is simply unread leftovers, carried along passively from generation to generation without doing anything, is clearly a contradiction with the idea of an “Intelligent Designer.” So the Discovery Institute and numerous other creationist organizations that are actually sophisticated enough to recognize the issue (including Georgia Purdom of Ken Ham’s “Answers in Genesis” organization) keep spreading propaganda that “junk DNA is a myth” or “every bit of DNA has function, even if we don’t know what it is.” Moonie Jonathan Wells, who has written crummy books misinterpreting fossils and embryology, wrote a whole book denying the subject—even though he hasn’t done any research in molecular biology since 1994. Do they actually do any research to explore this topic, or trying to test the hypothesis that all DNA is functional? No, their labs and their “research” are not that sophisticated. Instead, their entire output on the topic (just as in every other topic) is based on cherry-picking statements of the work of legitimate scientists, quote-mined to distort the meaning of the original scientific publication. Either they don’t understand what they are reading and their confirmation bias filters screen out all but a few words that seem to agree with them, or they are consciously lying and distorting the evidence—or both.
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What would disprove evolution? « Why Evolution Is True

"If evolution is a scientific theory worth its salt, then there must be some conceivable observations that could show it to be wrong. I just wanted to put down, for the record, what some of those observations might be. First, let’s reprise what I see as the major components of the theory of evolution."
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The “Tornado in a Junkyard” Fallacy via Science-Based Life

As a promoter of science literacy and therefore the theory of evolution, I often get some push back from those who are either unaware of the tenets of the theory, or are straight up opposed to it.

One of the most common arguments is to say that evolution is impossible, because evolving something as complex as the human eye, for example, would be “like a tornado going through a junkyard and creating a 747.” This is meant to imply that creating a complex structure is impossible by chance, and therefore that there had to be some “intelligent design” to the process.
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