Mark Isaak's Amazing Story of the Evolutionof theBombardier Beetle in 15 Steps
or
THE TALE OF HOW THE BOMBARDIER BEETLE GOT HIS GAS

by James M. Foard

This is a genuine Darwin Evolutionary Tale made up by talk.origins

Hurrrry, Hurrrry! Step right up ladies and gentlemen to Mark Isaak's incredible Travelling Evolutionary Sideshow! You will see sites that will enthrall you; you will listen to stories that will astound you; you will witness daring feats of verbal sophistry that will bend the very laws of nature and will leave you speechless (step aside kid, your crowding me, no we don't have any transitional fossils), and it's all here for your viewing, and all that you need is your computer screen and an internet connection!

And now, for our first attraction, the fantastic, the incredible, the world famous, one-and-only story of HOW THE BOMBARDIER BEETLE GOT HIS GAS.

(This story is based on the actual observations of Mark Isaak. Well, he really didn't observe any of this, and he admitted that he made it all up, however it has been referred to by many evolutionists at talk.origins as genuine evidence that evolution has occurred.)

DISCLAIMER

This humble little essay is not meant to poke fun at Mr. Isaak's ridiculous story of the evolution of the Bombardier Beetle. This is a serious attempt to scientifically investigate an evolutionist's account for the origin of a species. Any type of chuckling, chortling, snickering, or guffawing will be strictly forbidden.

i) First of all, Isaak notes that certain epidermal cells produce quinones for tanning the cuticle. True enough, although Isaak skips over how these quinones developed through evolutionary processes, or how evolution produced these complex chemicals in the right place for the correct function, this is merely assumed. He goes on from here to a highly speculative journey of assumptions, mixing facts with storytelling.

ii) He then notes that some of the excess quinones are used as protection by various arthropods such as beetles and millipedes. Still true, but no evidence on how they evolved. Now we get into the really interesting stuff, and it all just happened, without any intelligent design

iii) Then invaginations (folds in the epidermis) conveniently develop at just the right place on the body to hold more quinones.

iv) Then muscles re-arrange themselves so they can help the invaginations dispell quinones.

v) Then two invaginations turn into reservoirs while the others disappear.

vi) Some predators have "evolved" defenses against quinones so brand new chemicals appear for the beetles defense, one of which is hydroquinone

vii) Next more cells develop to produce more hydroquinone; channels neatly develop between the cells allowing the hydroquinone to reach the reservoir

viii) The channels now become ducts "specialised for transporting the chemicals!", then "secretory cells withdraw from the surface, ultimately becoming a separate organ" !! (all by chance evolution - no room for design in Isaak's universe). Although certain beetles do have this feature, the question is not whether they exist, but how this amazing specialised organ came to be by blind evolutionary processes, and Isaak does plenty of assuming for the readers benefit.

ix) Then, without any design, mind you, muscles (again) adapt to close off the reservoir and prevent chemicals from leaking when not in use.

x) Next, hydrogen peroxide mixes with hydroquinones, the reaction producing a mixture of quinones and hydroquinones for defense.

xi) Then, Isaak reasons that since catalases exist in most cells, and peroxidases are common in plants and animals, "Cells secreting a small amount of catalases and peroxides appear along the output passage of the reservoir"(!) outside of the valve, thus ensuring more quinones in secretions used for defense, with these chemicals conveniently concentrated in just the right location (of which Isaak totally fails to explain why this should happen).

xii) More catalases and peroxidases are produced, with a warmer, more volatile reaction.

xiii) The walls of the output passage become strong enough to withstand the heat and pressure generated by the reaction.

xiv) More peroxidases and catalases are produced and the walls of the output passage"shape into a reaction chamber".

xv) And finally, remarkably, the apex of the abdomen of the beetle lengthens and becomes pliant so that the beetle can aim the discharge in different directions!

And all of these marvelous innovations, Isaak would have you believe, came about by chance, blind, evolutionary processes. No room for design here .

