(Paul Copan)
The former Chrysler CEO Lee Iacocca once said: “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.” This simple advice has wide-ranging application—whether we’re settling personal disagreements, planning our schedules, or trying to build bridges with non-Christians.
One area of bridge-building has to do with the creation-evolution “debate.” In my book “That’s Just Your Interpretation” (Baker, 2001), I deal with a variety of philosophical and apologetical questions such as the Trinity, the Incarnation, Eastern monism and reincarnation, foreknowledge and free will, predestination, and the like. One question I address has to do with the Genesis-science issue. I note that the fundamental question is not how old the earth is (although I do believe it is billions of years old); nor is the issue how long God took to create the universe (if we insist that God’s creating in six 24-hour days as more miraculous than a process of billions of years, this still wouldn’t be as miraculous as God’s creating in six nanoseconds…or just one!). I also mention in the book that the fundamental issue to discuss with scientifically-minded non-Christians—the main thing—is not “creation vs. evolution”; rather, it is the question of “God vs. no God.” There are, after all, evangelical theistic evolutionists such as theologian Henri Blocher and the late Christian statesman John Stott, and the theologian J.I. Packer seems quite open to theistic evolution (consider his endorsement of theistic evolutionist Denis Alexander’s book Creation or Evolution: Do We Have to Choose?).
Now I have my questions about evolution, but then again, a number of naturalists do too! For example, the biochemist Franklin Harold writes: “We should reject, as a matter of principle, the substitution of intelligent design for the dialogue of chance and necessity….but we must concede that there are presently no detailed Darwinian accounts of the evolution of any biochemical system, only a variety of wishful speculations.”[1] Hmmm…interesting. At any rate, if evolution turns out to be true, then the Christian should embrace it as one dedicated to following the truth wherever it leads. This might mean reworking his interpretation of Genesis on the subject—much like Christians have had to rework their interpretation of biblical passages referring to the sun rising and setting, the earth not moving, or the earth resting on foundations.[2]
As I speak to secular audiences on university campuses and elsewhere, I don’t raise the creation vs. evolution issue. Rather, for the sake of argument, I grant evolution and begin the discussion there. I don’t want people turned off to the gospel because I’ve lost sight of the main thing—the centrality of Jesus; unfortunately, a lot of well-meaning Christians do just that and end up running down this or that rabbit trail and never getting back to the main thing. Evolution is a secondary concern; we Christians should remember this when engaging with unbelievers rather than getting side-tracked. Keep the main thing the main thing.
I typically highlight the following two points when speaking with naturalists.
1. If humans evolved from a single-celled organism over hundreds of millions of years, this is a remarkable argument from design! Indeed, a lot of naturalists themselves utilize design language when referring to biological organisms—“machines,” “computer-like,” “appears designed” (a point I’ll address in a future blog posting). As believers, we shouldn’t be surprised to see God’s sustaining and providential hand operating through natural processes—though unfortunately even some believing scientists are reluctant to acknowledge this. Alvin Plantinga’s recent book on God and science, Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism (Oxford), points out that the conflict is between naturalism and science, not God and science, even if this involves guided (not unguided) evolution.
Now, the atheist Richard Dawkins has claimed that Darwin made it possible to be a fulfilled atheist. Well, that’s not quite right. For one thing, Darwin himself didn’t see God and evolution in conflict with each other. Darwin wrote in The Origin of Species (1859), “To my mind, it accords better with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator, that the production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants of the world should have been due to secondary causes . . . .” And again: “There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one . . . from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.”[3] But there’s more for the atheist to consider.
2. Several significant steps or hurdles must be overcome before evolution can get going: Many naturalists claim that “evolution can explain it all.” For example, Daniel Dennett asserts that Darwinistic evolution is a “universal acid” that eats through everything it comes into contact with. The problem, however, is that a number of massive hurdles must be overcome before self-replicating life can even get a running start. Here are the key hurdles:
- The origin of the universe from nothing: evolution’s no good without a universe in which it can unfold, and the universe began a finite time ago; it hasn’t always been around.
- The delicately-balanced, knife-edge universe requires many very specific conditions for life;
- The emergence of first life (and eventually consciousness): how life could emerge from non-life (or consciousness from non-conscious matter) continues to stump scientists; moreover, if humans could somehow produce life from non-life, this would simply show that this takes a lot of intelligent planning! Just because we have a life-permitting universe, this is no guarantee that it will be a life-producing universe.
- The continuation of life in harsh early conditions: even if life could come have into existence on its own from non-living matter, there would have been immense obstacles to initial life’s continuation, development, and flourishing.
When we’re looking at the odds in terms of probabilities, this is what we have:
|
STAGES TO CONSIDER |
CALCULATED ODDS |
| 1. A UNIVERSE (OR, PRODUCING SOMETHING FROM NOTHING IN THE BIG BANG): | Exactly 0. (Something cannot come into existence from literally nothing; there isn’t even the potentiality to produce anything.) |
| 2. A LIFE-PERMITTING UNIVERSE | Roger Penrose (non-theistic physicist/mathematician) notes that the odds of a life-permitting universe: “the ‘Creator’s aim must have been [precise] to an accuracy of one part in 1010(123).”[4] What number are we talking about? It “would be 1 followed by 10/123 successive ‘0’s! Even if we were to write a ‘0’ on each separate proton and on each separate neutron in the entire universe—and we could throw in all the other particles as well for good measure—we should fall far short of writing down the figure needed. [This is] the precision needed to set the universe on its course.”[5] Astronomer Donald Page (a theist) calculates the odds of the formation of our universe at 1 in 10,000,000,000124.[6] |
| 3. A LIFE-PRODUCING UNIVERSE (LIFE FROM NON-LIFE) | Stephen Meyer (a theistic philosopher of science) calculates the odds for the necessary 250 proteins to sustain life coming about by change as being 1 in 1041,000.[7] |
| 4. A LIFE-SUSTAINING UNIVERSE (MOVING FROM THE BACTERIUM TO HOMO SAPIENS | Frank Tipler and John Barrow (astrophysicists, the latter accepting the Gaia hypothesis) calculated that the chances of moving from a bacterium to homo sapiens in 10 billion years or less is 10-24,000,000 (a decimal with 24 million zeroes).[8] Francisco Ayala (naturalistic evolutionary biologist) independently calculated the odds of humans arising just once in the universe to be 10-1,000,000.[9] |
Many naturalists will simply deny design at every stage (and for all of them). It seems that no matter how much the odds are ramped up, design would never be acknowledged—an indication that the issue isn’t scientific after all. This is a theological and philosophical issue. At any rate, from the literal outset (the beginning of the universe) the falsity and folly of an “evolution did it all” explanation is apparent.
