Why Evolution is False, the Basics

I attended a public school in England, as many other children have. And while I have fond memories of my time in school, after becoming an adult and, more importantly, a Christian, I have had certain realisations about my time at school that cause me to view it in a slightly different way. The education system has changed significantly in past years, and without getting into the details of why these changes have occurred and who has authored them, the things taught in school are characteristically anti-Christian. The truth of the Gospel is quenched, and any information that may cause a young mind to take interest in Biblical ideas is avoided in favour of, frankly, lies that douse our God given intellect rather than spark it.

One of the areas in which this deception has had the most significant effect is the theory of evolution. Darwin's theory of evolution gained popular recognition with the publication of his book “The Origin of Species” in 1859. Darwin's theory was and is a landmark in the history of science. Up until that point, religious thinking dominated understanding of how humans and the rest of the animal kingdom came to be. Darwin's theory, therefore, toppled the existing paradigm and initiated an entirely new way of thinking about not only biology but also the very nature of God, humans, and man’s ultimate origin and destiny.

Unfortunately, it was too good to be true. As much as atheists would like the case to be that we evolved from fish and became philosophers, the facts simply don’t add up. Immediately after the publication of Darwin's seminal work, scientists began asking questions; doubting the validity of the theory and all that it claimed (we will shortly see that Darwin himself expressed such doubts).

My goal with this essay is to give some context to the theory and explain why it fails as an adequate account of man's origin. A significant portion will be about the philosophy of science, as this will enable a better understanding of how such a theory gains popular acceptance. My hope is that by the end you will understand enough to at least critique the theory yourself, and have developed enough doubt to undertake your own research. Let us begin.

What is science?

Nowadays the term science is thrown around without much thought. But what actually is science? While this may seem an easy question to answer; that science is simply enquiry into the natural world in an attempt to understand it, this answer becomes too simplistic when we ask it from the perspective of a philosopher.

Many activities, such as astrology, fortune telling and religion, are attempts to understand the natural world, yet we do not consider these things science. In short, science is distinguished by the methods which are employed for this enquiry into the natural world. Experimental procedure characterises these methods, and an attempt is often made to organise the results of such efforts into a general theory of reality that can be applied universally. The modern way we approach science can be generally traced back to the scientific revolution. A period ranging from 1500 to 1750. A number of scientific discoveries characterise this period, which we will briefly outline.

Before the beginning of the scientific revolution, the majority of what we would now call science was defined by the works of Aristotle. This ancient Greek philosopher came up with theories of biology, physics, and astronomy that influenced thinkers for many ages to come. Due to the limits of his time, however, his theories fell short in some places. For example, he believed in a geocentric model of the universe. This led to the Copernican revolution. Named after the Polish astronomer Nicolas Copernicus, the Copernican revolution saw a new understanding of the universe take hold, with the sun, rather than the earth, becoming the centre of our solar system.

This discovery led to the establishment of modern physics with the works of Johannes Kepler and Galileo Galilei, who again reworked Aristotle's theories and came up with new theories of motion and astrophysics. Then came René Descartes, whose mechanical philosophy posited a universe full of inert particles of matter that are constantly colliding with each other. His theory suggests that all observable phenomena can be reduced to the motion of these different particles.

The scientific revolution came to an end with the work of British physicist and mathematician Isaac Newton, with his most famous work being the Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. Newton accepted Descartes' mechanical philosophy, and sought to improve on it. The result of these efforts was a powerful theory of physical reality based on his three laws of motion and the principle of universal gravitation. Through this principle, Newton argued that each body in the universe exerts a gravitational pull on every other body according to its size and mass. The way these effects manifest, Newton expressed through his three laws of motion.

Amazingly, Newton was able to demonstrate that the previous ideas of Kepler and Galileo were logical consequences of his three laws of motion. Unsurprisingly, Newton's theories dominated scientific thought for roughly 200 years. Then, Einstein's theory of relativity undermined Newton's ideas by demonstrating they do not apply to very massive objects or objects moving at high speeds. Interestingly, quantum theory then showed that Newton's theory does not work when applied to very small, subatomic particles.

The reason for this very brief outline of the scientific revolution is to demonstrate the ever changing nature of scientific understanding. We may think that due to modern access to information, such fundamental changes in our understanding of how the world works are beyond us, some minor tweaks maybe, but no revolutions as significant as, say, the Copernican revolution. Such thinking, however, is naively misguided.

