“Evolution from a common ancestor, via DNA changes, is very well supported” (p. 12).
“[O]ne leg of Darwinʼs theory—common descent—is correct” (p. 65).
Young-Cosmos Creationists with higher degrees in the sciences admit that evolution is not a “theory in crisis,” and the evidence generally does favor an old-cosmos and evolution. They even add that less highly educated young-earth creationists are prone to speaking ignorantly on the topic.
Todd Wood is a young earth creationist with a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Virginia (Charlottesville, 1999). Toddʼs Ph.D. advisor was the famous Dr. William Pearson, the original developer of the widely popular FASTA suite of computer programs used for DNA analyses. When providing a reference for Todd in his subsequent academic position application, Dr. Pearson stated “he was the best graduate student I ever had.” Immediately following his Ph.D. work at Virginia, Dr. Wood accepted a position as the Director of Bioinformatics at the Clemson University Genomics Institute (Clemson, SC) which at that time, was directed by Dr. Rod Wing, a world famous scientist in the field of plant genomics. So Todd knows genes. He also does not think evolution is a theory about to collapse. In fact he wrote a paper pointing out the problem for creationism of the close genetic similarity between humans and chimps:
The Chimpanzee Genome and the Problem of Biological Similarity
See Toddʼs other admissions concerning evolution here: “Why Arenʼt More Biologists Intelligent Design Advocates? Hereʼs 6 Likely Reasons”
And here: “The cat genome: what does it say about domesticated moggies?”
Wood admits that our genome is nearer to chimps than some species of cats are to one another, yet creationists accept that cats evolved from a common ancestor. So why not humans and chimps? In fact our genome is as near to chimps as sibling species of fruit flies are to one another. Yet creationists admit sibling species of fruit flies evolved from a common ancestor.
DENNIS VENEMA is an ex-I.D.ist, Ph.D. biologist (and Christian), who often critiques I.D. arguments and explains how strong the evidence for evolution is in series of articles at the Christian website, BIOLOGOS. See his latest series!
There is far more genetic diversity in the human genome than previously thought. Thereʼs tons of neutral mutations and also some interesting ones found among limited numbers of people today, like mutations that grant people the ability to recognize more colors, tastes or smells.
The mutation that led to the ability to digest milk sugar spread quickly after the domestication of cattle and the drinking of milk began, but has not yet spread to everyone on earth, especially some people in parts of Asia.
The fact of such genetic diversity is handy in that it refutes a recent global flood:
Speaking of genetic diversity, all the cells in your body are not uniquely your own. Your DNA and identity are not as entwined as once thought. In fact most people have multiple genomes floating around inside them! “DNA Double Take.”. I am sure this is as confusing for creationists as the fact that some people are born with stripes of both testicular and ovarian tissue in their gonads (are they males or females?) Nature is basically one big experiment, always mutating.
When the complete DNA of one human being was first sequenced in 2000, it was considered to be “the” human genome. Soon after, researchers began to explore the differences between individuals, launching the era of the “personal genome.” Now science is entering the age of the microgenome, in which research begins to explore the worlds within us, examining our inherent imperfections and contradictions, the multitudes we contain. Even though each of your cells supposedly contains a replica of the DNA in the fertilized egg that began your life, mutations, copying errors and editing mistakes began modifying that code as soon as your zygote self began to divide. In your adult body, your DNA is peppered by pinpoint mutations, riddled with repeated or rearranged or missing information, even lacking huge chromosome-sized chunks. This DNA diversity is called “somatic mutation” or “structural variation.” Yet it functions, as all jury-rigged evolutionary things do.
The computerized comparison of genomes of many vertebrate species from fish to reptiles to mammals and humans, has uncovered evidence that the vertebrate genome leading from jawless fish to humans underwent at least two rounds of WGD (Whole Genome Duplication) events in the past. Thatʼs not just an extra chromosome or gene that is duplicated, but the entire genome is duplicated, with subsequent whittling down of the genome as the duplicated genes are either eliminated or mutate and find other uses. But wow, thatʼs a big mutation, duplicating the entire genome, and then that genome was slowly whittled down by further mutations and natural selection.
Gene and genome duplication have been thought to play an import part during evolution since the 1930s (Bridges 1936; Stephens 1951; Ohno 1970) . Ohno (1970) proposed that the increased complexity and genome size of vertebrates has resulted from two rounds (2R) of whole genome duplication (WGD) in early vertebrate evolution, which provided raw materials for the evolutionary diversification of vertebrates. Recent genomic sequence data provide substantial evidence for the abundance of duplicated genes in many organisms. Extensive comparative genomics studies have demonstrated that teleost fish experienced another round of genome duplication, the so-called fish-specific genome duplication (FSGD) (Amores et al. 1998; Taylor et al. 2003; Meyer and Van de Peer 2005). Because the timing of this WGD and the radiation of teleost species approximately coincided, it has been suggested that the large number (about 27,000 species—more than half of all vertebrate species (Nelson, 2006)) of teleosts and their tremendous morphological diversity might be causally related to the FSGD event (Amores et al. 1998; Taylor et al. 2001; Taylor et al. 2003; Christoffels et al. 2004; Hoegg et al. 2004; Vandepoele et al. 2004). Semon and Wolfe (2007) showed thousands of genes that remained duplicated When Tetraodon and zebrafish diverged underwent reciprocal loss subsequently in these two species may have been associated with reproductive isolation between teleosts and eventually contributed to teleost diversification. (See this PDF).
