PUSHING THE ENVELOPE OF CREATION-BASED BIOLOGY

by Margaret Helder

The new generation of creation scientists are young, smart and sophisticated.
Along with geneticists, taxonomists, and palaeontologists,
experts in DNA sequencing analysis and phylogenetic analysis (the search for
relationship patterns) are asking new questions and revisiting
old issues. No longer do they concentrate on fighting evolutionary theories.
They don't need to. Rather, they are forging new creation-based
theories. With this positive approach, they are certain to attract yet further
support fr om Christians in educational and professional circles. It
was to learn more about some new initiatives that I attended a conference in
Lynchburg, Virginia on August 5-7, 1999.

The roots of the August conference go back to 1941 when biologist Frank Marsh,
in a self-published book, proposed that the term "baramin"
be applied to the created kinds of organism mentioned in Genesis 1:11 and in
following passages in the Old Testame nt. Mr. Marsh coined his
term from the Hebrew words "bara " meaning "created" and "min" meaning "kind".
However it is all very well to agree that God separately
created the biological kinds, and quite another thing to determine their exact i
dentity. Was it the species that we see today which constituted
the created kinds? Mr. Marsh did not think so. He suggested that organisms which
can breed with each other, or hybridize, are in fact members
of one "kind" or baramin.

According to present usage in biology, individual species are distinguished on
the basis of their continued existence in nature. Separate
species generally do not breed together in the wild. Many are however able to do
so under special circumstances su ch as in a laboratory or
zoo. Thus within the dog family we distinguish coyotes, domestic dogs, wolves
and foxes, all of which are able to interbreed. According to
Marsh's criterion, all these animals would be placed within a single baramin or
dog kind.

If several species are members of a single created kind, then there must have
been a process of change which led to the varied expressions
within the kind that we see today. During the 1990s a few scientists have
adopted the Marsh hypothesis and devel oped it further. Walter
Remine defined "holobaramin" as the complete set of organisms descended from a
created ancestor. Dr. Kurt Wise, about the same time,
defined baramin as all descendants of an "archaebaramin" or original created
ancestor. In addition Dr. Siegfried Scherer, director of the Institute
of Microbiology at the Technical University of Munich, has published on the same
concept. He prefers the term "Basic Type", defining this as
all extant organisms which are able to hybridize. (e.g. Siegfrie d Scherer.
1998. Basic types of Life. in Wm A. Dembski. Editor. Mere Creation.
IVPress pp. 195-211) Apart from these individuals, interest in created kinds or
baramins has been rare in creationist circles, and of course totally
absent within secula r science. For example, neither term appears in the index
of Dr. Leonard Brand's 1997 book Faith, