'Tiktaalik' Simply Shows God's Divine Design, says Ken Ham
by Allie Martin
April 20, 2006
(AgapePress) - - The founder of a Christian apologetics ministry says a so-called "missing link" found in the Canadian arctic doesn't prove that land animals evolved from fish, despite reports in the secular press. Earlier this month the secular press announced the discovery of a fossil known as "Tiktaalik." Scientists said the fossil -- purported to have lived 375 million years ago -- had the characteristics of a fish, but also had characteristics that made it a predecessor of amphibians, reptiles, and dinosaurs.
"Experts said the discovery, with its unusually well-preserved and complete skeletons, reveals significant new information about how the water-to-land evolution took place," reported Associated Press on April 5. And while Jennifer Clack of Cambridge University, an expert unconnected with the study, told AP that it is impossible to tell if the fossil was a direct ancestor of land vertebrates, she admitted that if a scientist set out to design a plausible candidate, "you'd probably come up with something like this."
Ken Ham, founder of the apologetics ministry known as Answers in Genesis, says Tiktaalik does not show a transitional form of animal as evolutionists claim.
"If you look at a platypus, a platypus has features of reptiles, birds, and mammals," he notes. "Now, that's not considered to be a transitional form. But what you find is that God has used optimum features in different creatures. And so you see some similarities and you see differences, and so on -- just as the forelimb of a human is similar to the forelimb of a chimp is similar to the structure of the bones in other animals, other vertebrates."
The fossil -- which Ham describes as a lobe-finned fish -- is just another example of God's divine design, he says. "They're saying that it was evolving legs. But, you know, you've got a shallow water fish here, like the lungfish," says Ham, "and they have the strength in their fins -- these lobe fins. They're different from fins of other fish."
The Answers in Genesis spokesman explains. "The lobe fins' bones give them some strength so they can crawl along the mud," he says. "I mean, so what? That's not a transitional form. That's a fish designed to do what it does do in shallow water."
Ham says if evolution is true, there would be millions of fossils representing transitional forms of animals. And he contends the secular press has once again shown its bias toward evolution by heralding the recent discovery as one that, as AP put it, "sheds new light on one of the greatest transformations in the history of animals."
Researchers have not yet discovered any remains from the hind end of the creature's body -- only from the jaw, snout, and neck areas.
Allie Martin, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
