If Humans and Chimps Are 15 Percent Genetically Different, What Difference Does That Make?

Think about how often you've heard it said that the genetic difference between human beings and chimpanzees is only slightly more than 1 percent, and therefore humans are 99 percent similar to chimps.  It is also said that this proves that chimps--and also bonobos--are our closest living evolutionary relatives.  This seems to be confirmed by the fact that chimpanzees and bonobos are more genetically similar to humans than to gorillas.  This 1 percent difference between humans and chimps fits the evolutionary timeline of five to eight million years since humans and chimps diverged from their last common ancestor.

But now an article published last May in Nature (Yoo et al., 2025) reports that a complete sequencing of ape genomes shows that the genetic difference between humans and chimps is a lot greater than 1 percent--more like 15 percent!  And yet perhaps I shouldn't say this article "reports" this because if you read the main article, you won't see this claim of a 15 percent difference.  You have to go to the Nature website and print out the "Supplementary Data" for the article, and even then, you have to work through the technical jargon to find the 15 percent difference.  Casey Luskin has posted a helpful article at the Discovery Institute website that digs deep into the "Supplementary Data" to uncover this remarkable finding.  You would think that such a surprising discovery would be prominently announced in Nature and in press releases: "The Chimp-Human Genetic Difference Is Not 1% But 15%!"  I think Luskin is right to suggest that the editors at Nature must have worked hard to hide this finding because it refutes the popular claim about "only a 1% difference" separating humans and chimps.  

Luskin says this refutes one of the "icons of evolution," as Jonathan Wells called them--that is, widely believed assertions about evolution that the proponents of "intelligent design theory" and "young-Earth creationism" deny.  It's not surprising, therefore, that creationists like Ken Ham have cited Luskin's article as proving that the creationists are right to deny that there is any common evolutionary ancestry linking humans and apes.  Ham explains that Bible teaches us that God created the "ape kind" and the "humankind" separately and created humans as a unique kind made in the image of God.

And yet I don't see that this newly discovered "15% difference" provides any support for the intelligent design theorists or the creationists in their denial of evolutionary science.

But first we need to understand how this new research allows us to calculate genetic difference and similarity.  The title of the article in Nature is "Complete Sequency of Ape Genomes."  The emphasis is on "complete," because the first human and ape genome sequences were incomplete.  They excluded extremely repetitive sequences and large-scale structural differences such as inversions and duplications of genomic sequences.  So the first reports of only 1% differences between human and chimp genomes were based on incomplete drafts of the genomes.  But now the complete sequency in this article allows for a fuller comparison of similarities and differences in the sequences.

The authors found two kinds of differences--"gap divergence" and "single nucleotide variation" (SNV).

Luskin prepared this figure to illustrate the difference between "SNVs" and "Gaps" between two genomes.  Gaps represent nucleotides or segments of nucleotides that don't exist in one of the genomes.  SNVs represent places where the nucleotides are different for the two genomes.  In this illustration, we have 30 nucleotides of the target genome with 3 SNVs and 9 gaps relative to the query genome.  So SNV divergence is 10%, and gap divergence is 30%, which means a total divergence of 40%.

If you go to the Supplemental Data for the Yoo et al. article, you will see that Figure III.12 shows the SNVs in comparing the genomes for humans, chimpanzees, bonobos, and orangutans--the four "great ape" species who belong to the Hominidae family.  When the human genome is the "target" genome, the "gap divergence" for the gorilla genome is 27.3 percent, for the Sumatran orangutan it's 16.5 percent, for the bonobo it's 14.4 percent, and for the chimpanzee it's 13.3 percent. 

Figure III.11 shows the SNV divergences, which are 2 percent for the gorilla, 3.6 percent for the Sumatran orangutan, 1.6 percent for the bonobo, and 1.6 percent for the chimpanzee.

If we add the gap divergences to the SNV differences, we get these total degrees of difference between human and ape genomes: 29.3 percent for the gorilla, 20.1 percent for the Sumatran orangutan, 16 percent for the bonobo, and 14.9 percent for the chimpanzee.  That's how we get the estimate of almost 15 percent difference between the chimp and human genomes, which is a lot higher than the purported 1 percent difference.  

It should be noted that these comparisons are for the 44 non-sex chromosomes in the human genome--that is, excluding the X and Y chromosomes.  As compared with chimps, the human X chromosome has a 4.4 percent gap divergence and 1.1 percent SNV divergence, while the human Y chromosome has an amazing 56.6 percent gap divergence and 3.9 percent SNV divergence.

Although this new research shows that the genetic differences between humans and apes are greater than had been previously reported, this does not deny the evolutionary story of the common evolutionary ancestry of humans and apes.  The genetic similarity between humans and apes is still very great--85 percent!  And humans are more genetically similar to chimps and bonobos than they are to orangutans and gorillas, which supports the claim that chimps and bonobos really are our closest living evolutionary relatives.

ALL IN THE GENES?  OR FOUR DIMENSIONS OF EVOLUTION?

There is an obvious problem here, however.  All of us have seen chimpanzees in zoos.  And many of us have seen bonobos if we have gone to zoos in San Diego, Milwaukee, or Cincinnati that have bonobos.  Those zoos often have displays that say something about the 1 percent difference between humans and chimpanzees.  Now those displays might have to be changed to read 15 percent.  But even so, when we look at those apes and compare them with humans, it's very hard to believe that the difference is only 1 to 15 percent.  It's simply not true that humans and apes are 85 percent the same.  The gap between the mental achievements of human beings and those of the apes is staggering.

Most human beings don't believe that evolutionary genetics can fully explain that gap, and that's why so many people reject the science of evolution, and why so many believe that the superiority of the human mind over the ape mind can only be explained by the supernatural work of an Intelligent Designer or Divine Creator.

They are right to believe that evolutionary genetics cannot fully explain the achievements of the human mind.  But that's because genetics is only a small part of evolutionary science.  As I have indicated in some previous posts, there are four levels of evolutionary inheritance--genetics, epigenetics, culture, and symbolism (Jablonka and Lamb, 2005).

The genetic inheritance system is the foundation for the Neo-Darwinian theory of evolution. But genetic reductionism and determinism fail to see how gene action depends on the complexity of interacting causes within the genome, within cells, within organisms, within groups of organisms, and within ecological circumstances. Except for a few single-gene genetic disorders, "genetic astrology"--the idea that genes directly control specific traits--must be dismissed as foolish.

The epigenetic inheritance system is evident in the differences between specialized cells. Brain cells, liver cells, and skin cells are very different, although the nucleus of each cell has the same genome. Their differences are epigenetic, rather than genetic, because they have arisen through their developmental history in which there were different patterns of gene activation and interaction within the cell. This developmental information is passed on as these cells divide to produce more cells of the same kind. It is possible for evolution to occur through heritable epigenetic variation even without genetic variation. Just as a musical recording transmits interpretations in musical performances of a musical score, so does an epigenetic inheritance system transmit interpretations of the information in DNA, so that there is a Lamarkian inheritance of phenotypes instead of genotypes. One version of such inheritance that is now under active study is DNA methylation: strands of DNA are chemically modified during development, and these modifications can be transmitted through reproduction.  The chemical modification in epimutation is not in the DNA itself but in the chromatin marking. Methylated DNA has a small methyl group attached to some of its bases. The pattern of methylation influences which regions of DNA are expressed. The different kinds of cells in the human body have the same DNA, but the different patterns of methylation regulate the expression of DNA.

The behavioral inheritance system is the transmission of information among animals through social learning. For example, among some animals (including human beings) mothers transmit food preferences to their offspring, because information about what mother is eating is transmitted either in the womb or through suckling, so that the offspring inherits a preference for that food. More complex forms of social learning come through animal culture. For example, some chimpanzees can discover how to open nuts with a stone and then pass on this practice within their group so that it becomes a social tradition. Different communities of chimps in Africa have different cultures based on distinctive profiles of traditional practices transmitted by social learning. As opposed to genetic evolution, cultural evolution is not blind but targeted to functional change.

The symbolic inheritance system is uniquely human because it shows the qualitative leap that defines our humanity as based on our capacity for symbolic thought and communication. Other animals can communicate through signs. But only human beings can communicate through symbols. The evolution of human language was probably crucial for the evolution of symbolism. Symbolic systems allow us to think about abstractions that have little to do with concrete, immediate experiences. Symbolic systems allow human beings to construct a shared imagined reality. These symbolic constructions are often fictional and future-oriented. Art, religion, science, and philosophy are all manifestations of human symbolic evolution. 

To explain why humans are somewhat similar to the great apes and yet radically different from them, we have understand how all four levels of human evolution have shaped human beings to be the unique animals that they are.

COMMON DESCENT OR INTELLIGENT DESIGN?  OR BOTH?

Although Casey Luskin is an advocate of intelligent design theory as the best alternative to evolutionary science, he stresses that he is not pointing to the new estimate of 15 percent difference between humans and chimps as evidence that refutes evolution.  As long as the five to eight million years since humans and chimps diverged from their last common ancestor is enough time for this 15 percent difference to evolve, then the evolutionary story of common ancestry is still defensible.  

But still, Luskin suggests, intelligent design theory has a better explanation for this genetic similarity--85 percent--between chimps and humans:  "Functional genetic similarities between humans and chimps could be explained by common ancestry or by common design.  Common ancestry is not the only way to explain genetic similarities.  Intelligent agents can re-use functional code in different designs.  Common design can explain shared functional genetic similarities just as well as common descent can."

There are two mistakes in Luskin's reasoning, however.  First, he mistakenly assumes a dichotomy between common descent and common design, as if they were mutually exclusive.  As I have noted previously, one of the leading advocates of intelligent design theory--Michael Behe--argues (in The Edge of Evolution) that the genetic similarity between humans and chimps is evidence that human beings evolved from primate ancestors shared with chimpanzees.  He explains that intelligent design is required to explain the emergence of the higher taxonomic levels of life (kingdoms, phyla, classes) but not the lower levels (orders, families, genera, species).  This means that the evolution of species could be fully Darwinian.

Behe is an intelligent-design evolutionist, because he insists: "The possibility of intelligent design is quite compatible with common descent, which some religious people disdain.  What's more, although some religious thinkers envision active, continuing intervention in nature, intelligent design is quite compatible with the view that the universe operates by unbroken natural law, with the design of life perhaps packed into its initial set-up" (166).  Luskin refuses to recognize Behe's position.

Luskin is also mistaken, however, in assuming the plausibility of the arguments for intelligent design.  He thus ignores my objection that the arguments for intelligent design are fallacious in two respects.  First, intelligent design reasoning depends completely on the fallacy of negative argumentation from ignorance, in which intelligent design proponents argue that if evolutionary scientists cannot fully explain the step-by-step evolutionary process by which complex living forms arise, then this proves that these complex forms of life must be caused by the intelligent designer.  This is purely negative reasoning because the proponents of intelligent design can offer no positive explanation of their own as to exactly when, where, and how the intelligent designer caused these forms of life.  

The second fallacy is the subtle use of the fallacy of equivocation--in the equivocation between human intelligent design and supernatural intelligent design.  We have all had the experience of seeing how human intelligent agents create artificial products by intelligent design.  But it does not follow logically from this that we have all had the experience of seeing how supernatural intelligent agents create artificial products by intelligent design.

CREATED BY GOD IN HIS IMAGE?  OR EVOLVED IN THE IMAGE OF PRIMATES?  OR BOTH?

Ken Ham (2025) argues, on the contrary, that even if we have not seen with our own eyes God creating everything out of nothing, this has been revealed to us through the Bible; and part of that revelation is that God created all the "kinds" of plants and animals separately, and He created the "chimp kind" to be utterly different from the "humankind," which was created in His image.

But as I have said in my previous posts on Ham and his two museums in Kentucky--the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter--he mistakenly assumes that he is conveying the clear meaning of the Bible and that the Bible's clear teaching is incompatible with Darwinian evolution.

The Bible says nothing about God creating apes and humans as separate "kinds."  The Book of Genesis never mentions apes.  Actually, in the whole Bible, the Hebrew word for "ape" appears only twice (I Kings 10:22, 2 Chronicles 9:21), and never in the context of creation.  And while Genesis speaks of God creating plants and animals "after their kind," it never identifies human beings as a "kind."  Consider Genesis 1:26--"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness."  The phrase "after our likeness" takes the place of "after their kind," suggesting that in being created in the likeness of God, man is not bound by a "kind."  So there is no Biblical basis for Ham to speak of "humankind."

Moreover, the Hebrew word min that is translated as kind in the King James Bible is ambiguous.  In the Latin translation of the Bible, min is translated as the Latin word species.  Consequently, for almost two thousand years, Biblical believers assumed that God's creating "kinds" meant that God created each "species" separately, and that each species was eternally fixed.  But then after Darwin published his Origin of Species in 1859, in which he argued against the "theory of special creation" that God had created each species separating, some Christians began to believe that the created "kinds" in the Bible referred not to "species" but to some higher level of taxonomy.  Then, in 1941, the Christian biologist Frank Marsh coined the word baramin (combining the Hebrew words for "created" and "kind") as the best term for "created kind."  He argued that a "created kind" was not at the taxonomic level of "species" but at or near the level of "family."  This allowed Biblical believers to accept Darwin's theory of the origin of "species" by natural selection while also believing that God had created the "families" of plants and animals to be fixed and separate.  So, for example, we could say that God originally created the "family" of the finches, but within the limits of that "family," the separate species of finches endemic to the Galapagos Islands evolved by natural selection to be adaptive to those islands.

Notice what this means for the taxonomic classification of human beings.  If the "kind" of human beings refers to their taxonomic "family," then in modern taxonomy, human beings belong to the "family" of Hominidae, which includes chimps, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutan.  Even the young-earth creationist Todd Wood (2010) accepts this Hominidae classification of humans with the great apes, although he identifies the "human holobaramin" as the genus Homo.

This idea of "created kinds" was crucial for Ham in solving an old problem with Noah's Ark.  If the Ark carried all the "kinds" of land-based plants and animals, how could the Ark be big enough to hold all of the land-based species--which could be numbered in the millions?

Ham's creationist researchers have solved this problem by calculating that among these land-dependent vertebrate species, there are fewer than 1,400 known living and extinct kinds (that is, families).  This allows them to estimate that Noah had to have fewer than 6,744 individual animals on the Ark.  Once these animals left the Ark, speciation by natural selection within kinds could create all the living and extinct species that we know today.  The Ham's Ark Encounter is designed to show how as many as 6,744 animals and 8 human beings (Noah and his extended family) could survive on the Ark for almost a year.  But notice that this is a speculative reading of the Bible that never defines "kind" in this way.  This is not the clear meaning of the Bible, as Ham claims.  Indeed, if you go to the Ark Encounter in Kentucky, you might notice one display that speaks of the need for "Arktistic license" in making up details in the story of the Ark that have no basis in the Bible.

Since the Bible is so obscure in its creation story, and since so much of that story sounds like a figurative folk tale that was not meant to be a literal account of natural history, many Christians (like C. S. Lewis, Francis Collins, and Deborah Haarsma) have decided that the Bible could be read as allowing for theistic evolution or evolutionary creation.  According to this conception, God created the universal laws of nature at the beginning of the Universe, but then He allowed all the forms of life to emerge by natural evolution.  God is the "primary cause" of everything.  But the evolutionary process unfolds through the "secondary causes" of nature.  Even Darwin himself accepted this metaphysical conception of "dual causality" that reconciles belief in God as First Cause with acceptance of evolutionary science.  At various points in the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter, there are displays that acknowledge that many if not most Christians accept some version of this theistic evolution.

