What's the True Origin of Species according to Genesis? - Dr. Todd Wood

 

Explore the fascinating fields of biology, genetics, and intelligent design with 16 in-depth interviews featuring Del Tackett and six scientists from the film.

Biologist Todd Wood takes us to a zoo full of antelope, gazelle, zebras and many other incredible creatures to discuss how natural selection operates in light their amazing designs. He then compares the evolutionary "tree of life" to the creationist "orchard of life."

Dr. Todd 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.

Todd, we've talked to a number of scientists so far,

and it's clear

that to believe in the Genesis paradigm,

as opposed to the conventional paradigm,

puts you in a minority.

And that means

that it's probably tough along the way.

And so what is it about the Genesis paradigm,

and the data,

and the evidence that you see around you,

that causes you to continue to hold to that in the midst

of a whole flow of things trying to pull you another way?

It works.

And it keeps working.

That's what keeps impressing me.

It keeps dragging me back,

even when I think, maybe I should not bother,

I keep finding new ways of understanding things,

new insights into nature.

I mean, this is what science is supposed to do, right?

And, for me to read through Genesis and see

how integral it is

to basic Christian story of creation, fall,

and redemption, I don't think

that we can just reimagine all that.

And then when I go

and think about what kind of scientific insights

that I can gain from that,

it continues to impress me how much progress we're making.

If creationism is so bad and so wrong,

why is it we keep making progress?

Why do we keep -

even in geology, and in biology,

the whole nine yards all of it?

It seems like we're continually finding new insights,

and new ways of understanding things,

that suggest that we must be on the right track, I think.

So this is not just a blind faith for you.

I mean, this is something

that you see substantiated everywhere you look?

No, I don't think it's a blind faith.

I'm not even sure that I like that phrase.

I mean it implies that, you know,

there's just nothing there,

that I'm just going to believe for no reason.

But I also don't want to underestimate

the open questions.

There are a lot of hard problems

that creationists still have to sort of resolve.

But the fact that, with so few of us,

we keep finding new ways of thinking about this problem,

and that problem,

that it's like, you know, I'm on a long journey,

and I'm not to the city that I want to get to yet,

but I keep passing those signs

that tell me how many miles I got to go,

which is pretty exciting.

That tells me I'm on the right track,

I'm going the right direction.

So, that's the way I look at it.

I just find it -

I just find it really exciting,

even though I might not have all the answers

that I'd like to have yet.

Well that seems to be the -

kind of the characteristic that we're seeing

in the creationist scientists that we're talking to,

that there's an underlying confidence there,

that the scripture is right.

Absolutely, yeah.

The more I dig,

the more I work at it, the more insight I get,

the more answers I get, it's really exciting.

It's really exciting.

I can't imagine why,

you know, young science students wouldn't want to do what we do.

I mean, it's some of the coolest research

that you could possibly imagine.

But there are still these great questions to be answered,

and you're looking at the Zebras and they're all unique,

and yet all of these creatures are just -

so much complexity and diversity.

How does the standard story,

the conventional paradigm explain all of that?

Well, they would use evolution, right?

So, billions of years, random variations,

all things that are alive now,

that cactus, that zebra,

the grass here, it's all related.

We all go back to a common ancestor

that lived billions of years ago,

and through the process of mutation,

and genetic variation, and natural selection,

that's where we get the stuff that we have today.

But doesn't that imply that all of those mutations are positing,

they're all moving towards all of this diversity that we have?

Well, there certainly has to be a lot of beneficial mutations.

There could be bad stuff, I mean

that's what natural selection is going to get rid of,

because natural selection is basically killing off the stuff

that's not fit to survive.

So anything that's bad

that crops up is going to be presumably eliminated

by natural selection.

So, there can be bad mutations in the conventional model,

but yeah, you got to have good mutations, too,

to make the variety of things that we see.

You've got to have a lot of really good stuff

that happens in the history of mutation.

Does that seem reasonable?

Well, that's a good question.

I mean, from what we can see in genomes today,

we can see, yeah, I mean,

there's some mutations

that might be helpful in some circumstances,

other mutations are probably not so good,

but the vast majority of them?

