This morning I read an article out of the online edition of the New York Times. Evidently, scientists have unearthed fossils of a curious-looking fish in the sediments of Canada. This fish appears to have pectoral fins which could have functioned as legs. Evolutionist biologists are simply jumping for joy over this find, as they believe it is clearly a creature in the “transitional stage” between fish and land animals.
A couple observations here. First, this is not the first so-called “missing link” that has been found and claimed. There is no reason to be so dramatic about it. Second, I did not realize that evolutionist biologists viewed Biblical creationism as such a dire threat to their paradigm. To listen to them talk you’d think that creationism presented so insignificant a threat that it shouldn’t even be taken seriously. But no sooner do they find a weird looking fish than they immediately hold it up as a “powerful rebuttal to religious creationists.” Aha! Finally they have found the scrap of evidence that disproves Biblical creation.
Well, they can keep looking.
Gimme a break. It’s still a fish. It just happens to have unusual features in its pectoral fins. There are many other creatures that blur the lines between animal classes. And since the categories of taxonomy are man made, we should not be shocked in the least to discover creatures, living or extinct, that defy classification. Even so, it does not appear that the Tiktaalik Roseae really does blur those lines, since it is still clearly a fish.
“But it has legs!” you say. Well, no it doesn’t. It has pectoral fins that share certain properties with “legs,” and whose function has not really been scientifically determined but has rather been merely assumed. The fact that two structures bear a resemblence to each other does not necessarily indicate a biological relationship. It is this same defunct logic that concludes that because a human fetus in the early stages of gestation resembles that of a horse (or hippo, or what have you), they must have a common ancestry. Or, just because the structure of our eyes bears a remarkable similarity to that of the octopus, humans must consequently be closely related to octopi.
Now I would go so far as to agree that these similarities of structure do indeed indicate a common source. But that source isn’t biological. It’s theological.
