And This Bacillus thuringiensis Is My Great-Great-Great-Granddaddy...

 

Luke Jordan

Senior Seminar

December 6, 2001

 

 

Intro

Who or what really is our greatest of great ancestors?  Most major religions and early groups of people have an answer to this common question.  The Greek myths declare that only Geia (the Earth) and a great sea of Chaos were in the beginning, and in a soap opera fashion the gods eventually came forth, who eventually created humans (Bierlein 47-8).  The Chippewa/Algonquin Native Americans believe that the great Earth Mother had two sons, a good one and a bad one that ended up creating the plants, animals, and humans (61).

In the Christian, scientific Western Hemisphere, we believe in two possible answers -- one, that we descended from Adam, who was created from the mingling of the dirt of the ground with God's breath into His image (a doctrine held by religious Creationism), or two, that we evolved from monkeys which evolved from bacteria, which evolved from non-living chemicals and lightning (the scientific theory of evolution).  These two theories both have credibility - the Bible is one of the oldest and most extensive historical documents we have, recorded with great precision, while evolution is very logical and builds on numerous scientific disciplines.

Yet creation and evolution seem diametrically opposed.  If we were created randomly and purposelessly, as evolution suggests, then the creation account of a sculptor molding his clay to make man appears erroneous.  So scientists often call the Genesis account a “myth” – a story conceived by early man to explain away his questions.  Christians are often offended by implications like these, and end up attacking science’s claims.  In turn, many scientists feel distaste for people who don't accept their elegant theory and their mounds of evidence, and thus reject the others' view.  Though a war has been established pinning these two theories against each other, this dichotomy is actually a false one.  Christians do not need to give up their faith and scientists can start believing in God.  These two clashing but persuasive theories, creation and evolution, can be reconciled.   First, these theories need to be defined.

 

Definition

            Evolution is the theory that all living organisms can be traced back to a common ancestor, which came into being from non-living elements, by natural laws.  Darwin’s contribution to this theory was the mechanism by which species could evolve – natural selection.  This mechanism says that certain factors in an organism's environment can cause a change to occur from generation to generation.  There are three types of natural selection: stabilizing selection (the mutants are knocked out of a population), directional selection (there is a shift in a certain trait of a population), and disruptive selection (in which a population is broken up and each population changes separately).

As laid out nicely in the book, Parallel Myths, by J. F. Bierlein (84-7), general scientific theory as to how life began goes something like this (although new fossils constantly tweak the dates):

Precambrian Period:  the earth is 4.7 billion years old, and 2.7 billion years ago the first life starts in shallow pools.  The first photosynthetic plant life fossils have been dated to 2.5 billion years ago.

 

The Cambrian Period:  Life is anaerobic and once the level of oxygen is one one-hundredth what it is today, referred to as the critical level for the development of life, organisms become aerobic.  This period takes place 600 million years ago, and there is a life explosion in the seas.  Land is not entirely separate from the seas.

 

The Mississippian Period:  355 million years ago, sharks and amphibians become greatly developed, as well as large-scale trees and see ferns.  Climate is warm and humid.

 

The Pennsylvanian Period:  310 million years ago, reptiles appear but amphibians dominate.  Gymnosperm plants, vast forests, and swamps are numerous.  Coal and petroleum deposits form.

 

The Permian Period:  280 million years ago the earth cools and land becomes drier.  With this change in climate many species become extinct.

 

The Triassic Period:  220 million years ago.  Dinosaurs and gymnosperms dominate the landscape, and tree ferns die out.

 

The Jurassic Period:  181 million years ago mammals and birds appear.  This is the great period of the dinosaurs.

 

The Cretaceous Period:  135 million years ago modern mammals and monocotyledonous plants appear.  At the end of this period a great extinction takes place among the dinosaurs.

 

The Paleocene Epoch:  65 million years ago placental mammals first appear.

 

The Eocene Epoch:  54 million years ago hoofed animals and carnivores appear.

 

The Oligocene Epoch:  36 million years ago, the climate becomes warmer and most modern species of animals start appearing.

 

The Miocene Epoch:  25 million years ago anthropoid (like humans) apes show up, most mammals take shape like the ones we see today.