Gene duplication is a major force of evolution and plays a critical role in increasing complexity, and two rounds of whole genome duplication (WGD) have been proposed to occur during vertebrate evolution [1]… One whole genome duplication (WGD) event in the fish ancestor generated genome-wide duplicates in all modern species… Duplicated genes may adopt three major modes of evolutionary divergence: loss by deleterious mutations (nonfunctionalization), acquisition of a new adaptive function (neofunctionalization) or division of an ancestral function (subfunctionalization). The role of gene duplication in evolution is perhaps best illustrated by the growth hormone (GH)-prolactin (PRL) family. This family has arisen from a single ancestor by gene duplication followed by extensive functional divergence. Although GH retains the original role in growth control in all vertebrate species, the other members have distinctive functions between fish and mammals: PRL is important for the mammary gland in mammals but for osmoregulation in fish…They also exhibit differences in expression pattern… Fish models provide an ideal system to study the modes and mechanisms of duplicated genesʼ evolution in vertebrates. After split from the tetrapod lineage, fish has undergone a third WGD event in the common ancestor of all modern-day teleosts. Interestingly, the resultant genome-wide gene duplicates usually coexist, leading to more genes in fish…
Two whole-genome duplications likely occurred before the divergence of ancestral lamprey and gnathostome lineages. Moreover, the results help define key evolutionary events within vertebrate lineages, including the origin of myelin-associated proteins and the development of appendages. The lamprey genome provides an important resource for reconstructing vertebrate origins and the evolutionary events that have shaped the genomes of extant organisms.
Scientists have suspected that spare parts in the genome — extra copies of functional genes that arise when genes or whole genomes get duplicated — might sometimes provide the raw materials for the evolution of new traits. Now, researchers report that they have discovered a prime example of this in fish.
Fish genomes provide an ideal context in which to examine the consequences of WGD.
Fugu Genome Analysis Provides Evidence for a Whole-Genome Duplication Early During the Evolution of Ray-Finned Fishes [with about 24,000 extant species, teleosts are the largest group of vertebrates. They constitute more than 99% of the ray-finned fishes (Actinopterygii) that diverged from the lobe-finned fish lineage (Sarcopterygii) about 450 MYA]
The rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) is raised in aquaculture the world over and is among the most studied fish species. Scientists in France have now sequenced its genome, uncovering evidence of whole-genome duplications that were landmarks of vertebrate evolution and the divergence of teleost fish. The team uncovered and examined two copies of the ancestral salmonid genome within the rainbow trout genome, and used it to infer evolutionary relationships between the fish.
“Due to a relatively recent WGD [whole-genome duplication], the rainbow trout thus provides a unique opportunity to better understand the early steps of gene fractionation,” the rearrangement of the genome following duplication, the researchers wrote in Nature Communications this week (April 22). They added that their results challenge the hypothesis that whole-genome duplications are “followed by massive and rapid genomic reorganizations and gene deletions.”
Vertebrate evolution has been shaped by several rounds of whole-genome duplications (WGDs) that are often suggested to be associated with adaptive radiations and evolutionary innovations. Due to an additional round of WGD, the rainbow trout genome offers a unique opportunity to investigate the early evolutionary fate of a duplicated vertebrate genome. Here we show that after 100 million years of evolution the two ancestral subgenomes have remained extremely collinear, despite the loss of half of the duplicated protein-coding genes, mostly through pseudogenization. In striking contrast is the fate of miRNA genes that have almost all been retained as duplicated copies. The slow and stepwise rediploidization process characterized here challenges the current hypothesis that WGD is followed by massive and rapid genomic reorganizations and gene deletions.
Gene duplication has had a major impact on genome evolution. Localized (or tandem) duplication resulting from unequal crossing over and whole genome duplication are believed to be the two dominant mechanisms contributing to vertebrate genome evolution. While much scrutiny has been directed toward discerning patterns indicative of whole-genome duplication events in teleost species, less attention has been paid to the continuous nature of gene duplications and their impact on the size, gene content, functional diversity, and overall architecture of teleost genomes… Conclusions: We have analyzed gene duplication patterns and duplication types among the available teleost genomes and found that a large number of genes were tandemly and intrachromosomally duplicated, suggesting their origin of independent and continuous duplication. This is particularly true for the zebrafish genome. Further analysis of the duplicated gene sets indicated that a significant portion of duplicated genes in the zebrafish genome were of recent, lineage-specific duplication events. Most strikingly, a subset of duplicated genes is enriched among the recently duplicated genes involved in immune or sensory response pathways. Such findings demonstrated the significance of continuous gene duplication as well as that of whole genome duplication in the course of genome evolution.
Scientists who sequenced the Amborella genome say that it provides conclusive evidence that the ancestor of all flowering plants, including Amborella, evolved following a “genome doubling event” that occurred about 200 million years ago. Some duplicated genes were lost over time but others took on new functions, including contributions to the development of floral organs. “Genome doubling may, therefore, offer an explanation to Darwinʼs ‘abominable mystery’—the apparently abrupt proliferation of new species of flowering plants in fossil records dating to the Cretaceous period,” said Claude dePamphilis of Penn State University. “Generations of scientists have worked to solve this puzzle,” he added. Comparative analyses of the Amborella genome are already providing scientists with a new perspective on the genetic origins of important traits in all flowering plants—including all major food crop species. “Because of Amborellaʼs pivotal phylogenetic position, it is an evolutionary reference genome that allows us to better understand genome changes in those flowering plants that evolved later, including genome evolution of our many crop plants—hence, it will be essential for crop improvement,” stressed Doug Soltis of the University of Florida…
Human and chimp genomes are Really close when you consider how many differences are simply due to gene duplications. Gene duplications are an important part of evolution. As for genes that are present in one species but not the other, they are not necessarily evidence of an unbridgable gap, especially not in the case of species as near as human and chimp. Thatʼs because both the intraspecies variation of the genome in a human population (overall human genetic diversity) and the intraspecies variation within chimpanzee populations (chimp genetic diversity) are comparable or greater in some cases than the variation between humans and chimps.
