Should Christians Embrace Evolution? [Paperback]

When Berkeley law professor Phillip Johnson published a controversial book in 1991 called Darwin on Trial, it hit a raw nerve, and was severely criticised by many evolutionists. A notable exception was David Raup, former dean of science at Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History, and a committed evolutionist. His verdict on Johnson was: "He's really done his homework. It's phenomenal the way he absorbed the field. Now, many people would say, `He doesn't know anything. That's obvious from the first page.' That's often said without *reading* the first page."

`Reviews' that slate a book and/or its author(s), without discussing any of the book's contents, tell us nothing about the book, but quite a lot about the `reviewers'. They also call into question the meaning of the term "book review"!

"Should Christians Embrace Evolution?" is a book of two equal halves. The first half deals with principles of exegesis of the biblical text, as applied to the early chapters of Genesis. A correct interpretation depends on the correct historical & literary context. This theme is developed in a chapter entitled "The Language of Genesis".

Forcing an evolutionary interpretation upon the Genesis creation account necessarily creates serious conflicts for many other biblical doctrines. Much of the remainder of the first half of the book is an elaboration of this argument.

The evolutionary mode of `creation' does not do justice to the nature & character of God. Any attempt to harmonise the bible's account of the creation of Adam & Eve with human evolution involves unnatural mental contortions. Such ideas also conflict with a proper understanding of the doctrine of the Fall & original sin, as well as its punishment in suffering & death - death is evolution's friend, but according to the Bible, mankind's "last enemy". The doctrine of redemption is consequently distorted. The authority of Christ is also called into question.

The second half of the book includes a selection of relevant scientific topics. Chapter 9 is entitled "Interpretation of scientific evidence", & is a composite of four parts, including homology, the fossil record, chromosomal fusion as evidence for common ancestry, & information & thermodynamics. These topics are given somewhat brief treatment. They deserve to be allotted separate chapters. I find it puzzling that these four topics should be grouped under the heading "Interpretation of scientific evidence", separately from chapter ten (on the relevance to common ancestry of pseudogenes & other non-coding regions of DNA) & chapter eleven (on the origin of life). These two chapters are just as much about interpretation of scientific evidence as chapter nine is!

Space does not afford detailed mention of the scientific arguments in the book. I shall restrict myself to just a couple of examples.

(1) A major finding of the ENCODE project is that about 93% of the human genome is transcribed into DNA. This surprising discovery strongly implies that the bulk of the non-coding segments are in fact functional. The evolutionary concept of `junk DNA' is seriously threatened with extinction.

(2) A fairly substantial chapter assesses some of the well known origin of life theories: polypeptide origin, polynucleotide origin, RNA world, etc, in each case pointing out fatal flaws that are well recognised. A major problem is the origin of complexity & self-organization. Certain fascinating phenomena, such as the Rayleigh-Benard convection (self-generation of vortex cells in fluids), and the Belousov-Zhabotinski reaction (chemical mixtures that generate cyclic colour changes), have been claimed as examples of self-organization that have relevance to biological evolution. This is rather like a child who has just cleared a 3-foot high jump imagining that with practice he/she will eventually be able to jump to the Moon. The failure to find realistic support for evolution from the real world of biology has led some to turn to the virtual world of computing. The irony of resorting to the combination of intelligently designed hardware & intelligently designed software to bolster belief in a non-intelligent origin of life has not eluded many observers. But even here, the level of organization & complexity is minuscule compared to that of living organisms - shades of the juvenile high-jumper.

More in-depth treatment of much of the material can be found elsewhere in the creationist & ID literature.

Chapter 8 is of special interest because it's contributor has no commitment to biblical Christianity. Steve Fuller is Professor of Sociology at Warwick University, but was trained in the history & philosophy of science, in which he obtained an M.Phil. (Cambridge) & a Ph.D. (Pittsburg). Much of his published work is in that area. Fuller likens the authoritarianism of the modern scientific establishment to that of the Vatican in Galileo's day, and expresses surprise that Protestants like Denis Alexander & Francis Collins so readily confer Vatican-like authority on it. Evolutionary theory lacks a precise, unified, inter-disciplinary definition, but expressions of divergence are confined to the technical literature and hidden from the general public. Fuller suggests how this divergence could be exploited by IDists in their conflict with Darwinists.

The book concludes that "No coherent, cohesive theology has yet been offered that would allow Christians to embrace evolution with integrity." On the other hand, "Science has uncovered a great deal of empirical evidence that is challenging the Darwinian paradigm." To the question posed by the book's title, the authors' answer is "an unequivocal `no'".

The inclusion of an index would be highly desirable. A book without an index is like a town without a map.

This book is a concerted multi-author attack on a well known book, by Denis Alexander: "Creation or Evolution: Do We Have to Choose". Despite the unity provided by the single enemy, the book is very diverse, covering a broad span of theological and scientific subjects, and with chapters of unequal merit. I here focus on just the two chapters on molecular genetics, by Geoff Barnard. I would have preferred not to give a star-rating, because I do not feel competent to review all aspects of the book, but the Amazon website requires one. Therefore, in view of the faults of Barnard's chapters, and some other weaknesses that I notice at a more superficial level, I give it only two stars.

