It Just 'Happened'?

"God saw all that he had made, and it was very good" (Genesis 1:31).

The osprey has a protective "visor" that drops over its eyes right before it dives into the water to catch a fish.

The champion of bird migration, the arctic tern, follows an invisible compass and flies 11,000 miles one-way from North America to the Antarctic Ocean each fall, then makes the return trip again each spring.

Per body weight, the woodpecker has the thickest skull of any creature. Like a bicycle helmet, the skull prevents damage to the head when the woodpecker pounds on a tree limb. The woodpecker's 10-inch tongue contains a sticky glue to pull in insects (plus a solvent to keep the bird from swallowing its own tongue).

The angler fish lives in complete darkness a mile deep in the ocean, but the female attracts its prey by dangling a lighted strand (a bright-looking "artificial worm") in front of its mouth.

The archer fish spits streams of water and knocks insects from nearby bushes onto the water's surface so the fish can eat them. This is especially difficult because of refraction. Stick a pencil into a pool of water, and the pencil appears to bend. How can the archer fish consistently hit its target when the insects aren't where they appear to be when viewed from underwater?

Beavers are equipped with built-in "goggles"—transparent eyelids so they can close their eyes underwater and still see. They cut trees with their teeth, using their self-sharpening incisors. They can swim in a straight line with branches in their mouths because they are equipped with paddle-shaped tails that function like rudders.

Yarrow's spiny lizard bears live young, which have sacs inside their bodies to hold water—about 10 percent of the newborn's body weight. This built-in canteen provides a water supply for the lizard during the first month of its life in the desert.

Frogsicle, anyone? The Alaskan wood frog somehow survives temperatures of 21 degrees Fahrenheit and below during the winter. During its months of icy hibernation, the wood frog doesn't breathe, its heart doesn't beat, and it exhibits no measurable brain activity. Yet remarkably, after the spring thaw it resumes normal activity with no damage to its organs.

And speaking of frogs ... the North American bullfrog has drum-like membranes in its ears (large circular shapes behind its eyes). When the bullfrog croaks, the sound starts in its vocal cords, then is amplified by its ears. A researcher at UCLA proved he could muffle a bullfrog's croak by placing his fingers on the frog's ears.

In a beehive some bees feed the queen; some are "undertakers" that remove dead bees from the hive; some are "groomers" that groom other bees; and others are guards that defend the hive from outside threats. Remarkably, these various worker bees are all sterile females. Because they produce no offspring, they cannot pass their genetic traits directly to the next generation. Yet somehow the bee colony continues to produce workers that carry out their tasks for the good of the whole.

After many failed attempts and enormous investments of time and money, mankind finally learned how to build machines that fly. But flight was "invented" by nature four times separately: in birds, insects, bats (mammals), and extinct flying reptiles.

I don't believe these and a million other marvels of nature "just happened." Did these remarkable life-forms result from the impersonal plus time plus chance? Surely there's a more reasonable explanation.

God spoke, and it was so.