Today’s New Reason To Believe

by Jeff Zweerink

A recent article in Science discusses the difficult spiritual journey of Stephen Godfrey. Raised in a strong, Bible-believing home, Godfrey showed great aptitude for both science (particularly biology and paleontology) and art. Though his parents believed Earth to be 6,000 years old with the geological record having been laid down during Noah’s flood, they encouraged their son to pursue his interest in biology. However, during graduate school, Godfrey encountered a number of problems that eventually led to a crisis of faith.

The first issue related to the pervasive animal death represented in the fossil record. Based on his upbringing, Godfrey believed the Bible taught that no animals perished before Adam and Eve disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden. However, Godfrey saw a great number of well-designed predators in the fossil record. How could these animals emerge if God had not intended them to prey on others?

A field expedition in rural Kansas unearthed a second troubling issue. Upon discovering fossil animal footprints, Godfrey struggled to resolve how these footprints could have been formed during Noah’s flood.

As he wrestled with these obstacles, the counsel he received from his parents and others in the church was that “it was all or nothing.” Either the Earth was 6,000 years old and virtually all the geological record resulted from Noah’s flood or the Bible was not true. Godfrey could not accept the former and still struggles to know what to believe about God. Consequently, he was rejected from the church community and estranged from his parents.

For me, the most troubling aspect of Godfrey’s story is the response of the church community. Nobody in the church came alongside Stephen Godfrey to guide him through his troubled waters in a way that affirmed the authority of Scripture and the legitimacy of the scientific enterprise. It appears that his questions and struggles caused him to be treated as a threat.

Additionally, an “all or nothing” admonition similar to what Godfrey received is dangerous if it requires a young-earth interpretation. Throughout history, the church fathers have never spoken with a unified voice on the age of the Earth. While there has been great agreement among them on the authority of Scripture, the Trinity, God’s transcendence over the creation, the Incarnation, the Atonement, and many other essential Christian doctrines, a diversity of views regarding the timescale of creation existed.

Please note, I am not saying that those who believe in a 6,000-year-old creation are doomed to a crisis of faith when they pursue careers in science. A New York Times piece demonstrates how some young-earth creationists survive and even thrive in scientific careers. However, other Christians cannot suitably resolve the conflicts that arise between a young-earth creationist view and the findings of contemporary science. These Christians might benefit from exposure to an old-earth creationist framework, which resolves many of those conflicts.

As we, the church, interact with the scientific community let’s keep a clear picture of the essentials of the Christian faith so we don’t put up unnecessary roadblocks. Furthermore, let us engage in genuine respectful dialogue that reflects a Christ-like spirit.

Posted by Fazale ‘Fuz’ Rana, Ph.D.

Dental Anatomy Gives Important Clues on Hominid Growth and Development

For a little kid, losing teeth is a rite of passage. Each tooth that falls out (or gets unceremoniously yanked loose) serves as a sign that the child is growing up, as, one by one, baby teeth make way for permanent teeth.

The same is true for hominids, which are often interpreted as transitional intermediates between an ape-like creature and modern humans. Hominid tooth eruption, deposition of microanatomical structures, and tooth wear occurred at characteristic times during their growth and development and throughout adulthood. Because of the relationship between dental anatomy and life history, paleoanthroplogists study these features to gain important clues about the behavior and lifestyle of these now-extinct creatures.

Two recent research projects examined dental features of Paranthropus robustus and Neanderthals. Both studies indicate that these two hominids developed and behaved in decidedly nonhuman ways, extending the separation between the hominids and modern humans in accord with RTB’s human origins model.

RTB Human Origins Model and the Hominids

Instead of viewing these creatures as evolutionary intermediates, RTB’s biblical creation model regards the hominids found in the fossil record as animals created by God’s direct intervention. These primates existed for a time and then went extinct. RTB’s model considers the hominids to be remarkable creatures that walked erect, and possessed some level of limited intelligence and emotional capacity. This allowed these animals to employ crude tools and even adopt a type of ‘culture’ much like baboons, gorillas, and chimpanzees. While the RTB model posits that the hominids were created by God’s divine fiat, they were not spiritual beings made in His image. The model reserves this status exclusively for modern humans.

