I’m sure you must be familiar with spider webs. Every one of
us has seen them and most of us have gotten tangled in one from time to time. Most
of us would be just fine if we never had anything to do with a spider or its
web again.
We try to avoid encountering them or even thinking about
them, but a spider’s web is an engineering marvel that most of us could not
begin to figure out how to create even if we had the resources. Scientists don’t
even know how they do it.
Most spiders have three different “spinnerets” that are
organs in their bodies to produce the three different types of silk that go
into making a spider web. They have both sticky and non-sticky silk. Most of
the silk threads in a spider web are the “sticky” type which catches insects
for them to eat.
As you have probably heard, the silk of spider webs is
stronger than steel for its size, but it is way more elastic.
Did you ever wonder why spiders don’t get all caught up in
their own webs? They have special legs, claws, feet, and hairs that help them
not get stuck. They also spin the type of silk that is “non-sticky”. When they
run across their web, they stay mostly on the non-sticky silk threads.
Reading about spider webs is a fascinating education.
There are so many elements that come together to create a
spider web that most rational people who study about the details have to
conclude that it is a total miracle if it happened by mutation and natural
selection through slow and gradual changes as predicted by the Theory of
Evolution. However, it’s so much simpler and more elegant to imagine a
super-intellect designing it all, as I do.
I want to go through the article in Wikipedia.Org [1] on
Spider Webs and point out some questions that you should ask yourself if you
have any doubt about God.
“When spiders moved from the water
to the land in the Early Devonian period, they started making silk to protect
their bodies and their eggs.” [1]
The writer says that spiders just “started making silk.” Now if you imagine what they are really doing, you'll see this is a miraculous performance. It’s
not like they decided to put on a jacket or something. Spiders somehow
developed a special organ in their bodies that they never had before. This
brand new organ actually makes a long continuous strand of silk that is
stronger than steel for its size. Somehow they realized that this string coming
out of themselves would be good to wrap themselves or their eggs in for
protection.
That’s a miracle or it’s a design.
“Spiders gradually started using
silk for hunting purposes, first as guide lines and signal lines, then as
ground or bush webs, and eventually as the aerial webs that are familiar today.”
[1]
Each sentence is taking one or more gigantic leaps by
assumption. The kind of silk that was produced to wrap themselves or their eggs
must have been the “non-sticky” silk. Otherwise, they’d be in a total mess. So
in order to use any silk for hunting purposes, they would need the “sticky”
type of silk. This is not produced in the same bodily organ, or spinneret. They
need a totally different type of spinneret to produce the “sticky” silk. So
they have to grow a whole new organ.
Next, you might also ask yourself, “How did they learn to hunt
with sticky silk?” Imagine that you grow an organ to produce sticky silk and it
starts oozing from your abdomen. How do you figure out what to do with it?
Since it is sticky, it will get all over you, sort of like duct tape gone wild.
Remember it is stronger than steel at your level of size. Somehow you have to
learn to turn it on and off. Then next, over many generations of getting all
stuck to yourself, you evolve special hairy arms and hands with special cells
so you can deal with the sticky silk.
Remember the concept of Natural Selection says that every
slow and gradual step along the way was an advantage to survival so it was
preserved. I’m having a hard time imagining myself wrapped in duct tape and
thinking I could survive better that way.
Ok, let’s skip ahead. You’ve got this long strand of sticky
silk emerging from your body that you have managed to get under control. How
does it become useful for hunting? The author claims it must have been used
“first as guidelines and signal lines”. I guess the spiders must have laid it
out across the ground and realized that if food got stuck to it, then they
could reel it in like on a fishing line. That seems like a possibility until
you think of getting some double-sided duct tape and laying it out across the
ground. You’re not going to catch anything but dirt. Even if you laid it up the
side of a tree, you’re probably only going to catch tree bark.
Maybe they hung upside down from a tree branch and dangled
the sticky silk strand in the air. They might accidentally catch a bug for
dinner. Odds are not so good. They also might catch a bird and get carried away.
I just don’t see this as an improvement on survival abilities. There are more
bugs on the ground to eat than they could catch in the air.
“Spiders produce silk from their spinneret
glands located at the tip of their abdomen. Each gland produces a thread for a
special purpose – for example a trailed safety line, sticky silk for trapping
prey or fine silk for wrapping it. Spiders use different gland types to produce
different silks, and some spiders are capable of producing up to 8 different
silks during their lifetime.
“Most spiders have three pairs of
spinnerets, each having its own function – there are also spiders with just one
pair and others with as many as four pairs.” [1]
So most spiders have several glands for producing each a
different type of silk thread. Some spiders may have up to 8 different glands.
Obviously, each type of gland is unique and so there had to be a lot of DNA
changes in a spider’s sperm AND egg for those changes to first occur and then
be perpetuated from one generation to the next. If only the female or male
spider mutates, then a trait is not likely to get passed to the next
generation.
“Webs allow a spider to catch prey
without having to expend energy by running it down. Thus it is an efficient
method of gathering food. However, constructing the web is in itself an
energetically costly process because of the large amount of protein required,
in the form of silk. In addition, after a time the silk will lose its
stickiness and thus become inefficient at capturing prey. It is common for
spiders to eat their own web daily to recoup some of the energy used in
spinning. The silk proteins are thus recycled.” [1]
I am skeptical that this statement can be arguing in favor
of evolution. How much energy does a spider actually expend to run down an
insect as opposed to creating a huge spider web? Which strategy is more likely
to lead to survival of the fittest? Seems to me that a spider that runs down
some food gets to eat it right away as contrasted to the one that builds a huge
nest and waits and hopes. Which one will survive better to reproduce, the spider
on the ground chasing prey or the one that is taking many generations to learn
how to make a spider web and use it?
