Answers to my Evolutionist Friends  ·   by Thomas F. Heinze

Back to Heinze Main Page

Present Day Examples of Evolution
by Thomas F. Heinze
 

We have seen that a number of the arguments which have been used to convince people that evolution took place really don't really show evolution at all. Likewise, just reading a school textbook, you would probably get the impression that there are all kinds of instances of evolution going on in our time. Examine more text books, however, and you will notice that the same few examples are repeated again and again in the various books, and others are only inferred.

Let's examine these commonly used "proofs" that evolution is going on today to see what they show and what they don't show, since what is not included is probably as significant as what is. For example, a great deal of research has been carried out for many years on the drosophila, a fruit fly, and on the E. coli bacteria, both of which produce new generations so rapidly that millions of generations have been studied and the mutations recorded. In the case of the fruit flies, the mutations, when not fatal, frequently caused visible defects such as the loss of wings or eyes, but all the fruit flies remained fruit flies and the bacteria remained bacteria. While this research has added to our knowledge about mutations and heredity, not one of the billions of individuals studied has ever evolved into a more complex life form, or provided other evidence that would serve to prove the theory of evolution. While evolutionists often refer to these studies, they don't include them among the text book examples of evolutionary progress in our time.

What are the examples of evolution taking place today that evolutionist authors consider good enough to include? Here they are, judge them for yourself.

The Examples
An English Sheep with Short Legs
A mutation caused short defective legs which were a disadvantage to the sheep and would have been eliminated by natural selection, except that they offered an advantage to the farmer who selected and protected them because he could use shorter fences.

This mutation did not give origin to any new organ, or make the sheep become a deer or some new type of animal. It did not add complex new information to the the Sheep's DNA which would enable it to compete more effectively. It actually went in the opposite direction of evolution. It simply gave sheep the ability to pass short defective legs along to their offspring.

Bacterial Resistance to Antibiotics

Some colonies of bacteria develop a resistance to an antibiotic resulting from a mutation that simplifies the bacteria's DNA instructions. This allows the bacteria to eat more types of food, including the antibiotic which previously would have killed them. While this is a helpful mutation for bacteria developing in the presence of antibiotics, placed in normal environments these bacteria are less viable than those without the mutation. The mutation subtracts rather than adding to the information content of the DNA of a bacterium and is not a step toward its becoming a frog, a prince or an elephant, but a step toward a more simple bacterium. (The same response applies to insects becoming resistant to insecticides)

Light Colored Moths Give Way to Dark Colored Moths

In England, peppered moths, which were almost all light colored, rested on white tree trunks where they had the advantage of protective coloration when hungry birds flew by looking for a meal.

With the coming of the industrial revolution, the tree trunks became dark with the smoke of industry. This meant that the light colored moths lost their protective coloration, and the birds could see and eat them. Before long most of the light colored moths had been eaten and substituted by dark moths which matched the new color of the tree trunks.

The change of color has often been attributed to mutations, and while this may be a kind of change that mutations could make, it now seems to have been established that both colors already existed in the DNA of the moths, just like some people have darker coloration than others. When the trees were white, few of the dark moths lived to reproduce, so many more light colored moths were born. Later, when the trees became dark, the situation was reversed; the dark moths were the ones with protective coloration and the population shifted in their favor with fewer light colored moths able to evade the birds and reproduce. Natural selection had really made significant changes in the coloration of the moth population. The majority were no longer white as before, but dark.

However, natural selection can only choose between traits which are present. The moths remained moths. None had become bats or humming birds, or even a different kind of moth. Later, ecological awareness led to cleaning up the industrial smoke and many of the trees returned to their former white color. So did the moths!

What Do These Examples Show?

