Evolution: Refuting Poor Arguments Against It

Christian Arguments

All of the arguments I bring up here are actual arguments I have encountered myself when talking to my parents or other Christians. Here are the arguments they tend to make arranged by how often they are made (I made up Latin-ish names for 6 of them).

1. Argumentum ad absurdum (Argument from Absurdity)
2. Argumentum ad auctoritate (Argument from Authority)
3. Argumentum ad populum (Argument from Popularity)
4. Argumentum ad theorium (Argument from Theory)
5. Argumentum ad Noahsium (Argument from Noah)
6. Argumentum ad tempore (Argument from Time)
7. Argumentum ad fossils (Argument from Fossils)
8. Argumentum ad abiogenesis (Argument from Abiogenesis)
9. Argumentum ad grandeur (Argument from Grandeur)

Evolution is Absurd!
(Argument from absurdity)

The primary argument I encounter when talking about evolution with my parents is an attempt to show that evolution is absurd. To adequately argue that something is absurd requires first showing that you understand the contrary viewpoint by honestly representing it. No Christian I have talked to has ever honestly shown that they understand evolution properly (not to say one doesn’t exist, just that I personally haven’t met one yet).

When I talk to Christians about evolution, they are unable to demonstrate an understanding of how evolution works, they merely assume the idea is absurd and then come up with absurd examples to fit their absurd assumption. To quote one person I was talking to, she said “…you believe that suddenly ‘shoop‘, there’s an ear just sitting there. What use is that?” This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how evolution works, which I’ve often seen to be a lack of education on the topic or being motivated by a desire to fit their religious narrative onto reality.

Ironically, if any instance of this happening was ever observed, it would immediately disprove evolution rather than prove it correct. Evolution works through gradual changes over time, not miraculous leaps. Arguments like these demonstrate a profound misunderstanding of how evolution works by creating a a straw man to easily chop down. This is harmful to both parties in a discussion. Rather than driving the person with less knowledge to understand how evolution does work, it reinforces their preexisting beliefs about the absurdity of evolution. Conversely, it makes the person who has spent months, or possibly years, learning biology feel angry at the (perceived) willful ignorance of the person they’re talking to.

To give a very brief explanation, evolution is the explanation of how the diversity of life has exploded since life first began. How traits are inherited by children is well understood, and genetics has made significant advances in understanding and treating diseases that are inherited. Altering the DNA of living creatures can show an immediate change in behavior or cause traits to change or appear. There is no doubt that DNA is the process through which traits are inherited nor any doubt that it takes a long long time.

To address the ear claim from above here, keep in mind that evolution requires a long time to work. An ear is not going to suddenly just appear out of the blue. It IS possible that a group of cells might have a mutation to relay very simple auditory information to those around them. As the years progress, and the species reproduces, the ability to process this auditory information becomes useful and actively aides in the survival of the organism. Because it aides the organism, mutations that make the process more efficient and reliable begin to help the organism survive better. Millions of years later, there might very well be a fully formed ear on an organism. It’s almost certainly not the same organism (or organ) that the process began with, however.

My Holy Book (or Preacher) Says Evolution is Wrong!
(Argument from authority)

The next most common claim I get is that some authority says evolution is wrong. Because this authority says evolution is wrong, then evolution is wrong.

Unfortunately for the person making this claim, there is often no reason to believe that particular authority is a good source of information on the subject. Because I live in a Christian dominated section of the world, I’ll specifically use the bible and pastors/preachers as examples here.

In the case of the bible, the people writing it had no understanding of evolution. While they incorporated the best science available to them at the time when the Jewish people were held captive by the Babylonians, the breadth of knowledge about the world they had was still very small compared to today. The Babylonians pioneered things we consider pseudoscience today, and some of these things became enshrined in the bible. For example, astrology, which is mentioned in Genesis, has no basis in reality.