Furthermore, many genes have very little effect on phenotype. Even if they code for particular proteins, they donʼt have to be expressed. Much of the intraspecies variation consists of such genes.
Much of the difference between species is also relevant only to the histo-immune system profile of the individuals, i.e, a lot of the variation we see between genomes is simply comprised of genes that evolved to in resistance to pathogens, and many diseases are specific to a species. So there are variations in the genes for immunity based on the pathogens that each species encounters. Chimpanzees donʼt get all the diseases of humans, and vice versa. Neither should one want to define “human” in terms of the diseases one is prone to.
“A duplicated gene shaped human brain evolution - and why the genome project missed it.”
“Regional Patterns of Gene Expression in Human and Chimpanzee Brains”
Remarkable Diversity Of Viral Genome Structures as well as a previously unidentified evolutionary link between unsegmented and segmented viruses.
ORGANISMS CAN VARY A LOT VIA MUTATIONS—A trillion trillion microbes of cyanobacterium hover near the oceanʼs surface and produce half of the worldʼs oxygen. Given their abundance (results pub. in Science, 4/24/14) illustrate their astounding genomic diversity, which is not surprising… Remarkably, within the Prochlorococcus strain in her current study—the so-called high-light-adapted Prochlorococcus—individuals share only about 1,450 “core” genes among the 2,000 genes in each genome. The rest are Variable. (For comparison, humans share 95 percent of their genes with chimpanzees.)… And, “to get these single nucleotide polymorphisms [in the core genes], they need time.”
DNA never duplicates itself perfectly. There are always mutations.
Most mutations probably are neutral, not necessarily deleterious, or they are deleterious and beneficial to only a limited extent.
The experiments that involved shooting xrays at fruit flies were like shooting buckshot at chickens, yes, they produce a lot of deleterious mutations. But in nature the mutations are not brought on by massive doses of x-rays, and the animals have many more generations to sort them out via natural selection.
Mutations do not have to be fully efficient in order to provide some added function. A famous recent example is the discovery of a simple frame shift mutation in a species of bacteria that allowed it to partially digest nylon, a recent man-made polymer. The bacteria did not receive a lot of energy partially digesting the nylon, but that is only the beginning of further mutations. Same with the recent experiment in which a bacterial colony in a lab evolved the ability to digest citrate. It did not happen all at once, but in stages (see Dennis Venemaʼs article, which also responds to I.D. assertions, Venema is a biologist and ex-I.D.ist, and he also has an ongoing series on understanding evolution that goes into greater depth that youʼre liable to see elsewhere on the web.)
Every animal was something wrong with it in its chromosomes. No animals is perfectly healthy, only relatively healthy, and only the animals that live long and healthy enough to reproduce pass along their genes to the next generation and even among those who reach the point of mating donʼt all produce the same numbers of offspring. So a lot of animals along with their genes get whittled out of the process from fertilization until mating—and even those that mate produce different ratios of offspring.
Both animals and plants survive whole genome duplication events, which are the most massive forms of mutation one can imagine, they also survive whole chromosome mutations either the duplication of a whole chromosome, or a chromosome split into two, or a merging of two into a single chromosome. They also survive duplication of individual genes. In fact there are many groups of similar proteins as one might expect via the above mentioned duplication events. And there are plenty of pseudogenes as well, as one might expect via the duplication events mentioned above.
Viroids are fascinating. A single strand of their RNA alone can copy itself in a test tube. And some viroids appear to be as large as the smallest known bacteria. Bacteria also passively absorb DNA. Exactly how the earliest reproducing chemicals, reproducing cells and viroids co-evolved we donʼt know. But all life appears related as we look backwards from the present to the past in the fossil record (the Cambrian Explosion does not appear to be an exception judging by the way the earliest members of many phyla resemble worms, slugs, and/or little shellies, and diversify increasingly over time, i.e., the earliest vertebrate-like organisms have mere notochords, not bony vertebrae nor jaws, they are long like worms). Life also appears related in the genetic record. Though DNA exchanges grow increasingly less possible to trace as one looks further back since bacteria trade DNA all the time, as well as passively absorb it.
If organisms truly were designed intelligently they could continue to interact with their environment and change accordingly without having to compete to leave offspring, most of which die, or they reproduce in smaller numbers than others, or they never get to reproduce at all.
Mosquitoes resistant to DDT underwent a mutation that produced multiple copies of the esterase gene that helps detoxify DDT; But the cotton budworm underwent a mutation that altered the target of the DDT poison. And houseflies underwent a mutation that altered the proteins that transport the DDT poison. So a variety of POSSIBLE mutations could reduce the killing effects of DDT, and only one of those different mutations has to occur in order for the organism to develop resistance, and of course the organism that survives gets to continue passing that gene along. We donʼt know all the possible mutations that might allow Plasmodium to survive either. This increases the odds that such resistance could occur via random mutations. Also see this recent Take Down Of Beheʼs Argument That Malariaʼs Resistance To A Drug Could Not Have Evolved…
“Natural selection in the time of cholera” — Using a recently developed computational method, the researchers have been able to detect patterns of strong natural selection left behind in the genomes of a population that has been contending with cholera for generations.