Hopefully you have noticed that none of the illustrations of observed evolution are in the direction of greater complexity. None make any progress in the direction that could evolve a bacteria into a microbiologist or a spot on the skin into an eye. These examples do give evidence of change, which is another definition of the word "evolution," but they certainly do not provide evidence for the kind of evolution that the theory of evolution is all about. No new organs are being formed. No higher forms of life are developing. The only thing that has evolved is the definition of the word "evolution." Despite the fact that these illustrations can be used effectively in convincing people who don't notice the switch in definition, they provide no evidence for evolution in the sense of the word which the theory of evolution requires.

The random or downhill changes which mutations actually cause, could never have lifted us up from the microbes, or even from the apes. The increase in complexity that might cause a simpler major group to evolve into a higher one as the theory of evolution requires, is not only lacking in the fossil record, it is also lacking in the examples that evolutionists present as the best present day evidence for evolution.

Startling Facts About Moths and Butterflies

The introduction of the peppered moth illustration into millions of books promoting evolution throughout the world has opened up a can of worms (or should we say caterpillars) for evolutionary theory. Why? Because it makes us stop and ask where moths really came from. Are they a product of evolution? Let's look at the evidence.

The insistence that the moth's change of color has evolutionary significance is used to bring us to conclude that the other changes necessary to evolve a single celled animal into a moth also happened. This kind of reasoning does an end run around some very important facts:

- The stability which is built into the program in the DNA.

- No mutations have been observed, or fossil evidence found which would show that mutations have ever accumulated to build a complex new organ, or to change a simple animal into a more evolved one: A fish into a reptile, for example, or some earlier creature into a moth.

- The lepidoptera, the classification which includes butterflies and moths, have a fascinating life cycle which gives strong evidence against the idea that a one celled animal could ever change into a moth. When a moth or butterfly lays an egg, a small moth does not crawl out. A larva, or caterpillar does.

By the very nature of random mutations, it would be impossible for both the caterpillar and the moth stages to evolve together in a coordinated way at the same time. Which would most likely evolve first, a butterfly or moth with strong but light weight wings with the aerodynamics, nervous system and what-not necessary to fly, or a caterpillar which just crawls on the ground?

If we admit that the crawling stage is simpler and should evolve before the flying stage, we have raised an insurmountable problem for the evolutionist: The caterpillar has protective coloration and is often covered with disgusting stiff hairs that predators don't like. Butterflies and moths, however, have wings much larger than their bodies, like big bulls eyes to attract predators. The size of the wings keeps them from crawling easily in the grass or among the leaves where the caterpillars do well, and are almost invisible. Many butterflies flap brightly colored wings, as if they were waving banners saying "Here I am. Come eat me!" What survival value do big bright wings have that natural selection should choose them over a wonderfully camouflaged caterpillar? Some species may use their wings to attract the other sex, but there are many other methods for attracting the other sex which do not attract predators. Caterpillars chew on vegetation, making food available to them most of the year. Butterflies depend on nectar from flowers for sustenance, greatly reducing the period in which they can eat. Why would caterpillars with a strong survival advantage have turned into butterflies with survival disadvantages?

The Fantastic Transformation

If you wanted to invent an imaginary life cycle that could never happen by evolution, you would be hard pressed to invent one that would beat that of the moths and butterflies. The caterpillar stage goes through life eating voraciously, then he stops eating and changes into the mummy-like, immobile phase of his life cycle called the pupa or chrysalid. Some prepare for this stage by covering themselves with a cocoon, others hide in the dirt while still others hang suspended with tiny hooks from a pad made with silk which they have extruded and glued to a tree. Doing this, they put the principles of velcro into practical use long before human scientists were able to perfect the technique.

In the pupa stage the lepidoptera often resemble a tough little brown sack. Inside the sack, the caterpillar's organs break down into a sort of a liquid from which the wings, legs, eyes, etc. of the moth or butterfly are then constructed. The process is called metamorphosis.

Think about it. After the first caterpillar had turned to liquid, could it have waited millions of years for a fantastic series of mutations to use the liquid to build a beautiful creature that could fly? It is because the instructions for the transformation are already written in the DNA that the transformation takes place before the liquid rots. The change usually takes just a few days or weeks!

