BP Books, Tulsa Oklahoma, 2019, 230 pages, $14.95
Evolutionists are aware of the power of the argument from design, but rather than explain how mutations and natural selection can produce ANY design, good, bad or indifferent, they attempt to question the intelligence of the designer they so adamantly oppose.
Aside from the hubris of critiquing systems that are imperfectly understood, their objection often comes down to “personal incredulity” and completely avoids exploring any possibility of a logical reason for the feature. It is akin to the vestigial organ/junk DNA approach, “I don’t know what this is, it must be useless.”
Spine: Bergman first deals with evolutionary explanations for back pain, based on the assumption that we were originally intended to walk on all fours with an arched back. The “S” shaped (back to front) spinal curve that humans require to stand upright is thus felt to be the cause of back pain. Popular therapies for decades included attempts to restore the dome shaped curve (kyphosis) and reduce the lumbar hollow (lordosis). In the process, the real causes of back pain in “the civilized world,” namely sedentary lifestyle and muscle weakness, were missed. Neither of these is helped by the obsolete advice “avoid walking or jogging” and “go to bed.” How much pain and suffering, even unnecessary -- and often unsuccessful – surgery resulted?
Hand: Bergman cites the analysis of a Professor Nathan Lents that the wrist “is way more complicated than it needs to be,” not stopping to marvel at the amazing abilities of the whole hand. This is an example of objection without analysis, like telling Mozart that his music has too many notes. But amazing engineering is admitted by an evolutionist as long as he can attribute it to “nature” as George McGavin did when he stated, “The hand is one of the most beautiful and complex pieces of natural engineering in the human body.”
Pharynx: Is having a common pathway for the intake of food, water and air as well as the outflow of speech “the height of stupidity” as critics claim? To prevent choking, there is an efficient mechanism for closing off the air passages when swallowing, backed up by the ability to cough. Choking is rare and often related to inappropriate things mouthed by infants or neurologic problems in old age. If there were separate pathways, you could die of a stuffy nose, you could not increase your air intake when exercising and the mucus that sweeps the respiratory tract could not be swallowed and digested but would have to be blown into the environment.
Larynx: The left recurrent laryngeal nerve is an inviting target for the design skeptics. It travels with the vagus nerve into the chest, loops around the aorta then ascends to the larynx. On the right side, the nerve loops under the subclavian artery because the embryological right aortic arch is eventually absorbed. Richard Dawkins claims that this arrangement proves that humans came from fish and the larynx from gills. It does not seem to be of concern to the critics that the larynx functions at least adequately and in the case of singers, exceptionally, even though the signals to each side have to travel different distances. Embryological development is important, not because ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, but because the blood and nerve supply for each organ needs to function throughout development. Organs form and move to their final destination carrying those structures with them. Adding them in later in development is not an option.
Eye: The inverted retina looks like low hanging fruit to the design doubter, with the light sensitive cells (the rods and the cones) behind a layer of bipolar and ganglion cells with their nerve fibers. Those fibers then pass through the retina and leave the eyeball as the optic nerve, creating a blind spot in each eye. Critics note that the squid and octopus have their light sensitive cells facing the light with the nerve fibers behind them and wonder why the creator gave an inferior system to his highest creation. But, of course, there is more to the story. Cephalopods live in low light. Might that have something to do with the question? Science ought to ask why, but often fails to do so when it is “just stupid.”
As it turns out, the extremely metabolically active vertebrate retinal cells need to be in close contact with the blood supply in the pigmented choroid layer for oxygen and nutrients as well as carrying off excessive heat. The choroid epithelial cells also recycle the used photoactive chemical, retinal, and prevent a toxic buildup of free radicals and superoxides. And is the presence of the nerve cells detrimental to vision? No! Vertebrate eyes work very well, thank you. And it turns out that the nerves are not only basically transparent but actually function like fiberoptics. The blind spots? They are in the peripheral vision and at different places in the two eyes.
And to think, Darwin himself was distressed at the prospect of building an eye by small random steps – and all he knew about was the optics! His disciples are much more arrogant and think that by pointing out “design flaws” they have proved the whole thing happened without intelligence! Perhaps the most significant defects they reveal are their incomplete research and faulty logic.
Of course, Biblical Creation does include the understanding that because of the Fall and Curse, some things have gone wrong. The fact that systems still work so well is testimony to the quality of the original design and its backup systems.
I picture the critics trying to answer God:
“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand.”¹
The book has some technical explanations that require background knowledge but the fact that there are reasonable explanations for the evolutionary “Gotcha” arguments is clear throughout.
¹ Job 38:2
Reviewed by Ross S. Olson MD