Evolutionist Deceptions Continue with the Arthropods in the Shape of Life Documentary

The "Conquerors" episode of the documentary The Shape of Life dealt with the arthropods, suggesting that these creatures made the transition from sea to land, and afterwards formed a separate taxonomic category by developing wings and beginning to fly. Evolutionist scenarios that have been disproved countless times by scientific research and discoveries were repeated to the accompaniment of new images, with no evidence put forward to back them up. This article reveals the evolutionist propaganda that took place in this documentary, and briefly sets out the dilemma that the arthropods represent for evolution.

The Evolutionists' Cambrian Difficulties

The beginning of the film deals with living things which lived around 500 million years ago. This period, known as the Cambrian Age, was when organisms possessed of complex physical structures suddenly emerged. These are the "phyla," the most fundamental category of living creatures. In a most interesting way, nearly all the phyla that have existed on the earth emerged during the Cambrian period. Only a few phyla have been identified from before this period, whereas it has been estimated from the fossil record that the number of phyla appearing in the Cambrian was close to 100. The enormous jump in the variety of life at this time was so great that it is known in the scientific literature as the "Cambrian Explosion."

Richard Monastersky, a staff writer at ScienceNews magazine , a popular evolutionist publication, provides the following information on the Cambrian Explosion:

A half-billion years ago, . . . the remarkably complex forms of animals that we see today suddenly appeared. This moment, right at the start of the Earth's Cambrian Period, some 550 million years ago, marks the evolutionary explosion that filled the seas with the world's first complex creatures.1

The same article also quotes Jan Bergström, a paleontologist who studies the early Cambrian deposits in Chengjiang, China, as saying, "The Chengyiang fauna demonstrates that the large animal phyla of today were present already in the early Cambrian and that they were as distinct from each other as they are today.2

No organism has ever been found that the evolutionists might possibly put forward as an "ancestor" of the living things that emerged in the Cambrian Explosion. The creatures of the Cambrian period emerged suddenly, and with flawless structures. This naturally demonstrates that creation was at the root of the Cambrian Explosion. The British zoologist Richard Dawkins, one of the most prominent defenders of Darwinism in the world, makes the following admission regarding the living things of the Cambrian:

For example the Cambrian strata of rocks . . . are the oldest ones in which we find most of the major invertebrate groups. And we find many of them already in an advanced state of evolution, the very first time they appear. It is as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history.3

Another aspect of the Cambrian period that totally undermines evolution is the fact that the number of phyla existing today is far fewer than the number that emerged during the "explosion."  According to the theory of evolution, there should have been an increase over time in the number of categories of living things. Yet from the fossil record the situation is the exact opposite.

One of the world's most prominent critics of Darwinism is University of California Berkeley professor Phillip E. Johnson, who openly states the contradiction with Darwinism revealed by this situation in the following words:

Darwinian theory predicts a "cone of increasing diversity," as the first living organism, or first animal species, gradually and continually diversified to create the higher levels of taxonomic order. The animal fossil record more resembles such a cone turned upside down, with the phyla present at the start and thereafter decreasing.4

Not one word about this is mentioned in the documentary. There can be only one reason why a film that deals with how living things emerged on earth and then spread should ignore this huge explosion in the number of phyla and variety of living things. This explosion in the Cambrian Period definitively reveals that life came about not by chance but all of a sudden and in perfect form—in other words that it was created. The makers of the documentary deliberately avoided touching on the subject.

The Evolutionists' Major Deception Regarding Antennae and the Eye

Trilobites were among the first known animals with efficient eyes. These had many crystal lenses fixed at different angles to register movement and light from different directions. This 530-millionyear- old compound eye structure is an "optical marvel" which worked with a double lens system. This fact totally invalidates Darwinism's assumption that complex eyes evolved from "primitive" eyes.

Each and every one of the dead-ends facing the theory of evolution is ignored in the documentary. When the film, which looks at natural history from an evolutionist perspective, speaks of the arthropods, it resorts to totally fictitious Darwinist scenarios to account for the perfectly designed organs in these animals' bodies.

One of these organs is the arthropod antennae, which work together with a complex nervous system. For instance, the 15-30-cm-long antennae of lobsters are organs that can perform special scanning motions in the water and are equipped with sensitive tiny hairs capable of trapping chemicals. The claim put forward to account for the origin of such a complex organ is very far from explaining this multi-faceted design: "To help guide them through their world, arthropods developed a package of on-board sensors; appendages like antennas."

It is true that the arthropods' antennae make their lives easier. It is also true that there is a purpose behind their design. Yet, it is impossible for an arthropod, lacking all powers of reason, to have adopted an aim for itself and to have designed and developed a pair of antennae in the light of that aim. In the same way that we human beings do not "develop" eyes for ourselves but find them ready when we are born, so the arthropods did not develop their antennae but found them ready at their birth. That is because both eyes and antennae, and all other organs, were created. The PBS makes no mention of this fact, preferring instead the nonsensical claim that the animals developed their organs for themselves.

"Among His signs is the creation of the heavens and earth and all the creatures He has spread about in them. And He has the power to gather them together whenever He wills." (Qur'an, 42:29)

Another organ based on evolution according to the documentary, although no consistent evidence is given for its origin, is the eye. The eye contains light-sensitive cells that are found in no other organ of the body. The job of these cells is to transform light into electrical energy and to forward this to the brain. The eye also contains a lens system for focusing light.

