Tuesday, September 27, 2005
The DNA of Chimps and Humans
Virtually every teacher of biology in the universities of the world explain how life began from non-life and how genetic mistakes in replication were naturally preserved or eliminated due to the benefit or hindrance such changes made to that ever-changing life-form. Natural selection, as they call it, is a process that eliminates weakness and supports strengths in each ecological environment. Slowly but surely, small changes in each organism are maintained in separate streams, thus leading to the differentiation of all the species, and eventually resulting in human life.
One of the interesting scientific developments in recent years has been the rise of a technology that allows us to map the genetic patterns found in cellular DNA. A common belief is that chimpanzees are the closest relatives to humans in this evolutionary scenario, and the mapping of the genome has shown that the genetic pattern found in chimps and humans is 96% alike. Surely this is a strong proof of our evolutionary ancestry (chimps and humans arising from a common ancestor). Such similar DNA confirms for many that evolution is a satisfactory explanation of the origin of human beings, and the biblical story seems to sound more and more like mythology.
But wait! Things are not so simple as this account seems to make them. Yes, it is the case that a large part of the genetic sequence is the same. But let’s not overlook that 4% difference. What does that really mean? Four percent of the chemical pairs in the human DNA would be about 3 million base pairs that reside within protein-encoding and other functional areas of the human DNA. No, that is not a misprint! If DNA were the only effective measurement (and it is not), we still have to account for random genetic changes making over 3 million favorable DNA changes that were preserved. The rate of favorable vs. unfavorable changes is very low. The genetic system is very complex, and random changes would be unfavorable most of the time. So to gain 3 million positive base-pair changes that are in section of DNA that make a difference and are sufficiently favorable to be naturally selected, there must have been an enormous number of useless changes that were naturally eliminated.
How fast do these changes occur? Not very fast! We do not notice this evolutionary process in our lifetimes. We have historical records that go back several thousands of years, and genetic changes in human beings do not seem to be great. So even thousands of years do not show much change. But we have to account for 3 million functional and preserved changes since humans supposedly split off from the chimpanzees. Is any reasonable amount of time available within which these 3 million favorable changes could have been made? Remember, the changes according to evolutionary theory, cannot be guided or directed in any way by intelligence. Science, evolutionists say, cannot accommodate intelligent design, and yet intelligent control and planned changes are essential to make this scientific theory reasonable. It is simply unreasonable and lacking in supportive evidence to argue that all of those favorable changes could be made so effectively and efficiently over so short a time. Even a million year period would require the recognition of three favorable changes per year, and in light of the three recently discovered 500,000 year old chimpanzee teeth from Kenya that show virtually no changes at all in chimpanzees in that time period, there simply is little if any evidence that such a pattern of rapid genetic change would likely be sustained over that amount of time. Remember, even a good change randomly produced could be randomly undone in the next generation if it did not link strongly to an established gene. Especially would that be the case if changes are mostly taking place only in a limited number of segments (those making up the 4% of active portions of the DNA sequence).
Science News, September 3, 2005, page 147, reports that the geneticist Robert Waterson of the University of Washington Medical School in Seattle let the team that analyzed the genetic sequence of a male chimp and compared it to that of humans. Is natural evolution really the best explanation of the origin of the differences between these species?
In that same study, Evan E. Eichler and his co-workers discovered that the differences between chimps and humans are found mot in simple base-pair variations but in complete or partial genes. Single base pair variations make up 1.2 percent of the differences between chimps and humans, whereas 2.7 percent of the variations are entire genes. This further complicates theories of unguided change.
Moreover, Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, reports that his research reveals that it is the genes active in the brain that have accumulated more changes in people than in chimps.
Perhaps that is why it is mostly people and not chimps that will be reading this article. An all knowing Creator remains the most reasonable explanation for the facts of genetics as they are known today.
One of the interesting scientific developments in recent years has been the rise of a technology that allows us to map the genetic patterns found in cellular DNA. A common belief is that chimpanzees are the closest relatives to humans in this evolutionary scenario, and the mapping of the genome has shown that the genetic pattern found in chimps and humans is 96% alike. Surely this is a strong proof of our evolutionary ancestry (chimps and humans arising from a common ancestor). Such similar DNA confirms for many that evolution is a satisfactory explanation of the origin of human beings, and the biblical story seems to sound more and more like mythology.