But what about the creation of human beings in the image of God?  If the "image of God" refers to the God-like intellect of man, then we might argue that the extraordinary mental capacities of human beings could have evolved through the evolution of the primate brain.  I have argued that the evolution in the size and complexity of the primate brain passed over a critical threshold so that now there are 86 billion neurons in the human brain, and of that total, 16 billion are in the cerebral cortex, which includes 1.3 billion neurons in the prefrontal cortex.  That emergent evolution of the brain created the uniquely powerful human mind.  We were created in the image of the primate brain.

Even if we are only 15 percent genetically different from chimps, we are different in kind from chimps because we have the mental capacities for language, morality, and symbolic abstraction that they do not have at all.  That's the difference that makes all the difference.

REFERENCES

Behe, Michael. 2007. The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the  Limits of Darwinism. New York: The Free Press.

Ham, Ken. 2025. "Study Finds Chimp DNA Is Not '99% Identical' to Ours." Answers in Genesis. Ken Ham Blog. May 27. Online.

Jablonka, Eva, and Marion J. Lamb. 2014. Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life. Revised edition. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Luskin, Casey. 2025. "Fact Check: New 'Complete' Chimp Genome Shows 14.9 Percent Difference from Human Genome." Science and Culture Today, May 21, online.

Wood, Todd Charles. 2010. "Baraminological Analysis Places Homo habilis, Homo rudolfensis, and Australopithecus sediba in the Human Holobaramin." Answers Research Journal 3: 71-90.

Yoo, Dong Ahn, et al. 2025. "Complete Sequencing of Ape Genomes." Nature 641: 401-418.

The New House Speaker--Mike Johnson--Is a Young-Earth Creationist. Can He Solve the Problem of the Holy Spirit?

                       The Holy Spirit Depicted as a Dove in the Apse of Saint Peter's Basilica

Over the years, I have written many posts on Ken Ham's Young Earth Creationism--the idea that a literal reading of the Bible shows that the world was created by God in six days about 6,000 years ago, and therefore that the Darwinian science of evolution is false.  Most recently, I wrote about my visits to Ham's Creation Museum and Ark Encounter in northern Kentucky, which replicate God's creation of the world and Noah's Ark.

Many of my friends have questioned me about why anyone should take Young Earth Creationism so seriously.  Well, now I have a quick answer:  Have you noticed that on Wednesday the House of Representatives chose their new Speaker of the House--Mike Johnson--who has been one of the leading proponents of Ken Ham's Young Earth Creationism?  Yesterday, the Huffington Post published an article about Johnson's active support for Ham's work.

Johnson is an attorney with a constitutional law legal firm--Freedom Guard--that provides legal representation for Christian organizations like Ham's Answers in Genesis.  In particular, Johnson defended Ham's legal right to ask for sales tax refund incentives under the Kentucky Tourism Development Act for the Ark Encounter.  When the yearly sales tax revenue at the Ark Encounter exceeds a specified amount, a certain portion is refunded to Ham's organization, which provides subsidies of millions of dollars a year.  In the courts, Johnson has argued that this does not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment because it conforms to Supreme Court opinions that have held that as long as a state law confers benefits in a neutral manner, religious organizations that qualify under the law can receive those benefits, because the state is not officially endorsing any religious teaching.  Moreover, Johnson has argued that in promoting Young Earth Creationism, Ham's organizations are exercising their rights to freedom of speech and religious liberty under the First Amendment.  Johnson has also defended in federal courts the right of Ham's organizations to require that those hired to work for them must sign a statement of Christian faith.  The prohibition of discriminatory hiring in the Civil Rights Law of 1964 does not prohibit this because there is an exemption for religious organizations.

But I am wondering if Johnson can resolve the fundamental theological and philosophical problem in Ham's position, which I call the problem of the Holy Spirit.  Johnson has said: "The Ark Encounter is one way to bring people to this recognition of the truth, that what we read in the Bible are actual historical events."  How does he know that this reading of the Bible is "the truth"?  Traditionally, Christians have assumed that God sends the Holy Spirit to guide Christians to the correct interpretation of Revelation in the Bible.  Jesus promised that God would send the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Truth to guide Christians to the truth (John 14:15-16:15).  But since the most pious Christians disagree about how exactly the Bible should be applied to the creation/evolution debate (as well as many other issues), the Holy Spirit has failed to guide them to the truth of Revelation.

The "Starting Points" exhibit at the Creation Museum states the fundamental claim underlying both the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter:  creationists and evolutionists observe the same evidence in the natural world, but they reach different conclusions from that evidence because they start with two different worldviews--the naturalistic evolutionist worldview and the biblical creationist worldview.  The evolutionist assumes that everything in the world emerged through a natural process of evolution, and then he interprets the evidence as supporting that conclusion.  The creationist assumes that the Bible is a divinely revealed teaching that tells the truth about God's creation of the world according to the literal history of creation in Genesis, and then he interprets the evidence as supporting that conclusion.

According to AiG, there is no way to scientifically prove which worldview is true because of the distinction between observational science and historical science.  "Observational science deals with testing and verifying ideas in the present.  Chemistry experiments in a laboratory and the ongoing study of a medicine's effectiveness in treating a particular disease are examples of observational science.  Historical science involves the interpretation of evidence from the past that now exists in the present.  A paleontologist's narrative of a fossilized creature's habits and an astronomer's explanation of a star's formation are examples of historical science."  The "interpretation of evidence from the past" in historical science depends on one's choice of a worldview, which cannot be tested or verified through observational science.

Anyone who carefully studies the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter will see that they implicitly admit that the distinction between the two worldviews is a false dichotomy, because it falsely assumes that there is one and only one naturalistic evolutionist worldview and one and only one Biblical creationist worldview, and that there is no evolutionary creationist worldview.

Some of the exhibits recognize that "many Christians" have rejected Young Earth creationism in favor of Old Earth creationism or Theistic Evolution as more compatible with the Bible.  Ken Ham has even said that "most of the church" denies Young Earth creationism.  Now, of course, Ham and AiG say that these Christians are mistaken in their interpretation of the Bible.  But that's just the point: the Bible is open to different interpretations in the dispute over creation and evolution; and therefore, there are different Biblical creationist worldviews, and some of them support evolutionary science.

Can the new Speaker of the House explain how we resolve this problem, so that the Holy Spirit will guide all Christians to "the truth" of Young Earth Creationism?

And if he can do this, will this support Young Earth Creationism as a Biblical foundation for MAGA Republicanism and a new American Christian Nationalism?

Remarkably, in his first speech as Speaker of the House, Johnson suggested that his becoming Speaker was ordained by God:  "I believe that scripture, the Bible, is very clear that God is the one that raises up those in authority. He raised up each of you. All of us. And I believe that God has allowed and ordained each and every one of us to be here at this specific moment. This is my belief."  Is this the work of the Holy Spirit?

The Cincinnati Bonobos' Answer to the Creation Museum: In the Image of God or Created from Animals?

 

                            Vergil, A Male Bonobo in the Cincinnati Zoo, Born January 24, 1994

                      Vim, a Male Bonobo in the Cincinnati Zoo, Born September 5, 1995

                            Zanga, a Female Bonobo in the Cincinnati Zoo, Born January 9, 1999

After touring the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter in northern Kentucky for two days, my wife and I spent a day at the Cincinnati Zoo.  I was particularly interested in seeing the bonobos.  The Cincinnati Zoo is one of the few zoos in the United States with bonobos.  They have about 12 individuals.  When I taught my course at Northern Illinois University on "Chimpanzee Politics," I used to take my students on a bus trip to the Milwaukee County Zoo, which has the largest group of bonobos in the U.S.--about 21 individuals.

I have written a series of posts on bonobos and how bonobos and chimpanzees are the primates most closely related to human beings, which suggests that the last common ancestor of these primates and human beings probably combined the traits that we see in bonobos and chimpanzees.  Certainly, at the Cincinnati Zoo, the signs posted around the bonobos clearly suggest that human beings evolved from some bonobo-like primate.  