Paradigms and the structure of scientific revolutions

The important thing to remember about the scientific revolution is that new discoveries completely overturned theories and understanding at each stage. This appears self-evident to the post-enlightenment mind of modern man. Of course any new observation changes the fundamental understanding of science within that field. What is less obvious to modern man are the consequences of such a scenario, one of which is paradigms.

The scientific enterprise is undertaken by normal people trying to do good work. It seems that in our current society, people think that the minute someone puts on a white lab coat, they become devoid of all biases and preconceived notions about the world. While it would be nice if this was the case, the thinking of said scientists is generally dictated by the paradigm of the historical period they happen to find themselves in.

Let us take for example the Copernican revolution, prior to his discoveries about the heliocentric model of the universe, it was Aristotle’s geocentric model that dominated the field of astronomy. The change, therefore, from a Ptolemaic to a Copernican model of the universe, constituted a paradigm shift which completely changed the way in which succeeding scientists carried out their work. For such work was now undertaken with an entirely new understanding of the universe.

Thomas Kuhn, a famous historian and philosopher of science, describes paradigms thusly in his famous work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions:

To discover the relation between rules, paradigms, and normal science, consider first how the historian isolates the particular loci of commitment that have just been described as accepted rules. Close historical investigation of a given specialty at a given time discloses a set of recurrent and quasi-standard illustrations of various theories in their conceptual, observational, and instrumental applications. These are the community’s paradigms, revealed in its textbooks, lectures, and laboratory exercises. By studying them and by practising with them, the members of the corresponding community learn their trade. The historian, of course, will discover in addition a penumbral area occupied by achievements whose status is still in doubt, but the core of solved problems and techniques will usually be clear. Despite occasional ambiguities, the paradigms of a mature scientific community can be determined with relative ease.¹

We see therefore, that the paradigm within which each scientific area operates, dictates the methods, applications, and theoretical limits of any work conducted. Kuhn makes a distinction between “normal science” and “scientific revolutions”, asserting that science is predominantly made up of people doing normal science within the confines of aforementioned paradigms, with scientific revolutions, which result in replacement of these paradigms, happening comparatively rarely.

Our interest in paradigms comes in the way in which new paradigms come to be established. It is assumed that each paradigm shift is brought about by the discovery of new evidence, but Kuhn suggested this isn’t always the case.

Generally speaking, no paradigm is perfect. However, sometimes certain problems continue to occur within a paradigm. So much so that scientists are unable to accurately carry out “normal science. ”This is what Kuhn refers to as crisis, and typically it is a crisis that will precede the emergence of a new paradigm. Scientists are very cautious to give up an existing paradigm though, so first, new theories will be created as a forerunner to the paradigm to flesh out its validity. The point here is that normal science is not attempting to undermine or disprove the existing paradigm, it is operating within it. It is only when normal science gets disrupted to a significant degree, does the creation and testing of new theories commence. Stated by Kuhn:

Because it demands large-scale paradigm destruction and major shifts in the problems and techniques of normal science, the emergence of new theories is generally preceded by a period of pronounced professional insecurity. As one might expect, that insecurity is generated by the persistent failure of the puzzles of normal science to come out as they should. Failure of existing rules is the prelude to a search for new ones.²

Science will continue to operate under a paradigm, even a faulty one that is raising questions, as long as normal science can still be conducted with relative ease. Until a crisis happens, that is, the problems get frequent to ignore, normal scientists are happy to operate on under the existing paradigm:

So long as the tools a paradigm supplies continue to prove capable of solving the problems it defines, science moves fastest and penetrates most deeply through confident employment of those tools. The reason is clear. As in manufacture, so in science—retooling is an extravagance to be reserved for the occasion that demands it. The significance of crises is the indication they provide that an occasion for retooling has arrived.³

The important thing to note here is that scientists do not renounce an existing paradigm in the face of even excessive failures of normal science and repeated anomalies. Again, while it would be nice if scientists were completely objective and had zero biases, they are humans, and all humans have biases. The carrying out of normal science is not interested in shifting paradigms and flipping the table. Most will in fact ignore any errors and anomalies that are produced by their work and concoct explanations that remove the problem in favour of distorting it to fit within the limits of the existing paradigm. In other words:

Though they may begin to lose faith and then to consider alternatives, they do not renounce the paradigm that has led them into crisis. They do not, that is, treat anomalies as counter-instances, though in the vocabulary of philosophy of science that is what they are. In part this generalization is simply a statement from historic fact, based upon examples like those given above and, more extensively, below. These hint what our later examination of paradigm rejection will disclose more fully: once it has achieved the status of paradigm, a scientific theory is declared invalid only if an alternate candidate is available to take its place. No process yet disclosed by the historical study of scientific development at all resembles the methodological stereotype of falsification by direct comparison with nature. That remark does not mean that scientists do not reject scientific theories, or that experience and experiment are not essential to the process in which they do so. But it does mean—what will ultimately be a central point—that the act of judgment that leads scientists to reject a previously accepted theory is always based upon more than a comparison of that theory with the world.⁴

Naturally, when Kuhn published his book along with these ideas, he was met with a significant amount of hostility. The suggestion that scientists were not wholly objective when deciding which paradigms to adopt and which ones to do away with, flew in the face of the carefully designed public image of them as the high priests of rationality. Kuhn argued that one of the main factors that influenced scientists when adopting new paradigms was not the objective evidence at all, but rather peer pressure. If a paradigm was backed by the majority of scientists in any one field, it was more likely to gain acceptance, irrespective of the evidence for or against it, for:

Surely scientists are meant to base their beliefs on evidence and reason, not on faith and peer pressure? Faced with two competing paradigms, surely the scientist should make an objective comparison of them to determine which has more evidence in its favour? Undergoing a ‘conversion experience’, or allowing oneself to be persuaded by the most forceful of ones fellow scientists, hardly seems like a rational way to behave.⁵

But should we be surprised? Scientists are humans after all, and is it not human nature to base our decisions on the movements of the herd, rather than the dictates of reason? Maybe so, but again, this reality severely undercuts public perception of the entire enterprise and how it truly operates.

Kuhn didn’t stop there though. Not only did he undermine the scientists ability to base their reasoning on objective understanding of the facts, but he contested whether or not it was even possible to speak of “facts” existing as sole entities, apart from a paradigm to contextualise them. In other words, Kuhn questioned whether the idea of “objective truth” was coherent if spoken of independently of a paradigm, that facts change as paradigms change, and truth is relative to the paradigm it exists within.

This is Kuhns idea of the theory ladenness of data; essentially, Kuhn rejected the notion that there was an objective reference point scientists could use to determine which set of facts were more or less correct. He asserted instead that all data is inseparable from the theoretical assumptions at play in the theory that the data emerges from. Meaning you cannot separate out “neutral” data from scientific research, and the idea that such is possible was an illusion.

The implications of theory ladenness are here explained:

The Theory ladenness of data had two important consequences for Kuhn. Firstly, it meant that the issue between competing paradigms could not be resolved by simply appealing to the data or the facts, for what a scientist counts as data, or facts, will depend on which paradigm she accepts. Perfectly objective choice between two paradigms is therefore impossible: there is no neutral vantage point from which to assess the claims of each. Secondly, the very idea of objective truth is called into question. For to be objectively true, our theories or beliefs must correspond to the facts, but the idea of such a correspondence makes little sense if the facts themselves are infected by our theories. This is why Kuhn was led to the radical view that truth itself is relative to a paradigm.⁶

We have now come to the end of this section on paradigms. To conclude; paradigms are conceptual frameworks that dictate the way scientists do “normal science." All of this science happens within a paradigm. It is therefore impossible to separate any scientific discoveries from the paradigm that birthed them because the theoretical assumptions used to produce the data are inseparable from the data itself. Furthermore, scientists' bias for the paradigm prevents them from acknowledging any anomalies and errors produced during their work. Rarely will a scientist question the paradigm, but they will instead attempt to rationalise away the anomalies or modify their interpretation so they fit into the paradigm.

The reason for this brief outline of paradigms and their influence within the scientific community is because it is a concept which is very relevant to our study of evolution. Let us now move on to Darwin and his famous theory.

The Theory

Darwin's theory of evolution itself comprises a scientific revolution, or paradigm shift. Before the onset of his famous theory, the generally accepted understanding of man's origin was based on the book of Genesis.