But wait! Things are not so simple as this account seems to make them. Yes, it is the case that a large part of the genetic sequence is the same. But let’s not overlook that 4% difference. What does that really mean? Four percent of the chemical pairs in the human DNA would be about 3 million base pairs that reside within protein-encoding and other functional areas of the human DNA. No, that is not a misprint! If DNA were the only effective measurement (and it is not), we still have to account for random genetic changes making over 3 million favorable DNA changes that were preserved. The rate of favorable vs. unfavorable changes is very low. The genetic system is very complex, and random changes would be unfavorable most of the time. So to gain 3 million positive base-pair changes that are in section of DNA that make a difference and are sufficiently favorable to be naturally selected, there must have been an enormous number of useless changes that were naturally eliminated.
How fast do these changes occur? Not very fast! We do not notice this evolutionary process in our lifetimes. We have historical records that go back several thousands of years, and genetic changes in human beings do not seem to be great. So even thousands of years do not show much change. But we have to account for 3 million functional and preserved changes since humans supposedly split off from the chimpanzees. Is any reasonable amount of time available within which these 3 million favorable changes could have been made? Remember, the changes according to evolutionary theory, cannot be guided or directed in any way by intelligence. Science, evolutionists say, cannot accommodate intelligent design, and yet intelligent control and planned changes are essential to make this scientific theory reasonable. It is simply unreasonable and lacking in supportive evidence to argue that all of those favorable changes could be made so effectively and efficiently over so short a time. Even a million year period would require the recognition of three favorable changes per year, and in light of the three recently discovered 500,000 year old chimpanzee teeth from Kenya that show virtually no changes at all in chimpanzees in that time period, there simply is little if any evidence that such a pattern of rapid genetic change would likely be sustained over that amount of time. Remember, even a good change randomly produced could be randomly undone in the next generation if it did not link strongly to an established gene. Especially would that be the case if changes are mostly taking place only in a limited number of segments (those making up the 4% of active portions of the DNA sequence).
Science News, September 3, 2005, page 147, reports that the geneticist Robert Waterson of the University of Washington Medical School in Seattle let the team that analyzed the genetic sequence of a male chimp and compared it to that of humans. Is natural evolution really the best explanation of the origin of the differences between these species?
In that same study, Evan E. Eichler and his co-workers discovered that the differences between chimps and humans are found mot in simple base-pair variations but in complete or partial genes. Single base pair variations make up 1.2 percent of the differences between chimps and humans, whereas 2.7 percent of the variations are entire genes. This further complicates theories of unguided change.
Moreover, Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, reports that his research reveals that it is the genes active in the brain that have accumulated more changes in people than in chimps.
Perhaps that is why it is mostly people and not chimps that will be reading this article. An all knowing Creator remains the most reasonable explanation for the facts of genetics as they are known today.
Friday, September 16, 2005
Intelligent Design
A Way of Looking
My issue here is not that all science must be done according to a specific model. I know some scientists are not happy with religious people telling them how to interpret scientific data. They see efforts to affirm design as the end of good science. They believe that science should not be used in the service of religion.
All of these comments are understandable, but I believe they are fundamentally flawed. The fact that people are or are not religious in their attitudes or actions has nothing to do with their expertise in some given discipline. Intelligent design theorists do affirm that the orderliness of the world is due to intelligence rather than to chance, that it is a result of conscious planning and implementation rather than being a result of random changes and subsequent natural selection. They might believe, for example, that natural selection cannot select anything in the way a person does, and further that natural selection, even if it were true, could not originate new biological organisms.
Mutation or some other random and non-purposive process has to originate a change in the genetic code in order for nature to select it. So at heart, the evolutionary process depends upon many changes being favorable, and yet there is no mechanism to guarantee that any changes will be favorable, and there really is no assurance that random changes would not be lethal. It is far more likely that random changes would be harmful to a complex system than to assume that a random change might actually be favorable.
To argue that the only way to think about biology is to assume that only undirected changes can occur, and that among those, only favorable ones will be selected, is virtually to leave biology without a reasonable explanation of itself. There are many kinds of changes that might not actually be favorable and yet might easily be selected in a given environment by a natural unthinking process. Moreover, things do not systematically organize themselves and luckily develop enhanced features at a pace anything like that necessary to get from a simple original cell (which already would have to be excessively complex) to all the living varieties and stable forms that we find in the world today.
It is not good science to ignore the beauty of an organism simply because beauty is a philosophical category rather than a strictly empirical one. It is not good science to de-emphasize the complexity of an organism for fear that someone might perceive that complexity as an evidence of design. The affirmation of design is in no way a hindrance to the examination of the data. No one knows (from the Bible or any religious book) what must be the features of some biological organism prior to actually looking at the organism. Religious believers are motivated to speak the truth, to take care in their work, and to be honest about their discoveries. Nothing about intelligent design theory should lead anyone to give up good scientific observation and practice.
