Is evolution falsifiable? What would falsify evolution?

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If phylogenies inferred from independent sets of traits were uncorrelated. You can test this every time you discover a new species (best make that multicellular species because in bacteria there is so much horizontal gene transfer that things get complicated). If you have enough taxonomic knowledge and know where to look, you can discover dozens of new species every day for the rest of your life and you can keep testing this prediction on new data.

The prediction that phylogenies inferred from independent sets of traits should be correlated is necessary for evolution, but is not a necessary element of creationism or intelligent design. It can be added in, but only at the price of making creationism or ID less testable than evolution.

If front loading had occurred. Front loading is the name of the notion that all information that appears to be generated by evolution really was there before evolution did anything. One example is the postulate that developmental programs were already present in the last common ancestor of all eukaryotes and all evolutionary history comes from activating some parts and possibly losing others. No new information is supposed to have come in since the moment front loading occurred. If that were true, there would be a lot less left for evolution to explain, and it would not explain the front loading event itself.

The prediction of front loading is not a necessary element of intelligent design. Apparently it has been derived from the notion that there is a law of conservation of information that can be broken only by intelligent agents. If ID proponents accepted that this law does not exist, that would not falsify ID. If that law were true, it would falsify evolution. Evolution is more testable.

Evolution would also be falsified if the biological inheritance system were one that does not allow evolution. The inheritance system accepted at Darwin's would have made evolution impossible. Darwin knew that inheritance was a problem, and spent a lot of effort at trying to reconcile evolution with the then accepted theory of biological inheritance. It was shown only after Darwin's death that the two are incompatible. At least one of the two had to be false. It turned out to be the theory of inheritance. Mendel had the solution to Darwin's problem during Darwin's lifetime, but his work made little impact until about 30 years later. The inheritance system does not matter to ID or creationism. Evolution is more testable.

Evolution would be in trouble if the universe were too young for evolution to produce the biological diversity we see. That was the basis of Lord Kelvin's objection, when he believed the only sources for the sun's energy could be potential energy, and that only added up to enough energy for a sun about 100 000 years old. When physicists discovered the possibility of fusion, Kelvin withdrew his objection. The age of the universe does not matter to creationism or those versions of ID that assume a supernatural designer. Evolution is more testable.

Is that enough?


I think if you say something that someone else doesn't believe, and you answer a request for evidence with "I can, I just don't want to" you just lose credibility with most people more than five years old. They will assume you really can't offer evidence. It's not good debating strategy. Better not to say anything at all.

I have a more than passing familiarity with evolution myself, and I have not found any of those contradictions you mention. Can you understand why I will not accept "I can, I just don't want to" as a persuasive argument?

Last edited by Gromit on 03 Dec 2009, 4:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I'll take your word for that right now.



It's not quite the same, more often than not people who argue for evolution don't bother to research the creationist side to consider what our actual arguments are. I know that you've said before that you have looked into what creationists websites actually say, so this doesn't apply to you. However, with Arthur Dent here it most certainly would seem to apply. And really, when arguing with someone who does this, more often then not, after we've done the research and posted references, the reply from a person like Dent is usually along the lines of "your ignorant and wrong" like a constant function, practically no matter what is said.

Dent's point, at least I'm guessing, is that all creationism begins by accepting that a deity is behind changes in species and is rejected on those grounds - believing in the existence of a deity is precisely that, an act of faith, not a basis for advancing humanities understanding of it's material existence (and therefore can only perpetuate a condition of ignorance). What does creationism ultimately teach us that is useful, much less more useful than natural selection and/or evolution, when it's primary presupposition (in fact the only thing that holds the entire concept together) is the belief in the existence of an anthropomorphic and/or omnipotent entity which cannot be measured or verified. Hence why I say creationism only teaches humanity to turn up on a sunday and make no attempt to advance beyond the condition it finds itself in.

Though this would fall more under the category of deism more than Biblical creationism in specific, one of the first occurrences of its usefulness is in the idea that God is omniscient and that He is the Lawmaker of the physical universe. The orderliness and regularity of physical law... I'm not saying this right, let me find it....