The RTB’s conceptual scheme treats the hominids as analogous to, but distinct from the great apes. Because of this, the model predicts that anatomical, physiological, biochemical, and genetic similarities will exist among the hominids and modern humans to varying degrees. But since the hominids were not made in God’s image, they are expected to be clearly distinct from modern humans, particularly in their cognitive capacity, behavior, “technology,” and “culture.”

In summary, the RTB model predicts that the hominids, including Neanderthals, should be biologically and behaviorally distinguishable from modern humans.

One study examined facial features and tooth wear for 19 specimens assigned to Paranthropus robustus. This hominid lived between about 2 and 1.2 million years ago in South Africa. (Evolutionary biologists don’t think that this hominid is part of the lineage that led to modern humans. Instead they place P. robustus, along with its two sister species, P. boisei and P. aethiopicus, as an evolutionary side branch and dead end.)

The research team noted that for male specimens the most extensive dental wear correlated with fully developed adult features. Those males with underdeveloped adult characteristics showed little dental wear. This pattern was not noted for females in the sample. These observations indicate that males took a longer period of time to develop than females and imply that P. robustus displayed sexual dimorphism, with males possessing a significantly larger body size than females.

Sexual dimorphism impacts mating strategy. Primates like gorillas that display sexual dimorphism based on body size have a social organization centered on a large dominant male who mates with a harem of females. This means that Paranthropus, and by extension the other Australopithecines, employed a mating strategy similar to gorillas.

In contrast, modern humans display relatively limited sexual dimorphism. As a consequence, males and females form mating pairs.

This work indicates that the Australopithecines were biologically and behaviorally distinct from modern humans, in accord with predictions made by the RTB model. The study also widens the gap between the Australopithecines and hominids that belonged to the Homo genus. According to paleoanthropologist J. Michael Plavan:

The finding challenges a theory that early hominids had a relatively low level of sexual dimorphism, inherited from a common ancestor shared with chimpanzees…Instead, the primitive condition may have been more gorillalike, and our female ancestors may not have closed the gap until recently, perhaps in Homo erectus in the past 2 million years.

The implication: the transition in mating behavior (and the accompanying growth and development process) must have happened rapidly.

Another study examined microanatomical features of Neanderthal teeth as a way to assess the rate of growth and development for these hominids. Biological rhythms produce incremental features in the enamel and dentine throughout childhood that can be used as a record for the individual’s life history.

Earlier studies using these markers have been inconclusive about the growth and development of Neanderthals. Some studies indicate that these hominids grew into adulthood at a pace similar to that of modern humans. Other work suggests that the rate of growth and development was accelerated when compared to human beings.

The most recent study took the most-detailed and comprehensive look at the microanatomical characteristics of Neanderthal teeth. Based on this work, the researchers concluded that Neanderthals grew at a much more rapid rate than modern humans. To say it another way, a prolonged childhood and relatively slow life history appears to be unique to modern humans. And these differences in the length and pace of childhood have important consequences for social organization.

Based on this work, it appears as if Neanderthals are both biologically and behaviorally distinct from modern humans. Once again this finding comports with RTB’s human origins model. Scientific advance makes it increasingly possible to make a scientific case that human beings are distinct from the hominids in a way that harmonizes with the notion that humans are uniquely made in God’s image.

While it is commonplace for human children to put their baby teeth under a pillow in the hope that the tooth fairy will exchange it for “gold,” it’s unlikely that Neanderthal children ever went through such a ritual. They grew up too fast.

Thanks to a spectacular new discovery concerning the geophysical history of the earth, one more detail in biblical author Moses’ chronology of Earth’s creation history has been scientifically verified. The breakthrough yields yet more evidence for the divine inspiration of the Bible’s words and message. First, let me offer some personal background for this discovery.

