The Illogic of a Creationist Argument
The proof of Evolution in its most general sense, that is, the development of species from species unlike themselves over time, rests on three clear facts. First, there is variety in the natural world (that is self-evident). Second, all living individuals must have come from a living parent (no one has ever been able to prove the contrary). And third, simple species were around long before more complex species (any inspection of fossilized sedimentary strata confirms this point). The conclusion to this argument is unavoidable: the complex species must have come from the simpler species.
Misrepresenting or failing to understand the nature of science (deliberately or not) is central to an allied argument that often crops up with the above case, namely, a definition of science which claims that what cannot be observed cannot be scientific. Since evolution cannot be observed because the time spans are too long, therefore it cannot be scientific. Scientific theories deal all the time with things we cannot observe, like, gravity, electrons, electric fields, viruses, and so on. On the basis of these theories predictions are made which lead to observable results which will enable the theories to be confirmed or falsified. In this sense, evolution is thoroughly scientific. It leads to predictions which can be checked against the fossil record. A single finding, well confirmed, could destroy the case for evolution (e.g., a vertebrate skeleton in the pre-Cambrian rocks). That has never happened in the thousands of inspections which occur.
This point illustrates the key objection scientists have to the Creationist account, namely that it generates only one prediction, and that has been consistently falsified and never confirmed, namely that if all the species were created at once then we should find their fossil remain all together in every fossilized strata. Nowhere in the world has this ever occurred. Hence the explanatory predicting power of the Genesis account is empty and without scientific interest.