So the main thing is to keep the main thing: God vs. no God—not creation vs. evolution. And if evolution turns out to be true, why couldn’t this be one of the means by which God brings about his purposes on earth? Indeed, God has revealed himself and his nature through two “books”—God’s Word and God’s world—and Christians should view them as ultimately in concord with one another.
[1] Franklin Harold, The Way of the Cell (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 205.
[2] See Gen 19:23; Deut 16:6; Ps 19:6; 93:1; Ps. 104:5.
[3] Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, orig. pub. 1859 (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, n.d., corr. ed.). Quotations from pp. 459 and 460.
[4] Roger Penrose, The Emperor’s New Mind (New York: Bantam., 1991), 344.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Noted in L. Stafford Betty and Bruce Coredell, “The Anthropic Teleological Argument,” Michael Peterson, et al. (eds.), Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings, 3rd edn.(New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 239.
[7] Mentioned in Stephen Meyer, Signature in the Cell (New York: HarperOne, 2009). For documentation of other biologists’ calculations, see Meyer’s peer-reviewed essay, “Intelligent Design: The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories,” in Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington (2004) 117/2: 213-239.
For a brief video on the intricacies of the cell, see “Journey Inside the Cell”: http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/more-on-id-at-justin-brierleys-unbelievable/.
[8]John Barrow and Frank Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 557-66.
[9] Noted in Frank J. Tipler, “Intelligent Life in Cosmology,” International Journal of Astrobiology 2 (2003): 142.
328 replies to "Creation and Evolution: Keeping the Main Thing the Main Thing"
Steve, we ALL have bias. Yours comes though loud and clear. But if we refuse to learn from anyone with a bias, we can never learn from ANYONE – including Christ. So what is your point? At the very least, this can be a learning experience because you just might be presented with evidence that is not a straw man spun to reflect all the bias against something. I don’t know what Dr Levin is going to say. As I am not a theistic evolutionist, or a natural evolutionist for that matter either, I don’t know if I am going to agree with him or not. But I do know that a practicing cellular biologist is going to be a lot more equipped to offer information on evolution than some geologist or physicist or something. The proper thing to do is to have an open mind and accept that whatever Dr. Levin’s alleged biases might be, they are no more biased than those of the Sarfati’s or Ham’s or Morris’ of this world…yet you don’t seem to feel the need to point THEIRS out.
Daniel,
Answer me one question please. Are you the Daniel B. Wallace of Credo House Ministries and the blog Theologica?
Daniel,
Thank you for your support. I wish to convey the importance of honesty in the presentation of scientific knowledge. I have creationist firends who insist that the evidence does not matter to them. They believe what they believe, regardless of what evidence might be brought to bear on certain questions. I have more respect for these individuals than I do for those who engage in deception and outright lies in a pretense that science supports a literal interpretation of the Bible. People like Sarfati are peddling snake oil to the credulous masses who want, more than anything, to continue to believe things that are demonstrably false.
What is needed here is for people to engage in an open an honest examination of the data. This is not easy for many non-scientists, particularly those who would rather defer to some authoritative sounding figure. But I can offer genuine expertise in the area of biological evolution and am also quite conversant on the topic of dating methods. I am not asking anyone to believe any claims that I make, only to engage the data and draw their own conclusions. But if all of their “scientific” information comes from places like CMI and AiG, they are doing themselves a great disservice.
Lol. No. I’m not Dan Wallace. When I am not posting from my phone, my posts do link to my Theologica blog though. If you are wanting to find out all the reasons why you might want to ignore anything I say, you can find lots of my stuff there in the form of blogs and forum posts.
@Daniel #2
I am biased. I am biased for Biblical Chrisitianity. Levin is not. I am biased for propositional truth as it is revealed in the Judeo-Christian Scriptures. Levin is not. I am biased for the Biblical doctrine of creation. Levin is not. I am biased for a man once dead to resurrect Himself back to life. Levin is not.
Levin is biased against any and all of the above, and not a fan of Christian apologetics. What could he possibly offer to a Christian blog that is not completely filled with his biases, especially on evolution? I am simply amazed at your statement: ‘But I do know that a practicing cellular biologist is going to be a lot more equipped to offer information on evolution than some geologist or physicist or something.’ and not understand that evolution is the epitome of a philosophical bias.
Steve,
All I ask is that you engage the evidence. Science is nothing more than the application of logic to data. One’s biases should have no impact on one’s ability to derive logical conclusions from a collection of information. For example, I could provide you with an exceptionally strong set of data supporting the accepted conclusion that the Hawaiian island chain was formed over a period of 65 million years. It’s absolutely beautiful. You might possibly be able to explain the data in some other way, but we should at least be able to look at the same set of data, set aside our biases about what the answer should be, and apply logic to their interpretation. Is this something you are afraid to do?
I share a lot of your beliefs. But I think it is only fair not to ASSUME someone else’s beliefs and whether their alleged biases can, in any way, change the outcome of testable scientific hypothesis. Just because the observer may or may not share your same beliefs and preferences does not mean that it changes the results of things like genetic tests. A bias may impact how the data is interpreted, but the data is neutral. Dr Levin’s point is that there is a long history where some creationists not only show bias in interpretation, but totally misrepresent the data. You can even find them selling and promoting creationist arguments that have been disproved for decades and are even disavowed in the small print of the web sites of the creationists selling the stuff. The have lost all credibility because of it. The fact that you can walk into a CHRISTIAN bookstore today and find books still using moon dust arguments and claiming human footprints in the Paluxy River leaves us with no credibility to challenge the bias of others.
