Humans Cause Stuff to Happen to Hummingbirds
There’s no disagreement on stuff happening.
What’s different is our explanation
of how and why stuff happens.
Hummingbird … “Evolution”?
by John D. Wise, PhD
“It is almost as if the human brain were specifically designed to misunderstand Darwinism, and to find it hard to believe.”
— Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker
Bird feeders have caused a dramatic evolution of California hummingbirds. Science, 21 May, 2025.
Watch the Short Reel about this article!
Both Burmese pythons in Florida and hummingbirds in California have experienced changes in the aggregate characteristics of their respective populations. The Burmese python population is more cold-tolerant now than it was before the freezing temperatures killed off many of them, paving the way for a northward expansion of their range. This northward expansion is happening to hummingbirds, too. This article begins:
Hummingbird feeders are a beloved pastime for millions of backyard birders and a convenient dining spot for the birds. But for the Anna’s hummingbird, a common species in the western United States, feeders have become a major evolutionary force. According to research published this week in Global Change Biology, artificial feeders have allowed the birds to expand their range out of Southern California up to the state’s northern end. They have also driven a transformation of the birds themselves. Over just a few generations, their beaks have dramatically changed in size and shape.
My first article for Creation Evolution Headlines was about the rapid evolution of Burmese pythons in the 2010’s in Florida. Jenny and I made a humorous short on that piece you can view here. What’s less humorous is that evolutionary propagandists successfully use stories like these to prop up their failing theory. Quoting directly from the article on Burmese pythons, “something happened” to the Anna’s hummingbird population in California.
If stuff happening proves evolution, then we’d all best just throw in the towel. The argument is over. After all, Creationists consistently deny that stuff happens, don’t they?
Process Metaphysics and Faith
Hummingbird eggs. Into those tiny eggs is packed all the code to make a magnificent flyer. (Credit: DFC)
No, there’s no disagreement on stuff happening. What’s different is our explanation of how and why stuff happens. Creationists assert that God designed the world so that stuff will happen in and to it, whereas the evolutionists assert that stuff happens because everything is nothing more than stuff happening – process metaphysics, and then they throw in that rather odd “extra” that allows them to assert a relativistic notion of truth – materialism.[1] Our disagreement is philosophical, not scientific. Empirically, we process the same data.
Here’s where I might get myself in trouble with some of our readers. Science as we understand it will never resolve this question in favor of one side or the other, as it is not a simple matter of facts, but of Faith.
Now, let me properly qualify what I just said, as it goes to the heart of our disagreement. If “Science” has an absolute meaning, then Science not only could but would resolve the question, as the meaning of the Latin word scientia is Knowledge. When knowledge is absolute it is complete, and complete knowledge would comprehend the entire spectrum of history – the question of creation vs. evolution wouldn’t be a question at all. Questions only exist on the level of the non-absolute, the incomplete, and this is the space in which we human beings conduct science.
The Honor of Socrates in Admitting Ignorance
Perhaps the most important insight in Western philosophy (apart from what I believe to be the ultimate source of all human wisdom – God’s word) comes from Socrates’ famous words in Plato’s Apology. Socrates is defending himself against false accusations in a trial for his life. He tells the story of a realization he came to as he was questioning one of the “wise” men in Athens. Socrates’ questions, as usual, showed that this man didn’t really know what he claimed to be an expert about. This unsurprisingly made him angry at Socrates, who concludes:
So I withdrew and thought to myself: ‘I am wiser than this man; it is likely that neither of us knows anything worthwhile, but he thinks he knows something when he does not, whereas when I do not know, neither do I think I know; so I am likely to be wiser than he to this small extent, that I do not think I know what I do not know.[2] (emphasis mine)
Socrates’ wisdom, that is, consisted in recognizing his own limitations, his own ignorance. His practical wisdom was to be cautious in his claims to knowledge – “for I was conscious of knowing practically nothing.”[3]
The author of Proverbs was much more succinct: “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom.”
