Creation Facts of Life (6 page)
He openly and frankly states that the thesis of his book is "anti-evolutionary" (p. 353), but it seems to me that he is cautiously taking a step even further. The first chapter of his book is titled "Genesis Rejected," and he would react very strongly against being called a creationist, but in his honest analysis of the creation-evolution controversy through history, Dr. Denton freely admits that many of the scientific views of the early creationists have been vindicated by modern discoveries in science.
Take William Paley's classic argument that design in living things implies a Designer just as clearly as design in a watch implies a watchmaker. In
The Blind Watchmaker,
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discussed later, Richard Dawkins argues — incorrectly — that Paley was wrong. Denton states, "Paley was not only
right
in asserting an analogy between life and a machine, but also
remarkably prophetic
in guessing that the technological ingenuity realized in living systems is vastly in excess of anything yet accomplished by man" (emphasis added). Then Denton goes on to summarize his thinking on life's origin (p. 341) as follows:
The almost irresistible force of the analogy has completely undermined the complacent assumption, prevalent in biological circles over most of the past century, that the design hypothesis can be excluded on the grounds that the notion is fundamentally a metaphysical
a priori
concept and therefore scientifically unsound.
On the contrary, the inference to design is a purely
a posteriori
induction based on a ruthlessly consistent application of the logic of analogy.
The conclusion may have religious implications, but
it does not depend on religious presuppositions
(emphasis added).
Now that's quite an admission! Even though he would deny any leaning toward a Christian concept of creation, this leading molecular biologist sees quite plainly that a scientific concept of creation can be constructed, just as I've said, using the ordinary tools of science, logic, and observation. In fact, Denton intimates that creation scientists have shown more respect than evolutionists for empirical evidence and a "ruthlessly consistent" application of logic!
It's also true, as Denton concludes, that creation may have religious implications, but so does evolution, and that should not prevent our evaluating their scientific merits on the basis of logic and observation alone.
In a short but thought-provoking article, British physicist H.S. Lipson
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reached the same conclusion. First he expressed his interest in life's origin, then his feeling — quite apart from any preference for creation — that, "In fact, evolution became in a sense a scientific religion; almost all scientists have accepted it and many are prepared to 'bend' their observations to fit with it."
After wondering how well evolution has stood up to scientific testing, Lipson continues: "To my mind, the theory [evolution] does not stand up at all." Then he comes to the heart of the issue: "If living matter is not, then, caused by the interplay of atoms, natural forces, and radiation [i.e., time, chance, and chemistry], how has it come into being?" After dismissing a sort of directed evolution, Lipson concludes: "I think, however, that we must go further than this and admit that the only acceptable explanation is
creation"
(emphasis his).
Like Hoyle and Wickramasinghe, Lipson is a bit surprised and unhappy with his own conclusion. He writes, "I know that this [creation] is anathema to physicists, as indeed it is to me." But his sense of honesty and scientific integrity forces him to conclude his sentence thus: "…but we must not reject a theory that we do not like if the experimental evidence supports it."
By the way, let me assure you that not
all
who see the evidence of creation are unhappy about it! Witness Dr. Dean Kenyon. Dr. Kenyon is a molecular biologist whose area of research interest is specifically the origin of life. His book on life's origin,
Biochemical Predestination,
opened with praises for Darwinian evolution, and he taught evolution at San Francisco State University for many years.
A couple of students in Dr. Kenyon's class once asked him to read a book by Dr. Duane Gish on creation science. He didn't want to, but thanks to their polite persistence (1 Pet. 3:15), he resolved to read it and refute it, but, as I heard him tell it, he read it and
couldn't
refute it. Instead, Dr. Kenyon got interested in creation science and began a long re-evaluation of the scientific evidence, which finally led him to the
happy
conclusion that life, including his, is here as a result of creation, the deliberate plan and purpose of a personal Creator God!
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Comparative Similarities: Homology
If God made people as people, why are we full of "animal parts"? Look at your arm for a moment and try to picture the bones inside. There's one bone attached to the body, two bones in the forearm, a little group of wrist bones, and bones that extend out into the fingers. As it turns out, there are many other living things that have forelimbs with a similar pattern: the foreleg of a horse or dog, the wing of a bat, and the flipper of a penguin, for example, as shown in Figure 6. Biologists use the term "homology" for such similarities in basic structure.
Why should there be that kind of similarity? Why should a person's arm have the same kind of bone pattern as the leg of a dog and the wing of a bat? There are two basic ideas. One of these is the evolutionary idea of
descent from a common ancestor.
That idea seems to make sense, since that's the way we explain such similarities as brothers and sisters looking more alike than cousins do. They have parents closer in common.
Using descent from a common ancestor to explain similarities is probably the most logical and appealing idea that evolutionists have. Some think that our ability to classify plants and animals on a groups-within-groups hierarchical basis virtually forces scientists to treat evolution as a "fact." However, we can classify kitchen utensils on a groups-within-groups basis, but that hardly forces anyone to believe that knives evolved into spoons, spoons into forks, or saucers into cups and plates.
 |
Figure 6. |
After all, there's another reason in our common experience why things look alike. It's
creation according to a common plan.
That's why Fords and Chevrolets have more in common than Fords and sailboats. They share more design features in common.
What's the more logical inference from our observation of bone patterns and other examples of homology: descent from a common ancestor, or creation according to a common plan? In many cases, either explanation will work, and we can't really tell which is more reasonable. But there seems to be times when the only thing that works is creation according to a common design.
