EVIDENCE FOR DESIGN
AT THE ECOLOGICAL LEVEL

Henry Zuill (Retired)
Professor of Biology, Union College

Geoscience Reports 29:1-6 (Spring 2000).
    Related page — | EDITORIAL | PORTUGUESE |

Introduction

    When astronaut John Glenn took his famous "senior" space trip in November 1998, he commented on the view of Earth that passed beneath him. He wondered how anyone could not believe in God when they saw His wonderful creation.
    The idea of design in nature is not new. William Paley (1742-1805), prominent among contemporary theologians of similar persuasion, wrote of natural design and natural theology. His still-famous work (1802), Natural Theology: or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, Collected from the Appearances of Nature,¹ influenced scholars for decades. Paley likened nature to a watch, as compared to a stone, and suggested that no one would deny that the watch was designed. Paley also addressed the intricacies of the eye as evidence for design. Similarly, he viewed all of nature as bearing the hallmark of design — which suggests a designer. He believed such evidences to support the existence of God.
    Paley's books were required reading at the university, and Charles Darwin was considerably influenced, but not persuaded, by him. Some of Darwin's writings were specific challenges to Paley's ideas. Under the influence of Darwinism Paley's impact diminished considerably, but the power of his argument is still felt today. Nearly two centuries after Paley's initial publication, Richard Dawkins, in The Blind Watchmaker (1990),² believed it necessary to contest Paley's ideas.
    We often hear that the idea of design in nature is teleological or purposeful and, thus beyond scientific investigation. The inference is that the design hypothesis is scientifically unacceptable, possibly even false. For this reason Dawkins tried to demonstrate that apparent design in nature is actually the product of natural processes. He believes that a little luck and much time is all that is necessary to account for nature's complexity. Having rejected any other possibility, what else could he do? This demonstrates the lengths to which some will go to sidestep the most obvious and compelling contrary evidence.
    Dawkins appears to be thoughtful and careful, but locked into a philosophy that leaves him no other option. Other scientists are uncomfortable with this position. Lewis Thomas stated their dilemma: "I cannot make my peace with the randomness doctrine; I cannot abide the notion of purposelessness and blind chance in nature. And yet I do not know what to put in its place for the quieting of my mind. It is ridiculous to say that a place like this place is absurd, when it contains, in front of our eyes, so many billions of different forms of life, each one in its way absolutely perfect, all linked together to form what would surely seem to an outsider a huge spherical organism."³
    Though the design-in-nature hypothesis may be scientifically untestable, it is not necessarily false. The evidence may still point to design; there is just no way of scientifically dismissing the hypothesis. There is reality that science cannot see, and even reality that science has not discovered. Do we simply dismiss the obvious because we cannot test it? Do we resort to naturalistic speculations that are also untestable?
    Recently the idea of design has again come into prominence. John Polkinghorne wrote, "I think we're living in an age where there is a great revival of natural theology taking place."⁴ Michael Behe brought the idea of design in nature to popular attention in his best-selling book, Darwin's Black Box: the Biochemical Challenge to Evolution.⁵ While Behe believes that biochemical systems at lower biological levels demand design by being irreducibly complex, he finds evolution the best explanation for the origin of species.⁶ A favorite of some creationists, he is not a traditional biblical creationist in any strict sense, but his ideas are an important beginning.
    We tend to view nature through the restrictions of our disciplines. While Behe can see biochemical complexity demanding design, apparently he does not see the almost unimaginable complexity at structurally higher biological levels also making similar demands. These higher-level complexities likewise defy conventional evolutionary explanations. At the other end of the spectrum of life from where Behe works is the ecological level, and here complex ecological relationships also challenge evolutionary explanations.

The Challenge of Ecology

    Ecology is a relatively young science that attempts to understand various relationships between organisms, and between them and their non-biological surroundings. Darwin saw evolution as the result of natural selection, in which more suitable members of a population were favored over others by both biotic and abiotic environmental forces. Thus, they were more often able to leave a genetic imprint on future generations — which suggests that ecology does the selecting. Understanding ecology is important in understanding natural selection and evolution.
    Ernst Haeckel, a noted zoologist and ardent evolutionist, coined the word "ecology" during the 1860s.⁷ He believed that ecology would establish evolution. Instead, as complex ecological relationships are examined, ecology may be a significant challenge to the idea it was intended to support.
    We will examine evidence from modern ecology and paleoecology. Because ecological relationships are vital, we will relate the evidence to a gradual development of ecology, as is apparently required by evolution. We will also consider the picture that requires a complex and functioning ecology from the beginning — the understanding arising from a belief in creation.

