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Reasons To Believe Home PageA burst of biblically relevant discoveries has made headlines in the latest science journals. At least six of the breakthroughs reported affirm the Genesis chronology and support the biblical descriptions and explanations of Genesis events. In the articles that follow, you will find brief accounts of these findings and of their relevance to Christian apologetics.
A year ago the science community was stunned to discover how brief and dramatic the Cambrian explosion must have been.1 In a window of time between zero and and five million years, about half a billion years ago, Earth's population went from tiny, morphologically simple single- and multi-cellular life forms to a hundred phyla of life—the thirty existing today plus seventy more that have gone extinct.
For some time, evolutionary biologists have recognized that significant atmospheric changes necessarily converged with this sudden proliferation of species. Pre-Cambrian creatures' need for atmospheric oxygen is low; post-Cambrian creatures' need is high. Large animals require lots of oxygen for respiration and for the synthesis of collagen, a structural protein. Something must have happened to make that extra oxygen available.
The first direct indication of this rapid oxygen enrichment came to light four years ago. Carbon isotope measurements suggested that in the geologic era just prior to the Cambrian (the late Neoproterozoic, 600 to 900 million years ago),2 a vast decrease occurred in the amount of carbon-rich organic material exposed to the atmosphere, material that typically "gobbles up" atmospheric oxygen as it decays. When this oxygen-grabbing stuff became buried (under water, sediment, lava, or tectonic folds), the amount of oxygen remaining in the atmosphere went up sharply.
In recent weeks, microbiologists Donald Canfield and Andreas Teske have reported two additional sets of findings that corroborate this pre-Cambrian oxgen increase.3 Studies of sulphur isotopes in shales and pyrites indicate that oxygen increased to adequate levels for complex creatures about 650 million years ago and may have begun to increase as early as 800 to 850 million years ago.4, 5 Most likely, burial events began some 850 million years ago and peaked at about 650 million years ago.
Studies of clam fossils put the date of oxygen enrichment at 760±320 million years ago, based on data from one species, and at 620±280 million years ago, based on data from another.6 These error bars may be large, as yet, but still the dates fit the pattern.
This research into atmospheric oxygen increase harmonizes with the Genesis creation account in two ways (at least): Genesis 1:14-18 desribes a dramatic change in the earth's atmosphere right after the production of plants on the newly formed continent(s) and right before the creation of swarms of ocean animals. That change can be explained as the transformation of Earth's atmosphere from permanently translucent (light-penetrable but always overcast) to transparent (partly cloudy and even clear from time to time).7 Oxygenation of the atmosphere, precisely timed and controlled by God, would accomplish this transformation. Creatures mentioned in verses prior to Genesis 1:14 need little atmospheric oxygen; creatures mentioned from verse 18 onward need lots. The Genesis 1 chronology perfectly matches the fossil chronology.8
In addition, the new research throws weight toward supernatural causation and against strictly natural causation of the species involved in the atmospheric transformation. That weight comes from comparison of fossil data with molecular clock data. Molecular clocks represent biologists' estimates of the rates at which various genes can possibly mutate. Knowing how significantly genes must change to account for the differences between one species and another, molecular biologists can determine the minimal time for any possible natural processes to transform one species into another—under hypothetical, perfectly favorable conditions, of course. (Note: If the processes are strictly natural, most mutational changes will be neutral, some unfavorable, and a very few favorable; some will proceed toward one direction of change, others will go in opposite or different directions.) To put the matter simply, if the time separation between species A fossils and species B fossils is shorter than molecular clocks show to be the minimum, we have evidence that species A did not evolve by natural means into species B.
No wonder many biologists view the Cambrian explosion as a mortal blow to gradualism. Molecular clocks flatly contradict the possibility of the Cambrian explosion's proceeding so rapidly.9 The fossil record allows only 5 million years—at the most—for this enormous surge of speciation. As for the transition from creatures needing little oxygen to those needing much more, Canfield and Teske point out that whereas the fossil record allows just 30 million years, the relevant molecular clocks running at top speed under optimal conditions appear to demand at least ten times that long.10
Physicist Alan Cromer, a non-theist, heightens the drama by reminding us that oxygen is toxic to Earth's early life forms. Unless the atmospheric xygen increases slowly, creatures die. Assuming natural Darwinian processes are responsible for all the changes in Earth's life forms, Cromer hypothesizes that the creatures need an enromous amount of time to develop 1) the enzymes that protect life from oxygen and 2) the other metabolic adaptations an oxygen-rich environment demands. And yet, if the increase proceeds too slowly, the sun runs out of fuel before advanced life ever comes on the scene.11 (Actually, problems, such as increases in the sun's luminosity, develop long before the sun runs out of fuel.12)
All these and other indicators reflect detailed orchestration of multiple physical factors to protect and foster life's development and survival. Was blind chance or an awesome Creator more likely responsible for anticipating the physics of the sun, the geophysics of Earth's crust, and the chemistry of Earth's atmosphere? The answer seems obvious to me.
1. Hugh Ross, "Biology's Big Bang #2," Facts & Faith ,vol. 7, no. 4 (1993), pp. 2-3.
2. David J. Des Marais, Harold Strauss, Roger E. Summons, and J. M. Hayes, "Carbon Isotope Evidence for the Stepwise Oxidation of the Proterozoic Environment," Nature, 359 (1992), pp. 605-609.
3. Donald E. Canfield and Andreas Teske, "Late Proterozoic Rise in Atmospheric Oxygen Concentration Inferred from Phylogenetic and Sulphur-Isotope Studies," Nature, 382 (1996), pp. 127-132.
4. Donald E. Canfield and Bo Thamdrup, "The Production of 34S-Depleted Sulphide During Bacterial Disproportionation of Elemental Sulphur," Science, 266 (1994), pp. 1973-1975.
5. Donald E. Canfield and Andreas Teske, p. 130.
6. Donald E. Canfield and Andreas Teske, p. 129.
7. Hugh Ross, Creation and Time (Colorado Springs, Colo.: NavPress,1994), pp. 149-151.
8. Hugh Ross, pp. 151-154.
9. Russell F. Doolittle, Da-Fei Feng, Simon Tsang, Glen Cho, and Elizabeth Little, "Determining Divergence Times of the Major Kingdoms of Living Organisms With a Protein Clock," Science, 271 (1996), pp. 470-477.
10. Donald E. Canfield and Andreas Teske, p. 129.
11. Alan Cromer, UnCommon Sense: The Heretical Nature of Science (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 175-176.
12. Hugh Ross, The Creator and the Cosmos, second edition (Colorado Springs, Colo.: NavPress, 1995), pp. 134-135.
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