Thinking About Galapagos (12): Todd Wood's Baraminology

In my previous posts, I have mentioned Todd Wood's young-Earth creationist theory of baraminology--the idea that species have arisen through a limited evolution of species within created kinds (baramins).  In 1941, Frank Marsh coined the term baramin from the Hebrew words for "create" and "kind."  In 1990, Kurt Wise coined the term baraminology as a label for the creationist science that would elaborate and test Marsh's theory.  Over the past 20 years, Wood has continued to work out this theory.  Notably, all three of these people can be identified as serious scientists.  Marsh had a Ph.D. in biology from the University of Nebraska.  Wise earned his Ph.D. in geology from Harvard University, where he studied under Stephen Jay Gould.  Wood earned his Ph.D. in biochemistry at the University of Virginia.  The critics of creationism cannot say that these men are ignorant of science.

For some years, Wise and Wood were together at Bryan College (named after William Jennings Bryan), located in Dayton, Tennessee (the site of the Scopes trial in 1925).  It should be noted that William Jennings Bryan was an old-Earth creationism, and so he would have rejected the young-Earth creationism of Wise and Wood.

                                                                     Todd Wood

Kurt Wise

Wood has produced this video--"Understanding Created Kinds with Bunnies"--to illustrate his idea of baraminology as worked out through statistical analysis of biological traits to find clusters of species.

Of all the creationist writing on Galapagos, the most impressive in its scientific rigor and comprehensive coverage of Galapagos is Wood's book A Creationist Review and Preliminary Analysis of the History, Geology, Climate, and Biology of the Galapagos Islands (2005).  It occurs to me that a serious project for thinking through the scientific and theological meaning of Galapagos would be to organize a tour of Galapagos on a yacht with 16 passengers who would represent the full range of positions on creationism and evolution; and prior to the voyage, all the passengers would read Wood's book along with some evolutionist writings on Galapagos.  While sailing around the islands, these people could then debate the meaning of their observations of Galapagos in the light of the differing positions represented in their readings.  Hey, I'm ready to go again!

Here's one passage from Wood's book that summarizes his conclusions:

"In contrast to natural theologians of Darwin's younger days, today's creationists affirm a single creation event and a single global catastrophe with recolonization of the earth by land animals from Ararat.  The young-earth creationist framework precludes re-creation of species, 'centers of creation' for modern organisms, and even species stasis.  Thus, the species of the Galapagos were not created in the islands nor in any nearby center of creation. Instead, the Galapagos were certainly devoid of life immediately after the Flood (Gen. 7:21-23), whether the islands formed during or after the Flood.  The ancestors of Galapagos plants probably sprouted from propagules that formed large vegetation mats during and after the Flood.  The land animals must have sprung from ancestral stock that survived the Flood on the Ark, explaining their affinities with South and Central American species. In modern creationism, the question of how animals colonized the islands remains an important issue to be addressed" (2005, 170-71).

He says that he accepts "a chronology similar to Ussher and Lightfoot" (Wood and Murray 2003, 35).  So, I assume this means he accepts Ussher's dates--4004 BC for the Creation, 2350 BC for the Flood.  The evolution of all the species we see today would have happened in a period of rapid diversification shortly after the Flood, perhaps within a few hundred years. He never comments on the problem that the Bible never specifies these dates.

As I have already indicated in previous posts, what is most remarkable about baraminological creationism is how much it concedes to Darwin.  The creationism that Wood rejects--"re-creation of species, 'centers of creation' for modern organisms, and even species stasis"--is the "theory of special creation" that Darwin rejected in The Origin of Species.  Wood agrees with Darwin that the "theory of natural selection" is a better explanation for the species endemic to Galapagos than the creationist idea that God specially created each of those species for Galapagos.  According to Wood, "Darwin correctly deduced that species on the islands had evolved by natural selection," although he incorrectly deduced that all species evolved from a common ancestor over a long period of time (2005, 4).

The baraminological creationists say that the biblical creationism rejected by Darwin was actually "unbiblical," because it misinterpreted the Bible as teaching that each species had to be specially created by God.  The problem, Wood indicates, is that in the Bible's account of creation, the Hebrew word min ("kind" in King James English) is an "imprecise term" that was translated as "species" by Saint Jerome in the Latin Vulgate of the Bible (using the Latin word species) and by biblical creationists generally up to Darwin's day (Wood 2008, 8). But since the baraminological creationists have recognized that Darwin refuted the theory of special creation, they now realize that min should be interpreted as a term for a group of plants or animals at a taxonomic level higher than species, designated by the technical term baramin ("created kind"), which is at or near the modern taxonomic rank of "family" (Wood 2005, 57).  But such a contrived interpretation of the Bible's language contradicts the claim of the baraminological creationists that their position rests on "clear biblical teachings about the past" that require no special interpretation.  Indeed, this baraminological interpretation of the Bible is so hard to see that almost no readers of the Bible saw it until Frank Marsh proposed it in 1941; and even today most readers of the Bible don't see it, and many biblical creationists actively criticize it.

In principle, baraminological creationism is truly scientific in so far as it can make falsifiable predictions that are open to empirical testing.  It makes four general predictions.  (1) All species of plants and animals are grouped into baramins at or near the taxonomic level of families, as identified by a biological similarity that sets species within the group apart from species outside the group.  (2) Baramins do not have any common ancestors. (3) The genomes of the species within a baramin show a genetic mechanism that caused a rapid speciation within a few hundred years that stopped a few thousand years ago. (4) These baraminological patterns are consistent with the biblical account of creation.

Marsh believed that organisms belonging to the same baramin were identified by their God-given ability to hybridize.  Wise and Wood believe that hybridization is a sufficient but not necessary sign for identifying baramins.  Wise and Wood propose that baramins "merely occupy a continuous region of biological character space," and consequently, baramins are identified either by the continuity between species or by the discontinuity between larger groups (Wood 2005, 53-54).  Wood employs various statistical methodologies for detecting patterns in biological traits that show continuity or discontinuity at the taxonomic level of families.

Wood uses this statistical methodology to classify the Galapagos species into baramins.  So, for example, Wood sees evidence that all of Darwin's finches in Galapagos belong to a single baramine (geospizine).  In contrast to those creationists who have argued that Darwin's finches are too similar to be separate species, Wood agrees with the Grants that these finches have evolved by natural selection into separate species.  And yet, Wood insists, this is speciation "within a created kind" (Wood 2005, 108-25, 187-88).