In “Origin of Species,” Darwin argued that the array of species we see in the natural world came from a common ancestor and that when the offspring of certain species had children, these children then passed on characteristics that were either beneficial for survival within the environment they inhabited or they weren’t. If they were beneficial, then those offspring survived, passing on those characteristics, and so on and so forth. Eventually, Darwin argued, over many generations, this breeding by natural selection would lead to the emergence of an entirely new species. This process took millions of years, leading to the existence of the many species we see today. Darwin's theory had so much support and made so much sense that the entire scientific community quickly adopted it—a scientific revolution.

Before we proceed, I think it important to define two systems of thought that characterise the thinking of biologists when it comes to evolution. These two modes of thought are structuralism and functionalism.

Structuralism

Structuralism, simply put, is the view that all organisms are built on underlying forms or patterns that pre-exist within the natural world. Any adaptations that occur to the anatomy of the organism are merely modifications to this invariant form in response to environmental cues. This view was held by a significant number of pre-Darwinian biologists and is still held by many today.

The concept rests on the idea that, rather than solely based on functional utility, groups of organisms possess “starting points,” which are not necessarily the result of any such utility. The utility can and will develop in response to environmental pressures, but the structure on which these modifications occur remains unchanged and pre-exists any modifications that will occur throughout history. In an article on the topic, Michael Denton, the renowned biologist and Darwinian evolution critic, highlights that structuralism does not suffice as an all encompassing biological system, but is rather a foundation to build on:

It is important to stress that structuralism... implies that organic order is a mix of two completely different types of order, generated by two different causal mechanisms: a primal order… [including the taxa-defining homologs] generated by natural law, and a secondary adaptive order imposed by environmental constraints (by natural selection according to Darwinists, by Lamarckian mechanisms and by intelligent design according to current design theorists). The adaptive order of living things [which serves specific immediate environmental constraints] represents a completely different sort of order, outside of the explanatory framework of structuralism altogether. This means that structuralism per se can never give a complete causal explanation for all organic order. Structuralism is NOT a biological theory of everything.⁷

Life, therefore, is not a random and chaotic emergence with no intelligent guidance. But an array of unchanging forms. As we will touch on later, the molecular biology revolution has not rendered this theory of life any more unlikely, for it appears that cells and proteins, too, are governed by underlying forms which dictate how much and in which way these components of life can change:

Protein folds represent one of the most remarkable cases where a set of physical rules determine the forms of an important class of complex molecular structures. Intriguingly, the rules that generate the thousand-plus known protein folds have now been largely elucidated and remarkably they amount to a set of ‘laws of form’ of precisely the kind sought after by early 19th-century biologists (see above). These rules arise from higher-order packing constraints of alpha helices and beta sheets, and constrain possible protein forms to a small number of a few thousand structures. In conformity with pre-Darwinian structuralism, the protein forms are analogous to a set of crystals! And while all proteins exhibit adaptive modifications, these are in perfect conformity with pre-Darwinian structuralism, clearly what Owen (see above) would have termed ‘adaptive masks,’ built upon an underlying invariant form or ‘primal pattern.’ Thus the globin fold, for example, has been adapted in haemoglobin to carry oxygen (Owen’s adaptive mask), but the underlying form (the primal pattern) is essentially an abstract pattern determined by physical law, one of the permissible protein forms constructed out of alpha helices as determined by the rules of protein folding. Moreover as Daniel Weinreich has shown, even the adaptations built upon the folds are greatly constrained by biophysical properties and the structures of the folds themselves. He concludes, “It now appears that intramolecular interactions render many mutational trajectories selectively inaccessible, which implies that replaying the protein tape of life might be surprisingly repetitive”. This is a sentiment that would be shared by Owen and most of his contemporary 19th-century typologists.⁸

Functionalism

Conversely, functionalism is the idea that all life, and the distinct taxa defining novelties that we see within it, are the result of a long gradual process of adaptations and transitional forms. A cumulative succession of changes, each one serving some kind of adaptive end that boasted functional utility.

