Let's begin (sort of).
There are some things in our universe which are true. We know that the Earth, with it's population of just under 7,000,000,000 humans, is an opaque spheroid (round). It is common knowledge at this point and I think most readers would agree.
That hasn't stopped some fringe groups from creating the Theory of a Flat Earth. It's important to note that while most people who bring up this 'theory' do so for satirical reasons, there are literally people who believe it is truth.
Let's look at a few words, and what they mean.
Truth: a simple google search states that truth is a noun, and is defined as - 1) The quality or state of being true. 2) That which is true or in accordance with fact or reality. This is very interesting but not very helpful if one wishes to question what is true. Let's break it down a little further.
Fact: Noun - A thing that is indisputably the case.
Scientific Fact: Noun - An observation that has been confirmed repeatedly and is accepted as true. Scientific facts are simply observations that display the same result. So if a statement is a fact, then the result of that statement must be true. An example? Well let's examine the statement that "Objects in motion, stay in motion unless acted upon by an outside force." Thanks to hard work of Newton when he discovered the laws of motion we all know this statement to be a fact, and is by extention, true.
So all in all, a statement of fact is true.
Now a belief 'is the psychological state in which an individual holds a proposition or premise to be true'. Just because something is accepted by an individual to be true does not make it a fact.
Scientific Theory vs Scientific Law.
A scientific law states a repeated observation about nature while a scientific theory is something that explains scientific observations. Consider the Law of Motion and the Theory of Gravity; the law of motion states that an apple that falls from a tree will continue to fall until stopped and the theory of gravity explains why. I hope that's a simple enough explination and we can move forward.
How does this all relate to Evolution and Creationism?
It is very important moving forward that we understand the difference between several key concepts: Fact vs belief, scientific theory vs general theory, and personal truth vs factual truth. (Note: that a fact is a factual truth and a belief is a personal truth, since I will be using all of these terms I want all four to be understood.)
Evolution and Creation
The Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection was first seriously considered by Charles Darwin. I won't get too much into the history of either, however I will be stating a few facts about this very important discovery.
Evolution is currently the standard model for how life on our planet has come to be as it is on our planet. The current standard goes hand in hand with several other theories and concepts currently held in the scientific community; such as the Theory of an Old Earth, Genetics, Transitional Fossils, and a few others that I don't feel need to be discussed here.
What I will be discussing.
The current misconseptions and misunderstandings about evolution and how it works will be the focus of this post. I am not here to fully educate you on what evolution is, for that you can reference any of the source material available online.
Evolution and monkeys.
It's a common thing to hear on any discussion forum or in a debate over school science standards. "If we evolved from monkeys, then why are there still monkeys?"
This is a false premise, and is not true. We did not evolve from monkeys, we evolved from a common ancestor with monkeys and other apes. They are our cousins species, not our parent species. You may ask how that makes sense? Why are we so advanced and our cousins so wild?
The answer really is very simple and wonderful. We evolved down a specific avenue based on our enviroment and selective mutation. They did the same. They have the traits that helped their more recent ancestors survive, just as we do. Consider the act of sitting down with a chimp and trying to explain how gravity works. Then consider a situation in which you had to fight a chimp one on one for food. See the point?
"Why don't we see transition fossils?" is another big one I hear.
The simple answer is, we do. There are huge collections all over the world at this point that show very clearly that over the fossil record species have changed and adapted. Now only ignorant people would try to raise the question of "Where is the fossil that shows a crocodile evolving into a duck?" That's not how evolution works.
"Evolution states that everything just happened by chance!"
Again this is a false premise. Evolution states no such thing. In fact, evolution by natural selection is the exact opposite of chance. We are the result of a gradual slope of change over a very very very long time. No scientist would make the claim that your dog just popped into existence by chance. Which leads me to my next and most important point.
Evolution and how it relates to Abiogenesis.
As of right now we are still working on HOW life began. We are trying to find exactly how those first cells came into existence. It is an ongoing issue and we are getting closer every day. Evolution explains how we got to this point in our evolution, and scientists are still in the process of hashing out how it all started.
The universal genetic code.
All cells on Earth, from our white blood cells, to simple bacteria, to cells in the leaves of trees, are capable of reading any piece of DNA from any life form on Earth. This is very strong evidence for a common ancestor from which all life descended.
The Flood Myth.
Many creationists try to claim that there are so many fossils and that they could only be the result of a huge amount of sediment covering a large number of animals at once. They claim that all animals that exist as fossils are the result of a single global flood. This is easily refutable because any well informed individual knows that you don't find Hares in the Precambrian portion of our Earth's layers.
They also claim that the Grand Canyon was carved out by a large amount of water over a short period of time. Which is as most Geologists would tell you, the exact opposite of how the Grand Canyon was formed.
There isn't enough liquid water on the planet to completely submerge our world. It just isn't possible.
At this point, most creation arguments and 'theories' have been refuted over and over. The ones that have not, cannot be refuted by science because they enter into the world of the supernatural; which will be discussed at length in a future post.
