Creation Facts of Life (10 page)
Remember, though, that I'm not trying to convince you of all these things in one short book. I used to teach evolution in university biology classes, and it took me several years to change my thinking from evolution to creation. Let's face it, there is much to be said for evolution. In fact, I still present the case for evolution to my classes, then let them bombard me with questions which I answer as an evolutionist. That certainly surprises some of my students, but it stimulates all of them to "think about it."
That's my purpose in this book: to stimulate your thinking. The case is not all one-sided in favor of creation, but it's certainly not one-sided in favor of evolution either. When it comes to origins, we can't appeal to direct observation, nor can we run experiments on the past. We're stuck with
circumstantial evidence,
i.e., evidence subject to more than one interpretation. Our goal must be to weigh
all
the relevant evidence, asking ourselves which is the more logical inference from the weight, on balance, of our scientific observations.
The case for creation I've presented so far is based on what we
do know
and
can explain
in the areas of molecular biology, homology, embryology, and adaptation. But what about Darwinian natural selection and the fossil evidence? Well, let's dig in. All you need is an inquiring mind, a sharp eye, and a willing heart. "Think about it!" What's the more logical inference from our scientific observations of genetics and the fossil evidence: time, chance, and the evolution of matter,
or
plan, purpose, and irreducible properties of organization pointing to special acts of creation?
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Chapter 2
Darwin and Biologic Change
Design without a Designer
"Wait a minute! Stop! Let's come to our senses! I just read through a whole bunch of evidence for 'creation,' evidence that's supposed to convince me that this world was created by the all-loving, all-powerful God of the Bible. But just look around. The world's a mess! People are starving, babies are born deformed, disease kills millions, and 'acts of God' like earthquakes, fires, and floods have killed millions more. This is supposed to convince me the world was made by an
all-wise Creator?"
Have such troubling thoughts crossed your mind? They certainly troubled a young amateur naturalist as he sailed around the world on the
HMS Beagle
back in the 1830s, as described earlier. Charles Darwin was brought up in an England that at least paid lip service to the Bible and creationist thinking. Yet, everywhere he looked, as he collected specimens for the
Beagle,
he found only struggle and death.
How could such wholesale waste, violence, and death result from the plan, purpose, and direct creative acts of God? Darwin began to look for another explanation for the origin of life — and he found it. After years of thought, research, and self-doubt, Darwin was coaxed into publishing his revolutionary new theory in 1859:
On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.
Darwin's book
(Origin of Species
for short) revolutionized human thought. Many saw in natural selection a means to explain all appearance of design without any reference to a Designer, and many more seized on that as an excuse to disbelieve a "Creator God" and to get out from under the oppressive rules of organized religion. The old creationist argument from design, "the watch implies a watchmaker," was dead; long live the new "blind watchmaker," natural selection: evolution by time, chance, struggle, and death (TCSD).
After biologist Michael Denton identified himself on television
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as a skeptic regarding
both
creation and evolution, the interviewer asked him what he thought the chief impact of Darwin's book had been. After a pause, Denton replied that its chief impact had been to make atheism possible, or at least respectable. The much-admired historian and philosopher Will Durant
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said that we are now coming out of a pagan era that began in 1859 with Darwin's
Origin.
Darwin's book changed the whole course of history. Certainly, I can claim that scientific evidence supports the biblical account of origins
if and only if
I can deal fairly and honestly with natural selection.
Natural Selection
In spite of its revolutionary philosophic impact, Darwin's concept of natural selection is quite easy to understand
(and
to misunderstand). It was based on observations of artificial selection, the results of selective breeding by farmers and animal fanciers. Darwin, for example, referred to all the different breeds of pigeons that had been produced by artificial selection. The ordinary one in Figure 11A is the wild rock pigeon, the one you often find around city statues and country barns. But all the other birds pictured are just pigeons, too: the fan tail, the one with the neck pouch, etc. All these birds can be bred from the wild rock pigeon, and crossing among the different varieties can lead right back to the wild rock pigeon. Everyone knows, of course, about the results of selective breeding with dogs, cats, cattle, roses, and so on.
