As Evolution News put it concisely the other day, “Where Design Explains, Darwinism Explains Away.” An illustration from paleontologist Günter Bechly: the evolution of insects, which he describes in a fascinating new ID the Future episode with host Andrew McDiarmid.

Download the podcast or listen to it here.

Dr. Bechly notes three contradictions at odds with Darwinian gradualism: Insects pop into existence at one blow, as do insect wings, as does the phenomenon of metamorphosis. None of these is led up to by the expected gradual evolutionary process. As with the Cambrian explosion, Darwinians have theories to explain away the problems.

Meanwhile the completeness of the fossil record grows more evident, and so the reliance on theories and excuses grows with it. But only a design inference explains such abrupt transitions. That’s how new ideas, in our own daily experience, get instantiated in physical reality — abruptly.

Photo: A fossil dragonfly, Chrismooreia michaelbehei, from the Early Jurassic, about 191 million years old, described and named by Dr. Bechly in honor of Michael Behe.