How much change is there?

- The caterpillar typically crawls in on three pairs of legs attached to his thorax and three more pairs on his abdomen. After the transformation, he flies off on two pairs of new wings so you may not even notice that he has just three pairs of legs instead of the six pairs he came in with.

- He goes into the pupa stage with a body consisting of 13 segments, but flies off with a new body of 10 segments.

- Before the caterpillar becomes a pupa it has six simple eyes on each side of its head. The butterfly or moth flies off with two compound eyes and usually one pair of simple eyes.

- The short antennae of the caterpillar are replaced by longer antennae.

- The caterpillar comes in without any organs for sex and reproduction, the butterfly/moth flies off with them.

- After the strong chewing jaws of the caterpillar turn to liquid, a sucking mouth is formed which has a long tube to insert into flowers. The tube coils up when not in use.

(1998 Encyclopedia Britannica, on CD). Groliers Multimedia Encyclopedia, 1988, Butterflies and Moths).

These are just some of the outward changes which can be easily observed. Inside are hidden a new nervous system and the muscles, glands, and what not that are necessary for the butterfly to fly and function! In addition, the two long and complex glands which the caterpillar used to extrude silk are absent after the transformation.

Evolutionary theory teaches that all living things were developed by chance mutations which introduced small random changes in DNA programs. To be accepted by natural selection, the theory maintains that these changes had to offer some survival advantage at every stage. Think about it. How could all this have happened in a sack full of liquid before it rotted? Actually, all the stages are written in the DNA and there is good evidence that they have always been there!

The Stages of Life

- Egg,
- Caterpillar,
- Pupa
- Butterfly,

If the caterpillar had, long ago, developed directly into a moth with no pupa stage in between and had left a lot of intermediate fossils to prove it, true believers in evolution might have found some way to explain away the fact that a better protected animal had evolved into something more vulnerable. But such fossils have not been found. The moth seems to have always had the amazing life cycle it has today.

As you read the literature and observe nature, search for suggestions as to how accidental mutations could write the thousands of lines of DNA code which would gradually program each of the very different stages of the life of the moth and keep them all coordinated. Good luck!

To my knowledge no way has ever been discovered, or even suggested, by which mutations could modify the DNA, to produce the complex programs for all four of the moth's greatly differing and but perfectly coordinated stages. It is not because of the evidence that most evolutionists, believe that it came about by mutations and natural selection. There is no such evidence. It is because their world view excludes the other alternative. Show these same people a simple mortar and pestle made by a primitive people, and they will immediately recognize that they were produced by intelligent beings. Things that are obviously made to work together just don't happen by chance.


 

Sex

Someone has said, "The chicken is an egg's way of making another egg!" In the case of the butterfly, things are not that simple.

A thinking person who really wants to believe in evolution must choose between some very discouraging choices. He can:

- Believe that caterpillars evolved first, and somehow survived without reproductive organs for however many millions of generations it took for the butterfly, the only part of the life cycle capable of sexual reproduction, to evolve.

- Believe that the caterpillar, or another of the earlier stages, evolved first, complete with reproductive organs, but lost them later.

- Believe that the more complex flying stage with the sexual organs evolved first and the simpler crawling stages evolved from it later.

- Believe that some completely unknown, and imaginary kind of super mutation wrote the entire DNA code for all four life phases (egg, caterpillar, pupa, and butterfly) all in one shot. so that there would be no necessity for reproductive possibilities in any stage but the last.

No way exists for any known types of mutations to account for any of these possibilities. Neither is there any evidence that the Lepidoptera ever lacked any of the stages which they have today..

