After happily admitting that, despite the title of the great book, Darwin never actually did explain how one species could possibly change into another one, or even offer a definition of the term, evolutionist Professor Anthony Barnett points out in “The Science of Life” that science still cannot provide a watertight definition of what a “species” actually is. He then adds an interesting comment, saying: “However we define species, most organisms clearly fall into kinds sharply separated from similar types and do not breed with them”. Notice his interesting recourse the Biblical term “kinds”.

Lumpers and Splitters
In his book “The Great Evolution Mystery”, in a chapter entitled “The unsolved origin of species”, the late Gordon Rattray Taylor, an enthusiastic but disconcertingly honest evolutionist, says that when it comes to processing information, people are usually “lumpers” who want to simplify and combine and stress what things have in common, or “splitters” who delight in finding the most trifling of differences and exceptions.

Taxonomists, he says, fall into the second category – citing the example of Locard who classified the freshwater mussels of France into 251 species on the basis of shell shape and colour. Today they are regarded as just one species. Similarly, the famous finches studied by Darwin in the Galapagos Islands have at different times been considered to constitute more than thirty species – although, in Genesis speak, they are clearly just one kind, or perhaps a subdivision of a kind.

Many biologists define species as a group of organisms that are able to mate with each other and produce offspring. Complications arise, however, when species A can mate with B, which in turn can make with C – but A cannot make with C.

The Bauplan
As scientists discover more and more “complexity within complexity”, says Taylor, the origin and nature of species still remains a mystery – one problem being that many organisms, a la Lamarck, even modify their appearance, their “phenotype”, according to their surroundings, which makes it hard to classify them, although their genetic make-up, their “genotype”, remains unchanged.

Biologists have long recognized the informal concept of “bauplan”, a German word used by taxonomists meaning “body plan” or “blueprint”, the acceptance, in so many words, of the common sense message of Genesis that God created a core collection of “kinds” of plants and animals, each with its unique “bauplan”.

As a result, a rose will remain a rose and dog a dog, no matter how much variation occurs – just as when I change my clothes, cut and comb my untidy hair and trim my nails and don a hat and put on my reading glasses, it is still me inside it all. Biologists recognise that bauplans are remarkably stable and invariant. [Ed: I don’t think Professor D likes bauplans, G-Man.]

The Morphic Field
If evolutionist Rupert Sheldrake is correct, then the physical bauplan may simply be a reflection of an invisible spirit bauplan, the non-physical “morphic field” which he claims controls the shapes and forms of all organisms – as well as features such as mind, emotion and instinct. [Ed: Do you think Sheldrake’s idea explains how the young of migratory birds are born knowing how to navigate by the stars, G-Man?]

If, as a silly thought, a cat could evolve into a canary, we might wonder at what stage it would start chirping instead of meowing, and develop a love for bird seed.

Slime Moulds
As one of many amazing examples of inexplicable “complexity within complexity” that thinking individuals like Sheldrake seek to explain, we might briefly consider the “slime mould”, an organism discovered by Kenneth Raper in 1935. Slime moulds possess both plant and animal properties and normally exist independently as amoeba which feed on bacteria, and which divide up and multiply every few hours.

At certain times, however, apparently due to some kind of invisible signal from somewhere, some 40,000 or more amoeba will stream to a central point and assemble themselves into the form of a slug which then crawls about, and has been shown to respond, as if a single organism, to light and heat signals.

We are told that experimenters have investigated this mystery by dying the front end of such a “slug”, then removing a thin slice and grafting it on the tail end of another “slug”. To their amazement, the coloured section migrated to the front end, as if, in Taylor’s words: “they ‘knew’ it was their job to be front cells”. Other, even more complex slime mould behaviours have also been observed.

Mechanical Marvels and New Inventions
Letting his evolutionary imagination take flight like a pterodactyl from a primordial swamp, Professor Sheppard easily accounts for what he rightly calls “the mechanical marvel of bird flight” as being simply “the culmination of a long series of changes – feathers replace scale, bones become lighter, the tail disappears, teeth are replaced by a beak”, and much more! ! [Ed: Jus’ like that, G-Man. Jus’ like that! – as dear old Tommy used to say.]

The “much more” he dismisses so lightly would seem to include the ability to lay eggs as the outcome of sexual interaction between male and female birds, the development of claws, bird song, nest building, migration – and much much more.

Evolutionists become skilled as such soaring flights of fancy, as the professor again demonstrates in “Natural Selection and Heredity”, when he says, also referring to the fossil record, that the emergence of a new major group of organisms depends on a “new invention”, which is why, for example, “the acquisition of lungs allowed the fishes to invade the land and evolve into amphibians.” [Ed: No wonder fish is regarded as brain food, when even their ancestors were that clever.]

For this amazing transformation to take place, other complicated and coordinated changes were also clearly required, as he does actually admit, saying: “Consequent upon this depended the evolution of an egg which could conserve water, and so did not have to develop in a pool” – a wondrous technological breakthrough which then made it possible for them to “live in more arid places and evolve into reptiles” [Ed: We are overdue another pause for applause, G-Man.]

