Download Independent Design (as believed by early naturalist.)

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 modern species, 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 twentytwo distinct species just 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.