I get support for my claim again from Denton,
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in his chapter titled "The Failure of Homology." Dr. Denton is not only a research scientist with a Ph.D. in molecular biology, but also an M.D. with an intimate knowledge of comparative anatomy and embryology. He admits his desire to find naturalistic explanations for patterns of similarity among organisms (homology), but he also admits the failure of evolutionary explanations.
Like every other scientist, Denton recognizes the striking similarity in bone pattern evident between vertebrate fore- and hindlimbs. Yet no evolutionist, he says, claims that the hindlimb evolved from the forelimb, or that hindlimbs and forelimbs evolved from a common source. I was once taught to refer to corresponding parts of the male and female reproductive systems as "sexual homology." Homology, in that case, could not possibly be explained by descent from a common ancestor; that would mean that males evolved from females, or vice versa, or that human beings evolved from some animal that had only one sex.
Worse yet for evolution, structures that appear homologous often develop under the control of genes that are
not
homologous. In such cases, the thesis that similar structures developed from genes modified during evolutionary descent is precisely falsified.
In frogs, for example, the five digits on each limb grow out from buds on the embryonic paddle; in human embryos, the digits form as the tissue between them is resorbed. Here quite
different
gene-enzyme mechanisms produce
similar
(homologous) patterns. Structures in adult lobsters and crayfish are so similar (homologous) that the same lab instructions can be used for dissecting either, yet the crayfish egg develops directly into the adult form while the lobster egg reaches the homologous pattern through a free-swimming larval stage.
Our observation of similarity or homology is real enough, but that's true, Denton points out, "whether the causal mechanism was Darwinian, Lamarckian, vitalistic,
or even creationist"
(emphasis added). Although the evidence is not as spectacular and compelling as the biomolecular data, I would say the weight of our present knowledge of homology favors Denton's final alternative: creation according to a common design.
Perhaps the clearest anatomical evidence of creation is "convergence." The classic example is the similarity between the eyes of humans and vertebrates and the eyes of squids and octopuses. Evolutionists recognize the similarity between the eyes easily enough, but they've never been able to find or even imagine a common ancestor with traits that would explain these similarities. So, instead of calling these eyes homologous organs, they call them examples of "convergent evolution." Rather than evolution, however, we have
another
example of similarity in structure that cannot be explained as evolutionary descent from a common ancestor.
Convergence, in the sense of similar structures designed to meet similar needs, would be expected, of course, on the basis of creation according to a common design. As we'll see later, both the octopus eye and the vertebrate eye are complete, complex, and totally distinct from one another right from their first appearance in the fossil sequence. Biologist Michael Land
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sounds like a creationist when he mentions in passing that the vertebrate eye "shares design features but not evolution" with the eye of the cephalopod mollusks such as the octopus.
The real focus of Land's article, however, is "divergence," the occurrence of quite distinct structures in plants and animals that otherwise are supposed to be close evolutionary relatives. Certain shrimp-like animals that live in deep ocean darkness, he says, have compound eyes with lenses all arranged to focus light at a common point (rather than forming multiple images, as most compound eyes do). But, he continues, some members of the group have "lens cylinders" that smoothly bend the incoming light (because of smoothly varied refractive indices), whereas others have square facets with a "mirror system" for focus (utilizing even a double-corner bounce). Ingenious use of physics and geometry should be evidence enough of creation it seems to me — but there's more.
Comparing the mirrors with the lens cylinder system, Land says, "Both are successful and very sophisticated image-forming devices, but I cannot imagine an intermediate form [or common ancestral type] that would work at all." The kind of design in these eyes, he says, seems impossible to explain as a result of evolutionary relationship. So Land goes on to suggest that the shrimp-like animals with different systems should not be classified as evolutionary relatives, even though they are otherwise quite similar.
Even more interesting is Land's statement about how he felt when he was trying to figure out the mirror system. He said he was "trying not to come to the conclusion that these eyes had been put there by God to confuse scientists." They may confuse evolutionists, but may I suggest instead that these eyes were put there by God to
inform
scientists. As such cases show, a mind open to examples of created order can hasten and enrich the scientific search for understanding.
Some evolutionists admit they have failed to find good evidence of evolution in comparing large structures, so they are looking instead for homology among molecules. In a foundational book basically describing the three-dimensional structures first known for proteins, Dickerson and Geis
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state that "from the perfection of protein sequence and structure analysis…. We can pin down with great precision the relationships between the species and how the proteins evolved." Then, with every example they give, they proceed to
disprove
that evolutionary prediction.
Consider hemoglobin, for example, the protein that carries oxygen in red blood cells. Dickerson says that hemoglobins pose "a puzzling problem. Hemoglobins occur sporadically among the invertebrate phyla [the animals without backbones] in no obvious pattern." That is, they don't occur in an evolutionary
branching
pattern. I would suggest that they
do
occur in a creationist
mosaic
or
modular
pattern, like bits of blue-colored stone in an artist's mosaic. We find hemoglobin in nearly all vertebrates, but we also find it in some annelids (the earthworm group), some echinoderms (the starfish group), some mollusks (the clam group), some arthropods (the insect group), and even in some bacteria! In all these cases, we find the same kind of molecule — complete and fully functional. As Dickerson observes, "It is hard to see a common line of descent snaking in so unsystematic a way through so many different phyla…."