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Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V
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Part I: The Preparation of the Earth
For Man
Chapter 8
Creation and Divergence
NATURAL SELECTION acting upon random
mutations is still the only viable option for most evolutionists
at the present time. This is current orthodoxy. But it is widely
admitted, nevertheless, that the concept is of doubtful validity.
Sir Julian Huxley in 1943 said frankly, "the direct and
complete proof of the utilization of mutations in evolution under
natural conditions has not yet been provided.'' (126)
And Theodosius Dobzhansky said in 1962, "No satisfactory
theory of mutations has yet emerged.'' (127) One year
later, Ernst Mayr, perhaps the greatest authority on speciation,
admitted candidly: "Mutations merely increase the heterozygosity
of a population but do not lead to the production of new species.
. . . Mutations cannot produce new species in sexually reproducing
species.'' (128)
Artificial
selection is admittedly a different matter, for the operation
of human planning and conscious purpose make things possible
which pure chance has little if any likelihood of achieving,
as Leo Berg put it: (129)
Artificial
and Natural Selection are two very different things. In the first,
the intelligent will of man operates; in the second, blind chance.
Man engaged in the improvement of his breed in a rational manner,
crosses only what is useful, selecting from the offspring
only the useful, removing all else [his emphasis
throughout]. Nature can do nothing of the kind.
Nature may eliminate what is not immediately
useful but it cannot by itself foresee what might be useful in
the future unless one attributes to it some kind of purposeful
planning, and this is precisely what the evolutionist is most
anxious to avoid. Yet by capitalizing the word Nature and personifying
it by referring to it as her or she,
126. Huxley, Sir Julian, The
Modern Synthesis, Harper, New York, 1942, p.116.
127. Dobzhansky, Theodosius, Mankind Evolving, Yale University
Press, 1962, p.46.
128. Mayr, Ernst, Animal Species and Evolution, Belknap
Press of Harvard University Press, 1963, p.432.
129. Berg, Leo, Nomogenesis: Or Evolution Determined by Law,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, reprint 1969, p.65.
 pg
1 of 5 
evolutionists
do really deify Nature while dethroning Nature's Creator.
Man
is in the position of being able to see ahead and can therefore
take advantage of chance mutations that are recognized to be
of possible use sometime in the future. As a rule, Nature would
merely eliminate them, for Nature's way is to discourage the
exceptional and favour only the normal. Populations of animals
do not encourage the persistence of the extremes of their range
because they are constantly crossed with the normals which therefore
overwhelm them and thus place natural limits on variability,
once the form is established for any particular habitat. This
is a kind of negative selection process and is everywhere to
be observed both in the field and in the laboratory. Attempts
to extend the range of variability are usually unsuccessful,
or if the extremes are favoured by controlled breeding,
they almost always turn out to be less fit in the field -- though
they may have some particular value to man if he maintains the
breed under unnatural conditions. Certainly the rule in Nature
is to favour the mean, not the extremes.
Furthermore,
mutant varieties of a particular species that have been produced
in the laboratory by artificial controls differ in a very significant
way from those mutant varieties observed in Nature, to which
the artificial varieties are assumed to be analogous. C. P. Martin
of McGill University, (130) has pointed out that in Nature varieties
of certain supposedly closely related species are observed to
anticipate the differences of the adult form quite late in
embryological developmental. Up to a point, the embryos
of sub-phyla, for example, are indistinguishable. Later, the
characteristics that set apart the different orders make their
appearance in the embryo, followed later still by generic differences,
and finally by specific differences. Only in the last stages
of prenatal development do specific differences, which will be
observable in the adult, become apparent. In marked contrast,
laboratory mutant forms which will be clearly distinguishable
as adults, display their well-defined differences in the very
early stages of embryological development.
Clearly,
then, artificially induced mutant varieties tell us little or
nothing of how the different varieties of animals arose under
natural conditions. In short, the embryos of very different adult
forms, such as a chicken and a man, follow a parallel course
of development that is remarkably similar for a remarkably long
time, considering the differences in adult forms. By contrast,
adult forms
130. Martin, C. P., "A
Non-Geneticist Looks at Evolution," American Scientist,
January, 1953, pp.100-106.
pg.2
of 5
which
have been "engineered" in the laboratory by deliberately
induced mutations, while they too as adults may diverge quite
radically, are actually observed to begin this process of differentiation
far earlier in embryonic development.
To
put it very simplistically, divergent forms in Nature do not
suggest by their embryonic development that they are divergent
because they are mutant forms. Thus, artificially induced mutant
varieties shed little or no light on how the different varieties
of animals arose under natural conditions. It is not even sufficient
to say that the Creator used some method for their production
which was not unlike that which man may use. Superficially, about
the only common element that one can point to with certainty
at the moment is that Artificial and Supernatural Selection both
involve forethought and planning. In this, at least, they are
clearly to be distinguished from Natural Selection which, in
the present state of our knowledge, seems almost to be a fantasy.
It is doubtful if Natural Selection has in reality played any
part whatever in the formation of species, and in so far as Darwin
depended upon it as the prime agency in speciation, the title
of his famous work, The Origin of Species, was a complete
misnomer.