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Figure 11A. |
"So," Darwin said, in effect, "we see what artificial selection by man can do. I believe selection can also happen in nature. After all, there is a constant
'struggle for survival'
because of population growth and limited resources, and certainly each kind can produce many
varieties.
Therefore, there will be
'survival of the fittest,'
or
natural selection,
of those varieties of a population that fit best into their environments. Given enough generations [time] and the right trait combinations [chance], organisms that seem designed for their environment will simply result from natural selection [struggle and death]."
Replacing the Creator God with what he called the "war of nature," Darwin claimed that all appearance of design in biology is the result of time, chance, struggle, and death — the process of "natural selection." Is there any evidence that Darwin was right? Can nature select as well as man? Answer: There is considerable evidence that Darwin was indeed
correct
about natural selection and the "war of nature."
For over 50 years, the prime example of natural selection used in textbooks, museum displays, and TV programs has been the peppered moths. Take a look first at the top photo in Figure11B, which represents a camera close-up of tree bark with some moths on it. How many moths do you see? One is easy to see, and most people see two. (Some claim to see three, but I've never found the third!) At least we can agree that one moth stands out and one is camouflaged. Presumably, that's the way birds saw it, too, back in the 1850s. The darker moth stood out, but the lighter one was camouflaged against the mottled gray lichen that encrusted the trees back then. As a result, birds ate mostly dark moths, and light moths made up over 98 percent of the population.
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Figure 11B. NOTE: It was discovered recently, however, that these famous photographs show dead moths glued to tree trunks. Live peppered moths flying among the branches can recognize camouflaging backgrounds (a "habitat choice" instinct) and/or migrate out of the polluted area. Still, the peppered moth story as originally told |
But then pollution killed the lichen on the trees, revealing the dark color of the bark. As a result, the dark moths were more camouflaged than the light ones. Thus, the dark ones had a better chance of surviving and leaving more offspring to grow into dark moths in succeeding generations. Sure enough, just as Darwin would have predicted, the population shifted. The "dark environment" just
naturally selected
the dark moths as more likely to survive and reproduce. By the 1950s, the population was over 98 percent dark, proof positive of
"evolution going on today."
At least that's the way it's stated in many biology books, and that's what I used to tell my biology students.
Change, Yes; Evolution, No
When I "proved" natural selection to my classes (pages 7–11), I just assumed I was also proving evolution. Perhaps the most powerful argument for evolution is the word "change," and the most persuasive (and ambiguous) definition of evolution is
"change through time."
If I say "No" when asked if I believe in evolution, the likely response is an astonished look and the incredulous query, "What?? You don't believe in change?!"
To get the conversation started, I might reply, "Of course I believe in change; I've got some in my pocket." An evolutionist would counter, of course, "Not that kind of change!" Lots of examples of "change through time" would get the same response: the change from round to flat in an opossum run over by a truck; from athletic young runner to old man in a wheel chair; from seed to mighty oak; God making man from the dust of the ground; plants and animals successively buried during Noah's flood, etc. There are obviously all kinds of "change through time" that are not evolution, so evolution must be
only a particular kind
of change through time. Natural selection certainly produces change in populations, but is it the evolutionary kind of change?
Take a look again at the peppered moth example (Figure 11B). What did we start with? Dark and light varieties of the peppered moth, species
Biston betularia.
After 100 years of natural selection, what did we end up with? Dark and light varieties of the peppered moth, species
Biston betularia.
The moths themselves didn't change; there were always dark moths and always light moths from the earliest observations. All that changed was the percentage of moths in the two categories: that's what creationists call
variation within kind
. (For details, see the master's thesis by one of my students, Chris Osborne.
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)
According to the biblical outline of history, struggle and death began when man's rebellion ruined God's perfect creation. Natural selection is just one of the processes that operates in our present
corrupted
world when the created kinds spread throughout the earth in all its ecologic and geographic variety. In fact, 24 years before Darwin's
Origin
, a scientist named Edward Blyth published the concept of natural selection in the biblical context of a corrupted creation. A book reviewer once asked, rather naively, if creationists could accept the concept of natural selection. The answer is, "Of course.
We
thought of it first."