 

The Pliocene Epoch:  11 million years ago man is evolving and forests are giving way to growing grasslands.

 

The Pleistocene Epoch:  1 million years ago human social life appears amid glaciation and many forms of life go extinct.

 

The Recent Epoch:  11,000 years ago "civilized" society began

 

            The Biblical account of creation, found in Genesis chapters one and two (see Appendix I for full story) goes something like this.  In chapter one God creates the heavens and the earth.  Then the earth is waste and void and darkness is “upon the face of the deep”.  So God fixes it up and populates it in six days by his speaking.  He first speaks forth light and darkness, which he calls Night and Day.  This is day one.  Then he divides different levels of water on top of each other, one of which he calls Heaven.  Day two.  Then he makes dry land appear, which he calls Earth, and the waters he calls Seas.  He tells the earth to make grass, seed bearing plants, fruit bearing trees and these plants spring forth.  Day three.  Then God makes the sun, moon, and stars.  Day four.  Then God makes creatures in the sea and birds in the sky.  Day five.  God then makes the cattle and the beasts of the earth.  Finally God makes man and woman “in our image, after our likeness”.  This man is given rule over all the all the earth and animals.  Day six.  Chapter two begins with day seven.  Now that everything is finished, God rests.

            In chapter two, the story is retold, with more verbal flourish, and apparently with a little different chronology.  In the days when the earth and heavens had been created, before plants or animals, a mist comes up from the earth and waters the land.  God then “form[s] man of the dust of the ground and breathe[s] into his nostrils the breath of life” (Gen 2:7).  God plants the Garden of Eden, where there are all sorts of trees with fruit (two in particular – the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil) and puts man there to live.  God says, “It is not good that the man should be alone” (Gen 2:18), so he starts creating all the animals.  He brings them to the man, and the man gives them all names.  But man still doesn’t have his partner.  So when the man goes to sleep, God reaches in and pulls out a rib and closes up the flesh.  From the rib, God makes woman.  The man replies, “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh:  she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.”  (Gen 2:23)  And this is the reason that men and women get married.

 

History – Rounding Out the Definitions

A short history of the debate between these two theories sheds some light on how these theories came to be what they are, why they are valued by each side, and why they are our two main theories (no other creation stories have been in the limelight in the United States of America and Europe).

Our scientific knowledge today stems from the scientific revolution in Europe during the fifteenth century.  When science was just beginning (and even up into Darwin’s day in the nineteenth century), almost all of the scientists believed in the Biblical creation story.  Originally they had very few fossils and the layers of earth hadn’t been studied yet.  Because European culture was dominantly Christian, and the Bible was the only source they had that described the beginning times, many accepted this account (the account is pretty logical, too – simpler organisms are created before more complex organisms).  So scientists looked around nature and saw God as the source.

However, through three disciplines – geology, paleontology and taxonomy (the classification of animal and plant species) – early beliefs of a literal six-day creation story Bible increasingly became challenged.

The agreed starting date of the earth was 4004 B.C., as determined by Archbishop Ussher, 200 years before Darwin (Blackmore and Page 27).  Since the creation story talks about six days of creation, and Psalm 90 says a thousand years are but a day to God, then the six days of creation would be followed by six thousand years, many believed.  Using this logic, Martin Luther, a leader during the Reformation, figured Jesus came four thousand years after creation, and a final two thousand years were left.

But discoveries by geologists (people who study the earth) began to show an earth much older than 6000 years.  After Ussher's death in 1656, naturalist John Ray raised some disturbing questions, such as how could a buried forest have been at the bottom of a sea and then exposed on dry land again, and how could mountains be formed in such a short time (27-8).  Abraham Werner, an influential biologist, later showed that the crust of the earth was a bunch of successive layers, meaning that the earth was older than figured.  Both Ray and Werner still believed in God and creation (Werner believed the days of creation were not literal days but periods of time), but the public was rattled.  To them it appeared he was refuting the Bible’s authenticity (28-9).

Another seeming attack on the creation story came from interpretation of fossils.  Georges Cuvier (1769-1832), France's leading scientist, by observing fossils, declared that some species had become extinct.

