Dear Friends of the Kolbe Center,
Pax Christi!
On several occasions in recent years Catholic academics have criticized the Kolbe Center for allegedly holding an inconsistent position in regard to the use of scientific evidence to support the traditional literal historical interpretation of the sacred history of Genesis. Our critics accuse us of inconsistency since, on the one hand, we argue, with St. Thomas Aquinas and all of the Church Fathers, that the entire work of creation was supernatural, while, on the other hand, we point to scientific data like evidence for genetic entropy to support the traditional interpretation of Genesis 1-11. In this newsletter, I will explain why there is no contradiction between these two lines of argument.
The Creation-Providence Distinction
All of the Church Fathers and the Angelic Doctor adhere to the plain teaching of Genesis that the entire work of creation was supernatural and that the natural order—which St. Bonaventure and other Doctors call the “order of Providence”—did not begin until the entire work of creation was finished with the creation of St. Adam and St. Eve on the sixth day of the Hexameron. Thus, in the Summa Contra Gentiles, St. Thomas Aquinas answers the question whether God used secondary causes, i.e., natural processes, to create the various kinds of creatures during the Hexameron, in these words:
It is in order to cast out this error that Moses, after saying that God “in the beginning created heaven and earth” (Genesis 1:1), went on to explain how God distinguished all things by forming them in their proper species. And St. Paul says that “in Christ were all things created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible” (Colossians 1:16).
This truth is confirmed by centuries of observation that, for example, life does not come from non-life, that no new biological function has ever arisen through a material process of mutation and natural selection, and that no one has ever observed the formation of a single star through the condensation of a gas cloud since gas pressure is stronger than gravity and gas particles in the real world will tend to diffuse rather than condense, rendering the natural formation of the first stars physically impossible.
These observations harmonize perfectly with the consensus view of the Church Fathers on the fiat creation of all things at the foundation of the world, summed up beautifully by St. Isaac the Syrian who wrote:
The Divinity created all things—not just hydrogen, helium and lithium at the moment of the alleged Big Bang—in the beginning—not over billions of years—and everything stood before Him in perfection—not on its way to some Omega Point, billions of years in the future, but perfect when it came forth from God at the beginning of time.
The Bondage to Decay
With the Fall of mankind, various processes of decay began to affect the biosphere, so that it is possible to extrapolate some of them from the present into the past. Over the years, advisory council member, author and aerospace engineer Eric Bermingham has written many excellent book reviews for the Kolbe website. One of his book reviews is particularly important because of the way that it summarizes the work of molecular biologist Dr. Nathaniel Jeanson who has demonstrated that careful analysis of variations in the mt-DNA in women and in the y-chromosome of men fully confirms the literal historical truth of the sacred history of Genesis. Traced – Human DNA’s Big Surprise is a follow-up to Replacing Darwin: The New Origin of Species (2017, and the lay version Replacing Darwin Made Simple, 2019). The author is a molecular biologist with a PhD in cell and developmental biology from Harvard, who works for Answers in Genesis. He believes in the Biblical six-day creation about 6,000 years ago with the global Flood about 4,500 years ago.
In the Replacing Darwin books, Dr. Jeanson argues that genetic studies have shed more light on the question of origins than Darwin could have imagined in 1859. It was only in 1953 that the structure of DNA was discovered. Since then, the entire genome sequence has been mapped out for several organisms, including man. We now know that heritable characteristics are passed on through the genes. In sexually reproducing organisms, one-half comes from the male and the other half from the female.
Dr. Jeanson notes that if all organisms descended from a single, common organism, the evolution of sexual reproduction is problematic. It would take a male and a female evolving in the same way, at the same time, in the same place in order for a sexually reproducing species to come about. The odds against that happening make it practically impossible.
It turns out that mitochondrial DNA serves as a good timekeeper because there have been only a relatively small number of changes to it in humans. Considering the mutation rate, those few changes indicate that humans originated only thousands of years ago, not millions. This is consistent with what Dr. John Sanford wrote in his book Genetic Entropy. When you further consider the possible variation in species like dogs or horses, the actual number of species that exist today also indicates an origin of only thousands of years ago.
Another argument made in the Replacing Darwin books is that the number of individuals of a given species that appear today also indicates an origin of only thousands of years ago. An elephant has a gestation period of nearly two years. However, under ideal conditions, after 300 years, you could get 163 million elephants from one original pair. That answers that question of how you could get so many animals in the Biblical timeframe after the Flood. But there is still the question of how Noah could have gotten enough animals on the ark in order to account for the diversity of land-dwelling animals we see today.
Another question is how the different species got distributed to the locations that we now see. The key to diversity is in the concept of a Biblical kind of animal. In the taxonomic hierarchy of organisms, the last three classifications are family, genus, and species. All dogs are of the same family, as are all cats. Organisms of the same species can interbreed freely. Organisms of the same genus can often produce offspring. Organisms of the same family can theoretically produce offspring. Outside of a family, production of offspring is not possible in nature. That is why you cannot get a dog from a cat. Noah would just have needed, in theory, to bring two of each family of land-dwelling organisms onto the ark in order to account for the diversity of life that we see today. That would only amount to several thousand individuals, who could have easily fit onto a boat of the dimensions described in Genesis.
So after the animals got off the ark and started reproducing, how did different ones end up in different places? The key to the distribution is an Ice Age, and the key to differences is expression of recessive traits by isolation. After (or during) the Flood, the original supercontinent split up into the continents that now exist. They probably moved rapidly around the time of the Flood, but are only moving slowly today.
