Activist Animals and Ecosystem Engineering

Charles Darwin used existing religious and tentative scientific views of evolution and hijacked the principle of natural selection for his own ends. He and most of his followers believe that outside forces ("external pressures") caused living things to adapt. However, organisms affect their environments — they were equipped for this by the Master Engineer.

Cumberland Gap National Historic Park Davis Branch beaver dam
Credit: US Geological Survey (usage does not imply endorsement of site contents)

Some evolutionists are realizing that critters and such influence their environments, but researchers seem to be limiting their discussions to Darwinian ideas. The impact that living things have on their ecosystems is more far-reaching than this, and evolutionists who discuss ecosystem engineering do not go far enough. If they dropped the materialistic presuppositions and conducted more thorough research, they might see that this influence is according to the Creator's design.

Because Darwinists assume that inanimate environments are actively shaping and sculpting organisms on Earth, they imagine organisms as primarily passive life forms. But organisms are quite active in pioneering and dealing with their habitats—sometimes aggressively so. . . .

Some examples are too conspicuous to ignore, such as dam-building beavers or reef-forming mollusks. But the habitat modifications produced by other creatures have often gone unnoticed because they occurred underground, or underwater, or were otherwise “hidden in plain sight.” Eventually, the activist traits of many animals were recognized by open-minded ecosystem investigators.

To read the entire article, click on "Ecosystem Engineering Explanations Miss the Mark".