THE NON-EVOLUTION OF MAMMALS
(OR, THE NATURAL THEOLOGY OF NURSING)
Recently my daughter gave birth to a son, giving another fresh example of the miracle of childbirth and creation of a new human life. This time, however, another aspect of birthing struck me as worthy of special note for the way in which it confounds Darwinian speculations and illustrates the loving purposes of our great Creator.
This aspect of childbirth is nursing. Within a matter of hours after birth, a woman’s breasts, having been prepared by hormones during pregnancy, begin the serious manufacture of large quantities of milk. This milk is exquisitely tailored to the new baby’s needs, and is nutritionally far superior to any other form of milk, formula, or supplement. “Cow’s milk is great for cows,” was the laconic comment of my med school virology professor when I questioned him on the subject years ago. Human milk has just what the human infant needs, right down to antibodies transferred by mother to baby, so that breast-fed babies have lower rates of viral illness. How did we attain such a perfect fit between the baby’s nutritional needs and mother’s milk? Was it random evolution and amazingly good luck, as we are so often told?
Let’s back up a bit in the evolutionary story. “The female breast is a modified sweat gland,” one of my recent textbooks of pathology confidently states. Thus, it is believed that some proto-mammal had a lucky mutation one day that caused a few of its sweat glands to change the nature of secretion so as to gain nutritional content. At just the same time, this proto-mammal’s offspring mutated in such a way as to change its behavior, so that it can locate the “sweat gland” with enhanced nutritional value, and begin feeding on the gland's secretion. The new nursing mother must also have her behavior genetically modified at the exact same time, so that she at least tolerates this new invasion of her body. This seems like a pretty tall tale. What’s the evidence for it?
The short answer is “very little.” Darwin pointed to gradations in mammary gland structure, with “higher” mammals having well-formed mammary glands complete with nipples, and “lower” mammals (such as monotremes) having less conspicuous glands that lack nipples. This might be regarded as slightly suggestive, but it’s hardly conclusive. Darwin’s followers haven’t added much to this threadbare evidence. What they hope no one notices is that there’s a pretty big gulf between the simplest mammary gland and any form of sweat gland. Thousands of biochemical genetic changes would be needed to make such a glandular transition, not to mention the complex behavioral changes and neuronal reflexes that would be needed in both mother and offspring. Once again, we’re asked to believe in a lot of successive evolutionary miracles, with very little evidence to support the Darwinian story. No convincing fossil sequence, no experimental verification—just blind faith in evolution is what’s demanded here.
What about the other side—the creation version? Can we discern anything of God’s purpose in creating mammals in general, and human nursing in particular? Yes, I believe we can. There are few things in this world more beautiful and endearing than a mother nursing her baby. It provides emotional bonding and intimacy between mother and child, with mutual pleasure and physical benefit, but it also does something more. It gives us a graphic symbolic picture of a mother giving of her very self to sustain and nourish her infant. This, in turn, builds us a bridge of understanding to a higher unseen truth--that God our Creator gives generously of his very self in creating us, sustaining us, being patient with us, and redeeming us from evil. Nowhere is this great self-giving of our Creator more evident than in the Christmas story, where God the Father gives us his only begotten eternal Son to bear our sins and save us from death and all evil.
Thus, mammary glands and nursing are things we should praise and thank God for, as a generous provision for our own needs, as well as a wonderful picture of His own selfless love and providence in caring for us. It’s especially good to reflect at Christmastime on how the Creator himself was humbly born as a tiny baby, and used the same highly complex and wonderful system for newborn nourishment that He himself had created.
(dedicated to my daughter Laura and her newborn son Edmund Michael, with love)
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Microevolution In the Backyard
MICROEVOLUTION IN THE BACKYARD
Or, Confessions of a Lazy Gardener,
a Late Lawn Mower,
and a “Creative” Dental Patient
I admit it—I’m a lazy gardener. I like to be out in the yard watching things grow, but I don’t like digging in the muck all that much. My motto is “Throw it in the ground, weed and water at least once, and pray to God for some sort of harvest.” Thankfully, God usually delivers a yield far beyond what my efforts deserve. Plus, time in the garden gives an added benefit of being able to watch God’s creation in action. In my own backyard I’ve been able to notice some small evolutionary changes over the years that illustrate one of the main issues in the creation-evolution debate.
For instance, some years ago I put a few cherry tomato plants in my backyard, and got a fair harvest. Then I left many dropped tomatoes on the ground and didn’t clean the garden bed till next spring. By that time, numerous “volunteer” tomato plants were coming up. I selected the most vigorous and early volunteers, let them grow to maturity, and weeded out the other volunteers. Then I repeated this annual cycle a number of times. In the second year I thought I was just getting free tomato plants. But in the third and fourth years I found that the tomato plants had visibly improved—they were bigger and bursting with fruit. (And, being a lazy gardener, I had not put down any fertilizer to make this happen. It was just selection of the most vigorous volunteers.) This is nothing new—farmers and agricultural scientists have been using this well-known principle of microevolution for thousands of years, through tens of thousands of plant generations. It makes better tomatoes and improved breeds of crop plants, often in a very short time (just a few years, as in my case). However, it never has turned plants into animals, or made entirely new kinds of plants.
