There are plenty of things to critique about the working theory of evolution. For instance, there is the problem of irreducible complexity, which refers to how living things are elegantly built, using an apparent minimum of parts, and could therefore not have evolved step-by-step from simpler forms.

There’s also the problem of the missing transitional forms in the fossil record, especially in layers like the Cambrian, where there is an apparent “explosion” of new life forms without ancestors. Charles Darwin, himself, was flummoxed by the uncooperativeness of this part of the fossil record for his theory.

And then there’s the problem of information in DNA, which is at the heart of all life. For evolution to happen, vast new amounts of information would be needed. Yet as philosopher of science Stephen Meyer has argued, our uniform and repeated experience teaches us that information comes only from a designing intelligence, not from unguided, natural processes.

All of these are real problems with the real theory of evolution as it is currently understood by scientists and taught in classrooms. And each problem deserves to be widely explained and taken seriously, rather than evolution being treated uncritically as “settled science.”

Yet in the age of social media and now artificial intelligence, there is another problem: what many people think is Darwinian evolution isn’t Darwinian evolution at all. Instead, it is a mashup of popular depictions, viral videos, and even advertising that bears little resemblance to what evolutionary scientists actually believe and defend. And this matters because the first step to debating a theory’s merits is, in fact, understanding the theory. If the version of evolution in people’s minds owes more to pop culture than paleontology, arguments for and against it will both be misguided and pointless.

One such popularized and oversimplified version of evolution recently went viral on X. In a one-minute video shared by the “Science girl” account with its nearly three million followers, a series of AI-generated creatures, each labeled, morph into one another, supposedly showing the evolutionary history of elephants. Set to a sort of electronic Gregorian chant, this bizarre clip begins with a shrimplike creature 505 million years ago, proceeds through an ancient squid, a fish, various reptiles, a host of mammals more or less beginning to resemble elephants, until finally it ends in the present day with an AI-generated elephant.

The video received tens of thousands of “likes” and was shared thousands of times, including by some Christian authors who used it to poke fun at evolution. Many left comments like, “Imagine believing this instead of that God just made elephants.” Others defending the video insisted that “evolution is literally proven by science.”

Lost in all of this, both for those who liked the video and those who laughed at it, was that it was AI-generated rubbish. No evolutionary scientist thinks an unnamed shrimp evolved into the squid-like Orthoceras, or that into the armored fish Dunkleosteus, or that into the sail-backed Dimetrodon, or that into Lystrosaurus, or that into any mammal, let alone an elephant.

A look at the Linnean Society’s interactive tree of life, which depicts the actual, mainstream view of evolution, shows that many of these creatures are classified on entirely different “branches” of the tree of life and have no direct relationship according to any scientist. And some of the animals were completely mislabeled or fabricated, making it hard to know what the creators of this video—to the extent there were human creators—even intended (besides going viral).

In the end, what millions were shown was a selection of random creatures from different supposed geologic eras, morphing into one another Pokémon-style, implying a direct evolutionary chain. But again, not even committed Darwinists believe this chain looks like what happened.

It is true that Darwinian evolution involves many of what Rudyard Kipling called “just-so” stories, sequences of events that have little evidence backing them up besides evolutionists’ own need to explain life without a Creator. And we should critique those enthusiastically. But when evolution is either criticized or defended on the basis of a completely inaccurate popular depiction, no one wins or becomes any wiser. We just tear down a “straw man,” attacking a misrepresentation of the theory, and that primarily hurts our own credibility.

What’s truly concerning is how much of our cultural dialogue is now like this—divorced from reality, and expressed in online “memes,” fake quotes, fabricated news, or AI imagery. “Just-so” stories have evolved, which is why, in the age of AI and social media users who will pass anything off as “settled science” to go viral, it pays to be extra discerning.

Christians and others are rightly skeptical of the scientific consensus on certain issues, Darwinian evolution among them. But that same skepticism and commitment to the truth should lead us to question the actual theories taught that belie God’s design, not the AI Pokémon version.

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