The National Geographic TV, on the 7th of May 2003, went on air with the documentary titled ‘LOST WORLDS: THE FISH THAT TIME FORGOT.’ The subject of the documentary was the Coelacanth, once portrayed as evidence for the theory of evolution that life forms evolved from the sea onto the land. However the Coelacanth, caught alive in 1938 and since then many more times, rocked the evolution theory. Amazingly, the National Geographic TV made no mention of the Coelacanth’s deadly blows to the theory. Instead, it was claimed that the fish proved Darwin right.
At the beginning of the documentary, it was stated that “Darwin was sure for the place to look for freak survivors would be in the ocean depths. There these creatures would have avoided many of the ruthless pressures to adapt which strive evolutionary change.” Then the story of the first caught example of the fish was related and the commentary suggested that “Darwin’s theory less than a century old itself suddenly had supporting evidence,” clearly misleading the viewer.
In this way, the channel abused the viewers lack of background knowledge on the subject.
The documentary portrayed the Coelacanth as the ancestor of all land vertebrates; a primitive fish unchanged for 400 million years. We had come across similar evolutionary claims in the documentary titled ‘Dinosaurs of the deep,’ aired on Discovery Channel on 14th of April 2003 and had commented accordingly. For this reason we find it unnecessary to go into the details of the subject but we want to address a couple of points in order to expose the National Geographic TV’s error.
First of all, the Coelacanth is not a supporting factor for the evolution theory, the contrary is true. For a time, evolutionists used the discovery of bones in the fins of the fossil fish as evidence for life’s migration from water to land. When the fish was caught alive and observed in its natural environment it became clear that it used its fins to propel itself through the water instead of using them to move on the sea bottom, proving expectations wrong. It became apparent that the fossils relied upon to support life’s migration from water to land thesis did not fulfill this purpose and the Coelacanth left the evolution theory’s thesis on life’s emergence from water without a basis.
Secondly, it is known that the Coelacanth remained unchanged for 400 million years. How can such a creature resistant to change be used as evidence for a theory founded on the very principle of change? How can the National Geographic TV explain the reasoning behind portraying a creature untouched by evolution as the very proof thereof?
It is not a valid argument to quote Darwin’s ‘living fossils’ terminology, then proceeding to claim that it is possible to escape the forces of evolution by moving down to the bottom of the oceans. The National Geographic interprets data perplexingly biased and when confronted by evidence unfavorable to evolution it resorts to misconstruing Darwin’s terminology and hides behind the smokescreen it thus creates. Darwin never spoke of living fossils as favorable to evolution for their existence to prove him right.
This argument is as ludicrous as saying Darwin wrote that he observed spinozas on the Galapagos Islands; it is true that they live there, therefore Darwin’s evolution theory is proven.
We presume that the National Geographic TV is actually well aware of the facts on the Coelacanth, but prefers to ignore them because it is equally well aware that pronouncing these would be seriously damaging to Darwinism. However, this misguided attitude will not suffice to prove Darwinism right.
We would like to advise the National Geographic TV to follow the Focus magazines example of impartiality on the subject of the Coelacanth. In its April issue, the Focus magazine related objectively the Coelacanth’s damaging blows to the evolution theory. We congratulated the magazine for its impartiality and called on all evolutionists to follow its lead. Only if and when the National Geographic TV manages to display this kind of objectivity can it become credible in its claim to be a science channel.