4-minute read
Recently I sat in my backyard watching a woodpecker hammer away at a tree trunk. It hit the tree so rapidly and powerfully that it sounded like a jackhammer, and I wondered how this bird could do that without giving itself a serious headache??? (sorry, bit of a Dad joke there)
It turns out the answer is remarkable though, and it may be one of the greatest evidences for an intelligent designer (God).
It may be that God has left us a trail of breadcrumbs here (no bird pun intended) if we are willing to "seek and find" (as Jesus said).
While it's true that many creatures adapt gradually over time through a process called microevolution—such as Darwin's finches exhibiting modest changes in color, size, or behavior—the woodpecker highlights something deeper at play.
The woodpecker's survival depends on a system of interconnected traits that all needed to develop in coordination, within a relatively narrow window of time, in order to be effective.
Without a number of these parts emerging together as a functional set, the woodpecker would have died early-on and never had the chance to pass on its traits.
For instance, the woodpecker has all of the following:
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A uniquely powerful skull and beak—designed to withstand constant high-velocity impacts.
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A very specialized tongue—up to three times longer than its beak, able to reach deep into a tree after the tough bark and wood are blasted away.
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A tongue routing that wraps around its skull functioning like a seatbelt for its brain. All indications are that this design is critical to the woodpecker’s ability to safely peck at wood sometimes 10,000 times per day.
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A powerful neck musculature and rapid-fire neuron network to coordinate such quick and strong pecking (up to 20 pecks per second).
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A reinforced hyoid bone tongue brace system—to keep everything in place so it can support the tongue's unique shock absorption methods.
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Special tree-grabbing claws to keep the bird locked to the tree to counteract the extreme force of the pecks, and special eye membranes to prevent the barrage of splinters from causing instant blindness.
These traits are all required to do the job. They couldn't have shown up one by one over millions of years, because without any single one of them, the whole system fails.
For example:
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If the woodpecker had the pecking power and speed but not the tongue brace, its tongue could dislodge from its routing.
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If it had the long tongue but no ability to drill into wood very quickly, it couldn’t reach all the little bugs before they were scared off and escaped.
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If it had a strong beak but no way to cushion the force, its brain would be injured.
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If it had the neck power but a weak beak it would damage its beak and starve.
This is a textbook case of what scientists call "irreducible complexity"—a system of biological componentry where each part is essential to the whole, and the whole only works if everything is in place together.
The "Evolutionary Dilemma" theory is where things get even clearer. In standard Darwinian evolution, complex systems evolve step by step, with each new feature offering a new adaptation. But in the case of the woodpecker, these singular features could even be dangerous to the woodpecker unless they all arose together. Ie, the bird could start pecking, get splinters in the eye, and go blind.
Some might argue that certain features (like the tongue or skull) could have evolved originally for other purposes and were later repurposed—a concept called “exaptation.” But there’s no evidence of such a pathway in the woodpecker.
So we can ask ourselves: Why would a tongue evolve to so elegantly and purposefully wrap around the skull to prevent the brain from rattling around if there were no major impacts to cushion yet? In other words, why develop shock-absorbing skull features if the bird doesn’t yet peck wood, and especially if it has no inherent intent that it ever will?
And if pecking wood for all the bugs beneath it was such an asset to all birds to randomly develop, why didn't all birds evolve to add that function? Chickens peck the ground for seeds and bugs, so why not add woodpecking to the mix too? The random evolutionist may say "because it doesn't work like that," and they'd be right.
Random mutations can’t exactly account for a system this tightly integrated.
Now, this doesn’t mean evolution isn't a thing—many changes in living things do happen gradually. All dogs we have today come from the Grey Wolf. There are many different breeds with different skills and traits, but they are all essentially dogs, and none have lapped the field in any particular designs such as growing wings. Additionally, most of the evolution from yesterday's wolf to today's pocket-chihuahua were man-made, so yeah, even that is more intelligent design at play (although honestly, not sure that's such a great example of intelligence 🤣 ).
The kind of system we're looking at in the woodpecker points to something more at play.
If it were totally random, one would expect a long line of intermediary species in the fossil record, especially for birds like this that depend on an integrated anatomical toolkit. One example might be a series of similar birds with broken beaks, who developed the neck muscles before the fully hardened beaks. Obviously this is just one example, but the fossil record offers little in the way of these partial evolutionary prototypes. The random-evolutionist may say that's because the bird developed slightly stronger beaks and slightly stronger pecking power over many millennia, but again, that would require a remarkable level of coordinated evolution (and lots of soft trees to test on for millions of years before the capable features all showed up).
Instead, we’re seeing a coordinated system of development—one that resembles the work of an engineer. Every part depending on every other part to be of use. That’s not just complexity—that’s intention, even AI agrees (screenshot attached).
The idea that all of these features evolved independently, yet in perfect sync and purely by chance, runs directly against the logic of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which science holds dear. It says systems naturally drift toward disorder, not complexity. Random mutations tend to break things down—not build integrated systems that defy science. But we tend to see a lot of order and coordination, especially when each species that exists is considered in the whole of an ecosystem, where it turns out a woodpecker is essential to the survival of the whole. For example:
1. They are engineers of the ecosystem
Woodpeckers create essential nesting cavities that are reused by birds, mammals, and insects that can't make their own living quarters.
2. They provide essential pest control
They feed on many tree-damaging insects, helping prevent infestations and essentially supporting forest health.
3. They aid in critical forest regeneration
By removing weak trees and breaking down deadwood, they support nutrient cycling and new growth. In other words:
It turns out there is not only intention in their specific design, but also there was intention in their role within the ecosystem as a whole.
Still, skeptics of Intelligent Design may continue to say this all happened via natural means by billions of slight random changes over millions of years, even though that defies other laws of science. It's only theoretical speculation with as little (or less) evidence as anything else. It would require a series of nearly impossible odds stacking atop one another.
At some point, we each have to weigh the odds and ask: does this feel more like random chaos... or purposeful design?
I'm not claiming this proves everything about everything. But when I sit on my back porch and observe something as integrated and awe-inspiring as the woodpecker, I can’t help but think the evidence leads more to intelligence than randomness. It looks crafted. It calculates out to be intentional.
And maybe that’s worth paying attention to?
PS, if you're wondering who else believes in this idea of intelligent design, here are a few prominent scientists who do:
1. Max Planck – Father of Quantum Theory
“All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force… We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind.
2. Fred Hoyle – Astrophysicist, coined the term “Big Bang”
“A commonsense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.”
3. Albert Einstein – Father of Modern Physics
“Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a Spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe.”
4. Francis Collins – Director of the Human Genome Project
“To get our universe, with all of its potential for complexities such as stars, planets, and life, the initial conditions had to be set with mind-boggling precision. It is hard to imagine how this could happen without some thoughtful creative force.”
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