Science should not be the maidservant to religion. Science should be the servant of truth. If religion is true, as I believe Christian Faith is (but not necessarily other religious claims, and I am somewhat selective even within Christianity), then science by serving truth will serve Christian Faith. If my faith needs to be revised, then science might show the way, but Science should be just as open minded. Truth should rule in science and in faith.
My issue here is not that all science must be done according to a specific model. I know some scientists are not happy with religious people telling them how to interpret scientific data. They see efforts to affirm design as the end of good science. They believe that science should not be used in the service of religion.
All of these comments are understandable, but I believe they are fundamentally flawed. The fact that people are or are not religious in their attitudes or actions has nothing to do with their expertise in some given discipline. Intelligent design theorists do affirm that the orderliness of the world is due to intelligence rather than to chance, that it is a result of conscious planning and implementation rather than being a result of random changes and subsequent natural selection. They might believe, for example, that natural selection cannot select anything in the way a person does, and further that natural selection, even if it were true, could not originate new biological organisms.
Mutation or some other random and non-purposive process has to originate a change in the genetic code in order for nature to select it. So at heart, the evolutionary process depends upon many changes being favorable, and yet there is no mechanism to guarantee that any changes will be favorable, and there really is no assurance that random changes would not be lethal. It is far more likely that random changes would be harmful to a complex system than to assume that a random change might actually be favorable.
To argue that the only way to think about biology is to assume that only undirected changes can occur, and that among those, only favorable ones will be selected, is virtually to leave biology without a reasonable explanation of itself. There are many kinds of changes that might not actually be favorable and yet might easily be selected in a given environment by a natural unthinking process. Moreover, things do not systematically organize themselves and luckily develop enhanced features at a pace anything like that necessary to get from a simple original cell (which already would have to be excessively complex) to all the living varieties and stable forms that we find in the world today.
It is not good science to ignore the beauty of an organism simply because beauty is a philosophical category rather than a strictly empirical one. It is not good science to de-emphasize the complexity of an organism for fear that someone might perceive that complexity as an evidence of design. The affirmation of design is in no way a hindrance to the examination of the data. No one knows (from the Bible or any religious book) what must be the features of some biological organism prior to actually looking at the organism. Religious believers are motivated to speak the truth, to take care in their work, and to be honest about their discoveries. Nothing about intelligent design theory should lead anyone to give up good scientific observation and practice.
Science should not be the maidservant to religion. Science should be the servant of truth. If religion is true, as I believe Christian Faith is (but not necessarily other religious claims, and I am somewhat selective even within Christianity), then science by serving truth will serve Christian Faith. If my faith needs to be revised, then science might show the way, but Science should be just as open minded. Truth should rule in science and in faith.
Monday, September 12, 2005
Wind and Flood
Acts of God
Hurricanes and floods are by insurance companies called acts of God. Any natural disaster is referred to in this way because there is no one else on which to lay the blame. One cannot sue God, so we cannot get the money to restore our losses from Him directly. In fact, the huge disasters on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and to a lesser extent (though a more publicized one) the disaster in New Orleans, is going to cost each of us a great deal of money as we pay off the damages caused by God’s acts.
If God is good, as we say He is, then why does he allow so much human suffering and so much property loss and so much hardship? Were all the victims great sinners? Was this because God is not good? Clearly He is powerful. Why then, the suffering?
Note well that the suffering is not directed only on the criminal element in society. Many churches and religious sites were destroyed. Theological schools were severely damaged. Hospitals were as much in harms way as were the houses of prostitution on Bourbon Street.
The question is ill placed. The old traditional issue of why a good God would allow bad things to happen is not the place to begin. First of all, the question only leads to atheism as an answer, since clearly bad things do happen, even to good people. So if the theist has to somehow show that bad things happen only to bad people, he either will have to argue that all people are bad (which is true in a sense, but not all people face the disaster of a category 5 hurricane), or he will have to show that God punishes the bad but bring good out of such disasters for the good people. All of these answers are set up by the particular way the question is phrased. Ask a different question and the answers begin to sound different. For example, if there is not God, then why did so many people respond with help and support for the sufferers? Why were churches immediately used as feeding stations and as shelters? Why did people pray for their own safety? If there is no God, then there is no one to hear those prayers.
The evidence for the reality of God’s existence is not overthrown simply because we do not understand why God allowed a certain thing to happen. Maybe we are overly confident in our ability to know what is best in the overall scheme of things. Maybe something really big is coming, and God is getting us ready for it. Maybe God is warning us of final judgment. Maybe there are reasons we cannot at the moment comprehend. Must we understand everything immediately or else we threaten God with our disbelief? How ludicrous!