Experimental evidence concerning how life began and exactly how the earliest reproducing organisms evolved may be hypothetical but the cosmos does appear like one enormously old experiment continually mixing energies and atoms. The cosmos is quite an active laboratory.
How is I.D. going to prove that such an experiment on such a massive scale could never produce self-reproducing molecules and then living organism? And after self-reproduction begins, itʼs a matter of some molecules reproducing greater ratios than others.
The Inevitability of Lifeʼs Origin?
Snowflakes, sand dunes, tornadoes, stalactites, graded river beds, and lightning are just a few examples of order coming from disorder in nature; none require an intelligent program to achieve that order. In any nontrivial system with lots of energy flowing through it, you are almost certain to find order arising somewhere in the system. If order from disorder is supposed to violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics, why is it ubiquitous in nature?
From the standpoint of physics, there is one essential difference between living things and inanimate clumps of carbon atoms: The former tend to be much better at capturing energy from their environment and dissipating that energy as heat. Jeremy England, a 31-year-old assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has derived a mathematical formula that he believes explains this capacity. The formula, based on established physics, indicates that when a group of atoms is driven by an external source of energy (like the sun or chemical fuel) and surrounded by a heat bath (like the ocean or atmosphere), it will often gradually restructure itself in order to dissipate increasingly more energy. This could mean that under certain conditions, matter inexorably acquires the key physical attribute associated with life.
“What is life-lecture: Jeremy England”
Englandʼs theoretical results are generally considered valid. It is his interpretation — that his formula represents the driving force behind a class of phenomena in nature that includes life — that remains unproven. But already, there are ideas about how to test that interpretation in the lab. “Heʼs trying something radically different,” said Mara Prentiss, a professor of physics at Harvard who is contemplating such an experiment after learning about Englandʼs work. “As an organizing lens, I think he has a fabulous idea. Right or wrong, itʼs going to be very much worth the investigation.”
Yes, cells are complex, and thereʼs a natural reason for that. In fact, recent experiments indicate that replicating molecules that are more complex and that work in series can out-reproduce other replicating molecules that work alone. So complexity appears to be favored even on a biochemical level. See the new book, “What is Life?: How Chemistry becomes Biology” by Addy Pross and these other books on modern day biochemical research into the origin of life and rising complexity in the genome:
Bacteria as well as viruses, ruled the earth all by themselves for two billion years or more before larger more complex eukaryotic cells (of which we humans are composed) ever arose. Bacteria exchange DNA packets endlessly with other bacteria as well as absorb DNA passively when they encounter it. Sounds like a jury-rigged process of DNA exchange on a trial and error and on a massive scale, doing so for over a billion years. What might that NOT evolve into?
The evidence for an OLD earth presently includes:
Individually (C-14)dated tree-rings in two or three separate tree-ring series, stretch back 12,000 years. (Even Young-earthers like Aardsma, formerly with the Institute for Creation Research, have admitted that the evidence from individually dated tree-rings in two totally separate tree-ring series on two different continents, demonstrates the reliability of C-14-dating stretching back 12,000 years in time).
Individually (C-14)dated varves in a lake in Japan, stretch back 40,000+ layers. (Green River varves have not been individually C-14 dated, but that would be an interesting experiment to perform since there are over 2 million layers per ancient fossil lake in that region, and all toll, when you count the layers of all the fossilized lakes in the Green River region, noting the lowest and highest layers in each lake and how the time overlaps in each lake, there are over 6 million layers.)
Deep ice cores feature 100,000 layers of ice — each layer having its own distinctive isotopic signature (and other types of layer-distinctive signatures as well), stretching back over 100,000+ layers. Latest core drilled was two miles deep and contained 700,000 layers of ice.
Evidence of extremely slow sea-floor spreading over 100,000,000 years. New sea floor is seen forming today from molten rock that emerges from a ridge that runs right down the middle of the Atlantic ocean. On each side of that mid-Atlantic ridge, new molten rock continues to emerge, then it cools and hardens, and the date of cooling (as well as the direction and strength of the earthʼs magnetic field at the time it cooled) is sealed inside the rock in the iron crystals that harden there. Then the next strip of molten rock emerges from the mid-Atlantic ridge, cools, and hardens, as the continents on either side of the Atlantic ocean continue to drift slowly apart from each other. This forms distinctive strips of sea-floor rock that run all the way from the middle of the Atlantic ocean (where the youngest radiometrically-dated strips are found) to the shoreline (where the oldest radiometrically-dated strips are found). Such strips of rock along both sides of the mid-Atlantic ridge reflect over a hundred million years of sea floor spreading that occurred as the continents of North and South American slowly drifted away from Europe and Africa.
Moreover, the radiometric dates that stretch from the middle of the Atlantic to the shoreline, agree with independent measurements (both land based and satellite based) of the present rate of movement of North and South America away from Europe and Africa. And such direct measurements of the slow current rate of continental drift are cumulative and more accurate over time, leaving little doubt as to the known average rate. In both cases, the expected time it would take for the continents to move apart at their known present rates of speed equal the data based on radiometric dating of the strips of rock from the middle of the Atlantic to its opposite shores.
