Del Ratzsch has again made a number of helpful comments. Comments that
I do not respond to here will be reflected in iteration two of part III.
Del Ratzsch wrote:
>Some creationists are going to have a *very* difficult time with your
>claim that (what you call) "bad" designs were deliberately produced in
>order to make their carries more vulnerable to predation.
Creationists that have a difficult time believing this should really take
a good look at some of the lethal designs in nature. Poisonous snakes,
insect trapping spiders, etc... If you can believe that God designed
these things, what is the problem with using imperfection to balance an
ecology?
Del continues:
>Here again, I think Jim Foley is right, but let me add a couple things.
>There is no prima facie problem for evolution because (1) rabbits not
>only have survived, but have positively flourished and nothing in
>evolutionary theory suggests anything to the contrary or surprising
>about that; (2) according to evolutionary theory, solutions to
>evolutionary problems are typically closely linked to available survival
>resources (with some suitable clauses) and relevant variations, etc.,
>for increased rabbit digestive efficiency were never guaranteed to
>arise; and (3) survival of rabbit species was the issue, and fecundity
>is a perfectly respectable survival strategy for prey. Indeed, probably
>any evolutionist would claim that fecundity *was* an important part of
>the evolutionary response in this case. Tha fact that (given the
>theory) evolution did not hit upon what seems to us to be the most
>obvious solution - more efficient digestive systems - is no problem for
>the theory at all.
The whole question for me is how stretched do we allow our credulity to
become before we discard the theory of evolution. Take the case of the arca
noae. This is a mollusc that has more than 25,000 individual visual units
in more than 300 eyes of 3 different kinds. Evolutionists expect us to believe
that such a creature came about through chance mutation and natural selection,
but say, "Well, the required mutations didn't show up for the lens in certain
octopus eyes".
What I am trying to do is demonstrate a contrast. Evolution through chance
mutation and natural selection is supposed to be capable of truly unbelievable
feats and yet is incapable of seemingly simple and advantageous changes. I
will try and make myself clearer in iteration 2.
In Christ
robert van de water
associate researcher
UCLA