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The origin of whales, and of sea mammals in general, is a very important question from the point of view of the theory of evolution. The theory maintains that sea-dwelling creatures moved onto the land, where mammals evolved. This leads to an important question regarding the existence of marine mammals, one which is difficult to answer: If mammals evolved on land, how and why did they return to the sea?
Charles Darwin gave considerable thought to this question, which represented a serious dilemma for his theory, but failed to come up with a conclusion. On this point, which truly deadlocked his theory, he was forced to suggest a none-too-convincing ancestor. The animal Darwin suggested as the ancestor of whales was the bear. He said, "I can see no difficulty in a race of bears being rendered, by natural selection, more and more aquatic in their structure and habits, with larger and larger mouths, till a creature was produced as monstrous as a whale."1
While applauding Darwin's imagination, evolutionists are now of the view that whales must have had some other ancestor. The latest creature suggested to fill this vacancy is a species of dog.
National Geographic magazine embarked on a campaign of whale propaganda in its November 2001 edition, publishing this inconsistent claim in a 14-page article, complete with illustrations. The whale story on the TV screens went no further than the scenarios in the magazine, and made no new claims.
For that reason, we shall not be going into scientific detail regarding those points, which invalidate these claims about the whale, recommending instead that our readers to turn to our original article.
References
- Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species: A Facsimile of the First Edition, Harvard University Press, 1964, p. 184 ↩