Evolutionary Biologist Reacts to Creationist Arguments

[Music] a theropod dinosaur was found to eat birds now don't you understand it's the therapod dinosaurs that supposedly evolved into birds and they go out there they find this therapod this is published in a secular Journal plus one and you look in here and there's stomach contents that got preserved as well and so they can go up and they can do studies on that like what did it eat what was its last couple of meals here and they can identify those bones they were from different birds so how's the therapods evolved into Birds when birds

are already around being eaten by therapods you see when you start looking at the details it is impossible to change a dinosaur into a bird yikes well hi there my name is Clint ladla I'm an evolutionary biologist I study evolutionary ecology particularly life history Evolution as well as Evolution acceptance through teaching I also believe in God and I spend a lot of my time talking to Young Earth creationists not to mock or ridicule but to be sure that I accurately understand their position positions their arguments and what they actually think partially so that I'll know

how to properly respond to their most common arguments in the classroom I don't want to misrepresent their positions or dismiss them without truly evaluating them on their merits especially in front of a class but in addition to that I want to understand their arguments because I'm open to the possibility that they're right as I think any good scientist should be and while many of the arguments that young Earth creationists put forward are easily refuted not all of them om AR I have on multiple occasions summarized their strongest arguments to create a Steelman argument the strongest

version of the young Earth creationist argument that I can produce and I've run those Steelman arguments by as many creationists as I can to be sure that they're an accurate representation of their actual thoughts making improvements as I learn ways that I've missed the mark to one degree or another and I'll provide the most recent version of my Steelman explanation of young Earth creat ISM a little bit later in this video however first I'd like to address the opposite of a Steelman a straw man instead of the strongest version of an argument some people deliberately

or accidentally assign arguments to their opposition that are weaker than their opposition's actual positions and then instead of addressing their strongest arguments or even positions actually held by their opposition they tear down these weaker false assigned arguments this is a logical fallacy and it's never very persuasive to have somebody tell you that you're wrong when that person demonstrates that they don't have the slightest idea what you actually think they disagree with something that you don't agree with either why would that change your mind about what you actually think and in my discussions with young Earth

creationists I often encounter arguments against Evolution that do not represent the actual positions of evolutionary biology straw man arguments so let's take a look at a few arguments presented by some of the biggest creationist thought leaders to see if they're correctly or incorrectly representing the actual positions of mainstream biology let's start off with the one we just saw this video came to us from Answers in Genesis a nonprofit creationist organization founded by Ken Ham who you may know from his famous debate with Bill NY in 2014 the Creation Museum and Arc Encounters in Kentucky or

his videos on YouTube and other platforms this video was reporting on a study from plus one where bird fossils were found in the abdominal cavity of a nonavian theropod dinosaur showing that this dinosaur had predated upon Birds the speaker in this video found this interesting as it's the theropod dinosaurs that supposedly evolved into birds so how is it that theropods evolved into Birds when birds were already around being eaten by theropods and then he says when you start looking at the details it's impossible to change a dinosaur into a bir bird so the Assumption here

is that birds cannot be descendants of theropods if they coexisted with theropods and they clearly did given that theropods ate them you can eat your descendants but not your distant descendants and that's true you can't eat your distant descendants so the therapod that ate those birds cannot reasonably be the distant ancestor of those birds or birds in general I'd say that is correct but there is a clear misconception here about the relationship between birds and dinosaurs the same misconception that Timmy had in Jurassic Park do you really think the dinosaurs turned into birds and that's

where they all went unfortunately that is not and never has been the explanation for what happened to the dinosaurs or even the theropods for one thing bird Evolution dates back to far before the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs birds first appeared in the late Jurassic the non-avian dinosaurs didn't go extinct until the end of the Cretaceous this means that birds and other dinosaurs including other theropods coexisted for over 80 million years about the same amount of time that theropods which first appeared in the Triassic existed before the first Birds came to be those theropods of

the Triassic and most of the Jurassic would include the non-bird ancestors of birds but the other theropods didn't cease to exist just because Birds came to be just like monkeys didn't disappear just because humans came to be most of the most famous theropods of all time came from the Cretaceous theropods like T-Rex Spinosaurus Carnotaurus Velociraptor Giganotosaurus Utah raptor and danicus and none of their descendants ever became Birds but most of them likely ate birds at least whenever they got the chance there was never a time when any of these theropods walked the earth when Birds