Similarly, Wood sees the other endemic species of Galapagos as belonging to distinct baramins.  So that, for instance, the Galapagos penguin belongs to the baramin family Speniscidae. The three booby species--blue-footed, red-footed, and Nazca--belong to a single baramin. And the lava lizards, the land iguanas, and the marine iguanas all belong to one baramin--the family Iguanidae--that was on the Ark.  In this case, the hybridization on South Plaza Island of marine and land iguanas proves that they belong to the same baramin.  (I have written about the hybrid iguana in a previous post.)

Wood also accepts the Darwinian explanation of how the ancestral species for the endemic species of Galapagos migrated from the South American mainland to the islands.  Wood, however, sees this as part of the migration of animals from Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat in what is now Turkey.

Wood rejects the Darwinian claim that this speciation that one sees on Galapagos took millions of years, because Wood is committed to an Ussherite biblical chronology that requires a short span of two hundred years or less.  For this reason, old-Earth creationists like Hugh Ross have identified young-Earth creationists like Wood as "hyperevolutionists" who believe in "ultraefficient biological evolution" that can create thousands of new species in a few hundred years, which seems ridiculously implausible unless there is some amazingly fast mechanism for such evolutionary speciation (Ross 2015, 116). 

Wood only briefly acknowledges this criticism in a few sentences (Wood 2005, 58).  In fact, it's his only reference to old-Earth creationism.  He doesn't answer the criticism except to say that young-Earth creationists have proposed some mechanisms for explaining rapid diversification of species.  He mentions his own proposal--that transposable genetic elements ("jumping genes") with an extremely high rate of producing beneficial mutations could explain rapid speciation after the Flood (Wood 2002).  But, surprisingly, he mentions this theory in only three sentences in his Galapagos book (Wood 2005, 58, 187, 196); and he does nothing to show how this explains speciation in Galapagos.  As far as I know, he has never presented any evidence that such a mechanism exists. So it seems that he has no good answer to this criticism from the old-Earth creationists.

Another problem for Wood and the young-Earth creationists generally is that they don't have a good explanation for what Wood recognizes as "biological imperfection" or "any biological phenomenon that appears to be contrary to our understanding of the nature or intentions of the Creator" (Wood 2005, 144).  David Hull, a philosopher of biology, once wrote an essay on "The God of the Galapagos."  He asked:

"What kind of God can one infer from the sort of phenomena epitomized by the species on Darwin's Galapagos Islands?  The evolutionary process is rife with happenstance, contingency, incredible waste, death, pain, and horror. . . .

". . . The God of the Galapagos is careless, wasteful, indifferent, almost diabolical.  He is certainly not the sort of God to whom anyone would be inclined to pray" (Hull 1991, 486).

Wood fervently disagrees with Hull:

". . . Based on the preliminary work I have presented here, I would say that just the opposite is true.  The organisms of the Galapagos reveal a wise and caring Creator that endowed His creatures with amazing abilities to survive in hostile and unpredictable environments, despite the influence of sin and the Curse.  This is exactly the kind of God to whom I would not only pray but also trust with my life" (Wood 2005, 199).

It is not clear, however, that this explains "biological imperfections" like siblicide among the Galapagos boobies.  As I have noted in a previous post, tourists who are initially charmed by the Galapagos boobies are disturbed when they learn that Nazca boobies lay two eggs and then allow the older of the two offspring to kill the younger, because only one can be reared to maturity.  Wood says that creationists explain something like this as an imperfection that comes from the God's Curse for the Fall of Adam and Eve.  But as he indicates, this doesn't seem to explain the "intrabaraminic variation" among the boobies: although all three booby species belong to the same baramin, only one species (the Nazca booby) shows this genetic propensity to siblicide (Wood 2005, 144-46).  If the divinely created propensity to siblicide is God's Curse on boobies because of the Fall, why does it appear only among the Nazca boobies?  The alternative Darwinian explanation is that this is something that arose from an evolutionary process that was not designed by God.

Of course, the creationists might say that we can't rightly hold the boobies morally responsible for their behavior, because only human beings were created in God's image, as moral and spiritual beings, and thus set apart from all other animals.  Here is a clear disagreement with Darwin, who once wrote: "Man in his arrogance thinks himself a great work, worthy of the interposition of a deity, more humble and I believe true to consider him created from animals" (Darwin 1987, 300).

If human beings were not "created from animals," but specially created in God's image, as the Bible teaches, then it would seem that the human species should be in a baramin of its own, showing little or no biological similarity with other animals.  One would think, therefore, that this is a falsifiable prediction of Wood's baraminological science.

Wood recognizes the remarkable biological similarity between human beings and chimpanzees at the level of their genomes--about 98%.  He does not admit that this falsifies one of the predictions of his creationist science.  But he does say this is a "problem" for creationist science, for which he has no solution (Wood 2006).

Wood considers the possibility "that God created humans and chimpanzees with identical genomes."  and he says: "Theologically, the high similarity of humans and chimpanzees reinforces our spiritual--not physical (Ecc. 3:18-21)--distinctiveness from the animals. It is the image of God that makes us human not some intrinsically valuable genetic element" (Wood 2006, 12).

By citing the verses from Ecclesiastes, Wood confirms the point made by Hugh Ross (2015, 58-60, 267-68) that there are many creation-related passages in the Bible outside of the opening chapters of Genesis.  The verses from Ecclesiastes are particularly interesting in indicating the biological similarity of humans and animals:

"I think to myself: where human beings are concerned, this is so that God can test them and show them that they are animals. For the fate of human and the fate of animal is the same: as the one dies, so the other dies; both have the same spirit [ruwach].  Human is in no way better off than animal--since all is futile.  Everything goes to the same place, everything comes from the dust, everything returns to the dust. Who knows if the human spirit [ruwach] mounts upward or if the animal spirit [ruwach] goes downward to the earth?" (Ecclesiastes 3:18-21)

Wood wants to see here a distinction between the physical similarity of humans and animals and the spiritual difference, so that human beings are the only spiritual animals.  But notice that humans and animals are said here to have the "same spirit," using the Hebrew word ruwach. 

Was Darwin right about human beings as "created from animals"?  If all the evidence supported this conclusion, would Wood accept it?  Perhaps Wood would agree with Kurt Wise who once wrote:

"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 turned 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." (Wise 2000, 355)

Notice what Wise is saying here.  His biblical faith takes priority over scientific reasoning.  His biblical faith dictates young-earth creationism, and thus he looks for scientific evidence that supports that faith, but his faith commitment does not depend on any scientific evidence.  Therefore, no scientific evidence for evolution could ever convince him to change his mind.  Ken Ham said that in his debate with Bill Nye.  Similarly, Wood said this in a blog post:

"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 I'm crazy or because I've "converted" to evolution. I say these things because they are true. I'm motivated this morning by reading yet another clueless, well-meaning person pompously declaring that evolution is a failure. People who say that are either unacquainted with the inner workings of science or unacquainted with the evidence for evolution. (Technically, they could also be deluded or lying, but that seems rather uncharitable to say. Oops.)