Likewise, I once planted some Jerusalem artichoke bulbs from a friend’s leftovers. I was warned to hedge them in with a barrier to keep them from aggressively spreading, and to treat them for grubs that would bore into their edible roots. Being a lazy gardener, I did neither. The artichokes grew luxuriantly and spread. The first year I enjoyed both their flowers and their edible roots (rather like water chestnuts). Then in the second year the grubs moved in and bored ugly dirty holes into the root tubers, making them unfit to eat. The plants still multiplied every year, though. For the next decade I just enjoyed their bright yellow flowers. However, as each year I weeded the outliers, I found that natural selection was quietly working for me. Every year as the plants reproduced the grubs lost ground (literally). My artichokes are now almost completely grub-resistant, just as bacteria can quickly get resistant to antibiotics.
Speaking of antibiotic resistance in bacteria (often cited as firm proof that we all came from pond scum), I developed some resistant bacteria in my own mouth in just a few years time. I had a root canal that went bad, allowing bacteria to grow into a crack below the gumline. It didn’t get overtly infected, just created a bad taste that was a considerable nuisance. The tooth was doomed sooner or later, but I kept it for a few more years by swabbing the cracked side with a pinch of antibiotic powder. At first just one antibiotic worked well, but then two were needed. After 4 years three antibiotics were needed, and a bacterial culture showed several resistant microorganisms. (Yes, I finally had the tooth out, rather than have my head eaten off by antibiotic-resistant bugs.) A dentist friend of mine confirmed that it’s quite easy to develop antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria in a single patient’s mouth by treating a chronic deep dental infection with antibiotics. It happens quite frequently and in a very short time. However, such resistance has never helped a bacterium to become a yeast, algae, or protozoan. Even such a small step of macroevolution remains elusive.
My daughter is very fond of spring violets, and likes to make bouquets of them. I like to help her gather the violets. However, we’ve noticed that the best violets for bouquets don’t come from the many violets in our own yard, but from those in the vacant lot across the back alley. The reason is that the vacant lot violets sit in vases better, having much longer stems—usually two to three times as long as the short-stemmed ones in our back yard. I know some critic will say that this is only because the violets in our yard bloomed quickly on a shorter stem after they were cut. However, this effect was very noticeable even when I was a tardy mower, and didn’t mow our lawn at all until late spring after the violets had already fully bloomed and faded (much to the neighbors’ chagrin). When we discussed why this was, we realized that once again natural selection was in action before our very eyes. In our occasionally-mowed back yard, the short-stemmed variety had a survival/reproductive advantage, while in the rarely mowed vacant lot (with competing long grasses) the long-stemmed violet variety had the advantage. Once again, we had microevolution right in our own backyard. Like the Grand Canyon squirrels that developed different colors on either side of the Colorado River, the violets developed different stem-length varieties on either side of our back alley.
Darwinians often try to prove their point by giving examples of very small biological changes, or microevolution, and saying that these will add up to very big changes (macroevolution) through eons of time. They say that Darwinism is a “fact” or “law” because small inherited changes can be seen so easily. They are right that microevolution is everywhere—one need look no further than the backyard, or even one’s own body. On the other hand, we can go to the ends of the earth, track living things through thousands of generations, and find no trace of macroevolution. The extreme commonness of microevolution contrasts sharply with the extreme rarity of macroevolution. We see the first very frequently, the second never.
This tells us something profound about the living world. God obviously loves variety, and has built enough genetic plasticity into living things to give potential for incredible variety. Thus, we can have scores of dog breeds develop in just a few hundred years. Or, we can have millions of people of all shapes and sizes, with no two being exactly alike. This genetic plasticity also implies loving providence from God, for it allows creatures to survive changing and hostile environments in a cursed and fallen world. However, despite all this micro-variation, the basic kinds of creatures remain remarkably stable, reminding us of the need for a Creator to explain it all.
Romans 1:21 tells us that the amazing genius of the Creator God should be obvious to everyone. We don’t need to travel around the world to find this out. Just a little thoughtful time in the backyard can help us toward this needful conclusion.
Or, Confessions of a Lazy Gardener,
a Late Lawn Mower,
and a “Creative” Dental Patient
I admit it—I’m a lazy gardener. I like to be out in the yard watching things grow, but I don’t like digging in the muck all that much. My motto is “Throw it in the ground, weed and water at least once, and pray to God for some sort of harvest.” Thankfully, God usually delivers a yield far beyond what my efforts deserve. Plus, time in the garden gives an added benefit of being able to watch God’s creation in action. In my own backyard I’ve been able to notice some small evolutionary changes over the years that illustrate one of the main issues in the creation-evolution debate.
