This cuts like a knife — watch and share, please. The most famed Darwinian icon, the Tree of Life, poses an existential challenge to Darwinian theory. As Discovery Institute biologist Michael Denton notes, the fact of evolution as we find it, not as Darwinism should expect it, is characterized by the distinctness and persistence of biological types. Under strict Darwinism, such distinctions should blend, meld, melt into each other, certainly over the course of hundreds of millions of years.

How do Darwin advocates deal with this? You know how they habitually confuse the public by mixing up the several different meanings of “evolution.” There is change over time, common descent, and the Darwinian mechanism as a universal explanation for biological novelties. The nested hierarchy of life’s Tree, suggestive of shared ancestry, not only is compatible with intelligent design but itself forms a spear in the side of Darwin’s unguided mechanism.

The meanings of “evolution” are like wild animals fighting under a blanket. Remove the cover and you see that one is locked in a mortal battle with the other. Perhaps that’s why Darwinists insist on keeping the blanket over them, to conceal what’s going on.

Of course some ID advocates are skeptical of common descent, and that’s a fascinating conversation to have. But the Tree is no defeater of ID. Quite the opposite.

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