Shortly after the Flood, an Ice Age had much of the water which is now separating the continents locked up in glaciers. That made it possible to travel overland across the Bering Strait between Asia and North America, and also between Asia and Australia. After the ice age and the melting of the glaciers, the continents would have been become isolated by the higher ocean levels. Travel over water or even through the air can also account for how some other organisms got to remote places like Easter Island and Hawaii. This explains how different organisms could have become isolated, like the marsupials in Australia. During the Ice Age, they moved to where they are, and after the ocean levels rose, they were isolated. This isolation allows recessive traits to be expressed. It also allows certain animals to live in the absence of predators. Today, when an invasive species is introduced into an area, it often takes over the native species.
Dr. Jeanson speculates that the DNA differences required to produce all of the variation in a family of organisms were present in the male and female of all of the kinds of animals on the ark (and also in the first created pair). That would account for the diversity that we see today. He also remarks that similarity in body structure is not proof of evolution from a common ancestor.
Testable Predictions Confirm the Historical Truth of Genesis
Testable Predictions Confirm the Historical Truth of GenesisIn Part II of Replacing Darwin Made Simple, Dr. Jeanson answers some typical question from skeptics. One of the biggest criticisms of creation science is that it is not testable since you cannot redo the six days of creation. Incidentally, that is also why you cannot extrapolate back to the time before the end of the sixth day of creation using the laws of natural science because those laws were not in operation during the supernatural creation week. That makes the Big Bang Theory untenable, as well as evolution between animal kinds (since all the kinds/families of organisms were necessarily created independently). However, Dr. Jeanson notes that testable predictions regarding mutation rates and the rate of the appearance of new species have shown that the young-earth scenario of only thousands of years since the global Flood is supported by the evidence.
One of the major errors of creationists living at the time of Darwin was in thinking that all of the animal species seen at that time were created directly by God in their then locations. Darwin rightly criticized that idea, and we now know that only the different kinds/families had to be on the ark, and that migration could have gotten them to where they lived later.
In Traced – Human DNA’s Big Surprise, Dr. Jeanson further develops the idea of a biological clock by examining Y-chromosome data taken from men around the world. Not only is the idea of a recent creation/Flood supported by the evidence, but the history of humanity is recorded in the DNA of living men. There is a comment from Ken Ham on the front of the jacket cover of the book that says: “Dr. Jeanson has found the Rosetta Stone of human history.” The original Rosetta Stone was the inscription in Greek and Egyptian which allowed hieroglyphics to be read.
The major finding documented in this book is that there is a molecular “clock” visible in the human Y-chromosome, which is only passed through males, and which has an accumulated record of genetic mutations. This clock “ticks” by recording mutations in DNA, which occur at a relatively constant rate. Mitochondrial DNA, which is passed through the female, also demonstrates this feature, although it has more statistical noise making it less precise.
Since DNA mutations are passed down to offspring, the accumulated number of mutations accounts for the total number of ticks of the clock. The difference in mutations between two individuals indicates the time that has passed since they had a common ancestor, given a constant mutation rate, which turns out to be about three per generation. The one common ancestor of all men living today is Noah, who had three sons.
The differences in the Y-chromosome between males around the world are relatively few and occur in groups called haplogroups. The different haplogroups can generally be associated with geographical location, certain physical characteristics, and even language. Although the DNA data from only a relatively small number of men has been examined, a fair amount of information can be derived from it, including migration patterns. The effect of mountain ranges and bodies of water on migration patterns can be detected in the distributions of haplogroups around the world. The world population “explosion” starting in the 1400’s becomes apparent, as well as the wholesale population decline of native Americans shortly after the time of Columbus. Even the effects of the slave trade of the 1500’s through the 1800’s can be seen. Data from more men would serve to complete the picture of human history.
The break from one haplogroup into another one (or several) can also be determined by comparison of individual mutations in the Y-chromosome. The type of variation indicates which branch of the haplogroup “tree” that you are in, while the number of variations indicates how far back in time the common ancestor existed. It turns out that all men living today can be “traced” back to one of the sons of Noah in this way. The book even traces the descendants of the sons of Shem who are recorded in the book of Genesis. Although the history recorded in the Y-chromosome of men living today is discernable, branches of the tree of human history that have not survived, or exist only in very small numbers, are not detectable. Even with that, a relatively complete history of humanity can be compiled. For example, even though certain haplogroups can be correlated with particular men in the Bible, the ancestors of native Americans are not directly identifiable. However, using the process of elimination using the data that exists, Dr. Jeanson identified native Americans as descendants of Shem.
Conclusion
In light of what has been presented above, we can see that there is no contradiction between the two principal lines of argument that we use to defend the literal historical truth of God’s Genesis Revelation.
On the one hand, the complete absence of evidence for the origin of the first of each kind of creature supports the Church’s traditional faith in fiat creation. On the other hand, the various kinds of material processes in nature reveal the beautiful harmony between the Creation/Fall and Flood Framework and the Biblical chronology derived from the genealogies in Genesis 5 and 10.
Through the prayers of the Holy Theotokos, may the Holy Ghost deliver us from all evil and error and lead us into all the Truth!
In Domino,
Hugh Owen
P.S. The 2027 annual Kolbe leadership retreat will take place at the Catholic Conference Center in Hickory, North Carolina, again next year, from June 4-10.
P.P.S. I will be giving a presentation to the Sag Bridge Mission Society in Lemont, Illinois on October 3, 2026. I will be driving there and back from our home in Virginia, so if anyone could organize another presentation at any point between Winchester, Virginia, and Chicago, Illinois, in the days immediately before or after the Lemont venue, please contact me at howen@shentel.net as soon as possible.