I signed my name in the back of a Gideon Bible late one August night in 1964, thereby committing my life to Jesus Christ. This commitment was based—to a large extent—on the evidence I had accumulated for the truthfulness of the Bible’s content and message. Much of that evidence consisted of several dozen Bible passages wherein future scientific discoveries were accurately predicted thousands of years in advance of the discoveries.

There were two passages in the Genesis 1 creation account, however, that at the time I had to place in the unresolved anomaly category. Genesis 1:2 implied that islands and continents either did not exist on early Earth or they covered an insignificant fraction of Earth’s surface. Genesis 1:9-10 placed the period of most aggressive continental landmass growth within creation day three; that is, roughly halfway through God’s creative activity on Earth. The problem with these two passages was that in the early 1960s the prevailing view among geologists and geophysicists was that continental landmasses, though shifting in position and shape, had covered a large fraction of Earth’s surface throughout Earth’s history.

This view, though troublesome, did not disturb my faith in an inerrant Bible. I was aware that the view lacked physical evidence and that a detailed plate tectonic model for the history of Earth’s crust had been developed for only the past 0.25 billion years. Thus, I adopted a wait-and-see approach to the supposed anomaly.

During the 1980s and especially the 1990s geophysicists had determined most of the physical and chemical processes that operate through plate tectonic activity to transform ocean floor basalts into continental silicates. The researchers demonstrated that indeed virtually all of the silicates on Earth came from these processes. This meant that Earth must have begun as a water world in which water covered the entirety of its surface. Further, the rates at which these processes operate implied that it took a few billion years for the continents to build up to their present sizes.

These discoveries and analyses by geophysicists proved consistent with advances taking place in paleontology. These advances showed that Earth’s first life was strictly marine life and that terrestrial life appeared much later in the fossil record. The net result of these discoveries, analyses, and advances was to vindicate the bold statements made in Genesis 1 about the history of Earth’s oceans and continents, thereby providing yet one more piece of evidence for the Bible’s power to accurately and consistently predict future scientific discoveries thousands of years in advance of their time.

One detail about continental buildup remained to be put to a scientific test. Genesis 1:9-10 seems to imply that it was during creation day three that Earth experienced the most dramatic episodes of continental landmass growth. Now, a team of British geologists and geophysicists has demonstrated through osmium isotope measures that Earth’s continental crust didn’t grow gradually and roughly linearly through time but rather it advanced through a series of pulses.¹

Geologists have noted for some time that much of Earth’s continental crust dates to be one of four specific ages, namely, 1.2, 1.9, 2.7, and 3.3 billion years, with the first three dates being predominant. Since large upper mantle melting events are known to trigger the growth of continental crust formation, the British research team used measures of the rhenium-187 to osmium-187 ratios to track and date upper mantle melt events. They discovered that these upper mantle melt events cluster around three specific ages: 1.2, 1.9, and 2.7 billion years ago. The fact that these dates coincide with the ages for most of Earth’s continental crust provides strong evidence for (1) “the pulsed models of continental growth by means of large-scale mantle melting events,”² and (2) dramatic growth of continental landmasses at approximately the halfway point during the history of life on Earth.

In confirming that the most dramatic growth of continental landmasses occurred at about the halfway point in life’s history on Earth, the British research team also vindicated Genesis author Moses. His chronology was correct in describing a past period of aggressive continental landmass growth and in dating that period as occurring on creation day three (out of the total of six creation days). Thus, the discoveries made by the British earth science research team illustrate how the more we learn about science the more reasons we uncover for belief in the Bible as the inspired error-free word of God.

1. D. G. Pearson, S. W. Parman, and G. M. Nowell, “A Link Between Large Mantle Melting Events and Continent Growth Seen In Osmium Isotopes,� Nature 449 (September 13, 2007): 202-05.
2. Pearson, Parman, and Nowell, 202.