The problem for evolution is not "What color moths would be left if those of the other color had been eaten?" It is "How could the egg, caterpillar, pupa and butterfly have developed in the first place?" I have personally read many books which defend amoeba to man evolution using the example of moth populations changing from a lighter to darker color, and claiming that these color changes are a wonderful example of evolution taking place. However, I cannot remember ever having read a single evolutionary author who ventured a suggestion of how evolution could possibly account for the development of the completely different, but completely coordinated phases of the life cycle in the first place.

Before the existence of any detailed knowledge of DNA, if one really wanted to believe in evolution, the theory might have seemed to provide a plausible explanation of how either a caterpillar or a moth might have evolved. However, to coordinate four completely different phases of life, which include the fantastic change that takes place in the pupa from the sexless caterpillar to the moth with its reproductive capacity, seems to be miles beyond anything that the random mutations could make in the DNA instructions.

Where did moths and butterflies come from? The evidence supports the thesis that God designed all of the stages of life of the lepidoptera, and programed the DNA to produce what He had designed. Before rejecting this idea, try to find some other rational explanation. Perhaps God made butterflies and moths for the same reason an artist puts his signature on a finished canvas: He wants people to know who painted it. Random accidents cannot write this kind of DNA code. It carries God's signature!

Butterflies and Navigation

Some butterflies have the ability to navigate long distances with great accuracy. Monarch butterflies fly south around 1800 miles in the autumn to a destination where many of them winter together before returning north the next spring. I have visited one of these places on the Monterey peninsula in California where I saw great clumps of them here and there, .attached first to trees, then one to another for shelter and heat.. The spot has been made a park to protect them.

How can the butterflies find this area only a few city blocks in size after flying thousands of miles? Do they have a tiny internal compass and navigational ability? Do they calculate their whereabouts from the position of the stars or communicate with a navigational satellite? It has been suggested that their eyes may have the ability to polarize light and analyze it. Without a map I couldn't find the place again myself.

Perhaps you are thinking, "They just have a better memory then you do. After making the flight with a butterfly who remembered his last trip they don't forget the way." Wrong! Their first trip is also their last trip. Each butterfly that flies north, lays eggs and dies before it gets back to the wintering place. The young butterflies, who have just come out of the pupa stage make the rest of the trip south

unguided (Monarch butterfly, Encyclopedia Britannica CD 98).

One piece of evidence after another fits together to show that mutations, as they are really are, could never account for butterflies and moths. Think about it! What kind of magical nonsensical imaginary mutations could possibly have invented the catterpillar to butterfly transformation and written the instructions into the DNA, added the rest of the life cycle, navigational ability and the other marvelous features.? If we follow the evidence it brings us to an intellegent creator. Those who, because of their presuppositions refuse to believe in God, make gods out of mutations, attributing to them the ability to work miracles, to do things real mutations have never done. No wonder evolutionists tend to concentrate their propoganda on the fact that more dark colored peppered moths are left after the birds have eaten up the light ones.

The Yucca Moth, a Helper

There is a saying in Italian, "one hand washes the other," that could be used to describe the relation between the yucca moth and the yucca plant. You will understand the phrase as we go along.

The yellow flower of a yucca plant closes by day and opens by night. During the day, the yucca moth sleeps safely within the flower. At night, when the flower opens, the yellow moth comes out and, guided by its sense of smell, flies from flower to flower. Surprisingly, it is not looking for nectar. While it was a caterpillar it ate, but since it's transformation into a moth, it does not even have anything to eat with.

It is out on a different mission. It is pollinating yucca plants. It does not accidentally brush against the pollen while doing something else, but purposely scrapes the pollen from the anthers with its legs, molds it into a ball, and holds the ball on top of its front legs with two specially made pollen holders. It then flies off, looking for a yucca blossom that needs pollinating. When it finds one, it sets the pollen ball on the stigma, and rams it down into the ovary with its head.

Other flying insects don't go to all this bother. While getting something to eat from a flower, a bit of pollen may stick to their legs. They don't mind if it rubs off on the next flower they visit, pollinating it in the process, but they don't put themselves out like the yucca moth.