Even Young Eartherʼs agree that if you try, as they have, to explain the evidence for extremely slow sea-floor spreading simply by speeding up the process and imagining that the continents zipped into their present positions in a mere “year,” that hypothesis would require a MIRACLE to cool the molten rocks down instantly and in distinctive stages — because if the continents “zipped” along, then the rocks and their radioactive isotopes would have run together like soft butter spread on microwaved bread, neither would the sea floor rocks exhibit the crystallization patterns that rocks exhibit that have cooled under conditions of much lower temperatures and pressures, which is what the sea floor rocks presently exhibit. Moreover, after the continents had ceased “zipping” along but slowed to their present extremely slow speeds, what odds would there be of achieving the same Match between the known range of radiometric dates of sea-floor rocks from the middle of the Atlantic to the shoreline, And the present speed of the continentʼs moving apart from one another today? What a coincidence! The strictly scientific odds look far better that the “continental zip” hypothesis is wrong, and the continents took over a hundred million years to separate, and at the same rate they are presently separating.
The evidence of an old-earth is enormous and defies the “odds.” There are thousands of individually dated tree rings — tens of thousands of individually dated lake varves — a hundred thousand distinctive layers of ice — and, endless numbers of sea-floor rocks formed in succession, having hardened over successive periods stretching back over a hundred million years.
But regardless of the general evidence not favoring their side, the more highly educated creationists invoke various ingenious explanations to explain away the evidence for an old earth and evolution. Such explanations may include the idea of “virtual history,” or, “creation with appearance of age,” and lastly, “the deliberate rejection of Godʼs word” [that does not allow secular scientists to understand and accept the true age of the cosmos]:
Young-cosmos creationist, Aardsma (Ph.D. in nuclear physics from the University of Toronto) believes that his “virtual history” hypothesis is less problematic than the usual creationist excuse of “creation with apparent age.” Aardsma even admits at one point below that “I think there is enormous evidence of biological evolution (meaning extensive changes to flora and fauna)—-again, in virtual history.” But not in real history. Read his explanation of virtual history below and see if you are convinced:
“To one thinking consistently in a virtual history framework, the phrase ‘creation with appearance of age’ seems at best a redundancy, at worst a heresy, and in the middle (just to cover all the ground) an absurdity. So there are, obviously, some differences. I havenʼt had to articulate these differences to many people to the present time, so it is still not easy to explain what I can ‘see.’ In addition, it gets harder to think in the Creation with Appearance of Age paradigm the longer you think in the Virtual History paradigm —- kind of like trying to make yourself play the piano wrong after years of training to play right. So consider the following comments to be a rough draft.”
“The two ideas share some similarity, but differ at a basic level both philosophically and theologically. Creation with Appearance of Age gives the impression that God arbitrarily painted a facade of age over the creation — that He could have chosen to leave everything looking its ‘real’ created age (i.e., roughly 7000 years, by my best Bible chronology reckoning) if He had wanted to, but He chose instead to make things look much older. This immediately raises theological objections: ‘But why would God do such a thing? Isnʼt it fundamentally dishonest to make something look like it isnʼt? Isnʼt God being deceitful?’” (This is where the “heresy” mentioned above comes from.)
“The virtual history view never encounters this problem. It says that the people who are saying ‘creation with appearance of age’ donʼt understand properly what the word/idea ‘creation’ means. The virtual history view goes to the analogy of human creations to try to show what ‘creation’ means. It takes the creation of a story by a human author as (probably its best) analogy. It observes that in all such stories one always has a virtual history present—-grown characters wearing sewn garments and living in already built houses… right from page one of the story. What is implied from page one of the story is a cause-and-effect virtual history to the story, stretching back into the indefinite past. This virtual history in no way contradicts the actual date (in the story charactersʼ time) of creation of the story. (That ‘date’ we would fix at page one of the book, since that is when, in the story frame of reference, the story world comes into existence.) We find by such analogies that an ‘appearance of age’ is inherent in what ‘creation’ means.” (This is where the “redundancy” mentioned above comes from.)
“But this ‘appearance of age’ is not an add-on and is not arbitrary. Try to imagine writing a story which does not have an ‘appearance of age’. After you have completed that exercise, try to imagine writing a fiction story which has a false ‘appearance of age’. I find that it is intrinsically impossible to create such stories. I.e., you cannot have a ‘creation with an appearance of age’ if you mean by that anything other than a creation with its inherent virtual history. To ask for a creation with a false appearance of age (which includes the case of a creation having no appearance of age), is to ask for the impossible/ridiculous.” (This is where the ‘absurdity’ mentioned above comes from.)
“We are living in a ‘story’ God created. God is both author and reader of this story (e.g., ‘For in Him we both live and move and have our being.’ Acts 17:28.) (Note how this works. A story-world has no existence in the book; its existence is in the mind of the author and readers.) Page one opens about 7000 years ago our time, (the only time frame we have access to). This ‘story’ has a virtual history stretching back billions of years. We find this to be the case by computing the time it would take light to travel from remote galaxies we see in the sky, or by computing the time it would take radioactive elements, such as uranium dug from the earth in natural ores, to decay as much as they have. These great ages in no way negate the fact that page one opens 7000 years ago. Nor does our virtual history, with all its dinosaurs etc. negate the fact that we are created. All stories have virtual histories and no story yet has ever created itself—-all have had an author/creator. And the fact that our (fallen) virtual history shows eons of death and savagery and futility merely says ‘amen’ to what Romans teaches, that the whole creation has been subjected to futility by God as a consequence of the entrance of sin, in hopes of its eventual redemption (Romans 8:20). [And, if I may stray from the point a bit, the ‘story’ is still being written/read, and God allows us to take a real part in its unfolding by our prayers and actions—-so the Bible shows.]”
