EVOLUTION OR DESIGN? YOU BE THE JUDGE
by Phillip Day

Pacific golden plover
Nothing about this creature is routine. The bird weighs half a pound and is around the size of a dove. It usually lays four eggs and after the hatchlings are born, the parents clear off to Hawaii for the winter, leaving their babies behind. This is an 88-hour, non-stop flight that takes three days and four nights sleeping on the wing, preparation for which entails the bird increasing its weight by 70 grams. The energy burn-rate during the flight, however, is 1 gram of fat per one hour’s flight, leaving the plover well short of its target. At which point the hapless, non-swimming bird should plunge from the sky to its death in the ocean and no more be seen.

It doesn’t. The plover flies with other plovers and changes place in the formation by rotation to lessen wind-drag. Thus the plover burns less energy and successfully reaches its destination with milligrams of fuel to spare.

How does this creature navigate to Hawaii in the first place? What manual does it use to calculate how much fuel to take onboard? Alaska to Hawaii is no garden jaunt. Just one degree off and you’re shark biscuit. What navigational aids does the bird use? What about side-winds, head-winds, tail-winds and storms – how are these compensated for even when the bird is asleep on the wing? Scientists have no idea how the plover does it but it does. And those chicks left behind in Alaska will tank themselves up with the required 70g before setting off on their own 88-hour beano, never having done it before. No compass. No GPS. Not one Michelin Guide between the lot of them.

How could this bird have evolved such navigation? Perhaps the Pacific is littered with unknown corpses of millions of transitional plovers, all of whom perished trying to evolve a navigation system for Hawaii. If so, why do we still have Pacific golden plovers?1

Homing pigeon
The same with the homing pigeon. These can fly thousands of miles from a point of release almost anywhere in the world, and return to the home loft unerringly.2 Upon release, they circle for a while to gain their bearings before setting off. Some scientists think the pigeon uses a ‘map and compass’ system, which appears to be orientated by the sun and Earth’s magnetic field. Studies show that if released at night, or if the magnetic field around the coup is disrupted, the pigeon’s homing ability is compromised. How could such a system evolve? Natural selection cannot select from a non-functioning precursor. What did the pigeons use for navigation before that? A torch?

Wasps and hornets
The Daily Mail writes:
“You don’t need a pest expert to tell you how a wasp can destroy the mood at your barbecue. But they could help you with planning dates to avoid them. According to a study, wasps are at their most annoying in British gardens during the last few days of July - so watch out this week….

Homeowners should not try to remove a wasp or hornet nest themselves. Hornet colonies reach their peak population in late summer and can contain 700 large, angry insects. Wasp nests are even larger - and can contain up to 10,000 insects. The creatures can mobilise the entire nest to sting in defence of an attack….

Killing a hornet near its nest can also be dangerous. The insects release a distress pheromone that could trigger an attack from the whole colony. Traces of the chemical left behind on clothes can provoke an angry reaction much later in the day.”3

And sure enough, the following day:

“A grandfather has died after being attacked by a swarm of wasps. George Moody, 64, accidentally disturbed a nest as he walked with a friend in the countryside near his home. He is believed to have suffered a fatal allergic reaction when he was stung dozens of times. Wasp experts say that when angry, the insects release pheromones which encourage other members of the nest to join in an attack. The number of wasps in each colony increases at the height of summer, reaching as many as 10,000 per nest.”4

Where does this programming come from? What did the hornets and wasps use to defend themselves with during the hundreds of thousands of years it took for this co-ordinated attack strategy to evolve?

Dragonflies
In the larval stage, dragonflies feed on tadpoles. When a tadpole is attacked, it releases a signal to warn other tadpoles to change their colour and escape. When the dragonfly sprouts wings, it has four of them on its back in two sets of two. The insect can fly forwards, backwards and even bank in a turn, revealing complexity in how the wings work aerodynamically. The wings are wafer thin but veined to provide maximum flexibility and strength. How did the dragonfly survive before all these structures and skills were in place? Where are the fossilised remains of its transitional forms? Perhaps the dragonfly looks finished because it is.
Here’s another thing:

“They are the size of a tiny paper aeroplane. And faced with the underside of a shoe, or the maritime storms of the Indian Ocean, they are about as robust as one. So the fact that this small, delicate species of dragonfly commutes an amazing 12,000 miles every year is no mean feat.

According to new research by British naturalist Charles Anderson, the Pantala flavescens species migrates farther than any other insect, even though it is barely 5cm long and boasts flimsy 8cm wings…. Incredibly, these bold little insects migrate at an altitude of 1,000m, double the height of the world's tallest building, the Taipei 101 tower, in the Taiwanese capital. They also cleverly take advantage of the prevailing winds of the so-called Intertropical Convergence Zone…. 

