 dated to 1892-93, and it clearly shows a one-cylinder gasoline engine with electric ignition installed in a second-hand carriage. This fossil has caused quite a stir for its obviously endosymbiotic engine on the one hand, yet its totally anomalous occurrence with an electric starter long before such starters were thought to have evolved. The next fossil evidence for electrical ignition occurs in 1912, after which it rapidly proliferates throughout all classes of the Phylum Gasolinolophyta. Similar to the carburetor, the strong selection pressures evidently produced convergent evolution of the electric starter in at least five or six major classes initially, so that this feature has not proven to be a useful criterion in establishing a comprehensive phylogeny for the entire phylum.
The Parable Applied:
Doesn't the discussion above seem ludicrous? Isn't this because you already know that automobiles did not evolve in the sense that most biologists feel plants and animals did? For automobiles we know that the similarities between different models are the result of common design - whether using off-the-shelf components in new vehicles, or of adapting an existing feature to a different purpose, or even of maintaining a certain stylistic similarity within a particular make of auto for several years running. Thus similar structures sometimes appear in vehicles otherwise very different because they were put there by the designer.
What you may not realize is that this feature also occurs among living things. Again and again we find the same sort of problem (illustrated above for self-starters and number of wheels or cylinders) cropping up in the case of eyesight and flight among animals, or in photosynthesis and nutrient transport among plants, to name just a few cases. Evolutionists must repeatedly invoke the idea of "convergent evolution" to explain this - that somehow two or more independent, lengthy series of random mutations produced nearly identical designs. Is it really scientific to just assume that the rate and variety of mutation and the efficiency of natural selection is adequate to produce such parallel or repeated marvels, all the while leaving scarcely a trace in the fossil record?
We think the evidence points rather to a Designer behind it all, working sometimes by guiding natural processes and sometimes by intervening to produce results that would never happen by themselves. We think you would do well to investigate this alternative yourself (don't take our word for it!), since it may have a bearing on what life is all about and what you ought to do about it.
Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (Bethesda, MD: Adler and Adler, 1985).
Gordon Rattray Taylor, The Great Evolution Mystery (New York: Harper and Row, 1983).
Charles B. Thaxton, Walter L. Bradley and Roger L. Olsen, The Mystery of Life's Origin (New York: Philosophical Library, 1984).
Phillip E. Johnson, Darwin on Trial (Washington, DC: Regnery Gateway, 1991).
Alan Hayward, Creation and Evolution: the Facts and the Fallacies (London: Triangle, 1985).
Percival Davis and Dean H. Kenyon, Of Pandas and People (Dallas, TX: Haughton, 1989).
Robert C. Newman and John L. Wiester, with Janet and Jonathan Moneymaker, What's Darwin Got to Do With It? (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2000).