What were the Original Animals God Created Really Like? - Dr. Todd Wood

 

This video segment is from "Beyond Is Genesis History? Vol 2 : Life & Design," where we explore the fascinating fields of biology, genetics, and intelligent design. Check it out on our website: http://bit.ly/2QlPtQV.

Biologist Todd Wood introduces us to the concept of 'created kinds' and then talks about how that explains the origin of species we see in the world today.

Dr. Wood has a BS in Biology from Liberty University in Virginia (1994) and a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Virginia (Charlottesville, 1999). Immediately following his PhD work at Virginia, Dr. Wood accepted a position as the Director of Bioinformatics at the Clemson University Genomics Institute (Clemson, South Carolina). After working for about two years at Clemson University, Dr. Wood accepted a faculty position at Bryan College (Dayton, Tennessee) in 2002. He is now president of the Core Academy of Science.

For more information on Dr. Wood, please go to https://bit.ly/2N2Oraa.

so todd what

got you interested in biology oh i've

always been

interested in biology i can't remember a

time when i wasn't i remember you know

three four years old going to the

brookfield zoo in chicago and

the detroit zoo and being pulled around

little red wagon you know

my parents and looking at all the

animals it was amazing and it's just an

amazing thing and i just sort of knew

there was always going to be these kinds

of creatures in my future somehow

todd when we walk around a zoo like this

i mean the first thing is just the

beauty of all of these creatures

but that beauty seems to be

found in that diversity there is just so

much

difference a beautiful difference in all

those creatures

and yet there's something similar about

them

as a biologist what do you see when you

see all of these creatures

yeah when i look at these lions

specifically i'm

seeing cats myself and you know all the

other

cats they have here at the zoo they all

have this

underlying catness to them

that's really apparent it's really

apparent when

they start playing right you're seeing

them lick themselves

and clean themselves or you see them

playing with some sort of ball or

something and they look

they're just like a cat they look like a

cat i mean this is like kittens play

around and they do that sort of thing

and so for those kinds of things the

scientists would put that into a family

called felidae

and i would understand the felids to be

representatives of a single created kind

so the continuity the similarity there

is so significant

that i'd say yeah these guys have all

descended from a single

pair of critters that was on the ark and

that eventually generated all the

different sorts of cats that we have

today

well todd how do we get all of that

diversity the other cats but

they look different yeah they definitely

look different

that's a good question where do we get

all this diversity so

for an evolutionist of course they would

argue that it's natural selection and

many years of mutations and changes

but for creationists i'm looking at this

thinking

these designs are already built into

whatever cat came off the ark

with noah and over time then those

characteristics have been expressed as

the cats have dispersed and spread out

over the world

just like we see in dogs oh kinds of

dogs how does that

dogs are a great analogy i mean in only

a few hundred years we've taken

essentially a wolf-like creature and

turned it into all these crazy breeds

the chihuahua and the saint bernard and

the german shepherd

and i think that's kind of what's going

on here with the cats there's

within that cat that came off the ark

those two cats that came off the ark

they had all the potential necessary to

generate the various

forms of cats that we have today it was

just a matter of breeding it out and

dispersing the

dispersing the cats around the world and

as they went then

then you have the lions and the tigers

showing up

later on so originally the the cat

and the original dog they there was a

lot of potential then within them but

genetic

potential huge genetic potential all

programmed inside of these critters

just waiting to come out so that over

time

in the in the breeding that we've done

with dogs we're basically just kind of

uh separating some of those genes out

yeah yeah so

so there's that all that potential

that's in the dog kind in the dog

genome whatever it is that gets

expressed as we

sort of tease out different parts of

various

genetic traits and combinations you get

dalmatians and whatever

that's the same sort of thing that's

happening here with the lions

so rather than just a a random accident

it appears as if all of these different

species are coming from a really

elaborate design oh absolutely and it's

not just a design like god you know

designed and created the lion it's god

created something that could make a lion

so it's more like you know a multi-tool

or a swiss army knife where you've got

all these pieces that you can just pop

out whenever you need them

but it's all just one thing that's

exactly what i think god created

cats to be like you have these traits

that can come out

when they're needed uh we can see some

of these variations come out

even today so you take a lion here you

cross it with a tiger you'll get a liger

but that thing will be much bigger than

either of its parents

so those are traits that come out and

the beautiful thing is even amidst all

this variety

and variation and generating diversity

you can still

end up with this cat right so you end up

with a liger that's a real cat it works

you know

it's not like these are broken things or