Here, then, the Zoo is challenging the claim of the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter that there is no evolutionary connection between humans, bonobos, and chimpanzees.  As part of the "Starting Points" exhibits at the Creation Museum, bonobos are grouped with gorillas, orangutans, and chimpanzees as "great apes" (CMS, 35-36).  But while evolutionary scientists place the great apes in the same family with human beings--Hominidae--the Creation Museum insists that the great apes should be placed in their own family--Pongidae--so that there is a separation between the "Ape Kind" and "Human Kind."  This is required for their claim that God originally created these two "kinds" as separate, and endowed only the human kind with the moral dignity of being created in God's image.  To teach that the great apes and human beings belong to the same evolutionary lineage, they argue, would destroy the foundations of human morality by denying the moral uniqueness of human beings as the only animals aware of and subject to God's moral law.

But it's not clear that this teaching is grounded in the Bible.  First of all, the Bible never identifies human beings as belonging to the "human kind."  The word "kind" (Hebrew min) appears in Genesis, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and Ezekial 30 times, but it is never applied to humans.  So, the Bible does not clearly separate the "Ape Kind" from the "Human Kind," as claimed by the Creation Museum.  Moreover, the Bible refers to "apes" only twice (1 Kings 10:22 and 2 Chr. 9:21), and the Bible does not identify the various species of apes.  Everything that the Creation Museum says about the great apes being in their own family has no Biblical basis.  This confirms my point that the Bible is not a science text about natural history.

But surely, Ham and the Creation Museum would say, the Bible does clearly teach that human beings are the only animals created in God's image, with a humanly unique moral awareness, and surely this must mean that God did not allow the human species to evolve from primates, which denies the Darwinian account of human evolution from animals.

But if we compare behaviors in bonobos and chimpanzees, we can see that they are more similar to humans than to each other (Brian Hare and Shinya Yamamoto, "Minding the Bonobo Mind," in Hare and Yamamoto, eds., Bonobos: Unique in Mind, Brain, and Behavior [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017], 1-13).  Chimpanzees share at least five traits with humans not manifest in bonobos:  extractive foraging, lethal aggression between groups, infanticide/male coercion of females, cooperative hunting, and male-male alliances.  Bonobos share at least five traits with humans not manifest in chimpanzees:  non-conceptive sexual behavior, mother's importance to adult offspring, high levels of adult play, sharing between strangers, and female gregariousness.

And yet we can also see that human beings are unique animals in at least three respects.  In The Descent of Man, Darwin noted that self-consciousness is uniquely human: "It may be freely admitted that no animal is self-conscious, if by this term it is implied, that he reflects on such points, as whence he comes or whither he will go, or what is life and death, and so forth" (105).  Morality is also uniquely human: "A moral being is one who is capable of comparing his past and future actions or motives, and of approving or disapproving of them.  We have no reason to suppose that any of the lower animals have this capacity. . . . man . . . alone can with certainty be ranked as a moral being" (135).  And language is uniquely human: "The habitual use of articulate language is . . . peculiar to man" (107).  Is the Bible pointing to these three uniquely human traits in saying that humans were created in God's image?

As I have argued previously, we can explain human evolution from primate ancestors through a growing expansion of the number of neurons in the cerebral cortex of the primate brain.  Humans are unique intellectually and morally because of the 16 billion neurons in the human cerebral cortex.  That gives them mental capacities for self-conscious reflection, language, moral reasoning, and symbolic thinking generally, which includes the symbolic capacity for imagining supernatural realities and believing the Bible to be a supernatural revelation of God's creative history and His promise of human immortality with divine judgment in the afterlife.  The Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter are manifestations of that evolved symbolic capacity of the human mind.

My Debate with Ken Ham: Darwinian Morality or Biblical Morality?

When I toured the Creation Museum, I was reminded of the debate between Ken Ham and Bill Nye at the Creation Museum in 2014, which was the subject of a post.  I was also reminded that I had once debated Ham in 2009--not in person but on the online website of Forbes magazine.  February 12, 2009, was the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth.  An editor at Forbes invited a number of people to write essays for the occasion.  I wrote an essay entitled "We Are the Moral Animals," in which I argued that Darwin had explained the natural grounding of morality in evolved human nature.  Ham wrote an essay entitled "Darwinian Dangers," in which he argued, on the contrary, that Darwin had destroyed the grounding of morality in Christianity by denying the moral uniqueness of human beings as created in God's image.  This shows the true motivation for Ham and other creationist scientists.  Their primary concern is not the truth or falsity of the science but its moral consequences: we should accept Biblical science because it supports morality, and we should reject Darwinian science because it corrupts morality.

At the Creation Museum, Ham begins his attack on evolution's moral dangers in the "Starting Points" exhibit.  Are Human "Races" Equal? is the question for one display (CMS, 15).  For the "Naturalistic Evolutionist Worldview," the answer is: "While most evolutionists reject racism, their philosophy is inherently racist."  To support this, the display quotes Stephen Jay Gould saying that "biological arguments for racism" have been common.  The same quotation appears in Ham's Forbes.com essay.

For the "Biblical Creationist Worldview," the answer is: "All human beings are made in God's image and are descendants of Adam, so there is no basis for racism from a biblical perspective."

Although there have been "biological arguments for racism," they have never been properly rooted in Darwinian evolutionary science and evolutionary moral psychology.  As I have pointed out, Darwin was a vehement opponent of slavery who wrote The Descent of Man to show that all human beings were equally human as members of the human species.  Ham and the Creation Museum are silent about this.

They are also silent about the fact that wherever the Bible speaks about slavery, it endorses it.  The Ark Encounter does have one display with the question, Was the Bible Used to Promote Racism?  The answer is: "Sadly, some professing Christians have misused passages of the Bible to spread racist ideas, such as slavery based on a person's skin tone or the notion that 'interracial' marriage is sinful" (AE, 101).  "But what does the Bible really teach on these matters?"  They answer with four verses about all of us being created in God's image, all one race, and all loved by God.

But they cannot cite any Biblical passage that directly condemns slavery.  And they are silent about the many passages that endorse it.  As I have indicated, those who defended the Biblical basis of slavery (like Fred Ross) wrote meticulous studies of the Bible to show that it consistently supported slavery.  To the claim that God's creating men in His image makes all men equal, Ross responded by pointing out that the "image of God" teaching is compatible with a divinely ordained hierarchy among human beings.  

For example: "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them" (Gen. 1:27).  Far from creating all men equal, Ross observed, God here created humanity as "male and female," so that they are not equal in body and mind.  God made the woman "out of the man" (Genesis 2:23); and He made "the man the image and glory of God, but the woman for the glory of the man.  For the man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman, but the woman for the man" (1 Corinthians 11:7-9); and he made the woman to be the weaker vessel (1 Peter 3:7).   Moreover, just as wives are to obey their husbands, and children to obey their parents, slaves are to obey their masters (Ephesians 5:22-24, 6:1-5).  Insofar as slaves are inferior in body and mind to their masters, the slaves are naturally better off being ruled by their masters.  

Ham and the Creation Museum make no attempt to refute this scriptural argument for slavery.  Instead, they have silently corrected the Bible by reading it through the lens of their natural moral sense, which Darwin explains as a product of human evolution.  Their knowledge that slavery is wrong comes from that natural moral sense not from their reading of the Bible.

They also silently correct the Bible's moral mistakes by refusing to even mention those many places where the Bible endorses immoral violence.  For example, in a display on "God's Promise to the Nations," they reproduce Rembrandt's painting of Abraham preparing to kill his son Isaac; but they do not explain that this murder of a child was commanded by God (Gen. 22).

Similarly, while they refer to the Israelites being commanded by God to fight against the Canaanites (CMS, 55), they are silent about God ordering a "curse of destruction," in which the Israelites would slaughter everyone, including women and children, but keep alive the young virgins so that the Israelite men could rape them (Deu. 20:10-18; Numbers 31:7-20).  Previously, I have written about how Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI have condemned this religious violence in the Bible as immoral.  Ham and the Creation Museum do not do this, because in doing so, they would have to admit that the Bible's moral mistakes need to be corrected by our natural moral sense.

