The Fish That Shoots Down Evolution

Vertical Thought Magazine ^ | June 2006 | Mario Seiglie

[DouglasKC]

The Fish That Shoots Down Evolution

This unusual fish uses a specialized system to blast insects out of the air. How could this evolve slowly over time when there is no survival advantage without the whole system working perfectly?

by Mario Seiglie

In Asia, Africa and Australia lives a remarkable creature, the archerfish, that shoots down its prey from the air above it with a burst of water. It uses its tongue and the top of its mouth to form a groove similar to a gun barrel. Then, by compressing its gills, it squirts water up to six feet with deadly accuracy—in spite of the distortion caused by seeing the target from below the surface of water.

What's so amazing about the archerfish's ability to shoot straight? When light passes between air and water, it is refracted, which causes a distortion. If an archerfish simply aimed at the object where it appeared to be from below the water, it could never hit its target! Yet scientists have found that archerfish are able to strike their target when sighting upwards at angles of 40 degrees!

More amazingly, marine researchers have discovered that these fish can hit their prey whether the amount of refraction is large or small. They have also found that the fishes' binocular vision allows them to see clearly at considerable distances above them, an ability other fish do not have.

An experiment

Here is an experiment. In a clear glass of water, hold a pencil at an angle halfway under the water and look at it from different positions. Notice how the pencil appears different below and above the water. That is the refraction of the light changing from the water to the air.

So how can the archerfish compensate for this distortion and know how to shoot at the right place?

Evolutionists don't know

Evolutionists still don't know how the archerfish got its amazing abilities. They can only wonder! Viewed through the distortion of evolution, they cannot explain how the archerfish gradually learned to not aim where its eyes see but to aim instead at a different spot where the target actually is.

Without its binocular vision, it could not see the object with such precision, and without the special shape of the upper mouth and a specialized tongue, it could not make the groove it needs to shoot the concentrated jet of water. Many factors have to appear together—and be perfectly formed—for this shooting mechanism to work. This, of course, goes totally against Charles Darwin's evolutionary theory, which is based on a gradual, step-by-step process.

Darwin wrote in The Origin of Species, "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down" (1859, p. 171).

The archerfish offers precisely such an example, since several complex systems must all appear at the same time, perfectly and not gradually formed—binocular vision, a specialized mouth and tongue, specialized gills to compress and expel water and an aiming system based in the brain and not in the eyes. If any of these parts is missing, the mechanism will not hit the target and no survival advantage is created.

Shooting down Darwin's theory

When you get down to the facts, the archerfish with one squirt of its gills shoots down Charles Darwin's entire theory of evolution—and that by Darwin's own admission!

So evolution doesn't have the answer to this mystery. But the Bible does. Genesis 1:20-21 says that God created all the creatures that live in the water. He created a great variety of perfectly formed fish, including the archerfish with all its special features, such as binocular vision, other specialized organs and a built-in ability to compensate for the distortion of the water. VT

[DouglasKC]

That's... convenient. It's also not supported by what you posted from the Bible.
"... the moving creature that hath life"
Plants can move.

You missed the point I was making. The operative phrase was "that hath life". This is "nephesh", that which has life. "Nephesh" is the life force, the essence of life, that scripture says is only given to animals and man. Here is another definition:

Nephesh (Heb.) "Breath of Life, Anima, Mens Vitae, appetites. The term is used very loosely in the Bible. It generally means Prana, 'life'; in the Kabbalah it is the animal passions and the animal soul." Therefore, as maintained in theosophical teachings, Nephesh is the Prana-Kamic Principle, or the vital animal soul in man.

Like it or not, scripture does not say that plants have the "breath of life", the "nephesh", that defines animal and human life. There is something intrinsically different.

You ignore plants as being alive, and therefore dying before the Fall, purely out of ad hoc necessity.

Not really. You asked me a question. I answered on the understanding that I gained from reading scripture. I explained it to you. If you don't understand or agree with my response then that's not my fault.

[Celtjew Libertarian]

Gotta go. Later....

[Redcloak]

Other fish do that without spitting water. (Just ask any fly fisherman!)

[Liberal Classic]

Do you also disbelieve plate tectonic theory? Using laser rangefinders and global positioning satellites, geologists can measure the miniscule movements of the continents. We don't need to have a lifespan of millions of years to know that the indian plate was one at the south pole before moving north and colliding with the asian continent, thus forming the Himalayas. The large scale change in the layout of the continents are the sum total of millions of years of small scale movements added together. Likewise with the genomes of living organisisms.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"You missed the point I was making. The operative phrase was "that hath life". This is "nephesh", that which has life. "Nephesh" is the life force, the essence of life, that scripture says is only given to animals and man."

