John Sanford's declining genes

A creationist friend recently lent me a John Sanford DVD entitled 'The Mystery of Our Declining Genes', which I finally got round to watching this week.

Genetic Entropy

Sanford's main premise is that our genes are degenerating at an alarming rate

Sanford is the latest great hope for creationists; he is a pleasant and reasonable man and apparently a well-respected Cornell geneticist with sound academic credentials, who has moved from atheism through theistic evolution all the way to Young Earth Creationism. 'Declining Genes' is filmed from a 45-min lecture given to the unsurprisingly creationist Creation Ministries, in which he claims to be able to refute the evolutionary Neo-Darwinian synthesis completely by his theory of Genetic Entropy.

I must confess I didn't fully understand (or attend to) all of the talk. His main premise is that our genes are degenerating at an alarming rate, and that 'bad' or harmful mutations are so much more frequent than 'good' or beneficial ones that natural selection is like baling water out of a sinking ship. His view is that selection is God's method of slowing down the inevitable degradation and extinction of species rather than being capable of producing any actual positive developments. He's also put together a computer simulation called Mendel's Accountant (freely available to download) which he claims conclusively backs up Biblical timescales (and the ages of people in Genesis), and supposedly refutes standard evolutionary accounts.

Unfortunately as a layman I can't really interrogate Sanford's biology or his maths, so I'll have to leave that to others. However, so far my search of the web hasn't turned up any good refutations of - or indeed any proper engagement with - his ideas. My initial impression is that his arguments seem, at least on the surface, fairly plausible. However, I remember being equally impressed with Michael Behe's 'irreducible complexity' when I first came across it, and that concept has now been very effectively refuted.

A note of caution

I would just sound a note of caution to excited creationists that a single idea in one field, however impressive, is unlikely to be able to overturn all the overwhelming evidence for an old earth and for evolution across numerous other fields. If there is any weight in Sanford's findings, then they will stand out as a puzzling anomaly to address, but not as the paradigm-shifting argument-clincher that he seems to imagine.

I'm also slightly unsure about Sanford's assumptions - given that most creationists eschew the principle of uniformity, his calculations seem heavily reliant on being able to extrapolate back several thousand years from today's genetic decay rate. I'm not entirely convinced either that 'bad' mutations are necessarily as detrimental as he claims, but I'll need to leave that to more qualified people to clear up.

The second law of thermodynamics

Sanford seems to slightly misunderstand entropy, which is clearly crucial to his theory

Finally, I think that, along with many creationists, Sanford - not a chemist or physicist - does slightly misunderstand the second law of thermodynamics and the principle of entropy, which is clearly crucial to Sanford's theory. Entropy, they argue, must always increase according to the 2nd law; your house doesn't simply tidy itself (cue appreciative chuckles from audience). So the idea of natural selection being able to increase order is clearly laughable and evolution is disproved.

What they don't seem aware of, or are ignoring, is that within any specific system entropy can be decreased - at the expense of increased entropy in its environment. In biochemist Albert Lehningher's words:

"living organisms preserve their internal order by taking from their surroundings free energy, in the form of nutrients or sunlight, and returning to their surroundings an equal amount of energy as heat and entropy".

A useful related idea is Ectropy (the reverse of entropy), "a measure of the tendency of a dynamical system to do useful work and grow more organized" (Wikipedia). The Earth's ectropy is increased (entropy decreased) by the Sun's energy, and a living organism's ectropy is increased by taking in food.

So life could almost be defined as a system designed to decrease or reverse entropy internally while increasing it in the external environment.

Disquieting fundamentalism

Overall, I found watching 'Declining Genes' a strangely disquieting experience - not so much because of its challenge to my theistic evolutionary worldview, but because of its underlying fundamentalism and dogmatism. Sanford is a very pleasant, reasonable and mild-mannered man, and clearly far from unintelligent. But his wholesale adoption of fundamentalist beliefs, principles and jargon struck what seemed to me a jarring note.

He started by remarking on the 'sweet spirit' in the room, which to me sounded like an over-spiritual way of saying that the atmosphere was - unsurprisingly - friendly. He paid tribute to all the members of Creation Ministries who had faithfully been fighting for God's truth while he had been compromising with the world in espousing theistic evolution. And his whole talk was based on refuting the dangerous deception of the Neo-Darwinian synthesis with the unfailing truth of God's Word. There was no room for disagreement, middle ground or uncertainty. God's Word says, and of course the science has to back that up - how could it be otherwise? This kind of thinking scares me, especially in a man of science.

False prophets and heresy hunters

The other evening I spent a couple of hours on the internet researching some dubious American preachers and self-styled prophets - notably Todd Bentley, Patricia King and Bob Jones (of Kansas City not of Bob Jones University). Just watching a YouTube video of the three of them chatting together was enough to set fifty-five alarm bells ringing - daily visits on demand to the Third Heaven, accompanied by the smell of vanilla? Satan's hooks in your life all being pulled out as you journey through the Second Heaven? Angel orbs and angel feathers appearing as you pray? Nutcases or frauds at best - perhaps something more dangerous.