The Bible Is Not a Book of Natural History: At the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter

 As I toured the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter, and as I read the AiG guidebooks for these two creationist theme parks, I asked myself, Is this Young Earth creationist history of the Earth the clear teaching of the Bible?  Again and again the answer was No.

DINOSAURS

The first thing one notices outside the entrance to the Creation Museum is a large replica of a dinosaur.  As soon as one enters the Museum, you see the Dragon Legends exhibit, which teaches that the many dragon legends from around the world must be evidence that ancient people fought against dinosaurs, because the dragons look so much like dinosaurs.  In the Main Hall of the Museum, a large variety of dinosaur replicas are displayed.  This is supposed to teach visitors that "according to the Bible, man and dinosaur lived at the same time, and these marvelous creatures were originally created as vegetarians (Genesis 1:30)" (Journey Through the Creation Museaum [JCM], 15).  There are over 30 dinosaurs in the Creation Museum.  At the Ark Encounter, there are dinosaurs on the Ark to represent the 85 kinds of dinosaurs said to have been on the Ark (JCM, 71).

So what is it with dinosaurs?  This seems strange given that the Bible says nothing about dinosaurs!  According to Genesis 1:30, "to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so."  AiG wants us to believe that "every beast of the earth" must include dinosaurs.  But it was not until 1842 that Richard Owen coined the word "dinosaur."  And although people had previously identified dinosaur fossils as "dragon bones," it has been only in the past 200 years that these fossils have been studied scientifically.

AiG quotes from Job 39--41 as describing Behemoth and Leviathan as giant animals that could have been dinosaurs (Creation Museum Signs [CMS], 6-7).  But this seems unlikely since Leviathan is identified as fire-breathing and as having multiple heads (Psalms 74:14).  At the "Dino Den" exhibit, AiG describes many genuses and species of dinosaurs, but all of this comes from modern science, and none of this is found in the Bible (CMS, 192-99).

AiG cannot deny the fossil evidence for the existence of dinosaurs, but it must deny the evidence that all non-avian dinosaurs went extinct about 66 million years ago, long before human beings emerged, because this would contradict what the Young Earth creationists say about the 6,000-year history of the earth and the creation of both the "beasts of the earth" and Adam on the sixth day of creation.  They have to argue that dinosaurs and humans coexisted, until the dinosaurs went extinct sometime after Noah's Flood (CMS, 13).  They do this without being able to cite any clear references to dinosaurs in the Bible.

Apparently, the Holy Spirit saw no need to convey any divinely revealed teaching about the natural history of dinosaurs.  

IS THERE A "NATURALISTIC EVOLUTIONIST WORLDVIEW" OPPOSED TO THE "BIBLICAL CREATIONIST WORLDVIEW"?

The "Starting Points" exhibit at the Creation Museum states the fundamental claim underlying both the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter:  creationists and evolutionists observe the same evidence in the natural world, but they reach different conclusions from that evidence because they start with two different worldviews--the naturalistic evolutionist worldview and the biblical creationist worldview.  The evolutionist assumes that everything in the world emerged through a natural process of evolution, and then he interprets the evidence as supporting that conclusion.  The creationist assumes that the Bible is a divinely revealed teaching that tells the truth about God's creation of the world according to the literal history of creation in Genesis, and then he interprets the evidence as supporting that conclusion (CMS, 12-18).

According to AiG, there is no way to scientifically prove which worldview is true because of the distinction between observational science and historical science.  "Observational science deals with testing and verifying ideas in the present.  Chemistry experiments in a laboratory and the ongoing study of a medicine's effectiveness in treating a particular disease are examples of observational science.  Historical science involves the interpretation of evidence from the past that now exists in the present.  A paleontologist's narrative of a fossilized creature's habits and an astronomer's explanation of a star's formation are examples of historical science" (CMS, 20).  The "interpretation of evidence from the past" in historical science depends on one's choice of a worldview, which cannot be tested or verified through observational science.

Anyone who carefully studies the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter will see that they implicitly admit that the distinction between the two worldviews is a false dichotomy, because it falsely assumes that there is one and only one naturalistic evolutionist worldview and one and only one Biblical creationist worldview, and that there is no evolutionary creationist worldview.

Some of the exhibits recognize that "many Christians" have rejected Young Earth creationism in favor of Old Earth creationism or Theistic Evolution as more compatible with the Bible (CMS, 80, 83-84).  Ken Ham has even said that "most of the church" denies Young Earth creationism (Six Days, 29).  Now, of course, Ham and AiG say that these Christians are mistaken in their interpretation of the Bible.  But that's just the point: the Bible is open to different interpretations in the dispute over creation and evolution; and therefore, there are different Biblical creationist worldviews, and some of them support evolutionary science.

WHAT IS A CREATED "KIND"?

One of the most fundamental disagreements among Biblical creationists has been in the interpretation of created "kinds."  When the King James Bible speaks of God creating living creatures "after their kind" (Genesis 1:21), "kind" is an English translation of the Hebrew word min.  In the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible--the Septuagint--min was translated by the Greek species, corresponding to the English word species.  This led most Biblical creationists, up to the middle of the 19th century, to assume that the Bible was teaching that God had specially created every species eternally fixed in its form so that it could not change, which denied that there could be any evolutionary development of species.  

But then, in 1859, with the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species, it appeared that Darwin had shown how his theory of natural selection could explain the natural evolution of species from ancestral species, and thus refuted the Biblical creationist doctrine of the created fixity of species.  Some creationists responded by suggesting that the Hebrew word min was "imprecise," and that it could be understood not as species but as equivalent to some higher level of taxonomic category--perhaps "family."  As I have previously indicated, creationist biologist Frank Marsh in 1941 coined the word baramin (combining the Hebrew words bara [create] and min [kind]) to denote "created kind."  One could then argue that what God created in Genesis 1 were "kinds" rather than "species," and that there can be evolutionary speciation within a kind, but there cannot be any evolutionary change of one kind into a new kind.  So, for example, the creationist can concede that Darwin correctly saw that the various species of finches in the Galapagos Islands had evolved by natural selection to be uniquely adapted to the Galapagos, but that all of these species were within the general "kind" of finches as created by God.

At the Creation Museaum and the Ark Encounter, the "baraminology" of Marsh is identified as the "updated view" of Biblical creationism as opposed to the "outdated view" of fixity of species (CMS, 19, 31, 33, 35, 95, 134-40; AE, 14-26).  But notice that they cannot cite any Biblical text that clearly endorses the "updated view" as correct.  Here, again, the Bible is not concerned with providing a precise science of natural history.

One reason that AiG has adopted the "updated view" of created kinds is that it helps them to answer the question, How could Noah fit all the animals on the Ark?  God told Noah: "Take with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and one pair of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, and also seven pairs of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth" (Genesis 7:2-3).  The meaning of "clean" versus "unclean" animals is unclear, but "clean" could refer to those animals considered appropriate for animal sacrifice.  In any case, if every "kind" means every "species," the number of animals from every species would be too great to fit on the Ark.  But if "kind" means "family," that drastically reduces the number of animals that had to be on the Ark.

Moreover, AiG assumes that most fish and invertebrates and most non-animals (such as plants and bacteria) could survive the Flood, and therefore they did not have to be taken onto the Ark.  AiG estimates that there are about 34,000 species of known, land-dependent vertebrates in the world today.  But among these land-dependent vertebrate species, there are fewer than 1,400 known living and extinct kinds (that is, families).  This allows AiG to estimate that Noah had to have fewer than 6,744 individual animals on the Ark.  Once these animals left the Ark, speciation by natural selection within kinds could create all the living and extinct species that we know today (AE, 28-33).  The Ark Encounter is designed to show how as many as 6,744 animals and 8 human beings (Noah and his extended family) could survive on the Ark for almost a year.