did not exist as well but when all of the other dinosaurs including these theropods when extinct the birds were the only ones weird enough to make it we actually have a whole video on how they managed to survive but the fact that later therapods ate Birds has nothing to do with whether or not birds are theropods you just can't get eaten out of a CLA just because a python gets eaten by a king cobra that doesn't change the fact that they're both snakes and the descendants of snakes though it is highly unlikely that the king

cobra itself is the ancestor of its constrictor Cuisine is it impossible to change a dinosaur into a bird I certainly see no evidence that it is but if it is impossible it has nothing to do with whether or not non-avian therapods ate birds in the late Jurassic and Cretaceous it would be shocking if they didn't but if you ever find a Triassic theropod with a belly full of birds come back that would be a GameChanger here's what I can tell you about science it is observable and repeatable has anyone ever observed or repeated the big

bang no anyone ever observed or repeated millions of years no anyone ever observed or repeated the changing of a single- cell organism like an amoeba into a goat never seen it that's actually a religious worldview you see it's a battle over two different religions okay here's another video of that same speaker from Answers in Genesis and here he is saying that because science is observable and repeatable and because nobody has ever observed or repeated the Big Bang millions of years or single celled organisms evolving into goats that these things are not science but religion and

it is true that nobody has ever directly observed the Big Bang millions of years of history or the evolution of goats from unicellular ancestors but saying that these things are beyond the scope of science to understand demonstrates a fundamental misunder understanding of what science is and how it works science is not what is repeatedly observable in fact we don't need science for what is repeatedly observable but repetition and observation are essential for science to function because science is a methodology by which we create and test models of what cannot be observed using what can basically

based on what has been observed up to this point I create a model that makes predictions about what I should observe in the future if my model is a reasonable approximation of reality I then test those predictions to see if what I observe matches or does not match those of the model if the predictions are correct once and then wrong forever after then the model got lucky but probably isn't a good model it probably isn't a good approximation of real that is why I check its predictions repeatedly not just once to ensure that it's a

useful model and not just a lucky one that is in essence how science works and the reality is that science is not only a tool but probably the best tool that we have for understanding events that happened just once in the past events that cannot be repeated or observed directly but that can be understood based on the pieces of information that can be observed in the here and now like say uh the scene of a crime if you're a forensic scientist and you walk into a room where you observe a dead body with multiple knife

wounds that you measured to be 6 in deep the body also has some tissue not matching the victims under the fingernails of its right hand leading away from the body You observe some bloody Footprints you identify to be from size 10 Jordans which lead to a dumpster Where You observe a bloody 6-in knife covered in fingerprints upon examination you find that the fingerprints match those of one Alan Tois who is a known sack of poop and when you go to the residence of Mr Tois You observe next to the door a pair of Jordans with

slight traces of blood in the tread of the souls Mr TOS has four parallel scratches on his left cheek but Mr TOS is the only person alive today that you suspect to have observed the murder directly and when questioned he says that he knows nothing about any murder and you know that since the murder cannot be repeated or observed by anyone else well any position that you would have on the occurrence would just be a religious worldview right science clearly can't help us understand right or is science probably the best tool that we have to

help us understand what happened interestingly none of those things that you have repeatedly observed were science they were just observations you didn't need science to observe them observations have existed since long before humans but I bet you could put together a model based on the things that you did observe that would generate some shockingly accurate predictions about what you could potentially observe in the future for example what size would you predict Mr to's Jordans to be do you predict that the blood on those Jordans would match that of the murder victim there's a security camera

in the alley with the dumpster do you predict that the security footage would show somebody matching Mr to' basic description the night of the apparent murder do you predict that the DNA in the tissue under the nails of the victim would match that of Mr toas this is science obviously nobody alive today has observed the origin of the universe millions of years elapsing or the evolution of goats from single- cell ancestors if those events occurred they only occurred once and they occurred in the past they won't repeat and they cannot be observed directly but is

science ill equipped to address such phenomena of course not questions like these are the reason that we have science for evolution to be true it requires a gain of information we've never observed that but what we do observe is a clear loss of information we can clearly see a loss of genetic information from we say the LI into the domestic house cat we even see this in the fossil record where yes we would recognize all of these as Triceratops but they're still a little bit different right we see this variation within created kind so how

many copsy and kind were on the ark we would say two they would have had all the genetic potential to create the copian after the global flood so natural selection does not provide any brand new information it is pulling information that already exists completely opposite of evolution which requires new information I suspect we're going to have a lot to talk about in today's patreon extras video so uh if you don't support us on patreon already now it's probably a great time okay so that was another great video from Answers in Genesis and in summary um

