Snakes alive!
There’s design in the Curse
by Tom Hennigan
In
Genesis 3:14, God’s curse on the serpent included that it would ‘eat dust’ all its life. Many snakes literally
do ‘eat dust’.
Their darting, forked tongue licks the ground, picking up dust particles which are
then carried into the mouth to be sampled by special receptor organs. In this way,
they can follow scent trails.
Snakes! The mere word strikes horror into the hearts of many. If you happen to be
one of these individuals, you may be ophiophobic.
True, there are dangerous members of this animal group. Who hasn’t heard of
the deadly cobra, the taipan or the venomous rattlesnake? With these, a healthy
respect is in order! But have you ever examined these creatures in a different light?
Have you ever seen them in the light of their Creator?
Take, for example, the eastern hognose snake (Heterodon platyrhinos). This reptile
inhabits the upland hillsides, cultivated fields and woodland meadows of the eastern
United States. Depending upon the community you are from, it is known as the puff
adder, spreading adder or blow viper. The hognose is stout of body with a wide neck
and a vicious-looking upturned nose! They are about one metre (39 inches) long when
fully grown.
What really distinguishes the eastern hognose from its notorious cousins, are its
wonderfully designed survival tools. Let’s say you’re enjoying a peaceful
afternoon stroll in your favourite wooded meadow. Suddenly and without warning,
there is a lot of commotion. You look down and notice, with horror, a one metre
cobra! The hood is spread, its body is coiled and it is hissing loudly as it strikes
your leg. Upon regaining consciousness (assuming you passed out in fright), a sickening
feeling overwhelms you, as you become painfully aware that you are lying on your
attacker! However, it seems dead—the snake is lying on its back, tongue hanging
out of its mouth. You roll it over with a stick but it rolls back, repeatedly. After
determining that gravity is not the culprit, you become aware that this guy is pulling
a fast one. This snake pretends to be the most dangerous animal in the forest by
impersonating a cobra but if that doesn’t work, it will play dead!
Unfortunately for the snake, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to notice
that this act will not earn it an Academy Award. Fearful people often take this
opportunity to kill the snake while it is in this state. This is unfortunate, because
the eastern hognose snake is quite harmless. This is why it brings these other strategies
to bear, in order to increase its chances for survival. Think of the complicated
mechanisms within the snake that allow it to do such feats! What is the origin of
these mechanisms (see box below)? Is it time, chance and selection,
or deliberate design?
This snake’s unusual nose has a purpose. Toads, its main food source, are
known to dig into the ground, so the snake’s nose makes a wonderful shovel.
When the snake senses that the toad is near, it merely digs up the little amphibian
and dines accordingly. But that isn’t all. You see, the toad has this nasty
habit of inflating itself, which discourages many would-be predators. The hognose
is not discouraged in the least! It is designed so that the back of its mouth contains
sharp, backward curving teeth that puncture and deflate the toad, preventing its
escape.
Many people often ask how hognoses (and other snakes) are able to swallow their
prey whole, without choking. The Creator has engineered their mouths so they can
dislocate their lower jaw. He has also designed an elastic muscle connecting both
sides of the mouth. In this way, the snake is actually able to swallow things larger
than its head. But if our jaws were wired in the same way, we’d still choke.
The solution is the placement of the windpipe. Ours is located in the back of the
throat. Theirs is located on the floor of the mouth. I have personally witnessed
a Burmese python extend its breathing tube out the side of its mouth while swallowing
a huge portion, so it could continue breathing all the time! Evolutionists need
to explain how the snake could avoid choking before all these features were fully
formed.
The hognose snake is just one of about 2,700 species of snakes, and all should be
studied from the perspective of the Creator’s design. We need to begin examining
them in the light of Jesus Christ, instead of the darkness of chance natural processes.
To see the serpentine design as a product of God’s hand, let us rejoice with
the Psalmist and proclaim:
‘It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord and to sing praises unto
thy name, O most High … For thou, Lord, hast made me glad through thy work:
I will triumph in the works of thy hands. O Lord, how great are thy works!’
(Psalm
92:1, 4–5).
Do you have Ophiophobia?
Ophiophobia describes an excessive, irrational fear of snakes.
Though venomous snakes should be wisely avoided, not all snakes have poison, and
some can be safely handled, as creation singer/dinosaur sculptor Buddy Davis finds
out.
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How did harmful things come about?
The snake described in this article is obviously harmless to people—but it
has mechanisms enabling it to survive in a harsh, fallen world. In fact, virtually
all creatures have well designed ‘fight or flight’ mechanisms enabling
them to survive in a fallen world of predation, disease, etc. So how and when did
these arise—or indeed the poison-injecting fangs of the hognose’s more
dangerous cousins?
There are a number of possibilities, including:
- The structures in question (e.g. poison glands) were not there to begin with, but
the design information required was added by God after the Fall.Genesis
3) involved changes in living things other than people. Thorns and thistles
would now appear, for one thing. We don’t know what the original design of
snakes was, but they were re-designed at that time to thenceforth crawl along the
ground. Remember that the Curse which came upon creation because of sin.
- The structures were used for something else, but turned to other purposes after
the Fall. This is conceivable for some, like sharp teeth (useful for hard fruit
and bamboo), but less so for others.
- The genetic information was present all
along, with unmasking of the relevant genes after the Fall. Remember that the all-knowing
God foreknew the Fall. Also, it may not have been very long at all between Creation
and the Fall—maybe less than three weeks. (The command to be fruitful was
given before the Fall, yet it is unlikely that Eve became pregnant till after the
Fall, since all of her descendants, except for Jesus Christ, were fallen.)
- Or any combination of the above. It is very hard for our finite minds to imagine
what a perfect world/ecology would have been like, and so we need to be careful
about extrapolating backwards from our present one. Regarding snakes, however, two
things seem obvious:
(i) Design demands a Designer—even where the structures are suited to a fallen
world.
(ii) We can confidently say that no snake would have been poisoning people (or other
nephesh animals) before the Fall of Adam. For a more detailed discussion, see the
relevant chapter in
The Answers Book, available from the addresses p. 2. A fascinating
discussion of poisons in general can be found
in our Journal of Creation 11(3):353–360, 1997.
Sources
- John Behler and Wayne King, The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Reptiles
and Amphibians, Alfred A. Knopf Inc. New York, 1979.
- Lawrence E. Palmer, Field
Book of Natural History, McGraw Hill Co. New York, 1949.
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