The creation versus evolution debate has now been raging for over 170 years and sadly many Christians have been caught in the crossfire. Today, many people are leaving the church and losing faith in God because they believe that science is somehow able to disprove God’s existence and undermine the truthfulness of His word. Others, while maintaining their belief in God, try to explain away portions of scripture by placing an evolutionary view on them; we call this ‘theistic evolution’. Can we, as Christians, maintain the truthfulness of God’s word, while also being in harmony with science? The answer is absolutely, yes, we can!
Why is it so important to believe in the Biblical account of creation?
Creation forms the very basis for the Biblical narrative. We are told that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth (Gen 1:1). He then went on to fill the earth with plants, animals, and people, while He filled the heavens with stars and planets, as well as a sun and moon. At the end of the six days of creation, God looked upon all that He had done and pronounced it ‘very good’ (Gen 1:31). In this very good world, there was no death or suffering. The death of living creatures came as the result of sin (Rom 5:12) and this has been the state of things since Adam and Eve fell in Eden.
From this account, God has given us a clear picture of our origins as well as an understanding of why our world has fallen into chaos. All was made ‘very good’, after which sin brought death and suffering. This sin is what Jesus died to redeem us from so that we can return to that ‘very good’ state in which God created us. Without this foundation, the gospel message makes no sense.
Evolution claims that death and suffering are a necessary part of how we came to exist. Survival of the fittest and death of the less favourable organisms forms the basis of an evolutionary worldview. If we try to fit this into the Biblical narrative, as with theistic evolution, then we must accept that God used death and violence to create a perfect world. Death is no longer the result of sin, but part of God’s perfect plan; and so, the whole Biblical narrative is undermined and rendered absurd.
Isn’t evolution fact?
Although we are often told that evolution has been proven to be a fact, this couldn’t be more untrue. Evolutionists will seldom share the many quandaries and inconsistencies of evolutionary theory, but if we analyse some of the simple facts, we will realise that the theory of evolution creates far more questions than it answers.
To cover all the issues in the theory of evolution would take a great deal of time and far more than this article allows for. Instead, let’s focus on one fatal flaw in the theory of evolution, ‘genetic entropy’.
What is genetic entropy?
Entropy refers to the process by which order turns into chaos. This is something that we see happening around us all the time. If we make a sandcastle on the beach, eventually the wind and waves turn our perfectly ordered masterpiece into nothing but an indistinguishable lump of sand, and, eventually, it disappears altogether. The only time we see order develop out of chaos is when an intelligent mind is involved. When we see a beautiful sandcastle on the beach, we never assume the wind and waves made it, instead we look for the intelligent artist nearby who created the sculpture we see. The process of order becoming chaos is also what we see happening with our own DNA; this is genetic entropy.
Genetic entropy is a term that was first coined by the retired Cornell University geneticist Dr John Sanford. It describes the process by which our DNA is gradually accumulating typological errors in its genetic code. Our DNA contains all the information required to instruct each one of our cells to perform its required duty to keep us alive and functioning. If this information should gradually become corrupted through an accumulation of mutational errors, the result will be that our cells will malfunction, and eventually, this code will no longer be compatible with life.
DNA stores all its information in a four-letter code. They are adenosine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G), and thymine (T). Human DNA has over three billion letters that make up its code. If we consider this in terms of an average English Bible, which contains roughly 3.5 million letters, we would need 850 Bible sized books to contain all the information in our DNA. As an information storage medium, DNA is entirely unsurpassed. The greatest computers on earth cannot store and control information the way our DNA does. Despite the great quantity of information and the complexity of the system it controls, all of this is stored inside the cell nucleus which is so small it cannot be seen by the naked eye.
The only problem with DNA is that it is not very stable and is prone to breaking. An average cell will have one million breakages in its DNA every day [1]. For this reason, our cells have sophisticated repair mechanisms that are constantly at work keeping our DNA in good functioning order. This fact is a strong argument against evolution. DNAs fragility requires that there must be a
coexisting repair mechanism to keep it from completely breaking down. For evolution to have occurred, DNA would have to arise at the exact same time as the repair enzymes, and these repair enzymes would need to have a perfect understanding of how the DNA should be ordered to repair it. What’s more, the instructions to make these repair mechanisms are also stored within our DNA. Without the genetic code, they could not be created. Sound like an impossible dilemma? That’s because it is!
Even though our cells have sophisticated and efficient repair mechanisms, they are not perfect. Therefore, we find an accumulation of mutations passed from one cell to the next and from one generation to the next. As it turns out, this gradual accumulation of genetic mutations is what gives
an age limit on the human lifespan. Each time our cells divide there are on average three to four errors in the replication process [2]. By the time a person reaches the age of sixty, one of their skin cells has accumulated something in the order of 40,000 mutational errors [2]. Is it any wonder that we wrinkle as we age and often become increasingly prone to skin cancers? This same process is taking place in all the cells of our body and explains why we go through the downward process of aging.