Evolution requires a gain of information something that we've quote never observed what we do observe is a loss of information for example a lion clearly has more information than does a house cat it would take a loss of information to go from a lion to a house cat the speaker then goes on to explain that the diversity of ceratopsians are all clearly the same basic thing Triceratops but they aren't exactly the same because there is variation within what she calls created kinds and I'll explain more about created kinds here in a minute it is her

contention that there were two ceratopsians on Noah's Arc and those two ceratopsians possessed all of the genetic potential to produce all of the ceratopsians that existed After the flood because ceratopsian Diversified once again following the flood she then moves on to say correctly that natural selection does not provide any brand new information but is rather pulling from information that already exists and that this is the opposite of evolution which requires new information so there's a lot to there let's start with a gain of information I see this argument presented by Young Earth creationists regularly I

often struggle to get them to specify exactly what they mean by information but I think it's fair to assume that they're referring to genetic material of some kind so the contention is that Evolution requires a gain of genetic material and while that isn't true in every instance some Evolution can occur through loss of genetic material by and large that's a fair point you aren't going to go from the simplest organisms that have ever existed to complex multicellular life without gaining additional genetic material at some point she then says that we've never observed that this is

why I always ask what they mean by information because if she's referring to genetic material that claim is just blatantly false we observe this with some regularity at times it leads to nearly instantaneous speciation not only do we see Tiny additions of genetic material such as insertion mutations but we observe Gene chromosome and even whole genome duplications How Can You observe a doubling of the genetic information in a single generation and still claim that we have never observed a gain of information the most charitable take that I can come up with is that you're referring

to the fact that duplication adds new copies of existing information but nothing new and that is where other forms of mutation come into play she says that we observe a clear loss of information and I think what she's saying here is that when mutations occur excluding the duplications that we just discussed they change the genome in some way any information that was there before is now lost because it was changed and this is significant because when genetic information is changed in many cases it ceases to do what it did before perhaps the new function will

be more beneficial in terms of overall lifetime reproductive success but the prior function is now lost that is unless this mutation occurs after a duplication event because if you have two copies of the same gene then a mutation to one causing it to do something new will allow a new function new information to occur while the other copy is still doing what it did historically and if having a new copy of a gene that is now modified to do something different while the previous function of the gene remains intact does not count as new information

then I really need for somebody to tell me what they're talking about when they say new information okay her next claim is that a house cat represents a loss of information compared to a lion I suppose because a lion is so much larger than a house cat but how much information does a lion possess 38 chromosomes compare that to a house cat that only possesses 38 chromosomes oh yeah that's that's the same number and a much smaller number than something like a lampay which possesses 174 not to mention the numbers that we see in plants

which can self- fertilize making whole genome duplications more common some of them have over a thousand and some single celled organisms have over 10,000 so I'm not exactly sure how we know that house cats show a loss of information versus a lion it is a loss of information versus a walking catfish though 104 what it is pretty clearly is a loss in size that or lions have shown a gain in size and that is not necessarily due to a gain or a loss of information clearly not chromosomes but definitely a change in the genes specifically

responsible for size but now we're getting into the ark and some discussion of created kinds and to understand what she was saying there we're going to have to understand a bit more about what Young Earth creationists believe and so I see no better time than now to lay out my Steelman of the young Earth creationist position modern young Earth creationists YC's accept essentially all of the mechanisms of evolution accepted by evolutionary biology except for mutation as the original source of all genetic information they think that all variation between organisms was created by God intact at

Creation in a more perfect form than is present today and manifests itself differently in different individuals within a kind due to that information being corrupted over time in differential ways and due to differential expression of genes already present in the genome epigenetics adaptation is very much accepted but the raw material upon which selection acts is not from mutation but variation that has existed in the Genome of the kinds since their initial creation this also helps explain why young Earth creationists think that Evolution occurs much faster than would be predicted by evolutionary biology and how complex

structures that are irreducibly complex could exist kinds also known as baramin are a bit difficult to Define most often the idea of a Kind reflects the biological species concept but it is more broad extending to any organisms in a group where gene flow can occur even through several intermediates as with ring species being able to hybridize with any other members of a kind is enough to confirm membership to a given kind and hybrids do not need to be viable for more than a few cell divisions for their existence to confirm that the hybridizing species are