The two chapters by Geoff Barnard have a common aim: to refute the claim that man and higher apes have a common ancestry. In my opinion both chapters are seriously inadequate, for the reasons that follow.

Chapter 9C ("Chromosome Fusion and Common Ancestry"), the first of Barnard's two chapters, deals with the claim of Alexander (and virtually all evolutionary biologists) that DNA sequences provide strong evidence that chromosome 2 of humans was formed by the fusion of two ancestral chromosomes that persist in chimpanzees and other modern apes (designated 12 and 13, or in modern papers 2p and 2q). Alexander's argument is that chimpanzee chromosome 2p is strongly homologous with one part of human chromosome 2, that chromosome 2q is strongly homologous with the other part, and that the joining region in humans contains telomere sequences that would normally be at the end of a chromosome but are found in the middle of human chromosome 2, exactly as one would predict from the chromosome fusion hypothesis. Barnard accepts all of this! And he agrees that human chromosome 2 was formed by the fusion of 2p and 2q. All he does to contradict Alexander is to bring up three marginal questions. First, he mentions some difficulties to do with "alphoid sequences" that seem to me irrelevant in view of the fact that he accepts the chromosome fusion. Second, he mentions "human-specific" inversion in chromosomes 1 and 18, but I fail to see the relevance of this to the chapter's theme of chromosome fusion or more generally to the thesis of common descent. Then, finally, in the very last sentence he writes "What is certain, however, is that the wide variety of chromosome variations that clearly exist between the human and chimpanzee, dictate against the thesis that these species have common ancestry." This last sentence amazes me, partly because the chromosome variations are rather small (2% at the DNA sequence level), and even more so because Barnard has said almost nothing about the size of the variations in his chapter.

Chapter 10 ("Does the Genome Provide Evidence for Common Ancestry"), the second of Barnard's chapters, deals with the whole range of genomic data that Alexander presents as evidence for common descent: pseudogenes, mobile genetic elements and retroviral insertions. For brevity I here focus on the latter. When retroviruses infect a cell, they insert their DNA in the genome of the host cell, and the cell's descendants are thereby labeled recognizably from the presence of the retroviral sequence at a very precise place in the genome. When the cell is a germ cell, all the progeny are thereby labelled. Remarkably, the pattern of labelling is exactly what we would expect from a standard evolutionary picture. Thus, some insertions occur only in humans, others in humans and chimpanzees but not other primates, others in all primates, and so on. But you never find, for example, an insertion in humans and macaques but not chimpanzees. All of this is very strong, and direct, evidence for the common descent of humans, chimpanzees and other primates, and it presents a major problem for anti-evolutionists. Barnard's solution is to accept most of the data but to explain it away by claiming that particular retroviral sequences go very specifically to a precise location in the DNA. Thus, he claims (without evidence) that the presence of the same retroviral DNA sequence at EXACTLY the same location in chimpanzees and humans is due to the fact that one virus infected a chimp germ cell, another infected a human germ cell, and their identical sequences went to identical places in the genome. Such amazing precision is not biologically credible. An enormous amount of research has been done on retroviral infections, and all the evidence is against Barnard's claim. It is true that the distribution of retroviral insertions is not totally random. Some tend to go near active genes, others near inactive ones, etc. But in claiming a "very precise" specificity in retroviral insertion location Barnard is misleading the reader very seriously. Without this blatantly false claim his case collapses.

Whatever may be the merits or faults of the other chapters, those on molecular genetics are seriously misleading.

This excellent book, although written to respond to Denis Alexander's book titled Creation or Evolution, does an excellent job responding to the claim that no conflict exists between Christianity and Darwinism. Nevin documents that the conflict is at the fundamental level of Christianity. Unfortunately, many Churches have sided with Darwinism, repeating the mistake that the Catholic church made with Galileo. Then, as now, all to often the church sides with orthodox science because they trust the "authorities". In Galileo's day orthodox science was Ptolemaic astronomy. When Galileo presented evidence against establishment science, the church sided with orthodox science and opposed Galileo, and many churches are doing the same today by siding with Darwinism. Many people today claim that you can "believe in both, and no conflict exists." First of all, as the authors of this book show, an enormous major conflict exists between the two worldviews. Second, there is no point tying to harmonize Christianity, Judaism, or Islam with Darwinism until Darwinism has been proven true. Since the preponderance of evidence, as this work documents, is against Darwinism, to side with Darwinism now is premature if not irresponsible. One of the best chapters in this book is the one on the fossil record, but the chapter on the chromosomal fusion theory is excellent as well (my field is biology, so this interests me). The whole evolution-theology issue is addressed in 220 pages by university professors and reputable scholars. Religiously the authors and/or references are Catholics, agnostics, protestants and others. It covers both theology and science and shows clearly that Darwinism negates both the core of, and the basic doctrines of, Christianity. Although the book focuses on the British situation and controversy, I hope this book will be available in the USA as well. The book shows that the controversy over Darwinism and scientism has now reached beyond America.