A friend points out the bit of nice news that one of our favorite nature video clips, “‪Dylan Winter and the Starling Murmurations,” from the Illustra film Flight: The Genius of Birds, has exceeded a million views on YouTube. Not bad. That’s a million plus people exposed to one of the most remarkable demonstrations of the wonders of bird flight.

All those viewers may not know precisely how starling murmurations give evidence of intelligent design. We’ve discussed this in the past:

• “Why Starling Murmurations Suggest Intelligent Design“

• “‘Not By Chance’: Drone Engineers Try the Starling Trick“

• “Fly Now; Swim Later“

As Dr. Timothy Standish explained, here in a nutshell is the challenge posed by starling murmurations to traditional evolutionary thinking:

In the cold hard world of survival of the fittest, starlings that stick with the group may enhance their odds of surviving predation. But such an effect is an emergent property of the murmuration. Attributing the origin of murmurations to enhanced survival requires first that murmurations exist, thus making for a circular argument. To circumvent this problem, a Darwinist might invoke cooption. Maybe the ancestors of modern starlings gathered together for some other practical purpose and then, in a lucky coincidence, gained the survival advantage provided by murmurations. But think about the resources consumed by daily migrations followed by considerable time flying about with other starlings. It’s unclear why any other proposed reason for investing resources this way would not be equally vulnerable to the criticism of circularity.

Flying in formation has advantages that humans quickly recognized once we mastered powered flight. The most obvious of these involves multiple sets of eyes looking out for enemies or obstacles. If human intelligence can figure this out, perhaps clever starlings can as well. But if there is a genetic component to the behavior — a reasonable assumption given that starlings form murmurations wherever they are in the world while other birds do not — then a mechanism for creating the required genetic changes would need to anticipate the need fulfilled by murmurations. Darwinian evolution is blind and unguided, incapable by definition of anticipating anything. In the case of human flight, various types of formation flying were developed in anticipation of a need. Generally that was to survive during battles in the air. Formation flying is not something that pilots stumbled upon in the middle of a dogfight then stuck with; it is a solution to an anticipated need. Intelligence alone has been shown to have produced such solutions.

When it comes to design and murmurations, the elephant in the room is the other abilities birds must possess to achieve the phenomenon. They must have the inclination to fly long distances and to congregate. They must have the ability to navigate, the ability to fly, the ability to perceive and react to the other birds they are flying with, and any number of other wonders. Most people, scientists or not, can see this; but Darwinism demands that we turn a blind eye to such things.

Those million+ viewers also likely haven’t had the opportunity to savor the unintentional humor when atheist evolutionary biologist and blogger Jerry Coyne fumbled by promoting this same pro-ID video:

• “At Why Evolution Is True, Jerry Coyne Promotes an Intelligent Design Documentary“

• “Tripped Up by Snafu on Starling Murmurations, University of Chicago Evolutionary Biologist Jerry Coyne Tell Us to ‘Stuff It!’“

Murmurations have been caught memorably on video by others, as here:

Congratulations to our friends over at Illustra Media! We are following the production of their next documentary, and will keep you apprised.

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