"Creationist students, listen to me very carefully: There is evidence for evolution, and evolution is an extremely successful scientific theory. That doesn't make it ultimately true, and it doesn't 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 God's creation from what I believe to be a biblical, creationist perspective. Evolution itself is not flawed or without evidence. Please don't be duped into thinking that somehow evolution itself is a failure. Please don't idolize your own ability to reason. Faith is enough. If God said it, that should settle it. Maybe that's not enough for your scoffing professor or your non-Christian friends, but it should be enough for you."

"Faith is enough.  If God said it, that should settle it."  So, again, belief in young-earth creationism is not based on scientific evidence.  It's based on biblical faith--or rather on faith in a young-earth creationist interpretation of the Bible.  Someone like Wood with that young-earth creationist faith is motivated to look for scientific evidence consistent with that faith, but that faith is not falsifiable by the scientific evidence.  Without that faith, Wood candidly admits, looking at the evidence would support evolution.

Notice that the content of that faith comes from a human interpretation of the Bible--a young-earth creationist interpretation--that many readers of the Bible will not share.  So there will be different kinds of biblical faith depending upon the different kinds of biblical interpretations that believers adopt.

Perhaps it is not fair to say that biblical creationism is not falsifiable in any way.  After all, Wood is candid in saying that he developed his theory of baraminology as a creationist substitute for the theory of special creation--the theory that God had specially created every species, and that species were immutable--because that theory had been refuted by Darwin.  Wood also had to develop a special interpretation of the Bible that would be consistent with his theory.  Therefore, Wood indicates, the older creationist science and creationist interpretation of the Bible were falsified by Darwin's evolutionary science.  (Wood's concessions to Darwinian science are similar to the concessions made by Michael Behe, the intelligent-design proponent, as I have indicated in a previous post.)

So those who go to Galapagos, who listen to the Darwinian explanations of their naturalist guides, and who then look at the evidence for evolutionary adaptation in Galapagos will see that the evidence there really does support the truth of evolution.  But those who go to Galapagos with faith in the young-earth creationist interpretation of the Bible will interpret the evidence as showing that God created "kinds," and that the only possible evolution has been within those "kinds," as an expression of the genetic potential originally designed by the Creator.

Some of my other posts on the different kinds of creationism and intelligent design can be found here, here, here, and here.


REFERENCES

Darwin, Charles. 1987. Charles Darwin's Notebooks, 1836-1844. Eds. Paul Barrett et al. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Hull, David. 1991. "The God of Galapagos." Nature 352: 485-486.

Ross, Hugh. 2015. A Matter of Days: Resolving a Creation Controversy. 2nd expanded edition. Covina, CA: RTB Press.

Wise, Kurt P. 2000. "47." In Six Days: Why Fifty Scientists Choose to Believe in Creation, 351-55. Green Forest, AR: Master Books. (Available online.)

Wood, Todd. 2002. "The AGEing Process: Post-Flood Intrabaraminic Diversification Caused by Altruistic Genetic Elements (AGEs)." Origins (GRI) 54:3-34.  (Available online).

__________. 2005. A Creationist Review and Preliminary Analysis of the History, Geology, Climate, and Biology of the Galapagos Islands. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers.

__________. 2006. "The Chimpanzee Genome and the Problem of Biological Similarity." Occasional Papers of the Baraminology Study Group. Number 7, pp. 1-18.  (Available online.)

__________. 2008. "Species Variability and Creationism." Origins Number 62: 6-24.  (Available online.)

Wood, Todd, and M. J. Murray. 2003. Understanding the Pattern of Life. Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman.

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. 

Thinking About Galapagos (11): Creationist Ecotourism

As far as I know, Lester Harris was the first creationist scientist to lead a tour of the Galapagos in the early 1970s.  Later, the Institute for Creation Research, founded by Henry Morris, began leading creationist tours of the Galapagos in 2000.  In 2009, the bicentennial of Darwin's birth, the ICR organized a tour of the Galapagos that provided the material for a documentary film--"The Mysterious Islands"--released in 2011.  John Morris speaks about that ICR trip here.

Then, in 2011, Answers in Genesis--the creationist ministry of Ken Ham, best known for its "Creation Museum" in Kentucky--sent one of its scientists--Georgia Purdom--on a two-week tour of the Galapagos organized by a homeschooling organization ("Living Science") in Atlanta, Georgia.  Most of the people on this tour were parents and homeschooled high school students.  Purdom was to provide creationist scientific instruction for the trip.  Purdom has a Ph.D. in molecular genetics from The Ohio State University, and so she is an example of a scientific creationist who is a real scientist.  The aim of the trip was to collect material for a homeschooling instructional program in science using Galapagos as evidence.  Later, in 2013, Answers in Genesis produced a book--Galapagos Islands: A Different View--edited by Purdom that was partially based on the earlier tour.  Purdom wrote a series of blog posts (here) on her 2011 trip.

                Purdom sailed on the Galaxy, a Galapagos yacht designed for 16 passengers.

           A video of Michael Shermer interviewing Georgia Purdom at the Creation Museum


What this shows is that the ecotourism in Galapagos is not just for secular humanists--like those in the tour groups for my two trips--but also for fundamentalist creationists.  All tour groups have to have a naturalist guide approved by the Galapagos Park Service, who will present a purely Darwinian interpretation of what is seen in Galapagos.  But creationists can also bring their own instructors--like Purdom--who can add a creationist commentary.  Moreover, this creationist interpretation of Galapagos can be promoted through books, films, and lectures, and in creationist instruction through churches, homeschooling programs, or private Christian schools.  This supports a vigorous debate over creationism and evolution in countries like the United States, even when there is no attention given to biblical creationism in public school science classes.

The Institute for Creation Research invited Donna O'Daniel to be the lecturer on scientific creationism for one of their tours of Galapagos.  She reports that their Ecuadorian naturalist guide was so fascinated by her lectures that he asked her about God's plan of salvation, and before the tour was over, he made a profession of faith in Christ (Purdom 2013, 86).