@David #7,
You may be able to hoodwink some of the people posting here that you don’t come across the evidence without your biases, but not all of us. The ‘objective’ observer of science who sets aside his biases about what the answer should be while looking at a set of data was destroyed by Polanyi and Kuhn. You have a much bigger problem, and I would be negligent for at least not attempting to point you to it. To wit, an acknowledgment that Jesus is Lord. Does that scare you? Am I blithely to assume that you have not been confronted with the truth claims of Christianity , yet have rejected them?
Steve,
Clearly, you are not someone interested in what science can tell us. I am hoping that others on this thread share my curiosity about the earth and its lifeforms. It’s what propelled me into science many years ago and I derive great satisfaction from generating new knowledge to share with the world. I wish you the best, but will not respond further to your comments.
Dr Levin’s, I don’t know if anyone else is willing to engage in the data or not, but count me in. To me, it is a bit odd that folks that are so dogmatic about how evolution could not happen even over millions of years have no problem at all with the same process being responsible for hundreds of thousands of species coming from a small group of common ancestors on a big boat 4500 years ago….as long as you don’t use the “E” word to describe it. LOL
Indeed, Daniel. I will pick this up again tomorrow and we can actually discuss some of what I consider to be the strongest lines of evidence supporting evolution and an ancient earth. Perhaps others here will be interested, as well.
@David #10,
That’s fine David. You can run, actually still keep running I suppose, and hide behind your philosophically biased theory of evolution, but know that Jesus the creator and sustainer of the universe is knocking at the door of your mind. All you need to do is open it.
Dr Levin,
I have been following the discussion but not engaging since my last post as it is clearly a waste of my time.
However, I would really love to hear the data about the age of the earth that you talked about.
I would also love any comments you may have about exactly why DNA evidence seems to point to a common descent.
Also, I would like your input on an accusation I have never been able to falsify or verify for myself, which is that carbon dating has been used on freshly extruded rock and found it to me millions or billions of years old. This claim is used to discount dating methods. I was wondering if you have heard it, whether or not it is true and what evidence you have. If it is true, I would love your comments on why it does not discount the age of the earth as scientists have determined it.
To Charles, Wayne et al,
I am really glad that you want to stand up for God’s hand in creation.
I would also love to hear any data that you have to give and any particular claims and rebuttals you may have to the data posted by Dr Levin. Can you give me some of the evidences you know of to support your views that evolution is not true?
Please note that I am not persuaded one side or the other, though I do firmly believe that God through Christ created all things. I have never been able to access raw data and study it for myself and I have great difficulty in trusting both sides. However I am always interested in examining data and claims.
Also, can everyone please refrain from name calling and rhetoric? This is not at all constructive.
Last thing, I find it really awful when Christians resort to accusing one another of not really believing in Jesus as Lord. That’s not a judgement for you to make, not of someone you know from the internet only. I would even be wary of making that accusation to my closest friend or spouse. This is a defeat for our Christian love for one another. If any of us really want to show atheists and agnostic scientists what it means to be Christian, we should start not by belittling them and ignoring them, but by loving one another, as Jesus has commanded us to do.
In peace,
Saskia
Before you go spending a lot of time convincing me of stuff I already accept, let me say that I do believe in an old earth. And I believe the Bible to be silent on how the earth produced plants and living things. Can we start there? And if you think it might be more advantageous to do this in a different format or location, perhaps we could do it in the creation, fall, and flood section of the Theologica forum at Theologica.ning.com. Might be less sniping there. 🙂
“Please tell me what you perceive the problems to be with the chimp-human genomic comparisons. I am quite familiar with many aspects of these data. Perhaps I can tell you some things about it that you do not know.”
The fundamental issue is that the two genomes have not been compared a one for one basis. The total number of base pairs compared is orders of magnitude small that the total involved, so the comparison is very far from complete; but the general audience thinks it’s cut, dried and bagged.
Dr. David E. Levin,
What can you tell us about psudo-genes? Specifically in humans and Chimps.
If all of our Mitochondrial DNA stems from one human woman, did she inherit this Mito. DNA from other earlier hominids? How did she get a unique sequence of Mitochondrial DNA, and every other woman in her generation got different Mitochondrial DNA, if Mit.DNA doesn’t mingle with our “regular” (nuclear) DNA?
Sorry, if you haven’t heard of Mitochondrial DNA – it’s a big thing in evangelical circles.
Daniel,
Finally able to return to your comments 44, 46, 47 on page 4 of these posts. Since my comments did not refer to non-literal interpretations by some church leaders, but specifically to the gap theory, day-age theory, analogical, framework and theistic evolutionary theories, let me proceed as follows. With every church father you want to cite, e.g., Ephrem the Syrian, I can cite others as well to support my contention. If you want to get a real kick check out Basil of Ceasarea’s Hexaemeron, Lactantius’ Institutes, or Victorinus’ On the Creation of the World.
The point of contention here is that although there were diverse views held by the Church Fathers, they all correctly gave priority to the theological meaning of the creation, and definitely asserted that the earth was created suddenly and in less than 6000 years before their time. They lived in the mileu of Greek thought where evolutionary and uniformitarian concepts were plentiful. Hippolytus (c. AD170-235), a presbyter in Rome, is a good example of someone who was familiar with and rejected many Greek naturalistic teachings in his The Refutation of All Heresies.
Your use of Augustine to support the view of long ages is simply incorrect:
‘They are deceived too, by those highly mendacious documents which profess to give the history of many thousand years, though, reckoning by the sacred writings, we find that not 6000 years have yet passed’ (The City of God 12.10, in NPNF1, vol. 2). He believed in an ‘instantaneous’ creation from mistranslating Gen. 2:4, not knowing Hebrew and working from the original text, and only coming to know Greek later in life long after his commentary on Genesis was done. Your use of Augustine in support of ‘deep time’ is severely misguided, bordering on the unethical. There is no room for current old-earth advocates to appeal to him for support for their interpretation of the creation days as being long ages of millions of years each.