Additionally, the bible does not teach science or rational query of the world. For example, this is seen in the story of Noah and his ark. Since the focus is evolution here, it’s clear that the authors had no true understanding of the amount/diversity of life and the size of the planet they lived on. While Noah’s ark IS a large boat, it is absurd to think that any appreciable amount of the billions of species on earth could sustainably fit into such a (comparatively tiny) space.

Specifically for biblical literalists, a favorite is to say that the bible says life was created by god. This is, of course, the same as the previous argument. I’m merely going to examine the primary reason that people point to the bible as evidence – Genesis chapters 1 and 2.

Let’s put aside the problems and contradictions within these 2 separate creation myths (they tell different, but similar stories). The story immediately invokes a supernatural creator and all questions about it are resolved with “It was god!”. There is no verifiable evidence for the stories – finding Eden would be a nice start – nor is there any way to test that creation really happened. There are ways to test whether or not creation is a good explanation for lie however.

As one example, if all life was created in specific forms, we would expect their forms and internals to be uniquely distinct. For example, the nerve and blood vessel structure that bests suits a fish would probably not be a very good structure for a fast-moving land animal. Despite that, we see artifacts from a shared ancestry that still persist despite the form of the creature varying wildly. For example, Vertebrates all have a Recurring Laryngeal Nerve. On a fish, this path is a relatively short path from the jaw to the throat with a brief detour around internal organs (specifically the heart). Taken to the extreme on land, the Giraffe has a Recurrent Laryngeal Nerve of over 5 meters long (from it’s jaw, looping past the heart, back up to the throat). While these inefficiencies are exactly what we would expect to see in organisms that have evolved from a common ancestor, we would not expect to see these sorts of inefficiencies in designed creatures.

Similar problems apply to believing the words of preachers or pastors. Preachers are people who have often gone to seminary school and believe the religion they are in. There is no requirement to take scientific classes to receive an MD (Masters of Divinity) from seminary schools. Despite this lack of a scientific background, many preachers will talk passionately and authoritatively on scientific subjects that they have no experience with. While possibly unintentionally, they will end up misleading the people who trust them to tell the truth on topics. Oftentimes they will cite the bible as their source, which simply pushes the authority of the claim back to the bible. As already mentioned, the bible is not a scientific source.

To clarify, I’m not saying all Christians use or believe this, but most that I have met do. For example, non-literal interpretations of the bible often allows leeway for a scientific/naturalistic explanations of events.

But Many People Don’t Believe in Evolution!
(Argument from Popularity)

The argument from popularity can be summed up as “A lot of people believe this, therefore this thing is correct.” Unfortunately, arguing against evolution from popularity is one of the weakest arguments that can be made, but it is made often. The people who don’t believe evolution occurs often do so because of their authority figures telling them it is wrong, lack of education, or lack of desire to explore evolution at all. The reasons someone could disbelieve evolution are many and varied. In the end, the whys don’t matter. The amount of people who disbelieve in something is not evidence in and of itself.

To reiterate plainly, popularity is not evidence. The site dissentfromdarwin.org has created a list of about 880 signatures in total of scientists who agree with the statement “We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.” That may seem like a large number, but consider the response of the National Center for Science Education. They created a list of scientists named Steve (Archive Link) (or variations such as Steven, Stephen, etc) who believe evolution occurs, and currently has over 1500 signatures of Stevens on their list as of 2025-02-01.

The amount of “Stevens” in the world who believe evolution occurs outnumber the creationist list, and the amount of Steves in academia is estimated to be about 1% of the total population. While funny, all it proves is that a lot of people named Steven think evolution is True. The same can be said for the creationist list; all it proves is that 900-ish people don’t think this is true. Neither list proves anything positive or negative about evolution. That’s what evidence for or against evolution is for.

There are a variety of reasons that someone may believe or disbelieve in evolution, but the popularity of the opinion should not be the reason for their belief. Hearing that many people disbelieve evolution – such as through the creation and dissemination of large lists lists – is doesn’t contribute to the scientific community at large and manufactures a feeling of extreme controversy. Rather than controversy, the scientific community is surprisingly well united, with those who dissent usually having qualms with the specific mechanisms of evolution rather than whether it occurs at all.

