A Cool Coincidence

Have you ever heard of the North American walnut sphinx? It is a moth caterpillar that has one of the coolest defense mechanisms in all of creation. God equipped this insect with a nice camouflage, but birds are still able to track them down and eat them. The walnut sphinx has been nicknamed the accordion worm because of the way it compresses its body lengthwise when it is under duress. The moth has tiny holes called spiracles that allow air to exit its body while it is compressing, and the sound of the rushing air creates a whistling sound.

Here is the cool part: the whistling sound emitted by the walnut sphinx sounds exactly like the alarm call of the very songbird that is trying to eat it. When the songbird hears the mimicked alarm call, he thinks a fellow bird is warning him of nearby danger, and the bird flies away. It has been said that this moth whistles while it irks. The whistling sound has clocked in at 80 decibels, which is louder than the average volume at which humans talk.

In an evolutionary journal called Scientific American, Christopher Intagliata described this phenomenon as “A cool coincidence, for sure.” That five-word sentence tells you all you need to know about the difference in Darwinian evolution and belief in the biblical account of a Creator God. The evolutionist is confronted with dozens of examples of intelligent design (I have written frequently about it in these columns), and they must conclude it is “a cool coincidence.” When the evidence points towards God, they so badly want to be the god of their own lives that they dismiss intelligent design as a coincidence (usually while saying Christians don’t get science). The science points a Christian towards God, but causes the evolutionist to settle for “a cool coincidence.”

It is a cool coincidence that the amount of gravity on our planet does not cause us to fly away, but neither does it crush us. It is a cool coincidence that Earth’s distance from the sun neither scorches us nor freezes us. It is a cool coincidence that Earth rotates in such a way as to give us day and night, as well as seasons, and we get just enough of each.

I don’t have to believe in millions of coincidences. I don’t have enough faith to believe in evolution. It is so much easier to trust in a Sovereign God that fine-tuned this universe, our bodies, and everything else to run just right. I don’t believe in coincidences; I believe in Creation.