Now, to the analysis of the current theories that I have mentioned: gap, day-age, analogical, framework.
It was Thomas Chalmers in 1814, a young Presbyterian pastor, who in a review of Cuvier’s Theory of the Earth proposed that all the time could fit between Gen. 1:1 and Gen. 1:2. This became known as the ‘gap theory’. Later C.I. Scofield put the gap theory in his notes on Gen. 1:2 in his Scofield Reference Bible.
In 1823, George Stanley Faber, an Anglican theologian, was one of the earliest advocates of the day-age view, believing that the days of creation were not literal but figurative of long ages.
The framework view, a fairly recent addition to the compromise and capitulation on Genesis 1, is most notably promoted by Meredith G. Kline in his book Because It Had Not Rained, and Henri Blocher in his In the Beginning.
The analogical view is very similar to the framework view, fairly recent, and neither speak to any specificity in Genesis 1 except to say that ‘God created everything’.
You have already admitted that the theistic evolutionary view could not have come about until after Darwin, so we have no need to address it as a point of contention.
The point of all this Daniel, is that the Church held a fairly consistent view of a young universe and young earth through it’s first 16 centuries up until the time of modern geology in the early 1800’s when the idea of millions of years became the predominant view of the findings of secular geologists. It was compromising theologians who then acquiesced by proposing the gap theory, day-age theory, theistic evolutionary theory, etc.
Steve, you are fighting a straw man. I’m not claiming that the early church believed in old ages. That is moving the goal post. You listed a long list of “non-literal” interpretations and said they the post-date the study of geology. I’m saying that these non-literal interpretations (or at least some of them) PRE-date geology. Once geology started indicating long ages, they became more popular as a way to harmonize what the Scripture was teaching with what the Creation was teaching, but these things like the framework interpretation of what Genesis 1 was saying pre-date the 1800. It is often presented as if “the church” has always read Genesis 1 the way Ken Ham does until they “compromised” with those atheist evolutionists. That is just historical revisionism.
I will grant you that the ancient church fathers believed in a young earth But the ancient church theologians were also convinced of a lot of other things which we now disregard. They were making deductions based on a very limited set of knowledge compared to what we have today. All one has to do is read what was written about geocentrism and the antipodes and such to see that using the early church fathers in some kind of appeal to authority isn’t a good idea. If you want some concrete examples of some of that, the Glover YouTube series I linked to pages ago is full of citations. I think the early church fathers are great sources of theology, but when it comes to science, I’d trust a molecular geneticist trained in biochemistry and cell biology over my favorite church father, Augustine, any day of the week. When it comes to a discussion of original sin or something though, Dr Levin is going to have to take a back seat to the long dead guy.
One last comment on the Gap Theory. I am aware of the history of that as it relates to being called that and it being promoted by Scoffield. My first “big boy Bible” was his reference Bible back in the early 70’s. But it is another example of an interpretation that was *popularized* after geology, not one that was invented after geology. The fact that Chalmers proposed it doesn’t mean that he was the *first* to do so. Many argue that Origin’s comment about our current heaven and earth borrowing their names from the/a prior one indicates a gap theory interpretation way back then. I’ve also seen quotes from Augustine that might indicate a creation of everything “in the beginning” where this “beginning” was of undetermined length or separated from the first day by some period of time. Even if one discounts that though, one cannot argue that folks like Simon Episcopius and J G Rosenmüller were influenced by the geology of the 1850’s or whatever. I guess it could be argued that John Pye-Smith’s work from 1839 was possibly influenced by Lyell’s 1830-1933’s “Principles of Geology”, but still this whole idea that some interpretation that was influenced by something else must be discarded because it shows a bias is rather fallacious. Everything you and I read from the text is influenced by our other knowledge and biases. NONE of us read it in a vacuum. And it wasn’t presented in a vacuum. The original audience had their own ideas of how the world worked and the revelation of God and how HE works was presented in that context.
I see there is lots of interest. I will deal with each of these questions in order and hope to generate further discussion and questions. Please let me know if anything is unclear or needs further elaboration.
Saskia: “I would like your input on an accusation I have never been able to falsify or verify for myself, which is that carbon dating has been used on freshly extruded rock and found it to me millions or billions of years old.”
Firstly, thank you for your interest and I will do my best to address any and all questions that pertain to the interpretation of data. Secondly, I should clarify an error regarding your use of the term ‘carbon dating’. Carbon dating is not used to determine the ages of rocks. It can only be used to date carbon-containing samples of biological origin. I can explain to you in broad strokes in another post how that works, if you like.
The data to which you refer I believe concerns the Potassium-Argon (K-Ar) dating of newly formed lava from Mount St. Helen. Dating carried out by YEC Steve Austin in 1996 generated ages of samples ranging from 0.35 +/- 0.05 MY to 2.8 MY +/- 0.6 MY. The reason I make a point of indicating that Austin is a YEC is that he approached the question dishonestly. K-Ar dating is used to determine the ages of volcanic rocks that are millions to billions of years old. This is because the half-life of K-40 is 1.3 billion years. The company to which Austin sent his samples stated on their website that “We cannot analyze samples expected to be younger than 2 MY”. The reason for this is that the “background noise” from the instrumentation (trace Ar in the system) precludes accurate dating of samples with little to no Ar. It’s like trying to measure the length of a grain of sand with a meter stick. The best one can do is to say that it is less than a millimeter (the smallest gradation of the stick). Austin knew that the numbers generated would just be “noise”.
http://noanswersingenesis.org.au/mt_st_helens_dacite_kh.htm
If the writer of Gen believed that the world was flat, that the moon was a light bearer like the sun, the the sun moved around the earth, that the world was 6K years old, that his genealogy went back to Adam the first man, does that mean God wants me to duplicate his beliefs? that is, is God teaching as binding everything in the Scriptures or using some things to communicate to the Bible’s first readers?
if i see the Bible as authoritative, does that mean i assume the writer’s of Scripture worldviews and ideas about what the world is like are authoritative to me? must, if i am to take Scripture seriously, think like some amalgam of ANE and hellenized Palestinian worldviews?
