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Billions of Missing Links: Wombat Pouches

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Intelligent Design
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Note: This is the third in a series of posts excerpted from my book, Billions of Missing Links: A Rational Look at the Mysteries Evolution Can’t Explain.

A design must be considered improbable if it is highly functional and durable yet too complex to have come about spontaneously or by intermediate steps. Think of the subway system in any large metropolitan area. Could the combination of tracks, stations, tunnels, signs, vending machines, stairwells, lighting, trains, billboards, ticket booths, turnstiles, benches, platforms, security measures, and restrooms have happened all at once or did it come about by stages? If these commuter systems were to follow the tenets of the theory of evolution, the tracks going off in every direction might be called links to the stations called species. How does one get from station to station without the tunnel, train, and tracks? In the theory of evolution, these kinds of intermediaries are abundantly missing.

The wombat has an upside-down pouch. Scientists presume, and it makes sense, that position prevents dirt from entering the pouch when the wombat is digging in the ground. Could there have been transitional species with pouches situated sideways, or did the first wombats have to scoop dirt out of their pouches every day?

Taken from: Billions of Missing Links (Harvest House Publishers, 2007)

Geoffrey Simmons

Fellow, Center for Science and Culture
Geoffrey Simmons, MD, has authored seven novels, including The Z Papers, which sold 350,000 copies, and Pandemic, described by Publishers Weekly as “a hard lean thriller too fast to disbelieve.” His newest novel is Oppenheimer’s Demon, praised as “a riveting disaster thriller in which both the origin and end of man hang in the balance.” He has served as a disaster preparedness consultant to major US cities and is the former Governor of the American Academy of Disaster Medicine. His nonfiction titles include Billions of Missing Links and What Darwin Didn’t Know. A Fellow of Discovery Institute, he lives in Eugene, Oregon.
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