Amazingly though, after all is said and done, we find out that Isaak was making the whole thing up. He is simply storytelling and he admits as much. In fact, according to Isaak, it could have happened any one of a number of ways, take your choice! "The scenario above is hypothetical; the actual evolution of the bombardier beetles probably did not happen exactly like that."

In fact, he actually admits that "nature is not constrained by any persons lack of imagination."

Thus Isaak actually hasn't got the foggiest notion of how the bombardier beetle developed his marvelous defensive mechanism, and yet after spinning this fantasy he uses it as evidence for evolution:

"The scenario does show, however, that the evolution of a complex structure is far from impossible."

Well, if your going to make up your own stories out of whole cloth and then use that as proof, I suppose not. Anything could be possible with this type of logic. The entire story told above is 90% fantasy, cleverly woven together with a few observations of natural phenomena thrown in to lend it the look of scientific respectability. In essence, it's a make-believe childs' story told through the lense of an evolutionist belief system.

Isaak goes on to state, based on this fantasy: "Do bombardier beetles look designed? Yes; they look like they were designed by evolution ["designed by evolution", by definition a mindless process, not designed by an intelligent God. Were Isaak to admit that an Intelligence was involved in a hands on manner his whole case would be destroyed]. Their features, behaviors, and distribution nicely fit the kinds of patterns that evolution creates."

(Could you please repeat that Mr. Isaak?! I don't think I heard you correctly.)

"Their features, behaviors, and distribution nicely fit the kinds of patterns that evolution creates."

Um, there's just one tiny itsy bitsy little problem here. Isaak has created this scenario; hemade it all up and then called it evolution, but there was never any evidence of an evolutionary sequence for the creation of the Bombardier Beetle in the first place. Isaak is simply assuming God out of the picture and then giving evolution the deific power of creation itself, despite his duplicitous attempt later in his FAQ to mollify those who want to believe in evolution but keep God in the picture.

He then states: "Nobody has yet found anything about any bombardier beetle which is incompatible with evolution." He goes on: "Note that all of the steps above are small or can easily be broken down into smaller steps. The bombardier beetles' mechanism can come about solely by accumulated microevolution. Furthermore, all of the steps are probably advantageous, so they would be selected."

Of course all of the steps would be advantageous; after all, they all came out of his own mind. He never saw any of this happening, he never had any fossil evidence for it either. He made the whole blooming story up.

In real life if this were happening through chance mutation all of the steps would not probably be advantageous, the laws of probability would spell doom for Isaak's fantasy; natural selection would be sorting through millions of mistakes to pick out the right ones; it would simply not happen. And  Isaak doesn't have "four billion years" of earth's history, because in his scheme this only happened within a tiny, little time slot within that history. Again, probability does not give him enough time for the "right" chance mutations to occur within this time slot. In fact, even if he did have four billion years, counting the time when the earth was a hot, molten mass (couldn't happen) he would still not have enough time in a chance scenario for the chemicals and cells to show up.

Isaak then states that "No improbable events are needed" for the evolution of the Bombardier Beetle. Of course not, we wouldn't need anything out of the ordinary, except a supercomputer and advanced chemistry laboratory to develop the information necessary for the right chemical sequences for the quinones and new cells popping up out of nowhere to be at exactly the right spot at the exact right time when they are needed.

Isaak calls this fairy tale evolution. I think a better word for it (without intelligent design involved, that is) might be Alakazam, or Bippidy Boppidy Boo! This is not science folks, this is pure balderdash spun out of Isaak's imagination that he uses as proof for evolution! It has as much science in it as Grimm's Fairy Tales do.

Isaak then sums up his little story with this neat little disclaimer:
"This does not mean, of course, that we know everything about the evolution of bombardier beetles; far from it."

Well, um, actually we know absolutely nothing about the evolution of the Bombardier Beetle.

He goes on: "But the gaps in our knowledge should not be interpreted as meaningful in themselves. Some people are apparently uncomfortable with the idea of uncertainty, so uncomfortable that they try to turn the unknown into the unknowable"

This is exactly what Isaak has done with his fantastic story of the Beetles evolution; he has culled the entire thing out of the Twilight Zone.

