ACCIDENT OF NATURE

The apostle Paul told the Romans, "For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities-his eternal power and divine nature-have been clearly seen, being understood from what [he] has been made, so that people are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles" (Romans 1:20-22, NIV)

This statement can also apply to our day where many people look at the things of creation and instead of seeing an intelligence behind all of creation they see humans, birds, and all the other animals and plants on earth as having just evolved to their current state by pure chance rather than by intelligent design.

The argument between creationism and evolution has been going on for almost two hundred years with each side confident that they have the correct understanding of how all living things came into existence and that argument is certain to continue on for a long time into the future. But there are some things that those who believe in evolution don't want to examine and one of those things is the intelligent design that is clearly seen behind all of creation.

To understand this aspect of the argument we first have to understand what it is that evolutionists believe and to do that we have to go back to how the idea of evolution began.

As a young man Charles Darwin became interested in geology and natural history. On December 27, 1831 he began a five-year journey sailing on the HMS Beagle where he traveled to various parts of the world. At each place where they stopped he intently studied the many different kinds of vegetation and animal life. One of the places he visited was the Galapagos Islands which are located six hundred miles west off the coast of Ecuador. As he studied the animals there he noticed something rather intriguing. There were finch birds on the island but they looked slightly different than the finch birds that inhabited Ecuador. These birds had larger, stronger beaks than the ones he had seen on the mainland, six hundred miles away.

While on these islands, Charles also found other birds who likewise resembled finches but who had different characteristics than the other birds on the same island. In fact, he found thirteen different kinds of finch birds. Intrigue by why there were these variations in the same birds, Darwin spent five weeks meticulously studying them along with other animals, taking copious notes. It was this event that started his mind wondering what made animals both similar and different from one another, and for the remainder of his life he devoted himself to answering this question.

The conclusion he came to was that animals evolved in order to adapt of their environment. Since then, scientists have gained a more detailed understanding of how animals evolve into different variations of the same species and how they then evolve into becoming different species all together.

There are five reasons given for how evolution occurs: Genetic drift, non-random mating, gene flow, natural selection, and mutations. However, the first four of these involve the mating or breeding of animals in one way or another where the traits of one pair of animals are transmitted to their offspring. Therefore, we will look at this method of evolution first.

Genetics is the science of genes and all living things have genes, which are made up of strands of DNA, and it is the DNA which contains the blueprint or code that determines how all living things reproduce themselves. The father of genetics is Gregor Johann Mendel, an Augustine monk, who lived in Monrovia and conducted experiments on plants from 1856 to 1863. It was from these experiments that he discovered how such traits as color, shape, size, and many other characteristics of one plant are passed on when pollinated with plants who had different characteristics.

His experiments were so thorough that he was actually able to predict the percentage of plants that would have certain traits when cross bred with other plants, and not just for the first generation but for the second and even the third generation. At the time he didn't know anything about genes or DNA, but as science discovered the existence of these substances, they helped clarify and explain everything that Mendel had discovered.

It is in the DNA where the different traits are found. In other words, the DNA acts as a code that determines whether a person has blue, brown, or hazel eyes. It is the code found in a person's DNA that determines whether they will be short, tall, or of average height, or whether they will be prone to being skinny or fat, or whether a man will be bald or always have a full head of hair. If a change is made in the coding of a person's DNA during the gestation period, it will cause that person to have a different characteristic than someone else.

We can think of each molecular pair on the DNA strand as a letter and when we combine them together in a specific order they form a set of instructions. There are six billion of these base pairs found in each cell and each set of instructions for a particular trait is called a gene, and there are between 25,000 to 35,000 genes which are found on 23 chromosomes located in the nucleus of each cell. More than that, each chromosome has an exact duplicate, making 23 pairs of chromosomes. Just before a cell divides the pairs of chromosomes reproduce themselves, making 46 pairs. When the cell splits in two 23 pairs of chromosome go into the new cell and the other 23 chromosomes remain in the original cell.

During the mating process, one set of 23 chromosomes from the father's sperm joins with one set of 23 chromosomes found in the mother in the egg, thereby making two sets of paired chromosomes. Since these two set of newly paired chromosomes do not contain the same exact genes, this is why each child born inherits some of the traits or characteristics of their father and some traits from their mother. We refer to this mixing of traits as heredity.

Evolutionists teach that changes in animals and plants happen through this process of breeding. Since the new animal inherits traits from both of its parents it looks both similar and yet different from its parents. However, over time, as animals continue to breed these differences in traits begin to accumulate until, over millions of years, the animal has undergone so many changes that it no longer looks anything like the animal they originally came from.

