Creation and the Peacock's Feather

Alright, those are the announcements for today. Now we can just go right into the main message for this Sabbath. Again, talking about God's creation. As we look around us, have you ever asked why are things black, not black or white, why are things with color? They don't have to be. It's not something that is needed for creation, to work. As a matter of fact, there are many animals that only see black and white. For instance, raccoons, those little critters that sometimes bother us so much. Seals see only black and white. Whales and dolphins can see only black and white. Sharks, they can't see color as well. So have you ever thought how evolution explains why we do not have a black and white world and vision? It's a lot easier. It wouldn't take as much work to develop color into the scheme of things. And yet, we see the beautiful colors around us. I remember growing up in Miami, one of the TV programs that we all look forward to was called Disney's Wonderful World of Color. And when TVs went from black and white to color, it was a whole different experience. You marvel at it.

And yet, what kids are being taught in school about Darwinian evolution that pawned off the idea that all of this just happened to be a chance, you know, variation, natural selection. You don't need somebody to design what we see around us. And yet, when you ask them, bring out the hard evidence, where do you see, actually, animals evolving to become something else? We have about eight million different species of animals and plants on the earth. Show me one that is changing into another type. You don't see half a dog and half a cat, but you would have to have all of these gradations, these different grades, to go from one to another. It reminds me in a book that I have, which is called Why We Believe in Creation and Not Evolution by Fred Meldau. And in the book, he gives an example of the importance of having concrete evidence to determine a matter. Because people can come up with clever theories, but show me the evidence. In this case, this was a famous trial back in the 19th century by two famous lawyers. One was called Rufus Coate, and the other one was even more famous, Daniel Webster. He was kind of like the Perry Mason of the 19th century. He never lost a case that I know of, and he was able to use just logic and examples to win his cases. In this situation, the case depended on whether or not two wagon wheels belong to the same axle on the same wagon. Coate advanced a brilliant argument based on the theory of the, quote, fixation of points, that the wheels came from the same axle. Now, as you know, a wagon has two axles, front wheels, back wheels, and he was trying to say these two wheels belong to one axle. He had the jury almost convinced. Then Daniel Webster took the stand. He asked that the wheels and the axle be brought forward. It was evident that they did not come from the same axle, for the wheels were not of the same size. To the honest and sensible jury, Mr. Webster simply asked, look at those wheels, gentlemen. Just look at them and see for yourselves that they did not, they could not come from the same axle and wagon. That was all the argument he advanced. The fact was evident, and the jury were moved by the facts, and he won the case. So what we want to show is the evidence, not the speculation and all these maybe clever theories that they never bring out the evidence. And so for this sermon, I would like to bring out exhibit A, which is the peacock feather. And also related to this peacock feather and the colors that you see in this peacock feather. They're called bioluminescent because bio means something living, and it's this brilliant iridescent color. The same ones that you find in butterflies that also have bioluminescence. So I'd like for the girls to hand out the feathers and also to pass the butterfly samples.

So each row gets to see one of these feathers. Feathers where I just saw. Here's a butterfly. And where's the... you've already passed them out? Okay.

The point is that Darwin would say that all of these things developed in a step-by-step fashion.

But when Darwin looked at the peacock's feather, this is what he wrote to the botanist Asa Gray in 1860. He says, the sight of a feather in a peacock's tail whenever I gaze at it makes me sick. Well, most people marvel, but it made him physically sick. He also wrote in the Origin of Species, beauty created for its own sake would be absolutely fatal to my theory.

Chapter 6, page 184. I just read that last night. Now, knowing that natural selection couldn't come up with the colors of a peacock's feather, he invented the feather. He invented the theory of sexual selection, which meant that, oh, what happened was that in order for mates to get together and mate, that the ones that have the brightest colors, the hens, in this case, because the male peacock is the one with all the brilliant colors, the female hen would pick the peacock that has the most colors.

So, in a way, peacocks are trying to build up even more colors. Unfortunately, when you go to the evidence back in 2010, after a seven-year study of the University of Japan, watching 268 of these matings between the male peacock and the female, said that the hens did not regard the size of the tail or the color to mate. So, you see, when you bring out the evidence, Darwin just came up with this because he knew his theory couldn't explain it, so he came up with this other idea, because what you'd have to attribute to these simple animals, like the hen, the peacock hen, that they would have aesthetic values.

