The blue whale is the largest creature to ever live. They are overwhelming. Some weigh 200 tons – 400,000 pounds, or as big as 30 large African elephants – and reach 100 feet in length. There may have been slightly longer dinosaurs, but there never has been a more massive creature.
I remember in school listening to the Darwinian fable of how whales and other air-breathing sea creatures (seals, dolphins, porpoises, etc.) supposedly came to be. The fable begins in some ancient shallow sea, where some fish (who just happened to have legs, go figure!) “pushed themselves out of the swamp and began to walk on land.” That’s an actual quote from the website of the Smithsonian Institution. Really? What happened, real estate in the ocean got too expensive and they had to move? Couldn’t stand the neighbors? How convenient that the fish already had legs, wouldn’t you say? Pretty amazing in fact, since legs are a serious drag in the ocean, and even if they miraculously formed natural selection would not preserve them.
Think about what’s involved here, to change an animal that lives in the sea to one that lives on land. You need legs, muscles, tendons, and a nervous system to control them all. You need to be able to take oxygen out of the air instead of out of the water. You need eyes that can see on land, and a new skin. Keep in mind that getting a single piece of new biological technology (a new limb or feature) by chance – by random mutations – is mathematically ridiculous (see my earlier post on The DMS Epidemic). We are supposed to believe the fable that all of this occurred without a designer?
I remember being puzzled, but I was a kid and the books all said it was true, so I didn’t protest. But when you think about it as an adult, it’s a more fantastic “just-so” story than anything ever written by Rudyard Kipling. I mean, seriously, Kipling’s “How the leopard got his spots” makes about as much scientific sense as “one day this fish starts breathing, grows legs and walks on dry land.” And that’s only part of the Darwinian nonsense. The second act of the fable is that some descendant of this once-fish-now-on-land creature decides he wants to live back in the water, so he loses the legs but keeps the ability to breathe air through lungs. I mean, really??? What happened there, got tired of the new digs after all those years and decided to move back home? And the skin, eyes, etc. all just miraculously changed again? Sure, totally believable and extremely “scientific” theory, right? Ha!!!
Blue whales have special lungs that gradually collapse as the whale dives and the water pressure increases. This makes the whale less buoyant, so the whale can easily dive deep. Blue whales have been recorded at depths of 1,600 feet. Without gradually collapsing lungs, they couldn’t dive deep. For you and me, and probably all land mammals, the lungs would suddenly and totally collapse at some point, causing death.
Blue whales sing complex songs with repeating patterns. We don’t understand how or why they are communicating, but the intelligence behind the songs is undeniable. Then there is the sheer power of the songs. They are fantastically loud – one source says 190 decibels. That’s 10,000 times as powerful as the roar of a large jet engine. It’s a billion times as loud as a lawn mower (but, perhaps fortunately for us, blue whale songs are mostly below the range of human hearing). Whale songs travel through hundreds of miles of ocean water. How did the blue whale get that power? How did the blue whale learn to sing those songs, and what do they mean?
Blue whales eat massive amounts of tiny creatures; mostly krill, a sort of shrimp that is about two inches long. The mouth of an adult blue whale can hold 100 tons of seawater, and the tongue weighs two tons. Instead of teeth, they have special plates.
Blue whales have hips, and it was strongly argued that this somehow “proves” Darwin was correct, and Darwinian evolution is true, because the hips were thought of as a “vestigial” feature, a feature no longer necessary but left over from ancient ancestors on land. Science has recently shown that argument is totally false. Long story short, without whale hips you don’t get baby whales.
Either God created the blue whale, or you are stuck with the Darwinian fable. The Bible predicts many will prefer the fable:
For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables. 2 Timothy 4: 3-4
The blue whale is one of God’s most magnificent creatures. The proof of design is overwhelming. There may only be about 10,000 left. Fortunately, their numbers seem to be growing. Let us pray they will survive in our increasingly careless world.
Thanks for reading and Happy New Year! Please spread the good news that true science proves the existence of God. Together we can change the world.