degenerated things

they're the real deal the amount of

design that we're talking about here is

just

way more than just god making one

critter fit for one place it's making a

critter that can make other critters

that are fit for

places that we've maybe maybe not even

encountered before

and it's just an amazing design it's so

much bigger than what we used to think

of as design

okay so we have cats and dogs as kinds

what are some other examples

oh there's lots there's the sea lions

that we looked at this morning

we've got grizzly and polar bear they're

members of the bear kind

duck swans and geese the members of the

duck kind

and now the dogs are really interesting

so in russia they did this experiment

where they tried to breed

foxes to be more tame right they ended

up with these

foxes that looked like little dogs the

ears started to droop

and they started to bark which is really

weird and so just by

breeding for a single trait you can end

up making all sorts of other weird

changes

in the the appearance of these dogs

which i think is another great example

of how

you know the traits that we think of as

defining a species or really

they're all embedded into different

members of a single created kind

so those foxes actually were still

carrying that

dog kind within them oh yeah that's

that's the amazing thing

how does this happen that's a good

question how does it happen we

we don't really know one of the things

that we can tell is when we're looking

at the various genomes of dogs

we see that their chromosomes are all

scrambled around and changed up

quite a bit it's really amazing and so

then you might think well maybe that has

something to do with how

they change and how they differentiate

but then

the camel and llama which are all

members of a camel kind

their genomes are almost exactly the

same so even when you think oh that must

be this the genomes get scrambled

nope there are other kinds which are

really different and they don't have

scrambled genomes at all so it's really

it's a baffling mystery how how these

various

traits end up coming out of an organism

it's

just really weird well todd that's kind

of fascinating now to think

about what god was doing when he was

bringing

two of every kind what do you think was

going on there oh yeah

he doesn't have to bring every little

variety

onto the ark so you've automatically got

room to spare

basically when you actually do the

calculations and okay so we don't know

exactly how many creative kinds there

were on the ark but maybe a couple

thousands

and they're small most animals are quite

small so you have

room to spare literally room to spare on

the ark

with for all the provisions and and noah

and his family

and all of that diversity that we have

today

is built into those two of every kind so

they get off the arc

they start spreading out encountering

new environments so you get

and the rabbit kind you know some

rabbits move up into the arctic and of

course

then you get your arctic hares with

their beautiful white fur

other rabbits are going out west uh in

the u.s where you have

grasslands in the plains and they're

getting really long legs so they can run

really fast because there's not a lot of

places to hide

they're also getting coloration that

matches their environment

it's an amazing amazing thing that's all

sort of built into that

whatever that rabbit was that got off

the yard so that also then uh

gives kind of a neat uh picture of when

god told the animals and human beings to

fill the earth it's

it's not just phil it's really it's

exploding isn't it you are

it's not just you know becoming more of

you you know go make more of what you

are

it's a matter of actually filling all

the little habitats and niches and

environments that we have on the planet

and it makes sense then when we go out

and scientists continue to be surprised

when we find

you know bacteria living you know miles

underground or you know we find

these weird environments where you'd

think hot springs

at yellowstone you'd think there's no

way any critter could live in there and

yet they do

so filling the earth yeah we filled the

earth

pretty effectively but we're talking

about

kinds uh that were on the ark yeah

people sometimes equate that with

species can you

help us get those species has a really

weird history and and trying to

understand exactly

where the species idea came from when

you look into the history of it you

realize it's really coming

out of people studying reproduction

people used to think that if you left a

piece of meat out to rot

it would turn into flies right and so

this guy named francesco reddy

he started doing experiments and

realized no no it's because flies lay

eggs on the meat

and then the baby flies come from the

same kind of fly that laid the eggs on

the meat

and so he called those things species

and that led to the idea well

you know if species always produce more

of the same species then

you go back far enough you come to

creation right it wasn't until later in

the 18th century that people began to

realize

it's not really clear what these species

are and it's pretty clear that sometimes

they can be really variable

and sometimes they can even change and

so people

began to think there must be another

category here that's not

the species that god was the original

creator of

because species can really change in

pretty dramatic ways

todd i think a lot of people think that

uh

the animals that came off the ark were

all the animals that we see

they came off the ark and then they just

they stayed that way but you're telling

us that's not the case oh yeah

the ark the ark pictures and the

