The Surprisingly Lamarckian Superstitions of Evolutionists

Another very important issue on the origin of marine mammals is the great anatomical and physiological differences between them and their alleged terrestrial ancestors. Evolutionists assume that step-by-step processes were at work for all the necessary transitions, but this is an absurd idea since many of the systems in discussion are irreducibly complex structures that could not form by successive stages.

Let us consider just one case: the ear structure. Like us, land mammals trap sounds from the outside world in the outer ear, amplify them with the bones in the middle ear, and turn them into signals in the inner ear. Marine mammals have no outer ear. They hear sounds by means of vibration-sensitive receptors in their lower jaws. The crucial point is that any evolution by stages between one perfect aural system to a completely different one is impossible. The transitional phases would not be advantageous. An animal that slowly loses its ability to hear with its ears, but has still not developed the ability to hear through its jaw, is at a disadvantage.

The question of how such a "development" could come about is an insoluble dilemma for evolutionists. The mechanisms evolutionists put forward are mutations and these have never been seen to add unequivocally new and meaningful information to animals' genetic information. It is unreasonable to suggest that the complex hearing system in sea mammals could have emerged as the result of mutations.

But evolutionists do believe in this unreasonable scenario and this problem stems from a kind of superstition about the origin of living things. This superstition is the magical "natural force" that allows living things to acquire the organs, biological changes, or anatomical features that they need. Let us have a look at a few interesting passages fromNational Geographic's article "Evolution of Whales":

…I tried to visualize some of the varieties of whale ancestors that had been found here and nearby... As the rear limbs dwindled, so did the hip bones that supported them. That made the spinal column more flexible to power the developing tail flukes. The neck shortened, turning the leading end of the body into more of a tubular hull to plow through the water with minimum drag, while arms assumed the shape of rudders. Having little need for outer ears any longer, some whales were receiving waterborne sounds directly through their lower jawbones and transmitting them to the inner ears via special fat pads. Each whale in the sequence was a little more streamlined than earlier models and roamed farther from shore.167

On close inspection, in this whole account the evolutionist mentality says that living things feel changing needs according to the changing environment they live in, and this need is perceived as an "evolutionary mechanism." According to this logic, less needed organs disappear, and needed organs appear of their own accord!

Anyone with the slightest knowledge of biology will know that our needs do not shape our organs. Ever since Lamarck's theory of the transfer of acquired characteristics to subsequent generations was disproved, in other words for a century or so, that has been a known fact. Yet when one looks at evolutionist publications, they still seem to be thinking along Lamarckian lines. If you object, they will say: "No, we do not believe in Lamarck. What we say is that natural conditions put evolutionary pressure on living things, and that as a result of this, appropriate traits are selected, and in this way species evolve." Yet here lies the critical point: What evolutionists call "evolutionary pressure" cannot lead to living things acquiring new characteristics according to their needs. That is because the two so-called evolutionary mechanisms that supposedly respond to this pressure, natural selection and mutation, cannot provide new organs for animals:

- Natural selection can only select characteristics that already exist, it cannot create new ones.

- Mutations cannot add to the genetic information, they can only destroy the existing one. No mutation that adds unequivocally new, meaningful information to the genome (and which thus forms a new organ or new biochemical structure) has ever been observed.

If we look at the myth of National Geographic's awkwardly moving whales one more time in the light of this fact, we see that they are actually engaging in a rather primitive Lamarckism. On close inspection, National Geographic writer Douglas H. Chadwick "visualizes" that "Each whale in the sequence was a little more streamlined than earlier models." How could a morphological change happen in a species over generations in one particular direction? In order for that to happen, representatives of that species in every "sequence" would have to undergo mutations to shorten their legs, that mutation would have to cause the animals no harm, those thus mutants would have to enjoy an advantage over normal ones, the next generations, by a great coincidence, would have to undergo the same mutation at the same point in its genes, this would have to carry on unchanged for many generations, and all of the above would have to happen by chance and quite flawlessly.

If the National Geographic writers believe that, then they will also believe someone who says: "My family enjoys flying. My son underwent a mutation and a few structures like bird feathers developed under his arms. My grandson will undergo the same mutation and the feathers will increase. This will go on for generations, and eventually my descendants will have wings and be able to fly." Both stories are equally ridiculous.

As we mentioned at the beginning, evolutionists display the superstition that living things' needs can be met by a magical force in nature. Ascribing consciousness to nature, a belief encountered in animist cultures, is interestingly rising up before our eyes in the 21st century under a "scientific" cloak. Henry Gee, the editor of Nature and an undisputedly prominent evolutionist, points to the same fact and admits that explaining the origin of an organ by its necessity is like saying;

... our noses were made to carry spectacles, so we have spectacles. Yet evolutionary biologists do much the same thing when they interpret any structure in terms of adaptation to current utility while failing to acknowledge that current utility needs tell us nothing about how a structure evolved, or indeed how the evolutionary history of a structure might itself have influenced the shape and properties of that structure.168

167 Douglas H. Chadwick, "Evolution of Whales," National Geographic, November 2001, p. 69.
168 Henry Gee, In Search Of Deep Time: Beyond The Fossil Record To A New History Of Life, The Free Press, A Division of Simon & Schuster Inc., 1999, p. 103.