At Last: Science Discovers the Intelligent Design
of Evolutionary Processes in Genetics
A study came out recently (in Nature, online, and commented upon in Science) that quickened my heart. The researchers reported they had discovered (should we say, confirmed or understood?) that a species appeared to store a number of possibilities which remain phenotypically unexpressed until a significant change in the environment occurs, stressful enough that one of the other variants may be required for the species' continued existence.
Well, that's not exactly altogether new information, to my understanding of genetics. Still, I was pleased to see such a revelation of just the concepts I've been trying to get across, as I explain what I think about evolutionary processes and why they were originally designed into life by the Creator. This new little revelation, nothing new to my thinking, is precisely why I am not an implacable opponent of evolution theory, or research into evolutionary processes. I am only opposed to Evolutionism, by which I mean the religion that transforms the adaptive capacities built into life into the creators of life. I see Evolutionism as that doctrine that unjustifiably elevates the theory into a “fact”, and tries, at least, to turn a part of the design of life into a substitute for the Designer. Most Evolutionists adopt their faith solely in opposition to a belief in God, and to the Christian belief in the creation account in particular.
This has been my argument:
The scriptures tell us that life was God's creation, and the creation account tells us about the creation of the most significant “kinds”, which are essentially the major “levels” or thresholds of new forms of life, which God originated in His sovereignty and plans. Famously, the dinosaurs are an example. The scriptures do not tell us He created every species, but only that He designed and initiated the “kinds”, major taxa such as the simple plants and then the seed plants, and so on.
I suggest that the evidence of the scriptures and of the creation, the natural environment we live in, show us that He sowed the seed, so to speak. He designed each of those new “kinds” - major taxa of life forms, with much genetic (and phenotypic) plasticity. In that plasticity was the potential for adaptive “evolution” so that this garden could continue to adapt and survive the natural changes which are inevitable through time.
I even see in it the probability that He takes delight in allowing the freedom for His creation to innovate and create new form and beauty within the guidelines of the “kinds”, within the constraints of the miyn and zera, as the Hebrew put it. As I've said before, “He did not create a plastic terrarium but a living planet fully able to carry on when once He reached His “seventh day”. We know that He is not absent, but we also know that He finished His designing and building role sometime in the past. Then He did not leave, He only retired to the porch where He could sit back and enjoy watching the garden grow.
The idea that God created all the species as immutable things contradicts every sort of reason, and objective observation. We see, every day, the world changing and the living biota changing with it. We see, and even manipulate ourselves, the variability which is genetically built in to species. How else do we develop thousands of ever-more beautiful roses, interesting breeds of dogs, or useful varieties of sheep and horses? And how else does the Garden continually survive, even enriching itself, as the climate and the soils and even the impacts of other living species, march through eons of change that would annihilate a rigid and inflexible creation?
Evolution, appropriately regarded as a theory, does not replace God, but like so many other theories in physics and chemistry and biology, it recommends to us an insight as to how God designed and established His creation and His purposes for the future. Evolutionists, who deny the existence of God in favor of “chance”, and an ever-increasing variety of cockamamie metaphysics, and who ignore the remarkable record of creation offered in scripture, only try vainly to use evolution theory to replace God. That is why they nowadays try to sell it as a “fact”, not a theory. Only ignorance, in both high and low places, is allowing them to succeed in that lie, and to convert it into a political and social agenda.
Finally, I do not mean, here, to endorse any of those many “God of the gaps”, or “openness”, or “God the clockmaker” theologies. God needs no redefinition, nor should the creation account be “minimalized”, to accommodate science. I hope my position is becoming clearer and better understood as I continue my work of translation and interpretation of the Scriptures, and of science.
Both science and the Bible can be powerful tools for our comprehension of the truth and getting the most out of the creation we are blessed with. Truth exists independently of our interpretation of scripture and of scientifically observed data. We know we are in the truth when they do not contradict. And there is nowhere in the scriptures anything that denies evolutionary processes, but there is everywhere in the scriptures a denial of Evolutionism. These theologies or scientific doctrines which seek to homogenize the two or synthesize something new that contradicts the testimony of God, are simply wandering off into nonsense.