Category Archives: Science & Faith

Notes on: Evolutionary Creation 2

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In part 2 of her look at Denis O. Lamoureux’s book Evolutionary Creation: A Christian Approach to Evolution, RJS of Jesus Creed discusses the three evolution-accepting views of Creation Lamoureux describes: evolutionary creation, deistic evolution, and dysteleological evolution. Briefly, these positions could be described as follows:

  1. dysteleological evolution – is formed from the roots dys (“lack of”) and teleology (“final cause or purpose”). This view holds that evolution is ultimately purposeless or “blind”. Proponents would include the New Atheists such as Richard Dawkins.
  2. deistic evolution – accepts that a supreme being exists in the sense of a final cause for the laws of nature but rejects interference or revelation of any kind from that being. Thus, there is no possible interference or supernatural activity in the evolution of the Universe and life.
  3. evolutionary creation – is Lamoureux’s position. Proponents hold that God is the creator and sustainer of the Universe but uses evolution as a tool. Evolution therefore has some sense of purpose and design.

You are probably more familiar with the term theistic evolution. That is a broader category or spectrum that would encompass views 3 and some of 2. Word placement is key here. Evolutionary creation seeks to emphasize that God uses evolution as his creative tool whereas theistic evolution gives a connotation of merely adding a veneer of theism over deistic or dysteleological evolution. Please read the original post by RJS for my details and discussion.

Okay, with all that said, let’s hone in on evolutionary creation and RJS’s questions: From your perspective what is the most significant issue for an evolutionary view of creation?

As I look at the evolutionary and non-evolutionary (i.e.Young-earth and Old-earth) views of creation, I think for me probably the most significant issue with the evolutionary view is the way that it effects the way we look at the Fall and the arc of human origins and early history. Evolutionary creation declares “very good” what many Christians throughout history have declared to be manifestations of evil. For instance, natural disasters, disease, and physical death are reinterpreted to be a part of “good”, instead of a radical departure from it. Evolutionary creation fails to give us a simple story of a single, human, source for what we think if as “bad”. Instead we get much more nuanced or mysterious stories of the origin of what went wrong and a much narrower idea of what evil is.

RJS’s answer to the question is really good (better than mine I think):

The most significant issues with evolutionary creation center on divine activity in origins – both the place for divine activity in general and the role for divine activity in human origins in particular.

Her final questions are: What do you see as the strengths and weakness of evolutionary creation? What distinctions and positions are possible?

An obvious strength to the evolutionary creation view is its scientific robustness and its careful consideration (as opposed to rejection) of the Bible. The weakness is, in my opinion, that it has to give up a lot in order to make that happen. It has to give up easy, bumper-sticker, answers to some important questions:

  • What does it mean for the Bible to be true?
  • What is the nature and extent of the Fall?
  • How doe we know when scientists are making philosophical, as opposed to scientific, assertions?
  • How does God interact with Creation? What about miracles?
  • How do I know that God is really there?

Instead, we get lots of discussion and dialog and “I don’t know, it’s kind of mysterious” but very few solid answers. It is a very difficult path to follow, it seems to me. On one hand it rejects the easy dismissal of all things religious and supernatural as found in the New Atheists, and on the other it rejects the “plain reading of the Bible” of fundamentalism.

I see a pretty large spectrum of thought in evolutionary creationist writings. One key area, as I’ve already mentioned earlier, is the nature of the Fall. One end of the spectrum affirms the historicity of Adam and Eve as an original human couple and the source of sin within humanity. The other end of the spectrum rejects any historicity to be found in at least Genesis 1-3 (and generally through at least Genesis 11) and considers it to be purely literary and mythic. This makes evolutionary creation potentially acceptable to large variety of theological groups, anywhere from Evangelicals to Liberals and Roman Catholics. The negative consequence of that is that it also can be a bit confusing and shifty ground for young people or people new to Christianity.