“This raises one more major point of difference, the handling of the Fall. Briefly, Creation with Appearance of Age runs into a theological snag with things like fossils of fish with other smaller fish in their stomachs: ‘Do you mean that God chose to paint, of all things, a facade of Suffering and Death onto the creation when He gave it this arbitrary appearance of age at the time of creation?’ The virtual history paradigm recognizes simply that all creation type miracles entail a virtual history, so the Fall, with its creation type miracles (by which the nature of the creation was changed —- ‘subjected to futility’) carried with it its own (fallen) virtual history, which is the virtual history we now see. We do not see the original utopian pre-Fall creation with its (presumably utopian) virtual history. … Yes, I believe there was an ‘ice-age’. Actually, there were several ice-ages. They were all in virtual history. The last one ended about 10,000 years ago. So it doesnʼt enter into real history, since Creation happened just over 7,000 years ago. Since my work is designed to defend the historical truth of the Bible against charges that what it reports as history is in fact fiction, I have not had much cause to talk about the ice-ages so far. (In my understanding of virtual history and the past, one can just accept what the scientists specializing in these fields are telling everyone is their best understanding/reconstruction of these past events. These reconstructions do not attack the historical integrity of the Bible in any way once one understands the concept of virtual history.)”
“Actually, I think there is enormous evidence of biological evolution (meaning extensive changes to flora and fauna)—-again, in virtual history. Note that the Bible does not say that biological evolution CAN NOT happen; it says that biological evolution Did Not happen. That is, the Bible clearly teaches that we got here by Creation, not by Evolution. ‘In the beginning God Created the heavens and the earth,’ not ‘In the beginning God Evolved the heavens and the earth.’ But none of this excludes the possibility of biological evolution in virtual history. In fact, the teaching in Romans 8:20, that the creation was subjected to futility at the time of the Fall, meshes rather well with evolution being the thing seen in the virtual history data, for the hallmark of evolution is not purpose, but random chance and meaninglessness.”
“The Grand Canyon should also be understood just as the standard scientists describe its formation. It too is a virtual history phenomenon.”
“Virtual history is not a hard idea. Just think about what it means to actually CREATE something. Creating a story is a helpful analogy. Take ‘The Hobbit’ as an example of a created entity. Now step into the book with Bilbo on page one and begin to examine the world around you. Everything you see and examine around you has already, on page one, an extensive built-in virtual history. Bilbo is in his 50ʼs as I recall. So he has a virtual history. His house has been dug back into the hill, implying someone did some digging. If you examine the tunnels you can no doubt find tool marks left by the workmen. His front door is made of wood, implying trees grown, sawn into planks, planed, and fastened together by craftsmen, all before the story begins. And on and on it goes…Bilboʼs clothing with all those stitches, and the soil in his yard and garden with humus from long-dead leaves, …”
“We are living in a Creation. The creation we are living in is a story of Godʼs making. It opens on page one 5176+/-26 B.C. (by my best reckoning so far). The story moves from Creation to Fall to Flood to Exodus to Birth of Christ to Crucifixion to Redemption to ultimate Restoration of all things. This story is our reality, but it is not ultimate reality. (God is ultimate reality—-He transcends the story just as any author transcends their created story.) And like any story, it has, necessarily, a virtual history built in from page one onward.”
“The big take-home point is that evidence of virtual history—-of even millions or billions of years of this or that process operating in the past—-does not and cannot falsify the fact of creation in a created entity. So we can let the virtual history data about the Grand Canyon or the ice ages or whatever else speak for itself and say whatever it seems to say. We do not have to resort to foolishness (e.g., denying the validity of tree-ring calibrated radiocarbon dates) to try to wipe out every trace of any natural process prior to the biblical date of Creation. We understand virtual history to be part and parcel of any created thing, so evidences of such processes do not threaten our faith or falsify the Bibleʼs claim that we got here by supernatural creation just over 7000 years ago.”
Source: “Correspondence: Virtual History”
“Evolution is not a theory in crisis. It is not teetering on the verge of collapse. It has not failed as a scientific explanation. There is evidence for evolution, gobs and gobs of it. It is not just speculation or a faith choice or an assumption or a religion. It is a productive framework for lots of biological research, and it has amazing explanatory power. There is no conspiracy to hide the truth about the failure of evolution. There has really been no failure of evolution as a scientific theory. It works, and it works well… I say these things not because Iʼm crazy or because Iʼve ‘converted’ to evolution. I say these things because they are true. Iʼm motivated this morning by reading yet another clueless, well-meaning person pompously declaring that evolution is a failure… Creationist students, listen to me very carefully: There is evidence for evolution, and evolution is an extremely successful scientific theory. That doesnʼt make it ultimately true, and it doesnʼt mean that there could not possibly be viable alternatives. It is my own faith choice to reject evolution, because I believe the Bible reveals true information about the history of the earth that is fundamentally incompatible with evolution. I am motivated to understand Godʼs creation from what I believe to be a biblical, creationist perspective. Evolution itself is not flawed or without evidence. Please donʼt be duped into thinking that somehow evolution itself is a failure. Please donʼt idolize your own ability to reason. Faith is enough. If God said it, that should settle it. Maybe thatʼs not enough for your scoffing professor or your non-Christian friends, but it should be enough for you.”
Source: “The truth about evolution”
And see this post in which some of Toddʼs fellow creationists wonder if heʼs not a closet evolutionist for admitting thereʼs evidence for evolution.
On the other hand, see this post in which Todd discusses his view of creationism and why he doesnʼt think it is a pseudoscience but a genuine alternative to evolution that needs to develop its own hypotheses and theories related to “baraminology.”