The human intelligence required to think through all of this is impressive.  Young Earth creationists are very clever people.  But notice that most of this is purely human speculation that has no clear support in the Bible.  AiG quietly admits this in a couple of the Ark Encounter exhibits that refer to their "Ark-Tistic License" or "Artistic Interpretation" in working through the details where the Bible says nothing.  (It is worth noting that these exhibits are not included in the Ark Signs guidebook.)

SHOULD BIBLICAL CREATIONISTS DEFEND GEOCENTRIC ASTRONOMY?

Another example of "artistic interpretation" in both the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter is that they assume that the Earth is a spherical planet revolving on its axis while orbiting the Sun in a solar system with other planets orbiting the Sun (CMS, 120, 144-45; AE, 58-64, 119).  The Bible never teaches this. 

They say that the Bible "includes passages that imply a round earth" (AE, 119).  But they do not cite those passages.  In fact, while the Hebrew word for Earth in the Old Testament (eres) appears about 2,500 times, and the Greek word for Earth in the New Testament (ge) appears 250 times, never in these 2,750 instances is the Earth ever identified as spherical.

On the contrary, from the beginning of the Bible, the Earth is said to be a flat disk in a three-tiered cosmos, with the Sun, the Moon, and stars moving around the Earth, but with no planets and no moons other than the Earth's moon (Genesis 1:1-10).  Like the cosmology of ancient Near Eastern cultures, the cosmology of the Bible has the Earth in the middle, the heavens above, and the underworld beneath the Earth.  The Earth in the middle was a disk-shaped land mass surrounded by a sea.  The Sun, the Moon, and the stars were embedded on the surface of a "dome" or "firmament" that turned around the Earth; so that the Sun, Moon, and stars would rise above the Earth in the morning and sink below the Earth at night (Genesis 1:16-17).  Paul refers to this three-tiered cosmos when he said that "at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth" (Philippians 2:10).  Remarkably, this verse is quoted at the Creation Museum, but without recognizing that it points to a three-tiered cosmos (CMS, 79).

Indeed, some creationists insist that a truly Biblical creationist worldview must be geocentric, and therefore must reject the heliocentric astronomy of Copernicus and Galileo as contrary to the Bible.  Gerardus Bouw, who has a Ph.D. in astronomy from Case Western Reserve University, is one of the leading creationist geocentrists.  Danny Faulkner, a creationist astronomer at AiG, has tried to refute Bouw's arguments for Biblical geocentrism.  But Bouw has responded by pointing out that Faulkner ignores those Biblical passages that clearly indicate that the Earth is at the center of the cosmos--the same passages quoted by the Catholic Inquisition in condemning Galileo for advancing a Copernican astronomy that denied the truth of the Bible.

In Joshua 10:13, God ordered the Sun and the Moon to stand still for a full day: "And the Sun stood still, and the Moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. . . . So the Sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day."  Surely, the literal meaning of this verse is that the Sun moves around the Earth.  As Bouw pointed out to Faulkner, God could have said "And the Earth stopped turning so that the Sun appeared to stand still," but He didn't.  If we're going to say that the language of Joshua 10:13 is meant to be interpreted as figurative and not as literal truth, then why shouldn't we interpret the creation story in Genesis as figurative imagery that is not literal history?

In apologizing for the Catholic Church's condemnation of Galileo, Pope John Paul II and Pope Francis have admitted that Galileo was right to say that the Bible is not a scientific book of natural history because it teaches us "how to go to Heaven, not how the heavens go."  And adopting that Galilean principle of Biblical hermeneutics has allowed the Popes to accept a theistic evolution that sees no conflict between the Bible and evolutionary science.  

Why shouldn't the creationists at AiG follow the example of the Catholic Church and give up Young Earth creationism in favor of theistic evolution?

The Failure of Biblical Revelation in the Creation/Evolution Debate

Last week, I spent two days touring the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter in Northern Kentucky.  These are two Christian creationist theme parks designed and managed by Answers in Genesis (AiG), which promotes the young-earth creationism of Ken Ham, who argues that Genesis 1-11 clearly teaches that the universe was created in 4004 BC over six twenty-four-hour days, and that there was a Global Flood in 2348 BC that is responsible for most of the geological record that we see today.

This denies the modern evolutionary teaching that the universe is billions of years old.  This also denies three other Christian views of creation.  The old-earth creationists interpret Genesis as allowing for the universe to be billions of years old, so that God's creative miracles occurred over a long period of time.  The evolutionary creationists interpret Genesis as allowing for God having originally created the laws of nature billions of years ago, so that God's creative plan could then unfold from the beginning through the natural process of evolution as understood by evolutionary science.  Finally, the Christian proponents of intelligent-design theory argue that a purely natural science can prove the existence of an Intelligent Designer without any appeal to the Biblical story of creation, although identifying this Intelligent Designer as the God of the Bible is a matter of personal faith rather than scientific demonstration.

That the Bible provides no clear teaching about the history of creation on which Christians can agree suggests to me the failure of Biblical Revelation to resolve this disagreement among Christians in the creation/evolution debate.  So, when I visited the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter, I studied the exhibits to see if they could change my mind by revealing the Bible's clear teaching of young-earth creationism.  I had already studied the four AiG books that present most of the exhibits:  Journey Through the Creation Museum (2018), Creation Museum Signs (2021), Journey Through the Ark Encounter (2017), and Ark Signs That Teach a Flood of Answers (2017).

Ham's rhetorical arguments conveyed through these exhibits--and also through his writings--did not persuade me that he has found the Bible's clear teaching of creation history.  This confirmed my original thought that the disagreement about creation and evolution among Christians shows the failure of Biblical Revelation to resolve this issue.

I know of two serious efforts of Christian creationists to find a Biblical settlement of their disagreements.  I will begin by showing how they failed.  Then, I will show how Ham also has failed to do this in these two creationist theme parks.

If I am right about this, then one explanation for it would be that the Bible is not a Divine Revelation of God's truth at all.  But another explanation would be that the purpose of Biblical Revelation is to reveal the truths necessary for salvation, about which most Christians can agree, and that deciding whether Genesis 1-11 is literal history or figurative storytelling is unnecessary for salvation, and therefore Christians can disagree about that while agreeing about their salvation.

There is another problem with the Revelation of what is required for salvation, however.  The Hebrew Bible is accepted as God's Revelation by at least five major religions:  Judaism, Islam, Catholic Christianity, Eastern Orthodox Christianity, and Protestant Christianity.  Obviously, they don't agree about what this Revelation teaches about salvation, which again suggests the failure of Revelation.  

FOUR EVANGELICAL PROTESTANTS SEARCHING FOR CHRISTIAN UNITY

Six years ago, I wrote a post on a book edited by J. B. Stump--Four Views on Creation, Evolution, and Intelligent Design (Zondervan, 2017).  Four positions in the creation/evolution debate were represented by four leading proponents: Young Earth Creationism (Ken Ham), Old Earth Creationism (Hugh Ross), Evolutionary Creation (Deborah Haarsma), and Intelligent Design (Stephen Meyer).  This was the first time that these four people had engaged one another directly.  Each of the four wrote a chapter, followed by responses from the other three, and then a rejoinder by the chapter's author.

In John 17, in the Garden of Gethsemane just before his arrest, Jesus prayed to God that all believers would be as one, that they would come to complete unity, "so that the world may believe that you have sent me."  It seems that Christians give witness to the truth of Revelation by showing their agreement about that Revelation.  In Stump's Introduction to Four Views, he said that a primary purpose of this book was to pursue unity in what Revelation teaches about origins (16).  But in his Conclusion to the book, he lamented that this had not been achieved: "I doubt that readers will come away from this book with the feeling that we are any closer to the goal of Christian unity on the topic of origins" (232).

There are three possible explanations for this.  Either there has been no Revelation (through the Bible or through nature) of God's teaching about origins. Or there has been such a Revelation, but it's so obscure that it conveys no clear message. Or the Revelation does convey a clear message, but human beings have a stubborn bias that blinds them to that clear message.  Hugh Ross says that "since most humans will choose autonomy over submission to God," most humans will refuse to see the clear evidence of God's creative activity in nature (166).  But this atheistic bias cannot explain why faithful Christians--like the four authors in this book--would refuse to recognize the clear teaching of Revelation.  

