Part One: Introduction to Series and Why Natural Selection Can’t Create New Life Forms

 When it comes to the existence of life on Earth, its amazing complexity and fascinating diversity, there are only two possibilities: naturalistic evolution (Darwinism) or divine Creation (God). If one is false, by default the other is correct. There are no other options. There is more than enough compelling scientific evidence for the latter paradigm—divine creation. (I present this evidence in my revised and expanded edition of Defending Your Faith.)

 In this new series of blogs, titled “Creatures and Features that Evolution Can’t Explain,” I’m going to focus on seldom-used evidence for divine creation. Rather than point out scientific evidence, I will give examples in the animal and plant world of creation speaking for itself. In other words, there are countless animals and plants that could not exist unless designed and created by God.

Evolution can provide no demonstrable pathway for any of them to have developed through random natural processes. In particular, through natural selection, as commonly understood. Although hundreds of examples can be given, I will focus on ten or eleven that demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt only a transcendent, all-knowing, all-powerful God could create life on Earth.

Natural Selection Doesn’t Create New Life

Before sharing my first example next week, it’s important to understand why natural selection is unable to account for the emergence of new life forms from ancestral life form, such as fish evolving into reptiles or reptiles evolving into mammals through multiple thousands of transitional steps (macroevolution).

In an evolutionary scenario, each stage of an organism’s development must have function or it will have no survival value and therefore fail to develop any further. The key here is function, as Christian scholar and fellow at the Discovery institute’s Center for Science and culture,  Nancy Pearcey, explains in her book Total Truth:

Natural selection is said to work on tiny, random improvements in function—which means it does not kick in until there is at least some function to select from. But irreducible complex systems don’t have any function until a minimum number of parts are in place—which means those parts themselves cannot be products of natural selection. We’re talking about a minimum number of interacting pieces that must be present before natural selection even begins to operate. (186)

Professor Dr. Stephen Meyer explained it similarly in an interview with Lee Strobel in his book, The Case for a Creator:

Natural selection only preserves things that perform a function—in other words, which help the organism survive to the next generation….The problem with irreducibly complex systems is that they perform no function until all the parts are present and working together in close coordination with one another. So natural selection cannot help you build such systems. (79)

Keep this in mind as you read my new series of blogs. All the “creatures and features” I describe could not have developed through natural selection as Darwinism requires. They exist because God designed and created them. ©

Next week will begin examples of creatures and features that could exist only because God created them.