But evolutionists take this process a step further. According to Darwin, animals who acquire traits or characteristics that help them better adapt to their environment are more likely to survive, while those who do not have this better trait will eventually die off. Furthermore, animals who have better traits are more likely to mate with someone who has a similar trait, thereby making this trait become more prevalent. Darwin called this process, the survival of the fittest.

In his book, The Origin of Species, Darwin used the giraffe to illustrate this process. He wrote, "The giraffe by its lofty stature, much elongated neck, fore-legs, head and tongue, has its whole frame beautifully adapted for browsing on the higher branches of trees. So under nature with the nascent giraffe, the individuals which were the highest browsers and were able during [times of drought] to reach an inch or two above the others, will often have been preserved… These [taller giraffes] intercrossed [with other giraffes] and left offspring, either inheriting the same bodily peculiarities, or with a tendency to vary again [from their parents]… By this process long continued… it seems to me almost certain that any ordinary hoofed quadruped (i.e., a horse) might be converted into a giraffe."

According to Darwin's theory, the giraffe started out as a horse and through millions of years of small hereditary changes, eventually evolved into a giraffe. And because of its longer neck, it had a better chance of surviving through times of drought because it could reach food that animals with shorter necks could not reach. Therefore, it survived because it was better fitted to its environment than other animals.

But if this theory is correct, then why didn't all the other animals with short necks die off or at least be less numerous? In other words, if this theory is correct, then we should expect to see a much greater number of giraffes than other kinds of animals because the giraffe is better able to survive, yet this is not the case. When we look at all the animals and observe how each one is able to adequately adapt to whatever their condition is, we see that none of them are really at a disadvantage to one another. Each one is able to more than adequately provide for their own survival, which is contrary to Darwin's theory of evolution.

But there is yet another problem with the evolution of the giraffe. Because of its long neck, it also has to have a much more powerful heart to pump the blood all the way up to the brain. Furthermore, because of the pull of gravity, the giraffe needs special valves in its neck arteries to prevent the blood from draining back down to the heart, or prevent the blood from rushing into its brain when it bends down to eat grass from the ground. Without these valves, the giraffe would not live very long.

Yet none of these necessary changes from a horse-like creature to the modern giraffe can be explained through the process of natural selection because for that to happen, the giraffe would have to have mated with another animal that already had the trait for a longer neck, a large heart and special valves in the arteries leading to the brain. Since no other animal except the giraffe needs these traits, it would be impossible for it to have gotten them through hereditary means.

Another illustration of this is the finch birds that Darwin saw on the Galapagos Islands. What Darwin observed was that the bird with the very hard beak lived in a very rocky terrain and therefore needed a large, hard beak in order to dig for food. Without this kind of a beak the bird would eventually starve to death. Darwin therefore concluded that animals evolve to meet the challenges of their environment. He surmised that birds who did not have long, hard beaks on this part of the island died off while those who were better adapted survived and thrived.

But where did this finch first get the hereditary trait to have a longer, harder beak? In other words, which other bird did a finch from Ecuador mate with who had the gene that would produce such a beak in their offspring? According to modern evolutionists, these kinds of changes occur slowly over millions of years yet, if that is the case, then any bird landing on this part of the Galapagos Islands would have starved to death long before they could have evolved by producing an offspring with the right kind of beak needed for it to survive in that environment.

The same can be said for the large cats of Africa, such as lions, tigers, cheetahs, and leopards. Evolutionists claim that these animals evolved from much smaller grass eating mammals, but these cats survive by eating meat. In order to do that they need to have the kind of teeth that would allow them to rip and tear flesh. If a lion evolved from a grass eating animal then who did the pre-flesh eating lion mate with that would eventually have given their offspring the hereditary trait to have incisor teeth?

For the theory of heredity to explain the process of evolution one of the two parents has to have the gene that gives their offspring the trait they have. For example, if we were to mate a horse with a zebra, their offspring would not have the claws of a bear or the trunk of an elephant because neither parent has those traits to pass onto their young. In order for a horse to have an offspring that has claws instead of a hoof, the parent horse would have to mate with an animal that has claws.

The problem with this is that animals only mate with animals similar to themselves. For example, you would never find a horse mating with a lion. Instead, a horse will only mate naturally with another horse. This is the definition of natural selection. Since no horse has claws, it would be impossible for a horse to give birth to another horse who had claws instead of a hoof, even if we waited for 50 million years.