Lewis, C.S., Miracles: a preliminary study, Collins, London, p. 110, 1947.

Scientists are trained to do the opposite... you set out to find something that contradicts what is previously known. And there is much more fame, glory, and money in overturning old paradigms than there is in supporting them. If there were legitimate scientific findings which were inconsistent with evolution, biologists around the world would be all over it.


I find it curious that virtually none of the people who actually understand the relevant concepts share this belief, unless you are assuming some sort of massive conspiratorial cover-up in the scientific community.

With how strong the opposition to anything that would speak out against it is, who needs an actual conspiracy?

OK, fair enough, but the basis of creationism (especially young earth creationism) is still completely untenable in the face of the evidence.


Took a look around, seemed to be mostly nonsense. Better-presented, better-argued nonsense than most creationist sites, indicating that these are at least intelligent people, but they are still very far from offering a compelling case against evolution.

Is there really strong opposition to anything that speaks out against evolution? I'd say that the main problem is that anti-evolution arguments these days are all... well non-scientific BS. So it is rather a coincidence that most anti-evolution arguments are opposed strongly. If we had a well-made scientific argument against it, it would help us really confirming whether your generalization is true or not.

Anyway, regarding OP:
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA211.html

Somehow I feel like experiencing a dejavu here.

I am not sure that CS Lewis's point is necessarily that correct though. I mean, while I have heard that Islam has held to a metaphysical contingency in rules, I have also heard that some of the work done by the Greeks was somewhat scientific as well, which means that the "law-giver" hypothesis seems disconfirmed by the studies of those Greeks. Now, I will not say I have done an extensive study, however, Richard Carrier, who is an expert has made this claim about the Greeks.

Not only that, but I don't see much reason for the CS Lewis argument either. I mean, yes, there is a problem of induction, however, this cannot really lead us to the notion of a God, simply because a God would be as arbitrary if not more so than saying "the universe just works this way". Additionally, quantum mechanics is not utterly lawless, and the claim "science is true" has been surrendered as an act of humility, not a matter of disbelief in uniformity. I mostly see this matter as a matter of rhetoric, as a significant number of scientists and science enthusiasts are atheists (with top scientists often being somewhat likely to be atheists), while I do really think that religious circles have shown themselves to be more ideological than science-minded.

Actually "natural selection" must be true because it is a tautology. In essence natural selection is simply the premise "survival of the the fit enough", and the standard by which "fit enough" is measured must therefore be survival. So in essence the premise is "those things that survive are fit enough to survive".

It is impossible for a species to evolve into another species by natural selection alone. Natural selection's role in evolution is to "skew" the odds to favour reproduction of alleles that promote or facilitate reproductive fitness, and to skew the odds against the reproduction of alleles that detract from or prevent reproductive fitness. In an of itself (independent of other processes) this cannot result in speciation.

Not really. Natural selection is a tautology and must be true, and it is rather obvious that it cannot be irrelevant to the rate at which alleles are reproduced in a gene pool.

Not without departing from the axioms of deductive logic.

I'd say that the truth stands somewhat in the middle here. Not only that, but I would still want to emphasize that the scientific community's strength is that it is a community. Individual scientists can be biased, but frankly the fact that multiple members are questioning the ideas of other members with "science" being what emerges from this and transition of the field from generation to generation is a strength. I mean, I would like to say that bias isn't bad in individuals, being biased can lend some determination required to show a theory is correct against a prevailing orthodoxy as well.

What would falsify evolution?

- Organisms did not inherit genetic traits from their parents.
- No mutations. The laws of chemistry are different for DNA. A chemical reaction in which cytosine is deaminated to uracil will work fine anywhere, except when it takes place in the DNA molecule of a living organism, because some force stops the reaction from happening. DNA inside living organisms is invulnerable to chemical alteration, and while point mutations, frame shifts and duplication may be able to occur in samples in a test tube, the laws of chemistry miraculously change when that DNA is present in an organism.