“The tensile strength of spider
silk is greater than the same weight of steel and has much greater elasticity.
Its microstructure is under investigation for potential applications in industry,
including bullet-proof vests and artificial tendons.” [1]
This is incredible information. A spider can produce from a
gland on its body a thread stronger than steel (relatively), which has much
greater elasticity. It has taken human beings with intelligence thousands and
thousands of years to produce steel, yet evolutionists believe that spiders
accidentally stumbled on the way to produce it from developing an organ in
their own bodies from scratch, step-by-step, gradually over many generations.
Really?
Here’s another issue. Scientists know that a spider web is a
mixture of sticky and non-sticky silk which allows the spider to walk over
his/her own spider web and not get stuck to it. Just how in the process of
figuring out how to build a spider web did the spider learn to make a pattern
of non-sticky silk to walk on and avoid the sticky silk. Do you think it was
trial and error? Going back to the duct tape analogy, the spider would get
stuck in his own web many, many times before learning how to engineer the
non-sticky silk that he/she could walk on. The strands would have to be in a
certain pattern and distance between them so the spider could get anywhere in
the web that an insect might get stuck. The spider legs must be able to reach
across the gap.
“During the process of making an
orb web, the spider will use its own body for measurements.” [1]
I find this an amazing statement, that a spider takes
measurements like an intelligent construction worker planning his next move.
Next we need to spend a little time with the phenomenal way
a spider actually goes about spinning a web and ask ourselves lots of questions
of how can this rationally be explained without a master designer.
“Many webs span gaps between
objects which the spider could not cross by crawling. This is done by first
producing a fine adhesive thread to drift on a faint breeze across a gap. When
it sticks to a surface at the far end, the spider feels the change in the
vibration. The spider reels in and tightens the first strand, then carefully
walks along it and strengthens it with a second thread. This process is
repeated until the thread is strong enough to support the rest of the web.” [1]
Think about this for a little while. It’s talking about a
spider up in the air letting a silk drift in the breeze. (Remember to think
about duct tape.) However, the Wikipedia author previously said that webs were
created on the ground first. So spiders were merrily making spider webs on the
ground until they realized they needed to make them in the air and then they
somehow figured out that they should go up high and dangle a sticky silk to
blow in the wind. If it dangles around for a while and doesn’t stick on
anything, then they should let out some more silk.
Once it sticks to something, they carefully reel it in and
try to make it tight. Then they travel down the sticky silk (remember duct
tape) without getting stuck in it and without breaking it and falling. They
drag some other sticky silk behind them without getting stuck in that and
attach it to the end point. Now they have two strands across the gap. But still
they repeat this process again to make the sure it can support the whole future
web. How they know when they have enough strands, that is a mystery. With each
additional strand of sticky silk (remember think double-sided duct tape) they
manage to go back and forth across without getting stuck. How many generations
did it take them to learn how not to get stuck.
“After strengthening the first
thread, the spider continues to make a Y-shaped netting. The first three
radials of the web are now constructed. More radials are added, making sure
that the distance between each radial and the next is small enough to cross. This
means that the number of radials in a web directly depends on the size of the
spider plus the size of the web. It is common for a web to be about 20 times
the size of the spider building it.” [1]
“The spider easily grips the thin
threads with special serrated claws, a smooth hook and a series of barbed hairs
on the end of its legs. As it walks along the initial structural threads, it
lays more frame threads between various anchor points. Then it starts laying
out radius threads from the center of the web to the frames. The spider does
not coat the frame and radius threads with sticky material, since it needs to
walk across them to get around the web.
“After building all the radius
threads, the spider lays more nonstick silk to form an auxiliary spiral, extending
from the center of the web to the outer edge of the web. The spider then
spirals in on the web, laying out sticky thread and using the auxiliary spiral
as a reference. The spider eats up the auxiliary spiral as it lays out the
sticky spiral, resulting in a web with non-sticky radius threads, for getting
around, and a sticky spiral for catching bugs.” [2]
About all I can say to this is WOW. I am daily watching a
construction crew put a new wing on the building where I work. Each day is
awesome as the scaffolding goes up in a precise and coordinated way,
step-by-step. It takes a lot of brains to figure out an engineering feat like
the lowly spider is accomplishing.
Lastly there is the spider’s ability to sense by touching a
silk thread that it has caught something. Its brain can tell the difference
between the wind blowing or a leaf and true prey stuck in the spider web by
touching a silk strand with its claw.
“The spider might also leave the
web, to retreat to a separate nest, while monitoring the web via a connected
signal line.” [2]
There is no way that all these different types of spiders
learned to create different types of webs using several different materials
from different organs in their own bodies in a slow and gradual process.
There must be God.
______________________________________
[1] Wikepedia.Org article, Spider Webs, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider_web
[2] HowStuffWorks.Com, A Typical Spider Web, http://animals.howstuffworks.com/arachnids/spider5.htm
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