cartoons with all the lions and the

tigers and the

and the and the zebras and the horses

that is really unrealistic really

unrealistic

plus noah looks like us i mean he's a

white guy that's very unrealistic too

uh yeah the the ark you might not have

even recognized it but the cool thing

about it is you would have recognized

things you would have said hey that

looks like a horse

hey that looks like a cat hey that looks

like a dog even though you might not

have

known exactly what kind of cat or dog or

horse it was but you could have at least

recognized yeah i know what that is i

can see

that that is a member of that creative

kind that's the amazing part

so if we have uh the horse kind

or the dog kind coming off the ark

how can we get so many so rapidly is

that possible

that's that's a good question and when

you look at the history of dog breeds

and you can see only in a few hundred

years

we can generate all this diversity i'm

not really that worried

about generating the diversity that we

see in created kinds i think it's

possible

it's just a matter of keep hammering

away at it and trying to understand

exactly what's going on there

because we're just at the beginning now

of understanding genomes i mean when i

was in

when i started grad school we kind of

had a

idea of how genomes and genes worked i

mean

basically the year after i started grad

school was the first

genome sequence published it was a

bacterium

so i was there as the genome revolution

was happening it was pretty amazing to

watch

right up close and we're just beginning

to understand it we're barely beginning

to understand it by the time i got

out of grad school we discovered an

entirely new class of

small rna genes that we didn't even know

existed that turned out to be really

important for epigenetics and control of

gene expression

so you know people want to know well how

do you generate all this diversity so

fast

and i think how do you generate

diversity at all how do you even make

features of an organism we're barely

able to answer those kinds of questions

right now and so

how do you make it different well i

don't think it's going to be that hard

so all you're talking about is there's

some environmental things and other

factors we don't really know exactly how

but it's possible

for all that diversity to happen rather

quickly absolutely it's totally possible

to have it happen really fast now you

mentioned the term epigenetics what is

that

epigenetic so yeah so you have your

genes

which are the things that make physical

parts

of your cells epigenetics

is the stuff that controls how the genes

make the physical parts of your cells

because you don't want all your genes on

all at once that'll give you cancer

that's bad

so you've got to have some sort of

control some sort of way of making sure

that the right things get made at the

right time

that's what epigenetics is all about so

it's kind of like a super

controlling factor over all of this

potential we were talking and it

controls

as much maybe even more of inheritance

from one organism to another when they

have babies

as the actual genes themselves there's

already a cell there that we call the

zygote once the egg has been fertilized

that has a bunch of epigenetic stuff

already in it

that's going to guide and direct how the

genes are expressed to build a new

organism

it seems like this whole genetic thing

is like we're just

touching the surface of something

amazingly deep and powerful

underneath is that that's exactly right

we are we're

on the brink and i love the idea of more

christians

becoming involved in this kind of

research and learning more about

the genome because to be on the cutting

edge of understanding

where all these traits and features are

coming from that's going to be

you know next generation creationism

right there it's a level of

complexity that's just much bigger than

just the simplistic ideas that we have

we think

we're the ones that are breeding all

these things you know and making all

these different dogs

no no we're expressing things that have

been built into that

system from the start yeah how far can

we go with that todd

that is an excellent question and to

really understand that we got to go look

that at the cat that isn't really a cat

the meerkat

is right around the corner here yeah

that's not a cat let's go check him out

i have to hate to lead you guys

so the cats that aren't cats the most

popular part of the zoo right

so they don't even look like cats they

look more like little weasels or

something

and i've made a work effort over the

years doing a lot of research

trying to understand the similarity of

these things to cats and i can show

quantitatively using all sorts of fancy

mathematics that these things are

very distinct from cats and i would

interpret

that as something i call discontinuity

there's a there's a difference between

cats on the one hand and meerkats on the

other hand

um so they are not the members of the

same created kind

they're not really related at all

they're separate creations that god made

in their own separate sort of kind so

are you saying that we couldn't take a

meer cat and breed it with a real cat

and get something in between no you

could not make them cat meerkat hybrid

no they're definitely is that that

discontinuity you're talking about that

is the discontinuity that i'm talking

about they are separate created kinds

you're not going to cross them you're

not going to you know

breed meerkats to look more like lions

it's not going to happen

they're different does that happen

across all kinds in

absolutely kinds are separate kinds are

distinct

they're cute and they're adorable