Georges Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, also believed in an old earth.  He theorized that an asteroid smashing into the sun created the earth, which then took 75,000 years to cool.  He was then forced by the theologians of his day to retract his heretical views in his fourth edition of Histoire Naturelle (33-5).

Scientists had begun to think the earth was very old.  Some proposed the earth was formed with water (which resembles the Genesis story and is the scientific view today), while others believed with volcanoes.  Some believed many catastrophes had shaped the earth (like the great Flood in Genesis), while others believed natural laws had molded it over long spans of time.  Whichever theory was correct didn't matter – an old, old earth had been discovered.  And though the public shouted heresy at first, they eventually came to agree with this discovery.

While geology helped change people's views of how old the earth was, biology was changing people’s views of how the animals came to be.  Like the geologists, the biologists faced derision by the Christian public as well as many scientists.

Taxonomy helped solidify belief in creation of animals by God, because by the way they classified animals, each species seemed to have its God-ordered place.  A long line of taxonomists believed in this “fixed” status of species.  Aristotle, the famous Greek philosopher, was the first believer.  He believed that animals showed different levels of complexities, and could be classified thus (11).  This view of his set the view for the later taxonomists of the Renaissance.

An English clergyman, John Ray (1627-1705), like Aristotle, promoted static species.  He classified a large number of plants and wrote a book about them entitled, The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of Creation (14-5).

Two years after Ray died, the greatest of all systematists, Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778), was born.  He classified every species known at his time into his famous System Naturae.  He believed he was naming the animals just as the Biblical Adam had done, and so called himself the "Second Adam" (15-20).  However, while these scientists helped cause popular opinion to believe that species were fixed, some scientists were beginning to believe otherwise.

Other scientists saw species as shades on a spectrum.  Le Comte de Buffon (1707-88), who wrote the large Histoire Naturelle, was the first to speak forth this new view.  Society did not like his unorthodox views, and Buffon had to recant in one of his later publications (20-2).  Yet Buffon’s new view changed the way scientists looked at animals, a baby step in evolutionary thought.

Next came Erasmus Darwin, Charles Darwin's grandfather, who was one of the first to actually argue evolutionary behavior in animals.  He theorized in his medical textbook that viruses and diseases were constantly changing, but his theory was more speculative than factual (44-5).

Then Frenchman Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck (1749-1829) came out and argued for evolution of species.  He theorized that an organism acquires traits in its lifetime and then passes those traits on to its progeny.  His views were strongly rejected by the English, who dubbed him the "French Atheist".  Though his theory has been proven false, he was right about one thing:  organisms do pass on traits to their offspring (47-50).

In England 1844 an anonymous book was introduced to the public advocating evolution.  The author, Robert Chambers (1802-71) published anonymously to protect the reputation of his profitable business.  Though lacking scientific worth, the wildly popular book, Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, was useful to Darwin because it opened the British public up to the theory of evolution (51-2).

Another influencer in evolutionary thought was Georges Cuvier.  He formed a new classification system which classified organisms according to how they functioned in their natural habitats.  His system took them out of their rigid classification done by Linnaeus, helping evolutionists explain how organisms change:  by their environments (55-6).

All of these seeds of evolutionary thought were planted in one man – Charles Darwin.  Before we talk about Darwin, it is useful to know the context of his time, the Victorian era of the nineteenth century.

During the Victorian era belief of God was fervent in society.  In 1802, William Paley (1743-1805) published Natural Theology, subtitled "Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity collected from the Appearances of Nature" (23).  Paley's main point was that all the design we see in nature reveals a Great Designer.  The Victorian crowd loved this logic.  "Every Victorian lady could reel off names of ferns or fungi, every middle-class drawing room possessed a shell collection, a butterfly cabinet or an aquarium.  Newspapers ran columns on natural history, natural history books were almost as popular as Dickens, and every clergyman nursed ambitions to write such works" (25).