And these Uncle Remus "Just So" stories are used by evolutionists to string together their scenarios of "how the leopard got his spots" to regale their audiences, while they heap scorn on creationists who would dare to presume that some of these marvels of nature show evidence of design!

Then in a remarkable display of the pot calling the kettle black, Isaak accuses the creationists of hubris!
"There has never been any evidence that bombardier beetles could not have evolved, but just because they couldn't explain exactly how the beetles evolved, lots of people jumped to the conclusion that an explanation was impossible. In fact, their conclusion says a lot more about themselves than about the beetles. To make such a conclusion based only on a lack of knowledge is a kind of arrogance."

Incredible.

Isaak is nothing if not cunning in his presentations, much like his predecessor Darwin. Thus when creationists have pointed out the utter absurdity of all of the above events happening as he has described them by blind chance, or for that matter any evolutionist event ever happening at all, he accuses the creationists of misrepresenting evolution, or at least of misrepresenting the evolutionists definition of evolution.

He says that they (the creationists) are wrong in stating that evolution, according to the evolutionists, is supposed to proceed by mere chance. Yet Isaak himself, after making that accusation, barely half a paragraph later states that chance is the main ingredient in forming new genetic material, again, according to the evolutionists:  "Chance, in the form of mutations, provides genetic variation, which is the raw material that natural selection has to work with. From there, natural selection sorts out certain variations."
(Mark Isaak:http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-misconceptions.html)

Granted, Isaak claims that natural selection plays a part in sorting out variations supposedly produced by chance, but he has to admit that natural selection itself cannot create anything new. Natural selection is not a factor in originating anything, as will be more fully shown in the next chapter, The Origin of Evolution.

Thus, even by Isaak's own words, chance alone, through mutations, produces all of the new material by which evolution is supposed to proceed with. And yet chance, or random natural selection, cannot account for the complexity that we find in living systems.

Later on in his FAQ Isaak throws a bone to those who want to believe in evolution and creation, i.e. theistic evolution, that it was "God's method" for creating species. You just have to believe that somewhere way, way back there in time, in the beginning of the whole process, God kick started the whole thing but then left it alone.

But Isaak argues against any purpose in evolution. Thus we would have a God who created everything but then who had no purpose in creating anything, just like throwing some paint onto a canvas. SPLOT! It all happened by chance. No purpose, no design, an almighty intelligent Being just tossed a bunch of stuff out into a universe He created and let fly. Then again, if you want to believe that evolution was God's method, do you mean to say that you believe that God created evolution? Is His hand involved in the details of evolution itself?

If so, if purpose is involved, then chance and natural selection have no role to play in it, and it is no longer evolution.

In the second FAQ, Isaak also makes the claim that talk.origins has produced observed evidence of speciation, as well as transitional fossils providing proof that evolution has occured. I would refer the reader to Chapter Six of The Darwin Papers, where both of these ludicrous claims are dealt with.

Isaak is generally so far out of the ballpark with his illustrations and arguments that it should embarass talk.origins to still keep him posted at their site, were it not for the fact that his material is actually representative of most of the arguments used by the rest of the evolutionists there as well.

Fred Williams has mathematically demonstrated the impossibility of chance mutations' role in creating a new species, a new organ, a new anything, thus putting the nail in the coffin of Isaak's arguments.
http://www.evolutionfairytale.com/articles_debates/mutation_rate.htm .

Now according to Isaak, you have some organism going about its daily business when suddenly ZAP! A stray cosmic ray, or a mistake in cell reproduction produces a beneficial mutation. Isaak states that "chance ensures that such beneficial mutations will be inevitable". But mutations are mistakes! By their very nature, and by Isaak's definition they are not the product of any intelligent design. They are accidents! And a cell is amazingly complicated, more complicated than the largest computer ever built.

A cell has more structured, detailed information than a library of 1,000 books with each book having 500 pages. A single mutation to any of this, to one word in one page of this immense library could be, and in most cases is, deadly.

