ORG:Toads  by Josh McDowell

   Darwin's suggestion that evolution came about through small
successive modifications or changes cannot be applied to every observed
creature. Darwin admitted, "If it could be demonstrated that any
complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by
numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down." (1)

   We will provide some difficult-to-explain examples. The Surinam toad
is mentioned by Wells, Huxley and Wells as an example of how a
land-based amphibian solves the problem of no water. (2) The female
toad lays her eggs on her back by means of a long oviduct. After the
eggs are laid, the skin on her back grows around the eggs and forms a
nursery for the young.

   One would have great difficulty explaining how such a toad evolved.
Perhaps a Darwinian would say that this behavior, and the physiologic
structures associated with it, evolved at a time when water was scarce
and the need for such behavior was necessary.

   However, three different phenomena must have evolved or the Surinam
toad would have become extinct. First, the long oviduct must have
evolved; secondly, the skin of the back must have become capable of
surrounding the eggs or they would have dried out raidly on the toad's
back. Finally, the two physiological structures would have been useles,
unless the toad used them properly.

   There is absolutely no reason for either of these structures to have
evolved by themselves. A toad with no water to lay its eggs in and
possessing only a long oviduct is just as doomed as a toad lacking an
oviduct whose back can form a nursery but who is unable to get the eggs
onto the back. The offspring of a toad posessing only two of the three
needed facilities would die. This is an example of a structure which
can't be evolved by small modifications. It all must appear at once or
it is useless.

   Another toad which also lives in a waterless environment, solves the
problem differently. The female lays her eggs in themouth of the male
whose vocal sacs become a nursery. (3) Once again, there are several
items which must have evolved simultaneously or the whole thing would
have been useless. The female must have learned to lay her eggs in the
mouth. The male had to evolve behavior which prevented him from eating
the eggs, as well as acquiring the ability to change his vocal sacs
into a nursery. The lack of any individual item would have doomed the
species.

   In both of the above cases, the only conceivable impetus to develop
these structures would be the drying up of the water in the area in
which the toad lived. The toad would not need the structures and
behavior millions of years after the water was gone; it would need it
immediately, before the waterwas dried up since the tadpole must
develop in a watery environment. The changes must come rapidly or it
would be too late.

   FOOTNOTES

   (1) Charles Darwin. The Origin of Species, New York: New American
Library, 1958 p. 171

   (2) H. G. Wells, Julian Huxley, and G. P. Wells, The Science of
Life, New York; The Literary Guild, 1934, p.728

   (3) Ibid

   Josh McDowell, & Don Stewart. Reasons Skeptics Should Consider
Christianity, Campus Crusade for Christ, Inc., 1981, p. 160-161