As we look at nature what we observe is that each animal is perfect in its own sphere of existence and they all remain in perfect balance with one another to form a perfect ecosystem. To assume that all of this perfection happened by random chance through the interbreeding of genes rather than it being the handiwork of a perfect God is to believe in something that defies the laws of nature and statistical probability. More than that, Mendel's experiments proved that heredity is not random but is mathematically predictable, yet the basis on which evolutionists base their theory is that changes in animals happens from the mixing of genes through the process of mating.

But evolutionists offer yet another explanation besides heredity to account for how one species of animals evolve into a different species. As was mentioned before, in every animal cell there are 23 pairs of chromosomes which are made up of genes which are composed of strands of DNA, and it is the way in which molecules are arranged on the DNA strand that determines how the body develops. For example, it is the sequence of the DNA molecules that determines how the human hand is to be formed. The reason why humans don't have webbed hands but frogs do is because of the difference in their DNA. The reason why we look like humans and not like monkeys or apes, or orangutans, is because of how the molecules in our DNA are arranged.

In the process of cell division each pair of chromosomes makes an exact duplicate of itself, thereby causing both the new cell and the old cell to once again have the same two pairs of twenty-three chromosomes. This exact duplication happens with almost one hundred percent accuracy but every so often something happens where the newly formed chromosome is not exactly the same as the original chromosome. What that means is that the sequence of the DNA molecules in the new chromosome is slightly different from the original sequence. When this happens, scientists say that the DNA has mutated, or changed.

Because it is the sequence of the DNA molecules that determines the code or instruction of how the body is to develop, if there is a change in that sequence then there is a corresponding change made to the new body as it is being developed. For example, depending on where that change has occurred, a new child could be born with no skin pigment or with six fingers, or with no hair, or with any other kind of deformity that is different from its parents.

Evolutionists say that when an animal is born with a body that is different from its parents, if that difference prevents the new animal from surviving as well as its parents, then in time that animal and its offspring will eventually die off. But, if that difference doesn't affect the way the new animal can survive, in time it will develop into a different variation of the same species and, given enough time, it will eventually evolve into a completely different species of animal. On the other hand, if the change actually helps the new animal to survive better than its parents, eventually the older species will die off as the new species increases in population.

This is the explanation that evolutionists give for why the finch birds Darwin saw on the Galápagos Islands came to have a hard beak. It didn't have to mate with another bird who had a hard beak because somehow there was a mutation in the DNA of its offspring that caused a hard beak to develop. Then, because those birds who had the hard beak were able to survive, those whose beaks were not hard starved and died off.

However, this kind of a change could not take millions of years to happen because if it did all the birds on that island would have starved to death long before the new species of finch appeared. Therefore, this change-over had to happen rather quickly, perhaps as soon as within one or two generations.

If such a change had happened one time we might claim that it was just a freak chance of nature, but Darwin noticed that there were thirteen different kinds of finches on these islands, and all of them had changed in a way that helped them to adapt to the particular environment they found themselves in. To say that this sudden change happened thirteen times to produce thirteen beneficial results is statistically impossible.

Darwin's theory is that changes in nature (i.e., evolution) happen because of a need for the animal to adapt to its environment and today most evolutionists still stand by that theory, but for that theory to be true there has to be an intelligence causing such a change it to occur.

To illustrate this point, when humans are faced with a problem, there are three things that must happen. The first is that they have to be aware that there is a problem. For example, if someone is in a room during the winter and there is an open window in the room, the room will become cold because of the cold air coming in through the open window. Most animals may realize the room is getting colder but they don't have the awareness to realize it is a problem so they don't do anything about it. They just accept it. Therefore, in order to take care of a problem the first thing an animal has to do is recognize that there is a problem.

Secondly, an animal has to correctly understand what is causing the problem. In our illustration, an animal would have to realize that the cold temperature in the room is a result of cold air coming in through an open window. A three-year old child may recognize that the room is getting cold but they don't have enough intelligence at that age to recognize what is causing the problem and neither do most animals.

Thirdly, once an animal knows they have a problem and correctly understands what is causing the problem, then they have to figure out how to solve it. To an adult human, the solution would seem simple - close the window - but to make that kind of a decision takes a sophisticated level of intelligence.

The finch birds that Darwin observed may have realized they had a problem using their soft beaks to find food (although that is doubtful), but it certainly didn't have the intelligence to understand what the problem was nor did it have the intelligence to figure out how to solve the problem. However, even if it did, how was it going to grow a harder beak?