Biodiversity Studies

    The environmental movement has focused attention on the importance of ecology today. Rachel Carson's Silent Spring⁸ was the catalyst that initiated the popular effort to save the environment from wanton exploitation. This movement led to new ways to protect environments, new laws, and even new government agencies. Although some environmental improvement has resulted, the battle has necessarily been continual.
    In September 1986, a group of biologists met at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C.⁹ to assess environmental health and plan for greater efforts in conservation. Here the term "biodiversity" was introduced, and it has now become the focus of expanding studies and the basis for an emerging science. The idea has become a frequent and increasing theme in popular and scientific literature, as indicated by the graph which shows an increasing number of Internet "hits" using the word "biodiversity" in an "Ebsco Host" search.

Note that the year 1998 only includes from January through September. If the number of hits up through September is any indication, there should be close to 230 hits for the entire year as indicated by the adjacent bar.

    Biodiversity includes the enormous array of species making up the world's many ecosystems. It also includes different populations of those species with their many gene complexes. These provide for the most essential quality of biodiversity: its countless and necessary ecological services. In the words of Yvonne Baskin: "It is this lavish array of organisms that we call 'biodiversity,' an intricately linked web of living things whose activities work in concert to make the earth a uniquely habitable planet."¹⁰
    Though numerous studies reveal the nature of biodiversity, its services are only partially understood. It is obvious, however, that organisms making up ecosystems join in a web of services without which they could not exist.
    Some examples of these services include: bioproductivity; recycling of nutrients; many mutualistic services between plants, animals, and other groups of organisms; soil relationships, including mycorrhizae and their host plants; pollination services; seed dispersal services; ant and plant relationships; lichen relationships and their services in soil formation; etc. Biodiversity even includes backup services for times when stress prevents some ecosystem components from functioning adequately.
    Consider, for example, pollination, an important process linking plants and animals. Edward O. Wilson from Harvard University writes of pollination as a chain that leads directly to our species.¹¹ Many plants need insects. If plants must have insects to exist, then humans must also have insects to exist. While Wilson attributes this to "millions of years of coevolution," this viewpoint overlooks a fundamental question. Specific plant-pollinator relationships may change, but how did original plant-pollinator relationship begin? How did flowers producing nectar and pollen and needing pollinators, and animals needing nectar and/or pollen originate? How did they become so vitally interconnected?
    Though not fully understood or even recognized, these numerous essential relationships are clearly important. Peter Raven points out that when a plant is exterminated, often as many as ten to thirty other creatures become extinct,¹² because they cannot survive without the services the plant either directly or indirectly provides.
    The focus of biodiversity studies has become the necessity of conserving our environment for the greater good of all living things. In an address to students at the University of Nebraska, Edward O. Wilson discussed the claim of some economists that species providing redundant services can be expended with impunity. Each species provides several ecological services, but any redundances that may appear expendable in one situation may be vitally necessary in another, and thus they are not expendable. Wilson said of the many different species, "Save them all!"¹³ Species diversity is indispensable for normal functioning of ecosystems.
    These findings emphasize that ecology, which seems indispensable now, was also indispensable in the past. It is difficult to imagine otherwise, and yet few think about the historical and philosophical implications of such necessary relationships.
    The nature of biodiversity services raises the question: if ecological relationships are necessary for ecosystems functioning now, how could they ever have been unnecessary? That is what evolution appears to require. Not only would organisms have progressed from simple to complex structures and functions, but ecology would also have similarly progressed.
    Coevolution is the usual explanation for the origin of ecology. Coevolution is defined as the "joint evolution of two or more non-interbreeding species that have a close ecological relationship; through reciprocal selective pressures, the evolution of one species in the relationship is partially dependent on the evolution of the other."¹⁴ Some ecology was necessarily already present when coevolution began. Acting through natural selection of existing conditions, coevolution can enable species to refine mutual relationships, but it cannot account for the origin of basic relationships that enabled it to happen initially. There seems to be no imaginable way for the entire web of relationships to evolve independently in any integrated manner
    Since evolution lacks a substantive scheme to explain the origin of ecology, though it is essential now, design appears to be a reasonable alternative explanation. Indispensable relationships in ecology suggest that ecology has always been functionally developed. Are the complex eco-chemical and eco-physical relationships any less impressive than those cytochemical pathways that so impressed Behe? No! Given that eco-complexity is dependent upon all other underlying foundational complexities in cells, tissues and organisms, ecological complexity is even more impressive.
    We must recognize that today's ecology is much different from the original ecological picture visualized by most creationists. Natural relationships now include a number of negative characteristics (e.g., death, predation and parasitism).
    While one might expect negative traits to occur in the evolutionary picture, it is also necessary to ask why they persist. Predation and parasitism endanger and destroy the very organisms upon which predators and parasites depend. Mutually beneficial relationships should have been more enduring and desirable in natural selection. From a creationary perspective, both present organisms and the ecology they depend upon are degenerate. Selfish exploitation of nature, plus diverse domino-effect breakdowns, and various catastrophes, including the biblical flood, harmed original ecology.
    Loss of biodiversity stressed ecosystems through loss of species, loss of genes, and loss of biodiversity services. Mutations also damaged genes and produced genetic deformity. While we cannot explain in any detail how negative traits came into existence, degeneration is a reality in our world that surely is related to the breakdown of original ecology. Lacking resources available in the original menu, surviving species faced two choices: either go extinct or exploit previously unintended resources. Both must have occurred, and thus nature and ecology are very different today from that original creation.
    Even with these unfortunate developments, it is clear that a picture of nature with a gradually developing ecology is untenable.
    Some may argue that ecosystems gradually develop from little or nothing in primary succession. However, such succession only works because of seeding from adjacent sources, and succession is quite different from developing an ecosystem from nothing.
    The idea of functioning ecosystems being designed and created appears more compatible with what is now found in nature. The widespread, and often obligatory, interdependencies found in nature suggest that such relationships are necessary for the efficient operation of the natural world.

