Surely, one of the most outstanding examples of beauty in living things is when a peacock unfurls its majestic feathers to form a multicolored tail fan. It’s hard not look at it with breathless wonder.
Yet, as Charles Darwin, the main proponent of the theory of evolution, wrote to a friend, “The sight of a feather in a peacock’s tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me sick!” (Letter to Asa Gray, April 3, 1860, The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Vol. 2, 1911, pp. 90–91, emphasis added throughout).
Why in the world would he say that? Normally, a naturalist like him would marvel at such an intricate, colorful and harmonious design. Yet, he did touch on the reason for his disgust in his famous book, The Origin of Species. He mentioned that some naturalists “believe that many structures have been created for the sake of beauty . . . Such doctrines, if true, would be absolutely fatal to my theory” (Mentor Edition, 1958, p. 184). In other words, when he noticed the carefully crafted masterpiece that is a peacock’s feather, he saw a serious threat to his theory of evolution!
SPECULATION ABOUT SEXUAL SELECTION
In order to combat the idea of creation for the sake of beauty, Darwin came up with yet another questionable theory, which he called “sexual selection.”
Charles Darwin, the main proponent of the theory of evolution, wrote to a friend, “The sight of a feather in a peacock’s tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me sick!”
He speculated in The Origin of Species: “This leads me to say a few words on what I have called Sexual Selection. This form of selection depends, not on a struggle for existence in relation to other organic beings or to external conditions, but on a struggle between the individuals of one sex, generally the males, for the possession of the other sex. The result is not death to the unsuccessful competitor, but few or no offspring . . . thus Sir R. Heron has described how a pied peacock was eminently attractive to all his hen birds. I cannot here enter on the necessary details; but . . . I can see no good reason to doubt that female birds, by selecting, during thousands of generations, the most melodious or beautiful males according to their standard of beauty, might produce a marked effect” (Ibid, pp. 94-95). Notice that he wasn’t sure of his claim, but supposed it could be true.
ACTUAL RESEARCH ON THE SUBJECT
Yet, when scientists actually tested his idea that female peacock hens (peahens) were more attracted to the “most melodious or beautiful males” they found, to their dismay, that was not the case.
Painstakingly, researchers at the University of Tokyo studied peacocks and peahens in a zoo for seven years. They carefully photographed each male during the tail-fanning display ritual and counted the number of eyespots—a measure of the tail’s quality. They next examined whether females chose mates with the best-quality tails. During this period of observation, the scientists observed 268 successful matings. But to their surprise, they found that females mated with drab-tailed peacocks just as often as with the flashy males! They concluded that the peacocks’ tails were not the reason for the females’ attraction to a partner—a result at odds with Darwin’s theory of sexual selection (Animal Behaviour, April, 2008, pp. 1209-1219).
Let’s take a closer look at a peacock’s feather, which made Darwin nauseous because it challenged his theory that there was no proof of God in nature. It is ironic that in the Bible, God once asked a man called Job: “Did you give the beautiful wings to the peacocks?” (Job 39:13, Modern English Version). Job had questioned God’s wisdom—a mistake Darwin would later duplicate. Clearly, neither Job nor Darwin ever created any such thing—or for that matter, anything else!