Early Earth Enigmas (Part 7)

Alternative theories

The absence in the fossil record of transitional forms that would prove the Theory of Evolution has led many frustrated evolutionists to consider alternative theories for the development of life forms on Earth.

 

Theistic Evolution.

In the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, many Catholics and Protestants accepted Theistic Evolution, the belief that the process of biological evolution was divinely supervised. Theistic evolutionists believe that God created the first cell, then afterward allowed evolution to proceed, intervening only occasionally. He waited for primitive man to evolve into the first perfect human being before endowing him with a soul. The hybrid doctrine is a combination of divine creation and Darwinian evolution.

Botanist Asa Gray (d. 1888), one of Darwin's leading American disciples, embraced a variant of the concept. He argued that, only in special cases like those of human beings and complex organs such as the eye, did God carry out direct special creation.

Geologist Arnold Guyot, a staunch anti-Darwinist, advocated at least three interventions by the Creator: first, when He created matter; second, when He created life; and, third, when He created man.¹⁰²

 

Punctuated Equilibrium.

In an attempt to explain the absence of transitional forms, Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge, American Museum of Natural History curator, jointly proposed the theory of Punctuated Equilibrium in several articles in scientific publications (Mammals in Paleontology, 1972; Nature, 1993; Paleontology, 2007).^103,104,105 Newsweek magazine reported on March 29, 1982: “In 1972 Gould and Niles Eldredge collaborated on a paper intended… to resolve a professional embarrassment for paleontologists: their inability to find the fossils of transitional forms between species, the so-called ‘missing links’.” Their concept: “Instead of changing gradually as one generation shades into the next, evolution as Gould sees it, proceeds in discrete leaps. According to the theory of punctuated equilibrium there are no transitional forms between species, and thus no missing links!”¹⁰⁶ 

Gould and Eldredge speculate that speciation (the change from an old species to a new one) usually occurs in small, isolated, peripheral groups rather than in the main populations of species, making their fossilized remains harder to find. Fossils of the general population are usually found, which creates the impression of the unchanging nature or stasis of most species over millions of years.¹⁰⁷

Panspermia (spores from space).

Sir Fred Hoyle mused that “life could not have originated here on the Earth. Nor does it look as though biological evolution can be explained from within an earth-bound theory of life.”¹⁰⁸ Earlier, in 1908, Svante Arrhenius theorized that spores could have drifted to Earth from other star systems. These gave rise to the first living cells that later evolved into more complex organisms.¹⁰⁹

Nobel laureate Francis Crick similarly proposed that “life on earth may have sprung from tiny organisms from a distant planet, sent here by space ship as part of a deliberate act of seeding”¹¹⁰ Crick gave the old theory, known as “panspermia” (from Greek pan, “of all,” and sperma, “seed”), a new twist: “directed panspermia.” Some people find this plausible. J. Horgan wrote in the Scientific American (February 1992): “Given the weaknesses of all theories of terrestrial genesis (the origin of life on Earth), directed panspermia (the deliberate planting of life on Earth) should still be considered a serious possibility.”¹¹¹

Panspermia, though, fails to answer the question of life’s origin. It merely takes the problem of creation out to space. Just how life arose on a planet many light years away is not explained.

 

Progressive Creation

In the 1930s Russell L. Mixter, a Wheaton College graduate, formed the concept that God created the universe and the various forms of life on earth gradually, over millions and billions of years. Creation was accomplished in progressive steps -- hence the name of the doctrine:  Progressive Creationism. In 1954 theologian Bernard Ramm wrote The Christian View of Science and Scripture, popularizing the idea which no longer demanded a young Earth and the recent creation of man.¹¹²

Progressive Creationism is thus a form of Old Earth creationism, accepting geological and cosmological estimates for the age of the Earth and the universe, while teaching that the successive species of plants and animals in the fossil record were the products of divine creation, not Darwinian evolution. As earlier organisms died off and became extinct, God created new species to replace them.

Most of God’s replacements were typically improved models. Each time, the basic forms or "templates" of previously existing life are used -- with just a few minor adjustments. For instance, the DNA of a gorilla has been found to be 97.8% similar to a man’s; the chimpanzee’s DNA resembles that of a human being by 98.2%.

The leading proponents of Progressive Creationism are Reasons To Believe, organized by astronomer Hugh Ross, and Answers in Creation, another organization set up in 2003 to publish rebuttals to Young Earth Creationists’ scientific claims, which are regarded as pseudoscience.¹¹³

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¹⁰²Theistic Evolution, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia Deluxe 2004

¹⁰³“Punctuated Equilibria: An Alternative to Phyletic Gradualism,” Mammals in Paleontology, 1972, pp. 82-115

¹⁰⁴“Punctuated Equilibrium Comes of Age,” Nature 366, 1993, pp. 223-227

¹⁰⁵“Punctuated Equilibria: The Tempo and Mode of Evolution Reconsidered,” Paleontology, 2007, pp. 115-151

¹⁰⁶Enigmas of Evolution,” Newsweek, March 29, 1982, p. 39

¹⁰⁷Evolution, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia Deluxe 2004

¹⁰⁸Fred Hoyle, The Intelligent Universe, 1983, p. 242

¹⁰⁹Cited by Gary Stearman, “Rael, Inc., “Cloning for Life,” Prophecy in the News, February 2003, p. 11

¹¹⁰Francis Crick, “Life Itself – Its Origin and Nature,” Futura, 1982; quoted by Mark Eastman and Chuck Missler, The Creator Beyond Time and Space, 1996, p. 62

¹¹¹J. Horgan, “Profile: Francis H.C. Crick,” Scientific American, February 1992; quoted by Schroeder, op. cit., p. 90

¹¹²Old Earth Creationism, Wikipedia, Internet

¹¹³Progressive Creationism, Wikipedia, Internet

 

(Excerpted from Chapter 5, Early Earth Enigmas, THE DEEP THINGS OF GOD: A Primer on the Secrets of Heaven and Earth by M.M. Tauson, Amazon.com)

 

Early Earth Enigmas (Part 6)

Divinely designed DNA?

