Isaiah 44:20 “A deceived heart has turned him aside… he cannot say, ‘Is there not a lie in my right hand?’”

This was another question raised by one of my teens in my Sunday School class. As his Lees Summit High School biology class continued teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution, the class was taught that Darwin’s Galapagos finches demonstrated natural selection in action. Let’s follow along in the textbook.

“The evolution of many new species from a common ancestor can occur through adaptive radiation, which typically occurs when a few organisms make their way to new, unexploited areas or when environmental changes cause numerous extinctions, opening up various opportunities for the survivors.” OK, better define the first term being used: adaptive radiation. Evolutionists created this term to mean that from one species, multiple unique species will arise over time based on environment conditions that drive the change. They are trying to explain how species transition to higher levels of complexity until we end up with, well, people.

Let’s read on in our Lees Summit biology textbook: “Isolated island chains with physically diverse habitats are often the sites of explosive adaptive radiations. Colonizers may undergo multiple speciation events, producing species that are found nowhere else on Earth.” Another term evolutionists try to sneak by us without defining it – speciation. What does that mean? Well, it was coined by evolutionist Orator Cook in 1906, and it is defined as “the evolutionary formation of new biological species, usually by the division of a single species into two or more genetically distinct ones.” So, you can get completely unique organisms from a common ancestral organism that is testable genetically? Any examples of this in real life? No.

Back to our Lees Summit biology textbook: “The Galapagos island chain has a total of 14 species of closely related birds called Galapagos finches. These have many similarities but differ in their feeding habits and their BEAK TYPE, which is correlated with what they eat. Evidence accumulated since Darwin’s time indicates that all 14 finch species evolved from a single small population of ancestral birds that colonized on the islands… The effects of the adaptive radiation of Darwin’s finches are evident in the many types of beaks, specialized for different foods.” Wow, so we have genetically unique species of finches, from a common ancestral finch? Or do we have finches with different sizes of noses, oops – beaks?

Here’s how our Lees Summit biology textbook explain how natural selection in finches through adaptive radiation helps explain how we evolved: “Some theories wait a long time to be tested. Such was the case with Darwin’s 150-year-old hypothesis that the beaks of diverse Galapagos finch species had adapted to different food sources through natural selection. Then came the classic research of Peter and Rosemary Grant.” So, we have test results confirming these finches demonstrate natural selection in action?

First, Darwin wrote very little on these finches. Frank Sulloway, science historian and author of ‘Darwin and His Finches: The Evolution of a Legend’, explains: “Darwin possessed only a limited and largely erroneous conception of both the feeding habits and the geographical distribution of these birds. He was increasingly given credit for finches he never saw and for observations and insights about them he never made. As for the claim that the finches impressed him as evidence of evolution, nothing could be further from the truth.”

Second, Peter and Rosemary Grant’s 10 years of research on these finches did not confirm natural selection. Instead, they found only finch beak sizes oscillated from bigger to smaller based on the weather (dry versus wet seasons) because the available food source (seeds) changed with the weather. The beak sizes returned back to original size with the seeds! That’s not natural selection. They stay finches.

Our verse this week emphasizes how difficult it is for people to recognize and then admit when they come across information that falsifies their position. The National Academy of Sciences once famously posted that “Science and lies cannot coexist”. Yet, in a booklet on evolution for teachers, they conveniently left out the findings of the Grants. Instead, here’s what it says: “Darwin’s finches are a compelling example of origin of species: a single year of drought on the islands can drive evolutionary changes in finches. If droughts occur about once every 10 years, a new species of finch might arise in only about 200 years.” Let’s not confuse the reader with the fact that selection was reversed after the drought, thereby producing no long-term evolutionary change! Professor Philip Johnson, author of “Darwin on Trial”, responded to the Academy’s booklet on Darwin’s finches in the Wall Street Journal: “When our leading scientists have to resort to the sort of distortion that would land a stock promoter in jail, you know that they are in trouble.”

As we said last week, it’s time to teach our children how to think, not what to think. Give them the truth.

“The Evidence of Faith’s Substance”, Article #283 – February 17, 2018