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The Amazing Iron Bedstead Discovery: A Tale About Evolution

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The other day my wife and I hiked up to Fremont Saddle, where we came across an old rusty iron bedstead. I said, “Isn’t that amazing? How many million years do you suppose it took for that iron to be worn down by the weather and glaciers until it looked like a bed?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “Someone used to have a cabin up here.”

“How do you know that?” I asked. “You weren’t here to verify it. I think that it was formed by natural forces over millions of years.”

Just then I swatted a gnat on my arm. “Did you see what you just killed?” she asked.

“Sure,” I said. “I swatted a gnat. What’s the big deal?”

“That tiny thing has a brain smaller than a computer chip, and yet it can fly, hunt for food, and reproduce. You surely don’t believe that such a complex little creature, far more sophisticated than any scientist could create, happened by sheer chance do you? Doesn’t the amazing design of a gnat, let alone all of creation with its intricate balance, argue for a designer?”

“Come on,” I protested. “Any scientist will tell you that gnats evolved by adapting from some lower species without any help from God. The idea of God isn’t scientific.”

“Really?” she countered. “I don’t see any reason that, ‘In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth’ (Gen. 1:1) isn’t scientific.”

I rolled my eyes. “Everyone knows that science involves observing what is, and you can’t observe God,” I confidently replied.

“So how did that gnat develop the ability to fly?” she retorted.

“It’s called natural selection and the survival of the fittest,” I explained. “Somehow during the millions of years in the past the genes mutated to develop wings and it was advantageous to the species for its survival, so the new adaptation prevailed.”

“Did someone observe this?” my wife asked with a touch of sarcasm. “Besides, it would seem that the ability to fly didn’t help that gnat to survive!” she jibed.

“No, of course no one observed it. It happened millions of years before humans evolved. But, the ability to fly is clearly a survival technique.”

“So why haven’t people evolved wings? Wouldn’t it help our survival to be able to fly?” she challenged.

I took up the offense: “I read an article about another insect, the periodical cicada, that only hatches every 17 years. A biologist at the University of Chicago believes that these bugs have developed a sophisticated strategy for survival. He says that 17 years is an unusual life span. If a predator had a life cycle of six years, it would not encounter the cicadas more than once in a century. Wouldn’t you have to admit that it’s amazing how species evolve such sophisticated strategies?”

“Wait a minute,” she countered. “Are you telling me that these bugs had a meeting where they sat around discussing what the best plan for survival was? One suggested two years, but another said, ‘No, that’s too common. Let’s go with some odd number like 17.’ So they voted on it and it passed. Even if they did figure it out, tell me, how would they go about implementing it?”

“Obviously it didn’t happen that way,” I said. “But animals just have a built-in survival mechanism and the ability to adapt for survival and the improvement of the species.”

“Now that’s a faith statement,” she charged. “Nobody has ever observed a species developing such ‘sophisticated’ strategies. No one can explain how a species could come up with such even if its survival depended on it. But so-called scientists claim that that’s what happened and we’re just supposed to swallow it. That takes far more faith than believing that something with such complex design comes from an omniscient Creator. In fact, evolutionists are just basing their whole system on circular reasoning.”

“How so?”

“They assume that science excludes a God who actually created the universe. Then they conclude, ‘Therefore, everything happened by random chance plus time, with no outside influence from a supreme being.’ They’re just concluding what they assumed in the first place. To be blunt,” she continued, “the only people who can believe in the fantastic idea of evolution are those who a priori reject the overwhelming evidence that this planet and all that is on it has incredible design behind it, implying an incredibly intelligent Designer.”

As we left that old piece of iron that looked like a bedstead, I just shook my head in disbelief. My poor wife just doesn’t understand science!

Related Topics: Apologetics, Cultural Issues, Evolution, Faith, Worldview

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