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. All of us are familiar with the feathers of birds, scales of reptiles and fish, and the hair of mammals. Creation scientists view these structures as unique for the animal for which it was designed. Evolutionary naturalists disagree, of course, and they maintain that these skin appendages come from common origins, as reported recently in secular news outlets.
But before we look into that, we should look at evolution's bigger picture. Hair, scales, and feathers are all structures found in the vertebrates, a subphylum of the phylum chordata.
So where did the chordates come from, according to evolution? Lowe and his fellow scientists dated in Cell magazine volume 113, quote, Despite considerable paleontological work, and that is, work in the fossils, and molecular analysis, mystery still surrounds the origin of our own phylum, the chordata. Evolutionists Springer and Holley stated in their 2013 zoology text, quote, chordate origins are shadowy. We should keep in mind the title of Darwin's infamous 1859 book was On the Origin of Species. Ironically, one thing he never addressed was the origin of the species.
However, creationists have a book that does describe the origin of the species, and It's called Genesis, the Book of Beginnings. Yeah. In the latest effort to force an evolutionary take on the origin of animals and their unique structures, secular scientists have reported scales, hair, and feathers may have come from a common origin.
Now this was written up in the Christian Science Monitor June twenty-fourth of twenty sixteen. Not surprisingly, the monitor report by Eva Botkin is replete with words such as may, suggest, Maybe, perhaps, muse, scenario. It sounds very much like well, like they're guessing. The article quotes one of the study's authors, Michael Milenkovich of the University of Geneva, as saying, and I quote Our data shows that all these structures hair, feathers, and scales Are the descendants of a common structure that was present in the ancestors of all amniotes?
Well, amniotes are those so called higher vertebrates, mammals, reptiles, and birds. The problem for the evolutionists is that this cryptic, unknown amniote ancestor has never been found in the fossil record.
Furthermore, creationists predict it never will be found, based on the written record of one who is there. In the beginning.
So creation scientists maintain hair has always been hair as God created it. Indeed, in this defining feature of the mammals and people is not possessed even in the most basic form by any other vertebrate class. In may twenty ten, evolutionist Shanta Barley of New Scientist magazine reported the discovery in southern France of one hundred million year old hair entombed in amber. Not surprisingly, it's identical to modern hair. Bartley reported, and I quote: It turns out that the pattern is identical to that found on modern mammalian hair.
End quote. The origin of feathers in birds is a more interesting case, said evolutionist Hans Larsen in a two thousand seven publication. He went on to say, and I quote, The most basal bird is, by definition, Archaeopteryx, and it already has full plumage.
So where did feathers come from according to secular science? This is a critical question. Since feathers have always been feathers, evolutionists were driven to produce a hypothetical diagram of a scale a reptilian scale supposedly, that became a feather through random cracks separating sections of the large scale. But this quasi frayed feature ignored the follicle, or sheath of epithelium, a key design feature of the feather. Evolutionist Michael Denton said in twenty sixteen, and I quote, This first novelty.
Is without any antecedent structure in any reptile scale or any other vertebrate skinned appendage. It is a unique epidermal invagination that leads to the growth of a hollow tube, a tube that ornithologist, and an ornithologist is somebody who studies birds. Richard Prum calls quote the defining feature of the feather end quote. Richard Prum is a bird expert at Yale University who studies developmental structures such as feathers. To his credit he was the one who deconstructed the previously discussed frayed scale origin of the feather model.
Recently, National Geographic said in regard to feathers found an amber in Myanmar. Bone, tissue, and feathers show the almost 100 million-year-old wings are remarkably similar to those on modern birds. The author was quoting from the june twenty eighth, twenty sixteen, issue of Nature Communications Evolutionists found the asymmetrical flight feathers, with claws on the wing tips, indicate that the extinct birds were strong fliers.
Some secondary feathers, tissue, and bone were also preserved.