When the cell of a bacterium divides, it becomes two bacteria, not two amoebae. Apple trees bear apples, not oranges. A smooth-coated Siamese cat cannot give birth to thick-furred Persian kittens, although they belong to the same feline family. All living species, as well as varieties within them, stay the same from one generation to the next.

The Creator had apparently intended it to be that way from the very beginning: “And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so” (Gen 1:24).

Physically responsible for this biological order is a chemical molecule called deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), which forms part of threadlike chromosomes inside all living cells (except red blood cells and some viruses). In the form of two intertwined chains in a double helix (spiral), like a twisted ladder, each DNA comprises thousands of encoded genes that govern heredity, the transmission of physical characteristics from parent to offspring.

 

“Chicken or egg” paradox.

Proteins depend on DNA for their formation. Yet, DNA cannot form without pre-existing protein. Which came first?

Chemistry lecturer John C. Walton further lamented: “The origin of the genetic code presents formidable unsolved problems. The coded information in the nucleotide sequence is meaningless without the translation machinery, but the specification for this machinery is itself coded in the DNA. Thus without the machinery the information is meaningless, but without the coded information the machinery cannot be produced! This presents a paradox of the ‘chicken and egg’ variety, and attempts to solve it have so far been sterile.”⁹⁴

 

Stored genetic information.

DNA is stored information written in a genetic language with a four-letter (nucleotide) alphabet and grammatical rules, telling the cells how to function and reproduce. Despite having only four letters, through their various combinations DNA is able to maintain the distinctions not only among all species, but also between individuals of each species. The language components in the human gene are identical to that of other organisms, say, a snail. Only the sequence is different.⁹⁵

One of the tiniest one-celled organisms is the bacterium R. coli. Scientists estimate it has about 2,000 genes, with some 1,000 enzymes each. Every enzyme contains roughly one billion nucleotides or letters of the chemical alphabet, comparable to bytes in computer language.

Physicist Jonathan Sarfati reckons that the “amount of information that could be stored in a pinhead’s volume of DNA is equivalent to a pile of paperback books 500 times as high as the distance from Earth to the moon, each with a different, yet specific content. Putting it another way, while we think that our new 40 gigabyte hard drives are advanced technology, a pinhead of DNA could hold 100 million times more information.”⁹⁶

 

Information from intelligence.

Information is nonmaterial and, therefore, could not have originated from matter. Information can only come from intelligence. Co-authors L. Lester and R. Bohlin tell us: “Intelligence is a necessity in the origin of any informational code, including the genetic code…”⁹⁷ The vast amounts of information in the DNA can only have come from an intelligent source.

1962 Nobel Prize winner Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the DNA structure, had said that the more he studied the DNA double-helix, the more he became convinced that it could not have evolved by chance. In his book Life Itself, he wrote: “An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that, in some sense, the origins of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle.”⁹⁸

On December 16, 2010, the History Channel aired interviews with scientists who admitted that evolution of the DNA molecule by chance or accident is totally impossible.⁹⁹

Designed on purpose. Biochemist Michael Behe of Lehigh University in Pennsylvania (Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, 1996) construes that “the straightforward conclusion is that many biochemical systems were designed. They were designed not by the laws of nature, not by chance and necessity; rather they were planned. The designer knew what the systems would look like when they were completed, then took steps to bring the systems about… Life on earth at its most fundamental level, in its most critical components, is the product of intelligent design.”¹⁰⁰

Natural processes, such as mutation, cannot alter the DNA. I.L. Cohen says that “any physical change of any size, shape or form is strictly the result of purposeful alignment of billions of nucleotides (in the DNA). Nature or species do not have the capacity to rearrange them nor to add to them… The only way we know for a DNA to be altered is through a meaningful intervention from an outside source of intelligence – one who knows what it is doing, such as our genetic engineers are now performing in the laboratories…”¹⁰¹

Every living cell (except a few highly specialized ones) carries in its DNA all the information needed reproduce a new, identical organism. To clone an entire human being, the scientist needs just one cell.

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⁹⁴John C. Walton, “Organization and the Origin of Life,” Origins, 1977, pp. 30–31

⁹⁵Dawkins, op. cit., Oxford University Press 30^th Anniversary Edition, 2006, p. 2

⁹⁶Jonathan Sarfati, DNA: Marvelous Messages or Mostly Mess?, March 2003, Internet

⁹⁷L. Lester and R. Bohlin, The Natural Limits to Biological Change, 1989, p. 157

⁹⁸Francis Crick, Life Itself, p. 88; quoted by Gary Stearman, “Rael, Inc., “Cloning for Life,” Prophecy in the News, February 2003, p. 12

⁹⁹Jan Marcussen, Newsletter, Mid-January Y2K+11, p. 2

¹⁰⁰Michael Behe, Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, 1996, p. 193

¹⁰¹Cohen, loc. cit.

 

(Excerpted from Chapter 5, Early Earth Enigmas, THE DEEP THINGS OF GOD: A Primer on the Secrets of Heaven and Earth by M.M. Tauson, Amazon.com)