The trilobite, an arthropod from the Cambrian Period, has an eye whose design gives Darwinism a particularly serious blow. The compound eye design in these creatures is some 530 million years old, and just as perfect as visual systems from our own time. Some modern insects, such as bees and dragonflies, possess a very similar system.5 The fact that a system which functions flawlessly in our own time also existed in a nearly identical form 530 million years ago totally undermines the Darwinist hypothesis of evolution from the simple to the complex.

Moreover, the complex design in the eye also includes the feature of irreducibility. In order for the lens and the light-sensitive cells, as well as great many other organs, to do their jobs successfully, they need to exist in that precise form at the very same moment. According to evolution's own logic the eye will not work if just one of these elements is missing, and will thus atrophy and disappear. In short, the claims of Darwinism are in contradiction with each other.

Yet, it is an evident truth that the design in the eye was intelligently created. The program attempts to cover up the fact that the origin of the eye is one of the greatest dilemmas facing Darwinism, and basically glosses over the matter by saying that the arthropods developed eyes with precise and complex structures to enable them to perceive images.

If somebody one day told you "Computers made fast CPUs for themselves in order to function better," you would think that claim was a very odd and nonsensical one. Computers cannot develop their own systems; only computer engineers can do that. The same thing applies to living things. Living things cannot provide themselves with brand new features. That is only possible by intelligent design. The only reason why this intelligent design is being ignored is the Darwinist theory and materialist philosophy to which those who ignore the concept of intelligent design are so blindly devoted (as well as the atheism that underpins both).

The method employed to cover up such matters with regard to the eye and antennae emerges when it comes to extensions such as pincers, with their own particular design. The documentary proposes that with a small evolutionary leap, legs can turn into pincers capable of gripping. This is a truly ridiculous claim. The designs in the leg and pincer are encoded in the creature's DNA. Different DNA sequences are needed for the leg and pincer. Furthermore, both sequences are based on information. It is impossible for this alleged change to have come about by mutations, which evolutionists try to portray as the basis of evolution. Mutations cause damaging effects in an organism, or at best have no effect at all. It is not possible for a random mutation to add to DNA the necessary information for a leg and so regulate the system. Indeed, such a change has never been observed.

In fact, the documentary is filled with such evolutionist fairy tales from beginning to end. This statement is particularly striking from the point of view of revealing the deceptive style that dominates the film: "The basic arthropod body plan, with segments and legs, packs an incredible potential to adapt and evolve."

This, as we have made clear above, is the equivalent of saying that computers possess an unbelievable evolutionary ability. The only fact underlying this nonsense is the prejudice of the filmmakers in the face of that truth that all living things were created.

The Evolutionists' Spider Web Deception

Three-dimensional webs have a much more complicated structure than two-dimensional ones. A miraculous structure can be observed in every feature of the web. They, like all other creatures, behave only in accordance with the inspiration God has given to them from birth. This is the only cause of their architectural wonders.

Another important deception in the documentary concerns the spider web. It is alleged that the web emerged later in evolution, together with baseless claims that spiders' desires to catch flying creatures may have been influential in the web's origin.

It must first of all be made clear that, as has been explained above, living things' "desires" cannot possibly cause them to acquire new organs or physical attributes. No matter how much you and your descendants "wish" to fly, no matter how much you make that desire a part of your inner being, you will still never grow wings. Living things' physical features are encoded in their genes, and no "desire" can affect those genes. The style adopted by the documentary as it ignores this fundamental truth is an odd, unscientific, and fantastical one.

Moreover, someone who closely examines the spider's web can clearly see that it is the work of design, not of "evolution by chance." The spider's web is a substance that material scientists take as a model. Weight for weight, it is five times more resistant than steel. The production of steel bulletproof vests has been made possible by imitating the spider's web. Furthermore, the spider's web exists as a liquid inside the animal's body, undergoing a reaction as soon as it meets the air and becoming stiff. The spider is thus capable of consuming its web whenever it wishes and storing it for subsequent use.

The way spiders spin their webs also rests on the most intelligent techniques. They use trees or plants as props and build their webs around them. Spinning concentric links that move in towards the center, they build an invisible snare and also a secure nest for themselves.

The fact that the web possesses all these features and that the spider possesses the ideal characteristics to make use of the web, is a miracle—one which Darwinism can never account for. It once again shows us that the origin of life is creation.

The Scenario of the Scorpion Moving from Water to Land

One of the utterly baseless evolutionist claims made in the documentary "The Conquerors" concerns the transition from water to land. The film does not put forward any substantial evidence for this transition but covers up this subject with common tactics used by evolutionists. The only example given in this area concerns an organ that the scorpion's imaginary ancestors are assumed to have possessed called the "wing," which allowed them to breathe under water. It is suggested that over time this organ became buried inside the body and gained the ability to take in oxygen from the air. However, not one fossil was shown to back up this claim, and the account was stranded on the level of fantasy.

Like all other evolutionist accounts about transition from water to land, the claim about scorpion's transition from water to land also has no basis. When we examine the huge anatomical and physiological differences between water- and land-dwelling creatures, we can see that these differences could not have disappeared in an evolutionary process with gradual changes based on chance.

Conclusion

The Cambrian Explosion shows that no such process as evolution ever occurred in natural history. It can be seen that such complex structures as the eye and antennae possess an astonishing design that can never be accounted for by random mutations. The spider's web indicates that even tiny animals possess a superior design that engineers seek to emulate, and demonstrates that the design in nature is so superior that it could never have come about by chance.

In short, Darwinist propaganda does not reflect the scientific facts. The scientific truth is that the arthropods and all the millions of other living species are the product of an intelligent design.