ONE HEARTBEAT AWAY - PART 18

 ONE HEARTBEAT
 AWAY

PART  18



Mark Cahill's Book

                 

Evolution defying creatures

If any creature can be found that defies the rules of evolution in such a way that it could not possibly have evolved, then it must have been created.

And if there is even one animal that required God as its Creator, why not believe in God as the Creator of everything else as well?  When you honestly examine the evidence, it just doesn't make sense that design could have come about without a designer. 

Here are some examples of wonderfully designed creatures that defy evolution.

The Tick

The first "wonderfully designed"  creature we are going to look at is the detestable common tick.

Dr. Jose Ribeiro, of the

 National Institutes of 
Health, gives the tick a
 lot of credit:   "Ticks
 know everything we 
know and don't know (chemically) about pharmacology.

The tiny tick has dozens of elaborate chemical weapons in its saliva, which it injects into the wound. To help it camp out on its host for a few days and avoid detection, the tick's saliva contains an anaesthetic so the host won't feel it and interrupt the meal.

To keep the host's blood flowing , the tick's saliva contains compounds to disable the clotting mechanism. It also tricks the immune system into keeping white cells away so the tick consumes a feast of the red cells it needs.

Entomologist  Stephen Wikel, who has studied 10,000 ticks, stated: "We probably have a lifetime of work head of us,"  in order to discover how this complex process works. 

Dr. Ribeiro said  these tiny creatures "have a very ancient wisdom."  Do you think random natural processes could have come up with this incredible chemical cocktail - or could this come only from an intelligent Creator?

The Gecko Lizard:   Next consider the amazing gecko lizard., which can walk across the ceiling upside down without falling off. On its toe pads are an estimated 500 million fibers tipped with little suction cups. In addition, the tips of the lizard's toes bend upward so that it can peel off the suction cups gradually at each step and not get stuck to the surface. 

Dr. Robert Kofahl explains:  The extraordinary microscopic structure of the gecko lizard's toe pads clearly indicates intelligent purposeful design. No remotely  plausible scheme for the origin of the gecko's suction cups by random mutations and natural selection has yet been proposed by evolutionary theorists. And should some scientist with a clever imagination succeed in devising such a scheme, he would still be without a scrap of fossil evidence to demonstrate that the hypothetical process of evolution actually took place in the past.

Why would the process of  random mutations and blind chance put suction cups on the gecko's feet?  Only half a suction cup would make the gecko lunch for some other creature! Too much suction and the gecko isn't going anywhere!  

How did mindless evolution know to also create toes that curl  upward to control the suction?

Only the hand of God could have created the purposeful design of the gecko lizard.

The ocean sponge

Another creature that boggles the mind, is the seemingly simple ocean sponge., which scientists have discovered actually produces fibre optics better than our most sophisticated manufacturing methods.

The sponge's thin glass fibres are capable of transmitting light better than industrial fibre optic cables used for  telecommunication. Commercial manufacturing methods require high temperatures and produce relatively brittle cable that can crack if bent too far. The sponge's fibres, grown at cold temperatures, are much more flexible, and can even be tied in a knot without breaking. By adding traces of sodium to the fibres, the sponge increases their ability to conduct light - something that cannot be done in commercial manufacturing. Scientists at Bell Laboratories hope to eventually learn how to duplicate the manufacturing process of this lowly sponge. 

Joanna Aizenburg at Bell Labs admitted, "Modern technology cannot yet compete  with some of the sophisticated optical systems possessed by biological organisms. "  Most of us would think that an ocean sponge is a  pretty rudimentary life form on the evolutionar chart, yet top scientists are trying to copy its "sophisticated optical sysrem."

Do they see evidence of intelligent design and give credit where it is due? Surprisingly, no. Chemist Geri  Richmond said of the sponge;
...It's such a wonderful example of how exquisite nature is as a designer and a builder of complex systems. We can draw it on paper and think about engineering it, but we're in the stoneage compared to nature (emphasis added).

According to the journal Nature, there is an emerging field called biomimetics, in which scietists try to understand how biological systems are engineered and apply the principles to developing technology. 

Doesn't it strike you that  something that's "engineered" and that's more advanced than what scientists can create, couldn't have just happened by mindless, random chance processes? That's what the statistical analyses we looked at before tell us too. 

next post  21st August