Posted on 07/04/2006 8:42:50 AM PDT by DouglasKC
In Asia, Africa and Australia lives a remarkable creature, the archerfish, that shoots down its prey from the air above it with a burst of water. It uses its tongue and the top of its mouth to form a groove similar to a gun barrel. Then, by compressing its gills, it squirts water up to six feet with deadly accuracyin spite of the distortion caused by seeing the target from below the surface of water.
What's so amazing about the archerfish's ability to shoot straight? When light passes between air and water, it is refracted, which causes a distortion. If an archerfish simply aimed at the object where it appeared to be from below the water, it could never hit its target! Yet scientists have found that archerfish are able to strike their target when sighting upwards at angles of 40 degrees!
More amazingly, marine researchers have discovered that these fish can hit their prey whether the amount of refraction is large or small. They have also found that the fishes' binocular vision allows them to see clearly at considerable distances above them, an ability other fish do not have.
An experiment
Here is an experiment. In a clear glass of water, hold a pencil at an angle halfway under the water and look at it from different positions. Notice how the pencil appears different below and above the water. That is the refraction of the light changing from the water to the air.
So how can the archerfish compensate for this distortion and know how to shoot at the right place?
Evolutionists don't know
Evolutionists still don't know how the archerfish got its amazing abilities. They can only wonder! Viewed through the distortion of evolution, they cannot explain how the archerfish gradually learned to not aim where its eyes see but to aim instead at a different spot where the target actually is.
Without its binocular vision, it could not see the object with such precision, and without the special shape of the upper mouth and a specialized tongue, it could not make the groove it needs to shoot the concentrated jet of water. Many factors have to appear togetherand be perfectly formedfor this shooting mechanism to work. This, of course, goes totally against Charles Darwin's evolutionary theory, which is based on a gradual, step-by-step process.
Darwin wrote in The Origin of Species, "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down" (1859, p. 171).
The archerfish offers precisely such an example, since several complex systems must all appear at the same time, perfectly and not gradually formedbinocular vision, a specialized mouth and tongue, specialized gills to compress and expel water and an aiming system based in the brain and not in the eyes. If any of these parts is missing, the mechanism will not hit the target and no survival advantage is created.
Shooting down Darwin's theory
When you get down to the facts, the archerfish with one squirt of its gills shoots down Charles Darwin's entire theory of evolutionand that by Darwin's own admission!
So evolution doesn't have the answer to this mystery. But the Bible does. Genesis 1:20-21 says that God created all the creatures that live in the water. He created a great variety of perfectly formed fish, including the archerfish with all its special features, such as binocular vision, other specialized organs and a built-in ability to compensate for the distortion of the water. VT
God made him do it!
This isn't an argument against evolution that requires proof to be contradicted. The argument is that evolution could not have created the archerfish. All that's necessary is to posit a way that evolution could -- not prove that that was exact way -- and the argument that it couldn't have happened falls apart.
whatever you need to do to maintain your faith is fine with me.....wrong, but fine with me
Heh!
Interesting that you posted this crevo article under philosophy and culture not science and religion. Does the United Church of God (the publishers of this article) believe creationism is a philosophy and not a science? Or is that selection simply your personal belief system apart from this church?
"My guess is that they evolved into liberals :)"
LOL..True, Only liberals and Darwinists would spend so much time and money making monkeys of themselves.
Yes, tea..but it's really old tea.
"LOL..True, Only liberals and Darwinists would spend so much time and money making monkeys of themselves."
I would add Creationists to that list too ...
Anthropomorphism at it's finest.
A fascinating fish...But are they good eating?
And how did staph aureus develop resistance to penicillin? Were those bugs created in the first six days? Hopefully you wont get a staph infection but if you do you can specifically request a first generation antibiotic and then you can have a nice discussion in the afterlife about the subject.
I don't usually put a lot of thought into selecting the topics. It's a good question though. Science of course doesn't accept it as science, but I believe that eventually scientists will smack their heads and say "It was so obvious, what was I thinking?".
I'd place the odds that the author of this piece carefully researched and read all the academic literature on archerfish and their fossil history and evolution at about .000000000000000000000000000000001%.
Oh sure, if you like food that spits... :-)
And how did staph aureus develop resistance to penicillin? Were those bugs created in the first six days? Hopefully you wont get a staph infection but if you do you can specifically request a first generation antibiotic and then you can have a nice discussion in the afterlife about the subject.
"Develop" a resistance? The strains that had resistance are still around and those that did not aren't still around.
You've probably heard this before, but God designed a wide degree of variability into humans and animals so that we could survive in a number of different environments and circumstances. It would be a pretty poor design if an entire species got wiped out because the temperature dropped a degree.
Or die trying... a perfect example of natural selection.
I'm a little puzzled about why this disproves evolution.
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