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This article discusses the evidence of evolution and challenges the concept of independent design. It examines examples from the Galapagos and Cape Verde Archipelagos, as well as the fossil record of elephants, to illustrate the patterns and processes of evolution.
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Independent Design(as believed by early naturalist.) • An intelligent Designer created each organism separately and independently of every other organism. • Species never give rise to other species. • Each organism was independently designed and created to perfectly fit the environment in which they live.
There is a considerable degree of resemblance in the volcanic nature of the soil, in climate, height, and size of the islands, between the Galapagos and Cape de Verde Archipelagos: But what an entire and absolute difference in their inhabitants! The inhabitants of the Cape de Verde islands are related to those of Africa, like those of the Galapagos to America. I believe this grand fact can receive no sort of explanation on the ordinary view of independent creation.Charles Darwin
Why would species which had been designed just for the Galapagos, and nowhere else on earth bear so plainly the stamp of affinity to those designed for South America? Conversely,why would species which had been designed just for the Cape Verde bear so plainly the stamp of the inhabitants on its closest continental land mass; Africa?
Evolution offers the perfect explanation • Both groups of islands are geologically recent. • A few founding species from the respective mainlands colonized each archipelago. • Geographical isolation allowed natural selection to go to work. • Thus, the new species that developed on each island group are the evolutionary modified descendants of the respective founding populations. • This explains why, each archipelago has its own collection of unique species, and why those species most closely resemble their respective nearby mainlands.
Can independent design answer the question posed by the archipelagos? • Why was the designers powerful imaginative genius limited by the neighboring land masses? • The advocates of independent design seem to be able to offer no other explanation except that it was simply the whim of the designer. That is just the way he chose to do it • Are we to believe that it was the designer’s choice to mislead by producing sequences of organisms that mimic evolution so precisely that generations of biologist would be sure to misinterpret them?
His tail is like a cedar. The sinews of his thighs are knit together.His bones are like brass cylinders;His ribs are like bars of iron.He is the Masterpiece of My animal creation:The one that made him furnished him alone with a sword Job 40:17-19
Elephants, like every other intelligently designed animal, must have appeared suddenly in the fossil records. Right?
Fossil Record of the Elephant • The skull, teeth, and jaws of elephants are distinctly different from other mammals making elephant fossils easy to recognize. • Over the years paleontologist have uncovered an array of extinct elephant fossils. • The fossil record shows a familiar branching lineage. • Can Independent Design explain the data found in the fossil record?
The Independently Designed Elephant • The designer must have first engineered a small trunk into a little critter called Paleomastodon about 35 million years ago.
The Independently Designed Elephant • Ten million years later, the trunk design was used again in a larger animal called Gomphotherium. • This time along with the trunk he also used a set of small protruding tusk. • The Designer thought the trunk was a good idea because he used it again in both Deinotherium and Platybelodon.
The Independently Designed Elephant • 6 million years ago, at the end of the Miocene, the trunk and tusk was used again on a large animal looking a lot like modern elephants called Primelephas. • The Independent Design process absolutely, positively requires the successive creation of increasingly elephant-like organisms over time.
The Independently Designed Elephant • First the designer experimented with one species (Primelephas) • He replaced it with three more modernspecies, one of which, Mammuthus became extinct. • Each was a perfectly designed and perfectly formed species. • The sequence of their appearances is a misleading coincidence
The Independently Designed Elephant • The four organisms near the tree’s apex are actually represent four different genera. • When one plots the entire species-specific fossil record of the elephants, we see not four but an amazing twenty-two distinct speciesjust in the last 6 million years • The designer has been busy! And what a stickler for repetitive work!
Intelligent Design • The classic branching of this lineage is a typical evolutionary pattern. • Intelligent design, however, regards the appearance of each new species as the result of an individual act on the part of a designer. • Any impression of a sequence is just a figment of our imagination.
Is it any wonder that biologists are unable to take intelligent design seriously? • Over and over again, the imposition of intelligent design requires us to imagine a designer who creates successive forms that mimic evolution.
The character of the Independent Designer. • Magician or master illusionists. • If this magical designer had anything in mind, it must have been to cast the illusion of evolution and nothing else.