So it depends on what the meaning of *life* is. BTW, plants can move.

Very convenient....

Good thing I didn't bring up again intestinal microorganisms that break down food... :)

[Redcloak]

It might not of started as an instinct, but as an accident. The fish with the groove propelled water out randomly, occasionally striking insects, by chance. Because it got to feed on those accidentally struck insects, it had a survival advantage. Over generations, the accidental effect became an instinct.

But why would it have a fully formed, or even partially formed, mouth groove? How do evolutionary pressures guide the species' genome in the direction necessary to form, and maintain, the gene for a mouth groove? Remember that it's not enough to evolve the groove; use, leading to some competitive advantage, is needed to keep the feature from devolving. Without the "software" to go with it, the "hardware" gives no advantage to the fish with the altered gene. The genome has no reason to keep the partially formed feature.

[phantomworker]

In the same way evolution, in its most basic form, is a worldview created to explain life without God.

No. That's not true at all. Where did you get that idea from? Haven't you been following the thread? This might be where you need to go back and re-examine at what point you started "believing" this. This is your fallacy.

[sobieski]

DNA sequencing has been used to confirm lineages previously established through the fossil record.

Again, this is in the eye of the beholder. You can't use DNA to confirm something unless the DNA matches. The fossil record can't give that info. More to the point, which bird species was used specifically confirmed that birds descend form dinosaurs? And which dinosaur?

[Lutheran Loft II]

It only took 6 days, not 7.

[sobieski]

Please explain how these predictions show that gravity is a distortion of space/time relative to the mass of an object

I admit, I am a lowly PhD in Economics and Statistics, not a real science like physics. Wasn't that the point of the experiment which confirmed that time is not invariant?

What's more, I can replicate that small slice of gravitational theory any time I want (the prediction of the speed of falling objects). However, there is not one replicable test of evolution, b/c that is a test of ID. Everything else is inference and priors.

From what I've been able to see, there's more science in economics than 'evolution'

[DouglasKC]

So it depends on what the meaning of *life* is. BTW, plants can move.
Very convenient....

Let me correct you once more time. The Hebrew word "nephesh" has nothing to do with whether or not something moves. It's probably my fault for highlighting the entire phrase and then explaining how nephesh fits in. Let me do it again:

Gen 1:20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

The red highlighted phrase is "nephesh". This is what the bible defines as "life". I can't do anything about that.

Good thing I didn't bring up again intestinal microorganisms that break down food... :)

Gen 1:20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

I would say that the language allows for it. "Moving creature" is actually the Hebrew word "sherets" and it means:

From H8317; a swarm, that is, active mass of minute animals:

[vox_freedom]

As for their abilities, they came via evolution, those fish that could shoot had an advantage and they passed it on.

Oh come on now. I've got an uncle who can spit six or more feet without missing and he hadn't evolved at all. Good old Mel.

[sobieski]

I note no comment about your list that proves ID, not evolution.

[vox_freedom]

I admit, I am a lowly PhD in Economics and Statistics, not a real science like physics.

I'd give 50 to 1 odds that half the people in the US didn't know you could get a PhD in statistics. Congrats!

From what I've been able to see, there's more science in economics than 'evolution'

Yep, yep, and more yep.

[donh]

I can drop a ball from a height and predict when it will hit the ground. I can use gravity to send up space ships. We have a prediction of how much thrust we need to get into orbit. Etc.

So? And we don't have morphological and geological continuity that predict (quite accurately, one might add) what kind of morpologies we will find when we dig up a new chunk of metamorphic rock? When was the last time you predicted, and then accurately detected what a space craft leaving the Solar System would do? The most recent attempts at such predictions fell flat on their Einstein butts. And the last attempts to compute outer orbits of large bodies crapped out likewise. So, unlike the case for evolutionary theory, gravitational theory predictions are going way off the mark right now. But your faith is as touching as your ignorance of the respective confidence levels of these two theories is profound.

But evolution can neither predict nor can it be tested in experiments.

That's total balderdash. Evolutionary theory is tested, in a properly falsifiable manner, every time we find new fossils in new places, in predicted morphologies, mostly where we expected them, and mostly not where we didn't expect them. And there are plenty of such experiments, almost always successful, going on every time we send grad students out to establish a dig.

