Are look-alikes related?

by Don Batten

My childhood best friend looked so much like me that our teachers, and even our friends,
had a lot of trouble telling us apart. ‘Are you twins?’, we were often asked. However,
there was no family connection as far back as anyone could trace. The similarity in our
appearance was not due to being closely related—or, putting it another way—due to us
having a recent common ancestor, like a common father, grandmother, or even great
grandparent. It was just a ‘fluke’.

The main
Many creatures show similar features (only?)
because their Creator used similar argument for
structures for similar purposes. evolution is that
similarities
between living
things are due
to relatedness,
or common
ancestry. If two
kinds of animals
share a lot of
common
features, then
Photo by Keith they are
Swenson ‘obviously’
closely related
Australian Sugar gliders (top) The extinct
and so must
marsupial wombat look similar to marsupial thylacine
(top) and a flying squirrels. (top) and the wolf. have had a
marmot. recent common
ancestor—or so
the evolutionary reasoning goes.1,2 Birds, for example, all lay eggs, have feathers and a
specialized lung comprised of interconnected air sacs, so the evolutionist would say all
birds had a common ancestor which had these features. Creationists would say that birds
have these similarities because they were created with a common basic plan. People
would assume that because my friend and I were so similar we must have shared a very
recent common ancestor—like the same parents. They were wrong. In like manner, the
evolutionists are often—not always—wrong in assuming similarity is due to common
ancestry.
Of course my friend and I are members of the same human kind and so we know that we
had a common ancestor—who was a descendant of Japheth, in this case. However, the
analogy is accurate—that thedegree of similarity in appearance does not necessarily
indicate the degree of genetic relatedness. As we shall see, evolutionists are forced to
recognise this at times, but they (illogically) do not admit that such recognition
undermines the main argument for evolution (if similarities occur that clearly are not due
to common ancestry, how does the evolutionist know that any similarities are due to
evolution?).
If living things had a common creator/designer, we would expect there to be many
similarities—just like the early Porsche and VW ‘beetle’ have many similarities because
they shared the same designer. If there were not these similarities in living things we
might be inclined to believe in many creators, not just one. The Bible tells us that God's
very nature is revealed to us in what He has created (Romans 1:18–23). I believe that
God created things in such a way that the patterns we see defy a natural explanation—
such as evolution—but support a supernatural explanation. In other words, the patterns
of similarity cannot be consistently explained by any naturalistic (everything–made–
itself) theory.

The more similar creatures are, according to the evolutionary argument, the more closely
they should be related—that is, the more recent it is since they had the same ancestor.
Take, as an example, the usual textbook illustration of the similarities between the limbs
of animals with backbones (vertebrates) and people. Human beings have a five–
finger/toe hand/foot pattern, and limbs with two bones attached to the hand/foot joined
to a single other major limb bone. We share this pattern with bats and frogs and
therefore, the
evolutionist argues,
we must share
common ancestors
with these animals.
That explains the
similarities, we are
told.

However, if we look
at the horse limb
(right), we see that it is quite different to the human form. Frogs and people have
remarkably similar limb structures, but horses, which are supposedly very much more
closely related to humans, have a limb with little resemblance to the human limb. Just on
the basis of limb structures, it might be reasonable to suppose that frogs and people are
more closely related than people and horses.
However, horses, as mammals, share many similarities to humans which frogs, as
amphibians, don’t share—horses, like us, are warm–blooded, give birth to live young,
suckle their young, have hair, etc. The evolutionist claims that horses and humans must
be more closely related than frogs and humans.

But what about the remarkable differences in the limbs of horses and humans? The
evolutionist ‘explains’ the profound differences in the horse and human limbs as due to
‘adaptation’ in the horse. So, when the evolutionist confronts anomalies like the horse
limb, a story is invented to ‘explain’ it. In
this case the story is ‘adaptation’. The
limb was supposedly ‘modified’ by natural Marsupial Placental
selection to do a different job. However,
Tasmanian ‘Tiger’ or Wolf
this is a just–so story to explain away Thylacine
evidence which does not fit the common
Feathertail Glider Flying squirrel
ancestry idea.

Quolls and cats Dunnart or Marsupial Mouse, Shrew

mouse
Marsupials are mammals which give birth
Cuscus Monkey
to very immature babies which are
suckled in a protective pouch. These Marsupial mole Golden mole of
include the kangaroos, koalas, wombats Africa
and possums of Australasia and the
Quoll Cat
opossums of the Americas. Placental
mammals nurture their young in the Bilby Hare
womb, which develops an elaborate
Rat kangaroo Rat
nourishing structure called a placenta.
The babies are born in quite a developed Wombat Marmot
state compared to marsupials.
Numbat Anteater
Nearly all the mammals in Australia are
marsupials. Why is this so? The Table 1. Some marsupial and placental
animals showing remarkable similarities.
evolutionist claims to have an answer:
the marsupials evolved in Australia from a common ancestor which just happened to be
here.3 Placental mammals—such as dogs, cats, horses, squirrels, mice, etc., evolved on
other continents. That's the story.

However, there are many incredible similarities between marsupial and placental animals
which defy this naturalistic story. Take the marsupial mouse, or dunnart, and placental
mouse, for example. Some types are so similar it is difficult to tell them apart without
close inspection to look for the pouch.
The marsupial mole from the Northern Territory of Australia is incredibly similar to the
golden mole of Africa. When the cuscus was first discovered in Papua New Guinea it was
mistaken for a type of monkey. It has a flat monkey-like face, opposable digits on front
and hind limbs, and a prehensile (grasping) tail.

The number of similar marsupial and placental animals is astounding, if they just arose
by the evolutionary processes of chance mutations and natural selection.

The list could be extended by including extinct types such as the marsupial diprotodon, a
hippopotamus-like creature. So there are many similarities which are not due to common
ancestry, or evolution. How does the evolutionist account for these similarities? Here
another story comes into play: many of the marsupials and placentals ended up looking
like one another because they happened to be in similar ecological niches and so evolved
similarly to fill those similar niches. This is another ‘just–so’ story. Such similarities are
said to be due to ‘convergence’ or ‘parallel evolution’. ‘Convergence’ is really just a grab
bag to put similarities which cannot be explained through common ancestry (evolution).
This is supposed to account for similarities which do not fit the evolutionary scheme of
descent based on other similarities.

It stretches the bounds of credulity to believe that so many marsupials just happened,
without any plan and purpose, to look so similar to their placental counterparts. It’s like
trying to believe that two artists painted a series of almost identical paintings without
reference to one another, or that the similarities between a VW and Porsche were not
due to their having a common designer.

Also, if being in a similar ecological niche automatically generates similarities, why is the
kangaroo not more like cattle, horses or deer—the kangaroo’s ecological counterparts on
other continents? The kangaroo throws a spanner into the logic of the ‘convergence’
story used to explain similarities which do not fit the evolutionary story.4
God has indeed created things in such a way as to confound naturalistic (everything
made itself) explanations for the origin of organisms. Various ad hoc, or just–so, stories
have been invented in an attempt to explain the many things which do not fit the
evolutionary scheme, but they are just that—stories. May God receive the glory that is
His due for the marvelous things He has created!