Welcome to Science, Scripture, and Salvation, a radio ministry of the Institute for Creation Research. In this program, we want to encourage you in your Christian faith by showing how scientific evidence supports the Bible, particularly the Genesis account. The book of Genesis lays the foundation for all matters addressed in the rest of the Bible. The nature of God, His sovereignty in creation, man's purpose, sin, marriage, family, and why we need a Savior are all introduced and explained in Genesis. When we see that the first and most foundational book of the Bible can be trusted in all matters, including science, it builds confidence in the rest of the inspired word all the way to Revelation.
I'm Frank Sherwin, zoologist and research associate with the Institute for Creation Research. Join me for today's show of Science, Scripture, and Salvation. Proverbs 30, 28 says, The spider skillfully grasps with its hands, and it is in the king's palaces. At any given time, no matter where we are, we're not far from those infamous arachnids, most of which are not a threat. Many feel a natural revulsion when they experience spiders up close and personal, but like the mosquito, God had a plan for them in our ecosystem.
What is immediately apparent is that spiders have always been spiders, and did not evolve from a non spider ancestor. In twenty fourteen, an evolutionist reported that quote spider gene study reveals tangled evolution, end quote.
Well, tangled indeed. Creationists maintain spiders were created as spiders, as scripture and science shows. When it comes to their origin, two evolutionists stated most zoologists believe that arachnids arose from the Eurypterids and were early terrestrial inhabitants.
Well, creation scientists believe that God created spiders as spiders during the creation week. just thousands of years ago. Indeed, even fossil spiders are 100% spider. In a news story of April of 2011 we read, and I quote, tufts of hair-like fibers seen on its legs showed this 165 million-year-old arachnid to be the oldest known species of the largest web weaving spiders alive today, the golden orb weavers or Nephila. Going back even further in evolutionary time reveals two fossil spiders from Crossali, England.
They were found in sedimentary rock dated by evolutionists at 310 million years ago. Yet as the creation model predicts, they're still just spiders.
Well, here's an easy recipe. Take food, metabolically convert it into sticky glue, then allow air to contact it while rapidly stretching it into an impossibly narrow, nimble thread As strong as steel.
Well, there you have it. Spider silk. We tend to take for granted the incredible detail and beauty of a typical spider web. The creator designed most species of spider to secrete a special web that scientists have long appreciated and have attempted to copy. They have found that web strands are comparable in strength to fused quartz fibers.
Zoologists discovered that spiders have anywhere from one to four pairs of spinnerets located in the abdomen of the spider. of the normal number are three pairs. In addition, there are among with the spinnerets seven silk glands, each making a strand for a unique purpose. Many dozens of these tiny tubes lead to these specially designed abdominal glands. Earliest evidence of a spider's silk spinning activity is a fossil discovered from three hundred eighty million year old sedimentary rocks near Gilboa, New York.
It is clear that spiders, along with their silk producing parts, have always been spiders.
Some spiders even use a long trailing thread for a process called ballooning. The creature secretes a line and allows the wind to carry it and the spider aloft for places unknown. Spiders have landed on ships far out at sea. Evolutionists, true to their world view, call this amazing ability of the celliformes nothing more than a unique adaptation. Two secular authors state in a 2005 college biology textbook, quote, Each spider engineers a style of web characteristic of its species, and builds it perfectly on the first try.
This complex behavior is apparently inherited.
Well, creation scientists maintain that spiders were created with this amazing ability and carry this ability with them as they continue to thrive and move across the earth. In regard to webs before the fall, they could very well have been made as decorations, as some species do even to day. Evolutionists state in the BBC Nature News in 2011, quote, exactly why the spiders adorn their webs is unclear. A team has made a discovery in one spider species that suggests the spiders use adornments tacitly to make their webs more visible to animals that might accidentally damage them, end quote.
Now it's time for a short break. I'll return with some final words on this topic in a moment. What happened to the dinosaurs? Are monkeys and people the same? Why do we live on Earth and not some other planet?
Kids have some great questions about God's creation, but do you have the answers for them? At the Institute for Creation Research, our scientists and Bible scholars have produced The Guide to Creation Basics. This book contains full-colored images and fascinating commentary from experts in biology, geology, astronomy, and biblical study. Guide to Creation Basics can help teach your children how the animals could fit on Noah's Ark, how dinosaurs and humans could live at the same time, and how God's power and wisdom can be seen in something as small as a single cell. Find basic answers to your child's biggest creation questions.