Charles Darwin, a Christian who was taught by many other Christian scientists, brooded upon the views of evolution that were arising in the world.  At the age of 22 he went on five-year voyage on the Beagle around the world, sailing around South America and the lonely islands of the Galapagos (61).  On this voyage he made many observations about fossils, animals, land, and plants, filling "1300 pages with geological notes, 24 notebooks with impressions, 368 pages with zoology, and a diary of nearly 800 pages" (60).  However, he did not formulate his groundbreaking theory of natural selection yet.

After spending many years doing a reclassification of snails, he came back to his notes.  A theory had formulated in his head and he spent 15 additional years gathering evidence to make sure his theory had sufficient backing.  His labor culminated in his book the On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1859), in which he presented the mechanism of natural selection.  His theory of how evolution could occur was the answer scientists had been looking for.  Evolutionary theory now had a solid foundation.

This new theory rocked Europe and tremors from it are still being felt today.  While many scientists, like the vocal Thomas Huxley, immediately bought into this new theory, many theologians immediately began attacking this theory, which seemed to refute God's place in creation (and therefore His existence).  The debates have lasted even up to today, as in the case of the Scopes trial, in which a teacher was put on trial as to whether or not he could teach evolution in school.  A group of scientists today strongly believes in a literal interpretation of the Genesis account (a belief termed "scientific creationism").  These people usually consider evolution supporters to be atheists and heretics.

On the other side of the coin are many scientists, who treat the evolutionary theory picture of how the world came into being (life evolving from no life, evolving to more complex organisms, evolving to humans) as infallible.  Often scientists in this group mock the Fundamental Christians who refute the science behind evolutionary theory.  These Christians have set themselves up for attack by not believing in the validity of science's tools.  The scientists then have no problem dismissing this "crazy" group's book of how the world began.  The Genesis account gets turned into just another picture book of myths.  For example Tim Berra, who wrote Evolution and the Myth of Creationism, mocked President Reagan for being uneducated and manipulated when the President said if evolution was to be taught in schools, then so should the Biblical story of creation, "which is not a theory but the Biblical story of creation" (Berra 123).  Carl Sagan, has put their view succinctly:  "The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be" (Wright 13).  Scientists argue that the evolution account is a fact, not a theory.  Christians argue that is it a theory not a fact.  Which is it?  Who it right?  Let's evaluate the two theories.

 

Evolution Evaluated

Science is trying to construct a picture of the past, and has evidence from many sources.  The scientific approach is like a crime scene investigation.  The scientists are like detectives with mounds of evidence trying to determine what happened the night of the crime.  They look at all of the evidence gathered and reconstruct the crime scene.  Whenever new evidence is gathered (such as new fossils or new sciences like genetics), details are tweaked, but for the most part they know what happened.  The theory of evolution is the result of numerous disciplines in science discovering lots of evidence and drawing up a logical picture of what happened.

Paleontology (the study of fossils) aided by geology, has been one of the strongest supports for the theory of evolution.  Fossils are a footprint of prehistoric life, and the footprints we have recorded today tell a story of increasingly complex animals over great periods of time.

A fossil is made by an animal or plant falling to the ground and getting buried by sediment, like volcanic ash or silt at the bottom of a lake.  This sediment envelope must withstand the crushing, folding, and erosion that takes place in rock formations over millions of years (Berra 32-3).  The only problem is that the chances of an animal ending up in this process are not great.  Scavengers, bacteria, or natural forces often claim the bodies of fallen organisms.  In addition, these fossils have to be dug up and noticed by archaeologists to be added to the fossil record.

Geology and chemistry come into play to read these fossils.  Geology has revealed that the earth's crust is composed of many layers, which are called "strata".  Newer layers are stacked on top of older layers.  Fossils are found in these layers, and often certain species are found only in certain layers.  The lower the layer a fossil is found in, the older that fossil is (Berra 36).  But how old is the fossil.  Here chemistry comes into play.

All rocks are composed of minerals, and many minerals contain radioactive isomers, such as uranium.  These isomers act as a clock.  They have a "half-life" that is characteristic to each material.  If a half-life is 1,000 years, then every thousand years half as much of the material is converted to a different material (e.g. uranium 238 decays to lead 236 with a half-life of 4.5 billion years).  By measuring how much of each material is there, a date can be placed on the rock's origin. The theory is simple but in practice is difficult because the amount of isotopes being measured is very small (Berra 37).