Isaak has tried to give natural selection some grand role in sorting out these wonderful beneficial mutations that chance has supposedly produced. As noted, natural selection is only a sorting process, it contributes nothing towards a new genome. Isaak makes plenty of assumptions, such as "When the environment changes, or when organisms move to a different environment, different variations are selected, leading eventually to different species."

This is an unqualified statement, backed up by no science, no data whatsoever. He has used the typical Darwinian technique of extrapolation, using variations within a species kind, and suggesting that these variations can go on and on until you have an entirely different "kind" of organism.

By Isaak's reasoning, you could take a hammer to your computer and eventually come up with a better computer, or an improved hard drive. Or you could drive an automobile over a cliff and come up with a newer model. Well, maybe not on the first try, but remember, "nature is not constrained by any persons lack of imagination " according to Isaak, and we still have natural selection to work with. So maybe we could drive 100,000 old cars over a 1,000 foot cliff and watch them crash onto the rocks below and eventually come up with a better model car.

Hmmmm. Perhaps that would not be enough though, lets say we could drive 1,000,000 cars over a cliff and watch them crash. With the marvelous possibilities of natural selection to help us out, some of these cars, at least one or two of them, would turn into newer models with improved transmissions, advanced electronic ignition systems better fuel mileage, more comfortable bucket seats and improved child safety locks on the doors. Lets give them improved air bags as well! That's how Isaak assumed evolution produced the Bombardier Beetle, along with all of lifes other complex living systems. It was all chance and natural selection.

Or even better yet, let's start throwing old computers over a cliff until we come up with newer ones, better ones with more advanced hard drives and improved operating systems. Let's  just round up as many as we can and start bulldozing piles of them over a steep cliff and watch them shatter onto the rocks below. Now, according to Isaak's Laws of Evolutionary Probability we are going to start producing more advanced computers that process data more efficiently through this process that I would like to call "advanced naturalistic dumping". 

Natural selection will take those computers that have not been totally destroyed and start sorting through them and choosing the best ones for resale in the consumers market. Businesses will be beating a path to this dumping ground to pick up the most improved computers to sell on the market. And we could take those computers that have been improved by this method and throw them over the cliff again to upgrade them even more. Do you think? 

Essentially, there are three possibilities that can occur when a mutation happens: The mutation can be beneficial (rarely if ever seen in nature); the mutation can be neutral; or the mutation can be harmful (by far the most common effect of mutation, by some estimates this comprises 99.9 % of all mutations, caused by damage from nuclear radiation, overexposure to the sun, toxic chemical effects on the cells, etc).

Thus the chance for a single mutation occurring that would be beneficial are less than 50/50, less than that of tossing a coin. At best, out of the three possibilities listed above it only has a 33% chance of being beneficial. Actually it really has much less of a chance than that, because the beneficial mutation would have to be of a particular type for a particular genome in a particular organism in a particular environment to improve the organisms' genetic code and improve the survival value. In other words, out of the billions of possibilities that could occur, it would have to be a very specific mutation. It would be like hitting the lottery, only a lottery that is composed of billions of possibilities.

Now, here's the problem. For each of the steps listed above by Isaak, there would have to be numerous biochemical substeps; smaller, extremely intricate chemical changes in the genetic code for the main steps to happen. And each time you take a further step the odds against the right genetic mutation occurring after that get smaller and smaller. In Isaak's case the mathematical odds against it are zero, even given hundreds of millions of years for this to have happened, and he does not have that much time either.

Mutations do not occur at a fast enough rate to produce beneficial changes. Remember, the odds are that over time you would have just as many bad mutations as good ones, causing a reversal to any of the steps listed above, along with the numerous unmentioned biochemical substeps. In fact, you would have more, because a "good" mutation has to be a specific mutation out of numberless possibilities most of which would be fatal, to have any benefit. It would be like a blind man hiking through the continent of North America in search of a particular key laying somewhere on the ground, and upon finding that key, out of hundreds of thousands of doors finding the right door to insert the key in. In fact, according to Isaak, it is even worse, because without intelligent design the blind man would not be "searching" for the key, he would just be wandering around and "happen" upon it, and then after picking it up he would just "happen" to fit it into the right slot in the right door. And if he picked up the wrong key, or inserted it into the wrong door, it would spell instant doom. Thus you would eventually, sooner rather than later, have a deadly mutation that would throw the whole thing out of whack and destroy the species.