So, we are left with the first two explanations for why these Christians cannot come to agreement about origins: either there has been no Revelation about origins, or the Revelation is not clear enough to be understood.  All four of the authors believe that God has sent the Holy Spirit "to guide us persistently to truth" (71, 76, 107), but here the Holy Spirit has failed to guide them to agreement about the revealed teaching concerning origins.   

Notice also that these four people are all evangelical Protestants, which is a minority of Christians.  Around the world, the majority of Christians are Catholic or Eastern Orthodox.  And the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches deny the Protestant doctrine of the perspicuity of the Bible--that the Bible is so clear and easily understood by anyone who reads it that each Christian should be his or her own priest, with no need for an ecclesiastical priesthood to teach them what the Bible really means.  The Catholics and Eastern Orthodox believe that the Bible is a divine Revelation, but they also believe that the Bible is so obscure that they need the divine Revelation of the Bible's correct interpretation through the Holy Spirit working through the Church's tradition of priestly interpretation.

For example, as I have indicated in some past posts, the Catholic Church originally condemned Galileo's heliocentrism as contrary to the Bible's geocentrism; but later the Church apologized for its mistake and endorsed Galileo's biblical hermeneutics--rejecting the literal interpretation of the Bible when this contradicts what natural science has discovered about the natural world.  By this same principle, Pope John Paul II and Pope Francis have endorsed theistic evolution--that God exercises His creative design through the natural process of evolution--but with the understanding that the creation of the human immortal soul requires an "ontological leap"--God's miraculous intervention into nature to create the spiritual soul in His image.  

In response to this, I have argued that no miracle is required here if we see the emergence of the human soul in the human brain that is unique in having 16 billion neurons in the cerebral cortex, which includes 1.3 billion neurons in the prefrontal cortex.  This gives human brains the capacity for symbolic thinking about imagined realities such as the supernatural creation of human beings in God's image.

CHRISTIAN FRIENDS OR MORTAL ENEMIES?  TODD WOOD AND DARREL FALK

The debate over whether evolutionary science is compatible with Biblical creation is one of many "culture war" conflicts that divide Christians and sometimes even drive their churches and schools into angry disputes between "us" and "them."  The Colossian Forum is an evangelical Christian organization designed to teach Christians how to think about and resolve these disagreements in a way that heals their divisions and brings them together into a loving Christian community.  The Colossian Forum directs its attention mostly to four kinds of disruptive disputes among Christians: "Faith and Politics," "Sexuality," "Origins," and "Women and Men."  The Biblical verse that captures the thought behind the organization is Colossians 1:17--"all things hold together in Christ."  According to the Colossian Forum, if Christians honestly discuss their disagreements, look to the Bible for instruction, and pray for Christ's help, Christ will bring them together in Christian unity through the guidance of the Holy Spirit in revealing the Bible's teachings.

To show how this could happen in the creation/evolution debate over origins, the Colossian Forum invited Todd Wood (an evolutionary biochemist who is a young-earth creationist) and Darrel Falk (a geneticist who is an evolutionary creationist who believes God created life on earth through an evolutionary process as understood by evolutionary science) to come together for a series of meetings over a few years.  Their discussions were then published in a book--The Fool and the Heretic: How Two Scientists Moved Beyond Labels to a Christian Dialogue About Creation and Evolution (2019).

I have written some posts about Wood, who is best known as a "baraminologist" who studies the "baramins" ("created kinds") that were created by God in the six days of creation, from which all species have evolved by natural selection.  Falk is a founder of BioLogos, an organization that promotes Christian evolutionism.  I have written some posts on BioLogos and its evolutionary creationism (or theistic evolution).

Wood and Falk actually agree about a lot.  They are both devout Christians.  And they agree that there is plenty of evidence supporting the theory of evolution, including the evidence for the evolution of humans from animals over millions of years.  

As opposed to Falk, however, Wood denies that all of this evidence makes evolution true, because Wood's Christian faith includes a belief in the creation story in Genesis 1-11 as literal history that began 6,000 years ago, which means that the evolutionary story of how all life evolved "from molecules to man" over billions of years must be false, despite the fact that there is so much evidence supporting it.  But since the Bible gives us few details about how the natural world has developed, Wood admits, we must use science to understand those details.  And that is what Wood tries to do in developing a creation science that should work better than evolutionary science.  Wood concedes that young earth creationists are mistaken in denying the evidence for evolution, and that much of what creation scientists have done so far is not real science.  But Wood has devoted his life to trying to develop a creation science based on testable hypotheses that will be true science (The Fool and the Heretic [FH], 29, 62-63, 105-106, 112-13, 151-56).

Wood's disagreement with Falk is not so much about evolutionary science as it is about the Bible.  They agree that the science of evolution is well-supported by the evidence.  But they disagree about what this means for our interpretation of the Bible's creation story in Genesis.  For Falk, this means that we must read Genesis 1-11 as a poetic story that conveys a theological teaching rather than as a literal history of the natural world, because this will accommodate the truth of evolutionary science as compatible with the Bible.  But for Wood, his faith in the Bible as literal truth means that he must read Genesis as literal history, and therefore if evolutionary science contradicts this literal history, there must be something wrong with the science, and it should be possible to develop a creation science that confirms the natural history of the Bible.

Another way to explain this is that while Falk accepts Galileo's hermeneutics for interpreting the Bible, Wood rejects it (see Wood, The Quest: Exploring Creation's Hardest Problems [2018], 45-52).  As I have indicated previously, Galileo suggested that apparent conflicts between Biblical religion and natural science could be resolved by understanding that if the clear findings of natural science contradict the literal meaning of the Bible, then we must assume that the literal interpretation of the Bible is mistaken, because what the Bible says about the natural world has often been accommodated to the understanding of the audience.  So, for example, if the Bible speaks of the Sun moving around the Earth, that's because in ordinary human experience, we easily speak of the Sun rising and setting, as if it is moving around the Earth, but that is not literally true.  If the Bible had attempted to explain Copernican heliocentric astronomy, that would have been incomprehensible to the Bible's original audience.  After all, the Bible is not a science textbook but a divinely inspired theological teaching about salvation.  In Galileo's clever aphorism, "the intention of the Holy Spirit is to teach us how one goes to heaven and not how heaven goes."

Wood agrees that when the Bible speaks of the Sun moving around the Earth, this should not be interpreted as literally true, because we don't want to see the Bible as denying the scientific truth of Copernican heliocentric astronomy.  But Wood denies the Galilean principle that we should always read the Bible so that it accommodates whatever natural science seems to teach.  Particularly, when it comes to the creation story in Genesis, we must believe it to be literal history; and if this Biblical history contradicts the teaching of natural science, then the science must be mistaken, and we must look for a creation science that conforms to the Biblical teaching.

Galileo and Wood are attempting to resolve the debate between Reason and Revelation by synthesizing the two.  As with any such attempt at synthesis, they both fail because they cannot give equal authority to Reason and Revelation.  Galileo gives higher authority to Reason.  Wood gives higher authority to Revelation.

Falk accepts the Galilean principle in saying that we must not interpret Genesis literally if that literal meaning conflicts with modern evolutionary science.  We can see that the Genesis creation story is very similar to other creation myths in the ancient near east, and therefore the Genesis story was accommodated to the understanding of ancient people.  Like Galileo, Falk subordinates Revelation to Reason.  (I have written previously about Darwin's place in the Reason/Revelation debate.)

For Wood, this is a dangerous teaching that harms the church (FH, 30, 32, 35, 106, 174).  If Christians are taught that Genesis 1-11 is not literally true but only a poetic story similar to other creation myths, then won't they wonder whether other stories in the Bible--like the story of Jesus being resurrected from the dead--are only poetic stories?  If they can't believe the miracles in Genesis are true, then how can they believe the miracles in the New Testament are true?  Won't this tempt Christians to abandon their faith in the truth of the Bible?