Notes on: Evolutionary Creation 1

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RJS over at Jesus Creed opened up a new series today discussing Dr. Denis O. Lamoureux’s book Evolutionary Creation: A Christian Approach to Evolution. I’ve heard many recommendations for Lamoureux’s books (especially I Love Jesus & I Accept Evolution, a condensed version of Evolutionary Creation) from many Christians in the sciences. I haven’t read it yet, but it is on my ever-growing to-read list. In this first chapter, RJS summarizes some thoughts of Lamoureux and asks some questions about some “categories” that shape the way in which we see the world and the science & faith discussion.

What do the categories evolution, Darwinism, creation, and concordism bring to the discussion? What preconceptions color the discussion from your perspective?

Evolution is the center of so much consternation and controversy in American Evangelicalism that has become a litmus test of “true faith” in many circles. No “real” Christian would ever accept it, for it is antithetical to any biblical Christian worldview. The problem is, the people who actually study this stuff and are in a place to make evaluations of the evidence overwhelmingly support biological evolution. The numbers are something in the 95-99% range for scientists in general and even higher for biologists in particular. Coming from a Young-Earth Creationist background, that’s tremendously troubling. Beyond that, it shakes somebody like me to the core. See, I’m a scientist, I “do” science for a living. How am I supposed to seriously believe that science has gotten so much right, from distant planets to sub-atomic particles, and yet has gotten this large chunk of biology so terribly wrong? So that’s what evolution is for me, a consternation and confusion that pits the world of my youth against the world that trust.

Darwinism is, as RJS said in the original post, is a term that is rarely used in the scientific literature and I would further say it is the easiest way to spot an anti-evolutionist. Bottom line, don’t use it unless you’re specifically talking about Darwin’s particular theories and writings. Darwinism is not another word for Evolution.

Creation is where we meet the real fun part in the science & faith discussion. The Christian doctrine of creation is what binds us together. We are all Creationists at the heart of it, for we understand that God is the ultimate source the Universe, the creator and sustainer of all that is before us. Lamoureux outlines the doctrine of Creation as follows:

  1. The creation is radically distinct and different from the Creator.
  2. The creation is utterly dependent on the Creator.
  3. The creation was made out of nothing.
  4. The creation is temporal. (meaning it has a beginning and end, it is not eternal)
  5. The creation declares God’s glory.
  6. The creation is very good.

This is a wonderful beginning point to discuss our theology of Creation and origins. It binds Christians together without making scientific and philosophical assumptions that normally cut off discussion at the outset. RJS makes the point that this doctrine of Creation “is not confined by or challenged by scientific discovery.” This I see as a potential sticking point. I think most American Evangelicals are precisely looking for scientific discoveries that validate and justify their belief in God and Biblical inerrancy. A theology that is immune to scientific inquiry might be seen as a weakness, not a strength. This is something we need to address as it is a fundamental paradigm change in the way we view the Bible and God’s interaction with the world.

Concordism is sort of where the rubber meets the road in the debate between young-earth creationists, old-earth creationists, and evolutionary creationists (as Lamoureux terms them). Concordism is “the method of biblical interpretation that looks for correspondence between scripture and reality.” It is split by Lamoureux into three varieties (given by RJS):

  1. Theological Concordism “claims that there is an indispensable and  non-negotiable correspondence between the theological truths of the Bible and spiritual reality. The central purpose of Scripture is to reveal God, including His character, laws, and acts.“
  2. Historical Concordism “asserts that Scripture is a reliable record of a period in human history. First and foremost, the Bible offers a trustworthy account of the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. It is also a history of the nation of Israel and her interaction with neighboring countries and it documents the activities of the early Church.“
  3. Scientific Concordism “states that there is a correspondence between the Bible and the physical world. The most common form of this type of concordism aligns the Genesis creation accounts with modern science. …  All scientific concordists agree that since the Bible predates the birth of modern science, any correspondence between the scientific statements of Scripture and science today is proof for divine inspiration. Only an all-knowing Creator who transcends time could reveal future scientific discoveries to ancient biblical writers.“

What sets the Evolutionary Creationists apart is that they reject that scientific concordism is possible or necessary. They emphasize theological concordism’s centrality to orthodox Christianity while rejecting concordism that is unnecessary to the theological. Historical concordism is accepted by many only in so far as the theological purpose of the Bible necessitates (i.e. the historicity of the Resurrection). Another, more conservative, approach is to view historical concordism from the other direction of assuming historicity until shown otherwise (via archeology, etc.). I generally come at it from this later view. I tend to see the theological purposes of the Bible as fairly firmly rooted in the real history of Israel and the early Christian church.

