Another Evolution question
Posted by Steve on April 20th, 2010
You may have noticed, I’m not an evolutionist. There’s good reason for this, in my mind. Now I’m not a good enough debater to take on Richard Dawkins, but if anyone knows him, I wouldn’t mind to hear his take on this. I might have to buy his book just so I can see how he answers some of these questions myself.
But for me, the theory of evolution as espoused by Charles Darwin’s Origin Of Species is so full of unanswered questions and has more holes than a collander. It should be pointed out though that Origin Of Species theory of Evolution refers to something very different from natural selection which many biologists fail to observe in their arguments with creationists. Natural selection is demonstrable and can be seen in nature almost everywhere. However, natural selection occurs when genetic information is LOST due to environmental conditions selecting genetic traits that results in less diversity. Origin of Species requires genetic information to be created.
True evolution (Origin of Species type) is a little like taking a photocopy of a page from a book, and after doing a million copies, each one from the previous copy, and expecting to get a page from a different book come out at the end. If you try this and works please let me know! My expectation is that you’d end up with a load of unintelligable noise on the page instead of legible letters.
So anyway – here’s the main question for Evolutionists that I had this morning;
Look at the insect world. They have no lungs and rely on diffusion for getting oxygen to their cells. This severely limits the maximum size to which they can grow, because diffusion will only take the oxygen so far, depending also on the climate within which they live. Mammals on the other hand have lungs, which allows for significantly better transfer of oxygen around the organisms body. If insects had lungs they could be so much bigger, and therefore so much fitter, than their competitors.
So how come there are zero insects with lungs? Surely in millions of years, the genetic mutation that supposedly led to insects evolving into arachnids (with their lung-book) could have been ‘backported’ into an insect. It’s curious to understand why the genetic mutation that led to lungbook also meant that insects suddenly grew an extra pair of legs… Shouldn’t we see some insects with 8 legs, and some with a lungbook?
And why stop at the most immediate neighbour in the ‘evolutionary hierarchy’? Should it not be possible for the genetic mutation that gives amphibians lungs and gills, to be ‘backported’ to insects for example?
This is just one of the reasons I can’t believe in Evolution. Over the next few weeks I shall post more of my musings in seperate subjects, that all go together to mean that if you’re an evolutionist, I believe you actually have to have a stronger faith than I do in my Christian beliefs because evolution really requires you to take an awful lot of things ‘on faith’.
Please feel free to leave your comments below. Overtly offensive comments will be deleted, but if you have sensible discussion points I’ll be happy to read and possibly reply.
The answer to your question is that we will see huge insects one day. Actually we probably will not see them as as we will have died out from some cataclysmic disaster. As a result there will be an empty niche waiting to be filled by some entrepreneurial new species. With all the extra space around the new species will finally have a chance to take off, but to start with it will be a bit substandard in its ability to survive in it’s wide open new space. Once the species kicks off it will evolve into more suitable species which will thrive. The answer to why they don’t fill the gap that we occupy yet is that we are here eating all the stuff and a slightly larger insect is not yet good enough to beat us mammals and fish and birds. As soon as a big ugly insect mutates, it is too cumbersome and not yet effective enough to take our place. It could happen without a cataclysm of dare I say it “Biblical proportions”, but it is much easier for a new and slightly weird mutated creation to get the chance to really evolve fast when there is plenty of space and food. May I recommend you start with the Greatest Show on Earth, then head to the selfish gene. Please read a whole book before giving up and burning it on a pyre of other educational non-fiction books. When you really get into it then you can take the time to read the Ancestors Tale, perhaps his most interesting, but possible a little heavy to start with. Don’t start with the God delusion, it is clear that you will only get upset.
I hope you don’t take any of these comments as offensive, and I am more than happy enough to help your thoughts on this issue evolve to understand, but not necessarily agree with, the general direction that the best minds have been building on over the last hundred years or so.