Jay Hall
I’m sure we all want to know what the turtle taught us (tortoise). Let’s find out. In a phylogenetic (alleged family tree) study published in Biology Letters in 2012, more than a thousand of the least-changed regions in the genomes of turtles and their supposed closest relatives were examined. These Darwinists concluded that turtles are more closely related to birds than lizards!
According to evolutionists, the fossils and comparative anatomy place turtles as developing from the ancestor of all reptiles. However, genetic studies indicate that turtles evolved from the ancestor of crocodiles and birds.
The dip angle of the earth’s lines of magnetic force gives location clues. Turtles have a map sense apparently based on variations in the earth’s magnetic field at different locations. So, turtles are great navigators. Loggerhead sea turtles hatch on the Florida coast and migrate thousands of miles to the Mediterranean Sea. As adults they migrate back to Florida, often back to the same beach! Kenneth Lohmann has experimentally verified that turtles use light and magnetic fields for navigation.1
The painted turtle is very colorful demonstrating God’s beautiful creativity. Many turtles stay near water, but the desert tortoise can survive for over a year without water! Amazingly, the red-eared slider turtle can remain underwater for up to two weeks using lactate fermentation to supply cells with oxygen.2
Hindu mythology has the Earth on the backs of four elephants which stand on the shell of a turtle. Clearly turtles have been intelligently designed (ID), but ID is not enough and will not save your soul. Creation and Redemption are intimately connected:
“For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. … For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him [Jesus], and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross” (Col. 1:16-20, NIV).
Some would claim that continental drift occurs at a turtle’s pace. I argue for extreme plate tectonics and Rapid Plate Movements (RPM’s) in chapter six of my newly updated book YES – Young Earth Science.
Notes:
1) Biology 6e by Eldra Solomon, Linda Berg and Diana Martin, (2002, Brooks/Cole), p. 1118.
2) Ibid., p. 171.