Normal methods of polination won't work with the yucca, "Unlike many other plant species, they do not produce nectar or any other reward for pollinators...." (The Biosphere and Concepts of Ecology, The Study of Coevolution, Encyclopedia Britannica CD 98). The yucca moth is the only thing that stands between the yucca and extinction, but the moth knows just where and how to ram in that pollen ball. After completing its mission, the moth lays a couple of eggs on top of the pollen. Around 100 seeds develop and each moth larva eats twenty or thirty, leaving lots more to develop yucca plants. The yucca moth larvae eat nothing except yucca seeds, then go into the pupa stage from which the moth wriggles out.

Probably you are thinking that after the eggs hatched, their mammas must have come back to show them how to pollinate yuccas so their race could continue, but their mammas actually died right after laying their eggs and the little guys are on their own. Who taught them that the continuance of their race depended on their being able to pollinate yucca plants, and how to do it? Was it a series of random mutations, each of which changed the instructions for making one of their proteins, or was it God? Though it chooses the mutation alternative, the Encyclopedia Britannica admits,"The yucca can be fertilized by no other insect, and the moth can utilize no other plant." (Encyclopedia Britannica CD 98, yucca moth). Could mutations engineer an arrangement like that on top of their already impossible task of producing a moth in the first place?

Metamorphosis and You

The change of the caterpillar to a butterfly has often been used as an example of another type of transformation. It is a physical change which can teach us some spiritual lessons. When a caterpillar enters into the pupa stage, it is almost as if he had entered the tomb. His body parts decompose into a thick liquid and Mr. Caterpillar is no more. Then, after a few days, a butterfly comes out and flies off leaving the last resting place of the caterpillar empty. Christ was shut up in a grave, but when those who came to morn looked, they saw an empty tomb, and an angel who said: "Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified. He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay" (Matthew 28:5-6).

Later when Jesus came to the house where His disciples were meeting and talked to them, Thomas was not present, and refused to believe that Christ had risen from the dead, but he was soon convinced by the many inescapable proofs and exclaimed to Jesus, "My Lord and my God."

"Jesus saith unto him, ëThomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed'" (John 20:28, 29).

You have not seen. How can you have this blessing?

Believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross for your sins and that he rose again.

Some are probably saying, "Yeah, I'm supposed to believe that He rose again and went flying off into the clouds? How naive do you think I am?"

Yet those same people that believe Christ couldn't, believe that the caterpillar could!

Christ's resurrection is important to you personally because God did not stop writing after DNA, but also gave you the Bible. You can trust it when it says that Christ's resurrection is your guarantee that if you trust Christ to take you with Him, you will likewise rise (1 Corinthians 15).

The changed life

The caterpillar changing to a moth is frequently used as an illustration of the fact that our life is not finished when they close us in the cocoon, excuse me, the grave, but it is also used as an example of another spiritual reality: The fantastic change that takes place in the life of the person who receives new life in Christ.

The Bible says, "Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." 2 Co 5:17. A caterpillar crawling in and a butterfly flying out is also a natural illustration of the change that takes place when a man or woman who has been crawling in the dirt of sin hears that Jesus Christ gave his life for sinners, and trusts Christ to save him. Christ's Holy Spirit enters his life, giving it a spiritual dimension that it did not have before. He came in equipped only for this life, but he goes out with a new life which lets him fly to spiritual heights and fellowship with God Himself. Often the transformation is obvious: Drug addicts and alcoholics find that their chains have been broken. With God's power they overcome their weakness. Thieves stop stealing and not only work for their own living, but help others as well. Metamorphosis! New lives in another dimension!

God, who programed the DNA that sets caterpillars free to fly, gave you another book, the Bible, in which He explains how you too can have a transformed life. Why crawl, when by God's power you can fly?


Go to:  Thomas Heinze Page
Go to Intro of:  www.creationism.org