RJS asks: Is the doctrine of creation as outlined by Lamoureux consistent with your understanding? Is something missing or unnecessary?

I really like Lamoureux’s doctrine of creation. I think it makes a really good starting place for Christians to talk to each other about Creation and Genesis. I think it is useful for people to start out by affirming their commonality, it helps diffuse some of the “us and them” attitude. I think there might be some quibbles on points 5 and 6 though, in relation to Creation being good and declaring God’s glory for people who have a strong view of the Fall and consequently see a big discontinuity in the way Creation is and the way Creation ought to be. This is similar to the atheist’s charge that there is much in the Universe that doesn’t seem good: disease, natural disasters, unethical behavior.

RJS asks: Is this distinction between types of concordism -  expectations for the correspondence between scripture and reality – useful? Do they further understanding, or lead to confusion?

I see some usefulness here in essentially saying that every statement in the Bible cannot be expected to have they same correspondence to reality. The problem I see is that it’s really all much messier than putting things in these three categories, especially when it comes to the relationship between the theological and historical. The Bible is deeply grounded in story and particularly in the story of God’s relationship with his people. While we can talk about theology being true, even when removed from the historical, I think we lose an awful lot of power and authority in Scripture if we expect no or little historical concordism. Maybe if we thought of concordism as a spectrum rather than “bins” it would help.

Faith & Science Forum Questions: Part 6

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So it has been a long, long while since I last posted some answers to questions from the Faith & Science forum at the Living Stones church this spring. There is one last set of questions I received from a reader:

Question: Did Pangea exist?

Answer: Pangea is what is known as a supercontinent. The idea is that all seven of the current continents (North America, South America, Australia, Asia, Africa, Europe, and Antarctica) were actually one giant continent some time in the past and that continental drift (the various “plates” that make up the surface of the earth moving away from each other) has caused the supercontinent to break up and give us the Earth we see today. This theory was first formulated in the 1920s but since the 50s-60s has become generally accepted. The evidence for its existence basically comes down to an argument of similarity. There are 3 main similarities that people find:

  1. Geographic – if you look at a globe, you can see how it looks like South America and Africa fit together like puzzle pieces.
  2. Geologic – geologists have discovered similar rock formations that line up squish the continents together. Also plate tectonic theory gives a mechanism by which the continents have drifted.
  3. Fossil – many fossils of similar organisms are found on continents that are on opposite sides of the earth. Given that many plants and animals are fairly region-specific the indication is that the areas where the similar fossils were found were once in closer proximity than they are now

Almost all forms of origins theory (including most young earth and old earth creationism) have no problem with the existence of Pangea. Many young earth creationists, for instance, believe that Pangea was broken up during the Flood.

Question: Was the flood described in Genesis universal (covering the entire earth), or the Black Sea flooding of 5540 BC?

Answer: The question of the extent of the Flood found in Genesis is still very hotly debated among Christians. Some of the “how would that work?” questions from a universal flood are:

  • how much water is needed to flood the entire earth? If there were not any Mt. Everest type mountains at that time and Pangea existed, perhaps the necessary amount is not completely unreasonable.
  • how many animals would Noah need to preserve on the Ark in order to have the present diversity since the Ark was not big enough to hold everything we see today? Many young-earth creationists appeal to rapid adaptation, natural selection, and speciation to go from general animal “kinds”  to the present number of species, e.g. a single pair of cat-like creatures produced all the cat-like species we see today.

Many Christian thinkers have held that the Genesis Flood was not necessarily a global flood, but rather  a catastrophic, but localized, flood in the Middle Eastern region.

Two geologists from Columbia University proposed in 1997 that a catastrophic flood occurred around the Black Sea as it became connected to the Mediterranean Sea around 5600 B.C.  It is thought by some that this flood event may be what is described in the Genesis account.

