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Creation biology is an attempt to study biology from a creationary perspective. According to its proponents, it is a synthesis of science and religion, as it attempts to draw from both sources in developing its ideas. Creation biology is identical to mainstream biology with respect to the observable physiology and function of living organisms today; for instance, the structure of the cell, taxonomy, and genetics. It acknowledges microevolution and speciation as observable phenomena. Creation biology differs from mainstream biology only with regard to the origin of living things.
Creation biology and biological evolution
The theory of biological evolution, which is generally accepted by the mainstream scientific community, holds that all life shares common ancestry and evolved by natural means from a single protocell.
Creation biology, by contrast, is based on the idea that God created all life on the planet in a finite number of discrete forms, commonly called "kinds," which were specially designed and given particular characteristics which God deemed to be "Good." These kinds were given the ability to vary significantly through microevolution. However, variation can only take place within definite limits. Kinds cannot arise spontaneously, cannot interbreed, and one kind cannot change into another.
As such, creationists have proposed several ideas:
- Biogenesis, that is, the idea that life can only come from life, and cannot arise spontaneously from non-life. This runs contrary to naturalistic theories of abiogenesis as the Origin of life.
- Teleology, that is, the idea that God designed life with intricate and interconnected components for a purpose, and then determined that they were "Good." This runs contrary to philosophical naturalism, or the idea that natural phenomena are the result of chance and natural law, and contrary to the idea of the Selfish gene, that is, the idea that the complexity and beauty of life is merely the result of the replication, variation, and selection of DNA.
- Biological kinds, that is, the idea that life was originally created in a finite number of discrete forms, and that while these kinds had the ability to vary significantly within their kind, one kind cannot interbreed with another kind, and new kinds cannot arise spontaneously. This runs contrary to the idea of universal common ancestry, that is, the idea that all life on the planet is related via macroevolution.
- Irreducible complexity, that is, the idea that many components of life are composed of interdependent parts in which the absence of one part would cause the entire system to fail, making it extremely unreasonable to believe that they came about one component at a time as held by evolution, and much more reasonable to believe they were designed and assembled together, for a purpose. This runs contrary to the idea that all biological mechanisms are merely the result of slow evolutionary processes, one mutation at a time.
- Specified complexity, that is, the idea that genetic information is both complex and specified, and that such information cannot increase through random functions, but only through the intervention of an intelligent designer. This runs contrary to the idea that all biological mechanisms are the result of slow evolutionary processes, one mutation at a time.
Biological kinds
Creationists believe that life was originally created in a discrete number of forms, called "kinds." These kinds were designed with particular characteristics, and were created separately. They are therefore not related. The kinds do not correspond exactly with any one particular modern taxonomic classification, but are usually at a higher level than species. One possible example of a kind is Felidae. Some creationists have proposed that the original kinds were comparable to the Liger and the Tigon, and that after the flood, felines differentiated through variation, natural selection, and genetic drift from a limited population aboard Noah's Ark into the present variety of felines.
Creation biology holds that the original kinds of life were created by God in a greatly superior form than today; The genealogies of Genesis, for instance, indicate that people lived between 700-900 years before the flood, but that those lifespans dropped quickly after the flood, ostensibly due to a harsher environment and the inbreeding which accompanied the repopulation of the earth from only eight people on the ark. Creation biology looks to the extraordinary animals visible in the fossil record (which Flood geology interprets as having mostly been formed during the flood) as evidence that antediluvian life was much more diverse and sophisticated than life today.
Thus, while mainstream science infers that all life shares a common ancestor, creation biology holds that all cats may share a common ancestor, but dogs and cats do not; further, while mainstream science holds that speciation is due to an increase in genetic diversity due to mutation, creation biology holds that speciation is due to a decrease in genetic diversity due to reproductive isolation, inbreeding, natural selection, and genetic drift.
Microevolution, macroevolution, and genetic information
Whilst many creationists say that they accept microevolution but reject macroevolution, others speak in terms of "genetic information."
Creationary scientist Dr. Jonathan Sarfati, wrote:
- "The main scientific objection to the GTE [General Theory of Evolution] is not that changes occur through time, and neither is it about the size of the change (so the use of the terms "micro-" and "macro-evolution" should be discouraged"). It isn't even about whether natural selection happens. The key issue is the type of change required to change microbes into men requires changes that increase the genetic information content." Sarfati 2004.
These creationists point out that the first single-celled creature would not have had the genetic information for hair, lungs, limbs, or wings. To evolve from that first single-celled creature to today's mammals, reptiles, and birds, evolution would have need to add enormous quantities of genetic information—the information needed to code for those things (amongst innumerable others).
They claim that mutations—the only source of new information proposed by evolution—are an information-destroying mechanism, so mutations could not provide that additional information. They further claim that this is backed by many observations of mutations that destroyed information, and that information-increasing mutations have never been observed.
Creationism, on the other hand, proposes that God created the different kinds with enough genetic information to adapt to different environments, but that mutations and natural selection have combined to remove some of that genetic information.
Thus they claim that scientific observations are more consistent with creationary biology than evolutionary biology.
Challenges to biological evolution
Creationists hold that creation biology is superior to biological evolution, for the following reasons:
- Creationists argue that no demonstrable mechanism for abiogenesis has been presented, and it is therefore unreasonable to believe that life arose from non-life spontaneously.
- Creationists argue that no plausible mechanisms for macroevolution, or the evolution of irreducible complexity or specified complexity have been presented, and argue that the laws of genetics and probability strongly indicate their impossibility, and conclude that it is unreasonable to believe that all life descended from a single protocell.
- Creationists argue that the fossil record is devoid of transitional forms between higher taxa, for example reptiles and mammals, land mammals and whales, or lower primates and humans, and that the supposed transitional forms merely bear superficial resemblance to one or the other, but consistently show enormous gaps which microevolution alone could not reasonably bridge.
Creation biology and mainstream science
Creation biology is often accused of being non-scientific or anti-scientific. One creationist responded:
- "The discipline of biology will not only survive but prosper if it turns out that genetic information really is the product of preexisting intelligence. Biologists will have to give up their dogmatic materialism and discard unproductive hypotheses like the prebiotic soup, but to abandon bad ideas is a gain, not a loss. Freed of the metaphysical chains that tie it to nineteenth-century materialism, biology can turn to the fascinating task of discovering how the intelligence embodied in the genetic information works through matter to make the organism function. In that case chemical evolution will go the way of alchemy -- abandoned because a better understanding of the problem revealed its futility -- and science will have reached a new plateau." -- Phillip Johnson, Reason in the Balance, p. 92.
External links
- Creationscience.com (http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/LifeSciences.html) An on-line book, "In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood"
- Dogs breeding dogs? (http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v18/i2/dogs.asp)
Sources
Sarfati, Jonathon, Refuting Compromise, Master Books, 2004.
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