Ken Ham and the Echidna
Michael Suttkus
KEN HAM ON EDUCATION! The echidna - it's an
evolutionary enigma!
Home Education Weekly News - 6 September 2002
QUESTION: Is this another one of those unique Australian
animals?
ANSWER: It is not just because I'm
Australian that I love these creatures from "down under" - it is also because
they create such problems for evolutionists!
If you were to walk through the Australian countryside and see what looks like a wire
brush stuck over an ants' nest, you would have come across an echidna, having a
snack.
Or a wire brush stuck in an ants' nest. I doubt if you
know enough biology to tell the difference Mr Ham.
This animal, also known as the spiny anteater, is a scientific puzzle - if you're an
evolutionist.
Sure it is. Uh huh, uh huh. If you say so Mr
Ham, it must be true!
You see, the echidna, like the platypus, is a mammal. It has milk glands,
Poorly developed milk glands with no delivery system.
Almost like they were primitive or something.
hair, and a large brain.
But, at the same time, it also resembles reptiles and birds - it lays eggs,
No, Mr Ham, it does not resemble birds. The eggs it
lays are reptile eggs, just as if (gasp in shock and horror) it was a primitive mammal
that still retained reptile eggs. The eggs have a soft, leathery shell, not the more
crystaline shells typical of birds. Gosh, just like evolution predicts. Sorry
you can't be bothered to learn about the science that you purport to refute.
Laying eggs doesn't make it any more similar to birds than
it is similar to flies and sea urchins.
and its temperature is influenced somewhat by its surroundings!
So is yours. Oops, I guess you're a bird.
Mammals vary quite a bit in being influenced by their surrounding temperature, especially
desert species like the echidna and aquatic species like the platypus. But I guess
that desmids are like reptiles as well Mr Ham?
Here is the question for the evolutionist! What on earth could the echidna have
evolved from?
Late therapsids.
The answer is that evolutionists have no idea!
In your delusionary dream world, sure. Actually, the
fossil history of echidna is far from the blank you pretend it is Mr Ham. Below an
excerpt from
Comparative
Anatomy Topic 3 and some interesting links:
"The duck-billed platypus and the two species of spiny echidna of Australia and New Guinea represent the closest thing we have left alive to the first mammals. The main characteristics that suggest their primitiveness are eggs (they lay them), the lack of a nipple (they secrete milk from patches of skin without a discreet nipple), and the more splayed appearance of their legs. They are examples of living fossils and represent excellent transitional forms between therapsids and higher mammals."
Again, we find that the only way creationists can
maintain the illusion that they have a case is by remaining utterly and totally ignorant
of biology. Why don't you address the evidence that echidna did evolve Mr Ham?
Echidna is one of the compelling cases evolutionists put forward as evidence of
evolution! But you ignore all those answers, ignore all the fossils, ignore all the
biochemical evidence. You pretend that it doesn't exist and declare that
evolutionists have no answer.
The evidence from the fossil record shows that they haven't changed at all!
Except for the ones that had teeth, and the ones before
that, going back to reptiles. Sorry Mr Ham, but assertions that your ignorance of
facts represents an actual lack of facts just isn't going to cut it.
It is more logical to conclude that they have never evolved at all. God created
them as egg-laying creatures, right from the beginning.
Yes, it's logical as long as you don't mind ignoring the
evidence and calling God a liar.