So what I have called global liberal ecotourism can allow for an open intellectual debate about Darwinian evolution and biblical creationism in explaining the origins of life and the universe.  A liberal global order makes this possible because it promotes the tolerance and freedom of thought that allows such a free debate about the great questions of life, and also because it promotes the economic prosperity and educational attainment for growing numbers of people that allow them to travel to places like Galapagos and to study the natural history of the Earth and the Universe as well as theological texts like the Bible.  This is one great illustration of how liberal modernity improves not only the material conditions of life but also the moral, intellectual, and spiritual excellence of humanity.

To understand the complexity of this evolution/creation debate, one needs to see that there are many possible positions that one can take.  There are at least five positions.  One can be a naturalistic evolutionist (like Richard Dawkins), an evolutionary creationist (like Francis Collins), an old-Earth creationist (like Hugh Ross), a young-Earth creationist (like Ken Ham), an intelligent-design theorist (like Stephen Meyer), or a young-Earth evolutionist (like Todd Wood).

The naturalistic evolutionist says that the Earth and all life on the Earth have evolved by purely natural processes over billions of years. 

The evolutionary creationist says that God originally created the laws of nature (perhaps beginning at the Big Bang) that have produced by purely natural processes the evolution of the Earth and life over billions of years. 

The old-Earth creationist says that God created the Universe billions of years ago at the Big Bang and then created all the forms of life that we see in the fossil and paleontological record studied by scientists. 

The young-Earth creationist says that God created the Universe and all forms of life about 6,000 years ago over six 24-hour days as described in the first two chapters of Genesis. 

The intelligent design theorist says that the Universe and all forms of life show evidence of having been designed by an intelligent designer, but we cannot be sure by science alone that this intelligent designer is the God of the Bible, and in any case, the science of intelligent design must not depend upon the Bible.

The young-Earth evolutionist says that God created everything in six days--including all the "kinds" of animals and plants--6,000 years ago, but then God allowed the natural evolution of all species out of the divinely created "kinds."

Georgia Purdom is a young-Earth creationist.  In her first blog post on the Galapagos, she observes:

"I will be traveling to the same place that Charles Darwin did over 170 years ago. My observations about the islands may be very similar to Darwin’s, however, the implications of those observations for the past will be very different. I will be starting with God’s Word as the truth about the past but Darwin started with man’s opinions about the past. My conclusions about the past will be supported by what I observe, whereas many of Darwin’s conclusions about the past (i.e., molecules-to-man evolution) were and remain unsupported by what he saw. Isn’t it amazing the difference one’s worldview can make?"

Here, and in all of her work, she follows the lead of Ken Ham, as in his debate with Bill Nye, the subject of my post here.  And, like Ham, she adopts the position of Todd Wood in arguing that the "created kinds" (baramins) that were created by God 6,000 years ago and that travelled on Noah's Ark evolved naturally into all the species that we see today, including those in Galapagos, because God endowed His created kinds with the potential for such future adaptive speciation.  (But notice that in agreeing with Todd Wood, Ham and Purdom blur the line between their young-Earth creationism and his young-Earth evolutionism.)

Also like Ham, she insists that one's inferences from observational science about past history will depend on one's worldview, so that her worldview from the Bible will lead to different conclusions about the past than were drawn by Darwin, who had an unbiblical naturalistic worldview.  So when people tour the Galapagos, they can see the same things that Darwin saw, but whether they agree with Darwin's conclusions about the deep evolutionary history of life will depend upon whether they agree with his worldview.  The naturalist guides in Galapagos have been taught to assume Darwin's worldview.  But a creationist like Purdom can teach her fellow tourists to see Galapagos through the biblical worldview. 

Or, as Purdom says in her interview with Shermer and in her book on Galapagos, she sees the world through God's truth--as conveyed by the "clear biblical teachings about the past" (Purdom 2013, 91)--as opposed to seeing the world through unreliable human opinions.  When Shermer 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. 

Is that true?  Consider this remark by Purdom in an article coauthored with Tom Hennigan and Todd Wood:

"Creationists in Darwin's day were asleep, lulled into a false sense of security by the unbiblical claims of natural theology and 'species fixity.' The Origin of Species changed all that, and the sleeping giant of the creationist community woke up. Though we don't have all of the answers, even 150 years later, creationists have made a lot of progress" (Purdom, Hennigan, and Wood 2009, 75).

So, prior to Darwin's book, creationists believed that the Bible taught that God had specially created all species as fixed.  Darwin's book then refuted this idea of the created fixity of species by showing that species could change and new species arise.  Modern creationists, like Purdom and Wood, now must argue that the earlier creationists were actually "unbiblical" in their interpretation of the Bible as teaching the fixity of species.  Does this mean that Darwin forced creationists to change their reading of the Bible, so that the Bible would not be seen as contradicting what Darwin had discovered about the transmutation of species?  Or would Purdom say that the earlier creationists ignored the "clear biblical teachings about the past" that included the teaching that species are not fixed and that new species can arise by natural selection, which is shown by the appearance of new species adapted to the Galapagos?

In a blog post where she describes cruising near the islet of Daphne Major, where Peter and Rosemary Grant have conducted their famous research with Darwin's finches, Purdom writes:

"The Grants' research has been very important in developing our understanding of natural selection.  However, they often use the word 'evolution' in their publications, implying something much larger scale is occurring than in reality."

So Purdom agrees that the Grants have shown how new species can arise by natural selection, but she denies that this is really "evolution."  Apparently, she is restricting the word "evolution" to "macroevolution at a taxonomic level higher than species," so that the evolution of new species by natural selection is not really "evolution" in her sense.  Here she is assuming Wood's "baraminology"--the idea that God's "created kinds" are not species in the modern taxonomic sense, because they correspond to some higher taxonomic rank, perhaps "families."  But is this really one of those "clear biblical teachings about the past"?  If it is so clear in the Bible, why did it take so long for some creationists to see this--with the help of the writing of people like Marsh, Wise, and Wood?  And why do many creationists today disagree with this reading of the Bible?

The theory of baraminology as developed by Wood runs throughout Purdom's book on Galapagos.  For example, Gordon Wilson writes: "God created the various kinds with great genetic capacity to adapt to an array of habitats.  The differences the Galapagos species exhibit in size and shape from their mainland ancestors could arise after many generations of natural selection (and other mechanisms) that successfully bring out those divinely designed traits best suited to their new home" (p. 39). (See also pp. 53, 62-72, 76-78). 

But we must wonder whether the scientific evidence supports this theory, and whether it is one of those "clear biblical teachings about the past."  Purdom and Wood claim that this theory really is scientifically falsifiable, and that it is clearly taught in the Bible without any need for human interpretation.

