Page 29 - Devotion Among Animals Revealing the Work of God

Awareness in Animals

Furthermore, it can't be said that they learned their extraordi-
nary behaviors. All these creatures begin to display these behaviors
perfectly, from the first moment they emerged from their pupae.
They do not go through any learning process on any subject; all their
behavior is determined according to knowledge they have at birth.
This is equally true for the "instinctive" behaviors of all other living

beings anywhere on earth. If this is so, who does teach them these
skills?
Darwin voiced this contradiction 150 years ago:
. . . [I]t would be a serious error to suppose that the greater
number of instincts have been acquired by habit in one gener-
ation, and then transmitted by inheritance to succeeding gen-
erations. It can be clearly shown that the most wonderful in-
stincts with which we are acquainted, namely, those of the
hive-bee and of many ants, could not possibly have been ac-
11
quired by habit.
If a working ant or other neuter insect had been an ordinary
animal, I should have unhesitatingly assumed that all its char-
acters had been slowly acquired through natural selection;
namely, by individuals having been born with slight profitable
modifications, which were inherited by the off-spring; and that
these again varied and again were selected, and so onwards.

But with the working ant we have an insect differing greatly
from its parents, yet absolutely sterile; so that it could never
have transmitted successively acquired modifications of struc-
ture or instinct to its progeny. It may well be asked, how is it
possible to reconcile this case with the theory of natural selec-
12
tion?
Darwin's objection remains unanswered by evolutionists today.
The evolutionist Cemal Yildirim expresses the dilemma that this
subject presents to his fellow evolutionists:

27