Dr. Levin, #19/269: “I will deal with each of these questions in order and hope to generate further discussion and questions. Please let me know if anything is unclear or needs further elaboration.”
Dr. Levin, if you’d be so kind, would you address the questions I asked earlier:
“Are you a follower and a disciple of Jesus Christ? If so, can you describe theologically where you are in your relationship to Jesus Christ? For example, are you a regularly attending member of a church? Which church/denomination, if you care to share? And so on, and so forth.”
Your answer would be very helpful as it pertains in several ways to the topic of Dr. Copan’s post: “Creation and Evolution: Keeping the Main Thing the Main Thing.”
Saskia,
I think you will also appreciate the following example of evidence for an ancient earth. This has to do with the formation of the chain of Hawaiian islands. The reason that I like this example is that it invokes two consilient lines of evidence (radiometric dating and tectonic plate movement) that converge on the same answer.
The evidence, when viewed objectively, leads to the conclusion that the Hawaiian islands were formed in a 3000 mile-long chain over the last 65 million years by a combination of steady northwest movement of the Pacific plate and volcanic activity below that plate:
The Hawaiian islands form a linear chain along the path of the Pacific plate, which moves northwest at a measured rate of 5-10 cm/yr. The chain of roughly 100 islands is about 3000 miles (5000 km) long. These islands are made of volcanic basalt, and have been dated by the K/Ar method. The remarkable finding here is that they display a linear range of ages as a function of distance from a volcanic hot spot under the plate. The oldest (at the northwest end), at about 65 million years, is most distal to the youngest (Hawaii itself, at the southeast end), which is still volcanically active and sits over the volcanic hotspot. Today, the Pacific plate is measured (by GPS tracking) to move approximately 3 inches per year. If the rate of movement has been constant, the plate is calculated to have moved 3000 miles in 63 million years, almost the exact measured age and span of the chain.
http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/GG/HCV/haw_formation.html
Here is the key observation that we must explain: There is a linear relationship between the measured ages of these islands (more than 100 independent measurements) and their distance from the volcanic hotspot. You see, we have two independent sets of data (age and distance) that support the uniformity of movement of the Pacific plate over a period of 65 million years.
The radiometric dating data cannot be dismissed by the blanket criticism that “dating techniques are not reliable”. We have a large number of samples from these islands that show step-wise increases in age for each island as we move further away from the volcanic hot-spot. The data mean something. You are free to interpret both sets of data in a different way, but in the end, any interpretation must fit the data.
Great information on the dating, Dr Levin. I’d like to add a question to your list. It is one I proposed to a group on Facebook that has a lot of theistic evolutionists as members. How is it NOT an assumption that just because two life forms share the same trait that they are related? Let me give you an example. My wife has blue eyes. I have brown. Our kids have brown. The assumption would be that they got their brown eyes from me. But my daughter is adopted. She got hers from someone else. So we were both effected by whatever causes brown eyes, but it doesn’t indicate that I’m her ancestor. So how is it that we know that four legged animals with fur all came from a single source and not *multiple* sources that all got four legs and fir from some other shared cause? Why assume shared ancestry when there can be a shared cause?
TUAD, Dr Levin volunteered to answer questions about evidence for age and evolution. He didn’t volunteer for a spiritual strip search. Can we keep this on topic please? His data about dating methods and Hawaii and such is valid or not regardless of how many times he’s been to church or whether he prefers Coke or Pepsi. Unless you can show where his facts are wrong, any alleged bias associated with his NON-scientific beliefs does nothing more than show your own bias.
@ Daniel, #25/275,
Your impudent rush to display your boorish dullness is rather off-putting and far too frequent.
Do you not comprehend the last part:
“Your answer would be very helpful as it pertains in several ways to the topic of Dr. Copan’s post: “Creation and Evolution: Keeping the Main Thing the Main Thing.””
Charles: “The fundamental issue is that the two genomes have not been compared a one for one basis. The total number of base pairs compared is orders of magnitude small that the total involved, so the comparison is very far from complete…”
Actually, that’s not true. Both sequences have been determined in their entirety and aligned with each other. So, if this is your criticism of the data, it does not seem to be much of a criticism.
This seems like a good place to introduce the chromosome 2 story. Some of you may know that humans have 46 chromosomes (23 pairs), whereas the other apes all have 48 (24 pairs). This difference was cited years ago by creationists as evidence for special creation of humans. But in 1992, a discovery from Bob Wells’ lab at Yale offered an explanation for this discrepancy. What they found when determining the sequence of a piece of human DNA from chromosome 2 was that sequences normally found only at the ends of chromosomes (called telomeres) were sitting in the middle of the chromosome. Telomeres are non-informational repeats of 6-nucleotides (TTAGGG) that are added by an enzyme to both ends of linear chromosomes after each round of cell division. Duplication of linear chromosomes is an imperfect process, which results in the loss of 50-100 nucleotides at the ends during each duplication. It’s easy to understand that the cell would quickly get into trouble if there was no solution to this problem. The purpose of telomeres is to provide a buffer of unimportant sequence at the ends that can be lost during duplication. But they are only found at the ends. The striking finding that there were telomeric repeats sitting in the middle of chromosome 2 led to the immediate recognition that there has been an end-to-end fusion of two chromosomes at some time in the history of human evolution. Examination of the Figure 1 in the Wells paper allow one to draw a line at the precise point of fusion (where TTAGGG repeats turn into their complement CCCTAA).
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1924367
Chromosome 2 Part 2.