Some Christians accept fossil dating to be correct but argue that the fossil record testifies against evolution.  They claim that transitional fossils between major categories of animals are not evident, such as between fish and land creatures, or between land creatures and birds.  Even Darwin was bothered that there weren't more of these fossils (Blackmore and Page 100).

But some scientists argue that there are many transitional fossils (Berra 40).  One such one is that of the Archaeopteryx, a crow-sized animal about 150 million years old.  This bird has features of both reptiles and bird, which leads scientists to believe it is the link between the two.  Creationists have two arguments against this fossil.  Either it is a hoax (although 6 complete fossils of it have been found [41]), or that there are no fossils that show a more basic form of the feather, which has a very intricate design and couldn't just happen all at once.

Genetics, morphology, and biogeography, however, also seem to point in the direction of a common ancestor.  Genetics has revealed that all species of plants and animals have in their cells a complex code called DNA (some have RNA).  This DNA codes for RNA, which codes for proteins, which are the role players in creating and maintaining an organism's body.  Different species have different amounts of this DNA code (generally the more complex a species, the more DNA it has).  Also species that look similar and are grouped into species and genuses and families by us have much of the similar DNA.  For example, cows and horses have more DNA that is alike than do cows and ducks.  When a tree of DNA is then constructed by similarity between DNA, a remarkably similar tree to the evolutionary one appears.

Morphology, the study of the appendages on different organisms, also backs up the evolutionary tree.  One of the things appendages reveal to us is common ancestry.  If two organisms share bones of similar size and positioning, they are probably more closely related by ancestry.  The morphological data between species shows a trend that matches the evolutionary tree.  Another piece of evidence that morphology reveals are vestigial structures.  Evolutionists claim these structures are non-useful organs in a species that weren't phased out when that species evolved.  Whales and boas, for example, have traces of hind legs, which would suggest they evolved from terrestrial origins.  Humans have some too:  tail vertebrae, ear-wiggling muscles, wisdom teeth, a third eyelid, and an appendix (Berra 21-2).

Another scientific discipline, embryology (the study of embryos), also seems to indicate evolution occurred.  All vertebrate (fish, bird, reptile, amphibian, mammal) embryos look basically the same in the early stages of growth when the vital organs start developing (ontogeny).  Vertebrates that don't breath with gills have gill structures just like the vertebrates that use gills.  This might suggest that all vertebrates originated from fish species (Berra 22-7).

Yet another scientific discipline, biogeography (the study of geographic distribution of plants and animals over time), fits with the evolutionary theory.  On the tiny islands of Hawaii live about one quarter of the world's 2,000 species of flies.  Over a thousand species of snails and certain land mollusks also only live in Hawaii.  How can this be?  The answer is due to Hawaii's isolation from larger land masses.  Somehow some flies made it to the island (possibly by a great storm), while their predators didn't.  In addition, only one species of bat was found when the first human settlers arrived in Hawaii, and many plant and animal species were missing as well (Steering Committee on Science and Creationism Science and Creationism).

From these scientific disciplines, evolutionary theory definitely has legitimacy.  But how exactly did evolution take place, changing one animal with no wings into an animal with wings?  Here is where Charles Darwin made the great leap.  He proposed the mechanism of natural selection, which says, as environmental pressures (the raising and lowering of food supply, temperature, carbon dioxide/oxygen supply, water quality) stress a community, organisms that are better fit to the pressures will live on (while others die off), and will pass on their more resilient characteristics (genes) on to successive generations.  In this manner, populations change in their genetic makeup over time.  Small changes eventually lead to large changes.  Today we see many examples of in-between species of almost all organs and appendages.  For example, let's look at the human eye.

Like a high-dollar camcorder, the human eye automatically changes the size of the lens to focus on whatever we're looking at.  When we walk into a dark room, the iris automatically changes its "f-stop" (size of the opening), to let more light in.  Many animals in nature have eyes at different stages of complexity.  The chambered nautilus has relatively simple eyes, yet they still can focus light.  Many bacteria only have a have a light sensitive end, which responds to light and directs them towards or away from the light.  The advantages of each intermediate stage are not hard to imagine.  One organism gains advantage over its blind companions by using its one photoreceptor (a light sensitive cell), while another gains further advantage by mutating its eye into many photoreceptors.  Or the surface curvature or the transparency of the eye mutates to give a better picture, giving that organism an advantage (PBS "Evolution").

