Logic and Faith

If Charlotte Picked a Word for Atheists

I will never forget.  It was in fourth grade.  I can’t seem to remember much else during that school year, but I can close my eyes and return to the exact seat I occupied when the teacher first opened the book.  Fourth grade boys aren’t particularly interested in fanciful stories…but this one was different.  It was a Monday afternoon in the Fall when we first heard the words “Where’s Papa going with that ax?  said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.”  Over the next four days, the story of Charlotte’s Web was opened up for us and, in the age of childhood, we were both immersed and mesmerized by Fern, Wilbur, and especially Charlotte the spider.

Of course, in the E.B. White classic, Charlotte was no ordinary spider.  She was able to feel pity, evoke a sense of wonderment, and practice the literary talent of writing.  After our teacher finished reading the book to us, I immediately beat a path to the library to check it out.  I wound up checking it out four times, reading and re-reading the enchanting tale and visualizing every scene as if I too grew up in that barnyard and co-discovered the epic words “SOME PIG” written in the web.  I must admit, ever since that book entered my life, I have had a secret fascination with spiders and the amazing beauty and symmetry of their webs.

Scientists have long appreciated and tried to copy the fibers spun by spiders, with no luck.  Zoologists discovered that spiders have anywhere from one to four pairs of spinnerets located in their opisthosoma (abdomen), with the average number being three.   In addition to the spinnerets, there are usually seven silk glands, with each making a strand of silk for a unique purpose.  Many dozens of tiny tubes lead to these specially designed abdominal glands.  In a process not completely understood, a special scleroprotein-based substance is released as a liquid which then seems to harden as it is pulled from the spinneret.  Frank Sherwin, writing for the Institute for Creation research, has noted:

“One silk gland produces thread for cocoons and another for encapsulation of prey. The two seem to be the same, but they require different especially designed silk.  Other glands make the walking thread so the spider doesn’t encumber herself, while another makes the sticky material that captures prey. We are unable to see some of the finer threads unless the light is reflected just right. In fact, during World War II, only spider silk was fine enough to be used for cross hairs in some bomb sights. However, spider silk is also robust with a tensile strength five times that of steel and elasticity, able to stop a lumbering bumblebee at full speed. Some scientists describe the web patterns much like those mirrored by many flowers in sunlight (UV light). Insects that are searching for nectar see the “flower” patterned web in the UV spectrum and fly unwittingly into the sticky trap.”¹

If you get lost in the science, don’t worry.  Most spider experts readily admit that they are not at all certain as to how the mechanisms work and, more pointedly, why they work. Of course, evolutionists call the ability to spin webs nothing more than adaptation.  But the problem comes when the same evolutionists are asked the question “What did spiders do to catch prey before they had the ability to spin webs?”  This is a TERRIFIC question since evolution assumes that a species changes and adapts based on the constraints of needs, environment, and function.  However, if spiders (or their evolutionary ancestors) were successful at finding and catching food before attaining the ability to spin webs, then why develop the necessary organs for web-spinning?  And, if spiders were not successful at catching prey before developing the organs needed for making webs, the time period required for the necessary evolutionary changes to occur would have been too long and the species would have simply died out of existence due to starvation.

Additionally, spiders would have had to develop and adapt each of the organs needed for spinning webs at the same time.  Spinnerets without silk making glands would be useless; likewise, the glands without the spinnerets.  The probability of each of the different organs developing by chance is astronomically small.  The probability that each developed separately but at the same time is so infinitesimally small it is practically zero.

To compound matters, each spider engineers a style of web characteristic of its species and builds it perfectly on the first try. Scientists observe that this behavior is extremely complex and apparently inherited.  This RADIANT ability would have had to be passed on from the very first spider and could not have been taught since, as all members of my fourth-grade class learned, mother spiders often die immediately after laying eggs and prior to those eggs hatching.  Baby spiders must be born with this web-spinning sense, and it would needed to have been present in the first generation hatched.  Therefore, there could not have been thousands of generations where spiders gradually developed the “smarts” needed to spin a web.  Instinct without the organs would be ridiculous.  Organs without the instinct would be useless.  Evolutionists have yet to explain how the development of the organs and the instinct just happened instantly.  

In fact, evolutionists are reluctant to even discuss fossil evidence concerning spiders.  The earliest fossil record of spider webs has been found in a “380-million-year-old” sedimentary rock near Gilboa, New York.  Yet, when the fossil is examined, evidence clearly shows that the spiders which spun those webs are no different from those today.  The conclusion is that “spiders have always been spiders.”  But this goes against the theory of adaptation and mutations causing changes in species.  The same scientists would love to find a way to explain the dating of the rock as being of more recent origin, however, to do so discredits their whole geologic timeline.  So, the quandary for the evolutionists is:

“If the spiders have never evolved, then the geologic timeline is incredibly wrong.  However, if the geologic timeline is correct, then spiders seem to have never evolved.”

(Note: Recent attempts have been made to explain this conundrum by claiming that the discovered web was from a pre-spider.²  Yet this claim lacks significant tangible evidence.  In this line of reasoning, if it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it’s not a duck.”)

The answer to all of this is quite simple and has been in plain sight since the world was formed.  If evolutionists and atheists would HUMBLE themselves and open their eyes they would both see and understand.  God the Creator has given us all the evidence we need to conclude His existence, power, and wisdom reasonably and logically.  They would also do well to read the words of the Apostle Paul:

“For what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood from His workmanship, so that men are without excuse.…”   (Romans 1: 19-20)

The Psalmist long ago wrote:

“The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is no one who does good.”   (Psalms 14:1)