Order your copy of Guide to Creation Basics from the Institute for Creation Research by calling 800-628-7640 or visiting www.icr.org. Welcome back to Science, Scripture, and Salvation, a radio ministry of the Institute for Creation Research. We saw in the first half of our program that the fossil record reveals that when we do find spiders, they're always spiders, 100%. Not on their way to becoming spiders. We also saw that the silk spinning ability of spiders is totally unique, and that the anatomy and the physiology involved with the production of silk is beyond man's ability to ever comprehend something like that and to produce it themselves.
And then we found that each spider engineers a style of web that's characteristic of its species and builds it perfectly the first try, that again reveals the creative hand of God.
Well, one thing is certain, the webs before the fall must have been large, spectacular, and beautiful. Indeed, spider silk has been found to conduct light almost as well as glass fiber, opening the door to biosensor, laser, and microchip research, according to the Optical Society, in 2012. But what was the purpose and the function of Spider Venom before the fall, when everything was supposed to be very good? Creationist scientists continue to research and answers are becoming apparent. While creationists ponder the purpose of some aspects of spider physiology prior to the fall, it's now evident that their toxicity actually has the potential to save many people from starvation.
Well, how is that?
Well, as the world's population continues to grow at approximately eighty million souls per year, it's important to make maximum use of the various food crops. Unfortunately, crop loss to insect pests is around 10%, food that could be used to nourish millions of people. Reducing this intolerable loss by way of traditional pesticides like chlorinated hydrocarbons is costly, and it also gets into the ecosystem and causes problems. It adversely affects the environment, and insects are becoming increasingly resistant to the poisons. but let's keep in mind that insect resistance to pesticide is, however, hardly evidence of Darwinian evolution.
The insects are the same genus and the same species both before and after the pesticide resistance. One way of battling crop destroying insects is to use more environmentally friendly compounds that are just as deadly to these pests. We've all heard of nicotine that's found in cigarette tobacco. But nicotine from the tobacco plant is one such natural pesticide. It can be diluted and applied and has, as one scientific publication said, and I quote, a much lower acute mammalian toxicity and greater field persistence.
End quote. Oddly enough, using spider venom as a natural insecticide may be another method. Research biologists suggest that using a peptide that's a compound of two or more amino acids isolated from spider venom that is poisonous to insects. This chemical is called insecticidal spider venom peptide, or ISVP. Consider the benefits man has discovered from spider venom.
Two evolutionists said in twenty thirteen, and I quote, A large number of sulphur rich insecticidal peptides have been isolated from spider venoms. Many of these have desirable properties for the development as bioinsecticides, including high potency, rapid speed of kill, lack of vertebrate toxicity, and that also includes people, low production costs, and actively against a wide range of crop pests and disease vectors. A University of California Berkeley graduate student has discovered two beautiful new species of peacock spiders in Southeast Queensland, Australia. The student, Madeleine Girard, named the two colorful creatures Sparkle Muffin and Skeletorus. The report on Livescience dot com quotes an evolutionist entomologist saying the peacock spider group is more varied than previously thought.
Well, non Darwinists wholly agree. There is much variation within the created spider kind. But wherever they're found, spiders always display eight legs, remarkable eye structure, and are, as creationists predict, one hundred percent spiders.
So what we've seen in the program is that not only have spiders always been spiders, whenever they're fossilized, they're fossilized with their eight legs and a remarkable eye structure, always a spider's. And we find that the ability for these spiders to make webs is very, very unique to each individual species.
So we find that spiders certainly are clear evidence of creative design and organization that goes into these amazing arachnids. The Apostle Paul said in Romans chapter 1 and verse 20 that God's creation is clearly seen, and certainly we can appreciate and we can see God's clearly seen creation in these amazing creatures. that we call the spiders. Thank you for joining us on Science, Scripture, and Salvation, a radio ministry of the Institute for Creation Research. That's all the time we have for our program today, but we would love to connect with you through our website at icr.org.
For over 45 years, ICR has equipped believers with evidence of the Bible's accuracy and authority by showing how science supports the Genesis creation account. Our scientists research the evidence for creation and communicate their findings through books, articles, DVD series, and conferences. Please visit our website at icr.org for more information about the latest scientific discoveries, to subscribe to our free magazine and devotional, and to locate our next creation conference at a venue near you. All of this and more at icr.org. If you've enjoyed this podcast, subscribe to Science, Scripture, and Salvation on iTunes.
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