I would also argue from the evidence that the introduction of the genetic information and the new and different cell-types to create a functional Asian honeybee, to survive in an environment that contains the giant Asian hornet, must occur through the addition of a block of new cell-types in a clustered group to an existing, intermediate precursor insect, or introduced in-mass to produce a honeybee instantaneously by fiat creation within a zero-time duration, and not doled-out one new cell-type at a time in succession in a blind search for function through the trial-and-error processes of materialism.
The mature functionality and precise fit of the honeybee in Asia, I would also argue is factual evidence for designing agency that is not illusory.
How exactly would a naturalistic Mother Nature provide the intentional foresight and directional determination to persist through the enumerable lethal failures of a hypothetical trial-and-error process, to reach a successful outcome for the honeybees defending themselves?
To do this Mother Nature would have to rise to the level of being a conscious, deliberative deity herself, possessing the overall picture to be able to connect a series of isolated physical improvements that confer reproductive and survival advantage, at each small step of the way to reaching the high level of actualized self-defense.
We can substitute natural selection for Mother Nature in this example, and still have the same result.
This information-based defensive strategy by the native Asian honeybee colonies is successfully functional and universally operative today in Japan.
The question can be asked, do we currently see a positive move forward by the European honeybee colonies imported into Japan, exhibiting a trial-and-error start of clustering around the intruder scout wasp and in unison flapping their wings, exhibiting the first signs of a developing defense in support of the behavioral adaptation theory?
Can we identify an experiential transition part-way in development within the imported European honeybee colonies pointing towards the future perfected use of this successful defense tactic commonly utilized by their Asian cousins?
Has word begun to spread through the natural, molecular language of inter-breeding and genetic drift from the successfully armed Asian honeybees to the unsuccessfully unarmed, newcomer European honeybees imported into Japan (if this is even possible)?
This vital genetic information for survival would then be actualized through the mechanisms of molecular biochemistry within the cell.
But behavioral adaptation, inter-breeding, and genetic drift do not take us back the necessary one-step to explain the introduction of this information-based, novel defense strategy of the Asian honeybee in the first-place.
Blind chance here is a poor substitution for intelligent agency.
Long before a back-and-forth, escalating arms-race campaign can commence towards achieving these two incredible military-quality strategies of attack and counterattack, the fundamental question must be asked-and-answered as to the original source of this complex information.
How could a purpose-free and meaningless material universe produce such a complex, fine-tuned, and coordinated relationship, exclusive to these two species of insects alone, falling-short of an all-hands-on-deck, all-out warfare but instead focuses and stops at the predetermined sweet-spot of the limited goal of taking-out the lone scout only?
This has the constrained optimization of ecological balance written all over it, which chooses between multiple competing objectives to reach the optimum sweet-spot in the Asian insect-world, of neither the giant Asian hornet nor the Asian honeybees being able to completely wipe-out the other in all-out, major combat.
I would posit that the inference to the best explanation here is not the mechanism of random genetic mutations putting-out beneficial physical traits chosen by natural selection through trial-and-error, that can over time reach the balanced equilibrium between these two insect combatants we observe presently.
A much more plausible explanation is immediate function and fit actualized through the input or release of new cell-types in a clustered group, being an infusion or an activation of a massive amount of innovative information through an intelligent designing agent God…producing a completed organism or a number of completed organisms simultaneously outfitted for survival and reproduction.
No other current, living insect species that I know of clusters around a captured lone spy and flaps their wings to raise the temperature and create CO² gas to kill this roving scout on reconnaissance, before the scout can communicate back the whereabouts of the honeybee beehive.
The materialistic mechanism of random genetic mutations producing variant traits chosen by natural selection, must apply post-birth, trial-and-error, feedback testing for viability to some extent and in some form for the ten-million living species on earth.
Is this the observed paradigm of transitional development in the living natural world today?
If true this would display enumerable examples of architectural body-plans and lifestyle habits at mid-span points towards future iterations, like the theoretical, oscillating, back-and-forth arms-race between the giant Asian hornet and the Asian honeybee according to the concept of behavioral adaptation.
In the predator/prey relationship, synchronized developmental gradualism is not only absent observationally from the natural living world, but is conceptually unworkable.
The concept of incremental development in small steps towards complex life-forms is not well thought-out.
It is an inarguable fact that the history of life on earth goes from a single-cell bacteria to human beings today, in a gradual incline of complexity over a 3.8-billion-year time-span.
But this ever-increasing complexity does not have to occur exclusively through gradual small steps.
The small-step gradualism that must be the engine that drives the program of naturalistic materialism, does not hold-up as a satisfying explanation for the vast diversity apparent in the natural world.
Excerpt taken from my book Pondering Our World: Christian Essays on Science and Faith.
The Cross in the Christian Life 