However, what actually disturbed me more were the many Christian websites warning against these guys as false teachers. Not because I disagree, but because these same sites also warned against a vast array of other preachers whose views I might not share but who I certainly can't see as heretical - David Pytches, Mark Stibbe, Mark Driscoll, Nicky Gumbel, Tony Campolo, R.T. Kendall, Bill Hybels, Rick Warren... Indeed, the more I read, the more it seemed that no-one in the charismatic wing of evangelical Christianity is exempt from dangerous heresy and false teaching.

Of course it's important to think critically and be open to criticism - always to be ready to evaluate and re-evaluate the sources and validity of one's teachings and practices. It's also important not to put any teacher or movement on a pedestal as 'God's anointed', above reproach or question. I suspect that all Christian teachers and movements are wrong in some aspects of teaching and practice, however closely they try to stick to the Bible and however open to the Spirit they are. We need to health-check ourselves and our teachers regularly.

But... it does seem to me that there's an opposite and perhaps even greater danger in heresy-hunting and sin-hunting, as represented by the many sites I visited condemning Purpose-Driven Rick Warren et al alongside nutty Third-Heaven daytrippers Bob Jones and Todd Bentley.

For a start, there's a strong danger of setting up your own views or interpretation of the Bible as the Ultimate and Infallible Standard of Truth, which I can assure you they certainly aren't. Secondly there's the danger of plank-eyed judgementalism, not something Jesus greatly encouraged. Thirdly there's often an overridingly negative focus - always on the lookout for the bad rather than the good. And finally there tends to be a Pharisaical obsession with so-called 'sound doctrine' and external behaviour above all other aspects of the spiritual life. In the end, all you can see is heresy and sin - but in everyone else, never in yourself.

Of course most of these ultra-condemnatory sites are from the fundamentalist end of evangelicalism, so if you can't tick all their self-prescribed boxes of belief in Biblical inerrancy etc - as I can't - you will fall straight away into their increasingly over-populated 'heretic' category and be summarily written off.

I ended my two-hour internet research not enlightened but confused and disturbed. My own silly fault really - if I can't recognise an obvious bunch of nutbags without having to consult professional heresy-hunters, what do I expect?

Streams of faith

I'm writing here about the Christian faith because that's my experience, but it may well apply to other faiths too.

There are a number of 'streams', pathways or expressions of faith within the Christian tradition, and each of these has a valuable contribution to make to the whole. (I believe Richard Foster's Streams of Living Water covers this subject really well, but as it's a bit chunky and I'm a bit lazy, I've not got round to reading it. :-)

Stream	Key part of human being	Key part of Bible	Emphases / focuses
Contemplative/ mystical	Soul/spirit, heart; (emotions)	John's gospel/letters; mystical prophets (Ezekiel)	'Prayer of the heart'; finding God in stillness, silence, solitude and in nature, art, music; meditation, contemplation of the divine; creativity/poetry
Charismatic/ pentecostal	Emotions (joy), spirit	Acts; miraculous elements in gospels / Old Testament	Being filled with the Holy Spirit; manifestations/gifts of the Spirit - prophecy, tongues, healing etc; power, miracles, signs and wonders; spiritual warfare and deliverance
Sacramental/ ceremonial	Body - senses; soul	O.T. ceremonies (Exodus, Kings)	Tradition, ritual, liturgy, ceremony, order, sacrament, iconography, hierarchy, saints
Evangelical	Mind, will	Whole Bible; Paul's letters	'Sola Scriptura', Bible as all-sufficient Word of God; 'correct' doctrine/theology (e.g. of atonement); need for personal salvation through faith in Christ; discipleship and personal morality; importance of preaching, teaching and missionary work (evangelism)
Activist / social justice	Emotions - compassion; Body - action	Luke's gospel; Matthew 25; prophets of justice (Amos, Isaiah)	'Social' gospel - justice for poor, liberation for oppressed, care for environment; political activism, usually left-wing

I think Foster identifies others; and I've included creative/poetic within the contemplative stream but some would see it as separate.

Each stream or pathway has something good to contribute to the whole; each also has its weaknesses and dangers, particularly in over-emphasising its own focuses to the exclusion of the others.

The streams are - can and should be - complementary, not mutually exclusive. They also often overlap - it's perfectly possible to be a charismatic evangelical, a sacramental contemplative or an evangelical activist. (It's more difficult to be a sacramental evangelical or a contemplative activist, but maybe not impossible.)

Similarly, some of the streams tend to be particularly associated with certain church denominations - e.g. Baptists tend to be evangelical, Orthodox and Catholics to be sacramental; pentecostals tend to have their own groupings like the Assemblies of God.

It's easy to look on people from a different stream as odd, or plain wrong. It would be great if we could instead see them as different in a good way, offering us fresh approaches and insights into our shared faith.