In addition, many experiments have been done that show natural selection has taken place.  In 1889, a tremendous storm hit a town and many sparrows died.  H.C. Bumpus went out and collected and measured the wingspans of the birds.  Apparently the ones with long and short wings died in the storm, which lowered the number of mutant sparrows (stabilizing selection).  Another example has taken place in the past 50 years.  Corn at the University of Illinois has been pressured to produce more oil and less protein, which was done by keeping the corn from one generation with the most oil and protein and using its seed to make the next generation.  Researchers at the University successfully accomplished this, and then they reversed the process and achieved success again (directional artificial selection) (Blackmore and Page 96).

One of evolutionary theory's weaker points is the origin of life.  The theory suggests that life came from no life.  Many opponents argue that DNA is too complex (in even a simple bacteria, the DNA code is equivalent to all the volumes of the Encyclopedia Brittanica [Taylor]) and intricate of a code to arise naturally.  While evolution of DNA is an area that is not mentioned by Tim Berra, in his book, Evolution and the Myth of Creationism, he makes a good argument for how cells without DNA could have arisen from scratch.  In 1953, Stanley Miller set up an experiment in which he put a gaseous mix of methane, ammonia, hydrogen, and water vapor in a flask and subjected it to a week of electrical discharge.  Some brown stuff formed in the flask, which he analyzed to be four amino acids, urea, and many fatty acids (Miller and Orgel Origins of Life).  Many other scientists quickly began synthesizing other compounds from no life as well, and more complex compounds from those earlier compounds (Berra 73-4).  However, the origin of DNA from non-living elements remains to be proven.

 

Nature points to a Creator

If evolution took place, is there a god and what role did he or she play?  Many scientists would argue that God is not provable and that the Genesis account is just a myth from an early people trying to explain the world around them.  However, like evolution, the theory of the creation story and God's existence can be seen from the evidence in nature.

One argument for existence of a creator is that things in nature are balanced so precisely for man to be able to live, that the laws in the universe are geared towards producing man.  If man is the goal, someone or something had to have had the goal of producing man.  This argument is seen in the Anthropic Principle first described by Brandon Carter, an astrophysicist and cosmologist from Cambridge University, in a paper he presented at a conference in Poland in 1973 and which was published in 1974 (Carter Large Number Coincidences).  This principle basically says that the fundamental constants of chemistry and physics in the world are the precise values needed for life to exist, therefore the constants are life centered, or "anthropic".  For example, gravity is 10^39 times weaker than electromagnetism.  If gravity was just 10^33 times weaker, then the "‘stars would be a million times less massive and would burn a million times brighter’" (Taylor).  Another example:  the difference between protons and neutrons is roughly twice the mass of an electron.  If this difference is not exactly as it is, then protons would have become neutrons and vice versa, screwing up chemistry and life (Taylor).  One last example:  the strange properties of water are exactly what are needed to sustain life.  If water doesn’t have the property of its solid form being lighter than its liquid form (which is unique among all molecules), than the oceans would freeze from the bottom up and the earth would be covered with ice (Taylor).  One of the first proponents for evolution, Lamarck, even proposed that life had a driving force to become more complex, with humans as the most complex organisms (Blackmore and Page 47-50).

Another argument for God's existence is that nature is such an elegant design, as seen in the human eye, that there must be a Designer behind them (PBS "Evolution").  This was Paley's great argument during the Victorian era, as mentioned earlier.  The problem with this theory is how people interpret it.  Many creationists use it to attack evolution, saying that because things in nature are so elegantly designed, then there is no way they could be formed by random selection.  However, as discussed earlier with the human eye and animals with less complex eyes, even elegant designs could have arisen from nothing.  Beautiful design does not prove God, but points to Him.

