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If I dropped a handful of coins, we all know that they would go in all directions, ending up as a random pattern on the floor. However, suppose you came into a room, saw a straight line of coins and were told ‘I just dropped these coins and, look, they all happened to end up in a line’ – would you believe it? No, you would rightly say that chance does not produce design. If I then insisted that this had happened not just once but many times, then you would probably think I was out of my mind.

Yet the evolutionist must believe that a beneficial mutation not only occurred by accident once but repeatedly. Further, most of them would have had to occur at about the same time, because frequently more than one mutation is involved in a given change.

A diagram of the tricarboxylic acid cycle, commonly called the Krebs Cycle after its discoverer.

The Krebs Cycle
This is the basic chemical reaction in virtually all cells, by which glucose is broken down by a series of steps, each one achieved by a different enzyme, resulting in the release of energy.

If only one enzyme was missing or imperfectly formed, life in that cell would cease or be impaired. There are many other similarly essential processes in every cell. It is inconceivable that all these enzymes appeared simultaneously by accidental mutations.

Of this cycle one writer says: 'It is so elegant that it appears to have been designed by a systems analyst' (Life on Earth, page 165).

For example, the chemistry within the cell is a stage-by-stage process. As an illustration (an example from the hundreds that could be given), one of the most basic reactions in a living cell is the conversion of glucose to carbon dioxide and water, with the release of energy, called the tricarboxylic acid cycle. This does not happen in one go. Rather is it a series of step-wise reactions involving many intermediate stages. However, a different enzyme affects each of the steps. If only one of those enzymes was missing, then the process would stop and the cell die. Therefore, evolutionists must assume that all the mutations that produced the enzymes accidentally appeared at the same time. Or in terms of our analogy, not only did the coins form themselves into a straight line on one occasion, but did so repeatedly.

The Eye
The same holds good for whole organs and creatures as well as what goes on in cells. The eye is a good example of many differing features that must all be present at the same time if it is to function. As you read this page, your brain is controlling tiny muscles around the transparent lens, altering its shape to accurately focus the image of the print on to the retina at the back of your eye.

Cross-section of the eye

The retina has nerve cells that are sensitive even to the smallest quantity of light and are able, by a sort of in-built computer, to convert the light pattern into a compressed series of nerve impulses. The retina also has special pigments that enable different colours to be identified. Within the brain is a particular area that converts the nerve impulses into a picture we can recognise.

Is it reasonable to suggest that all these interdependent features arose by accident and all at the same time? Does it not rather look like intelligent design? The evolutionist claims that the eye developed by a series of random changes over countless millions of years. But think what we are being asked to believe – that all this fine detail working together so perfectly has come about from a series of accidental mutations. Do not be deceived by the glib evolutionary explanation so common in books for children, that some primitive organism ‘decided’ to develop some new feature.

The concept of planning is ruled out in the current theory of evolution – all is the result of purposeless change. It is ludicrous to suggest that an eyeless creature would envisage the need for sight and so control its developments over the ages to eventually produce an eye. As Darwin himself said:

‘To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.’ (Darwin: The Origin of Species)

We may confidently say that chance does not produce design.

Leaf Insect
Look at the top picture of a leaf insect. Here is an example of insects that mimic leaves so perfectly that given the right background they are perfectly camouflaged, as a protection from their predators. Can you see four leaf insects in the bottom picture? Does this look like chance mutations at work? If evolution were true, think of all the wrong designs that must have accidentally been produced by the original insect whilst this perfect disguise was at last fortuitously arrived at. Think of all the simultaneous accidental changes that were needed in the DNA that programmed this new shape. How did the poor insect survive whilst it was developing this disguise? We can be sure that the leaf-like shape was not the choice of the supposed original insect. It probably would not even recognise a leaf, let alone be able to alter its body to copy one.

The prominent dark and camouflaged light varieties of the peppered moth on bark.

'The prize horse in our stable'
One of the supposed evidences for natural selection and therefore the evolutionary process, is the variation in the peppered moth. It is an example that appears in almost every textbook on evolution. The story is that the moths were originally of a light colour and thus were camouflaged when they settled on the trunks of lichen-covered trees. But with the advent of industrial processes that polluted the air, the tree trunks became darker due to the lack of lichen and an increase in sooty deposits. Thus the moths stood out like the proverbial sore thumb and were rapidly picked off by the birds.

However, in time the moths responded by becoming darker to match the trunks and so they were camouflaged once more. Here we are told, is evolution in action! This is an example of a story that has universally been taken up and quite innocently repeated by advocates of evolution without themselves having investigated the subject. As is so frequent in this field, everyone else assumes that all the appropriate checks have been made.

In fact the darker form of moth existed well before the Industrial Revolution and all that happened was that the darker form later became more prominent. So it wasn't a question of a new form developing – it was already there. In fact the dark form exists quite happily in rural situations as far apart as Scotland, Canada and New Zealand, where it suffers no disadvantage from its colour.

The experiments, first carried out by a scientist named Kettlewell in the 1950’s, are now regarded as suspect. What is not generally known is that some of the experiments were done in artificial conditions in an aviary. Unlike in the natural situation, specially bred moths were actually placed by the experimenters on the trunks within reach of the ground; then birds were filmed feeding on them. This is hardly what happens in the wild and when the experiments were repeated in natural conditions the results were variable. It is now recognised that the moths only fly by night when the birds are not active and in the daytime they conceal themselves high up amongst the foliage, rather than be sitting targets on the tree trunks.( C.A.Clarke: ‘Evolution in reverse…’, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society. 26: 189-199,1985.) Moreover, when tests were actually carried out in woodland conditions, the results were very inconclusive. (M.Bowden: ‘Science Vs Evolution,’ Appendix 3, pages 194-211 (Sovereign Publications, 1991))

In addition, what of those pictures in the textbooks, such as the one reproduced here? One scientific paper describes how it was done. The pictures were not taken from nature, but dead moths were glued to the trees! (D.R.Lees and E.R. Creed: ‘Journal of Animal Ecology,’ 44: 67-83,1975. J.Wells: ‘Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth (Regnery Publishing Inc. 2000)) As a result of this re-evaluation of the subject, what was once described by one evolutionist as ‘the prize horse in our stable’ has now been discarded by many. An evolutionist says that when he realised this it gave him that same feeling as when he as a boy discovered Santa Claus was not real! (J.A.Coyne: Nature 396(6706): 35,36.) This is an outstanding example of what Professor P. Johnson describes as how ‘devotion to the ideology of Darwinism has led to textbooks full of misinformation’. (Quoted by J.Wells: ‘Icons of Evolution’, back cover.)

More information about Creation
Life on earth
The universe has a structure
Life is the exception
Man in the image of God
Design demands a designer