Polarities

As well as the streams, there are also the extremes or polarities - most notably the fundamentalist/liberal spectrum. Extreme fundamentalism tends to be characterised by over-rigidity and narrowness - scriptural literalism, doctrinal dogmatism, narrow exclusivism, strict moralism and often judgemental legalism. Fundamentalism is usually associated most with the evangelical stream, and least with the mystical.

Extreme liberalism in contrast is so broad and inclusive that it often loses any distinctive Christian character; often there is very little doctrine and little or no belief in God, the supernatural, miracles or the divine inspiration of the Bible.

Another polarity is that between logical/rational and emotional/intuitive/symbolic - basically left and right brain. Again, evangelicalism usually tends towards the rational end; contemplative and sacramental streams towards the intuitive/symbolic.

I susect then that people often gravitate towards a particular stream of faith (and therefore to a particular denomination) mainly because of their own personality type, and also upbringing. And also perhaps to do with what stage they are at on their faith journey, which I'll look at in my next post...

Why I believe Creationists get it wrong part 2 - Scripture

Creationists generally fit into the fundamentalist wing of evangelical Christianity, viewing the Bible as God's perfect, inerrant, timeless Word and so to be read as literal, historical and scientific fact wherever possible. Wherever the Bible's account of origins appears to differ from that of modern science, science must therefore give way. They argue that God is perfectly capable of saying plainly what he means, and he knows far better than modern scientists what happened at the beginning.

Finally they believe that the whole Bible stands or falls as a unit, so if you question the historicity of Genesis 1-2 you also by implication query the historicity of the gospels.

Inspiration and inerrancy

It's probably no surprise that I disagree with this view of Scripture at almost all points. I do accept that the Bible is divinely inspired ('God-breathed', 2 Tim 3:16) but I have a very different understanding from the Creationists of how that operates and what that means. For a start, I do not believe that divine inspiration must imply 'inerrancy' as they understand it, still less complete historical or scientific accuracy at all points. In my view this is to fall into the same Modernist-paradigm trap as Dawkins that there is only one kind of truth and knowing which is the Factual, ultimately the Scientific. This is certainly not how the original Hebrew authors would have approached Truth, nor does it in fact provide the best or fullest description of Reality. Scientific and historical truth are both important, but truth can also be personal, relational, philosophical, paradoxical, poetic, symbolic or mythopoeic.

To read Genesis 1-2 as teaching history and science is, I believe, to do serious violence to the texts, to the type of literature, its cultural context, and the intentions and understandings of the original authors. Gen 1 is essentially a poetic polemic for monotheism in a polytheistic cultural context, and Gen 2 can best be read as a mythological and theological account of the origins of evil, sin, pain and death. This does not mean that it contains no history, still less that it is untrue - indeed, it makes it more deeply and timelessly true.

The Gospels and Genesis

But if you believe this, how can you say whether any of the Bible is historically true? Most importantly, what of the Gospels, the accounts of the birth, life, death and resurrection of Christ? If these events were not historical, then the entire basis of our Christian faith is gone (1 Corinthians 15:14). But in the Gospels we have a very different kind of writing and literature to the early chapters of Genesis. The gospel writers, particularly in the Synoptics and Luke most of all, are explicitly setting out to record eyewitness accounts of events that took place within their own lifetimes, whose actuality or otherwise would in most cases be fairly easily disprovable were it not true. Here we have the beginnings of recognisable modern historical writing - theologically-interpreted history to be sure, but history nonetheless. C.S. Lewis wrote that, to a scholar of mythology, the resurrection accounts bore none of the hallmarks of myth but stood out very clearly as historical accounts. The Garden of Eden, by contrast, with its talking snake and Trees of Life and of the Knowledge of Good and Evil - quite clearly not standard horticultural varieties - bears all the marks of a mythological-symbolic story of origins, written primarily to convey theological rather than historical truths.

Can God not speak plainly?

Finally, let's deal with the point of whether God is incapable of speaking plainly. Of course he's capable, but that does not mean he always chooses to - look at Jesus' many parables and highly symbolical sayings. And sometimes plain factual statement is not actually the best way to convey what you are trying to say - particularly if you are conveying spiritual truths which are beyond the capabilities of normal human language and experience.

Can a leopard change its spots?

Of course, I need to always be open to the possibility that I may be wrong about all this. I sometimes wonder what it would take to make a dyed-in-the-wool Creationist or Evolutionist change their views - so much has often been invested emotionally in their position that to change would almost be a religious conversion (to a Creationist it would probably feel like apostasy, and might even involve a loss of faith). And I also wonder if Creationists and Evolutionists have such fundamentally, structurally incompatible worldviews that it's often not even possible for them to speak comprehensibly to each other.

Nonetheless, I fervently wish that Christians didn't have to divide and fight over this issue, one on which I believe no-one's salvation need depend. I also wish that in their legitimate concerns over some of the implications of evolution, Creationists did not have to set themselves up - and Christianity by implication - as such easy targets for scornful atheists.