Science and the Bible by Bolton Davidheiser Chairman, Science Division Biola College
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BIRDS OF PARADISE
T h e b ir d s o f paradise are the most beautiful birds in the world. The natural habitat of most of them is in remote areas of New Guinea, and for a long time the only knowledge Europeans had of them was from skins sold to traders by natives. In preparing these skins the natives re moved the legs and feet. This gave rise to a belief, accepted even by the erudite, that the birds remained con stantly in the air, never alighting, and that specimens were obtained only when they died and fell to the earth. It was said that they always faced the sun and that they lived so high that they were not visible from the ground. It was believed that the female laid its eggs in a hollow on the back of the male and brooded them while the male remained in per petual flight. It was thought that they subsisted entirely upon “ the dew of heaven,” and some main tained that they had no internal or gans but merely masses of fat in the area occupied by the viscera of ordi nary birds. In the seventeenth century a nat uralist named John Johnstone pub lished a work on natural history which went through several editions and was translated into a number of languages. In it he confirmed the footlessness of these birds and gave the notion wide publicity. In 1758 the great Linnaeus gave the best- known species the scientific name of Paradisaea apoda, which means the footless bird of paradise. It carries this technical name to this day. We may marvel that because of a misunderstanding about the way the natives prepared the skins, intelli gent people could have believed such fantastic things about the birds of paradise. But at this very moment thousands of people believe some thing just as fantastic — that the Bible must be supplemented by a message on golden plates revealed to a person of dubious character, who was able to translate them by using magical spectacles. Modern ornithologists believe that the birds of paradise are closely re lated to crows. This may be easily verified by consulting practically any book or scientific journal which deals
with this subject. For example, the Encyclopedia Britannica says they are “ closely related to the bowerbird and crow.” Ernst Mayr, a noted sci entist who is a specialist in the classification of birds, who has made a special study of the birds of para dise, and who has held the position of curator of the world’s finest col lection of birds of paradise, says, “ Birds of paradise are believed to be resplendent relatives of the crow family,” and he also refers to “ their close relatives, the crows.” One of the students of Thomas Henry Huxley, named W. K. Parker, went so far as to say that from a study of their anatomy he would “ place the birds of paradise in a position almost exactly intermediate between the true Crow of the Old World and the Piping Crow of Aus tralia.” An Australian scientist named Tom Iredale published a book about birds of paradise in 1950. According to him the belief that they are close ly related Jo crows is not scientific at all, but is the outgrowth of a misunderstanding. He says that about 200 years ago someone com pared the greater bird of paradise (Paradisaea apoda) to a crow as to size. Over a hundred years ago Al fred Russell Wallace, co-author with Charles Darwin of the natural selec tion theory of evolution, also said that this bird is nearly as large as a crow. Even this comparison as to size is an error, for the plumes of this bird of paradise make it look larger than it is, and it is not nearly so large as a crow. Mr. Iredale be lieves that it is merely because of this reference to crows in relation to the size of birds of paradise that the notion was started that these two kinds of birds are related. He strong ly differs with the opinion current among ornithologists, and says that “ it must be emphasized that no bird of paradise shows any, even distant relationship, with any crow.” This is another instance of what appears to be a general rule: No matter what belief is held by evolu tionists about some detail of the theory, it is always possible to find at least one evolutionist who holds the opposite view.
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