They begin their epic journey every August, flying from southern India, via the Maldives and the Seychelles, to Mozambique on the east coast of Africa. They complete their voyage in December  -  before flying back again. Not a bad summer holiday, if you can get it.”5

Whales
The largest creatures ever to live on Earth dwell in the ocean but are air-breathing mammals. No recovered dinosaur remains even approach the size of the largest blue whales found, which can weigh up to 300,000 lbs and measure over 110 feet in length. Their tongue can weigh as much as an elephant and when fully extended, the blue whale’s mouth can hold up to 90 tonnes of food.

Blue whales feed almost exclusively on krill, a small shrimp-like crustacean abundant in the oceans. The feeding pattern is unique. To sustain its daily requirement of around 1.5 million calories, the blue whale feeds only in areas with maximum krill. The whale dives down and releases a ring of bubbles which rise and form a ‘net’ for the krill, which flee from the bubbles into the centre of the ring. The whale has trapped its prey with nothing but bubbles! The great beast then rises up through the centre of the ring with its mouth open and gulps down the krill. And anything else, such as squid, which happens to be caught up with the prey.

The flippers contain blood vessels close to the surface which act as a cooling system, regulating the inner temperature of this creature. Blue whale vocalisations are intricate and, according to Richardson et al, used for perhaps six functions:

• Maintenance of inter-individual distance
  
• Species and individual recognition
  
• Contextual information transmission (e.g., feeding, alarm, courtship)
  
• Maintenance of social organization (e.g., contact calls between females and males)
  
• Location of topographic features
  
• Location of prey resources 6
  

If evolution is ongoing, why does the whale seem finished and uniquely suited to its environment? How did it evolve its navigation, feeding and calling skills? What are the odds of all the components of the blue whale coming together by accident? And then the cheetah? And the kangaroo?

Sparrows
Sparrows are an every-day wonder most fail to recognise. They are so manoeuvrable, they can fly through a tree and not hit a thing. The sparrow looks finished; so finished, in fact, that it can be found in diverse lcations around the world, adapted to its environment. Adaptation not evolution. The sparrow can make minute adjustments in flight by flaring and rotating its primary feathers to suit. How long did it take to get that right? Dr Jobe Martin:

“Evolution teaches that feathers came from scales because birds came from reptiles. But [feathers have] no muscles, no folicle, the whole works peels off, there’s no relationship there. If [birds] came from reptiles, you would expect their bones to be like reptile bones. They’re nothing like reptile bones. They have little air-pockets through them. They can even carry air in their bones like lungs. Their bones are lightweight and made for flying…. A sparrow’s heart is so efficient it can beat up to 760 beats per minute. It has a very short digestive system with concentrated digestive juices because you can’t have a whole lot of weight on the bird or it won’t fly. So it has to eat and then digest it quickly, and then get rid of its waste. All that had to be figured out and thought through in the design of the bird, just as in the design of the firefly and the design of the dragonfly.”7

And the design of the Corvette. Designers can recognise a designed system in the same way a florist knows a rose. They have a nose for it. A designed system works a certain way. It’s put together in a certain order so the different stages of construction logically proceed to the next step. The other choice is random processes acting over infinity, and then you have to come up with the transitory bits as proof if you want to punt it as science.

Sparrows lay their eggs so they are unencumbered with extra weight. Fur begins to fall off the lower chest to expose skin which the bird holds in contact with the egg. This ‘brooding spot’ develops great sensitivity during this phase. A communication transmits between the bird and egg via the brooding spot, so if there is a temperature or moisture variance, the sparrow can adjust its position to suit the egg. This is design. You don’t get a sparrow to do this by mistake. Ornithologist Dr Russ DeFusco gives another example:

“Penguins actually incubate eggs on the top of their feet. They put the egg on their feet so they can keep it off the ice and snow. And then they fold a patch of belly skin and feathers over the egg and completely encase it on top of their feet. But it’s a very sophisticated mechanism for keeping the temperature under direct control for the developing embryo in the egg.”8

Dr Martin: “How would that evolve? If you did not have that in the bird with the very first egg the bird laid, that egg would just sit there and die. This comes back to the irreducible complexity idea. All the parts have to be there from the very beginning or you don’t have the creature. If you don’t have the brooding spot, you don’t have the eggs. If you don’t have the ability to make the egg, you’re not going to fly.”9

Other examples of animals with irreducibly complex systems include the elephant, hippo, bee, hummingbird, dog, horse, penguin, fly, cuttlefish – the list is extensive. On the bottom of rivers and creeks in western America you will find the lampsillis mussel. This creature reproduces by pushing some its soft tissue out to form what looks like a struggling minnow on its shell, complete with ‘eyes’. A certain type of bass or trout is attracted to the wriggling prey and comes down to investigate. At precisely the moment the fish lunges for the bait, the mussel explodes its larvae and eggs into the bass’s mouth, where they get caught in the gills and attach as parasites. Here they feed on the blood of the host fish until large enough to detach and fall to the bottom to grow.

