Evolutionary Accident or Everlasting Architect??

THE BOMBARDIER BEETLE

Evolutionary Accident or Everlasting Architect??

When ever threatened the bombardier beetle shoots out a noxious gas which are at 212 degrees F, out from two tail pipes right into the face of the would be aggressor.

Dr. Hermann Schildknecht, a German chemist, studied the bombardier beetle and learned the beetle makes his explosives by mixing two very dangerous chemicals (hydroquinone and hydrogen peroxide).

This clever little beetle also adds another type of chemical known as an inhibitor. The inhibitor prevents the chemicals from blowing up and enables the beetle to store them indefinitely.

Whenever our little beetle friend is attacked (e.g. by a frog) he squirts the stored chemicals into the two combustion tubes, and at precisely the right moment he adds another chemical (an anti-inhibitor). This knocks out the inhibitor, and a small but violent explosion occurs right in the face of the poor attacker.*

How could this marvelous and complex mechanism have evolved piecemeal over millions of years? The evolutionist sheepishly responds "yes."

According to evolutionary "thinking" there must have been thousands of generations of beetles improperly mixing these hazardous chemicals in fatal evolutionary experiments, blowing themselves to pieces!!!!

Eventually we are assured, they arrived at the magic formula, but what about the development of the inhibitor??

There is no need to involve the inhibitor unless you already have the two chemicals you are trying to inhibit. On the other hand, if you have the two chemicals, without the inhibitor, it is already too late, for you have just blown yourself up!!!

Obviously, such an arrangement would never arise apart from intelligent foresight and planning. Nevertheless, let's assume that our little beetle friend somehow managed to simultaneously develop the two chemicals along with the all important inhibitor. This solution would be no benefit at all, for it would just sit there as a harmless concoction.

To be of any value to the beetle, the anti-inhibitor must be added to the solution. So, once again, for thousands of generations we are supposed to believe that these poor beetles mixed and stored these chemicals for no particular reason or advantage; until finally, the anti-inhibitor was perfected.

Now he is really getting somewhere!! With the anti-inhibitor developed he can now blow himself to pieces, frustrating the efforts of the hungry predator!!

Ah yes, he still needs to evolve the two combustion tubes, and a precision communication and timing network to control and adjust the critical direction and timing of the explosive.

So, here we go again; for thousands of generations these carefree little beetles went around celebrating the 4th of July by blowing themselves to pieces until finally the mastered their new found powers.

But what would be the motivation for such disastrous, trial and error, piecemeal evolution? Everything in evolution is supposed to make perfect sense and have a logical purpose, or else it would never develop. But such a process does not make any sense at all, and to propose that the entire system evolved all at once is astronomically improbable, if not impossible.

Yet, nature abounds with countless such examples of perfect coordination. We can only conclude that the surprising little bombardier beetle is a strong witness for special creation, for there is no other rational explanation for such a wonder.

* Rather than an inhibitor needing to be counteracted by an anti-inhibitor, it seems a peroxidase enzyme is needed to catalize the reaction. But the writer's point seems largely unaffected. 

A fuller treatment of this subject may be found in Scott M. Huse, The Collapse of Evolution, Baker Book House, 1983.

Electronic Copyright © 1999 EWTN
All Rights Reserved

.