As for Toddʼs credentials, he has a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Virginia (Charlottesville, 1999). His Ph.D. advisor was Dr. William Pearson, the original developer of the widely popular FASTA suite of computer programs used for DNA analyses. When providing a reference for Todd in his subsequent academic position application, Dr. Pearson stated “he was the best graduate student I ever had.” Immediately following his Ph.D. work at Virginia, Dr. Wood accepted a position as the Director of Bioinformatics at the Clemson University Genomics Institute (Clemson, SC) which at that time, was directed by Dr. Rod Wing, a world famous scientist in the field of plant genomics. After working for about two years at Clemson University, Dr. Wood accepted a faculty position at Bryan College (Dayton, TN) in 2002 where he now serves as the Director of the Center for Origins Research and Associate Professor of Science. He helped start the Baraminology Study Group (for creationists who are trying to scientifically determine what a biblical “kind” is). Todd has organized two conferences on baraminology. He is currently an Assistant Professor at the Center for Origins Research and Education at Bryan College and is also active at church, singing in the choir and teaching Sunday school.
And “could turn against creationism.”
Segment from a NYT article (“Rock of Ages, Ages of Rock” by Hanna Rosin) in which Wise admits the fossil transitions seen throughout time in the geologic record “fits the evolutionary prediction quite well” :
The heads of all the leading scientific creationist institutes from several countries showed up for the Cedarville event, along with the movementʼs other stars: John Baumgardner, a geophysicist who worked for 20 years at Los Alamos National Laboratory; Kurt Wise, who got his Ph.D. in paleontology from Harvard in the ʼ80s as a student of Stephen Jay Gould, the nationʼs most famous opponent of creationism; and Marcus Ross, 31, the latest inductee into the movement, who got his Ph.D. in environmental science from the University of Rhode Island last summer.
Like any group of elites, they were snobs about their superior degrees. During lunch breaks or car rides, they traded jokes about the “vulgar creationists” and the “uneducated masses,” and, in their least Christian moments, the “idiots on the Web.” One leader of a creationist institute complained about all the cranks who call on the phone claiming to have seen dinosaurs or to have had a vision of Noahʼs ark. (How Noah fit the entire animal kingdom onto the ark is a perennial obsession.)
Because they have been exposed to so much standard science, the educated creationists like Kurt Wise try not to allow themselves the blind spots of their less sophisticated relations. Some years ago, for instance, fellow creationists claimed to have found fossils of human bones in Pennsylvania coal deposits, which scientists date to millions of years before humans appeared. After examining them, Wise concluded that they were “not fossil material at all” but “inorganically precipitated iron siderite nodules.” Wise later pushed to get himself appointed as scientific adviser to the new creationist museum so he could “keep out the scientific garbage.”
In a presentation at the conference, Wise showed a slide of a fossil sequence that moved from reptile to mammal, with some transitional fossils in between. He veered suddenly from his usual hyperactive mode to contemplative. “Itʼs a pain in the neck,” he said. “It fits the evolutionary prediction quite well.” Wise and others have come up with various theories explaining how the flood could have produced such perfect order. Wise is refining a theory, for example, that the order reflects how far the animals lived from the shore, so those living farthest from the water show up last in the record. But they havenʼt settled on anything yet.
“We have nothing to fear from data,” Ross told me. “If weʼre afraid, it means we donʼt trust Godʼs word.” The older generation of creationists “would come up with an explanation or a model and say, ‘This solves it!’ Iʼm a bit more cautious and at the same time more rigorous. We have lines of possibility that we continue to advance but at the same time we recognize that this is science, so the explanations are subject to change with new discoveries.”
Source: “Rock of Ages, Ages of Rock”
In a 1995 article by creationist paleontologist Kurt Wise he admitted the following:
In various macroevolutionary models, stratomorphic intermediates might be expected to be any one or more of several different forms: – … It is a Very Good Evolutionary Argument… Of Darwinismʼs four stratomorphic intermediate expectations, that of the commonness of inter-specific stratomorphic intermediates has been the most disappointing for classical Darwinists. The current lack of any certain inter-specific stratomorphic intermediates has, of course, led to the development and increased acceptance of punctuated equilibrium theory. Evidences for Darwinʼs second expectation - of stratomorphic intermediate species - include such species as Baragwanathia27 (between rhyniophytes and lycopods), Pikaia28 (between echinoderms and chordates), Purgatorius29 (between the tree shrews and the primates), and Proconsul30 (between the non-hominoid primates and the hominoids). Darwinʼs third expectation - of higher-taxon stratomorphic intermediates - has been confirmed by such examples as the mammal-like reptile groups31 between the reptiles and the mammals, and the phenacdontids32 between the horses and their presumed ancestors. Darwinʼs fourth expectation - of stratomorphic series - has been confirmed by such examples as the early bird series,33 the tetrapod series,34,35 the whale series,36 the various mammal series of the Cenozoic37 (for example, the horse series, the camel series, the elephant series, the pig series, the titanothere series, etc.), the Cantius and [p. 219] Plesiadapus primate series,38 and the hominid series.39 Evidence for not just one but for all three of the species level and above types of stratomorphic intermediates expected by macroevolutionary theory is surely strong evidence for macroevolutionary theory. Creationists therefore need to accept this fact. It certainly CANNOT said that traditional creation theory expected (predicted) any of these fossil finds. [p. 221]
In fairness, Wise goes on to claim that this evidence is “explainable” under the creation model, postulating as an alternative the scientific model that “God created organisms according to His nature” (p. 219), which apparently leads to the expectation of “high homoplasy” – because God, I assume, likes homoplasy.