A plethora of examples of elegant design can be seen in the complex factory of flesh we all own – the human body.  Every single organ and feature in the body is complex:  muscle (a tool that grows by tearing itself and rebuilding), the eye (a top of the line camera), the lungs and tissues (exchangers of carbon dioxide produced in the body with oxygen with from the air), the heart (an involuntary pump that lasts for a lifetime), the kidney (the balancer of necessary minerals in the body), the lymph nodes (dispatchers of the antibody defense system), brain (the control tower of all processes in the body), and DNA (the blueprints for tools [proteins] that then follow the blueprint to direct growth of all these organs).  The human body is a physical wonder of nature pointing to God.

Some of the similarities we share with animals also point to God.  For example, all the animals show different traits that we see in humans.  For example, dogs are often clumsy, faithful servants that love to be around people.  Cats, on the other hand, are often well balanced (they always land on their feet) and antisocial.  A skunk will spray a nasty odor to get out of dangerous looking situation, while an ostrich will stick its head in the ground.  Ants and bees are very communal creatures, willing to die for the greater good of the colony.  All of these examples can clearly be seen in humans.  While these similarities between human and animal could be evidence for evolution, they could point us to a creator with a sense of humor.

Our superiority to all species points to God.  Though animals share many characteristics with us humans, they lack something great that we possess – thought.  Questions like: "Who am I?  Where am I?  What's wrong?  What is the remedy?" are common questions to all of mankind, but not to animals (as far as we know).  Is it built into our brains after millions of years of evolution?  Or do these questions point to a Creator who wants His creation to notice Him and come to Him?

Another suggestion of God’s existence is how we live in the world and find meaning and beauty in objects.  If we are, indeed, solely the products of nature, and there is no God (the belief of saying only things measurable by science are truth, thus denying God [the agnostic view put forth by Thomas Huxley, a strong supporter of evolution during Darwin's time]), then all poets, artists, philosophers, and theologians are idiots.  They all are seeing things that aren't there.  Poets see the four seasons as the life of man – born in spring, matured in the summer, full maturity in autumn, and dead by winter.  They see a flower as a symbol of hope for new life.  Artists see beauty in the way things are arranged and shaped.  With different brushes and paints they try to capture moods of anger or happiness.  Philosophers and theologians look at life and see different meanings in life and see a God or gods at work.  If all of these humanities are solely the result of random laws working over time, then these endeavors are foolish.  Scientists may be erring when they dismiss things not in the realm of science as untrue.

Another argument for God is the argument that evolution does not disprove God.  Though all species may have evolved from a common ancestor that evolved from no life, maybe He set up the laws of physics and chemistry to govern this process.  Indeed, some scientists believe that there is almost a guiding force behind natural selection.  At every point in a group of species, random events are not random (Blackmore and Page 98).  Darwin himself believed in this possibility.  And another way to look at God’s possible action in evolution can to look at God as an Artist, rather than a Designer.  Can a painting be made by itself?  Can the pigments get ground up by themselves?  Can a paintbrush form itself?  Just as a painting needs an artist to form it, so did evolution need someone or something to guide it along.

The Bible definitely points towards God…if you believe the Good Book.  One reason to believe the Bible as being factual is that it is an ancient text that includes much historical data (it tells about kings, lineages, and possibly the creation).  This large book testifies that God created everything, and consistently repeats this testimony:

       "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.  Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge.  There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard" (Psalm 19:1-3).

 

       "...to the living God, who made heaven and earth and sea and everything in them.  In the past, he let all nations go their own way.  Yet he has not left himself without testimony: he has shown kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons; he provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy" (Acts 14:15-17).

 

       "For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse" (Romans 1:20).

 

 

            These verses alone do not prove God's existence to a scientist that doesn't believe the Bible.  However, these verses indicate that the Bible is a consistent book, and that by its consistency may be viewed as more than a mythological story.

