Convergent Evolution in Pregnancy: More Darwinian Miracles

Convergence is the price
evolutionists pay to keep their
phylogenetic maps intact

The Conception of Convergent Evolution

By John D. Wise, PhD

Evolutionary biology has a superpower: the more impossible a biological system is to evolve once, the more often it claims that “Nature” selected for it de novo.

Take the eye. For decades, we were taught that the sheer utility of vision compelled blind Darwinian forces to reinvent the cornea, lens, retina, and neural processing network dozens of separate times. Whenever cladistics fails to trace a homologous ancestor, the magic wand of “convergent evolution” is waved over the phylogenetic tree.

Goodbye, eggshell: How pregnancy emerged in the animal world (Knowable Magazine, 5 September 2026). The article is subtitled: “Mammals evolved live birth just once; lizards and snakes did it over and over. What set the stage for this drastic change and how was it orchestrated?”

The author, Amber Dance, applies the same well-worn storytelling template – convergent evolution – to an even more astonishing biological miracle: pregnancy. Rather than marveling at the irreducibly complex integration of maternal and fetal physiology, the evolutionists quoted in the piece engage in a high-wire display of narrative gymnastics, complete with classic externalism, shifting definitions, and genetic sleight-of-hand.

How to “Know” Without Knowing

The article breezily notes that while mammalian live birth (viviparity) was a “one-off, long-ago emergence,” it crops up with “remarkable frequency” in other groups: over 100 times in squamate reptiles (lizards and snakes) and at least 12 independent times in cartilaginous fishes (sharks and rays).

How do they “know” this?

They didn’t observe it. Nobody has ever observed an oviparous (egg-laying) reptile transform into an obligate viviparous one via random mutations and selective survival. Rather, their “knowledge” is an artifact of cladistic mapping. The logic is entirely circular:

• Assume common descent a priori.
• Cladistic organization necessitates that many viviparous organisms sit on branches separated by organisms that lay eggs.
• Therefore, since you cannot easily lose live birth (they call it an irreversible “one-way street”), every scattered leaf on the tree exhibiting live birth must represent a de novo, independent “emergence.”

In other words, the staggering number of independent origins (over 100 in reptiles alone) is not empirical data gathered from real-time biology; it is the price evolutionists pay to keep their phylogenetic maps intact. If live birth cannot have a single common ancestor without upending the entire reptile family tree, then blind chance simply must have designed the placenta over a hundred times over.

How convenient that Mother Nature is so considerate of cladistic organization!

The Externalist Puppet Master

Throughout the article, the driving engine of evolutionary change remains strictly external. Evolutionary biologists are quoted asking:

• what “environments made pregnancy advantageous,” or
• what “pressured certain groups to give up egg-laying.”
• One researcher speculates that “long winters were probably a factor in temperate species.”

In the Darwinian worldview, the environment acts as a thinking agent: it “pressures,” “drives,” “shapes,” and “selects.” Yet the environment possesses no mind, no foresight, and no creative power. Cold weather cannot write DNA instructions, nor can a predator teach a mother lizard’s immune system to tolerate an alien genotype growing inside her abdomen.

Treating environmental hardship as a creative architect is nothing more than animism. If cold weather pressured reptiles into live birth, why did turtles and crocodiles – sharing many of the same climates – remain obstinately egg-laying? The researcher’s candid rescue device says it all:

“Perhaps… they may lack the right genetic starting materials.”

That’s a striking speculation. The external environment did not create the capability; the capability depends entirely on whether the organism possessed the internal programming to handle the transition in the first place. Almost like it had been created de novo with the ability inherent.

Climbing Mount Improbable?

The article attempts to smooth out the transition to live birth with charmingly simple scenarios:

For squamates, at least, the process likely began with mothers holding on to their eggs a bit longer—and longer, and longer—until they were incubating babies right up to term… “It sounds kind of simple,” she says, “but that’s actually very complicated, physiologically.”

