Bob WeathersIn April, the scientific community declared that a team of international scientists had “discovered a long-sought missing link between fish and the first animals to walk on land.” In the frozen ground of the arctic, they had unearthed 10 nearly complete fossils of a flat-bodied, sharp-toothed creature with a crocodile-like head and the scales and fins of a fish, but with a neck, ribs, and limbs that resembled a land creature. The new species was named “Tiktaalik,” an Inuit word for a large, freshwater fish.
For evolutionary biologists, this creature reinforced the belief that land animals, including humans, emerged millions of years ago from water. As Neil Shubin, a Chicago paleontologist, stated, “This animal represents the transition from water to land – the part of history that includes ourselves.” And biologist Per Ahlberg of Sweden explained that the limbs of the creature suggest “a walking mode similar to that of the modern mudskipper or the catfish.” And he added, “This is really what our ancestors looked like when they began to leave the water.”
It is? Really? Maybe not.
Maybe this is not so much proof of Darwinian evolution as it is proof that evolutionary science is more a worldview than it is a science. This discovery simply proves the principle that the evidence never speaks for itself. It must be interpreted. And everyone interprets the evidence of life from our own worldview.
Had the same creature been discovered by, say, unscientific folks like you or me, would we have jumped to the conclusion that Tiktaalik was our ancient scaly ancestor? Or would we have simply assumed that we had stumbled upon a prehistoric cousin to the catfish or the mudskipper? Evolutionary scientists are so quick to protect evolution that they will skip over the more obvious interpretations of the evidence. That’s not good science.
And for you and me, it’s a reminder of the shaping power of a personal worldview. Never underestimate just how much it matters what you believe. And make sure what you believe is biblical.