If Evolution is true, shouldn’t the human race have died out?
Posted by Steve on April 17th, 2010
I’ve just come from the hospital is with my brand new little baby boy who is, at the time of writing, 3 days old.
Now I don’t know if you’ve looked at babies much in your life, and until now, I hadn’t either, but as cute as they are, they’re really quite extraordinarily pathetic. Don’t get me wrong, I’m so much in love with my new little boy it’s not funny, but he’s really extremely useless. He can’t do ANYTHING on his own, except make a noise.
And from an evolutionary perspective that puts him at a MASSIVE disadvantage. Let’s think about this for a while, from an evolutionary standpoint where survival of the fittest is the mantra. When microbes turn into microbiologists, only the strongest in the gene pool keep swimming. And why is that? Well because the weak get preyed upon and eaten. You see it all the time in the wild animals of nature. And there’s a big difference between us and the wild animals of nature, because their offspring can run like billyo within a few hours of their birth.
Lambs, can stand within an hour of birth – and the birth process itself (labour) takes a mere one to three hours. Horses can similarly stand and run within a very short time after birth. Just about all ‘prey’ animals have the ability to stand and run within a very short time after birth – which reduces their risk of becoming prey.
Predators often display more human like birthing patterns – with offspring that cannot readily walk. The cat family often produces offspring that are blind for weeks, and then totally dependant on mum for months for their food and shelter. But in these situations, almost every animal that produces offspring such as this, except humans, produce multiple offspring so that if some are caught by other predators the rest will hopefully survive. Also, these animals often have reduced gestation periods and remating periods if a litter is lost. Humans don’t exhibit this trait either.
Humans generally have one baby at a time that is dependant on mum (at least) for YEARS not weeks or months. If a human loses her baby to a predator it takes 9 months to grow a new one. And then it must be protected and nurtured for years before it becomes capable of looking after itself and more importantly from a survival of a species under evolutionary pressure it is years before the offspring is capable of reproducing itself.
So lets look at a couple of other things that make it difficult to accept evolution when it comes to babies.
They make a LOT of noise. So they attract attention of unwanted predators. This would mean that for many many babies, mum either has to defend herself and her baby against the predator, or run away, thus losing the baby. Wouldn’t the quiet babies be naturally selected, since they’d be the most likely to survive the baby process and reach maturity?
They’re incredibly slow for years – indeed for the first year or so they cannot walk AT ALL. Mum must carry them. This means that in a predator situation, mum is slowed down with the weight of the baby – or she must abandon the baby to fight the predator. The outcome for her is not going to be good if she carries baby – and is deadly for baby if she abandons it. Wouldn’t humans have evolved to be able to run or defend themselves much earlier?
On the other hand, if we’re created beings made in the image of God, we haven’t needed to defend our patch for tens of thousands of years, we were created with the necessary intelligence to build shelters and tools to defend ourselves after the fall turned many creatures against us. From a creation standpoint, looking after our babies for years is perfectly acceptable.
I’d be interested to hear your opinion on the subject so please leave a comment below.
OK, I think you’re scratching the surface of what needs a much deeper understanding.
when coming up with an argument like this you need to look at nature and say “what’s the closest animal to us”
the answer you should get is the chimpanzee.
the females have menstrual cycles just like ours the breed all year round just like us and they gestate for up to 8 months also very similar to us.
no knowing this and knowing that chimps split from the human evolutionary path fairly recently about 6 million years ago.
surely they would be extinct too if you’re right.
what you’re not taking into consideration is that they are pack/social animals like we are.
they support each other. they are intelligent.
it took a long time for humans to reach their current form, but the intellect has been their in various states for us to be able to adapt and look after our selves.
the idea you speak of about predators doesn’t really come into it in the same way it does with a dear or a calf.
remember those animals don’t have hands, can’t make tools and have trouble sheltering them selves, they are entirely dependant on the environment, humans and the Hominidae (us chimps and gorillas) an all adapt and even change our environment. We learn, intelligence is always going to help a species survive.
evolution takes millions of years, creation theory only account for around 10,000 years..seems a little off in my book. how do you explain fossils?
there is one way that your idea could be supported in that if there was a creation point and genesis concept was to be taken with a pinch of salt then a “day” in god terms could be billions of years in earth terms.
in which case 6 days makes sense (makes the order of events wrong, we know the sun is older than the earth from a carbon dating stand point)
I think its hard to wrestle what you believe with available evidence, as a total agnostic I don’t really care about right or wrong answers all I care about is that people think about what they say carefully before stating an idea as fact (you are not guilty of this you clearly mention this is a question you have posed yourself not a fact.)
either way its an interesting read and I’m all ears if you have more insight on what I’ve said.
