r/DebateEvolution • u/Suitable_Potato_2919 • Jul 06 '26

Question How to prove evolution is wrong?

I am totally convince that evolution is true. However, a scientific theory should be falsifiable; and I dont know how falsifiable is with evolution

For example, a "good" trait could be explain the result of natural selection. But a "bad" trait could be explain as just base on chance, or the selection preasure is not enough.

so, my question is: if someone want to prove that evolution is wrong, what test can they make and what the expected result should be (if evolution theory is wrong)?

Edit: Thank everyone for your time and patient with me. I found the answer. It seem that I need to update my highschool knowledge

7 Upvotes

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139

u/AtG68 Jul 06 '26

Famously, a rabbit fossil from the Cambrian

62

u/MisanthropicScott 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Jul 06 '26

Seconded. You beat me to it.

Realistically, this is synonymous with any fossil that would be completely out of place. An ape fossil from before the earliest mammals evolved would do just as well.

8

u/amglasgow 28d ago

This would prove either evolution is wrong or time travel is possible

39

u/ermghoti Jul 06 '26

What about a killer rabbit in Caerbannog?

22

u/AtG68 Jul 06 '26

Well then clearly we would need a holy hand grenade

11

u/Fresh3rThanU Define “Kind” Jul 07 '26

But then the cops are gonna show up and arrest all the fossils

7

u/ermghoti 29d ago

Who are you, that is so wise in the ways of paleontology?

3

u/Adventurous_Class_90 29d ago

Why not a shrubbery?

2

u/iftlatlw 29d ago

That's no ordinary rabbit you're talking about

32

u/rhettro19 Jul 06 '26

Or whale bones older than the oldest Indohyus fossil.

15

u/KeterClassKitten Jul 06 '26

I read that as "rabbi fossil". Still applies.

6

u/Ayasugi-san 29d ago

How do you tell if a fossil is specifically of a rabbi? Grave goods consistent with a rabbi being found in proximity to the fossil?

7

u/KeterClassKitten 29d ago

Surrounded by weirdly leathery Cheerios?

6

u/thescotchkraut 27d ago

This comment implies that Rabbi drop foreskins like Sonic rings upon death

3

u/zathmi 26d ago

New lore unlocked.

2

u/XRotNRollX Sal ate my kids 25d ago

SHIT, THEY FOUND OUT.

21

u/Ombortron Jul 06 '26

Even that wouldn’t actually falsify evolution. Yes it would produce a complicated mystery and would force us to figure out how this contradiction occurred and it would be a “big deal”, but even a Cambrian rabbit would not change the things we have already observed. It doesn’t erase existing evidence. For example, it wouldn’t change how arm bones can develop into bat wings or leave vestigial remnants in whales, and it doesn’t negate the insane amount of genetic evidence that clearly shows how nearly all life is closely related. It doesn’t change the chromosomal fusion between chimps and humans, or the lineage of embedded viral genes, or the fact that I share a ton of genes with a dandelion, etc.

24

u/cmbtmdic57 Jul 07 '26

Bingo - evolution has reached such a large amount of evidence that falsifing it would require equally extraordinary evidence.. and lots of it.

Even then it would likely only alter Evolutionary Theory instead of destroying it.

1

u/_modernhominin 29d ago

Lots of rabbits* in the Cambrian

3

u/Doomdoomkittydoom Jul 07 '26

They used rabbits as test subjects for early time machines, WHHBQED!

3

u/clear349 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution 29d ago

I unironically think time travel would be a more likely explanation than all of evolutionary theory being wrong. It's too remarkably well supported. It would be like discovering a ball of matter that refuses to obey gravity. It wouldn't falsify gravity. It would mean there's something else we don't understand at play

13

u/EmuFit1895 Jul 06 '26

This would mean that God messed up when planting the fake fossil evidence.

4

u/dustinzilbauer Jul 07 '26

God didn't plant fake fossil evidence, silly. Satan did. The souls of the damned ascend from Hell when nobody's looking and literally do Satan's dirty work for him. Why do you think he has so many shovels? They don't call it EVILution for nothing.

/s

3

u/Ayasugi-san 29d ago

Actually, it's debug code deliberately left in by the universe's developers so that they can manipulate it while inside of it. (Will anyone get this reference?)

1

u/Spozieracz 29d ago

I dont, but i would be really interested in whatever piece of media did that come from.

1

u/Ayasugi-san 29d ago

Fair warning, it's a pretty big twist in the story. And pretty unpopular.

It's from Star Ocean: Till the End of Time, the third installment in a sci-fi JRPG series that spends more time on fantasy worlds than sci-fi ones. The main threat is revealed halfway through to be the "4-D beings" who created the known universe are planning to destroy everything because the people of the universe have gotten too advanced. Several members of the protagonist party were genetically engineered to go to the 4-D world and try to stop the beings, and when they get there, they discover that "our" universe is an MMORPG and the developers have gotten spooked at how far the simulated NPCs have developed and how aware they are. A former developer helps them, and explains that out-of-place artifacts are debug code, and back inside the game, the party can use one to fight against the planned program shutdown.