But Evolution is Just a Theory!
(Argument from Theory)

Many people misunderstand just how concrete, specific, and definite a well accepted theory in science is. When they argue this way, they almost always use the exact phrase “But evolution is just a theory” or “That’s just a theory”. This is because in common parlance, a “theory” is more akin to an educated guess (more formally known as a hypothesis), wild speculation, or hunch.

This is often done to make scientific theories seem like a simple guess. The reasoning for this is clear: a simple guess is not a good way to try understand the world. This usually ends with the theory being discussed appearing to be discounted as valid. There are a few problems with this viewpoint though.

First, and most importantly, a scientific theory is far more than a simple guess. A scientific theory has the weight of observations, facts, and experimental results contributing to it along with an explanation of how they relate. A theory that has particularly good explanatory power receives scientific consensus when, after much testing and experimentation, the majority agree it’s the best explanation for now. Theories tend to be tested often even after scientific consensus since a new understanding of something fundamental to the field could overturn the theory.

In Evolution’s case, these are some of the facts

1. Children resemble their parents
2. DNA is the method of genetic transfer
3. The skeletal structure of vertebrates is similar throughout many species
4. All living things are composed of cells (Cell Theory)

Note that last one: It too is a theory, just not one that is attacked nowadays. There are certainly many more facts that could be added, but I’m keeping this section intentionally brief. All these facts taken together along with an explanation of how they relate constitute a theory.

Here are a few other “just theories” to how how diverse theories can be.

1. Gravitational Theory
2. Atomic Theory
3. Germ Theory of Disease
4. Attachment Theory

But the Flood (and Noah’s Ark)!
(Argument from Noahsium)

This is similar to arguing from authority via the bible. I made it a separate argument because many people I talk to don’t see it as the same argument. Those same people often find this argument highly compelling.

For those who don’t know, in Genesis, there is a tale about how a man named Noah gathered up 2 of every “kind” of animal (ignoring insects, arthropods, fish, etc) on the planet and took them on a boat for several months while the earth was completely flooded and underwater (including all mountains such as Mt. Everest). A flood of this magnitude would have evidence for it all over the place. As one example, there would be evidence of a global devastation of life due to flooding. While there is a lot of evidence for mass die-offs from many sources, evidence for a worldwide flood has yet to be found.

I’m not going to focus on whether or not a god could miraculously make this happen – saying “god did it” does not offer an explanation. I don’t particularly want to focus on the geographic distribution of fossils, flood plains, young earth, or other common rebuttals here in this section. Those have been covered far more comprehensively than I could ever do here. Instead, let’s focus on the consequences of a large scale flood as described in the bible.

1. Literally kills everything
   • Animals would die off from lack of food
   • Fish would die off from incorrect saline content (freshwater and saltwater alike)
   • Plants would suffocate and die (Yes, they breathe in a sense and can’t live underwater)
   • Saltwater plants would die from the mixing saline/freshwater content
2. Noah’s ark would encounter issues as waters rise
   • Inability to restock food would kill everything onboard
   • Inability to breathe when waters rise too high (oxygen thins out as you get higher)
   • The boat would freeze over as the waters rise (it gets COLD at Mt. Everest height!)
3. Assuming the ark somehow makes it back, everything is dead
   • No, that dove would not find a living tree to get an olive branch from
4. Two of every creature is not enough to repopulate the planet
   • Predators would quickly eat the prey, and then probably eat the humans
   • Herbivores would die out from lack of food
   • Humans would die out from lack of food
   • Even assuming reproduction happens (somehow), genetic disease due to inbreeding would run rampant
5. No place for the water to go after the flood
   • This is “explained” in the bible by referencing an outdated and incorrect biblical flat-earth model where the earth is drained.
   • There is no natural mechanism we know of that could drain such a large amount of water.