And yet Falk thinks it is Wood who is harming the church.  To claim that Genesis is literal history--that everything was created in six days 6,000 years ago and that the Global Flood created the geological record of today--makes the Bible sound ridiculously contrary to all modern science.  And won't that drive people away from the church because of the perceived absurdity of the Bible?

Rob Barrett of the Colossian Forum has admitted that the attempt to resolve the dispute between Wood and Falk and bring them to Christian unity failed:

"We are stuck in a messy place.  I once asked our two scientists if they saw each other as friends or enemies.  I was confident, after all of our time together, that they would agree that they were friends.  Todd disappointed me when he answered, 'Not just enemies.  Mortal enemies.'  I looked pleadingly to gentle Darrel for the correction Todd needed.  He failed me too: 'Yes, Todd's right.'" (FH, 163-64)

Barrett reported:

"In one meeting, Todd expressed his frustration at the deadlock.  He had come to know that Darrel is a Christian, but then he said that this 'makes it a thousand times more awkward, because I wonder why the God who convicts me for my position isn't convicting him.  I don't know how to answer that question.  So it leaves me uneasy.'  Darrel answered, 'Like you, I puzzle a little bit: Why doesn't God sort things out for you and reveal truth to you in the way it seems he reveals it to me?'" (FH, 189-90)

Well, yes, that's the point, I would say:  The Holy Spirit has failed to convey the teaching of Biblical Revelation to Christians like Wood and Falk, even though they have made the most faithful effort to open themselves to that Revelation.

Or should we consider the possibility that while people like Wood and Falk have failed to accept the clear meaning of Biblical Revelation about origins in Genesis, Ken Ham has succeeded in uncovering the true meaning of Genesis?

Remarkably, even though Ham and Wood both identify themselves as young-earth creationists, Ham has criticized Wood for teaching "young-earth evolution," because Wood has conceded too much to evolutionary science by saying: "There is evidence for evolution, gobs and gobs of it."

Whether Ham presents the correct reading of the Biblical Revelation about origins at the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter will be the question for my next post. 

The Failure of Revelation at the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter

                                              The Garden of Eden in Petersburg, Kentucky

Answers in Genesis (AiG) is an organization founded by Ken Ham in 1993 to promote "young-Earth creationism" as the best interpretation of the biblical book of Genesis, particularly the first eleven chapters.  Young-Earth creationists read the Bible as teaching that God created the universe in 4004 BC over six twenty-four-hour days.  Therefore, the universe is only a little more than 6,000 years old; and those scientists who believe it is billions of years old are mistaken.  Those scientists who believe that all forms of life, including human beings, were created by a natural evolutionary process are also wrong.

AiG also teaches that the biblical stories about the global Flood and Noah's Ark are literally true.  The Flood occurred in 2348 BC.  All human beings today are descendants of the eight members of Noah's family who survived the Flood on the Ark.  And all the land animals today are descendants of those land animals that Noah took onto the Ark.

Ken Ham began his creationist ministry in Australia.  And while there, he was disturbed when he visited natural history museums that taught the evolutionary story of human origins; and he thought to himself that someday he should build a Creation Museum to teach biblical creationism as the alternative to evolution.  When he moved to the United States, he located his organization in northern Kentucky, a few miles from Cincinnati, because he thought that was so centrally located in America that it would be a good spot for his Creation Museum to attract visitors.

In 2007, Ham's dream was fulfilled as AiG's Creation Museum was opened in Petersburg, Kentucky.  Then, in 2016, AiG opened a new theme park--the Ark Encounter--in Williamstown, Kentucky, where Noah's Ark has been reconstructed according to God's specifications.  It's 510 feet long, 85 feet wide, and 51 feet high--the largest free-standing timber-frame structure in the world, with 3.1 million board feet of lumber!

                                                                            Noah's Ark

Beginning in 2007, I have written a series of posts on Ham's defense of young-Earth creationism in his debates not only with evolutionists (like Bill Nye) but also with other Christian creationists who disagree with him--old-Earth creationists (like Hugh Ross), theistic evolutionists (like Deborah Haarsma), and intelligent-design theorists (like Stephen Meyer).  For me, what is most remarkable here is how Revelation has failed to resolve this creation/evolution debate.  These Christian creationists all agree that God has revealed his truth by sending the Holy Spirit to inspire the writing of the Bible and to guide Christians to a correct reading of the Bible.  But the fact that they cannot agree on how God wants us to settle the creation/evolution debate shows that either there has been no Revelation of the truth about this issue, or there has been a Revelation, but it is too obscure to be correctly understood.

The ultimate problem here arises from the fundamental mistake in Protestant Christianity--the founding principle of the perspicuity or clarity of the Bible.  According to this doctrine, every individual Christian can rely on the Holy Spirit to guide him or her to the correct interpretation of the Bible--at least what is necessary for salvation.  Against this, the Catholic Church argues that the Bible is too obscure to be reliably interpreted by every Christian; and therefore, the Church must exercise its magisterium--its teaching function--by enforcing its tradition of biblical interpretation that is passed on to the lay Christians by the priests.  The Holy Spirit guided the writing of the Bible, but it also guided the Church's tradition of biblical interpretation.  If Christians are free to interpret the Bible as they wish, they will fall into endless disputes that will cause endless schisms within the Church, which is exactly what happens with the Protestants, who are divided into thousands of doctrinal factions.  A good defense of this Catholic position is Casey Chalk's The Obscurity of Scripture: Disputing Sola Scriptura and the Protestant Notion of Biblical Perspicuity (Steubenville, Ohio: Emmaus Road Publishing, 2023).

I am thinking more about this now because next week I will be going to both the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter.  I am studying some of the writing at the AiG website and five guidebooks from AiG: Journey Through the Creation Museum (2018), Creation Museum Signs (2021), Journey Through the Ark Encounter (2017), Ark Signs--That Teach a Flood of Answers (2017), and The Building of the Ark Encounter: By Faith the Ark Was Built (2016).  All are published by Master Books, Green Forest, Arkansas.

I am also reading a critical study of the Creation Museum as an exercise in rhetorical persuasion--Susan and William Trollinger's Righting America at the Creation Museum (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016).  They see the same problem that I have seen--that the failure of Christian creationists to agree on their reading of Genesis denies their Protestant claim about the perspicuity of the Bible.

For example, as I indicated in a previous post, Georgia Purdom, a scientist at AiG, says that she sees the world through God's truth--as conveyed by the "clear biblical teachings about the past"--as opposed to seeing the world through unreliable human opinions.  When Michael Shermer questioned her about this and suggested that the Bible is open to many different interpretations, Purdom responded by insisting that the young-Earth creationists don't interpret the Bible at all, because they accept the "clear biblical teachings" without imposing any human interpretation. 

But then in some of her writing coauthored with Todd Wood, Purdom has said that before the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859, most Christian creationists believed that God had specially created every species of plants and animals, because when Genesis says that God created every "kind" of life, they interpreted this to mean "species."  Once Darwin had refuted this by showing that species had emerged by natural selection rather than by special creation, creationists were forced to look for another interpretation of the word "kind" (min in Hebrew).  They decided that "kind" must correspond to some level of taxonomy higher than species--perhaps "family."  So, for instance, creationists can now accept the evidence that the various species of finches found only in the Galapagos Islands evolved by natural selection as adaptations to the Galapagos; but then the creationists will say that all of these species evolved out of the "kind" or family of finches that God created at the beginning and put onto Noah's ark.  So the Bible's language of "kind" was obscure, and creationists like Purdom had to change their interpretation of that word in the light of Darwin's science of evolution.

The Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter don't just display the text of Genesis One declaring that God created every "kind" of plant and animal.  Alongside the biblical texts, there are signs that explain that a "kind" is not a species but a higher taxonomic category.  Thus does AiG try to persuade the museumgoers to accept AiG's interpretation of the biblical text, even as they deny what they are doing by claiming that they are just presenting "clear biblical teachings" without imposing any interpretation.

I will have more to say about this.