 

Conclusion

Like a historian studying history, the more sources of data we have, the better.  The common parts of the different accounts cause an outline to come into view.  For example, take a fisherman who exaggerates the size of a fish he caught.  He may be exaggerating to make the story more exciting.  Or he may have forgotten the actual size.  Maybe he mis-measured the fish in the first place.  But if we have accounts from his wife who cooked it for supper, and his neighbors who ate it, we can at least know he caught a fish.  Like the fisherman’s fish, the history of the earth and all its living inhabitants can be seen more clearly with the more sources that are examined.  Though evolution and the creation story may be appear to be contradictory, they are not actually at odds with each other.  They both have validity and thus aid us in painting an outline of what really happened.

 

Appendix A

1:1In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 1:2And the earth was waste and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep: and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters 1:3And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. 1:4And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. 1:5And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.

1:6And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. 1:7And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. 1:8And God called the firmament Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.

1:9And God said, Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. 1:10And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good. 1:11And God said, Let the earth put forth grass, herbs yielding seed, and fruit-trees bearing fruit after their kind, wherein is the seed thereof, upon the earth: and it was so. 1:12And the earth brought forth grass, herbs yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit, wherein is the seed thereof, after their kind: and God saw that it was good. 1:13And there was evening and there was morning, a third day.

1:14And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years: 1:15and let them be for lights in the firmament of heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. 1:16And God made the two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. 1:17And God set them in the firmament of heaven to give light upon the earth, 1:18and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. 1:19And there was evening and there was morning, a fourth day.

1:20And God said, Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. 1:21And God created the great sea-monsters, and every living creature that moveth, wherewith the waters swarmed, after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind: and God saw that it was good. 1:22And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth. 1:23And there was evening and there was morning, a fifth day.

1:24And God said, Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind, cattle, and creeping things, and beasts of the earth after their kind: and it was so. 1:25And God made the beasts of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and everything that creepeth upon the ground after its kind: and God saw that it was good. 1:26And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 1:27And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. 1:28And God blessed them: and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. 1:29And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb yielding seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for food: 1:30and to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the heavens, and to everything that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for food: and it was so. 1:31And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

2:1And the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 2:2And on the seventh day God finished his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. 2:3And God blessed the seventh day, and hallowed it; because that in it he rested from all his work which God had created and made.

2:4These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that Jehovah God made earth and heaven. 2:5And no plant of the field was yet in the earth, and no herb of the field had yet sprung up; for Jehovah God had not caused it to rain upon the earth: and there was not a man to till the ground; 2:6but there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. 2:7And Jehovah God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. 2:8And Jehovah God planted a garden eastward, in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. 2:9And out of the ground made Jehovah God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. 2:10And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became four heads. 2:11The name of the first is Pishon: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; 2:12and the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone. 2:13And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Cush. 2:14And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth in front of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates. 2:15And Jehovah God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. 2:16And Jehovah God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: 2:17but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

2:18And Jehovah God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a help meet for him. 2:19And out of the ground Jehovah God formed every beast of the field, and every bird of the heavens; and brought them unto the man to see what he would call them: and whatsoever the man called every living creature, that was the name thereof. 2:20And the man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the heavens, and to every beast of the field; but for man there was not found a help meet for him. 2:21And Jehovah God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof: 2:22and the rib, which Jehovah God had taken from the man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. 2:23And the man said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. 2:24Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. 2:25And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

 

 

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The Bible, Revised Standard Version.

 

Bierlein, J.F.  Parallel Myths.  New York:  Ballantine Books, 1994.

 

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"Evolution."  Public Broadcasting System.  2001.  Nov. 2001.  <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/change/grand/index.html>.

 

Miller, Stanley and Orgel, Leslie.  The Origins of Life on the Earth.  Englewood Cliffs:  Prentice-Hall, 1974.

 

Pember, G.H.  Earth's Earliest Ages.  Grand Rapids:  Kregel Publications, 1975.

 

Steering Committee on Science and Creationism.  Science and Creationism: A View from the National Academy of Sciences, Second Edition.  1999.  Nov. 2001.  <http://www.nap.edu/html/creationism/evidence.html#>.

 

Taylor, Ross.  "The Creation Evolution Controversy."  Nov. 2001.  <http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/rossuk/abiogen.htm>, <http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/rossuk/c-evol.htm>.

 

Wright, Richard.  Biology Through the Eyes of Faith.  Washington, DC:  Christian College Coalition, 1989.