What many people do not realise is that these same types of errors are passed on from one generation to the next. You have 100 more mutations than your parents, your child will have 100 more mutations than you, and your grandchild will have a further 100 mutations [2]. Each generation has more and more genetic mutations than the generation before them. Thankfully, most of these mutations go essentially unnoticed. These apparently harmless mutations are often referred to by geneticists as being ‘slightly deleterious’ mutations3. Our genetic code is so complex that these errors often have no perceptible impact on our health. However, as these errors accumulate, they become devastating. Even a single poorly placed mutation can have a catastrophic effect.
Some evolutionists claim that this problem can be easily solved by natural selection. It is argued that organisms with deleterious mutations will produce less fit offspring that are less likely to reproduce due to premature death or infertility, thus removing the harmful mutations from the population. However, as many of these mutations are often unnoticed, and the offspring appear just as fit as the parent organism, natural selection is blind to these changes and therefore powerless to correct them. It won’t be until significant harmful mutations have already accumulated within the genome of a population that the effect will then be seen. The problem then becomes that it is impossible for natural selection to remove these problematic mutations except that the entire species should eventually become extinct; a point called ‘error catastrophe’ or ‘mutational meltdown’. This is exactly where the human genome is headed.
It is also argued that beneficial mutations counteract the harmful ones and ultimately lead to an overall improvement which would increase survival. The only problem with this is that we have never witnessed a truly beneficial mutation that has improved the survival and fitness of an organism. Although beneficial mutations do occur, they occur at such a low rate and with such low power that they cannot combat the overwhelming number of ‘slightly deleterious’ mutations. Could we expect to improve the information contained within an encyclopaedia by randomly changing letters or words? Or would we expect that over time this would make the book less intelligible until it reached the point that it made absolutely no sense at all? In many instances when we have seen ‘beneficial’ mutations occur, it has often made the organism less fit overall. Sickle cell disease would be one such example. Genetic mutations within certain people result in the red blood cells taking on a crescent or sickle shape. This change in the shape of red blood cells makes a person naturally immune to Malaria. This should be a good thing, right? The only problem is that sickle cell also puts a person at risk of anaemia and sickle cell crisis that can result in death. Today doctors view sickle cell as a disease and manage it accordingly. It certainly isn’t viewed as a truly beneficial genetic mutation as it reduces life expectancy and overall fitness, even if it does provide protection against the deadly disease Malaria.
Based on the mutation rate from one generation to the next and the number of mutations that would be able to occur before our genome would no longer support life, it has been estimated that humans could not exist beyond 200,000 years, and likely less than 20,000 years [4]. By studying
the mitochondrial DNA of humans, roundworms, fruit flies and water fleas, Dr Jeanson was able to show that, at the current mutation rate, these organisms could not have come into existence more than 10,000 years ago [5]. This strongly suggests that the long ages purported by proponents of evolution are a long stretch from what the scientific data is now showing.
The Conclusion
Genetic entropy fits perfectly within a creationist worldview. When God made Adam and Eve, they were perfect. Their genetic code was flawless. When sin entered and we came under its curse, the process of genetic entropy started. Over time we have seen the accumulation of genetic defects and we expect to see the research supporting an ongoing accumulation of harmful genetic mutations, just as we are. If evolution were true, we should expect to see new and improved genetic material accumulating, not the degradation we are witnessing. As such, genetic entropy stands strongly in support of a recent creation by an intelligent designer. Complex life-forms with their highly sophisticated genetic coding could not possibly have arisen by random chance over any space of time. The science supports the Biblical account, and, as Christians, we have good reason to maintain the true record of creation that we find in the opening chapters of Genesis.
References
Lodish, H. et al., Molecular Biology of the Cell, 5th ed., W.H Freeman and Company, New York, 2004.
Lynch, M., Rate, molecular spectrum, and consequences of human mutation, Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA 107(3):961-968, 2010.
Kondrashov, A.S., Contamination of the genome by very slightly deleterious mutations: why have we not died 100 times over, J. Theor. Biol. 175:583-594.
Ashton, J., Evolution Impossible, Master Books, 2018.
Jeanson, N., Recent, Functionally Diverse Origin for Mitochondrial Genes from ~2700 Metazoan Species, Answers Research Journal. 6:467-501, 2013.
Resources
It is highly recommended that those who wish to grow in their understanding of the debate around creation and evolution, and particularly regarding genetic entropy, read further around this topic for themselves. Below are a few recommended resources:
Books
Online Articles and Websites
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