The Paleontological Picture

    From an evolutionary perspective, development of ecology would have developed with evolution. In such a beginning, when living species were few and relatively simple, ecology would also have been simple. Many inefficient biological novelties would have been possible. As species increased in both complexity and number, and as their interrelationships also developed, ecology would have become more complex. Over time, biodiversity would have increased.
    If this evolutionary perception of developing ecology is true, one would expect to find supporting evidence in the fossil record. For example, as one works down the geologic column, wherever there is significant preservation of ancient communities, increasing community simplification should be evident. Lagerstäten¹⁵ is the paleontological term for fossil deposits with extraordinary preservation and fossil richness. If the evolutionary scenario of ecological development is valid, ecological simplification should be most evident in the well-explored and studied Lagerstäten sites, as far down as possible in the fossil record.
    One such site is the Burgess Shale of British Columbia, Canada. This Middle Cambrian deposit contains extraordinarily preserved fossils, including a number of soft-bodied types. Since the discovery of the Burgess Shale, other similar, but widely scattered, deposits have been found, including some described as Lower Cambrian.¹⁶ The Burgess Shale contains 140 species in 119 genera and 14 phyla.¹⁷ Most of the species are benthic types.¹⁸ There are also a number of algal fossils, indicating a shallow-water community probably less than 100 meters deep. None of the creatures represented live today, and most of them may be described as extraordinary.¹⁹ Nevertheless, two authors cited by Gould²⁰ indicate that despite the unusual nature of the fossils, the Burgess Shale ecology was quite ordinary compared with today's ecology. As Gould states: "No longer could the disparity of early form be attributed to reduced pressure of an easy world, devoid of Darwinian competition in the struggle for existence, and therefore open to any contraption or jury-rigged experiment. The fundamental trophic structure of marine metozoan life was established early in evolution."²¹ Simply stated, complex ecology was already present very early in evolution history.
    Other less well-preserved fossil faunas are found in lower Cambrian and upper Precambrian strata,²² but while they may also hint of a benthic existence,²³ the level of preservation is insufficient to say much about their ecology. Yet modern-style ecology appears evident in the lower levels of fossil-bearing strata. There is no hint of ecological simplification. Evolutionists look to the Precambrian for such developments, but, instead, evidence indicates that the Precambrian microfossils may not be as old as some suppose.²⁴ Paleontological evidence does not clearly support the hypothetical progression from simple to complex ecology demanded by evolution. It appears to better sustain the idea of fully functional ecology from the beginning.