Understanding that two chromosomes had undergone fusion in the human lineage led to the testable hypothesis that this fusion might explain the discrepancy between the number of human chromosomes as compared to the number of chromosomes in other ape species. The prediction was this: if true, we should expect to find two ape chromosomes that when conceptually set end-to-end with each other, would align with the single human chromosome 2. This is precisely what is seen. This is taken as strong evidence that humans and other apes share a common ancestor that had 24 pairs of chromosomes and that the fusion of two ancestral chromosomes to form human chromosome 2 occurred at some point after the divergence of the human lineage from the others.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromosome_2_(human)
TUAD, What *I* see when I read the OP is (1) an acceptance of old ages, and (2) “I grant evolution and begin the discussion there.” You guys come across as wanting to argue BOTH of these points and, to me, it comes across as if the only evidence you will accept in regards to those topics will have to come from someone who meets your spiritual litmus test. If you think “What denomination do you belong to” and “How often do you attend church” are keeping the main thing the main thing, then I’m not sure I read the same post you did. If we are going to follow Paul’s advice in the OP, setting up someone’s spiritual health as a prerequisite to talking with them isn’t how to go about it. I too am curious about Dr Levin’s belief in God, but I approach the topic within the confines of HIS expertise and offer to answer questions. My question for him is a perfect example. Asking about Causal Agents in the context of evolution is a way to build a bridge between science and a Creator. Insisting that someone gracious enough to be patient with our questions meet some kind of requirement up front is building walls, not bridges. If you find that approach “boorish dullness” and prefer a confrontational apologetic approach, that is fine. But lets not pretend that Paul’s original post is an excuse for that.
Dr Levin, your explanation of how we can go from 22 pairs to 23 makes sense. But what about when the number of pairs is vastly different? Ken Ham’s anti-evolution Creation Museum, for example, proposes that both wolves and foxes share a common Ark ancestor – even though one has 78 chromosomes and the other has 34 (http://nyti.ms/vMIFfW). What could cause that kind of change over that relatively short period of time? Or should we just chalk it up to Ham getting it wrong on this topic?
Loo: “What can you tell us about psudo-genes? Specifically in humans and Chimps.”
Daniel: “How is it NOT an assumption that just because two life forms share the same trait that they are related? …. So how is it that we know that four legged animals with fur all came from a single source and not *multiple* sources that all got four legs and fir from some other shared cause? Why assume shared ancestry when there can be a shared cause?”
These are both great questions, which I will address together using the concept of nested hierarchies. I hear and read much criticism about the interpretation of shared traits and shared DNA that hinges on the issue of how one can distinguish between common descent and common design. Similarity alone could not distinguish between these. But nested hierarchies can. I find it interesting that although this is the foundational concept of evolutionary tree building (phylogenetics) this is a concept that few creationists have even heard of. My take is that, because it so strongly supports common ancestry, it is a topic that folks like Sarfati, Ham, etc. don’t want to touch.
I will set out the basic concept and then provide an example of how it is used in the next post. Before DNA analysis was available, anatomists groups organisms based on shared traits using nested hierarchies. The more universal a specific anatomical feature, the more ancestral it was deemed to be. It was admittedly something of an acquired skill to determine which traits were ancestral to which, but the idea (using vertebrates as an example) went like this: There is a great diversity of animals that share the common feature of a backbone (vertebrates). This should, therefore, be a deeply ancestral trait. Among those animals with backbones, there are some with legs (tetrapods), some without legs (i.e fish). This divergence should therefore be less ancestral (or derived) than having a backbone. Among those animals with backbones and legs, some have hair and mammary glands (mammals), others lay eggs (birds, amphibians, and reptiles). I hope you can see from this the nested hierarchy of traits. Of course, there are always exceptions (snakes and whales, which are reptiles and mammals, respectively, do not have legs), but a trained anatomist will use many more traits in the phylogenetic assignment than the grossly over-simplified set I have given.
Nested hierarchies part 2: DNA comparisons.
I should have pointed out in the previous post that such nested hierarchies are absolutely predicted by common ancestry, but not necessary for common design. A designer could just mix and match traits at will, particularly if designing each species de novo. The fact is that a nested hierarchy of alterations is an essential element of common ancestry. If common ancestry is true, there should be only a single correct tree of life (for eukaryotes) that can be defined by nested hierarchies that reflect the points of divergence of various lineages that gave rise to all modern plants and animals.
When DNA analysis became available starting in the 1980s, it was then possible to ask if the nested hierarchies could be observed in the DNA. This is done by following the pattern of differences (rather than similarities) in the DNA. An alteration in the DNA (a mutation) that arises in one individual will be passed on to descendants of that individual. Because specific mutations are pretty rare, the assumption we make is that if we see the same mutation in multiple individuals, that mutation arose once in an ancestor of those individuals, rather than multiple times independently.
This applies to different species, as well. If, for example, we see the same mutation in two species that is not shared by a third species, we tentatively conclude that the first two are more closely related to each other than either is the third. Mechanistically, the mutation occurred at a time after the divergence of the lineage leading to the third species, but before the divergence of the first two. If we see the same pattern for lots of mutations in these species, we can have confidence that this assignment is correct. If we could not see an intelligible pattern of shared changes in the DNA among various species, this would absolutely violate the central prediction of common ancestry.
How can we tell what is a mutation?
In the next post, I will explain how mobile DNA elements have removed this question from the equation.
Nested hierarchies part 3.
The strongest evidence for common ancestry of species is shared errors in the DNA of a variety of types. For example, parasitic mobile DNA elements, which make up 45% of the human and primate genomes, provide some of the best evidence. These elements replicate and insert new copies of themselves into the genomes of the cells in which they live. We have literally millions of them within our genome. One in eight humans has a new mobile DNA element somewhere in their genome that was not inherited, but was generated in the egg or sperm that produced them. They usually cause no harm, but they certainly don’t do us any good. When these elements insert themselves into the genome, they do so at random. This is important, because the likelihood of an element inserting itself into exactly the same site in two genomes is extremely low. That means that when we see two individuals with a mobile DNA element inserted at precisely the same position in their genomes, we can reasonably conclude that this was the result of a single insertion event, which was subsequently transmitted genetically, rather than two identical insertion events happening independently.
