The Fly's Place

     I think that evolution is thought of as Satan's 'false road du jour' by a great many people already, but for those not yet convinced, consider the fly. They can lay eggs in dead fruit, vegetables, or creatures, and their babies grow up and eat the nursery for their food. Handy for the fly, as death and decay are a part of nature and so there is always a new food opportunity. And for flies, the harder times are, the better times are. A plague is a bad thing for most of nature, but not for the fly - it means food will be plentiful. A famine is a bad thing for most of nature, but not for the fly - it's a banquet! Everywhere!

   A Blue Bottle Fly mugging for the camera.

     But how does the fly affect the rest of us? It's somewhat revolting to come upon a dead animal seething with maggots, but once we are taught about how the maggots keep us from having to smell the dead creature forever, we end up feeling a sort of detached appreciation for maggots, and therefore flies. And flies often eat food without laying eggs if the food is a small creature, or bit of edible flesh or fruit or vegetable. So, they help us get rid of even small crumbs of garbage.

     What if every creature that died lay there relatively unchanged for a couple of years? What if only bacteria did the work? And predators? Wouldn't there be cases where entire regions became uninhabitable because of death's bad odor? Think of large fish kills, plague areas, the remains of predator kills, rabbit population explosions, and dead insects. Dead insects? Sure! They die in staggering numbers, even though they are small. And what about the area around a bear's den or an owl's nest? The smell of their leftovers would never go away, really. Their prey would smell their home from a mile away and know to go elsewhere.

     So, when did the fly 'evolve'? Without larger type dead things it has a problem. Yet if larger type creatues are dying without the presence of the fly, there is the problem of dead things building up. And if you are going to speak in geological terms, then ask yourself how many dead things will build up at the waters edge (didn't the first 'evolving' land creatures creep out from the water's edge?) if there is no efficient disposal species like the fly standing ready to consume them. Even the dead ocean or river creatures that washed up during storms would become quite a nasty problem. How many would build up in a million years? Or in 1000 years? Just how long would flesh last in the absence of the fly?

     Consider this also - a pair of flies can produce trillions of offspring in a year because they lay lots of eggs. And it's good they do, because sometimes, as in famines or plagues, dead things build up very rapidly. The fly can handle this - they can reproduce about as fast as dead things can multiply. It's only a matter of hours from laid egg to hatched baby maggot. But flies lay eggs in giant numbers. So why does the fly devote so much of its body's energy reserves to making eggs?

     Wouldn't the laws of individual survival tell the fly that it is prudent to save some energy for itself, and spend less on making eggs?

     The fly, friends, was made to do a job. It can quickly produce a monstrously large population to deal with a great quantity of decaying flesh. It quickly dies off when the food is gone. It plainly must have been there since the beginning, or else something else had to fill its niche. Unlike some niches, this niche must be filled. Dead animals build up suddenly indeed when you speak of the affects of several thousand years.

     Consider what would happpen if a herd of buffalo could double itself, despite predators, every 50 years? Start with 100. In 1000 years, you get 20 double-ings. You have about 10,000,000 buffalo in 1000 years. What about the next 1000 years then?

     Think of the quantities of dead buffalo parts that would be laying around after 2000 years - parts the predators leave. Think of the parts normally consumed by flies. What would have become of them without flies?

     And a fly is no featureless creature. Its multi-lensed eyes, its sense of smell, its legs, wings, mouth, ovipositor, digestive system, immune system - all these are just right for conducting its job - the locating and disposal of flesh or dead fruit or vegetables.

     So, flies are very necessary. Their populations today are very tied to the availability of food, to no one's surprise. Surely they have been since the beginning. Didn't they have to be ready to dispose of the flesh at about the same time the flesh started appearing? Being late in their 'evolution' by even 10,000 years could have resulted in the accumulation of uncountable tons of toxic, gas emitting, reeking rotting flesh. Which mutated creature wants to crawl out of the water over a pile of such nasty muck just to evolve?

     But evolving early would have had them there, ready and waiting, tens of thousands of years before the banquet was ready. Today flies seldom live more than a year. There is a problem indeed.

     Even if they ate fruit until animal life 'evolved' - and I do suppose they ate fruit or vegetables until 'death' entered the world - you have the problem of 'which came first - the fly or the rotting squash?'

     The fly has the strange trait of 'overproducing' to its own disadvantage. The food would last longer if they laid fewer eggs. But what they do - producing in vast quantity and consuming the rotting flesh quickly - is greatly to the advantage of the rest of creation. Are they philanthropical?

     The fly, though a small creature, is a beautiful thing. It does just what it should, just when it should, then shortly thereafter it largely dies off. It can take on a job of epic scale - such as thousands of dead large animals - then right after it's finished the pink slips go out.

     The fly is a fine example among many of how evolution just doesn't really work if you think about it. But creation by a wise, complex, and foresightful God fits in every way. Why choose to embrace a false understanding of this creation which does not work and is an affront to the true source of it all? Evolution is an evil pollution used to obscure the knowledge of God, who truly did create us and our surroundings.

     We give scientists too much credit. Because of the great things they accomplish in discerning the mechanizations employed by God and in discerning how to manipulate those same mechanisms in new and useful ways, we imagine they are wise in all of their other utterances and beliefs as well. All men have opinions. Only God offers actual wisdom.

     What can we say about the scientists of the year 1901? Though they possessed some of the brightest minds of their age, they were greatly mistaken about many things, as the scientists of 2007 would tell them, if only they could.

     What can we say about the scientists of 1801? Though they possessed some of the brightest minds of their age, they were mistaken about many things, as the scientists of 1901 would have told them if they could have.

     What can we say about the scientists of 1701? Though they possessed some of the brightest minds of their age they were mistaken about many things, as the scientists of 1801 would have told them if they could have.

     There is no need to discuss 1601, 1501, and 1401, right? We know that science just rewrites the textbooks of what is truth, and goes on without apology. But what they are teaching to any given generation of God created humanity can be shown, by the established pattern of scientific history, to be only partially true at best, and greatly amiss at worst. Scientists have authority in the minds of our modern culture that they have no business possessing; they have authority which they should loudly, quickly, and repeatedly repudiate for the sake of their own souls and the souls of those who look up to them in all areas, instead of perhaps admiring them just within the confines of what scientific work they accomplish.

     Science makes the mistake of Reuben, who went up to his father's couch and slept with his father Jacob's concubine, Bilhah. Science presumes to occupy a place reserved rightly only for God. They pretend to refute God's explanation of how He provided us with the creation we see, and they do so with little knowledge compared to the God they would pretend to put in His proper place.

     Creating the fly is a great deed of God. If the fly was a part of creation from the beginning, there is no problem explaining the fly. If not, there are questions. With many other species this is also so. But the not-so-lowly fly is one good example.