Sunday worship
10:30 am
Sunday School
9:30 am

Creation and Evolution

- James Kang -

Microevolution and Macroevolution

A few years ago, my boys and I visited a science museum, where we had an opportunity to watch a movie about evolution. The key evidence they showed for evolution was the change of brown bears into polar bears. The original bears had brown fur. But in a colder environment covered with snow, such as the Arctic, bears with lighter-colored fur were better able to camouflage themselves and to catch animals for food. So the bears living in the Arctic gradually became whiter and whiter and eventually became polar bears.

This explanation makes perfect sense. The random variation in the color of the fur and the process of natural selection in the snow-covered environment explain how brown bears gradually evolved into polar bears.

However, immediately following this example, the movie took the audience back billions of years to primordial times when the earth was being bombarded with ultraviolet light and the waters bubbling with gas from the volcanoes. Without any explanation, they jumped to a conclusion that out of the primordial soup emerged the first primitive cell, and from this cell developed all life forms through the process of Darwinian evolution.

Unfortunately, such a sweeping conclusion is encountered in virtually every science book and classroom. Science textbooks give the impression that large-scale evolution is a settled fact of science. Christians are often confused as to how to think through the issue on the face of the reigning status quo.

One of the helpful ways to think through the issue is to distinguish microevolution and macroevolution. There is abundance of evidence for microevolution, small-scale changes occurring through random variations and adaptation. We observe birds beaks changing their size and shape through adaptation to a new environment. These changes do not alter their essence. A bird is essentially a bird with the change in its beak size and shape. The concept of microevolution explains why there are so many varieties of birds.

However, there is no evidence for macroevolution, large-scale changes, such as the primordial soup evolving into cells, reptiles into mammals, and fish into amphibians. Brown bears evolving into polar bears is one thing, but a complex life form emerging from the primordial soup of water is a completely different thing. The gradual change of the color can be readily explained, but the emergence of the primitive cell from the primordial soup is a fanciful extrapolation without supporting data. Disturbed by the unbridgeable gaps in evidence, some biologists steeped in the Darwinian paradigm are now openly expressing their dilemma. Franklin Harold, a prominent scholar of biochemistry and molecular biology, writes, "we must concede that there are presently no detailed Darwinian accounts of the evolution of any biochemical system, only a variety of wishful speculations."

Complexity of Information in the Simplest Life Form

Moreover, when we consider the complexity of the simplest life form, the cell, we discover that macroevolution is infinitely implausible. During the past decades, the advances in molecular biology have revealed the enormous complexity of the cell, beyond anything that was imaginable before. As one commentator writes, "The cell is a masterpiece of miniaturized complexity that makes a spaceship or super computer look rather low-tech by comparison."

Within the cell, the precise instruction to operate this enormously complex yet invisibly small factory is encoded in the DNA molecule. Like a computer code, DNA contains very detailed and specific information about how to carry out operations to sustain and reproduce the cell. This information in DNA is arranged very much like language, with its own alphabet and syntax.

An important point to remember is that DNA contains complex and specific information. An analogy to language might help understand this concept of information. Suppose you are given two texts, each just 41 characters long.

zoeff,npbi,nngqzpegoxsyfmrtexrnygrr gnnfa

to be or not to be, that is the question.

In both examples, the building blocks are the same - the twenty-six letters of the English alphabet, plus punctuation marks and space. Each text has 41 characters. But that is where the similarity ends. The first text is random. It has no information, no instruction, no message. Even if some words are recognizable, they are just 3 or 4 letters long, which we expect from a monkey randomly typing on a keyboard. However, the second text has all the letters precisely ordered to form recognizable words in a specific sequence, all arranged together to convey a message for the reader. It carries complex and specific information.

The central question is: Where did this information come from? When we read the second sentence, we know that it came from an intelligent mind, which in this case is Shakespeare. Likewise, when we read the information encoded in DNA, we know that there is an intelligent designer behind it. As one scientist recently stated, "the problem of the origin of life is clearly basically equivalent to the problem of the origin of biological information."

One of the common misconceptions is that given enough time a monkey randomly typing on a keyboard would eventually produce such a sentence. They say that even though it is unlikely, given billions and billions of years, it will happen. However, a straight forward calculation of its probability exposes how unlikely it is. The probability that the above sentence by Shakespeare would be produced by random typing is roughly 1 chance in 10^61 attempts, that is, 1 in 10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 (61 zeros). Even if there were billions of monkeys typing without ceasing for billions of years, the chance is practically zero. Now, that is for generating a tiny sentence, merely 41 characters long.

If producing such a tiny sentence by chance is astronomically improbable, then producing a living cell by random processes is virtually zero. The heart of the matter is the incredible complexity of life, far beyond the simple text with 41 characters. Even in the simplest life form, the complexity is bewildering. For example, E. coli bacteria have 4.6 million base pairs in their DNA, all precisely arranged in a specific sequence. The 4.6 million base pairs are like a computer code that instructs a super computer to run a space-age factory. It is far too complex to have originated by chance, even if billions of years are allowed and all the atoms in the universe are provided. To produce such a complex code through blind and random forces is like putting a bomb under a pile of bricks, hoping that a house would be erected when the bomb explodes.

The Creator Behind the Beauty of Life

As we consider all the scientific evidence, it is clear that chance had nothing to do with the process that created life. The only reasonable explanation is that there is a Creator who conceived the universe in the most beautiful and intricate way. Ironically, modern science has given us enough glimpse of the intricate beauty of the created world to make us realize that we are merely scratching the surface. The recent discoveries on the inner workings of the cell have only exposed our ignorance and heightened our awareness of the infinite wonders more to be discovered at the molecular and atomic level. Every time we discover something wondrous about the way cells work or the way the universe was formed, it is an opportunity for us to praise the Creator. If the cell, the least of all creatures, is so wondrous, how much more is the Creator! In light of the beauty and majesty of creation, our God is ever more magnificent, ever more wondrous, and ever more beautiful. Every scientific discovery is an occasion for us to worship our God.

For those who want to explore deeper, visit our church website for the article "Resources on Creation & Evolution."