The history of movement of these DNA elements can be used to assess common ancestry and phylogenetic branch points. This becomes a straightforward logic problem of genomic DNA comparisons. When we look at the data, there is only one phylogenetic arrangement that is consistent throughout (and there are mountains of data to look at). Let’s try this, so you can see how it works. Imagine that we are comparing the mobile DNA elements from a particular region of DNA shared by humans, chimps, gorillas, and orangutans. Let’s say that this region of DNA is about 1 million nucleotides in length and within it are about 500 mobile DNA elements in each species. The positions of most of these (about 400) are common to all four species. Some are unique to a species (say 10 per species), reflecting recent insertion events that arose specifically in that species. Neither of these classes is particularly interesting from the perspective of common ancestry. The universal commonalities and unique differences are just that. But let’s now consider elements that are shared by two, or three of the four species. What we find is that about 60 elements in this region of DNA are shared by humans, chimps, and gorillas (but not found in orangutans). We find another 30 that are shared by humans and chimps only (not found in gorillas or orangutans). Significantly, we find none shared by humans and gorillas only, or chimps and orangutans only, or chimps and gorillas only, or any other combination of two or three species. How do we interpret these data? There is one and only one solution to this logic problem and this is it: Common elements in chimps and humans reflect insertion events that arose prior to the evolutionary divergence of the two lineages that led to these species, but after divergence from the gorilla and orangutan lineages. Common elements found in humans, chimps and gorillas reflect more ancient insertion events that arose prior to the divergence of the lineages that led to those three species, but after divergence of the orangutan lineage. The evidence of the common ancestry of these four species remains in their DNA. Moreover, it indicates unambiguously that the line leading to orangutans diverged earliest, followed by the gorilla line, followed finally by divergence of the human and chimp lines. The “nested” hierarchy of data (unique elements, those shared by two, shared by three, or shared by four species) fit only a single model for common ancestry.
Now, I made those numbers up for the sake of illustration, but they reflect pretty accurately what you would find were you to look at any particular 1-megabase chunk of genomic DNA from these four closely related species (there are thousands of such chunks). Why is this evidence inconsistent with common design? First, as I noted at the start, the insertion of these DNA elements occurs at random with no benefit to the individual in whose genome they arise, so their presence by “design” makes no sense. Second, if they were designed into the genomes of four separate species, as the creationist would argue, he/she would have to explain the peculiar nesting. That is, why are there elements shared by humans and chimps only, but none shared by chimps and gorillas only, or gorillas and humans only, even though the overall level of similarity among these three genomes is nearly equivalent? Common design cannot answer that, except to say that the designer could have made it look as though genomes are the result of descent with modification (God the deceiver). Common ancestry, as we have seen, explains these observations very well.
Daniel: “Ken Ham’s anti-evolution Creation Museum, for example, proposes that both wolves and foxes share a common Ark ancestor – even though one has 78 chromosomes and the other has 34 (http://nyti.ms/vMIFfW). What could cause that kind of change over that relatively short period of time?”
The short answer is: nothing. The point of the NYT article was the ridiculousness of Ham’s claim. Wolves and foxes are not that closely related. Their lineages diverged from each other some 7-10 million years ago. You can find the phylogenetic tree of canids here:
http://www.angelfire.com/in/wolfblud/canineevolution.htm
This brings us back to the post hoc notion of hyper-evolution proposed by some YECs today as a way to get around the problem of fitting all of the known species onto an Ark with a biblically-defined size. This is an idea that is completely without evidential support and the idea goes like this. Because the size of the Ark was explicitly set out in Genesis, this creates a problem for anyone who wishes to claim that Noah collected all the animals two-by-two. Because today we know of literally millions of species, it doesn’t take much to realize that they all would not fit onto the Ark. So, creationists try to resolve this dilemma by saying that Noah only collected “created kinds”, which are defined as ancestral forms of the millions of species we see today. This would decrease the number of animals required on the Ark by 100 or 1000-fold, after which, there is proposed to have been a rapid radiation of species to get to where we are today. Talk about mental gymnastics! But you have it exactly right to question the idea that all of the various canid species from foxes to wolves have evolved in the last 4500 years since the flood. If such a thing was possible, then on what reasoned basis can creationists argue against common ancestry of all species over a much longer time-frame?
Loo: “What can you tell us about psudo-genes? Specifically in humans and Chimps.”
I neglected to address your question about pseudogenes. Pseudogenes are interesting in that they tell us where we have been in an evolutionary sense. These are genes that no longer function. That is to say, they have been allowed to mutate to a state of non-functionality because a species shifts to a new environmental niche that allows it to survive without a particular gene, or set of genes. In the absence of selection pressure to maintain function, any mutation that breaks a gene is not culled out of the population and may end up spreading through the population. This has happened many times in evolutionary history. A well-known example in primates is the GULO gene, which encodes an enzyme required for the production of vitamin C. In most mammals, this gene is functional, but in apes, including humans, it is broken (mutated to non-functionality). Thus, it is referred to as a pseudogene. Interestingly, the inactivating mutations in the primate GULO genes are identical, arguing that its inactivation happened once in an ancestral primate. It is likely that the arboreal lifestyle of primates, which provides a diet rich in vitamin C allowed for the loss of function of the GULO gene. This is only a problem today for humans who do not eat enough fruits.
http://www.proof-of-evolution.com/pseudogene.html
Another example of pseudogenes are the olfactory receptors. Many mammals have a large number of genes (about 1000) that encode receptors that allow them to smell a wide variety of odors that humans cannot smell. This is not because we do not have the same genes, it is because most of our olfactory receptor genes (about 70%) have been allowed to mutate to non-functionality. We rely far more on our eyesight than our sense of smell. An extreme example of loss of olfactory receptor gene function is the cetaceans (whales and dolphins). These are mammals, and there is abundant evidence that they evolved from four legged mammals about 45 million years ago, returning to an aquatic life-style (their closest living relative is the hippopotamus). Because there is not much to smell in the air of the open ocean, nearly all of the 1000 olfactory genes of these animals have been allowed to mutate to non-functionality. As I said, pseudogenes tell us about our evolutionary history.
http://sysbio.oxfordjournals.org/content/57/4/574.long
A more general discussion of pseudogenes can be found here:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/molgen/
I found that bit about the GULO gene interesting. Glover also got into that in the YouTube series I posted. There is some interesting stuff there. If you haven’t seen it, it is a 16-part series that starts at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fperp1Mezt0.
Are you aware of the intelligent design arguments of irreducible complexity? What are your thoughts on that?