Taxa defining novelties

In short, there is no way for neo-Darwinian evolution to account for the large-scale macro evolutionary novelties that we see in nature. The desire to fit all of evolution and change into the Darwinian framework has been contested by some scientists as counter-productive, and a pursuit that asks the wrong questions. The study of small incremental changes simply cannot sufficiently account for the emergence of the complex structures that the incremental changes occur to. Gunter Wagner, a leading researcher in the field of evolutionary developmental biology in his work Evolution, genes and Evolutionary innovation comments:

The question of how complex body plans arise is not within the reach of population genetics [defined as the change in gene frequencies in populations, i.e., microevolution] neither are the questions on how complex organisms can arise from random mutation and selection.⁹

Similarly, Richard Prum and Alan Brush, two esteemed researchers who elucidated the development of the feather, echo a common sentiment in evolutionary developmental biology:

Recently, Wagner and colleagues... proposed that research on the origin of evolutionary novelties should be distinct from research on standard microevolutionary change, and should be restructured to ask fundamentally different questions that focus directly on the mechanisms of the origin of qualitative innovations. This view underscores why the traditional neo-Darwinian approaches to the origin of feathers, as exemplified by Bock (1965) and Feduccia (1985, 1993, 1999), have failed. By emphasising the reconstruction of a series of functionally and microevolutionary plausible intermediate transitional states, neo-Darwinian approaches to the origin of feathers have failed to appropriately recognize the novel features of feather development and morphology, and have thus failed to adequately explain their origins. This failure reveals an inherent weakness of neo-Darwinian attempts to synthesise micro and macroevolution. In contrast, the developmental theory of the origin of feathers focuses directly on the explanation of the actual developmental novelties involved in the origin and diversification of feathers (Prum 1999). Restructuring the inquiry to focus directly on the explanation of the origin of the evolutionary novelties of feathers yields a conceptually more appropriate and productive approach.¹⁰

One big problem for Darwin's theory is the apparent discontinuity that is presented not only in the fossil record but also in what all scientists have observed since scientific observation of evolutionary change began. Darwin's theory posits that each and every organism we see today progressed from one historic ancestor that we all share. As natural selection then took hold of this organism, a wider and wider array of different organisms emerged and developed, eventually providing us with the millions of different species we see today.

The shortcoming of this idea is that every single species is defined by homologs that are distinct and specific to said species. A ‘homolog’ is a defining characteristic that is shared by all the members of a species. Language would be an example for humans, and the insect body plan, consisting of the head, thorax, and abdomen, would be an example shared by all insects.

To reiterate, the reason this is such a problem for Darwin, is that, under the Darwinian view, the emergence of taxa defining novelties could only have come about through the successive evolution and adaptation of transitional forms. These transitional forms, however, are nowhere to be found. Instead, we see the presence of taxa defining novelties that were there at the start of the fossil record and remained unchanged for very long periods of time. Michael Denton, in his magisterial work, “Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis," comments:

There is indeed something incongruous about the very notion of distinct taxa and genuine immutable “taxon-defining novelties”—more than 100,000 according to Rupert Riedl—in the context of the functionalist Darwinian framework, which implies that all taxa defining traits should be led up to via long series of adaptive transitional forms! On such a Darwinian model, taxa-defining novelties should not exist; neither should distinct Types in which all members possess unique defining novelties not shared by the members of any other taxa. As I will try to clarify in Chapter 6, the apparent conflict between the widespread claim that there are many transitional forms and the contrary claim that transitional forms are rare or absent has arisen out of confusion of homologs with the types they define.The same point was explicitly made by John Beatty in a critique of radical cladism in the early 1980s. He argued that “pattern cladistics is not, after all, evolutionarily neutral. Rather, it is at odds with evolutionary theorising.” He went on to argue that systematists are justified in abandoning the search for defining characters because if evolution occurs, taxa should have no “properties that are collectively necessary and sufficient for membership in the group. On such a view there should indeed be no taxa-defining novelties. ¹¹

Point being that if all organisms had evolved gradually through the adaptation of original common ancestors, then there would be no taxa defining novelties, and the entirety of the animal kingdom would be a random selection of traits that were only distinct in their possession of certain characteristics. Darwin's theory does not allow for the existence of invariant taxa defining novelties that, rather than led up to over a long sequence of transitional forms originating from a common ancestor, are defined early on in a species history and remain unchanged throughout. Without this invariance and order to guide the development of organisms, Dawrins theory would have no structural basis to build from:

Ironically, as Riedl argues, it is only because organisms can be classified into distinct groups on the basis of their possession of invariant unique homologs that descent with modification can be inferred in the first place. If it was not for the invariance of the homologs and the types they define, the very notion of the common descent of all the members of a particular clade from a common ancestor would be in serious doubt. The living realm would conform to a chaotic network rather bethan an orderly branching tree.¹²

“Types are still as distinct today as they were for Richard Owen, Agassiz, and the other typologists and structuralists in the pre-Darwinian era and even for Darwin himself. They are still clearly defined by homologs or synapomorphies that are true evolutionary novelties without antecedent in earlier putative ancestral forms. Incongruous though it might seem (in the context of the evolutionary propaganda machine and especially to a reader outside of academia), it remains true, as I pointed out in Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, that the vast majority of all taxa are indeed defined by novelties without any antecedent in any presumed ancestral forms.”¹³

What are the chances?!