For a much more thorough discussion of a localized flood interpretation for Christians wanting to be faithful to the Scriptures I would highly recommend a short blog series by apologist and biologist Rick Gerhardt:

  1. Why See the Flood as Global?
  2. Flood Geology
  3. Science and the Flood
  4. Strained Arguments

Question: Is the Earth old or young?

Answer: That is an important part of interpreting scientific data and yet is somewhat of a secondary issue for the Christian. The clear scientific consensus is that the Earth is something like 4 billion years old. The alternative view of young earth creationists is that the Earth is something like 6-10 thousand years old. The first thing to note is that this is a huge difference. Scientists are reporting that the Earth is 400,000 times older than what Biblical literalist suggests. That’s more than just a little error. It suggests that there are 3 possible explinations:

  1. there is something pretty major that scientists are missing from their understanding about the way fundamental physical processes work
  2. God created the Earth 10,000 years ago to look 400,000 times older
  3. the literalist interpretation of Genesis 1 is not correct

As a physical scientist, I have a hard time seeing how 1 is very likely. Certainly scientists do not claim to know everything, but to get from 4 billion to 10 thousand years requires some very dramatic changes in things like nuclear decay rates or the speed of light and we’ve never seen any significant changes in those.

Explanation 2 is possible, however it does not seem likely as it suggests that God is somehow tricking us. Additionally this idea has virtually no explanatory power, it doesn’t explain “why?”. Lastly, there’s no way to verify it. If we start claiming that God just made reality look like reality, but that it isn’t really real, then how can we trust anything?

This leaves possibility 3. While this flies in the face of my conservative Evangelical upbringing, this seems the most likely. Over the next few posts I think I’ll try to develop this idea more. I think it is important to note that people often see 3 as being less faithful to the Bible or as an open door to taking everything in the Bible figuratively or an open license to throw the doctrine of  Biblical inspiration and inerrancy out the door. I don’t think that is the case. I’ve known too many people who are faithful followers of Christ and defenders of the Bible who happen to believe the best interpretation of Genesis 1 is that of an old earth.

Faith & Science Forum Questions: Part 5

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Question: Is there any legitimacy to the giant humans found outside Virginia city?

Answer: Short answer is — nope. I am assuming you are talking about the large, vaguely human-shaped footprints found in the late 1800′s when the Nevada State Prison was being built. The best information I could find online gives a pretty good explanation for the footprints and why they are unlikely to be human.

Question: What about Archaeopteryx and whales with rudimentary legs.  Do these point to macro-evolution?

Answer: Archaeopteryx fossils have been one of those “Creation killers” that people often throw out as bullet-proof evidence of evolutionary transitions. The problem is, it in fact has fully functional feathers that are very similar to modern bird feathers. The regions of the brain needed for flight appeared to be fully there, unlike  the much smaller and underdeveloped brain of dinosaurs. So the bird-like features are pretty much fully developed in Archaeopteryx, not transitonary. You might also read a couple articles on Caudipteryx and perhaps Answers in Genensis’s take on the issue. I tend to think that Archaeopteryx was really a bird with some dinosaur-like features. Remember though, that common features does not automatically mean common decent.

As far as whale legs go, while the idea that whales started out as land mammals that just sort of liked the water better is somewhat appealing as a simplistic story, I think there are still some issues such as bone structure and the ramifications of aquatic life that must be addressed as well.

Question: Is adaptation of species the same thing as mutation leading to new species?

Answer: No, they are a bit different. Adaptation is basically the process of natural selection making the organism or species better suited to their environment. Think of your pupils adapting to the change in light intensity as you walk outside. That is  adaptation by an individual. Another example would be the famous Peppered Moths. As tree trunks got darkened by industrial pollution, the light-colored variety of the months stuck out more and consequently got eaten more often than the dark-colored variety. That would be a species adapting. What’s important to notice is that the light-colored moths did not turn into the dark-colored moths (i.e. the dark color did not appear out of thin air), rather there was a shift in the relative amounts in the existing population.