members of the same kind what truly defines a kind is that each kind has an independent origin diversification even speciation can occur within a kind it is even possible for a species to become entirely reproductively isolated from other members of its kind thus the ability to produce a hybrid confirms membership to a kind but the inability to do so does not confirm that they are not of that kind in harmony with evolutionary biology many young Earth creationists think think that diversification and speciation occur more rapidly when many environmental niches are available such as immediately following

the fall of Adam and Eve or after the great flood it is thought that in both instances only a few members of each kind existed and that the diversity of species found within each kind has evolved since those events but many believe that the rate of speciation is slower today than it was then because there are fewer open niches this means that millions of species have Arisen from a comparatively small number in the last few thousand years but as evolution is not by the number of beneficial mutations that occur over time it can proceed forward

much faster than would be predicted by evolutionary biology humans are their own kind created separately and independently of all other living things they are not related to any other species that exists now or ever despite similarities to other organisms some presumed human relatives from the fossil record such as neander s were fully human and not members of a different kind humans diversify just like other kinds there are some fundamental disagreements between young Earth creationist views of evolution and biology's Views one the Earth is much younger per the young Earth creationist view two mutation does not

produce changes that increase Fitness and if it does not to the point of creating complex novel structures three life has many independent Origins and each kind originated with a larger and more more robust genome than its members possess today there are some surprising fundamental agreements between young Earth creationist views of evolution and biologies Views one speciation can and does occur and multiple species can all arise from the same common ancestors two the mechanisms of evolution are all valid especially adaptation except for mutation as being essential for the evolution of complex structures and three diversification may

happen more rapidly when niches are available if you're a young Earth creationist and you see any flaws in that summary please don't hesitate to call me out I've run it by as many creationists as I can but I want to understand not misrepresent anyway that should explain most of the ceratopsian diversification following the flood comments I'm really not here to criticize their beliefs but rather to correct any misconceptions that they have about evolutionary biology so let's talk about the last part natural selection does not provide any brand new information that's a fact that's just true

natural selection is not a force it's a consequence it's the consequence of the fact that some versions of a gene work out better in a given environment than others as measured by the likelihood that an individual with that Gene variant will reproduce versus individuals with other variants this is true and it is observably true the young Earth creationists agree that this is true and because of this impact on Lifetime reproductive success some variant become more common over time and others diminish and even Disappear Completely natural selection eliminates variation it does not produce it this is

a fact completely opposite of evolution which requires new information this is the part where she gets a bit over her skis yes Evolution at some point requires new information but not every aspect of evolution needs to be the one that produces it mutation produces new information as we discussed earlier and natural SEL ction happens because some of that new information works out better than others with respect to Lifetime reproductive success mutation randomly or nearly randomly produces new information and natural selection non-randomly reduces that information down to the subset that works the best in a given

environment not deliberately just as a consequence of that unequal reproductive success over multiple generations and all of this is repeatedly observable this doesn't mean that all genetic information originated in random unguided mutation but saying that we have never observed a gain of information that's just false he said hey folks would you like me to give you a tour we said that would be great sir well the first place we stopped on the tour was the geologic time chart so we're standing over there and the guide said now folks this layer of rock right here is

about 70 million years old oh my daughter was 12 years old at the time she raised her hand she said mister how do you know that layer is 70 million years years old he said honey that's a good question we tell the age of the layers by what types of fossils we find in them they're called index fossils and by the way that's correct that's what the textbook says scientists use index fossils to determine the age of rock layers she said thank you sir we walked around the other side we're standing over here and the

guide said now folks these bones are about 100 million years old my daughter raised her hand again she said sir how do you know those bones are 100 million years old he said well honey we tell the age of the Bones by which layer they came from she said uh sir when we were standing over there you told me you knew the age of the layers by the bones and now you're telling me you know the age of the bones by the layers she said isn't that circular reasoning you looked at my daughter he looked

at me I wasn't about to help him I thought wow this is going to be good I have got to hear this he looked back at my daughter he said wow you're right that is circular reasoning he said I never thought of that before that fellow drove 50 miles one way that night to hear me come to come hear me speak in Union Center South Dakota the crowd swelled to 39 we set up a chair okay so this is Kent hovind telling about a visit that he and his daughter had to a museum the museum

guide when talking about the geologic timetable explained that the layers were dated by fossils called index fossils and then he explained that some other fossils bones were dated by the layer that they came from and his daughter Ken hov's daughter pointed out that the guide said that they knew the age of the layers by the bones and the bones by the layers and that this was circular reasoning and this left the guy dumbfounded and in agreement that this was circular reasoning now I should mention that while Kent hovind is one of the best known creationists

