Eggs and Evolution
Luke 11:11-12
“If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent? Or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion?”
“The evolution of the amniotic egg was key to vertebrates leaving the oceans and colonizing the land and air.” So claimed a recent article on the evolution of the egg. The article noted that there are different-shaped eggs among birds. Researchers conducted a statistical study of the eggs produced by 1,400 species of bird. It was assumed that the shape of the egg was determined by the behavior of the bird, how fast it flies, what it eats, etc.
However, there are some anomalies. For example, the albatross and the hummingbird have very similar-shaped eggs, yet their life cycles are entirely different, and their genetics will be different, too. So how could these birds produce eggs that are almost exactly similar? To be fair, the study suggested a similarity between the birds; that they are both very powerful fliers. Yet, merely commenting that they are powerful fliers does not begin to recognize the difference between the way that these birds use their power in flight or how the eggs of other very powerful fliers, such as hawks, have completely different-shaped eggs.
The general evolutionary assumption is that creatures producing shelled eggs – such as reptiles and birds – evolved from creatures with non-shelled eggs, such as amphibia. Yet, the hatching of a salamander, for example, is dependent on the softness of the egg membrane. How would a salamander tadpole hatch from a partially shelled egg? Or how would the first reptile have survived when its partially enabled shells were broken by amphibian predators?
Shelled eggs are a wonder, not of evolutionary processes, but of God’s design.
Prayer: Each example we see of Your creation, Lord, reminds us of how great You are, and how insignificant we are. Therefore, we praise You again that You consider us.
Author: Paul F. Taylor
Ref: Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. “How eggs got their shapes: Adaptations for flight may have driven egg-shape variety in birds.” ScienceDaily, 22 June 2017. < www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/06/170622143053.htm >.
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