The Amazing Ant Reveals Intelligent Design

Hank Hanegraaff, president of the Christian Research Institute and host of the Bible Answer Man broadcast, meditates on the amazing ant and the brilliance of creation. Hank’s wife, Kathy, was lightly attacked by ants while hanging up Christmas lights, reminding him of the proverb, “Go to the ant, observe its ways and be wise, which, having no chief, officer, or ruler, prepares its food in the summer and gathers its provision in the harvest” (Proverbs 6:6–8). Weaver ants build nests that are about the size of soccer balls—and they do it through team work. After trimming leaf edges smooth, they sew them together, gluing them with silk—all the while the leaves are still attached to the tree, permitting photosynthesis. And in the process, they not only utilize tools but they cooperate one with another. How could such extreme behavior have evolved by unguided, purposeless natural processes? If you consider the “specified complexity” involved, it is highly unlikely that blind evolutionary processes explain it all. Indeed, Neo-Darwinian random mutation and natural selection (and accompanying processes) cannot produce the “complex programmed behaviors” of the ant. We’re told over and over that we are to follow the science. Indeed, following the science where it leads in terms of the complex programmed behaviors of the ant culminates with an Intelligent Designer! See the remarkable new book by Eric Cassell, Animal Algorithms: Evolution and the Mysterious Origin of Ingenious Instincts (Discovery Institute Press, 2021).