Source: “Honest creationist Kurt Wise on transitional fossils”
“…creationists still struggle with defining the baramin [the biblical ‘kind’] and justifying baraminology methodology, and evolutionists have found ample opportunity for criticism.”
— Todd Charles Wood, Kurt P. Wise, Roger Sanders, N. Doran, “A Refined Baramin Concept,” Occasional Papers of the Baraminology Study Group, July 25, 2003 Number Three [To be fair the creationist authors do wind up convincing themselves by the end of their paper that they have come up with a new refined concept of “baramin” that can spark loads of convincing new creation research]
Wise sums up his view this way:
“Although there are scientific reasons for accepting a young earth, I am a young-age creationist because that is my understanding of the Scripture. As I shared with my professors years ago when I was in college, if all the evidence in the universe turns against creationism, I would be the first to admit it, but I would still be a creationist because that is what the Word of God seems to indicate. Here I must stand.”
Source: “In Six Days, Why 50 Scientists Choose to Believe in Creation”
And in his book, “Faith, Form, and Time,” Wise wrote:
“A face-value reading of the Bible indicates that the creation is thousands of years old. A face-value examination of the creation suggests it is millions or billions of years old. A reconciliation of these two observations is one of the most significant challenges to creation research. Much more research must be devoted to this question to produce an acceptable resolution.”
Wise acknowledges that he embraces a minority view in scientific and academic circles, including Christian educators. At the most recent national conference of geologists, the creationists numbered a handful of the 8,000 attending; even in an Association of Christian Geologists meeting, Wise was in the minority. The overwhelming sway of evolution in public education doesnʼt bother him. But he sees little support among Christian educators for the theory he embraces. “I donʼt see a day in my lifetime when young-earth creationism will become accepted in the church,” Wise said. “I have no idea how to convince believers [the earth is young]. People who have a particular position on this issue arenʼt at all convinced by evidence.” Adding, “When I talk to an unbeliever, I donʼt want to talk about whether scientific evidence is consistent with a flood or a young earth,” Wise said. “The most important issue to speak about with unbelievers is their status before God and their eternity. [Otherwise], youʼre not talking about the most important issue.”
Source: Baptist Press, “‘Worldview shapes oneʼs conclusions about creation,’ Kurt Wise writes”
Wise also mentions the problems that evolution poses for a creationist biblical world view in his review of a book by Gould:
As [Stephen J.] Gould [one of Wiseʼs professors at Harvard] explains so well, however, a scientifically orthodox understanding of earth history includes many facts that are at odds with the idea that man was a purposeful product of the evolution. Why is it, for example, that for two thirds of the history of the earth, life proceeded no further than bacteria? Why is it that for half of the remaining one third of earth history, life remained one-celled? What is to be made of the possibility that two unsuccessful attempts at multicellularity preceded the one that finally initiated the line to humans? Why was the evolution of mammals delayed for 100 million years by the parenthetical note of the development, domination, and demise of the ‘terrible lizards’? Why is it that it took 99,999 out of the 100,000 units of time in the history of this universe for man to come about? And finally, if man is in Godʼs image, does God look like the ape who bore us? Although not expressly designed as a polemic against theological theories of accommodation, Gouldʼs arguments nonetheless bear upon them. The very nature of God comes into question if He chose evolution as a means to form man. The literal reading of the macroevolutionary history of the earth is that man is an accident—at best an afterthought of natureʼs process.
Source: “Truly A Wonderful Life” Review of: Gould, Stephen Jay, 1989
A Similar Ad Hoc Idea Was Suggested By William Dembski, Old-Earther And I.Dʼist, who suggests in his book, The End of Christianity: Finding a Good God in an Evil World, that “…at the heart of this [Dembskiʼs] theodicy is the idea that [Adam and Eve were real and lived in a paradisical creation, but…] the effects of the Fall [i.e., death, carnage in the world of living organisms] can be retroactive as well as proactive (much as the saving effects of the cross stretch not only forward in time but also backward, saving, for instance, the Old Testament saints)… An omnipotent God unbound by time can make natural evil predate the Fall and yet make the Fall the reason for natural evil.” Dembski adds that an evolutionist, supposedly a theistic one, can also employ his theodicy.
Which brings us back to the statements above by Aardsma, Wood and Wise, who claim that one can be a young-earth creationist and accept all of the data for an old-earth. To them itʼs merely a matter of the young-earther having a different interpretation of the data.
Andrew Snelling “The Creation Model: Itʼs Past, Present and Necessary Future,” at the 6th International Creation Conference, finds the problem not to be scientific so much as “spiritual, a deliberate rejection of Godʼs word”:
“What if there was absolutely no evidence that the universe was young? No scientific evidence the universe was young. Would you still believe that it was young? Why? Because Godʼs word teaches it. Thatʼs the only reason you need to have to believe the universe is young. Godʼs word says it, therefore I believe it. Thatʼs not to say the evidences are not important. Of course they are. Because weʼre commanded to have a reason for the hope, and to give reasoned answers for what we believe and why we believe it. But we must always remember our Biblical foundations.”
“So often we fight over the scientific evidence, but are we winning by leaving out our Biblical foundations? Too much of our creation apologetics has therefore been based on the evidence alone. We need to keep arguing from the level of world views. Because ultimately the problem that people have is spiritual, the deliberate rejection of Godʼs word.”