They come up and say, oh yes, well this is a really beautiful one. Like, it can distinguish art forms. So, that was refuted. And so, Darwin, when he saw the beauty in nature, he rebelled because it pointed toward God, that he was trying to deny his existence. What happened to him? Well, he was part of the product of the 19th century, where there was this rebellion toward God and toward religion.

And he was one of the main movers of this. His father and grandfather did not believe in God. Darwin wanted to attack God and the Bible, and through his theory, where you have creation without a creator, he tried to persuade people.

You don't need God to explain the nature that we see around us. The death of his daughter Anne, at the age of 10, made him bitter toward God. And he had secret notebooks that he didn't want his wife to read. And there he talked about his resentment toward God, that he was a materialist, that he didn't believe in anything spiritual. Everything had to do with atoms and matter and energy. And this type of response was prophesied in the Bible.

This would be part of man's rebellion in the end times. And Darwin fomented that. He was one of the ones that became this anti-God person. And I've read many of his biographies and analyzed it. And he was quite an embittered man. And he finally got swept by his popularity. And although he knew there were many grave flaws in his theory, he became very famous. And he's buried there in Westminster Church, where the great men in Britain are buried. Notice in Romans 1, verses 18 through 25, I'll read it from the Tree of Life version, a little more modern. It says, For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.

In unrighteousness, they suppress the truth, because what can be known about God is plain to them, for God has shown it to them. His invisible attributes, his eternal power, and his divine nature have been clearly seen ever since the creation of the world, being understood through the things that have been made. In other words, God has his exhibits. You show all of these things, and you say, you think this can all come without somebody designing? Carefully? The millions of molecules that you have to put, like Lego pieces for things to work. You think all of that can just eventually come out by chance?

It says, So people are without excuse, for even though they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or give him things. That was the case of Charles Darwin. He did not glorify him, and did not give him things. Instead, their thinking became futile, and their senseless hearts were made dark. Claiming to be wise, they became fools. They started teaching silly theories. That even an eight-year-old kid would have enough sense to know. It doesn't make any sense, any logic.

They exchanged the glory of the immortal God for an image in the form of mortal man, and birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things. So they started worshiping nature, and that's what we have today. We have a bunch of nature lovers, but not God lovers. We've gotten into the movements now, where everything has to do with saving humans, and just focusing on them, instead of thinking about God first. Therefore, God gave them over, in their evil desires of their hearts, to impurity, to dishonor their bodies with one another. They traded the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creation, rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. Darwin himself would mention that he was a master wriggler, which means that he tried to wriggle himself, never admitting when he was wrong. He always come up with some trumped-up idea, some imaginative explanation for things. And so, I pose that the feather of peacock is enough to refute Darwin's theory. In the Bible, peacocks are mentioned in some versions, because these words sometimes are hard to pin down. They are hard to pin down, but in 1 Kings 10, verse 22, the contemporary English version, for instance, says, Solomon had a lot of sea-going ships. Every three years, he sent them out with Hyrum's ships to bring back gold, silver, and ivory, as well as monkeys and peacocks. Now, peacocks were around that palace. That's a beautiful bird to have around. Over in Puerto Vallarta, we had a couple of peacocks. Right there, they'd go inside the vestibule area, and they were just domesticated and really beautiful. Also, in Job 39.13, again, the term is disputed, but in the King James, as well as Jubilee Bible 2000, it says, did you give beautiful wings onto the peacock?

I wonder, Charles Darwin's going to be asked that one day, too, by God. So you think you're such a smart guy. No, you're a smart aleck. You didn't create one little thing, and yet you're questioning the wisdom and creativity of your maker. So I'd like to finish up with seven features of the peacock's feather. I mentioned the first one, bioluminescence. Which is also found in hummingbirds and butterflies, like the ones you can see there. Actually, these are not the colors of the eye spot. They are not pigments. It's not like a paint. It's actually a crystal-like structure that refracts light at a certain wavelength to bring out these beautiful metallic hues, just like in the morpho butterfly, as you see there in the case.

