Dr. Rob Carter defines evolution and then explains the basic problem facing it.
DEL: So, from your perspective as a marine biologist – and I know that you’ve studied the whole area of genetics a lot – when people talk about evolution, what is it?
ROB: How do you define evolution? The word means ‘change over time.’ But I believe in change over time, but I’m not a evolutionist. So, how does one figure this out? Really, evolution is a belief that enough change over time, over enough time, can lead to the common ancestry of all species on earth. So that’s the part I reject. Of course species change. I mean, look at these sharks here. We have several different species of sharks. When God created He put into those organisms the ability to change, to adapt, to respond dynamically to the environment. But they’re still sharks. And when we look at the fossil record, they’re still sharks. People have heard the phrase ‘the missing link’ and they usually think of between a man and monkeys. No, there are missing links between almost every major group of animals and almost every other major group of animals, and plants, and even bacteria, throughout the entire fossil record – which indicates very strongly that these are actually different creations.
DEL: So, we don’t get one kind becoming another kind?
ROB: No. Evolutionary theory requires that small, random changes can explain everything we see. But it can’t.
DEL: And why can’t it?
ROB: Because life is so complex that small changes can’t explain it. Just like you can’t take a computer operating system and look at it and say ‘oh yeah, this is built up one digit at a time over any length of time.’ No, it took an intelligent person to sit down and put it together.
DEL: Well, I can guarantee you as one who was in that world, that if anyone in the area of computer science were to say if we just randomly changed some things in this operating system it will get better. I mean no one would agree with that.
ROB: No, we’re not going to get the shark to evolve into a bird. The number of changes and the types of changes are not something that you can do one change at a time.
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