Then, of course, came yet another “great invention”, the wing—which enabled reptiles to range further afield for food. Flight, he points out, was “a very effective way of avoiding earth-bound predators” -- so useful that birds and bats and many insects all latched onto the same bright idea. [Ed: Keep clapping folks!]

Again, all this mind-boggling modification apparently came about by the miraculous accumulation of one accidental but fortuitously complementary DNA copying error after another. [Ed: Put politely, folks, Sheppard is talking utter infantile nonsense.]

Hoping that such superficial reasoning will convince the reader, Sheppard concludes that: “not only has natural selection occurred, it is competent to account for the facts of adaptation and evolution as we know them”. [Ed: If anybody finds that convincing, I’d like to have a chat with them about a London landmark I have for sale, very cheap – with excellent potential for a lucrative toll bridge operation.]

Stanley the Knife Fish
With regard to inventions, I wonder what Sheppard would make of the Amazonian knife fish, in particular a specimen that engineers at Bristol University have named Stanley, evidently because it has a ribbon or knife-shaped ventral fin running the length of his body. By means of some marvellous muscular mechanism, Stanley is able to make the ribbon fin vibrate and undulate in such a way that that a wiggly wave motion runs along its body – thus pushing him smoothly through the water.

Engineers were amazed to observe that Stanley can also run the fin in reverse and move backwards, even through dense weeds that would soon enmesh a motorboat’s propeller and render it useless. They are now busily trying to copy the mechanism for use on submarines, using a “fin” composed of metal plates oscillated by a rotating cam shaft running the length of the boat.

The project leader said that there were a lot technical fluid flow problems to be solved before they could come anywhere near approaching the effectiveness of Stanley’s motor – which is, incidentally, over 90%, far better than any propeller. [Ed: Little Stan truly is amazing, G-Man, but what about the Star Nosed Mole, a land-based mammal which is able hunt under water by blowing out bubbles from its nostrils then immediately sucking them back in to see if they have picked up any scent of worms for dinner? Darwinize that, Dr. Dawkins!]

Odontomachus Bauri
Bauri is not another Russian geneticist, but a lowly ant from South America – its claim to fame being the fact that it clamps its deadly mandibles around its termite victims with a force equal to 300 times its own body weight and in record time of 0.13 of a millisecond – which scientists have calculated to be a speed of 145 mph.

According to a newspaper report, little Bauri is “operating in the outer known limits of biology”. Apparently scientists have had the little chap under close observation since the 1800’s, and have finally agreed that as well as using his mighty jaws to chomp his victims he also uses them to leap about, ejector seat fashion, to escape predators – being able to bounce a distance of one foot with a trajectory reaching as high as 3 inches in one go.

To catch his prey, the jaws are slowly ratcheted back and cocked and ready for instant action by means of massive muscles which are located inside his oversized head. Such is their power that Bauri is equipped with a self-protection mechanism just in case he misses his victim and the jaws power into each other. Oh, the wonders of Evolution! [Ed: Wow! This is fantastic. Can we do our “Darwin woz right!” mantra now, G-Man? Just a few hundred times, that’s all I ask. ]

Darwin Defeated!
About a century prior to the publication of “Origins”, Italian professor Luigi Galvani observed that the leg muscles of a partially dissected frog would twitch if in contact with surgical instruments made of different metals. As a result he theorized that the frog was acting as a source of “animal electricity”. Another Italian, the physicist Alessandro Volta doubted the truth of that theory and set about investigating the matter more thoroughly, finally proving that any two different metal plates held in a conducting liquid, such as a dilute acid or salty water, will generate a steady flow of electric current. [Ed: Is that where we get the word “volt” from, G-Man?]

By stacking up pairs of metal plates, such as copper and zinc, separated by bits o cloth moistened with salt water or a dilute acid, Volta was able to build a “voltaic pile” of much greater power, in other words, a battery – like a common 9 volt battery, which, when broken open, is found to contain six cells, each of 1.5 volts.

In theory, by making a pile containing hundred of plates, a battery capable of giving a nasty shock could be constructed – which is precisely the principle found in electric eels, except that in their case the voltage is generated by hundreds of pads of muscle running along the creature’s body that discharge electricity when flexed.

Commenting on this incredible phenomenon, in a chapter entitled “Difficulties of Natural Selection”, Darwin himself says: “It is impossible to conceive by what steps these wondrous organs have been produced”.

Darwin’s favourite strategy, of course, when confronted by the complexity of nature, such as the human eye, was to dream up a vast number of tiny steps in order to demonstrate, for example, how a single light-sensitive cell could gradually “evolve” into a human eye. [Ed: Of course, the biochemistry of even a single light-sensitive cell is horrendously complicated – but Chas didn’t know that, did he? Never mind.]

In this case, however, even Darwin had to admit defeat, totally unable to concoct any kind of credible tale – so notice that phrase again: “It is IMPOSSIBLE TO CONCEIVE” – a rare admission for Darwin’s fertile imagination. [Ed: Cut the caps, G-Man – it annoys people. OK?]

Darwin’s puzzlement was greatly increased by the fact that several kinds of totally unrelated fish have such electric organs -- and often located in different parts of their bodies, and sometimes with no apparent function. [Ed: Ah well, “moving on from that difficulty” G-Man. ]