The answer, of course, is baby giraffes. Let’s talk a little bit about Evolution.
Before we get into that, though, I’d like you to think about a traditional mousetrap. It’s a simple machine that’s been mass produced and has sold millions of units. Yet what would happen if any of the mousetrap’s components was removed? Take away the trigger, the holding bar, the spring, or anything else, and what happens? Removing any single component means the trap isn’t catching any mice.
Instead of a mousetrap, think of a complex biological machine, say, the human eye. Evolution says that simple, one-celled organisms changed over many generations and long periods of time to become highly complex living systems. If this is true, there had to be a series of pretty spectacular leaps forward to move from a single-celled organism to an organ that can sense light, then again to today’s human eye. It just doesn’t make sense. What was the immediate predecessor to the current version? What can you take away from the human eye and have it be almost as capable as the version we know today?
The theory of evolution has a problem. Animals that need to evolve fall into one of two categories: they either fail to evolve quickly enough (and thus fail to pass along genes that will enable future generations to acquire new characteristics), or they undergo massive mutational changes during a single generation (which seems very unlikely). Let’s use the giraffe as an example.
Let’s assume for a moment that Evolution is true. Imagine what giraffes looked like before they had long necks. It was more like a funky moose. For this conversation we’ll call it a stubby giraffe. Evolution claims that as food got scarce for individual stubby giraffes, they were forced to look for sustenance in areas beyond their normal reach. Let’s look at a few possibilities for what happened next.
Possibility number one: starving stubby giraffes did not consume enough calories to carry and give birth to baby stubby giraffes, so they died without birthing any healthy calves. – Unsuccessful evolution.
Possibility number two: the bodies of stubby giraffes, in the span of a single lifetime, while suffering from malnutrition, activated biological mechanisms which altered their own established DNA blueprints and triggered explosive leg and neck growth (while malnourished), enabling its survival. Malnourished bodies, however, experience stunted growth, not accelerated growth. North Korea’s people are starving and its children don’t get enough food to eat during their bodies’ crucial stages of physical development. As a result, many North Korean adults have a much smaller stature than their counterparts in other countries who had sufficient nutritional support during those stages of physical development. – Implausible.
Possibility number three: stubby giraffes did not experience rapid alterations, but they did experience incremental amounts of extraordinary growth (growth beyond what its DNA stipulated) with each passing generation. As these “hybrid giraffes” gained the ability to reach food they hadn’t been able to access before, they consumed all the food stubby giraffes could reach, and the stubby giraffes died out. But the same problem remains: if hybrid giraffes weren’t getting enough to eat and were forced to either evolve or die, how did their starving bodies find it within themselves to boldly step outside the bounds of their DNA and add inches or feet of bones, muscle, and corresponding tissue and blood vessels? On the other hand, if they were getting enough to eat, why did they need to evolve any further, and why haven’t they shrunk since then? After all, in terms of calories and energy, extra muscle mass is expensive. – Implausible.
There’s no logical scenario where this kind of evolution happens. Logically, people would have to buy into possibility number four: the giraffes you see today are similar (both in appearance and genetically) to the first giraffes that walked the planet. Hundreds or thousands of giraffe generations all followed the same DNA blueprint, passed that blueprint along to the next generation, which passed it to the next, and so on. Whoever designed these things established the originals along with a pretty solid process of reproducing themselves.
Did you know that a giraffe’s neck is strong enough to support the weight of a human climbing on it? Also, I got banned from the zoo today.
Here’s an example that will make you think. What if I, as a human, suddenly needed to evolve quickly enough to be able to hold my breath for 10 minutes? With practice I can increase my breath-holding capacity to over two minutes, but if I’m thrust into a situation where I need to hold my breath for 10 minutes, I’m not going to make it. That’s a Pass/Fail test, and it’s not looking good for me. What if we take a more incremental approach to this problem, though?
The Bajau people of Southeast Asia have long relied on their skills at free-diving for their livelihood and for food. They spend an extreme amount of time repeatedly holding their breath and diving below the surface to obtain food and pearls on the seafloor. This lifestyle has led to enlarged spleens among the Bajau. (The spleen plays a role in the oxygenation level of blood, among other things.) This adaptation enables divers to stay underwater longer. Here’s the interesting part though. Even non-divers among the Bajau people have enlarged spleens. This finding suggests conditioning the body has an impact on DNA, but it also means this adaptation was not the result of an “evolve or die” scenario, because death was not imminent before it occurred. Is it possible that evolution is taking place here?
I can’t find it online, but when I was in high school I was taught something I think called “Color Theory.” It helped explain the wide disparity in physical characteristics of people across the globe. I’ll run through a few examples. The Massai people of Kenya and Tanzania in eastern Africa have one of the tallest average heights in the world, at around 6 feet, 3 inches. They have tight curly hair and very dark brown (or even black) eyes. Spending many generations primarily as herders of livestock, they’ve traditionally spent long hours in the hot equatorial sun. Their height enabled them to see predators sneaking through the grass to attack members of their herd, and their dark skin, dark eyes, and tightly curled hair provided various forms of protection from the intense sun.
In Asia, the Gobi Desert straddles Mongolia and China, two of the world’s oldest and most storied cultures. The desert played a significant role in the type of genetic characteristics that manifested themselves in people that lived in the area. Being over six feet tall and having curly hair is no picnic during and after a sandstorm. The people in the region were generally much shorter, had straight, coarse hair, and had eye shapes and structures suited to providing protection for their vision. All of these characteristics made it easier to cope with the realities of living in regions with large volumes of sand blowing around.
Finally, the people of Scandinavia in northern Europe have their own unique characteristics. Living at high latitudes means the sun’s rays are not nearly as intense as other areas of the world. Weaker solar rays warrant fewer protections from the sun, so those traditionally living in this region are normally fair-skinned, have thinner (or more fine) hair, and have light-colored eyes. This makes them well suited for geography where, for months out of the year, the sun’s max intensity approximates dawn/twilight.
I share this with you to illustrate the following point. These four examples (Bajau divers, Massai, those around the Gobi Desert, and Scandinavians) all have unique adaptations for their native geography, but none of them are on their way to starting a new species. They are all unquestionably human, and they are all undoubtedly going to stay that way. They in no way represent a departure from the human race.
We are all human because God made us all in His image. We all descended from sinners and are sinners ourselves. Accordingly, we all have need of the same Savior, and that is Jesus Christ. If you’re one of His, there are plenty of other people out there who are waiting for you to share Christ with them, even if they don’t look like you. Take up the challenge to spread the good news with them.