So, for example, Purdom and the other authors in her book on Galapagos assume a young-Earth creationist dating of history: the Universe was created in 4004 BC, Noah's Flood ended around 2350 BC, and the Galapagos Islands and all the species endemic to Galapagos arose within a few hundred years after the Flood (pp. 6, 14, 21, 43).  Is this one of those "clear biblical teachings about the past"?  Is this supported by scientific evidence?

Purdom and the other authors often cite verses of the Bible.  But when they give their dates for the 6,000 years of universal history, they do not cite any biblical verses.  They don't do this, because the Bible does not specify those dates.  The Bible does not say that God created the heavens and the earth on 4004 BC.  Nor does it say that Noah's Flood began to subside on 2350 BC.

In his debate with Bill Nye, Ken Ham said that "when we add up those dates in the Bible, we get 6,000 years."  Remarkably, Nye did not question him about this. In fact, the Bible never "adds up the dates" to say that the Universe is only 6,000 years old.  Ham's dating of Creation comes from Archbishop James Ussher's book Annals of the World, published in the 17th century.  Ussher claimed that if we count up the lifetimes of the people in the Bible and follow the genealogies, we can date the day of Creation as October 23, 4004 BC.  Actually, Ussher found it impossible to "add up the dates" without going to historical evidence of chronology outside the Bible, because the Bible never lays out the whole chronology.  Ussher's book has over 12,000 footnotes citing secular sources (like Xenophon and Herodotus).  So the dating of Creation does not seem to be one of the "clear biblical teachings about the past."

The Christian church has generally agreed--as indicated in its early creeds, such as the Apostle's Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed--that orthodox Christianity includes the belief that God created the Universe and human beings at the beginning of history.  But the exact dating of this Creation has never been specified as necessary to the Christian faith, because the Bible does not clearly state the date of Creation.  So the young-Earth creationists like Ham, Purdom, and Wood are imposing their own Ussherite interpretation on the Bible.  The old-Earth creationists make biblical arguments for the conclusion that the Universe is possibly billions of years old, just as most scientists today believe.

The young-Earth creationists insist that the "six days" of Creation in Genesis 1 are six 24-hour days.  The old-Earth creationists insist, on the contrary, that a literal reading of the Bible suggests that these six days could have been long periods of time.  Hugh Ross in his book A Matter of Days lays out the biblical and scientific evidence for this view.  Jon Greene has summarized the biblical evidence for old-Earth creationism.

Does the scientific evidence for the age of the Universe support young-Earth creationism, old-Earth creationism, or evolutionary creationism?  In December 2009, Danny Faulkner (a young-Earth creationist) and Hugh Ross (an old-Earth creationist) debated the question of whether the scientific evidence and biblical teaching supported a young age (6,000 years) or old age (billions of years) for the Universe.  Faulkner is one of the authors in Purdom's book.  The debate was carried out before a panel of 13 evangelical Christian astronomers who evaluated the debate.  These astronomers were affiliated with prominent institutions such as the University of Chicago, the University of California, Cornell University, and NASA Exoplanet Science Institute, Caltech.

After a long deliberation, the 13 Christian astronomers all signed a statement that concluded: "It is our professional judgment that the weight of the evidence overwhelmingly supports a universe that is billions of years old."

Here's a video of the Faulkner/Ross debate:

We might wonder what Darwin would say about all this.  Would he take the side of someone like Richard Dawkins, an atheistic evolutionist, as Purdom assumes?  Or would Darwin see evolution as an expression of what Wood and Purdom call "mediated design"--in which God carries out His plan not by creating something entirely new but by working through the existing laws of nature?

The latter possibility is suggested by Darwin's adoption of the traditional Christian metaphysics of "dual causality," which I have considered in previous posts here and here. God creates the original forms of life at the beginning, but then He allows the "secondary causes" of nature to carry out His plan.  Darwin conveys this in the last sentence of The Origin of Species: "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved."

In Galapagos, we can see some of those "endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful."


REFERENCES

Hennigan, Tom, Georgia Purdom, and Todd Wood. 2009. "Creation's Hidden Potential." Answers Magazine, January-March, 70-75.

Purdom, Georgia, ed. 2013. Galapagos Islands: A Different View. Green Forest, AR: Master Books.

Thinking About Galapagos (10): Finding God in Galapagos--The Divine Creation of "Kinds" But Not "Species"?

        The Charles Darwin Mural on Charles Darwin Avenue in Puerto Ayora, Santa Cruz Island


On the last day of our tour, the Cormorant was anchored in Academy Bay, the harbor of Puerto Ayora on Santa Cruz Island.  In the morning, we went to see the giant tortoise breeding facility at the Charles Darwin Research Station on the eastern end of Charles Darwin Avenue.  On our way there, we walked past the mural pictured above.  Darwin's head floats over the Galapagos, as if he has taken the place of God. 

This could be seen as suggesting something like the "religion without revelation" proposed by Julian Huxley, in which the Darwinian story of evolution replaces the biblical story of Creation.  In fact, Huxley was one of the leaders of the "Galapagos International Scientific Project" for establishing the Charles Darwin Research Station and for making Galapagos an Ecuadorian National Park that would attract ecotourists from around the world.  Part of this project was to have the tourists guided by naturalist guides trained in evolutionary science who would teach the tourists to see Galapagos as providing them the conclusive evidence for the Darwinian story of how all life evolved on Earth as a substitute for the biblical story of how "in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.".  In 1966, Huxley wrote: "It was on the Galapagos . . . that Darwin took the first step out of the fairyland of creationism into the coherent and comprehensible world of modern biology."

At the western end of Charles Darwin Avenue, one can find Loma Linda Academy, a private school operated by the Seventh Day Adventist Church.  The school has a mural showing the animals of Galapagos looking up at the sky.  The writing on the mural declares: Todo la creacion exalta al creador.  "All creation exalts the Creator."  So it seems that some people in Galapagos are still living in "the fairyland of creationism." 

It is not surprising that a Seventh Day Adventist school should be teaching creationism as an alternative to Darwinism.  The modern creationist movement has been led by Seventh Day Adventists influenced by the teachings of Ellen White (1827-1915), the charismatic prophet who founded their church.  The Adventists emphasized the importance of observing the Sabbath on Saturday as a memorial to the six days of Creation.  God had commanded the keeping of the Sabbath, "for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it" (Exodous 20:11). Consequently, White and the Adventists opposed any scientific claim that the days of creation should be interpreted symbolically, or as something other than a literal six twenty-four hour days.  In 1864, White confirmed this teaching by reporting her divine vision in which she was "carried back to the creation and was shown that the first week, in which God performed the work of creation in six days and rested on the seventh day, was just like every other week."