Thus over time the negative mutations would swamp the beneficial ones, causing an extinction event, not a speciation event, because it only takes one negative mutation to cause the whole thing to stop; not only to halt it temporarily, but to end it forever, to destroy the species entire. Even given a 50/50 chance, there would have to be so many benefical mutations occuring in a row, without any negative ones, that it would be like tossing a coin and coming up heads 100,000 times in a row! And this would never happen in nature. This is a mathematical impossibility, even with natural selection saving the beneficial ones.

And given more time, the scene only gets worse, since the probability of negative mutations occurring are actually greater than positive mutations and would increase over time, this would mean that the scenario described above by Isaak would happen only in your dreams.

Isaak also makes the same simplistic assumptions regarding the origin of life that he made with the Bombardier Beetle: "Nor is abiogenesis (the origin of the first life) due purely to chance. Atoms and molecules arrange themselves not purely randomly, but according to their chemical properties."

That much is true, however he uses this known fact of physical chemistry to launch an entirely false premise in the field of organic chemistry, unproven in the natural world, and in fact, statistically impossible (if there were to be no Designer involved). "In the case of carbon atoms especially, this means complex molecules are sure to form spontaneously, and these complex molecules can influence each other to create even more complex molecules. Once a molecule forms that is approximately self-replicating, natural selection will guide the formation of ever more efficient replicators."

This is a leap of faith of incredible proportions. NONE of this has ever been observed in nature, it is entirely based on Isaak's own evolutionary belief system, not on any hard science at all [even Rebek's artificially produced replicating molecule in a laboratory setting was created in conditions that would never be found in nature, where the presence of water, which is necessary for any life to flourish, would destroy the reaction, and the gap between what Rebek produced and the smallest genetic code for the simplest organism, Mycoplasma genitalium is of such gigantic proportions that it would be impossible to bridge naturally].

Jonathan Sarfati has noted: "Chemicals obey the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and do not arrange themselves into self-sustaining metabolic pathways. Living cells have molecular machinery to channel the chemistry in the right direction and amounts." http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/3974.asp

Thus you need to have the living cell FIRST in order to produce a sufficiency of these complex carbon based molecules necessary to sustain life.

After making his argument for abiogenesis, Isaak then issues this incredible disclaimer: "One should also note that the theory of evolution doesn't depend on how the first life began. The truth or falsity of any theory of abiogenesis wouldn't affect evolution in the least."

If that were the case, then why did Isaak make such a plea for abiogenesis in the first place? And why do so many other evolutionists at talk.origins and other evolutionist dens spend so much time trying to prove it as well? If abiogenesis is so unimportant to the theory of evolution, then let's just agree that God miraculously created the first cell. Isaak should have no problem with that if it is such an inconsequential item for his theory.

What Isaak has said is simply not true. The truth is that abiogenesis is fundamental to the evolutionists viewpoint, for if you are to accept that something as complex as a single cell could never have been produced by blind chance, thus that a Creator had to have been involved in it's origin, then the Creator could very easily have created all of the other species of life after it as well, and that is why evolutionists have been working tirelessly for over a century, without any success, to prove that abiogenesis is possible, even after Pasteur's experiment in the nineteenth century disproved it, and in spite of the mathematical and chemical statistical odds that show it could never have happened.

For some genuine scientific data showing the utter impossibility of abiogenesis ever happening, these articles (http://www.trueorigin.org/camplist.asp#origin) will through more light on the issue.

To further bolster his argument for evolution, Isaak smoothly assures us "For example, Darwin explained how, under his theory, a few photosensitive cells might evolve gradually into eyes."

