Is Evolution Happening Now?
It is a fact that no one has ever seen evolution happening. There are no “transitional” forms existent today thus destroying the premise of evolution being an ongoing process. What we find today are many distinct “kinds” of plants and animals with many varieties within each kind, but with very clear and unbridgeable gaps between each kind.
Change happens within a group, but the descendant is clearly of the same type as the ancestor. This might better be called a Micro-evolution in variation, or adaptation, but the changes are “horizontal” in effect, not “vertical.” Such changes might be accomplished by “natural selection,” in which a trait within the present variety is selected as the best for a given set of conditions, or accomplished by “artificial selection,” such as when dog breeders produce a new breed of dog. Micro-evolution is an uncontroversial, well-documented, naturally occurring biological phenomenon.
The Controversial Macro-Evolution
On the other hand, Darwinists believe that all life is genetically related and has descended from a common ancestor. The first birds and the first mammals are believed to have evolved from a reptile; the first reptile is believed to have evolved from an amphibian; the first amphibian is believed to have evolved from a fish; the first fish is believed to have evolved from a lower form of life, and so on, until we go all the way back to the first single-celled organism, which is believed to have evolved from inorganic matter.
The very first single-celled organism did not possess all of the genetic information for a human, so in order for humans to have ultimately evolved from a primitive single-celled organism, a lot of genetic information had to be added along the way. Change resulting from the introduction of new genetic information is called macro-evolution.
The reason why macro-evolution is controversial and remains a theory is that there is no known way for entirely new genetic information to be added to a genome. Darwinists have been hoping that genetic mutations would provide a mechanism, but so far this has not been the case. No truly useful mutations have ever been observed.
Jeffrey Schwartz, professor of anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh, confirms this fact: “. . . it was and still is the case that, with the exception of Dobzhansky’s claim about a new species of fruit fly, the formation of a new species, by any mechanism, has never been observed.” Jeffrey H. Schwartz, Sudden Origins (New York, John Wiley, 1999), p. 300.
The scientific method traditionally has required experimental observation and replication. The fact that macro-evolution (as distinct from micro-evolution) has never been observed would seem to exclude it from the domain of true science. Ernst Mayr, a professor of biology at Harvard University, agrees that the theory of evolution is a “historical science” for which “laws and experiments are inappropriate techniques.” Ernst Mayr, “Darwin’s Influence on Modern Thought,” Scientific American (vol. 283, July 2000), p. 83.
Check out our Bible Answers page for more information on a variety of topics.
In His service,
BibleAsk Team