It's actually called defraction, because it breaks up the light in such a way that that metallic hue shines in the sun. Whereas with the butterflies, they are scales. They're like tiles that are crystal-like, and they are angled in such a way to produce that bright blue color. If you look in the back part of the butterflies, you'll see the red colors. So everything is structured. Can you imagine? The millions of molecules in just one of those little scales that have to be placed. Well, the peacock's tail, the eye, does not have scales. It has these barbs and then the tiny barbules with hooks on them so they can be all together to fly. Just like Velcro, they can come off or come on when the bird needs to fly. But here you have bands around those barbules with the same crystal-like structure which are presented to have the beautiful colors. And so this means millions of molecules have to be, like logo pieces, put together just to bring out every one of those streaks of light.

Secondly, the adult peacock has an average of 200 tail feathers with 170 eye spots. These are one of them. Each year, the adult male sheds these beautiful feathers and has to regrow them. That's why you can get these without doing any damage to the animals because they will shed these feathers.

Number three, the muscular control that these peacocks have, they can vibrate those 200 tail feathers in unison with the eye staying central in every case. It hypnotizes the females when they see that and actually emits a sound. Have you ever seen one of these peacocks when they vibrate the tail? And it makes a humming sound, which is pleasant, too. Now again, the females don't take any male that hums and waves around. They're not talking about some artistic, you know, Liato da Vici masterpiece.

This is called, in the peacock's feather, gratuitous beauty, which means beauty that's not necessary. You know, males and females can get along great without a big train of feathers. It's something that is added to nature. It's not essential to nature. A peacock, despite its long tail, can still fly. It can go up a tree. It can fly up.

It vibrates those tail feathers 26 times per minute. And guess what? If you see those 200 beautiful feathers with their eyes spots, do you know that they have discovered that the Fibonacci spirals also are involved? And not only on one side, but on both sides. You can take the pattern and it's beautifully angled, like the Fibonacci sequence on both parts of those tail feathers.

And that takes me to the final point, which is the origin of genetic information. That is the fatal flaw of the theory of evolution. It cannot account for the origin of all of this genetic information. For instance, just to make one of these feathers, it takes millions and millions of instructions in the DNA to have all the proteins line up and create such a thing. Now, what mechanism in nature is there that can build up genetic information? It's like taking an instruction book and then saying, okay, all of these instructions, we can replicate a Bible given enough time and place, just mixing all the letters together. No, you're always going to have gibberish. You start with gibberish, you end with gibberish. You need an intelligence to put these things in order. And so that is the one great—and there are many others, I would say, but to me, the origin of genetic information is just unexplainable. And just biology by itself, just a Darwinian evolution cannot come up with a mechanism for that. And so I'd like to conclude. 1 Corinthians 3, verse 18 and 19.

Again, this is from—I believe it's a contemporary English. I didn't put it down, but it's a modern version that says, don't fool yourselves. If any of you think you are wise in the things of this world, you will have to become foolish before you can be truly wise. What he's saying is, you might have all the technical information in the world, but you know, when you come into the church, I don't care if you're a PhD. I don't care how much secular knowledge you have. You'll become a babe in Christ, and all of that knowledge is not going to save you. And that, to God, is just secondary information, because first you need the knowledge about salvation, and that can't come from any, you know, biology textbook. And so he says here that we have to be humble. It doesn't matter how much learning you have. You come into the church, you realize how much you have been deceived, how much you have been tricked by all the wrong ideas in the world, with its wrong philosophies and teachings. Continuing on, it says, this is because God considers the wisdom of this world to be foolish or silly, because it's not grounded in God's Word, in the great majority of cases, unless you go to a Christian school. It is just as the Scriptures say, God catches the wise when they try to outsmart him.

And so, brethren, let's not take for granted this wonderful world of color that we have around us, because it could have been black and white. If there was no God, there would be no appreciation of the beautiful surroundings that we have here today. And that peacock's feather, which made Darwin sick, makes us glorify God. That much more. It is stunning and irrefutable evidence for God our Maker and Creator.