Daniel: “Are you aware of the intelligent design arguments of irreducible complexity? What are your thoughts on that?”
Indeed. I was invited to write a review of Michael Behe’s book “The Edge of Evolution” for the Reports of the National Center for Science Education. In brief, my assessment of the Intelligent Design crowd is that they offer nothing but God-of-the-gaps arguments. These are whines about perceived inadequacies of evolutionary theory to explain the emergence of X, Y, or Z. What is lacking in the ID discourse is anything resembling a testable hypothesis that would move it into the realm of science.
I provide in this review a treatment of the concept of irreducible complexity and explain why it does not a barrier to step-wise evolution. We can discuss it at greater length, if you wish.
http://ncse.com/rncse/27/1-2/review-edge-evolution
i believe that the nested hierarchical structure of living things is an important issue in the discussion. because life doesn’t look anything like any intelligent designer we are familiar with except those who use genetic algorithms to design.
designers swap modules, in fields from computer programming to auto design, people are loath to redesign/reinvent the wheel. we want to use past designed, functional, debugged pieces to design with.
yet life never does this (well not quite never see syncythin, an RV protein co-opted to build placentas), even if a parasite has a working structure a creature can not simply borrow it. eyes are created a bit differently dozens of times. life designs only using what is available in it’s lineage. this is a BIG POINT, if God designed life directly he did so making it look evolved, not anything like we understand design.
yet swapped modules are a big part of mythology, chimeras like the sphinx are so naturally part of our human imagination, yet they never occur like this in nature. the designer doesn’t reuse good designed structures but rather redesigns and rebuilds the wheel over and over again.
Dr. Levin,
I have not been able to keep up with all of the posts here, so hopefully this is not a duplicate question, so forgive me if I have missed something here.
I can understand the similarities between chimpanzees and man genetically, but what caused man to begin thinking, acting and living in ways that chimps still don’t? And why haven’t chimps progressed? And where are the evolving links between man and chimp, that are commonly called the ‘missing links’? Shouldn’t we be seeing some of those half man, half chimp type beings by now?
I realize that ID doesn’t produce any testable hypothesis of their own, but I’m not sure what to do with the number of changes that would seem to be required in order for some new series of traits to become a new functional system. Take gills to lungs (or lungs to gills) for example. A simple random genetic mutation just doesn’t seem to explain that to me. Seems to me that changes of that magnitude would require some kind of cause or design. Can you address how to explain the large changes like that?
The concept of irreducible complexity (IC) states that any system (molecular pathway or machine) that ceases to function when any of its parts are removed cannot possibly have evolved in a step-wise manner, because it will not function until the last part is in place. This is a barrier to step-wise evolution by natural selection because there is nothing to select for until the whole thing is in place.
There is an obvious logical flaw to this argument that, in effect, denies the possibility of evolution in its premise. The claim is basedon the assumption that the system has always existed as it does today, with all parts of the system being essential from the start. The moment one allows for the possibility that an essential component was not always essential, the claim implodes. The fact is that for each and every supposedly IC system trotted out by the ID folks, there exists a simpler system. Whether it’s the immune system, the blood clotting pathway, the bacterial flagellum, or anything else, we know of simpler systems. How can there exist simpler versions of an irreducibly complex system? The answer is that these systems have been built up over time from very simple systems by the addition of new parts that eventually became essential. You cannot look at a highly refined system as it exists today and assert that it could not have evolved from a much simpler system.
I see. It is kinda like the arguments that try to show the extreme odds of the fine tuned universe. It assumes that all life must look like or be like OUR life.
mbaker: “And where are the evolving links between man and chimp, that are commonly called the ‘missing links’? Shouldn’t we be seeing some of those half man, half chimp type beings by now?”
This is a common misperception of evolution. Man is not evolved from chimps. They both evolved from a common ancestor that is no longer living. Think of both modern forms at the ends of twigs that meet on a common branch of a tree and the common ancestor as the connecting point at the base of the twigs. Would you expect those two points at the tips to be connected? Of course not. We know of many transitional forms on the lineage to humans– Ardipithecus ramidus, Austalopithecus, Kenyanthropus, Paranthropus, Homo habilis, Homo erectus, etc. These extinct species all reside along the length of the twig leading to modern humans after their divergence from the twig leading to modern chimps.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_evolution
Dr. Levin,
“Man is not evolved from chimps. They both evolved from a common ancestor that is no longer living.”
Interesting that you should say that, because that is what many of us wonder about the commonly supposed theory of evolution, at least as most of us have heard it, that we have evolved either from gorillas or chimps.
And that ”no living ancestor’ is what? I am not asking from defending the typical creationist viewpoint, but I think Darwinism has confused many of us, and turned us off from accepting any scientific point of view, so perhaps you can enlighten us.
Dr Levin,
I have read a good deal of this exchange but have not commented here until now either. I haven’t read all of the back and forth you have had today. Just haven’t had time to keep up.
But I did notice that in one of your very first comments you made the remark that humans are descended from apes, but you are also saying we did not evolve from chimps.
I take it that you are saying that there was a definite ape of some sort in the distant past that both humans and chimps, and I would assume the other modern forms of apes, have descended from?
Cherylu: “I take it that you are saying that there was a definite ape of some sort in the distant past that both humans and chimps, and I would assume the other modern forms of apes, have descended from?”
Exactly!
Daniel: “Take gills to lungs (or lungs to gills) for example.”
I love these questions! I’m just trying to keep up. Lungs didn’t evolve from gills. The earliest “fishapods” (eg. Tiktaalik) had both lungs and gills. Lungs appear to have evolved from swim bladders, but that remains speculative.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiktaalik
mbaker: “And that ”no living ancestor’ is what?”
Good question. The common ancestor between humans and chimps has not been found. The closest we have to that is two Ardipithecus species, both on the human lineage, which are dated to about 4.4 and 5.6 million years old. This is shortly after the divergence of the chimp and human lineages from each other at about 6 million years ago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardipithecus
The Tiktaalik story is a very interesting one, because its discovery fulfilled another testable hypothesis set out by evolutionary theory. I can expand on this, if anyone is interested.