Evidence and Faith
The point of both Socrates and Solomon is that we humans inhabit the realm of the incomplete, the partial, and it is toward the Whole of knowledge that our scientific aspirations drive us – toward Science properly so-called.[4] It is the belief in such an absolute Truth that is the foundation of science as a human discipline. And it’s starting point and ground is the acknowledgment of our own ignorance, our incomplete understanding, our finitude in the face of KNOWLEDGE. This is the vaunted skepticism of science in its proper guise. To be a scientist and dismiss Creation isn’t skepticism but prejudice and ignorance, an uncritical retreat into certainty.
Evolutionary belief undermines the whole project of science, as we’ve said before (and here). Nevertheless, their faith in what they don’t know, but are nevertheless certain about, is constantly on display:
Carleton University animal behaviorist Roslyn Dakin, who wasn’t involved with the study, adds that the new paper beautifully shows “evolution in action.”
This is not what the evidence “shows” at all.
What I object to is not that evolutionists have a different faith-postulate, but that they deny having faith at all.[5] I hear this claim ad nauseum when I converse with atheists. I do not say it lightly, but this is the most absurd claim I’ve ever encountered that is delivered with a straight face. A belief in magic is more rational and evidentially supportable.
The claim that when stuff happens evolution explains it [6] is an assertion of faith, not science. Recognizing this truism should disarm the power evolutionary logic can assert on Christians encountering the flood of evolutionary propaganda with which we are inundated today.
On what is their faith based?[7]
Building on a Foundation for Solid Faith
We creationists should never forget that we are creationists because God said it is true, and He is Truth. He cannot lie. Because we are finite, we can only believe it, not know it. We believe in Truth. We believe in Being. We believe in Knowledge. But we can know the person who is Truth and all the other divine attributes because He invites us to know Him. Is this an appeal to authority? You bet your life it is! It is an appeal to THE Authority – Science (in its proper meaning as Knowledge) and Truth Himself.
Like our righteousness before God, our merely human knowledge is as “filthy rags” in comparison to the immense purity of Truth Himself.
In answer to Dawkins’ quotation with which we began, we end with a ‘slightly’ revised mashup of Scripture (John 4:22; Psalm 100:3):
Jesus said … “You Secularists worship what you do not know; we Creationists worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Creator” … it is He who has made us, and not we ourselves.
If this sort of discussion appeals to you, you might like our little book, Paradise Lost: The Machinery of Evil.
Footnotes
[1] In fact, this only delays their problem by pushing it from their consciousness, because either the substance of the universe is absolute, or it is not. If it is absolute, then an absolute being exists. This is the starting place for the Western God (“tell them I AM sent you.”) If it is relative, then they must still answer, relative to what?
[2] Plato’s “Apology” in The Trial and Death of Socrates, p. 25. Hacket: 2000.
[3] Ibid. Pp. 25-26.
[4] Toward God.
[5] The blindness isn’t universal, but there aren’t many secularists willing to look this truth honestly in the face. Jean-Paul Sartre, Anthony Flew and Thomas Nagel among philosophers, for instance. It was Sartre that revealed my own lie to myself on this point. As we mentioned last week, from C.S. Lewis, this is a “radical disease in their whole style of thought.”
[6] And of course, it does explain it. It provides a rationalized story that accounts for the facts, but it leaves the question of whether it is fiction or true history unanswered.
[7] Their common response when forced to answer is that it is based on the evidence. However, there is no such thing as “evolutionary evidence.” This sort of thing is only born through faith. Evidence does rationally point outside itself to a cause, but it does not by itself specify the cause. That’s why God reveals Himself to us as THE Cause, the Creator.
John Wise received his PhD in philosophy from the University of CA, Irvine in 2004. His dissertation was titled Sartre’s Phenomenological Ontology and the German Idealist Tradition. His area of specialization is 19th to early 20th century continental philosophy.
He tells the story of his 25-year odyssey from atheism to Christianity in the book, Through the Looking Glass: The Imploding of an Atheist Professor’s Worldview (available on Amazon). Since his return to Christ, his research interests include developing a Christian (YEC) philosophy of science and the integration of all human knowledge with God’s word.
He has taught philosophy for the University of CA, Irvine, East Stroudsburg University of PA, Grand Canyon University, American Intercontinental University, and Ashford University. He currently teaches online for the University of Arizona, Global Campus, and is a member of the Heterodox Academy. He and his wife Jenny are known online as The Christian Atheist with a podcast of that name, in addition to a YouTube channel: John and Jenny Wise.