even Answers in Genesis has criticized him for using poor arguments that have been abandoned by most of the young Earth creationist movement so he doesn't necessarily speak for all young Earth creationists but I do see this clip presen Ed very often in the groups where I engage in many of these discussions so it is definitely worth talking about okay is this an example of circular reasoning as presented yeah absolutely unless you know what an index fossil is and how they became index fossils index fossils are common fossils that appear over a very broad Geographic range

but only for a fairly short temporal range over a lot of area but only for for a short period of history that last part is the most important part because if they only existed for a relatively short period of time their presence can be used to estimate the age of the rock layers where they're found because they only existed at that point in time but how do we know when and for how long they existed this is the key and the answer isn't from the bones that would be circular reasoning fortunately index fossils are not

the only means that we have to date Rock layers one of the most valuable and widely applicable methods is radiometric dating radiometric dating allows us to utilize our knowledge of radioactive decay to estimate the age of samples containing radioactive elements for example uranium two forms of uranium u236 and u238 can each be used to date Rock samples this is because of our knowledge of how long it takes for half of a sample of uranium to convert itself into lead the half-life in the case of u236 it takes 710 million years for half of a sample

to turn into lead 207 this is based on the Decay rates that we can observe today with u238 it takes 4.47 billion years to turn into lead 206 by carefully measuring the ratio of u236 to lead 207 or u238 to lead 206 you can estimate how many many half- lives have passed or what percentage of a halflife has passed and you can thus estimate the ages of samples between 1 million years old and 4.5 billion years old there are other radioactive elements that we can use to check samples outside of this range or to corroborate

our findings from uranium Le dating if multiple techniques all reach the same basic conclusion there is good reason to accept the age is somewhat credible while many creationists are skeptical of the accuracy of radiometric dating that doesn't change the fact that it exists and it can be used to date Rock layers though it is somewhat expensive and time intensive to do so if you notice that every time you see shells like these like this one here and and you see them everywhere the radiometric dates always come back to be from the Jurassic well after a

while whenever you see a shell like this what are you going to conclude you can date the ample using radiometric dating to be sure and if you do from what time period do you predict that it will be from this is how fossils become index fossils you may have your doubts about radiometric dating but claiming that it isn't used among other techniques to establish and verify the ages of index fossils is either ignorant or just a lie but how do you get a fossil fish in the first place look at the beautiful state of preservation

of that fish well here's a fish about to have his breakfast doesn't get time to swallow it before he's buried and fossilized you can't Preserve a fossil like that where he's just about to take a Chomp and he's Frozen in an instant in fact here's another example from a museum in Germany that's a marine reptile 6 ft long giving birth to a baby one minute mother is about to give birth to a baby Split Second later she's buried in tons and tons of mud fossilization had to be catastrophic virtually instant and Rapid or these cry

noids look at the the heads of those cids or cities they're Del they have been preserved or the wings of this wasp how do you fossilize a wasp like that if it's not rapidly and catastrophically buried okay so this video from aners in Genesis documents multiple fossils that suggests that the fossilized animals were intuned by something catastrophic virtually instant and Rapid at the end it shows a wasp and asks how do you fossilize a wasp like that if it's not rapidly and catastroph ically buried and and that's a great question probably you don't generally when

an animal dies it is consumed by various scavengers and decomposers and as a result never becomes a fossil even its bones are destroyed by erosion and other forms of decomposition to become a fossil It generally needs to be buried shortly after death or while still alive probably an unpleasant way to die but a great way to become a fossil this can be in sediments at the bottom of the ocean lakes or or Rivers it could be in a Mudslide or a flood shifting Sands volcanic ash from nearby eruptions tar pits and Pete bogs are a

popular place to die and be buried all at once in other words there are a lot of catastrophic ways to be buried virtually instantly and rapidly and that is a nearly essential first step in becoming a fossil there really isn't any debate about that so this is just something about which we agree my only issue with that video is it does make it seem like there some real opposition to this idea coming from the mainstream scientific community and that's just not the case the fact that rapid burial is generally necessary for fossilization to occur is

just a point of agreement that we have and maybe the video was just presenting the fact that creationists also hold that opinion but it didn't sound that way to me anyway I hope this was helpful would you like to see me do something like this again are there any creationist arguments that you would like to see me address in the future did you learn anything from this video I hope you did as always like And subscribe and we hope to see you real soon Clint you said you believe in God I did what I know

I I'm sure that came as a shock to the both of you especially given that I met will at [Laughter] [Music] church [Music]