Of course, it won't be falsified because we have observed that organisms inherit genetic traits from their parents, and we have observed that mutations can take place in living organisms. From that, evolution is inevitable; each generation will inherit genetic code with some minor random alterations; those organisms who inherit a genome more suited to survival and reproduction will pass on their genes to the next generation, those that don't won't. More and more changes will accumulate over time, until eventually down the track the descendants of an organism have some many changes that they can be considered a seperate species. The idea that evolution can account for minor changes, but not for speciation, is peculiar. It's akin to saying that I can walk to the shops, but I can't walk to the next city. If you accumulate enough small changes over time, then of course you'll eventually get something substantially different. The only way that this couldn't happen would be if there was some peculiar mechanism monitoring every bit of DNA, and intervening at some point to prevent mutations which would cause the next generation to cross some invisible line at which it would become 'too different' to its distant ancestor.

Of course, none of this is to say that evolution is an unfalsifiable theory - it would be false if mutation and heritability did not take place in this world, it's just that in this world they do. It's much the same way that the theory of gravitation is falsifiable - if everything floated, and moved in a manner independent of the presence of large masses, this would show that the theory of gravity is false. However, gravity won't be falsified, because things fall down in our world.

... what? The principles of chemistry are not different for DNA, they just apply differently. The other potential reactions which would occur in a randomized mixture of amino acids, in which any of the functional groups are available for bonding to, are eliminated by the confined geometric parameters of the DNA.

Name me a single area of science that is reliant on an implicitly or explicitly posited deity/god/allah/whatever in order to maintain it's internal coherence.
If it is true that some men turned to science because of their religiosity and ended up prdoucing the very thing which destroyed the concept of god then it is a happy accident of history.
I'm under the distinct impression that Einstein remarked of Quantum Mechanics, the field of inquiry his own research helped give birth to, that "God does not play with dice" - and yet we have the Large Hadron Collider, the CERN fusion reactor, Ion drives, weaponised lasers and so on and so on.

I ask again, what does creationism ultimately teach us that is useful other than to go to church and pay your tithes to charlatans?

Are you trying to argue that anything without pragmatic value is false; only what is useful is true?

Anyhow, whether you wish to be a dork and claim that "science has PWNed religion", you should be intelligent enough to see that even if this were axiomatically assumed that, that the rise of the scientific era, starting in the 1500's with Bacon, was due to the belief in God as creator and that He bestowed order upon His creation, such laws that govern how this universe operates. Even if you think that they shot themselves down changing alchemy into chemistry, refuting the notion of the natural state of matter to be motionless with the notion of momentum, and all the rest prior to the rise of the paradigm of Lyell's uniformitarianism or Darwin's descent with modification, it still would not change the pragmatic utility to science that has occurred historically.

That's the point I was making with the smilies.

I've done the Creationism vs. Evolution debate until I'm blue in the face too many times. I used to believe evolution, I now think it is heavily flawed and I've found sources I trust that can document amply that there are things that really fly in the face of evolution's claims. Whenever I try to have a "debate" with an evolutionist, they denigrate my sources as unreliable; which is a logic fallacy. You attack the evidence, not the source. X is false because ____ is not a credible source, and I define what is a credible source is not a valid basis for logical reasoning...it allows the opponent to dictate the outcome by setting parameters that favor a pre-determined outcome.

For any effective debate to happen, the first rule is that both sides must be willing to admit that they MIGHT be wrong about their own positions. To debate absent that is a waste of effort.

The documentation is out there. Look at the sources, weigh the evidence for what it is, not who posts it. You'll find conspiracy evidence on conspiracy websites not because it isn't credible evidence but because the conspiracy theorist is probably the ONLY type of person interested in spending the time to hunt down the evidence, compile it, and display it in an easy to locate website. Most things going on in the world aren't done in secret, but rather hidden in a flood of data that the average person does not have the time, resources or attention span to sift through.

Hence, if you want to learn about evidence supporting Creationist theories, go to a Creationist website like Answers in Genesis and review their data for the value the data offers within itself.

Today's philosophy for debate has dissolved into "attack the messenger, not the message."