WONDERS OF CREATION: Yes, Males CAN Have Babies … If They Are Seahorses
There are millions of species of life on this Earth, but only one of them features males who fertilize their unborn young, then carry them to term and deliver them. No, I am not pulling your leg – there are males who become pregnant and deliver babies.
Baby seahorses, that is.
Screenshot from Youtube.
Seahorses are cute characters in kids’ movies, to be sure, but did you know they are also amazing anatomical examples that just may present an unsolvable problem for evolutionary materialists who believe Natural Selection is the sole explanation for the appearance of new species.
But, as rare and surprising as it may be, the fact male seahorses get pregnant isn’t the characteristic that makes them a challenge for Natural Selection advocates.
As Eric Lyons of the Apologetics Press explains in the following video, the Seahorse swims vertically, thanks to a gas bladder that always maintains exactly the right amount of gas to move the creature as it desires.
“How can evolutionists logically explain the evolution of the swim bladder if seahorses have always needed them to survive? If they have always needed them, then they must have always had them, else there would be no seahorses,” Lyons asks in the video.
The video is only 4:17 in length, and includes some beautiful footage of seahorses in their natural habitat, plus it poses some questions about Natural Selection that seem to be rather significant. Enjoy:
Of course almost all bony fish have a swim bladder, so seahorses are not unusual in that. It might be said that they are more dependent on it that some other fish, I don’t know if that is true or not but it wouldn’t be difficult for evolution to explain.
As for the sea horse male pregnancy thing, it is of course quite a bit less complex then the standard live bearing of young via a female that we see in many species (although few fish) and presents less of a problem to explain. Indeed in many ways it is a simpler and more elegant solution and one would think that if a designer was responsible for it he would have used it more frequently.
Of course the specific don’t really matter to anyone. Anyone who believes in a rational understandable universe isn’t bothered by the idea that we don’t know everything yet and those who have decided that the unknown is the box in which they want to put God would just move to another target.
David, the Natural Selection process, according to evolution advocates, keeps beneficial features and terminates unhelpful ones to develop new species. But a Seahorse born with an imperfect bladder would quickly die, thus stopping the process in its tracks. So how do you account for this fact?
I don’t claim any specific technical knowledge on the evolution of Seahorses. I don’t particularly know how different a Seahorse swim bladder is compared to other bony fish. My guess would be that a proto-Seahorse was less dependent on a perfect swim bladder and as the bladder improved other systems may have atrophied leaving it dependent on the bladder.
Interestingly enough, the swim bladder in bony fish eventually became the lungs in land animals.
David, how is your statement “my guess would be that …” different from your statement “interestingly enough, the swim bladder became …”?
My ‘I guess that’ refers to me not having any knowledge of the particulars of seahorse evolution so it is nothing more than a guess. My ‘interestingly enough’ refers to something that I believe to be the current understanding.
I certainly don’t claim to be an evolutionary biologist or have any particular expertise.
That’s my point – your statement about the swim bladder is presented as fact about its origin when it is actually a description of current scientific opinion.
Yes, that is true. If we are going to be totally pedantic. One of the most frustrating things discussing evolution is the ‘science on, science off’ game creationists like to play. Any science that they think ‘proves’ creationism is SCIENCE but everything else is just current scientific opinion.
Creationists claim God created the universe and point to evidence they find persuasive. Evolutionists claim evolution explains the origin of species and point to evidence they find persuasive. Neither can prove beyond question their respective conclusions. Call it faith, opinion, whatever you choose, David, but the bottomline on these ultimate issues is that we are all evaluating evidence and reaching what we believe to be the most reasonable conclusion based on that evidence. This is not pedantry, it is reality.
Any non-natural, unobservable phenomenon — let alone one that is utterly unique — is by definition outside the bounds and beyond the reach of empirical scientific inquiry. The subject of science is nature. We are perfectly free to believe that the universe has a Creator, but that premise is philosophical, not scientific. Science has nothing to tell us one way or the other.
If the subject of science is limited to science, as you suggest, then you are conceding that science is incapable of fully explaining the origin of the universe and much else. But many evolutionary materialists contend that science makes God unnecessary, irrelevant, a fiction, etc. etc.
What I was describing as pedantry what you instance that I qualify an interesting bit of information with it being ‘current scientific opinion,’ and time we are discussing science that is true.
I then went on a tangent about something I find frustrating that was only a bit related to the pedantry point. I certainly don’t think you believing different then me is pedantry.
Mark (12/28 @ 4:10 pm): Yes, there are those who claim that modern scientific findings make God irrelevant. And there are those who claim that literal scriptural interpretations nullify modern scientific findings. The two claims are mirror images and are equally absurd. Both misunderstand and misrepresent science.
Accepting the methodological naturalism of modern science, and acknowledging modern scientific findings themselves (e.g., concerning evolution), does not mean that one has embraced philosophical materialism or atheism. They are different domains. Regrettably, the tendency to conflate scientific questions with philosophical (or theological) ones is endemic on all sides.
Here are a couple of brief fascinating videos on the evolution of the seahorse:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIS_2_A-_Ko
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqYel-A29dc
God in His Providence has seen fit to fill our world with life. Isn’t our most appropriate response one of gratitude — rather than second-guessing His chosen methods?
But neither of these otherwise informative videos answers the question posed by the imperfect bladder.