God and His Testimony

It is so disappointing that Theistic Evolutionists put so much faith in a paradigm and less faith in God who reveals Himself in His Word Written and Incarnate. Do they really test that in which they have put their errant faith?

Correspondent John has previously drawn attention to "Haldane's Dilemma" at this blogspot and I mention it here in a slightly broader context. Just to give readers a background to Haldane's Dilemma I provide an acceptable explanation by Walter Re Mine in his monumental work "The Biotic Message - Evolution v Versus Message Theory" (1993):

"Evolution requires the substitution of old prevalent traits with new rare traits. There are limits to the rate these substitutions can occur, limits that depend primarily on the reproductive capacity of the species. Haldane's Dilemma examines these limits.

Imagine a breeding population of 100,000 individuals. Imagine 99,998 have the old trait O, and two (a male and female) have the new trait N. Imagine trait N has just arisen from O by beneficial mutation. The evolutionary goal is to substitute trait N for trait O in the population. To accomplish this goal, differential survival must eliminate the 99,998 type O individuals and all their heirs.

This can be accomplished in a single generation if there is perfect selection. (That is, if the survival values of O and N are 0 and 1 respectively.) Yet, there is an enormous cost involved. For every surviving type N individual there are 49,999 individuals (type O) that must perish without heirs. The population size must be regenerated from the two survivors.

Now allot the maximum speed to evolution. Let us assume evolution can happen like this continuously, generation after generation, for millions of years. Take a species like man with a nominal 20 year generation time. Extrapolate backward from this known species to a time 10 million years ago. This is three times earlier than the said occurrence of the four foot high australopithecine "Lucy." This is twice as old as the alleged split between gorilla, chimpanzee, and man. In that much time, how many traits could be substituted at this crashing pace? One per generation, maximum — approximately 500,000.

These substituted traits are simple changes having arisen by mutation. These can be of many types. The new trait might be a DNA inversion, gene duplication. or deletion, for example. Also, organisms are not merely the possession of the right genes. The position and sequence of genes on a chromosome are important to their action, expression, and propagation. So, a substituted trait can be some thing as simple as a new location of a gene on a chromosome. The substituted traits can be many different things. Yet, every time you wish to move a gene to a new position, or delete a gene, or duplicate a gene, or substitute any trait, no matter how trivial, then there is a cost to be paid.

According to the neo-Darwinian synthesis, these substituted traits are typically a new version of a gene — an allele. The new substituted gene typically differs from the old gene by one newly mutated nucleotide. So, the substituted trait is nominally a nucleotide. The following discussion deals with substituted traits as though they are all nucleotides. This focuses the problem and makes it more comprehensible, while remaining true to the essence of modern evolutionary thought.

With these clarifications, let us return to the example. Take an ape-like creature from 10 million years ago, substitute a maximum of 500,000 selectively significant nucleotides and you would have a poet philosopher? What does that sound like to you? How much information can be packed into 500,000 nucleotides? It is roughly one-hundredth of one percent of the nucleotide sites in each human ovum.

Is this enough to account for the significantly improved skulls, jaws, teeth feet, speech, upright posture, abstract thought, and appreciation of music, to name just a few? If you find it doubtful, then you are beginning to understand why this is important. It sets a limit on the number of traits that can be substituted by differential survival in the available time."

"Haldane's Dilemma" has, for many decades, posed a serious time problem for advocates of Evolution. The time is just not there for life to have evolved to the state it is today. Yet Theistic Evolutionists remain inclined to distrust the straight-forward reading of the Word of God on Origins.

Adding to the absurdity of their course, Theistic Evolutionists ignore the findings of Collagen in fossils and bones of creatures alleged to have lived and died multiple millions of years ago. Scientists acknowledge that, even in the best preservation conditions, Collagen will not last more than hundreds of thousands of years. So, to find Collagen in a supposed 40 million year old lizard leg, a supposed 50 million year old fossil fish and allegedly even older fossils and bones of dinosaurs really throws serious doubt over dating of fossils, to the point where the dating is unsustainable. Yet Theistic Evolutionists blindly accept evolutionary dating.

Why it is that the Church has many within prepared to insult our Lord by casting doubt on His Word is all but beyond me. I guess I have to remind myself how it was that Israel of old so many times cast doubt on God though they had seen His works.

Sam Drucker