On April 7, 2003, the Discovery Channel aired a documentary called "Ultimate Guide: Elephants." The lives of these giant creatures on the plains of Africa were described to the accompaniment of the most impressive images, and striking information was provided concerning them.
On April 7, 2003, the Discovery Channel aired a documentary called "Ultimate Guide: Elephants." The lives of these giant creatures on the plains of Africa were described to the accompaniment of the most impressive images, and striking information was provided concerning them.
Their long memories, loyalty to one another, skeletal systems capable of lifting tons in weight and their powerful trunks, which are nevertheless capable of delicately picking up the minutest objects, make these animals particularly fascinating. Yet the Discovery Channel also maintained that elephants had come into existence by evolution, and as always on the subject of evolution, it put that claim over to its viewers in the form of a fairy tale, offering no evidence whatsoever. In order to make its stories about the evolution more credible, the Discovery Channel had three-dimensional computer animations prepared and the imaginary process of evolution was portrayed, stage by stage, by means of these. The interesting thing about this was that this so-called scientific claim of the Discovery Channel"s, which actually rests on nothing more than imagination, was put across as if it were established fact. During the telling of this tale an interesting ancestor was suggested for the elephant: a creature resembling a pig! The following expressions were aired during this tale, which has taken its place amongst the Discovery Channel"s other classic myths of evolution:
The evolution of the elephant"s trunk began 55 million years ago. This primitive creature had short legs and was about the size of a pig. In all probability the upper lip and nose it used to collect food developed into a mobile trunk. Later it grew dramatically down the generations. As these animals grew taller their lower jaws continued to extend, allowing them to make contact with the ground to feed. At this point, this protuberance, which slightly resembled a trunk, began to grow even further. Their skulls with larger teeth grew heavier. Their necks grew shorter and thicker to bear that weight. This tendency lasted for tens of millions of years. As the animals grew their jaws and trunks also continued to grow longer. Twenty million years ago their lower jaw began to shrink but the trunk still made contact with the ground. The result was the extension used by the modern elephant.
The deception which is taking place here is the portrayal of the claim that certain organs developed according to specific needs as if this were a proven historical development. Yet in the same way that there is no evidence for this, neither could such a process actually have happened. No living thing can develop new structures inside its body, no matter how much it may wish to. For example, no matter how much a person might wish to fly and concentrates on that idea for 10 hours a day, or even spends all his time in an effort to take to the air, the result will always be the same. Not even a single bird feather will ever appear on his arm, let alone a fully-formed wing.
Such a change is biologically impossible. Living things" needs cannot cause new organs to come about in them. The claim in the documentary that elephants underwent changes in the light of a given aim is therefore about as scientific as Pinocchio"s nose growing longer every time he tells a lie in the famous fairy story.
Another fictitious tale about elephants from the Discovery Channel had to do with their ears. Elephants" ears work like a car radiator: elephants grow excessively hot under the blazing African sun. The veins which carry this body heat to the ears by means of the blood circulation come into close contact with the air there, thanks to the ear"s paper-thin tissues, and thus give off that excess heat. The fact that this circulation is constant means that the elephant is permanently cooled. It takes a mere 20 minutes for all the 450 litres of blood in the elephant to pass through this radiator system and be cooled down.
The Discovery Channel here comes up with an evolutionist deception, maintaining that the elephant itself developed this complex system. This is expressed in these terms in the film, "Elephants developed certain mechanisms to keep their bodies cool."
The Discovery Channel here openly emphasises the inconsistency in which it finds itself and compares the system to a car radiator, after which it suggests that this was developed by the elephant itself. Yet no rational person seeing a car radiator would ever maintain that this had come about in the appropriate place in the vehicle, with the appropriate materials and design, all by chance. Saying that the car developed its own radiator is no less inconsistent than the tale that elephants developed mechanisms to cool their own bodies down.
In fact, the car and the elephant ear are designs which work to the same end and with similar systems, but which are made of different materials.
The thinness of the ear tissue, the way the veins can open and close in a controlled manner in the ear, the way the ears can be moved like a fan to cool the body, the veins, the heart and a number of other factors are all key to this system. It is evident that these were all brought together compatibly with one another in order to perform a specific function, in other words that they were designed. Since every design must have a designer, in the way that a car radiator is designed by an engineer, so there is a Creator behind the design in the elephant. That superior Creator is God, the Exalted.
The aim behind the way in which the Discovery Channel ignores this evident truth and seeks to base the design in question on chance is obvious: it is an attempt to inculcate the theory of evolution as much as possible into the mind of the viewer. Tall tales of evolution under a spurious scientific mask and misleading three-dimensional animations are a product of these efforts. Yet no matter how many fairy tales the Discovery Channel repeats, it will never be able to conceal the scientific facts: random mutations have never produced the slightest benefit which might represent an advantage for any organism, let alone turning a pig into an elephant.
Our advice to the Discovery Channel is to abandon these evolutionary myths and to accept the fact that living things were consciously designed, in other words that they were created.