Mutations are genetic mistakes, and by themselves they do not create new species. The vast majority of mutations are harmful, if not fatal. In order for the few beneficial ones that happen to create a new species they would have to cause such large changes that the part of the population which has the mutation could no longer breed with the part of the population that does not. We just do not see that in practice. What we are more likely to see is a part of a population is somehow cut off from the rest (usually via geographic isolation such as volcanic eruptions, flooding that creates a new river, etc.) and gradually that sub-population loses enough genetic variation (through mutation and adaptation) that it can no longer breed with the original population and the original species has split into two distinct species.

Question: What do you think of cloning?

Answer: This somewhat of a tricky question because “cloning” is a bit of a loaded term. Generically, in biology cloning means making identical copies of DNA (molecular cloning), cells, or organisms. I think there is little controversy or debate over molecular or cellular cloning. In that sense I think cloning can be a very cool and useful tool. The controversial parts are human cloning methods such as research/therapeutic cloning and the potential for reproductive cloning. They are controversial because they use somatic cell nuclear transfer, which is essentially creating a new organism (a human embryo) either to harvest for research or make a genetic duplicate. I feel harvesting human beings for research is highly unethical from a Christian perspective. Sacrificing the life of some people for possible gains for others is totally against traditional medical ethics in  the United States (and much of the world).

Reproductive cloning has even broader issues. For instance, if a person is cloned, who has the “rights” or ownership of the genetic code since both people have identical DNA? DNA evidence would become virtually useless in criminal courts. Since cloned human beings would be perfect organ donors, will there be pressure  or even requirements that they donate? Will “identical” copies become “better” copies via genetic engineering? Even beyond these issues there is the problem that cloning is a rather inefficient process. For instance, Dolly the famous cloned sheep was the only survivor among 3 that were born from 29 embryos which came from 277 eggs. The first cloned horse had a similar story, the only survivor of 14 embryos coming from 841 eggs. At least initially, the vast majority of cloned humans would suffer from terrible birth defects and many would not survive infancy.

I believe science must be tempered with ethics. Just because we can do something does not mean we should.

Faith & Science Forum Questions: Part 4

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Question: What is the strongest defense for or against Darwinism?

Answer: I will share what I personally see as the strongest defense for and against Darwinism because I think it is important for us to know what the strongest and weakest arguments of our position are. Bear in mind that this question depends a lot on the person you ask and there are lots of possible answers.

I think probably the strongest defense for Darwinism is a simple appeal to extrapolation. Scientists do observe many of the evolutionary processes such as mutation, natural selection, adaptation, and even the occasional speciation that could generally be summed up as “groups of organisms change over time”. So the idea is that if one simply applies a general “things change” thinking to millions of years of earth history, small changes become big changes, and big changes become “my great granddad was a protozoan“. Evolution is not a particularly complex theory in that sense and I think that is perhaps why some evolutionary biologists get a bit irritated with creationists. They will say something like, “Evolution is just change over time, why is that so hard to understand?” However, that argument is really a bit of a distraction. Virtually nobody, even among the creationist community, argues that no changes have occurred. The real questions are whether the evolutionary processes I mentioned earlier can account for the origin of all life on Earth (i.e. the extrapolation is valid) and do it better than any other model out there. Personally, I’m skeptical on both fronts.

For me, the strongest defense against Darwinism is perhaps more observational than scientific. It’s simply you and me — our personality, our history, our morality, how we live, and the wondrous ways in which we work. The biology of the human body is simply stunning and awe inspiring. When you begin to contemplate how many individual bits go together and work together to make us work, how, even after hundreds of years of scientific endeavor, we are in so many ways just scratching the surface of our knowledge, one cannot help but wonder about the majesty, creativity, and power behind it all.

How can we defend the weak, protect the helpless, and elevate the selfless actions of those who give their lives to others? It is not promoting the survival of our genes. It is not ridding the species of the unhelpful, weak, or even costly parts. Why do we cherish love, creativity, and compassion? Hitler, Stalin, and the “dog eat dog” world of the corporate ladder are more in line with the naturalistic world view than Gandhi or Mother Teresa, and yet they are antithetical to the human understanding of the way things ought to be. Simply put, why do we live our lives every day as if naturalism and Darwinism are not true?

