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Hank Unplugged: Essential Christian Conversations

The Amazing Ant Reveals Intelligent Design

Hank Unplugged: Essential Christian Conversations

The Christian Research Institute

Education, Society & Culture, Religion & Spirituality

4.9809 Ratings

🗓️ 20 December 2021

⏱️ 4 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Hank Hanegraaff, president of the Christian Research Institute and host of the Bible Answer Man broadcast, meditates on the amazing ant and the brilliance of creation. Hank’s wife, Kathy, was lightly attacked by ants while hanging up Christmas lights, reminding him of the proverb, “Go to the ant, observe its ways and be wise, which, having no chief, officer, or ruler, prepares its food in the summer and gathers its provision in the harvest” (Proverbs 6:6–8). Weaver ants build nests that are about the size of soccer balls—and they do it through team work. After trimming leaf edges smooth, they sew them together, gluing them with silk—all the while the leaves are still attached to the tree, permitting photosynthesis. And in the process, they not only utilize tools but they cooperate one with another. How could such extreme behavior have evolved by unguided, purposeless natural processes? If you consider the “specified complexity” involved, it is highly unlikely that blind evolutionary processes explain it all. Indeed, Neo-Darwinian random mutation and natural selection (and accompanying processes) cannot produce the “complex programmed behaviors” of the ant. We’re told over and over that we are to follow the science. Indeed, following the science where it leads in terms of the complex programmed behaviors of the ant culminates with an Intelligent Designer! See the remarkable new book by Eric Cassell, Animal Algorithms: Evolution and the Mysterious Origin of Ingenious Instincts (Discovery Institute Press, 2021).

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hi, this is Hank Hennograph, president of the Christian Research Institute and host of the Bible Answer Man broadcast with another Hank Unplug short.

0:23.6

My wife was attacked by ants the other day when she was hanging up lights, Christmas lights,

0:32.0

at my son's house. I couldn't help but think about something that I had memorized a long time ago in Proverbs

0:40.8

chapter 6, where Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, save the incarnate Christ, of course,

0:50.9

said, go to the aunt, observe her ways and be wise, which having no chief officer or

1:00.9

ruler prepares her food in the summer and gathers her provision in the harvest.

1:10.7

Well, you can go to the internet and kind of look at ants, and it opens your mind to the

1:19.0

brilliance of creation.

1:24.4

Weaver ants, for example, construct nests that are about the size of soccer balls.

1:31.3

And they do it through teamwork.

1:34.3

They sew leaves together by joining the edges.

1:38.3

And by the way, the leaves are still attached to the trees.

1:43.3

So this permits photosynthesis.

1:49.0

And if the edges are jagged, well, the ants trim them.

1:55.0

And then they glue the edges together using silk, and they use various tools in the process.

2:04.9

They work in unison. They cooperate.

2:09.8

The question I have on this Hank Unplug Short is simply this. How could such extreme

2:16.5

behavior have evolved?

2:18.3

If you take all the complexities into consideration, it is highly unlikely that you can attribute this to blind evolutionary processes.

2:28.3

Evolution certainly cannot account for these complex programmed behaviors.

2:40.0

You can't ultimately say, well, this is a function of random mutation and selection.

2:49.0

So go to the ant, consider her ways, and be wise.

...

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