If I were still teaching Biodesign, I would have students quietly concentrate on this image for one full minute and have them “write out of their stream of consciousness.†I can assure you, their descriptions would be astounding! Why not try it?
The “Big Bang Theory†and evolution have something in common, both are events with no known cause. According to Galileo, the story of “Adam and Eve†was written as an allegory to “accommodate the mental capacity of the unlearned.†Perhaps it is really a story about the evolution of God and, 3,500 years later, it is becoming more complex and enigmatic. In a devilishly ironic twist, evolution has embarrassingly exposed the limited mental capacity of the so-called biological intelligentsia; experts who lack a spiritual perspective of what Joseph Campbell called, “The soul’s high adventure.â€
Whether people know it or not, college journalism 101 and biology 101 classes have very similar goals. Their collective objectives are to answer: Who? What? When? Where? Why? And how?
In his book, Cosmos, Carl Sagan, claimed that Heike crabs evolved when Japanese fishermen selected out crabs that resembled samurai warriors and returned them to the sea. I don’t know if this is true or not, however, many of his assumptions regarding evolution were pure “science fiction.†Crabs are crustaceans that appeared on earth about 145 million years ago. Many of the smaller species, including the Heike crabs, have little food value and are routinely returned to the sea by fishermen. The samurai warriors appeared in Japan about 800 years ago. Fossil evidence of such a recent event is not likely, however, if the Heike crabs evolved before then, Sagan’s theory would be invalid.
MORE importantly, this leads us to the obvious question: What was the controlling force that resulted in the flamboyant Mandarin Dragonets? Lacking any plausible explanation, scientists are forced to claim that the fish are the result of “random†or “chance†mutations or reshuffling of genes in the reproductive process. Most scientists would not bet a penny on the odds of this producing a Dragonet, instead they sheepishly grin and parrot, “given enough time it could happen.†Yes, and given enough time, a sow’s ear may magically morph into a silk purse.
In the introduction to Loren Eiseley’s, “The Star Thrower,†W.H. Auden wrote: “I must now openly state my own bias and say that I do not believe in Chance; I believe in Providence and Miracles. If photosynthesis was invented by chance, I can only say it was a damned lucky chance for us. If, biologically speaking, it is a “statistical impossibility†that I should be walking the earth instead of a million other possible people, I can only think of it as a miracle which  I must do my best to deserve…I can not swallow the assertion that “chance†mutations can explain the fact that whenever an ecological niche is free, some species evolves to fit it…â€
Auden surely had read Eiseley’s, “The Immense Journey,†where he discussed the evolutionary importance of Periophythalmus ( mudskipper fish). Instead of fish, using super-pectoral fins, making a triumphant march up an ocean beach, Eiseley describes the mudskippers climbing up mangrove trees. In what is truly one of the most profound scientific/theological observations Eiseley wrote:
“Perhaps there also, among rotting fish heads and blue night-burning bog lights, moved the eternal mystery, the careful finger of God. The increase was not much. It was two bubbles, two thin-walled little balloons at the end of the Snout’s brain. The cerebral hemispheres had appeared.â€
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KurTiX4FDuQ
The human cerebral hemispheres are the primary structures that separate them from other animals. They are three times larger than those of the higher apes and include the following functions: logic, reasoning, numerical, language, creative, spatial, perception, executive-motor skills, memory, visual, auditory, and sensory skills.
Nobel laureate/physiology scholar Roger Sperry, was well aware of this when he wrote: “One of the great unresolved paradoxes of science involves consciousness, free will and values, three long-standing thorns in the hide of science. Materialist science couldn’t cope with any of them, even in principle. It’s not just that they’re difficult. They’re in direct conflict with basic models. Science has had to renounce them—to deny their existence or to say that they are beyond the domain of science. For most of us, of course, they are among the most important things in life.â€
Indeed: Without our cerebral hemispheres we simply would not be sharing this moment in time and space. Boggling!