The September 2003 edition of Natural History
carried an article titled “Love and Death,” which dealt with
a study by the evolutionary biologists Matthias W. Foellmer and Daphne J. Fairbaim.
(“Spontaneous Male Death During Copulation in an Orb-veawing Spider”,
Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B (Suppl.) DOI 10. 108/rsbl.2003.0042,
2003)
The researchers had observed that the males of
the Argiope aurantia species of spider live for an average of 15 minutes after
mating, and that their hearts suddenly stop, though not as a result of any action
by the females.
Natural History interpreted this from
an evolutionist perspective, and wondered what sort of evolutionary advantage
might accrue from death immediately after mating. The researchers gave a speculative
reply to this question, claiming that the death of the male, in such a way as
to prevent other males from entering the equation, functioned like a sort of
organic system.
However, this speculation in Natural History provides
absolutely no support for the theory of evolution. Speculating about the behavior
of any living thing by assuming an evolutionary benefit of some kind offers
no explanation of how that behavior in question came about. Indeed, Foellmer
and Fairbaim indicate a benefit which might be regarded as an advantage from
this behavior but are unable to offer an explanation of how this behaviour first
came about.
Doing this is like describing a feature of one
brand of computer which other computers do not possess and then making do with
setting out that advantage. It is evident that someone who describes the useful
feature of the computer and then claims that this came about through natural
causes can never explain how this came about. Similarly, accepting the death
of the spider as an evolutionary advantage and setting out an advantage of this
does not explain how this behavior arose in the first place.
Moreover, no such spontaneous death is observed
in other species of spider. That in turn reveals the inconsistency of an explanation
which seeks an evolutionary “advantage” in the death of the A. aurantia
species. One of the fundamental requirements of an explanation is for the cause
and effect relationship brought to bear on phenomena to be able to function
in as wide a measure as possible.
The fact is that of all the thousands of species
of spider, only the males of this species die spontaneously. There is no difference
between this species and others in terms of habitat and lifestyle. So if this
death is an evolutionary advantage, then why have other species not selected
this advantage?
As we have seen, Natural History actually
seeks no consistency in its account and merely resorts to fantasies which might
adapt certain facts at its disposal to evolution, which it has adopted as a
dogma. In short, this tale is of no other value than revealing Natural History’s
evolutionist prejudices.
Our advice to Natural History magazine
is that it abandon its evolutionist prejudices and accept that intelligent design
is the consistent explanation of the phenomena in nature and that God has created
all living things.