They don't do anything.

They're just useless.

And so, you know,

we all have to think about mutations because we have,

when we can look inside

of a created kind, we can see differences in genetics,

so you know creationists need mutations, too.

The real question is,

you know, what kinds of mutations are happening?

So in my view, it's not a random mutation.

Just randomly changing any part of the genome is probably

not going to do much of anything, really.

What we need are mutations that are helpful and beneficial,

but those are the kinds of things that can only be built

into the system.

Evolution needs mutations

that produce an external feature that can be selected, right?

That can alter the survivability of the organism.

And sometimes that happens, sometimes it doesn't.

The vast majority of times,

there isn't going to be any external feature that

you can select for.

So we're kind of talking about how random mutations can produce

such exquisite design.

Yeah, and in some sense, it is.

It's not just mutation,

because you've got selection going on there -

so you do have features

that are clearly well designed for the environment.

So right over here, we've got these Oryx's, right?

Beautiful, beautiful creatures, and very very pale colors.

The wild range of the Oryx is right on the southern end

of the Sahara Desert.

And so, you can see, yeah, their coloration makes sense.

Natural selection,

if you get a really dark colored one,

that's going to be really easy for predators to find,

and so they end up being these really

beautiful light colors.

And that's an example

of where selection would take a variation

and turn it into an adaptation.

And that brings us back to the notion

that a really exquisite design in the beginning Oh,

I think so.

Oh, absolutely.

It has provided these creatures with the ability to survive

and to change for their benefit.

Absolutely.

So, the ability to be able to change your coloration

like that, to be able to fit an environment,

that's got to be built into the system

before it starts.

As I said,

random mutations generally don't do anything,

so it's hard to imagine

how you're going to get a lot of random mutations

that are going to actually produce

just the right coloration

for the environment that you're living in.

What about the issue of natural selection, though?

Does that have the power to get us to where we are?

That's a hot area of research.

Lots of people looking into that,

and what we find most often with natural selection is

that natural selection does a lot of fine-tuning.

Natural selection is basically all about killing off things

that aren't fit for the environment.

So if you're a Finch in the Galapagos

and you have a really tiny beak

and the only food available to you is really big,

hard seeds, you're going to die.

And that's exactly what we observe,

and so we can watch

over the generations as the beak size,

and finches, change in the Galapagos,

but they're still finches.

They're still birds.

The notion that natural

selection can generate all of the diversity we see,

that's not been demonstrated.

But that natural selection -

is that working within the kinds,

or does that allow us to go beyond that?

From my perspective,

most of the examples of natural selection are working

within the created kinds, right?

And so, now don't get me wrong,

I mean natural selection and random variation

can do amazing things,

I mean it's pretty astonishing,

the kinds of changes that we can see.

But no, they don't change from one kind to another.

We have not observed that.

All we've observed are the kinds of changes

within populations that happen.

Not even, you know, across species.

Mostly within populations, so it's very small stuff,

and that's why I call it fine-tuning,

because it's mostly taking one group of critters

and making sure that they're really fit, exactly,

for the environment where they're living.

Natural selection, then, obviously exists.

We see it around us, we see it in the fossil record.

Have you pondered

and thought about what God was doing

when He created all this that gave the potential

for natural selection to occur?

Natural selection is sort of an inevitable part of the world.

If you have random variation,

and things can die, then there's going

to be natural selection.

So before the fall,

I would say probably no natural selection going on

in the animal world at least,

but then after the fall it serves as

that fine-tuning feature, right?

So it makes sure

that the population of animals still survives,

even though the environment's fluctuating and changing.

It's just an inevitable kind

of thing that you have to have in a world

that is changing all the time.

And you know, the Flood is coming,

God knows this at creation.

So yeah, there's this system in place already -

not just to allow variations to come out of animals,

but for even the most careful adjustments to make sure

that populations don't just crash and die, go extinct.

So the tree of life that we see in the textbooks,

that is a picture

that everything started from one thing and all

of this diversity and exquisite beauty

that we see came from that one trunk,

so to speak.

So, you're right,

I mean evolution would say there is only one tree,

and it all goes back to a single common ancestor,

which is you know the base of the tree.