If  you are an atheist or perhaps a scientist “on the fence”, I think it is worthwhile to ask yourself, deep down, is there more to your life and being than matter in motion? Does atheism/naturalism account for the incredible good and incomprehensible evil that humanity is capable of? Do you desire purpose and meaning beyond yourself? Let me suggest that perhaps it is worth your time to take a serious look at Christianity. It is not “blind faith” nor a leap in the dark, but rather an incredibly power and comprehensive model for discovering who we are, what we are, and who we may become. Beyond that, it is also the most marvelous, loving, and personal of relationships that we may ever have.

Question: How does the fossil record explain trees being found fossilized in sediment from several periods?

Answer: I’ll assume the question is dealing with the age of the earth and modern geology. Fossils that lie in multiple geologic strata are commonly called “standing” or “polystrate” fossils. Young earth and old earth scientists have used these fossils as evidence for their side and against the other.  A prime example is the Joggins Fossil Cliffs in Nova Scotia. It is a virtual fossil forest with many fossilized lycopod trees. Nobody really disputes the fact that the fossilized trees are found in multiple strata, so the question is, how did they form and are they consistent with a young or old earth? Here is a summary of the arguments:

  • Young Earth – the fossilized trees could only form from rapid sedimentation like one would expect in a world-wide flood (such as in the story of Noah) and uniformitarian (“modern”, old earth) geology can not account for them because it assumes sedimentation is a very long process. For more information see the ICR article titled The Polystrate Trees and Coal Seams of Joggins Fossil Cliffs.
  • Old Earth – the fossilized trees could indeed be formed by rapid sedimentation but an appeal to non-uniformitarian geology is not needed. Local floods likely caused the fossilization and is consistent with “modern” geology. For a more detailed rebuttal of the Young Earth proposal see the Talk Origins article titled “Polystrate” Tree Fossil.

One can see that both sides agree that some sort of flooding or rapid sedimenation caused the trees to be fossilized where they stood, but they interpret the results within their existing scientific framework. I do not see any clear evidence myself that standing or polystrate fossils “prove” either side.

Faith & Science Forum Questions: Part 3

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Question: How does the human genome project help prove or disprove evolution/God etc.

Answer: That is an excellent question. First off, it might be important to answer the question, “what is a genome?”. A genome is the complete set of DNA found in a cell. It is all the genetic information for that organism (in this case a person) including all the genes. It is analogous to a 1 billion word book and is found in almost every cell in the body. The mapping of the human genome was an enormous project that took several years, millions of dollars, and is one of the biggest accomplishments in molecular biology.

Now, back to the original question. In many ways the Human Genome Project itself does not help us either way, frankly. People are often looking for a “smoking gun” or the proof/disproof of both evolution and God. The bottom line is that the problem is not in the facts but rather the set of assumptions or presuppositions (our worldview) that we come to the table with. The fact that we are 98.4% identical to chimpanzees at the DNA level can either be interpreted as:

  1. we evolved from a common ancestor, or
  2. we were designed by a common Creator

From that fact alone we have no basis to choose between options 1 and 2, so we most often end up picking the option that is consistent with what we already know or believe.  What we need to do is get a more comprehensive look at the world and see what model we think fits the observations or facts the best. Since I am a firm believer in giving people information and letting them decide on their own what to do with it I will give some resources/information about the human genome project from different viewpoints and give you some of my own thoughts as well as that of a scientist I really respect and happen to also disagree with.

When it comes to Darwinian evolution, I personally believe that the Human Genome Project has shown some places where the evidence is lacking. For instance, often times evolutionists will point out junk DNA (chunks of DNA that don’t code for genes/proteins or other obvious functions) as a proof of decent from common ancestor. They suggest that because 95% of the genome is comprised of junk DNA, and God obviously would not have designed “junk”, that the junk DNA must have merely been carried along in the evolutionary process. However, scientists are finding that junk DNA really isn’t necessarily  junk:

Many aspects of the genome structure remain to be elucidated, including the role of the intronic or “junk” DNA that makes up 99 percent of the genome – it’s telling that few people still call it “junk,” although its function is still mysterious.  — New York Times article entitled Genome Mania by Stanford biophysicist Stephen Quake

and that natural selection should get rid of the junk it it really were that:

Furthermore, the present lack of significant amounts of nucleomorph secondary DNA confirms that selection can readily eliminate functionless nuclear DNA, refuting ‘selfish’ and ‘junk’ theories of secondary DNA. –  Eukaryotic Non-Coding DNA is Functional , published in 1999 in the journal Proceedings: Biological Sciences

Additionally, just the sheer size and complexity of the information encoded in the human genome points me more towards a Designer and less towards random, unguided processes. For more on the Creationist perspective you might look at a good overview article published by the Institute for Creation Research (young earth) and as well as an article discussing junk DNA from Reasons to Believe (old earth). You might also look into Genetic Entropy & the Mystery of the Genome (book) and The Code of Life (DVD).

For a theistic evolutionists point of view I’d like to direct people to Francis Collins, M.D., Ph.D. who is a Christian, former director of the National Human Genome Research Institute and the lead scientist of the Human Genome Project. He had the following to say about his work on the human genome in an PBS interview:

Well, evolution is a theory. It’s a very compelling one. As somebody who studies DNA, the fact that we are 98.4 percent identical at the DNA level to a chimpanzee, it’s pretty hard to ignore the fact that when I am studying a particular gene, I can go to the mouse and find it’s the similar gene, and it’s 90 percent the same. It’s certainly compatible with the theory of evolution, although it will always be a theory that we cannot actually prove. I’m a theistic evolutionist. I take the view that God, in His wisdom, used evolution as His creative scheme. I don’t see why that’s such a bad idea. That’s pretty amazingly creative on His part. And what is wrong with that as a way of putting together in a synthetic way the view of God who is interested in creating a group of individuals that He can have fellowship with — us? Why is evolution not an appropriate way to get to that goal? I don’t see a problem with that.

While I agree that it is certainly possible that evolution could have been God’s “creative scheme”, I don’t think it is as probable as a designed, directed, and invasive “creation” of life and human beings in particular based on the totality of the evidence I have seen. But differences aside, Dr. Collins does say something that I think should be profound and encouraging to young Christian scientists:

For me, as a person who believes in a personal God, the opportunity to uncover something about us that nobody knew before but God knew is really a moment not to be missed. It expands the experience of discovery in ways that people who are not believers, I think, don’t quite get to experience. It’s an opportunity both for scientific exhilaration and actually for worship.

Faith & Science Forum Questions: Part 2

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Question: Is the speed of light slowing down?

Answer: I’ll assume you’re taking about the hypothesis that the speed of light in vacuum (known as c) has changed with time in such a way that the universe could be “young” but appear much older.

I think it’s fairly universally accepted in the scientific community that the speed of light, c, itself has not changed significantly with time. We really only have around 130 years of decent measurements of the speed of light (going back to the Michelson–Morley experiments) so it is difficult to conclusively say it has not changed over the course of the existence of the Universe. However, since the speed of light is used extensively for careful measurements such as GPS navigation and the fastest measurable events (a laser pulse lasting one quadrillionth of a second) if the speed of light were changing we would know about it fairly soon. As the experiments and instruments used to measure the speed of light have become better and more sophisticated the exact value has changed somewhat. This “narrowing in” on the true value has sometimes been interpreted as an actual change in the speed of light but is in fact normal for most scientific determinations of physical constants.

The speed of light does however depend on gravitational fields (Einstein’s theory of General Relativity) and frame of reference (Einstein’s theory of Special Relativity). This is where some interesting things can happen. Answers in Genesis has an article outlining some ideas and issues from a Young Earth perspective and Reasons to Believe has an article talking about time dilation from an Old Earth perspective.

Question: Do you believe that the first 25 elements of the periodic table existed before the big bang?