How does a mussel evolve that reproductive strategy? How does it know to form the right bait, or even which fish will be interested? Where does it get the information to know how to mimic the movements of that fish’s bait in the first place? And at what point did it learn precisely the right instant to explode its larvae and eggs into the fish’s mouth?

Perigrine Falcon and Goshawk
Here’s a real treat. Go for a ride with a falcon and goshawk and in so doing, ask yourself how these creatures could have evolved through natural selection acting on random variations with these amazing skills. Such dexterity is not learned by the youngsters, it is pre-programmed. All skills would had to have been in place from the beginning of the species or the birds would have killed themselves in the first few seconds of flight. And what do we know about birds with broken necks? They don’t evolve or pass anything onto their children.

Some evolutionists come clean
Plants: “...As yet, we have not been able to trace the phylogenetic history of a single group of modern plants from its beginning to the present.”10 – Professor Chester A Arnold, Professor of Botany and Curator of Fossil Plants, University of Michigan

“I still think that, to the unprejudiced, the fossil record of plants is in favour of special creation.... Can you imagine how an orchid, a duckweed, and a palm have come from the same ancestry, and have we any evidence for this assumption? The evolutionist must be prepared with an answer, but I think that most would break down before an inquisition. Textbooks hoodwink.”11 – Professor E J H Corner, Professor of Tropical Botany, Cambridge University, England

Fishes: “The geological record has so far provided no evidence as to the origin of the fishes....”12 – JR Norman, Assistant Keeper, Department of Zoology, British Museum of Natural History, London

Amphibians: “...None of the known fishes is thought to be directly ancestral to the earliest land vertebrates. Most of them lived after the first amphibians appeared, and those that came before show no evidence of developing the stout limbs and robs that characterized the primitive tetrapods... Since the fossil material provides no evidence of other aspects of the transformation from fish to tetrapod, palaeontologists have had to speculate how legs and aerial breathing evolved...”13 – Barbara J Stahl, St Anselm’s College, USA

Birds: “The [evolutionary] origin of birds is largely a matter of deduction. There is no fossil evidence of the stages through which the remarkable change from reptile to bird was achieved.”14 – W E Swinton, British Museum of Natural History, London

“The problem [of how feathers evolved from scales] has been set aside, not for want of interest, but for lack of evidence. No fossil structure transitional between scale and feather is known, and recent investigators are unwilling to found a theory on pure speculation [they are?]. It seems, from the complex construction of feathers, that their evolution from reptilian scales would have required an immense period of time and involved a series of intermediate structures. So far, the fossil record does not bear out that supposition.” – Barbara J Stahl, St Anselm’s College, USA

Mammals: “Each species of mammal-like reptile that has been found appears suddenly in the fossil record and is not preceded by the species that is directly ancestral to it...”15 – Tom Kemp, Curator of Zoological Collections at the Oxford University Museum, England

Barbara J Stahl states, “Because of the nature of the fossil evidence, palaeontologists have been forced to reconstruct the first two-thirds of mammalian history in great part on the basis of tooth morphology.” 16

Man: “In spite of recent findings, the time and place of origin of order primates remains shrouded in mystery.”17 – Elwyn L Simons, Department of Geology and Geophysics, Yale University

“Amid the bewildering array of early fossil hominoids, is there one whose morphology makes it as man’s hominid ancestor? If the factor of genetic variability is considered, the answer appears to be no.”18 – Professor Robert B Eckhardt, Human genetics and Anthropology, Pennsylvania State University, USA

“Modern apes, for instance, seem to have sprung out of nowhere. They have no yesterday, no fossil record. And the true origin of modern humans – of upright, naked, tool-making, big-brained beings – is, if we are to be honest with ourselves, an equally mysterious matter.”19 – Dr Lyall Watson, anthropologist

”The problem with a lot of anthropologists is that they want so much to find a hominid that any scrap of bone becomes a hominid bone.” – Dr Tim White, anthropologist, University of California Berkeley

RESOURCES
Want to know more about this fascinating subject?
ORIGINS – THE GREATEST SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY by Phillip Day
Expelled – No Intelligence Allowed, a documentary by Ben Stein