God is known to exist for the same reasons He was known to have existed before the Gulf States’ disasters. Yes, these are hard times. Yes, the suffering is great. Yes, we don’t understand. But whether or not we understand the why question, the reality of God’s grace and love is everywhere being shown in this disaster. Many who were physically unaffected are learning to care, to give, and to share the consequences by paying higher prices and by supporting relief efforts.
Can anything justify this act of God that destroyed so much along the Gulf Coast? Oh yes, for sure. God’s love is manifested in ways impossible to comprehend apart from the tragedy. God’s grace is manifested beyond what we could have otherwise known. There is likely an element of God’s judgment on the wickedness of the city and the coastal areas, but there is also a strong pull toward faithfulness that is welling up in the hearts of the responders and relief workers and in many of the victims. There is a spiritual discipline that may more clearly be manifested through these events than could ever be achieved otherwise.
Suffering is often hard to watch. Property loss is especially hard on materialists. Some have and will die needlessly, but many others will live with a renewed sense of purpose. While some will become depressed and rebellious, others will turn to faith in God Himself as their salvation. Even in the end of all things, there will be a heaven and also a hell. God is not simply a Grandpa who always tells us we are doing everything very well. The real God is a real God. Not everything is sugar and spice. This God is righteous, and He has moral standards and He expects our lives to conform to that of His Son Jesus Christ. But He is a loving God. Prove that by turning to Him in faith now. Only then can you fully see that what Christians are saying is actually true, both on earth and throughout the universe.
Hurricanes and floods are by insurance companies called acts of God. Any natural disaster is referred to in this way because there is no one else on which to lay the blame. One cannot sue God, so we cannot get the money to restore our losses from Him directly. In fact, the huge disasters on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and to a lesser extent (though a more publicized one) the disaster in New Orleans, is going to cost each of us a great deal of money as we pay off the damages caused by God’s acts.
If God is good, as we say He is, then why does he allow so much human suffering and so much property loss and so much hardship? Were all the victims great sinners? Was this because God is not good? Clearly He is powerful. Why then, the suffering?
Note well that the suffering is not directed only on the criminal element in society. Many churches and religious sites were destroyed. Theological schools were severely damaged. Hospitals were as much in harms way as were the houses of prostitution on Bourbon Street.
The question is ill placed. The old traditional issue of why a good God would allow bad things to happen is not the place to begin. First of all, the question only leads to atheism as an answer, since clearly bad things do happen, even to good people. So if the theist has to somehow show that bad things happen only to bad people, he either will have to argue that all people are bad (which is true in a sense, but not all people face the disaster of a category 5 hurricane), or he will have to show that God punishes the bad but bring good out of such disasters for the good people. All of these answers are set up by the particular way the question is phrased. Ask a different question and the answers begin to sound different. For example, if there is not God, then why did so many people respond with help and support for the sufferers? Why were churches immediately used as feeding stations and as shelters? Why did people pray for their own safety? If there is no God, then there is no one to hear those prayers.
The evidence for the reality of God’s existence is not overthrown simply because we do not understand why God allowed a certain thing to happen. Maybe we are overly confident in our ability to know what is best in the overall scheme of things. Maybe something really big is coming, and God is getting us ready for it. Maybe God is warning us of final judgment. Maybe there are reasons we cannot at the moment comprehend. Must we understand everything immediately or else we threaten God with our disbelief? How ludicrous!
God is known to exist for the same reasons He was known to have existed before the Gulf States’ disasters. Yes, these are hard times. Yes, the suffering is great. Yes, we don’t understand. But whether or not we understand the why question, the reality of God’s grace and love is everywhere being shown in this disaster. Many who were physically unaffected are learning to care, to give, and to share the consequences by paying higher prices and by supporting relief efforts.
Can anything justify this act of God that destroyed so much along the Gulf Coast? Oh yes, for sure. God’s love is manifested in ways impossible to comprehend apart from the tragedy. God’s grace is manifested beyond what we could have otherwise known. There is likely an element of God’s judgment on the wickedness of the city and the coastal areas, but there is also a strong pull toward faithfulness that is welling up in the hearts of the responders and relief workers and in many of the victims. There is a spiritual discipline that may more clearly be manifested through these events than could ever be achieved otherwise.
Suffering is often hard to watch. Property loss is especially hard on materialists. Some have and will die needlessly, but many others will live with a renewed sense of purpose. While some will become depressed and rebellious, others will turn to faith in God Himself as their salvation. Even in the end of all things, there will be a heaven and also a hell. God is not simply a Grandpa who always tells us we are doing everything very well. The real God is a real God. Not everything is sugar and spice. This God is righteous, and He has moral standards and He expects our lives to conform to that of His Son Jesus Christ. But He is a loving God. Prove that by turning to Him in faith now. Only then can you fully see that what Christians are saying is actually true, both on earth and throughout the universe.
