Red-blooded evidence
Refuting the evolutionary ‘sea-water’ argument
by Dr Don Batten
Sometimes evolutionists claim that our blood has very similar element composition
(sodium, chlorine, etc.) to seawater and this they attribute to our ancestors evolving
in the oceans eons ago. Various popularisers of evolution have made this claim.
For example, Robert Lehrman, in The Long Road to Man (Fawcett Publications,
1961), said:
‘One human characteristic, a chemical one, harks back to our ancestry in the
ocean … the percentages of sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, iodine,
chlorine, and other minerals in human blood salt coincide with those of sea water.
Our ocean–living ancestors developed cells adapted to the chemical environment
of sea water. When they left the ocean, they took a part of the environment with
them in the form of a fluid that bathes the cells; later it was incorporated into
the blood stream.’
The argument has not been used widely of late, but it still surfaces from time to
time—see Presidents and evolution.
There are major problems with the argument:
-
The mineral
concentrations in human blood plasma and/or serum1,2 and seawater3
are quite different. They are not at all similar (see Table).
The chlorine and sodium contents of blood are only about 20% to 30% of seawater
whereas the iron content is 250 times greater. Compared to seawater, blood has little
magnesium but 9,000 times as much selenium. The data in the Table contradict the
evolution-from-seawater idea. Lehrman and others are quite wrong in saying that
the percentages of minerals in human blood coincide with those in seawater. There
is little similarity. Even the blood of sea creatures such as crabs is quite different
from seawater.
-
Even within an evolutionary framework of thinking the claim does not make sense.
According to evolutionary beliefs, amphibians came out of the sea more than 350
million years ago. Salt is being added to the sea all the time, by rivers carrying
dissolved salts from the land to the sea, for example. It would have taken a
maximum of 62 million years to accumulate all the sodium we now have
in the oceans (using current rates of influx and the evolutionists’ own assumption
that ‘the present is the key to the past’, and being as generous to
the evolutionists as possible by assuming pure water to start with) — see
Salty seas: evidence for a young earth. In
other words, 350 million evolutionary years ago, when amphibians are supposed to
have evolved, there should have been no salt in the oceans at all! So, if the salt
in the blood of amphibians was similar to that in seawater now, which it is not,
it cannot be due to the salt content of the sea when they supposedly evolved! Of
course the oceans are not all those millions of years old, as the evidence from
the lack of sufficient mineral accumulation indicates.
Our incredible blood!
| Element |
Blood |
Seawater |
| Sodium |
3220 |
10800 |
| Chlorine |
3650 |
19400 |
| Potassium |
200 |
392 |
| Calcium |
50 |
411 |
| Magnesium |
27 |
1290 |
| Phosphorus |
36 |
0.09 |
| Iron |
1 |
0.004 |
| Copper |
1 |
0.001 |
| Zinc |
1.1 |
0.005 |
| Chromium |
1.1 |
0.002 |
| Bromine |
4 |
67 |
| Fluorine |
1.1 |
1.3 |
| Boron |
1 |
5 |
| Selenium |
0.9 |
0.0001 |
|
Table. The mineral contents of human blood plasma or serum1,2 and seawater3 (mg per
litre). Return to text. |
Studies of blood reveal how incredible it is! Blood carries oxygen from our lungs
to every cell in our bodies and removes carbon dioxide back to the lungs where it
is expelled as we breathe. However, blood does much more than that. It carries food
to all the cells in the form of energy (glucose) and chemical building blocks such
as minerals, vitamins, amino acids and fatty acids for the manufacturing of various
cell components. Our blood carries waste products such as urea to our kidneys from
where it is expelled. Blood carries special cells and proteins to combat disease–causing
bacteria and viruses which might invade the body. Blood carries a very complex set
of agents which will stop bleeding if we are cut and initiate repair of damage to
injured areas. The systems which regulate our body temperature also rely on the
blood to carry heat to the extremities where it is dissipated. And there is much
that has yet to be learnt about blood and its marvellous abilities.
The levels of elements in the blood are controlled by the body to within strict
limits so that the blood can perform all its various functions efficiently. Genetic
defects (mutations) which render certain enzymes
less effective and cause, for example, excess or inadequate iron in the blood, cause
disease. Such genetic defects have accumulated since the Fall (Adam and Eve were
created perfect) and are now being identified as the cause of many human ailments.
Blood was originally created to do what it does and what it does do it does marvellously
well—just as it was designed to do! Such a complex system did not arise through
a series of accidents following the enclosure of some seawater, as some evolutionists
might want to believe. Nor can accidents improve it—they only destroy. Let
us give our Creator, the Lord Jesus Christ, the
honour that is rightfully His for creating our blood with all its wonderful function.
References
- Burtis, C.A., Ashwood, E.R., Clinical Chemistry, W.B.
Saunders Company, Philadelphia, 1994 edition. Return to text.
- Baselt, R.C., and Cravey, R.H., Disposition of toxic drugs
and chemicals in Man, Year Book Medical Publishers, Inc, Chicago, 1989 edition.
Return to text.
- The New Encyclopædia Britannica,
15:925, 15th Ed., 1992. Return to text.
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