And even if we could do a test that would just be a test of ID.

No it's not. It's a test of ID, and TOE, and the green rigelian lizard people theory. It just happens to be a better test of TOE, because TOE looks at the morphology of two different species and predicts, accurately, that the morphology of a new creature in an intermediate geological location will be a compromise between existing species at levels above and below. On the other hand, micro-macro ID says there won't be a relationship, except by random chance. So mostly what these ongoing tests reveal, is that the TOE is a good bet, and the ID theory craps it's pants every chance it gets.

The 'fossil record' doesn't even include soft tissue,

That's not really an accurate statement. Is woody pulp "hard" tissue? How about fern leaves? In point of fact, soft tissue does get uncovered on occasion, esp., but not limited to, in amber.

so macro evolution cannot be traced.

That is an abysmally ignorant statement. It can be traced with abundant redundant checks, thru the mutational clocks of the genomes any given set of creatures share in commmon. This is probably the most devastating news of 20th century science, and you can't pretend it away by just trying to appear really self-confident. This is why most scientists, including most physicists, when asked what theory we have the most confidence in, will give the overwhelmingly consistent answer: the Theory of Evolution.

It's just in the eye of the beholder. A reasonable framework, more akin to economics than a real science.

What a bunch of unwarrantedly self-confident hooey. All science operates by induction on partial information. Nobody has ever observed a single step in stellar evolution, nobody has ever observed an atom being split, an electron jumping an NP barrier, or a photon deflecting itself through two slits in piece of cardboard, and nobody has ever observed a continent drift. What do you intend to leave in the science curriculum? Phrenology, healing pyramid power, and alchemy?

[DennisR]

Well, there again, it is Darwinian survival of the fittest. Because there must have been a fish 7,201,555,124 years, 153 days, and 12 hours ago who could only shoot 999mm. He/she could not get the bug, so he died. So evolution wins again. ;)

[Wolfstar]

George, re your post #30, it's terrific and I applaud you for it. But I want to gently comment on your tagline.

Many atheists may be narrow-minded, but religious people can be narrow-minded also. Take, for example, Muslims who believe in the strict wahabbi form of Islam. They are certainly narrow-minded. So much, in fact, that they refuse to join the 21st century, preferring instead to torture and slaughter people who do not share their religion.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

" I would say that the language allows for it. "Moving creature" is actually the Hebrew word "sherets" and it means:

From H8317; a swarm, that is, active mass of minute animals: "

Then how did microorganisms die before the Fall?

[donh]

Again, this is in the eye of the beholder.

No, it's not, "eye of the beholder" is exactly what we do science to reject. It's in the eye of any scientist, including any creationist scientist, that wants (as many actual scientists have done) to confirm a mutational relationship of a shared genome--of which there are plenty. Mutational relationships of independent genomes are all on independent tracks and serve as a huge mass of independent experiments that all lead to the same conclusion as the paleontologists came to, with exquisite precision.

You can't use DNA to confirm something unless the DNA matches.

I don't think you understand what this means, I think you are just throwing out buzz words so as to look like you have a serious argument. DNA matches what? You can't disconfirm one of the most redundantly confirmed triumphs of 20th century forensics, celebrated by scientists in every field, by just having a really confident attitude.

[freedumb2003]

yes, the same way that animals cant be seen to change from one to another either....like science claims....therefore, they are both philosophies.

No they aren't. I LOVE this CRIDer canard. Just "believing" something isn't equivalent in all contexts. I will have to pull my "dent in the night" analogy.

If I see a dent in my car in the morning and I don't have any eyewitnesses, I need to do some deduction. If the dent is at the height of a 1995 Ford Explorer, has blue paint which was only used by Ford in 1995, has the letters "Ex.." visible in the dent then you can be darn sure that it was a Blue 1995 Ford Explorer that hit my car. To determine which specific one may require more work, but at least I know generally what happened. This would be my "belief."

If you come up and say "no, you have no proof -- I 'believe' your dent was left by a 2005 Mazda 626" doesn't make these beliefs equivalent. Mine is a theory based on evidence, yours is just a guess based on the fact you don't like Mazdas.

you simply choose to believe in the wrong one...

I use my God-given judgment to decide what to understand. It is sad you mock and disrespect God by flinging His Gift of reasoning back in His face.