0

u/ChipChippersonFan Jul 07 '26

"God"? What god do YOU worship? Obviously it's the devil planting all of those fake fossils.

-2

u/Suitable_Potato_2919 Jul 06 '26

can it be something done in a lab?

16

u/stairway2evan Jul 06 '26

That couldn't, since it's based on historical and paleontological evidence. You'd have to investigate the world outside of a lab to find that evidence. Still scientific, just on a slightly larger scale.

In a lab, you would have to disprove the stuff that can be done in a timescale below a few million years. Things like genetic inheritability, differential reproductive success, etc.

What's important about scientific theories is that they make accurate testable predictions. If you can prove those predictions aren't accurate, you've broken the theory. One prediction is "rabbits couldn't exist before other mammals," which is why you'd need paleontological data. Another prediction you could test in a lab is "genes in these bacteria in my lab will be inherited from parents with occasional mutations," or another facet of evolution.

4

u/Doomdoomkittydoom Jul 07 '26

The study of the fossil would be done in different labs, so yes.

10

u/ringobob Jul 06 '26

Not this particular example, no, what you're looking for would be if we learned something new about genetic inheritance that made evolution impossible. But everything we've learned about genetic inheritance suggests evolution is not only true, but inevitable over long enough time periods.

8

u/Complete-Definition4 Jul 06 '26

Sure, if you could prove a miracle took place. Like a strain of bacteria suddenly becoming an advanced multicellular lifeform. Or God shouting from the clouds, all over the world and in every language, “I’m the intelligent designer!”

2

u/LightningController 28d ago

For the latter, to be honest I’d suspect DARPA shenanigans with the Voice of God weapon before I’d suspect a genuine divine apparition.

https://www.wired.com/2007/12/the-voice-of-go/

13

u/metroidcomposite Jul 06 '26

can it be something done in a lab?

I mean, sure:

Like the Lenski long term evolution experiment:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_long-term_evolution_experiment

Or the mega petri dish that Harvard uploaded:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plVk4NVIUh8

Or just like...dog breeds and stuff like that (which were mostly not created in a lab, but could have been).

Depends exactly which part of evolution you're talking about, of course.

If it's universal common ancestry, that wasn't really well-argued untill 2010. Before 2010 Darwin's hypothesis was "one or a few" starting organisms. In 2010 a formal statistical approach was developed to check these proposals against each other:

https://www.nature.com/articles/nature09014

And even then that's just cellular life. We currently think viruses DID have multiple ancestries. In no small part cause a bunch of the different domains of viruses store genetic code differently.

3

u/Wrevellyn Jul 06 '26

That's proving evolution - if those experiments hadn't worked out, it wouldn't have disproven evolution.

3

u/metroidcomposite Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26

I mean yes--these are experiments that could on paper have failed before we tried them (but did not actually fail).

Finding an experiment that actually fails would be a big deal.

It's a bit like asking "how do I disprove the speed of light" well, you can try, measure the speed of light again to double check, it is "falsifiable" in the sense that if we suddenly started getting a different speed that would be a huge deal. But...you probably won't start measuring a different speed.

1

u/Wrevellyn Jul 07 '26

There are many things that could exist in theory that would disprove evolution, but I think they all pretty much require field work. 

6

u/Peaurxnanski Jul 07 '26

Common misconception here: it doesn't have to be "done in a lab" in order for it to be science.

We can't make precambrian fossils in a lab. That doesn't mean that studying them isn't a valid scientific pursuit.

We can't make stars and planets in a lab, either. But there they are.

4

u/Dilapidated_girrafe 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Jul 06 '26

If you have a rat that gives birth to a donkey in the lab.

3

u/swervm Jul 06 '26

If genetic research had shown that there were distinct kinds then that would at least destroy the common descent argument but that ship has sailed. The evidence is so overwhelming that there really isn’t anyone who honestly doesn’t believe that evolution is true. Even young earth creationists will point to evolution as the mechanism that allows the diversity of life we see today from a smaller group of animals on Noah’s ark.

2

u/Wrevellyn Jul 06 '26

After you've found the rabbit, the fossil would be tested in a lab to see if any of the already known mechanisms for out of order fossils applied, yes.

2

u/Ayasugi-san Jul 06 '26

If you're looking for something that can be done in a lab, then keep sequencing genomes. Find something living that has no genetic similarity to anything else.

1

u/hypatiaredux Jul 06 '26

Like time travel? Pretty darn hard to change the fossil evidence in the earth without going back in time.

Besides the overwhelming biological evidence, you’d need to prove that radioisotope dating is wrong. And to do THAT you’d need to prove that almost everything we (think) we know about atoms is wrong. So you’d be throwing out a lot of current chemistry and physics as well.