I’ve seen the chart below so many times that it’s more a joke than instruction. It’s become a cliche within high school biology textbooks similar to the peppered moth photos or the Miller Urey experiment. An observation commonly used by evolutionists to support their theory is that the similar structure of the forelimbs of different animals is evidence that they are all descended from a common ancestor. But don’t take my word for it, according to Biologyonline.com,
[H]omologous structures are physical features found in different organisms that share a common ancestor. This similarity is due to shared ancestry between a pair of structures or genes in different taxa.
I’m not putting words in their mouth. Evolutionists claim that the similar traits in different animals are evidence that the animals are related… unless they’re not related.
Confused yet?
You see, similar traits in different animals could be the result of having a common ancestor. For example, cousins sometimes look like each other because they have grandparents in common. But what about similar traits in creatures that aren’t supposed to be closely related (according to evolutionary assumptions)? In that case, evolutionists don’t describe the features as homologous; rather, they are analogous and are the result of convergent evolution.
Biologyonline.com describes convergent evolution this way:
Convergent evolution is a kind of evolution wherein organisms evolve structures that have similar (analogous) structures or functions in spite of their evolutionary ancestors being very dissimilar or unrelated. Thus, analogous structures of unrelated species would have similar or corresponding functions although they evolved from different evolutionary origins.
One example of analogous structures are the eyes of mammals and the eyes of cephalopods (like octopuses). Human eyes are remarkably similar to the eyes of an octopus in spite of the fact that evolutionists claim that vertebrates and invertebrates diverged on the evolutionary tree some 540 million years ago. In this case, the similarity cannot be the result of having a common ancestor. Instead, our eyes just happened to evolve independently, in order to serve similar functions.
So let me get this straight: our forelimbs are similar to a bird’s wing because we share a recent common ancestor but our eyes are similar to octopus eyes by sheer coincidence. Do I have that right? Scientific theories are supposed to be useful in explaining things. When observing similar structures in different animals, they could be explained by those animals having a recent, common ancestor… or not.
A theory that could explain anything really explains nothing. If similar features aren’t necessarily the result of having a recent common ancestor then they cannot be evidence of having a common ancestor. Never! Evolutionists have to resort to different explanations of how similar features evolved in different species, yet they still claim both observations support their theory. It’s laughable. No, seriously, it’s a total joke. Read this from the same Biologyonline.com article:
In order to determine if a structure is analogous to that of another species, one could look at their common lineage. Analogous structures, as pointed out earlier, are structures having a similar or corresponding function but the two species under probe should not share the same evolutionary origin.
Isn’t that a hoot? In a blatant display of circular reasoning, they claim the distinction between analogous and homologous structures is determined by where the creatures appear on the imaginary “Tree of life.”
Here’s a thought: maybe the similarities in structures on different animals are the result of design! Think about how remarkable an Engineer that God must be. First, He took a similar design - the radius, ulna, and wrist of different species - and used it to perform different functions like walking, flying, grasping, and swimming. He also took a particular feature - like a wing - and designed it differently among birds, mammals (bats), reptiles (pterosaurs), insects, fish (Exocoetidae), and even plants (maple seeds).
Having different explanations for the same features when they appear in the animal kingdom doesn’t make any sense according to the theory of evolution. They make perfect sense when we realize they were designed by the Creator!