For instance, some years ago I put a few cherry tomato plants in my backyard, and got a fair harvest. Then I left many dropped tomatoes on the ground and didn’t clean the garden bed till next spring. By that time, numerous “volunteer” tomato plants were coming up. I selected the most vigorous and early volunteers, let them grow to maturity, and weeded out the other volunteers. Then I repeated this annual cycle a number of times. In the second year I thought I was just getting free tomato plants. But in the third and fourth years I found that the tomato plants had visibly improved—they were bigger and bursting with fruit. (And, being a lazy gardener, I had not put down any fertilizer to make this happen. It was just selection of the most vigorous volunteers.) This is nothing new—farmers and agricultural scientists have been using this well-known principle of microevolution for thousands of years, through tens of thousands of plant generations. It makes better tomatoes and improved breeds of crop plants, often in a very short time (just a few years, as in my case). However, it never has turned plants into animals, or made entirely new kinds of plants.
Likewise, I once planted some Jerusalem artichoke bulbs from a friend’s leftovers. I was warned to hedge them in with a barrier to keep them from aggressively spreading, and to treat them for grubs that would bore into their edible roots. Being a lazy gardener, I did neither. The artichokes grew luxuriantly and spread. The first year I enjoyed both their flowers and their edible roots (rather like water chestnuts). Then in the second year the grubs moved in and bored ugly dirty holes into the root tubers, making them unfit to eat. The plants still multiplied every year, though. For the next decade I just enjoyed their bright yellow flowers. However, as each year I weeded the outliers, I found that natural selection was quietly working for me. Every year as the plants reproduced the grubs lost ground (literally). My artichokes are now almost completely grub-resistant, just as bacteria can quickly get resistant to antibiotics.
Speaking of antibiotic resistance in bacteria (often cited as firm proof that we all came from pond scum), I developed some resistant bacteria in my own mouth in just a few years time. I had a root canal that went bad, allowing bacteria to grow into a crack below the gumline. It didn’t get overtly infected, just created a bad taste that was a considerable nuisance. The tooth was doomed sooner or later, but I kept it for a few more years by swabbing the cracked side with a pinch of antibiotic powder. At first just one antibiotic worked well, but then two were needed. After 4 years three antibiotics were needed, and a bacterial culture showed several resistant microorganisms. (Yes, I finally had the tooth out, rather than have my head eaten off by antibiotic-resistant bugs.) A dentist friend of mine confirmed that it’s quite easy to develop antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria in a single patient’s mouth by treating a chronic deep dental infection with antibiotics. It happens quite frequently and in a very short time. However, such resistance has never helped a bacterium to become a yeast, algae, or protozoan. Even such a small step of macroevolution remains elusive.
My daughter is very fond of spring violets, and likes to make bouquets of them. I like to help her gather the violets. However, we’ve noticed that the best violets for bouquets don’t come from the many violets in our own yard, but from those in the vacant lot across the back alley. The reason is that the vacant lot violets sit in vases better, having much longer stems—usually two to three times as long as the short-stemmed ones in our back yard. I know some critic will say that this is only because the violets in our yard bloomed quickly on a shorter stem after they were cut. However, this effect was very noticeable even when I was a tardy mower, and didn’t mow our lawn at all until late spring after the violets had already fully bloomed and faded (much to the neighbors’ chagrin). When we discussed why this was, we realized that once again natural selection was in action before our very eyes. In our occasionally-mowed back yard, the short-stemmed variety had a survival/reproductive advantage, while in the rarely mowed vacant lot (with competing long grasses) the long-stemmed violet variety had the advantage. Once again, we had microevolution right in our own backyard. Like the Grand Canyon squirrels that developed different colors on either side of the Colorado River, the violets developed different stem-length varieties on either side of our back alley.
Darwinians often try to prove their point by giving examples of very small biological changes, or microevolution, and saying that these will add up to very big changes (macroevolution) through eons of time. They say that Darwinism is a “fact” or “law” because small inherited changes can be seen so easily. They are right that microevolution is everywhere—one need look no further than the backyard, or even one’s own body. On the other hand, we can go to the ends of the earth, track living things through thousands of generations, and find no trace of macroevolution. The extreme commonness of microevolution contrasts sharply with the extreme rarity of macroevolution. We see the first very frequently, the second never.
This tells us something profound about the living world. God obviously loves variety, and has built enough genetic plasticity into living things to give potential for incredible variety. Thus, we can have scores of dog breeds develop in just a few hundred years. Or, we can have millions of people of all shapes and sizes, with no two being exactly alike. This genetic plasticity also implies loving providence from God, for it allows creatures to survive changing and hostile environments in a cursed and fallen world. However, despite all this micro-variation, the basic kinds of creatures remain remarkably stable, reminding us of the need for a Creator to explain it all.
Romans 1:21 tells us that the amazing genius of the Creator God should be obvious to everyone. We don’t need to travel around the world to find this out. Just a little thoughtful time in the backyard can help us toward this needful conclusion.
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