Hi Dan,
Thanks for your response, I have a couple of things in mind with my response – some might seem a bit asinine and if so I apologise. They’re in no particular order.
You mention carbon dating regarding the age of the sun. To my knowledge there’s been no carbon dating of the sun – from where would they get the material to date? We assume the sun is older because that’s what ‘long age’ theory tells us, and from a very young age we’re told that’s the truth.
I don’t believe that is the truth. There’s lots of evidence to indicate that fossil record dating is achieved using circular reasoning. When sending a fossil to be dated they ‘guesstimate’ the date based on the age of the rock in which its found. But to date the rock in which it’s found they check which fossils are embedded within it! They do use other things to guess the age of rocks based on which layers things are in and from this they determine the age. But it’s guesswork, based on previous assumptions and guesses. The problem is, it’s presented as fact to us, the mere non-geologist.
There was a recent example of a rock core sample being sent to labs for dating that blew up in the face of the labs. The rock core results came back with lots of elaborate stories about how the core sample was formed, how many millions of years ago and when within this timeframe certain features would have appeared. At various intervals the area represented by the core sample would have had lakes above it as there were decomposed tree leaves. Then there were times within this timeframe whereby the area became much drier. I’m paraphrasing, I’ll try to dig out the original article. But in any case, the researchers knew exactly how the core sample had been formed. They drilled it from the sediment left behind after the levees were breached during Hurricane Katrina. The date of this core sample was estimated at somewhere in the realms of millions of years based on its layers. It was no more than 2 years old.
That doesn’t prove I’m right – but it does (for me at least) cast doubt on the ways we date the rock and fossil record.
Carbon dating is equally unreliable, and based on assumptions. We assume we know how much carbon 14 was in the area at the time the object being dated ceased respirating. If that assumption is incorrect (and since no-one was actually there, it could well be) the whole calculation is off. Sometimes by considerable amounts. We also assume it decays at the same rate throughout history – when in fact we only know that it’s decayed at the same rate in recent recordable history. Various factors may well have interfered with the decay throughout history. We already know atomic clocks run at different speeds at different altitudes – and carbon dating is just an attempt to read an atomic clock that we don’t know the starting point for.
Again, it doesn’t prove that I (or other creationists) are right but it does cast doubt on what is touted as an infallible method for proving evolution.
I don’t know for sure that Creation occurred, any more than I know for sure that Evolution is the way it happened. But for me personally, Creation seems more plausible and fits with my other beliefs from personal experience, that there is a Creator. I have to look at the whole picture (personal experience of a supernatural God, together with the bible which has been proven to at least have its basis in fact (ie, Jesus did exist, as did many of the Old Testament figures), plus evidence of a global flood and other aspects of the bible appearing to be true – and couple that with my doubt regarding fossil dating and carbon dating). For me personally it adds up to the truth of the bible.
Incidentally I don’t support the idea of a day being a billion years. The order of creation is thrown out if you put it like that, and there’s a lot of study been done on the language used in Genesis that rules that out. And if you believe God created the world and is all powerful, it’s not too much more of a step to believe it could have happened in 7 days. In some circles you might even ask why it took such a powerful being so long to do it!
Ironically your thinking regarding the ape lineage should have died out too, I see as evidence for creation, not evolution – because you’re absolutely right, in evolutionary terms they probably /should/ have died out!
I’m more than happy to continue the conversation Dan, and I’m not intending to try to convert your way of thinking and definitely not intending to offend – but I do enjoy the debate
Best Regards,
Steve.
Chimps don’t die out. It might be worth a visit to the jungle and spend a year with a biologist. You will hopefully be able to see for your self how this very similar species is quite well “adapted” for living in a tough environment. As for the arguments for hurricane Katrina leaves. Yes I can see how a very amateur scientist might think about measuring core samples by cm of depth. However any qualified scientist understands that dating rocks is more complex than this. We can date the age of the sun using pure physics and could even simulate the sun on a computer to tell how old it is, using nothing but our understanding of what the sun is made of, its gravitational pull and observed physics. Or then again as you suggest, perhaps a divine being created our entire universe 7 days ago and implanted evidence in the ground and implanted memories into our neurons in every one of our heads to make us think that the world in its beautiful complexity just looks like it evolved over the last 4.5 billion years. Or maybe he just filled yours up with funny thoughts from some old book and filled mine with funny thoughts from lots of new books.
http://www.sciencentral.com/articles/view.php3?type=article&article_id=218392990
This appears to be the article that you were referring to, however as is often the case with human memory, it comes out a little different than the one you remembered. Sadly the original article is no longer on the Nature Website, but if you find the time, you may want to read this one. http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/2007JAMC1692.1 It doesn’t mention the issue you talked about. I suspect that this may have been elaborated on by someone who didn’t finish reading the paper, perhaps with an opinion that they wanted to reinforce.