White also interpreted the Genesis account of Noah's flood as a worldwide catastrophe that created the geological strata and fossils that we see today.  This refuted the geologists who saw the geological record as showing the Earth to be at least hundreds of millions of years old. 

The best history of creationism--Ronald Numbers, The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design (Harvard University Press, 2006)--emphasizes the influence of Seventh Day Adventist theology on creationism.  This tradition of Adventist creationist attacks on evolution continues in the presidential administration of Donald Trump: Ben Carson, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, is a Seventh Day Adventist who has regularly lectured on the falsity of evolutionary science.

Beginning in 1902, Adventist George McCready Price (1870-1963) wrote a series of books arguing that the evidence of geology and biology supported White's interpretation of biblical creationism and refuted Darwinian evolutionary science.  Nevertheless, Price sometimes conceded a lot to the Darwinian theory of the evolution of species.  In the first chapter of Genesis, God is said to have created the "kinds" of plants and animals.  "Kind" is the King James English translation of the Hebrew word min, which is as vague as the English word.  If "kind" means "species," then one would have to say that God originally created all species of plants and animals as fixed, and therefore there can be no evolution of new species.  This was the "theory of special creation" that Darwin challenged in The Origin of Species with his "theory of natural selection."  Sometimes, however, Price identified the created "kinds" as "the great stocks, or families" created by God, which allowed for natural variation within these created kinds that could cause the evolution of new species, and this would support Darwin's position, at least within some broad limits.

This point was made clear by Frank Lewis Marsh, an Adventist scientist and follower of Price.  Marsh received his Ph.D. in botany from the University of Nebraska in 1940, which made him the first Adventist with a doctoral degree in biology.  Marsh began to doubt the idea that all species had originated by separate acts of divine creation at the beginning.  It was hard to see how Adam could have named all the species of birds and land animals in one day (Genesis 2:19-20).  It was also hard to see how Noah's Ark was large enough to hold two of each species of birds and land animals (Genesis 6:19-20).

The solution to these and other problems was to identify created "kinds" as belonging to some taxonomic rank higher than "species," and thus one could allow for the Darwinian evolution of species within the limits of each "kind."  Marsh coined the term "baramin"--from the Hebrew words bara ("created") and min ("kind")--to denote the original units of creation, the created kinds.  Later, creationist Kurt Wise coined the term "baraminology" for the scientific identification and study of created kinds; and creationist Todd Wood has employed some statistical techniques for identifying baramins, which he has applied to the study of Galapagos (Wood, A Creationist Review and Preliminary Analysis of the History, Geology, Climate, and Biology of the Galapagos Islands [Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2005]).  So, unlike the "theory of special creation" refuted by Darwin, which assumed the fixity of species originally created by God, modern creationism has accepted a limited evolution of species within created kinds (see Todd Wood, "Species Variability and Creationism," Origins, number 62 [2008]: 6-25). 

Indeed, all creationists accept evolution to some extent.  The question is where to set the boundaries beyond which evolution cannot go.  This is the question posed by the evidence of Galapagos: Is this evidence of evolution, but only within certain limits?

This was the kind of question that Marsh raised in his extensive correspondence with Theodosius Dobzhansky, one of the leading proponents of the "modern synthesis" of evolutionary theory.  In Genetics and the Origin of Species (Columbia University Press, 1937), Dobzhansky had distinguished "microevolution" and "macroevolution."  Microevolution is evolutionary change that we can observe during a human lifetime.  Macroevolution is evolutionary change that occurs over long geological periods, and thus we cannot directly observe it, but we might infer it from our study of the fossil record and of the present distribution of species.

For Marsh, all of the directly observable evidence for evolution was evidence of microevolution of species within created kinds (baramins).  There was no directly observable evidence for the macroevolution of new kinds of plants and animals from earlier forms of life, Marsh argued.  When Dobzhansky responded by arguing that such macroevolution occurred only over long geological time, and thus it could "be proven or disproven only by inference from the available evidence," Marsh complained: "Alas! Inferential evidence again!  Is there no real proof for this theory of evolution which we may grasp in our hands?"  Dobzhansky answered with frustration: "If you demand that biologists would demonstrate the origin of a horse from a mouse in the laboratory, then you just can not be convinced."

Marsh rejected the inferential evidence for macroevolution because it contradicted what Marsh interpreted as the biblical history of creation as the truth of divine revelation.  That biblical truth should be taken seriously by scientists.  Although Dobzhansky was not persuaded by this, he accepted this as an honest statement of Marsh's faith that "the account given by the Bible is settled for you before you begin to consider the biological evidence."

What we see here are the two interrelated fundamental dichotomies employed in modern creationist argumentation over evolution: microevolution versus macroevolution and observational science versus historical science.  Observational science is based on what we can know by direct observation or experimentation.  Historical science is based on inferences about what has happened in the distant past that we cannot directly observe or experimentally test.  The inferences of historical science depend upon our fundamental assumptions about the universe--our worldviews. 

So if we have a biblical worldview that assumes the literal truth of the Bible, we will infer that while there has been microevolution within created kinds, there has been no macroevolution of kinds.  But if we have a secularist worldview that denies the truth of the Bible, then we might infer that all the kinds of plants and animals have evolved by purely natural processes from common ancestors, and perhaps ultimately from one primitive form of life.  Both of these worldviews rest on faith, the creationists argue, because even the secularist worldview rests on a kind of faith that the entire past history of the universe has been governed by purely natural laws without any miraculous interventions by God, although it's impossible for us to confirm this assumption by direct observation of the past. 

I suspect that this creationist use of the term "worldview" comes from David Noebel's Understanding the Times: The Religious Worldviews of Our Day and the Search for Truth (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 1991).  For over 40 years, Noebel has conducted two-week seminars for high school students teaching them how to defend a biblical "worldview" against alternative "worldviews"--such as secular humanism and Marxism--and a creationist rejection of Darwinian science is a crucial part of that biblical worldview.  I first heard Noebel talk about this in 1961, when I was a high school student in one of his seminars at The Summit in Manitou Springs, Colorado.

Another possible source for the "worldview" idea is Thomas Kuhn's account of science as based on "paradigms" that constitute fundamental assumptions about the universe that cannot be proven empirically but which organize scientific thinking and research.  Creationists can argue that every scientific paradigm is a kind of faith commitment, and thus creationism can be a paradigm for science.