It
is apparent from the discussion up to this point that in the
past, in the geological period before the appearance of man,
the stage was being prepared by the deliberate intervention of
God who created, as occasion demanded, entirely new types and
forms of life and, to use J. J. D. de Wit's apt terminology,
invested them with "enormous genetic recombinational potency." (131) All that was needed for these potentials to be realized
was that the newly introduced forms be set in appropriate niches,
in which their capacities for variation would be most useful.
We know from observation in Nature that this is a perfectly reasonable
interpretation of the evidence. Ernst Mayr freely acknowledges
the principle involved here, (132) and Sir Julian Huxley illustrates
it thus: "It is indicated clearly in many island forms,
which have diverged in isolation while their counterparts on
the mainland have remained constant over wide areas in spite
of a great diversity of environments." (133) Darwin's
Galapagos finches are an excellent case in point. On the various
islands where the birds introduced themselves, each community
formed a distinguishable variety, while the original stock from
which
131. De Wit, J. J. D., "A
New Critique of the Transformist Principle in Evolutionary Biology,"
Philosophia Reformata, vol.29, 1964, p.55.
132. Mayr, Ernst, Animal Species and Evolution, Belknap
Press of Harvard University Press, 1963, p.538.
pg.3
of 5
these local populations
were derived, continued the original form with none of these
divergences. Jens Clausen and W. M. Hiesey, in a paper entitled
"Balance Between Coherence and Variation in Evolution,"
noted that shifts in the environment -- which is, of course,
an alternative to shifting the particular species to a new
environment -- tend to alter the balance between forces favouring
persistence of the type and departure from the typical form.
And such an alteration leads to change in the genetic constitution
of the particular race and of the species itself. (134)
It is obvious, therefore, that
if we can only supply some means of accounting for the introduction
of an entirely new type of animal into a given habitat, the subsequent
expansion and differentiation of that type into variant forms
is not merely easily accounted for, it is virtually inevitable.
The problem for the non-Christian naturalist is that he cannot
account for the appearance of the new type. The Christian can
allow creation as a reasonable explanation and can point out
that it is, in fact, the only explanation, since all these
new types appear to have been introduced without genetic antecedents.
Yet because they were introduced by the same Creator, they often
share many features which suggest an economy of planning. This
parallelism of design in details is what has confused the evolutionist,
because he is persuaded that the only way to account for it is
to assume descent. Walter Lammerts and John Sinclair have suggested
that groups of genes may have been designed as groups to
carry the responsibility of looking after certain specific needs
of the organism and that these can be re-arranged to produce,
for example, an eye suited to a particular animal. They put it
this way: (135)
Thus on
the basis of economy of effort, a wise Creator would certainly
use the same genes in all organisms wherever possible, i.e.,
wherever the same function was to be achieved.
A little over 200 years ago, such
a concept had already been proposed by the perceptive Comte Buffon
(1707-1788). (136) In his work Of the Nature of Animals
he expressed the view that the Creator seemed to have employed
but one idea, varying it ad infinitum, from plants to
worms to reptiles to man, "to give men an opportunity of
admiring equally the magnificance of the execution and the simplicity
of the design." He viewed the design as really a mode of
operation or a
134. Clausen, Jens, and Hiesey,
W. M., "Balance Between Coherence and Variation in Evolution,"
Science, vol.130, 1959, p.1413.
135. Lammerts, Walter, and John Sinclair, "Creation in Terms
of Modern Concepts of Genetics and Physics," Journal
of the American Scientific Affiliation, vol.5, no.3, 1953,
p.8.
136. Buffon: quoted by J. C. Greene, The Death of Adam, Iowa
State University Press, 1959, p.141.
pg.4
of 5
system
of processes rather than simply a pattern of structures. And
he believed that the true aim of Natural History was to discover
and understand these processes, and not merely to classify their
end results.
It
all makes perfectly good sense to see the whole panorama in this
light, granted the single premise that behind it stands a Creator
with a purpose. One candid evolutionist, G. A. Kerkut, has written:
(137)
If living
material had developed on several different occasions, one would
expect to have a large number of distinct groups of animals whose
relationships and affinities are difficult to discern. . . .
This is the present situation.
Fair enough, as far as it goes: only
it is surely a gross understatement to speak of "several
different occasions" when in reality these gaps are a universal
phenomenon, and such "occasions" must therefore run
into the thousands. Moreover, their interrelationships are not
only difficult to determine, they are in fact impossible to
determine, except by ultimate reference in the mind of God.
So then, we can see this whole process
as a series of creative acts which account for the introduction
of new forms of life as soon as the setting is appropriate for
them, followed by diversification due to the spread of these
created forms with their high potential for variation into new
habitats. Their introduction into the total economy of Nature
will in turn change the system, tending it toward the formation
of a habitat finally to be ideally suited for the introduction
of man along with animal forms and plant forms of particular
importance to the welfare of the human race. And all the while,
the changes in the total environment involve a series of physical
events which were laying in store for man's future use, the enormous
reservoirs of energy in the form of fossil fuels (coal, gas,
and oil) which were going to make possible his final dominion
over the earth.
137. Kerkut, G. A., The
Implications of Evolution, Pergamon Press, New York, 1960,
pp.14, 17.
pg.5
of 5
Copyright © 1988 Evelyn White. All rights
reserved
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