One of the strongest areas in which it becomes extremely difficult to coherently defend the Darwinian view of evolution, or even the materialistic view that the apparently well ordered and meticulously designed reality we see around us is the product of mindless unguided processes, is the area of chance itself. Life is extremely complex, and the more it is researched and understood, the more complex it becomes.

Any attempt made by information scientists to run the numbers on biological systems and their emergence through a successive number of random mutations produces results that render such a scenario impossible. There is a lovely fallacy which perfectly illustrates this concept; “Junkyard Tornado” comes from Fred Hoyles famous calculation, in which he concluded that the probability of life coming about through random chance is 10^40,000, the fallacy is described thus:

A junkyard contains all the bits and pieces of a Boeing 747, dismembered and in disarray. A whirlwind happens to blow through the yard. What is the chance that after its passage a fully assembled 747, ready to fly, will be found standing there? So small as to be negligible, even if a tornado were to blow through enough junkyards to fill the whole Universe¹⁴

So, in short, random chance is simply not up to the job. We cannot expect the emergence of large complex organic systems to have arisen by chance through natural selection, there are simply too many variables. Natural selection can absolutely modify the material already present in an existing system. But the emergence of this system cannot be explained via the same mechanisms.

This is not to say that mutation can never be responsible for the emergence of novel biological forms. However, this process can only occur if said forms can be reached through a series of adaptive changes over a long period of time. If such an outcome would non adaptive (tetrapod limb) or no transitional forms can be conceived of (bat wing), then appealing instead to random chance for the emergence of these structures is appealing to a miracle. As Denton notes:

The sheer bankruptcy of the claim that novelties which are not led up to via empirically known incremental functional sequences might have been found by “chance” macromutations which “just happened to put together” complex structures like a mammalian hair, a diaphragm, a bat’s wing, a branched bipinnate feather, etc., is only too obvious. Evolutionary biology is clearly a theory in deep crisis if evolutionary biologists have to enter Darwin’s realm of miracle to account for the emergence of evolutionary novelties that are not led up via Darwin’s long chain of “innumerable transitional forms.¹⁵

That concludes the first part of this essay series tackling the question of evolution. I thank you for reading and hope it has shed light on some of the main critiques of Neo-Darwinism from both a philosophical and biological perspective. The next part will briefly focus on some of the main biochemical challenges. Until then.

1. Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: 2nd Edition, Chapter 5, p43

2. Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: 2nd Edition, Chapter 7, p67-68

3. Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: 2nd Edition, Chapter 7, p76

4. Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: 2nd Edition, Chapter 7, p77

5. Samir Okasha, Philosophy of Science: A Very Short Introduction, Chapter 5, p84

6. Samir Okasha, Philosophy of Science: A Very Short Introduction, Chapter 5, p88

7. Micheal Denton, The Types: A Persistent Structuralist Challenge to Darwinian Pan-Selectionism, Bio-Complexity, p5

8. Micheal Denton, The Types: A Persistent Structuralist Challenge to Darwinian Pan-Selectionism, Bio-Complexity, p5

9. Wagner, Homology, Genes, and Evolutionary Innovation, p230

10. Richard O. Prum and Alan H. Brush, The Evolutionary Origin and Diversification of Feathers, Quarterly Review of Biology 77, no. 3, p261-295, 289

11. Micheal Denton, Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis, Chapter 3, p39

12. Micheal Denton, Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis, Chapter 3, p40

13. Micheal Denton, Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis, Chapter 3, p43

14. Fred Hoyle, The Intelligent Universe, 1st American ed. (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1984), 19; quoted from “Junkyard Tornado,” Wikipedia, accessed January 2024 Junkyard tornado - Wikipedia

15. Micheal Denton, Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis, Chapter 11, p199