For that kind of change to take place, something in the DNA of that bird had to change and it had to be a very specific change at a very specific location in their DNA so that when their offspring were born, they had a hard beak. As intelligent as humans are, no one can deliberately cause a change in their own DNA. For example, many men don't like going bald, but they can't solve that problem in their offspring by causing a change in their own DNA. Then how was the exact needed change made in the DNA of not just one group of finch birds but thirteen different groups of finches? The only answer is that there had to be some sort of intelligence at work that was far greater than what even we humans possess.

Let's look at another example. During the early 19th century in England's industrial cities the trees and buildings began to turn black from the soot coming from coal burning factories. In these cities was an insect called the peppered moth, whose wing color was light beige. However, as everything was turning soot black, these moths stood out against the black background. Yet, in less than fifty years, the moths themselves changed their color to black so as to blend in better with their background, thereby camouflaging themselves from predators.

Scientists cite this as an example of evolution, saying that the light colored peppered moths were more vulnerable to being eaten by birds and insects, while the dark colored moths were able to reproduce and survive because they were harder for the birds and other insects to see. But there are a number of problems with this example.

The first is that this is not "evolution" in the strict sense of the term because the peppered moths didn't morph into a different kind of animal. There must have been some black moths already in existence but before the industrial revolution their numbers were not as numerous as the peppered moths. However, as the landscape changed, so did the danger. Now it was the peppered moths who became more vulnerable to being eaten and the black moth was less susceptible. Therefore, this wasn't evolution. It was one kind of moth being able to out-survive a different kind of moth.

If the peppered moths mated with another moth who carried the black gene then there had to be moths who already carried the gene for black coloring, in which case black moths must have already existed prior to the problem with soot. However, according to Mendel's research, the black gene is more dominant which means that there would already have to have been more black moths in existence than peppered moths even before the landscape became covered in soot.

If we account for this change according to the theory of mutation, at most, only one moth's genes would have mutated and then, through the process of mating over several generations, the black gene would have been transmitted to more and more offspring until all of the moths had nearly a pure black gene. However, if this is what happened, it is almost beyond belief that a gene just happened to mutate to exactly the right color needed at exactly the right moment in time.

If this was a single example of evolution, it might be considered as a freak coincidence, but according to evolutionists, this sort of thing happens fairly frequently, such as with the thirteen different kinds of finches Darwin observed, and there are many other such examples that evolutionists cite to prove their case.

Let's look at another example evolutionists like to use. In the hot climate of Africa all the animals have short-haired skin because short hair helps keep the animals cooler. On the other hand, all the animals in colder climates have long-haired skin because the longer hair helps keep them warm, and the colder the temperature the longer and thicker the hair will be on them.

Evolutionists claim this is a perfect example of animals evolving as the short-haired animals migrated to colder regions of the earth, but what caused the hair on all of these animals to grow longer? If it was heredity, then it would require all short haired animals to mate with animals of their own kind who already had the long hair gene. That means, there would have to have been similar animals with long hair already in existence. For example, in order for a short-haired horse who migrated from the Sahara desert to Norway to develop long haired would require it to mate with a horse who already had long hair. Bears have long hair but a horse isn't going to mate with a bear so heredity can't be the cause of this trait. In fact, this is not what evolutionists claimed happened.

Instead, they claim that it was mutations in the genes that caused the long hair to develop on animals in response to the cold weather. This is how it is explained in lecture notes produced by the biology department at the University of Miami: "Mutation is the raw material of evolution. Without genetic variation, [there can be] no evolution. Mutation is the only way new genetic material can arise in a population." (see www.bio.miami.edu/ecosummer/lectures/lec_causesofevolution.pdf)

But this explanation doesn't hold up under examination because it assumes that somehow the genes of all animals knew exactly what was needed to protect the body's heat and somehow all animals produced the same exact mutation in their DNA to solve the problem of how to stay warm in cold climate, and it was the perfect solution. The only way that could happen is if there was some superior intelligence in nature that was deliberately rearranging the genes of all animals so that the exact change needed to help them survive took place.

Yet, evolutionists claim that instead of there being some sort of intelligence behind these changes in genes, they claim that all of these beneficial mutations occurred in all the different kinds of animals through the process of random, unpredictable chance.

But if we say that there is some sort of intelligence at work behind all of these changes, whereby changes don't happen by arbitrary luck but by deliberate design, then all of the variations and perfection we see in nature make more reasonable, logical, and realistic sense than the theories put forth by evolutionists. This is what Paul meant when he said that the power and nature of the invisible God is clearly seen in the things He has made, but foolish men, who claim to be wise, refuse to see God's glory in nature and instead choose to see mortal humans, birds, and reptiles as nothing more than accidents of nature.


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