Although we cannot prove that either of these worldviews is true, we can debate whether one or the other provides the most plausible explanation for the world of observational experience.  So, for example, those of us with a secularist worldview will tour the Galapagos and see it though the lens of that worldview, while those of us with a biblical worldview will tour the Galapagos and see it through that very different biblical lens.  We will see the same geological and biological phenomena, but we will draw different inferences about the ultimate causes of those phenomena.  We can then debate with one another about which explanatory inferences are most plausible.

As I have indicated in my previous posts, the naturalist guides in Galapagos have been trained in the secularist worldview of Darwinian science, and so they teach the tourists to see Galapagos through that lens; and the people on my two tours were receptive to that teaching.  But I know that there have been creationists who have toured the Galapagos, and who have seen it as providing confirmation of God's creative activity. 

Any visitors within the protected area of the Galapagos National Park must be accompanied by a naturalist guide trained and authorized by the Galapagos National Park Directorate, and these guides always assume the truth of the Darwinian worldview.  But creationist visitors can apply their own creationist views, and they can bring with them creationist teachers to give them lectures that contradict what the naturalist guide is saying.

Beginning in the early 1970s, shortly after commercial airline service to Galapagos was started, Lester Harris, a Seventh Day Adventist creationist in the biology department of Loma Linda University, began to lead regular summer tours of Galapagos for his students.  He also assisted in the buying of the property in Puerto Ayora for establishing Loma Linda Academy.  He wrote the first creationist book on the Galapagos--Galapagos: A Creationist Visits Darwin's Islands (Nashville, TN: Southern Publishing Association, 1976).

Harris's book is a charming set of stories about his observations of the flora and fauna of Galapagos.  But the general theme running through those stories--usually stated at the end of each chapter--is that while Darwin drew some correct conclusions from what he saw in Galapagos, he jumped to bigger conclusions than he should have when he denied that there was any evidence for biblical creationism.  Darwin correctly saw evidence for microevolution in Galapagos, Harris argued, but Darwin mistakenly inferred that this showed a macroevolution of all life by natural processes that did not require any divine creation.

Without citing any of the creationist authors like Price and Marsh who argued for the limited evolution of species within divinely created kinds, Harris employed their reasoning.  For example, in his chapter on Darwin's finches, he wrote:

"It was only after returning to England following his famous round-the-world voyage on the H.M.S. Beagle that Darwin had time t analyze his collection of the birds that now bear his name.  They seemed to him to offer evidence that disproved the separate creation of animal species.  He reasoned that if the special-creation theory is true, then it was a strange coincidence of creation to find thirteen similar species of finches existing only in the Galapagos Islands."

"He was right.  At that time many people believed that God had created each new species right where man found it. Darwin couldn't accept that idea.  From his study of the finches, giant tortoises, and other animals in the Galapagos Islands, he developed the idea that each new species found only there had developed from some ancestor that came out from the mainland soon after the formation of the island."

"Darwin reasoned that newly arrived finches would be able to change to fit the particular circumstances of each island.  Later the new species would spread to the nearest neighbor islands, and then several species would be able to live in harmony since they had developed different-type beaks to fit their various feeding habits."

"Today we accept Darwin's conclusion about the finches' immediate origin, but we can't agree with Darwin when he proposes that both finches and marine iguanas had the same ancestor at some time in the distant past.  Each originated from its own creature type.  The evidence of change in both is real, but the degree of change is a theoretical point of argument" (118-119).

So Darwin was right to deny the theory of special creation that would assert that the species endemic to Galapagos were specially created by God for Galapagos.  But he was wrong not to see that the evolution of new species in Galapagos was possible because God had originally created all the basic kinds of plants and animals so that they had within them (in their genetic endowment) the capacity for adaptive change to fit the unique circumstances of Galapagos.

We can see God in Galapagos because we can see that the evolutionary adaptations of new endemic species there manifest the potentialities that God built into His original created kinds.

Since Harris's tours, other creationists on tours of Galapagos sponsored by the Institute for Creation Research, Ken Ham's Answers in Genesis, and other creationist groups have reached the same conclusions as Harris.

In my next post, I will continue my analysis of the creationist interpretations of Galapagos.

The Darwinian Science of the Creator in the Declaration of Independence

Here is the beginning of the second sentence in Thomas Jefferson's first draft of the Declaration of Independence:  "We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal and independent; that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent and inalienable."

Here is that same passage as it appears in the final version: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights."

Although the first version conveys the idea of human beings as created equal and deriving rights from that equal creation, the addition of "by their Creator" in the final version makes it clearer that the agent of creation is the divine Creator.

Here is the last sentence in the first edition of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species published in 1859: "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."

In the second edition of this book, Darwin added the phrase "by the Creator" after the word "breathed."  Darwin's language here about creation through "breathing" echoes the language of the King James translation of Genesis 2:7--"And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul."  As in the revision of the Declaration, Darwin's addition of "the Creator" makes the implication clear that there's a divine agent at work in the origin of life.

In the Biblical story of Creation, there seems to be something special about God's creation of human beings, and that human specialness is emphasized by the Bible's declaration that "God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them" (Genesis 1:27).  There is also a suggestion of human specialness in the Declaration's claim that human beings are endowed by their Creator with rights.

In Darwin's text, however, the powers of life were originally breathed by the Creator "into a few forms or into one," implying that human beings were not specially created but rather evolved from lower forms of life.  And, in fact, Darwin explicitly rejects the "theory of special creation"--the theory that the Creator had to miraculously create each species of life separately--in affirming "the theory of natural selection"--Darwin's theory that all living species of life have naturally evolved over millions of years from one or a few primordial forms of life.

The exact dating of creation is not clear either in the Bible or in the Declaration.  "In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth" (Genesis 1:1).  But Genesis does not give us a date for "the beginning." God's acts of creation are said to be spread out over six days, and yet it's not clear whether these are meant to be literal 24-hour days.  In the seventeenth century, Bishop James Ussher tried to calculate the chronology of Biblical history, and he estimated that the "beginning" of creation was 4,004 years before the birth of Christ; so that the whole world was no older than 6,000 years.  But the Bible does not clearly state this.  And the Declaration takes no position on this dating.

Although it was impossible for Darwin to date the history of life precisely, he saw that the natural evolution of all forms of life would require at least hundreds of millions of years.  One of the achievements of geology in the first half of the nineteenth century was reaching a general agreement that the Earth was surely much older than 6,000 years.  Nevertheless, by the beginning of the twentieth centuries, there were some "young-Earth creationists" who defended Ussher's dating, although the "old-Earth creationists" were willing to concede that the geological evidence was against Ussher, and that the "days" of creation in Genesis should be interpreted as "ages" much longer than 24 hours.  William Jennings Bryan, for example, was an old-Earth creationist.