But I would say, no, there's actually multiple trees.

There's a felid tree,

which has all the cats on it,

there's the canid tree which has all the dogs on it,

there's the ursid tree which has all the bears on it,

there's the equid tree with all the horses on it,

and so on and so forth.

Each individual created kind,

then, has its own individual tree,

so that what you end up with is not one big tree of life,

you end up with something like an orchard or a forest,

where you have lots of different trees

all growing together from the same created base.

But this forest has trees that have a lot of branches

on it and that's

that each kind now branching out and all

of these different species that we see.

Yeah, absolutely.

So you know,

they all start at creation, right,

so they have that common beginning,

but they're individual trees,

so they're not all related to a common ancestor.

They're all related to their own individual common ancestor.

So the cat ancestor, and the horse ancestor,

and whatnot.

And so then they diversify over time,

especially after the flood,

when you have this period of massive upheaval

when critters can change all over the place.

And is that what the data shows us?

I think so.

I would start with what I read in Genesis

which tells me about, you know,

at the end of creation week,

you have all these different creatures already there,

you have flying things and swimming things

and creeping things,

and when I look at the data of nature,

I see both similarity and difference.

So an evolutionary biologist would say,

look at all the similarity,

and that puts everything on a common evolutionary tree.

Then I would say, yes, there is similarity,

but there are also significant differences.

And the significant differences - and this is really important -

they end up exactly where I would expect them to.

So I look at the Bible and I see flying things, swimming things,

that sort of thing,

and those are really big categories.

I don't see it mentioning the individual species.

You read through Genesis 1 and 2,

you won't see lions and tigers and things like that.

So it's got to be somewhere between, you know,

bird and the individual species of bird.

That's where I would expect to find these differences.

That's where I find them, over and over and over again.

It's astonishing.

And so, you know, I shouldn't be astonished,

but I am.

It always delights me when I think "Hey,

the Bible works, what do you know?"

but that's exactly how it works in this situation.

I find these differences

that essentially make sense of exactly

what I'm seeing in the Scripture.

I'm seeing those differences right there

where they should be.

As a scientist,

looking at all of this data and everything that you see,

it seems what you're saying is

that the Genesis paradigm answers all of this data better.

Yeah I think so.

I mean, ultimately I think it does

because it embraces both similarity and difference.

Now, as we've already said,

there's lots of questions that are still out there.

But, I'm pretty confident given what our paradigm can explain,

I'm very confident

that those answers are going to be found.

But in this single tree of life, in the conventional paradigm,

if that were true,

then we must have all of these transitional

forms between kinds.

Yeah, so, that's a good question.

So there are a lot of critters out there,

especially in the fossil record,

that are put forward

as these things they call transitional forms.

I like to call them intermediates.

I like to just think of them in terms of the qualities

that they possess,

rather than whether there's some sort of transition,

and in my view based on my years

of study I see two kinds of intermediates.

I see intermediates

that occur within a created kind where I can say, oh yeah,

this is this created kind.

And then I see intermediates

that appear to possess traits of more than one created kind.

So actually I have right here in my backpack, one

of those sorts of transitions.

So this...

This is a Mesohippus.

Okay?

- You'll have to explain that.

Very small, right?

Mhm.

But this is a member of the horse kind.

And if you've ever seen a horse without its skin on,

you'd say oh yeah

that looks just like a horse.

But that's not enough for a scientist.

You can't just go on

"Oh, it looks like a horse."

you got to do some statistical analysis,

and I've done that too.

So, I've used characteristics of the skull,

and the teeth here, to show that in fact,

yes, this is a horse.

It fits in the horse created kind,

it is not something else, it is definitely a horse.

So this thing is supposed to be one

of those transitional fossils,

as horses are evolving from their tiny little ancestors.

And what I'm seeing here is really just another version

of a single created kind.

Yes, it's a horse and yes,

it's different from the horses that we have today,

but the transition is only within the created kind.

Now there are others,

as I said,

there are intermediates that appear to possess traits

of more than one created kind,

but we'll have to go over to the birdhouses to check those out.

Okay.