A global flood of biblical proportions is a literal end to all macro-life on the planet. Some extremophiles might survive on the ocean floor – bacteria and other microscopic organisms – but large multicellular, macroscopic creatures would almost certainly be extinct. Simply put, a global flood of biblical proportions would have left no room for the survival of life as we know it, and there is no credible evidence that such an event ever occurred

But the Earth is 6,000 Years Old!
(Argument from Time)

Young earth creationists tend to hold the viewpoint that the earth is about 6000-10000 years old, and that the flood happened sometime in the past 4-6000 years. As an upper bound, this gives 6000 years. If creationism could be shown to be true, then this claim could possibly be justified, especially since a young earth is used an attempt to argue that not enough time has passed for evolution to work as described by evolutionary theory as well.

Unfortunately for young earth creationists, Carbon Dating is a reliable method for dating objects to 20,000-50,000 years ago. After that point, the amount of carbon content becomes too small and Carbon Dating gives wildly inaccurate results. Given that this method alone can produce evidence for an earth at minimum 20,000 years old, the hypothesis that the earth is 6,000-10,000 years old is disproven as soon as it’s uttered. Carbon dating may not tell us how old the earth is, but it can tell us that creationists are off by several thousand years at least.

Because of the inability of carbon dating to determine ages older than 20-50k years reliably, young earth creationists often attack radiocarbon dating as wholly unreliable. Often, they claim that it’s highly inaccurate and often gives incorrect answers all the time – not just when things are older than 20-50k years or when it is misused to date items without carbon in it. Even if we assume they are correct about carbon dating, there are other techniques that are accurate to larger timescales.

As another example, radiometric dating is based on the half life of radioactive elements which take a very, very long time to decay. This decay rate is well measured and understood, and has been used to measure the age of the earth to billions of years. Because of it’s accuracy, radiometric dating is commonly used to date rocks in Geology today, leading to an earth of around 4-4.5 billion years of age.

One other point bears mention here, another direct quote from a conversation I’ve had with a young earth creationist. She told me “Scientists keep adding on more and more time because evolution just doesn’t work out. You know, just add a couple million years here, a couple million years there, and then they say it works.”

The is a misapplication of logic by putting the cart before the horse. Scientists don’t keep adding time to their estimates to make them work out. They have a hard limit to work with. The age of the earth is well known and supported by evidence, and the claims made by evolutionists work reasonably well within that time frame. There is a well documented and peer reviewed timeline of life that can be viewed, and evolution works within that timeline for the earth. Radiometric dating of fossils can be used to date when those creatures lived and what creatures were around at that time, and fossil records provide a record to verify against. All of the evidence supports an earth that is really old, not merely several thousand years old posited by young earth creationists.

But We Don’t Have All The Fossils!
(Argument from Fossils)

Creationists seem to make a lot of claims about fossils. These include (but by no means are limited to)

1. The fossil record was faked by god or satan
2. Fossils were all mixed together by the flood
3. We’re missing transitional fossils

Claiming that fossils were placed there by god or satan is impossible to test or falsify. Without any evidence for this, there is no justification for this claim or reason to really rebut it. I’m not going to examine that argument further here, even if the idea of either god or satan being enough of a joker to place fossils around as a cosmic prank to mislead people does amuse me. Instead, let’s look at how fossils form.

Fossils have several different methods.

1. Permineralisation where mineral-rich water fills up cell walls and evaporates, leaving a mineral deposit in the shape of the material it replaces
2. Impression – A buried organism gradually decomposes while the earth around it hardens into a hard shell leaving an empty space where the organism was
3. Casts – A buried organism fills up with minerals. The organic components decompose, but leaves a fossil in the shape of the organism
4. Amber – Organisms trapped in tree resin can become preserved
5. Trace Fossils – Fossils that indicate organism activity, such as footprints, nests, burrows, etc
6. Soft Tissue – Tissue can be rarely preserved if the fossilization process somehow prevents complete decomposition, such as within ice or volcanic ash.

Central to all of these is a large component of time. The dead organism needs to spend a long time in one place in order for a fossil to form. This leads to the organism slowly being buried via natural geologic processes over time. For example, an organism that is covered in volcanic ash will slowly be covered by dirt as time goes on. This gradual covering of an organism over years, decades, and centuries leads to a concept known as the geologic column.

The geologic column can be through of as a record of what the earth was like at a certain time. This column can be imagined to be organized into rows that indicate how old the layer is. The criteria to find an old layer is generally pretty simple: Simply dig deeper. As you dig deeper, you will be traveling backwards through time to peer into what the earth’s surface looked like many years ago.

To tie the column and fossils together, fossils become part of the geologic column. They don’t do this intentionally, rather, they get covered over many years and become integrated into the geologic column for the time period it was a part of. This means that fossils are generally arranged in the same order as the rows in the geologic column: oldest at the bottom.

Now that we understand how fossils form, we can now examine why the flood mixing fossils doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. Even if a flood did occur on the scale mentioned in the bible, fossils that had been buried for hundreds, thousands, or even millions of years, would remain undisturbed. If there was any evidence of a flood mixing fossils, the mix would occur in a single layer, and it would probably show a large amount of fossilization compared to other layers due to the large amount of water and relative lack of creatures eating the decaying organisms.

Finally, let’s examine transitional species and their fossils. Transitional species are those species that provide a link between and older species – one that may have long gone extinct – and an ancestor species. This species showcases common traits from it’s ancestors, and it’s later descendants. For example, Archaeopteryx shows traits common to it’s dinosaur ancestors and traits similar to it’s descendants, the modern birds.

Creationists often claim that we don’t have transitional species fossils. They further reason that since we don’t have those fossils, there’s no evidence to show the gradual change over time that evolution claims would happen. And therefore, because there is no evidence, evolution must be false, and god created everything.

Most of the time, this argument is based off of some incorrect assumptions and incomplete knowledge. First, we do have a large list of transitional species. Second, evolution still holds true even if we can’t find every single transitional fossil. All that is required is enough fossils to show a clear line of ancestry.

Fossilization is a relatively rare process, and it’s unlikely that we will ever find fossils for every transitional species. However, more than enough transitional fossils have been found to prove that transitional forms did exist.

Evolution Means Life Would Come From Nothing!
(Argument from Abiogenesis)

Evolution makes no claim for how life started (that is known as abiogenesis). There are many other hypothesis and experiments that look into this, but evolution doesn’t adadress how life began. Evolution is an explanation for how life changed (and continues to change) over time once life originated.

There are several hypothesis for Abiogenesis, but the area is still an active subject of scientific inquiry. I’d recommend reading through the Wikipedia article for more information on Abiogenesis if you are curious to learn more about this topic since it is a very complex topic as well!

Evolution Can’t Be Real, We’re So Much More Than That!
(Argument from Grandeur)

Christianity places humans central to the creation story by having humans made with all the other animals by the literal creator of everything. The creator then spends a large amount of time on these first humans, making sure that they are well taken care of and places them above all the animals. This human-centered view continues to shape how many Christians perceive evolution.

Many Christians I have talked to view evolution as somehow degrading, as if being “mere animals” is an insult to consider. Unfortunately for these Christians, finding something degrading doesn’t take away from the truth of it. If anything, evolution offers a more grand perspective on humanity. After all, if we consider Genesis 2, humans made from dirt might actually be less noble than being mere animals.

Discounting evolution as being an ignoble beginning to the human species completely misses the mark. If creationist want grandeur, then Evolution has all the grandeur and splendor they could ever ask for. From an evolutionary perspective, humans are a huge success story. Far from being lowly, Humans are standing on the shoulders of billions of years of evolutionary history that conferred a little more intelligence on the ancestor of the human species. With our increased intelligence, we humans have dominated the planet and are now beginning to learn how the universe itself might work. Who knows what we might accomplish in the future?