This post is for my science-minded
friends, though I think others may enjoy it as well. I just finished reading Replacing Darwin: The New Origin of Species,
by Nathaniel T. Jeanson. (It almost makes me wish I’d continued my
biology studies after college, but God had other plans.) Jeanson
shares a lot of research that has been done in the years since Darwin
wrote On the Origin of Species
(1859), and his conclusions point strongly to a young earth model
that aligns with Scripture. The following are just a few quotes to
illustrate his argument.
“Like
the 18th century, the scope of species diversity in Darwin’s day
was a fraction of today’s variety. In 1859, the scientific
community had no knowledge of the majority of species we have now
documented…
Since 1859, we’ve had time to reevaluate his picture—much more
time than he had to propose and appraise it…
Furthermore, the Internet makes information sharing faster than ever
before” (ch. 1).
In
1865, “Gregor Mendel…
solved the paradox of family trees…
One of the first discoveries that Mendel made was the discrete nature
of genetic information…
Mendel’s experiments demonstrated the fact of particulate
inheritance rather than blended inheritance…
Together, the discovery of unit factors, of dominant and recessive
traits, and of the segregation of genetic information began to define
clear rules for the ways in which traits behave each generation…
For reasons unknown, Darwin appears to have been unaware of Mendel’s
work. Conversely, for equally unknown reasons, when Mendel died in
1884, his discoveries died with him, not to be resurrected until the
turn of the century” (ch. 2).
“Prior
to the 1950s, Mendel’s unit factors had been renamed genes…
The origin of traits now seemed to be just a matter of understanding
the origin of genes... By the late 1960s and 1970s, the first
complete DNA sequences—the genomes—from various species were
trickling in…
In the 1960s, DNA was detected elsewhere—in a different
sub-cellular compartment termed the mitochondria…
When Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species, he had no knowledge of
the genetic processes…
No one had any idea how many DNA differences divided species. In
fact, the DNA sequence of our own species wasn’t solved until 2001”
(ch. 3).
“If
Darwin had no knowledge of genetics, how could he write a book on the
origin of species? …Fossils
don’t directly record genealogical relationships…
Similarly, geography doesn’t directly record inheritance…
Finally, anatomy and
physiology have a nonlinear relationship with DNA sequences…
The problem with inductive reasoning is that there may be multiple
explanations for an observation” (ch. 4).
“Over
the last few years, one of the most critical genetic observations
came from analysis of DNA sequences, not between species, but within
species…
In the parent-offspring pairs... the offspring contained DNA
sequences that could not be traced to either parent…
[They] didn’t just document the fact of mutation. They also
measured the rate. Since the reported units of measurement from these
studies were mutations per generation, these experiments naturally
had implications for the timescale over which DNA differences arose…
The mtDNA [mitochondrial DNA] findings contained in this chapter
called into question the entire foundation of the evolutionary
timescale…
[The] millions-of-years paradigm rests on the assumption that rates
of change have been largely constant. Yet, in the field of genetics,
the assumption of constant rates of change…
yields a 6,000-year timescale, not an ancient one” (ch. 7).
“Unlike
mtDNA, nuclear DNA has been much more difficult to compare across
species…
Too few results have been obtained to see a general pattern of what
precise percentage of nuclear DNA differences are preexisting, and
what percentage are due to mutation…
[The] results that have been obtained thus far for the YEC
[Young-Earth Creationist] model suggest that the majority—if not
the vast majority—of nuclear DNA differences in species were
preexisting [i.e. created at a point in time]” (ch. 8).
I’ll
leave you to read the details for yourself if you’re interested. (I
would recommend getting the physical book so his charts can be seen
correctly.) You can also check out the Institute for Creation Research and Answers in Genesis. I’ll close by saying that his arguments have gone a
long way in changing my own interpretation of our origins from a
generally theistic evolutionary position to a more literal reading of
the Creation narrative in Scripture. To use Jeanson’s analogy, we
simply do not have all the pieces of the puzzle yet and we can easily
misinterpret the picture from the pieces we do have.
“Such knowledge is too
wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it... Wonderful are
Your works; my soul knows it very well” (Psalm 139:6, 14b).
--
© 2019 Dawn
Rutan. Cover photo courtesy of Amazon.com. The opinions stated do not
necessarily reflect the views of my church or employer.
