The California Collection/TheCaliforniaCollection.cdr/his065/btg0390.arj/BTG0390.TXT

Text File | 1991-03-17 | 8KB | 153 lines

WATCHES AND WOMBATS

by Ken Ham

Most people are familiar with the unique animals in the land down
under.  Australia boasts the largest variety of marsupials on any
continent, including kangaroos, koalas, bandicoots, and wombats.

Wombats are a thick-set, short-legged, tailless, and somewhat
badgerlike burrowing animal.  As are all marsupials, they exhibit
marvelous evidence for design.

I shall never forget the time on the ICR Australia tour when I took
the American tourists to a wildlife sanctuary on Queensland's famous
Gold Coast.  We all wanted to see the wombat, an animal that has a
pouch like the kangaroo and koala.  As with other marsupials, the
young wombat is born as a fetus about the size of a jelly bean, with
well-developed forelimbs which enable it to crawl into the mother's
pouch where it completes its development.  This, in itself, shows the
hand of the Creator, God.

The guide began his talk by telling us that the wombat has a very
unusual feature.  Its pouch opens backwards, not forward, like the
kangaroo.  It soon became quite obvious why the wombat needed a
backward-facing pouch.  The wombat tunnels under the ground with
burrows sometimes 100 feet long.  It doesn't take much thinking to
realize that if the wombat had a forward-facing pouch, the young would
not survive.  The pouch would fill up with dirt, and wombats would
become extinct.

However, the next statement by the guide surprised us all.  He stated
evolution is really wonderful--over millions of years it slowly turned
the wombat's pouch around to enable it to burrow under the ground.
One of my astute tourists then asked, "What happened during the
millions of years while it was still turning around?" Good question!

Now if the wombat needs a backward-facing pouch to tunnel under the
ground, what would be the obvious type of pouch for a tree-climbing
koala?  Our logic would come up with a forward-facing pouch so the
young would not fall out of the pouch to the ground.  However, the
koala also has a backward-facing pouch.  Now what would be the
evolutionary advantage of this?  It is even more surprising when one
learns that opossums, which also climb trees, have a forward facing
pouch that forms a safe repository for the young while the mother is
climbing--yet it sleeps upside down.  Evolutionists find all this very
baffling.

Even more perplexing to the evolutionist is the supposed evolutionary
ancestry for the koala.  At the largest koala sanctuary in the world,
in Brisbane, Australia (which we also visited), the guide there told
us how the koala must have evolved from ground-dwelling marsupials
like the wombat since both have no tail.  However, she went on to say
that the koala was perfectly suited for sitting in trees, with special
padding instead of a tail.  She also explained how it had long curved
arms and sharp claws to enable it to climb and hold on to tree trunks
and branches.  It also has scissor-like sharp teeth for slicing
through the gum leaves.

The more I listened, the more I realized what this guide was saying.
The characteristics the koala did not have showed what it had evolved
from, and the characteristics it did have showed what it was designed
to do.

But what about the most perplexing Australian animal of all, the
Ornithorhynchus anatinus, or platypus?  This is a real evolutionary
enigma.  This mammal has a duck-like bill, a beaver-like tail; webbed
feet like an otter, hair like a bear, and claws like a reptile.  It
lays eggs like a turtle and feeds its young on milk like a mammal.  It
is able to detect electrical impulses, and builds a burrow, like a
rabbit, for a lair.  What a mixed-up animal!  Evolutionists have a
real problem with this little animal.  It did not evolve from
anything, and it is not evolving into anything, but it is a mixture of
all sorts of things.  I often wonder if God made the platypus
especially to confuse those who believe in evolution.

I believe the greatest evidence that there is a God is in the design
in the living world.  As Romans 1:20 states, "For the invisible things
of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being
understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and
Godhead; so that they are without excuse."

Someone who understood this very clearly was a famous man called
William Paley (1743-1805), who wrote a book about the design in the
living world showing obvious evidence of a Creator.

Paley's famous example is that of a person finding a watch and
realizing it had a maker.  The watch could not have formed by chance;
a craftsman must have formed it for a particular purpose.

There are many examples we can use to teach our children and others
that there is a Creator God.  It is obvious that functional complexity
could never arise by chance.

If your children use Lego blocks, you can illustrate the point by
showing that just emptying all the blocks out of their container will
not result in an airplane.  One has to put intelligence (information)
and energy into making an airplane out of Lego blocks.

I took my children to a shopping mall once to view a special Lego
display--all about evolution and dinosaurs.  The makers went to a lot
of trouble to explain how many hours of time and computer programs,
etc., were used to build this fascinating exhibit.  The purpose of the
exhibit was to show that dinosaurs (as well as all other living
creatures) evolved by chance.  As I taught my children, if it took
intelligence to build this display, imagine how much more intelligence
it must have taken to build real live dinosaurs.  They certainly got
the point!

When I am teaching in public schools, I also like to use the example
of Mount Rushmore.  I ask the students how the presidents' heads got
there--how many of them believe it was by millions of years of wind
and water erosion?  No one believes that, because they know that the
heads had to be carved.  Millions of years of wind and water erosion
would never form replicas of the presidents' heads.

William Paley was right!  Romans 1:20 is right!  It is so easy to see
the evidence that there is a Creator.  But if this is true, why don't
all the scientists agree?  Many people, after listening to this sort
of evidence, say, "Surely scientists would believe in God if the
evidence was that obvious."

II Peter 3:4,5 asks the question,.  .  .  "Where is the promise of His
coming?  for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as
they were from the beginning of the creation.  For this they willingly
are ignorant of, that by the Word of God the heavens were of old, and
the earth standing out of the water and in the water."

We are told in Scripture that people don't want to believe.  They are
willingly ignorant.  This means it is a deliberate choice on their
part not to believe, despite the overwhelming evidence to the
contrary.

I saw this illustrated clearly after talking with a number of teachers
in Alaska who were in charge of the science curriculum for public
schools.  At the end of the discussion, I asked one of the ardent
evolutionist teachers if he could give me one example anywhere in the
world where we have observed functional complexity arising from
disorder, by chance.  The teacher thought for a moment and then
replied, "No, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen." This is what
is called blind faith.

Watches and wombats are the result of intelligent design.  The
evidence of the Creator is easy to see, and if we do not accept it,
the Bible says that we are without excuse.  The atheistic evolutionist
will stand before the Creator God one day because he or she is without
excuse.  We need to use William Paley's arguments more than ever, to
defend the fact that there is a God who created the world.
Furthermore, this God is the Creator God of the Bible--the One who not
only created all things, but who came and died for His creation so
that we might live with Him for eternity.