So is the Darwinian science of human evolution compatible with what the Declaration says about the creation of human beings by the Creator?  Well, it depends on what one means by "creation" and "the Creator."  As I have already indicated, there are different kinds of creationism, and while some kinds clearly contradict Darwin's science, some do not--as suggested by Darwin himself in his reference to "the Creator."  A Creator whose creative activity is always against the laws of nature denies Darwin's science.  But a Creator whose creative activity works through the laws of nature--who acts as Nature's God--is compatible with Darwin's science.

There are five kinds of creationism--young-Earth creationism, old-Earth creationism, intelligent-design creationism, evolutionary creationism, and Spinozistic creationism.  Spinozistic creationism is completely compatible with Darwinian science, and evolutionary creationism is largely so.  (I have written about the different kinds of creationism here, here, here, here, here, and here.)

Most scientific creationists today concede that Darwin refuted the "theory of special creation"--the idea that the Creator had to miraculously create every plant and animal species separately.  The Bible speaks of God as creating the "kinds" of life, but these "kinds" are not necessarily all the "species" of life.  Some creation scientists claim that "created kinds" correspond not to "species" but to groups of plants or animals at a taxonomic level higher than species, perhaps at or near the taxonomic rank of family.  So, for example, Todd Wood concedes that Peter and Rosemary Grant have presented convincing evidence for the evolution of diverse species of "Darwin's finches" on the Galapagos Islands as adaptations to the environment of the Galapagos.  But still, Wood argues, all of these species of finches belong to a single "kind" created by God.

Wood also concedes that the human species might have evolved from ancestral primate species, so that human beings and apes might belong to some "kind" that was originally created by God with the genetic potential for evolving into all of the primate species.

Unlike the young-Earth creationists (like Wood), the old-Earth creationists (like Hugh Ross) concede that the universe is billions of years old, and so Ussher's dating of 6,000 years is false.  But over those billions of years of cosmic history, Ross argues, God had to miraculously intervene at critical points for supernatural creative activity that cannot be reduced to natural evolution.

The evolutionary creationists (or theistic evolutionists) like Francis Collins and Deborah Haarsma believe that God could have acted as First Cause in originally creating the general laws of nature, but then He could have allowed natural evolutionary history to unfold just as evolutionary scientists have explained it, without any need for God to miraculously disrupt the natural order of things.

This is the idea of the metaphysics of dual causality that Darwin introduces in the Origin of Species: God's establishment of general laws constitutes the primary causes of the universe, while the natural scientist studies the secondary causes that govern the observable world. (I have written about this here, here, and here.)

The signers of the Declaration of Independence were familiar with a similar conception of dual causality in Isaac Newton's version of deistic religion.  The universe is a "machine" governed by the mathematical laws of nature.  But God is the "Maker" of the machine.

This Newtonian conception of the "clockmaker God" creates a dilemma, however, for anyone who wants to see God as a transcendent being beyond the immanent order of nature.  As Gottfried Leibniz pointed out in his debate with Samuel Clark, either God must intervene regularly to rewind or repair the clock, which shows that God is an incompetent clockmaker; or the clock works fine all by itself, and God the clockmaker is indistinguishable from God the clock.  If it's the latter, then Newton's God is Spinoza's God, who is the same as Nature.

In one of the most influential statements of Lockean political philosophy in the eighteenth century--Cato's Letters--John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon resolved this debate in favor of Spinoza.  In their essay on how to dispel "superstitious fears" by recognizing that what appear to be miraculous events are probably works of natural causes, they argue:

"The works of Almighty God are as infinite as is his power to do them.  And 'tis paying greater deference to him, and having higher conceptions of his omnipotence, to suppose that he  saw all things which have been, are, or ever shall be, at one view, and formed the whole system of nature with such exquisite contrivance and infinite wisdom, as by its own energy and intrinsick power, to promote all the effects and operations which we daily see, feel, and admire; than to believe him to be often interposing to alter and amend his own work, which was undoubtedly perfect at first" (no. 77, Liberty Fund edition, 2:565).

This same Spinozistic idea of identifying God and Nature was adopted by Darwin.  After reading one of the first copies of The Origin of Species, Charles Kingsley--a prominent clergyman of the Church of England and a friend of Darwin--wrote a letter to Darwin, which included this remark:

"I have gradually learnt to see that it is just as noble a conception of Deity, to believe that he created primal forms capable of self development into all forms needful pro tempore & pro loco, as to believe that He required a fresh act of intervention to supply the lacunas which he himself had made."

Darwin wrote to John Murray, his publisher, that Kingsley's "capital sentence" should be inserted into the second edition of Origin, "in answer to anyone who may, as many will, say that my Book is irreligious."  This sentence was introduced into the concluding section of Origin as showing that there is "no good reason why the views given in this volume should shock the religious feelings of any one" (Origin of Species, Modern Library/Random House, 1936, pp. 367-68).

But can the creation of human beings "in the image of God" arise by purely natural evolution without any miraculous intervention by God?  Pope John Paul II and Pope Francis--and Catholics generally--have embraced theistic evolution in conceding that Darwin's theory of evolution has been verified.  But they have also declared that the creation of the human soul requires an "ontological leap" through a miraculous divine act that transcends natural evolution.  (I have written about that here.)

Darwin suggests, however, that even the creation of the soul might be explained by natural evolution. Here is the last sentence of The Descent of Man:

"I have given the evidence to the best of my ability; and we must acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system--with all these exalted powers--Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin."

Darwin's reference to the "god-like intellect" of human beings suggests that there might be some truth in the biblical idea that human beings bear the image of God.  But still, Darwin argues, all of the "noble qualities" of humanity can be explained as products of a natural evolution from lower animals.

To support this conclusion, Darwin offered evidence of the anatomical, behavioral, and mental similarities between human beings and other animals.  But he also saw that human beings were unique in their capacities for language, self-conscious reflection, and the moral sense.  Now, recent research in evolutionary neuroscience allows us to explain the emergent evolution of the mind in the brain, which includes the human mind's capacity for moral judgment, which allows us to recognize our natural rights, such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Jefferson foresaw this, because he studied some of the earliest neurological experiments showing how mental activity was correlated with the stimulation of the brain, which Jefferson took as evidence of how mind arises naturally from the material brain.  This came up in his correspondence with John Adams: "Why may not the mode of action called thought, have been given to a material organ of peculiar structure? as that of magnetism is to the Needle, or of elasticity to the spring by a particular manipulation of the steel?" (letter to Adams, March 14, 1820).  (I have written about this here.)