Answer: Let’s see, that would be Hydrogen through Manganese. I don’t think the current Big Bang model would nearly allow for even Hydrogen (the lightest atom) to exist before the “bang”. The Big Bang is looked at as an extrapolation of the expansion of the Universe backwards in time. That is, we currently observe that the Universe is expanding via a similar method to Doppler radar used in weather tracking. If we trace that expansion backwards in time there is a point at which we have infinite density (we can not compress the Universe any more) and infinite temperature (consequently infinite energy). At this point pretty much all the laws of physics break down and we can not “look” any further back in time. This then, is “the beginning” from the scientific standpoint. Because the Universe would so dense and hot in that first part of the “bang” all atoms and probably even subatomic particles such as electrons and protons could not exist. Moreover, I personally do not see a logical, theological, or scientific necessity for the first 25 elements to exist before the Big Bang. I believe God spoke the Big Bang (whether it be six thousand or sixteen billion years ago) into existence.

Faith & Science Forum Questions: Part 1

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Question: How do atheists believe that life came to be?

Answer:

Remember that I’m not an atheist so I have an obvious bias here, but this is perhaps one of the most difficult questions for the atheist to explain and a big chink in Darwinian armor, in my opinion.

Louis Pasteur (1822 – 1895) was chemist and microbiologist who created the first rabies vaccination and invented the Pasteurization process. He is also credited for proving the Law of Biogenesis by using the scientific method. The law states that life comes from other life, not non-life. The problem for the atheist is that the Darwinian evolution theory requires that first living, reproducing cell (actually quite a few of them) must have come from non-living material. To get around violating the Law of Biogenesis they modify it to say that it only applies “in modern times” or “for complex organisms”. They must acknowledge that we do not observe spontaneous generation today and so modify an existing, well-proven scientific law for their worldview to work out.

So how do they account for abiogenesis (life coming from non-life)? Well, there are naturally a number of different theories. The basic stages you need are:

  1. the basic organic building blocks such as amino acids
  2. more complex organic structures made up of amino acids such as proteins and DNA
  3. the “packaging” of the proteins, etc. into a cell

As simple as this might seem, no scientist has ever been able to reproduce all three steps. In fact, Wikipedia has the following:

As of 2009, no one has yet synthesized a “protocell” using basic components which would have the necessary properties of life (the so-called “bottom-up-approach”). Without such a proof-of-principle, explanations have tended to be short on specifics.

Some scientists believe that the first amino acids came from extraterrestrial sources. Some believe a combination of lightning and an atmosphere devoid of oxygen and rich in methane, ammonia, water, and carbon dioxide may have produced amino acids. Others say it was and iron and sulfur-rich atmosphere. Still others believe that it was in deep sea thermal vents. Essentially, the Earth must have been quite different that it is today for amino acids to spontaneously appear from basic chemicals.

Assuming amino acids did manage to appear, the next problem is to put them together into long protein chains. This is, for example, a fatal flaw in the famous Miller experiments. Miller could create some amino acids under controlled conditions, but he also created a number of molecules that would prevent amino acids from forming critical complex molecules such as peptides (the building blocks of proteins). Additionally, the presence of water tends to break up peptides rather than form them. In our bodies cells get around that problem by using enzymes (specialized proteins) to catalyze (help along) the polymerization reactions that form peptides. It’s a classic “chicken and egg” problem.

Assuming we were able to get some proteins, how do we then arrive at the first living cell? The problem is that in biological systems existing proteins and complex structures (such as RNA) is used to make new proteins. Additionally we need to also account for the homochirality of the biological universe. Not only do we need to somehow create the amino acids and RNA molecules we need to have the right “handedness”. The amino acids used in biology are “left-handed” and the nucleic acids used in RNA/DNA are “right-handed”. It is unknown how such selectivity could have randomly arisen. On top of all that, we need a system that includes protection (cell walls), replication (DNA and RNA),  energy (processing of chemical fuel), and communication (who does what and when).

In the end, and to hopefully wrap up the answer to the question, atheists really don’t know how life came to be. At each of the three stages there are critical problems that science just does not have the answers for right now. When I once asked a Harvard anthropology professor, who was at my university giving lectures on Darwinian evolution, “so how did that first cell get here?” he simply replied, “I don’t know, I just have faith that it did.”