Complicated is an understatement. Retaining an egg inside a reproductive tract is not a matter of patient endurance on the mother’s part; it requires an immediate cascade of synchronized, life-or-death engineering solutions:

• The Gas-Exchange Barrier: A hard eggshell is designed to breathe in open air, not inside a fluid-filled oviduct. If the shell does not thin, the embryo suffocates.
• The Calcium Paradox: An egg-embryo relies on the calcified shell for its developing skeleton. If “evolution” thins the shell to allow respiration, where does the embryo get its structural minerals?
• The Immunological Minefield: All embryos carry foreign paternal antigens. Foreign tissue triggers a violent maternal immune response. As a consequence, live birth requires tightly regulated immunosuppression, protecting the fetus without leaving the mother defenseless.
• Vascular Remodeling: Blood vessels must radically restructure to create intimate, non-destructive proximity between maternal and embryonic bloodlines.

As we detailed recently, the ultra-complex placental organ was exquisitely designed to solve these problems. To suggest that a mother simply “held on to her eggs a bit longer” ignores the reality that any single one of these missing links results in a dead embryo, a dead mother, or both. Developmental alterations are notoriously lethal.

Furthermore, from a pure cost-benefit standpoint, the supposed “selective advantage” falls apart under scrutiny. As the article admits, pregnant mothers are heavier, slower, more vulnerable to predators, and restricted to fewer offspring per season compared to prolific egg-layers. If reproductive output is the currency of Darwinian fitness, sacrificing multiple large clutches for a single, cumbersome pregnancy is a dubious tradeoff.

Motte-and-Bailey[1] Genetics

When challenged on the physiological impossibility of intermediate stages, researchers retreat to the defensible motte of observable gene expression and micro-shifts; but when explaining origins to the public, they stride boldly out into the expansive bailey, claiming rapid, whole-system transformation by unguided selective pressure:

“I would think that it just has to evolve very quickly, … so once you have one switch, there’s strong selective pressure to also have these other traits” … says Hans Recknagel, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Trier in Germany.

This is the classic Darwinian shell game: it takes millions of years to evolve complex systems, except, of course, when evolution requires it to happen overnight. Recent genomics work on hybrid Australian skinks makes the problem even worse for gradualism.

In Australia, Shine, Whittington and others have been studying two species of skink that each have three populations: egg-layers, live-bearers and in-between forms. Whittington and colleagues even observed a three-toed skink (Saiphos equalis) that laid three eggs and then, more than a month later, gave birth to their fully developed sibling. “We have no idea why,” she says.

In these lizards, researchers found that the same functional genes modulate activity depending on whether the lizard is laying eggs or giving birth. They also found a pre-existing genetic deck of cards being shuffled to manage eggshell thickness and gestation duration. Does unguided descent with modification explain this? Or does it look more like, perhaps … designed, pre-programmed, modular plasticity?

Mallets, Hammers, and the Tool Metaphor

The article wraps up with an inadvertently revealing analogy:

“But they don’t have to use the same genes every time, just as builders can reach the same goal with different tools… ‘You can hammer in a nail with a hammer; you can also use a mallet.’”

Evolutionists use machine and builder metaphors because biological systems persistently exhibit intentional engineering. A hammer and a mallet do not assemble themselves from mineral dust, nor do they swing themselves at a nail. They are tools selected by an external, conscious builder aiming at a pre-specified goal.

Live birth is not an accidental trick stumbled upon over a hundred separate times by mindless mud. It is an exquisitely calibrated, multi-system triumph of bioengineering. The fact that variations of this complex interface appear across disparate branches of life does not prove that nature is a prolific tinkerer; it proves that the Master Engineer deployed a rich, multifaceted toolkit to ensure life could thrive in every corner of the earth.

Related Reading on Creation Evolution Headlines

• Pregnancy Protects the Unborn from Immune Attacks October 2012
• Body Gifts to Stop Taking for Granted September 2021
• Pregnancy Symptoms Show Protection is working January 2026
• More Wonders Going on Inside You July 2013
• Your First Breath was Irreducibly Complex June 2015
• What’s Driving Darwin’s Driverless Car? September 2023
• Evolutionary Biology Turns the Genome Upside Down October 2026

Footnote

[1] The Motte and Bailey fallacy (coined by philosopher Nicholas Shackel in 2005) is an argumentative tactic where a speaker conflates two positions: a modest, easily defended claim (the stone “motte”) and a controversial, ideologically loaded claim (the desirable, open “bailey”). When the controversial assertion is challenged, the arguer retreats to the uncontroversial stronghold, pretending that was their point all along. Once the critic departs, the arguer quietly re-occupies the more ambitious territory.

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.