So, once again, creationists maintain God created feathers as feathers. And he created birds as birds, as we read about it in the Book of Beginnings. Let's take a short break. I'll continue on this topic when we come back. From sharks to butterflies, bats to orangutans, we can't help but marvel at the stunning and amusing creatures God has made.
If you and your kids enjoy learning about animals, then you'll love our book, Guide to Animals, with its beautiful full-color images and fascinating facts. Published by the Institute for Creation Research, Guide to Animals provides answers to many popular questions about the animal kingdom. How do chameleons change colors? How do jellyfish live without a brain? And what happened to the dinosaurs and other extinct animals?
Guide to Animals shows how everything that can slither, crawl, soar, or swim displays the handiwork of God. Order your copy of Guide to Animals from the Institute for Creation Research by calling 800-628-7640 or visiting icr.org. That's 800-628-7640 or visiting icr.org. Welcome back to Science, Scripture, and Salvation, a radio ministry of the Institute for Creation Research. The alleged common ancestry of scales, hair, and feathers is based on the similar mechanism of embryonic development starting with a critical and amazing structure called the placode, what Richard Prum calls an information center.
In the methods section of the twenty sixteen Science Advances paper, one should note authors Dupoi and Milenkovich did not conduct any work on birds or mammals, just on three species of reptiles, and then only on their eggs. The june twenty sixteen issue of Science Daily Story concluded Quote, these future studies will hopefully fine-tune our understanding of the physical and molecular mechanisms generating the complexity and the diversity of life during evolution, end quote.
Well, let's not forget the evolutionary linchpin is finding the ancestor of all amniotes, and this is called the basal amniote, that conveniently became extinct over 300 million years ago. Finding this will never happen, of course, because such a creature never existed. Homology is a resemblance by virtue of common descent, such as the leg of a horse, the fin of a porpoise, and the wing of a bat. It was a convincing argument for an evolutionary common ancestor, but as evolutionist Richard Milton said, and I quote Ultimately, however, it is homology that has provided the greatest stumbling block to Darwinian theory, for at the final and most crucial hurdle homology has fallen. Evolutionist Michael Denton has a chapter in his book entitled The Failure of Homology, saying, and I quote But it has become clear that the principle of homology cannot be extended in this way.
Homologous structures are often specified by non-homologous genetic systems, and the concept of homology can seldom be extended back into embryology. Embryology is a study of development of animals and people.
So homology fails because there's no homologous genes and virtually no homologous patterns of embryological development. If you remember, homology means physical resemblance by virtue of descent from a common evolutionary ancestor. Obviously, you cannot prove evolution by calling on homology, because homology has evolution as its foundation. We call this a tautology or circular reasoning. Evolutionists Thane and Hickman call homology quote a controversial term end quote in their two thousand four Dictionary of Biology.
Homology, indeed, is contentious. Evolutionist Michael Denton said in twenty sixteen, quote, But despite the co-option of pre-existing gene circuits, all the evidence points to feathers being genuine novelties, not homologous to reptile scales or any known antecedent structure. Evolutionists Brush and Prum said feathers are hierarchically complex assemblages of numerous evolutionary novelties. The feather follicle Tube feather germ. Feather branch structure.
interacting differentiated barbules, and barbules are the tiny hooks that sometimes you can zip and unzip on a feather. They have no homologue in any antecedent structures. And according to Six Evolutionists in their twenty eleven Zoology text, the primary keratinized epidermal scales of reptiles are not homologous to the bony scales of fish that come from the dermis. This argument from homology simply collapses.
So to conclude, there is no scientific reason to suggest scales, feathers, and hair came from an unknown reptilian ancestor many millions of years ago except, except the unproofed theory of evolution demands that such an unlikely event happen.
Meanwhile creationists look to God's Word, found in Genesis chapter one, where it states in verse twenty, And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creatures that hath life, and the fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. and God created great whales and every living creature that moveth. Yeah. We can take confidence and assurance that God's word is true when it comes to the origin of the species. 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.
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