"Random mutations cannot account for the complexity of life. All of our experiences have shown that the vast majority of mutations are harmful, not beneficial. It's absurd to think that the offspring of one species suddenly mutates a new feature."
Rebuttal
What makes you think that evolution is based on freak mutations? How many times do you think the word "mutation" occurs in Darwin's "Origin of Species"? 100? 50? Try zero. Darwin didn't even know what DNA was, nor did he have any idea what mutation was, and his word for freak mutations was "monstrosities": something that he held to be largely irrelevant to his theory of evolution.
Surprised? Unfortunately, there are many widespread misconceptions about evolution, and the idea that it's based upon freak mutations is one of them. Evolution is actually based upon selection from a varied population, not convenient feature-adding mutations.
The only kind of "mutation" necessary for evolution is the kind that most people don't even consider a mutation, such as a person being taller or having blonde hair instead of brown hair. That is what generates the variety upon which evolutionary selection can operate.
Fallacy watch:
Straw-man fallacy (pretends that evolution theory depends on convenient freak mutations rather than selection from variety, ie- genetic diversity).
Search Database Again
Search Notes:
Key word searches always look for all of the search words,
ie- Boolean "AND".
The exact keyword search looks only for exact matches in the argument (not
the rebuttal), and it ignores commonly used words and search terms shorter than 4
letters. The normal search will accept partial word matches and any search terms,
and it will search both the arguments and rebuttals.
If you search without entering any keywords, the system will produce
a complete list of all the arguments in the database.
This site was written using OpenOffice, running on Mandriva Linux.