In point of fact, Darwin did anything but explain how a few photosensitive cells evolved into eyes. The key word here is might, and even here, in his speculative ramblings, Darwin came nowhere near to explaining in any detail the intricate biochemical steps as to how such a complex and wonderful organ developed. He simply indulged in a wandering and often obtuse game of speculation as to how it might have occured.

Darwin had to admit that the eye developing by natural selection through random evolutionary processes was well-nigh to impossible: "To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems. I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree",  yet in a remarkable display of cunning, Darwin still attempted to use this admission of the failure of his theory as a springboard to justify it nonetheless! (Darwin, Origin of Species, Chapter VI: Organs of Extreme Perfection)

One might think, as I did at an earlier point in my study of Darwin, that here at last we find him in a rare moment of honesty, but alas, such is not the case. Darwin was still incapable of a frank admission of the deficiency of his theory; and he went on to defend his hypothesis with an attempt to compare the lack of evidence for the evolution of the eye with the incredible argument that since the sun only appears to revolve around the earth, but in fact it is the earth that revolves around the sun, then this somehow would show that what only "seems . . . absurd in the highest degree", the evolution of the eye by natural selection, actually has some degree of credibility.

Using this type of fantastic logic, one could go on to claim that the existence of werewolves only "seems . . .absurd to the highest degree", since one only has to look at the apparent revolution of the sun around the earth, when in fact it is the earth that revolves around the sun, for absolute proof that werewolves exist! To take an obvious fact of science, and the entire science of celestial mechanics and planetary motion that goes with it, and apply that as evidence for some simplistic, infantile fairy tale supposedly explaining how the eye "evolved" is an affront to the entire realm of valid scientific enquiry, yet these specious arguments are commonly adopted by evolutionists, from Darwin's time up to today.

Isaak then indulges in a meandering, pseudo-philosophical abstract, stating in brief that things are not really what they seem, until at last, fortunately for the reader, he cuts short his attempt at profundity with this little evolutionist nugget: "Finally, remember that the general arguments used here apply to a lot more than bombardier beetles. Creationists have argued for an appearance of design in everything from bacteria cilia to butterfly metamorphosis. Those arguments all share the same fallacies; they are all based on a combination of ignorance combined with a concept of design that is indistinguishable from evolution. If a kind of design incompatible with evolution were found in biology, nobody would be more excited than the professional biologists. As yet we haven't found such a design."

To which I can only respond: "Finally, remember that the concept for design in creation has tremendous importance for the way we view ourselves, our place in the universe, and our destiny. Evolutionists have long argued for the lack of design from the bombardier beetle to the wonderful patterns on the wings of butterflies. Their arguments all have certain logical errors in common; they all spring from a mixture of ignorance and a concept of evolution that is virtually identical with design. Evolutionists have willfully refused to recognise the amazing hand of the Creator from the evidence that stares them in the face in a thousand daily wonders of creation. They have hardened their hearts against the plainly revealed truth, as the Bible predicted men would do in the last days, thus heaping up for themselves a just recompense to reap in due season.

I have one final thing to say on the subject of the Bombardier Beetle: The God of the whole universe who created the sun and the moon and the stars also created the Bombardier Beetle. He is the same God who sent His son to die on the cross for the sins of the world. " For God so loved the world (mankind) that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life". That promise is for all the fallen race of Adam and Eve, including evolutionists such as Mark Isaak. Yeshuah the son of David is the Son of God, and is the Messiah of Israel and the Saviour of all mankind. He came to earth and was born of a virgin and died for us on a cross at Calvary 2000 years ago and rose again the third day from the dead and ascended unto the right hand of God the Father, where all power is given unto Him in heaven and earth, and he shall come again in power and glory to judge the living and the dead, and of His kingdom there shall be no end. Repent and believe in Him and in His blood to take away your sins and you will have the right to enter into that kingdom, and reign with Him forevermore.

http://www.thedarwinpapers.com/oldsite/Number2/Darwin2Html.htm