Conclusion

    Design in nature has been an increasingly recurring theme in numerous recent scientific publications. Some have found design to be a necessary explanation for the origin of biochemical systems. Examination of eco-complexity and paleontological evidence does not support the evolutionary explanation for ecology.
    Evidence from both modern ecology and from paleoecology support the idea of design in nature. Compared to evolutionary explanations, design is a reasonable alternative explanation for ecology and thus evidence for creation
    Though a highly integrated ecology cannot say exactly when creation occurred, it strongly suggests the necessity of a short-duration creation. Otherwise, essential ecological services would have been missing and ecosystems would have failed.
    The Scriptures are emphatic that God created in six days, even though it says little about when the events took place. . If creation occurred over just a few days, vast periods of evolutionary time would be made unnecessary. Ample time would be available for the changes that can be observed, and thus, ecology also is consistent with the recent-creation hypothesis.

ENDNOTES

1. Paley W. 1986. Natural theology. 12th edition. Charlottesville, VA: Lincoln-Rembrandt Publishing.
2. Dawkins R. 1990. The blind watchmaker: why the evidence of evolution reveals a universe without design. NY: W. W. Norton & Co. 332p.
3. Thomas L. 1980. On the uncertainty of science. Harvard Magazine 83(1):19-22. Quoted by Roth AA. 1998. Origins: linking science and Scripture. Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald Publishing Association, p. 333.
4. Polkinghorne J. 1996. The revival of natural theology. Chronicle of Higher Education 4(2):B9.
5. Behe M. 1996. Darwin's black box. NY: Free Press. 307p.
6. The New York Times, 29 October 1996, Tuesday Final Section A; Editorial Desk, Column 2, p. 25.
7. Smith RL. 1992. Elements of ecology. NY: Harper-Collins, p. 3.
8. Carson R. 1962. Silent spring. NY: Houghton-Mifflin.
9. See the report from National Forum on BioDiversity. 1986. Mass extinction of species. Smithsonian Magazine, November, p.42-47.
10. Baskin Y. 1997. The work of nature: how the diversity of life sustains us. The Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment (SCOPE). Washington DC: Island Press, p 3.
11. Foreword in: Buchman SL, Nabhan GP. 1996. The forgotten pollinators. Washington DC: Island Press/Shearwater Books.
12. Raven PH. 1976. Ethics and attitudes. In: Simmons J, et al., editors. Conservation of threatened plants. NY: Plenum Publishing, p 155-181; cited in Baskin (Note 10), p 36-37.
13. Address given on 12 October 1998 at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska.
14. Smith (Note 7), in Glossary p 3.
15. For a listing of several lagerstätten sites, see the following URL: http://www.museum.state.il.us/exhibits/mazon_creek/lagerstatten.html
16. Other similar sites have been found in other parts of British Columbia and in Idaho, Utah, Pennsylvania, Greenland, Australia, and China.
17. Gould SJ. 1989. Wonderful life: the Burgess Shale and the nature of history. NY: W. W. Norton & Co. 347p.
18. Bottom dwelling.
19. Whittington described them as "weird wonders" in: Briggs DEG, Whittington HB. 1985. Modes of life of the arthropods from the Burgess Shale, British Columbia. Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.76:149-160.
20. Briggs and Whittington (Note 19); also Morris C. 1986. The community structure of the Middle Cambrian phyllopod bed (Burgess Shale). Palaeontology 29:423-482.
21. Gould (Note 17), p 223-224.
22. Examples include the Tommotian Fauna in the lower Cambrian and the Ediacaran Fauna just below the Precambrian-Cambrian boundary.
23. Trace fossils — tracks and trails — have been found that suggest a benthic existence.
24. Roth AA. 1992. Life in the deep rocks and the deep fossil record. Origins 19(2):93-104.

(Photos courtesy of Clyde L. Webster, Jr.)
    watch in hand — small, color (26K), large b/w (518K)
    bee on flower — small, b/w (40K), large b/w (627K)
    lion with prey — small, b/w (34K), large b/w (774K)
    crinoids — small, color (78K), large b/w (375K)