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A biblical and scientific Adam

"A biblical and scientific Adam" Continued...

II. Or less

But we have only begun. The 96 percent figure deals only with DNA regions where an alignment or partially matching sequence can be found. It turns out that not all the regions of human DNA align with chimp DNA. A technical article in 2002 reported that 28 percent of the total DNA had to be excluded because of alignment problems, and that “for 7% of the chimpanzee sequences, no region with similarity could be detected in the human genome.”[8]

Even when there is alignment, the alignment with other primate DNA may be closer than the alignment with chimp DNA: “For about 23% of our genome, we share no immediate genetic ancestry with our closest living relative, the chimpanzee. This encompasses genes and exons to the same extent as intergenic regions.”[9] The study in question analyzed similarities with the orangutan, gorilla, and rhesus monkey, and found cases where human DNA aligns better with one of these than with chimpanzees.

III. The challenge of interpreting data

The data from the human genome project and similar projects for chimpanzees and other animals has to be interpreted. It does not interpret itself. What is the significance of the similarities? Do they in fact show that human beings have ape ancestry? Do they imply that we are little more than naked apes? Do they tell us who we are as human beings?

The reigning framework for the interpretation of genetic information and biological origin is Darwinism. Darwinism is much more than the observation that we can breed dogs or that we can study the effects of mutations in fruit flies.[10] Darwinism says that all kinds of living things came into being by purely gradualistic processes. In the popular mind, and indeed also among many scientists, Darwinism also involves the additional assumption that the process of change over time was unguided and purposeless—in other words, God, if He exists, is absent. When applied to the question of human origins, Darwinism implies that we are here by accident, and the kind of race that we are is an accident. Darwinism excludes design by a supernatural Designer; it also excludes in principle the idea of a sudden origin of a new kind of living thing through direct creation from nonliving material, or through multiple simultaneous mutations, or through large scale reorganization of living cells, or any kind of event that could realistically have taken place only through the presence of a Designer.

We must take into account the influence of Darwinism as a framework, because the framework guides how people interpret the significance of genetic similarities. The similarities exist—of that there is no doubt. But what do they mean?

IV. No purpose?

First, we should distinguish two issues, the issue of purpose and the issue of gradual processes. They are distinct. According to the teaching of the Bible, God is continually involved in ruling the world providentially. He is intimately involved in regular, gradual processes; His presence is not confined to miracles or exceptions. The following verses in the Bible illustrate God’s involvement:

“You [God] make springs gush forth in the valleys” (Psalm 104:10).

“You cause the grass to grow for the livestock
and plants for man to cultivate” (Psalm 104:14).

“You make darkness, and it is night” (Psalm 104:20).

“When you send forth your Spirit,
they [the next generation of animals] are created,

In particular, God is active in the formation of human life in a mother’s womb:

“For you formed my inward parts;

God is active as primary cause in addition to the secondary causes that are involved in spring water, the growth of grass, the coming of darkness, the birth of animals, and the gestation and birth of human beings. God has purposes in all these events. Within the picture presented in the Bible, scientific analysis of the secondary causes describes how God brings about His purposes—He does so through gradual processes.

Now for the sake of argument let us suppose that the mainstream picture of gradualism is true, that is, purely gradual processes produced all living things. That picture is completely compatible with God having done it all for His own purposes.[11] When Darwinism says that the process is “purposeless,” it might mean merely that scientific research, narrowly conceived, is not competent to discern the purposes, but only the processes. But in the popular mind, Darwinism is much more: It implies that the purposelessness of the process is definitively established. And that claim overreaches the evidence and the competence of science. It is really a philosophical and religious claim. It makes sense only if a person already knows or believes that God does not exist or that God cannot have purposes that He is accomplishing in gradual processes. The belief is simply smuggled in; it is not an inference just from raw data.















12 Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 96-99.





17 See Poythress, Redeeming Science, ch. 18.


19 Ibid. (italics original).











29 Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 112.


31 Ibid., 6787.





36 Ibid., 524.











47 See Gaffin, “Foreword,” ix-xxv.



50 Poythress, Redeeming Science, esp. ch. 1.




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