On Chromosome Two and the Creation of Our Species: A Response to the Discovery Institute's Feedback

Andrew Jones of the Discovery Institute has addressed my video, Chromosome 2. Part I.  Evidence for an Evolutionary Creation, in a way that I think warrants a response.  I appreciate the points that he raises; they are insightful and fair.

In the video, I lay out two hypotheses to explain the finding that the genes present on two different chromosomes in great apes are present on one single chromosome in humans.  Hypothesis 1 is that God purposely assembled the genes into a single chromosome package when he created our species in an instant (relatively speaking) and from scratch.  Hypothesis 2 is that God created our species through the evolutionary process from an ape ancestral species that had two smaller chromosomes and that God did so over a period of several million years.  At some point in our evolutionary heritage those two chromosomes fused end-to-end to become one larger chromosome.

Andrew suggests that I should have considered a third possibility: that our species was created from scratch with two chromosomes just like the great apes.  According to his Hypothesis 3, the two smaller chromosomes fused end-to-end after the (instantaneous, I assume) creation of our species.  

At first blush, Andrew is right; this would be a possibility.  However, there is a powerful way of estimating the time when the fusion took place (see Higma,  Journal of Heredity, 2017, 45–52) and it likely happened about 3.5 million years ago, long before the appearance of our species. Furthermore there is independent evidence against his Hypothesis 3. Denisovans and Neanderthals had the fused chromosome just like us (also see Higma, 2017) which further confirms that the event occurred prior to the formation of our branch of the Homo family..  So even though I think he raised a point worth considering, it doesn’t fit with the data and we’re still left with the two hypotheses I describe in the video.

Andrew went on to indicate that the aforementioned (his suggestion that a Hypothesis 3 was consistent with the data too) was a concern, but it was not the one on which he especially wanted to focus.  Here again, I think he expressed this matter clearly and raised an interesting point that I need to address.  In the video, I suggested that Hypothesis 1 (sudden creation from scratch) implies that our species would have been brought into existence in a manner that is more analogous to how an engineer designs and oversees the building of a structure or a puppet-maker assembles a puppet.  If, on the other hand, our species was created slowly through the evolutionary process rather than as an instantaneously created "product," the Creator of our species could have worked in a manner that is more like that of a parent as he gradually brought our species into existence (Hypothesis 2).  It takes time to be a parent and similarly, according to Hypothesis 2, God’s ongoing presence brought Homo sapiens into existence over a long period of time. 

There seems to have been a significant misunderstanding on Andrew’s part.  My two hypotheses were only related to the matter of how our species, Homo sapiens, was created: gradually (over millions of years) like a parent, or quickly (from scratch) like an engineer.  I am fully aware that my Christian Intelligent Design colleagues do not think that God, having created our species, then bows out of our lives following creation.  Surely, we all agree that through the Holy Spirit, Christ is shaping our lives on an ongoing basis in a manner that is parental.  Indeed, in the most fundamental set of communication guidelines ever presented, Jesus taught us to pray: “Our Father…”  and in some of the  most moving passages in all of Scripture (Romans 8 and I John 3, for example) we are reminded that we, as God's children, are deeply loved.  Engineers make great parents and Geppetto greatly loved his puppet as it became real.  But that’s not a point I am considering in the video.  I am talking about the manner in which our species was brought into existence.  

So the question the video is addressing is not how God works with us in today’s world.  It is how has God created our species.  The data on chromosome 2 as well as the data discussed in  the other videos on my channel, all address the question of how we know the manner by which our species was created.  It is important that none of us miss this point, but I would add that the inherent consistency of God not only working with us in our day-to-day lives as a parent, but of bringing our species into existence this way as well is fulfilling.

I might add that I'm fully aware of the fact that in the content of this set of videos, I’m still in the early stages of addressing the sense in which God has been at work in bringing our species into existence as well as the specifics of what it means to say that God is guiding that process like a parent.   I’ve begun to address this though  in my second video series, specifically in Genetic Change and the Origin of our Species, Part III, The Hovering Spirit of God, but there is still so much to talk about. 

Again, I thank Andrew for bringing these points out.  They are thoughtful and helpful and I look forward to further communication with my ID colleagues as  we Christians think alongside of each other about what it really means to come to peace with science.

(Note added May 14, 2018.  By a different technique than that described above, Dreszer et al [Genome Research 17:1420, 2007] have estimated the date of the fusion event as between .74 to 2.81million years ago at the 95% confidence level.  So there are three independent approaches to dating the time of the event--all placing it back prior to our branch of the Homo family.)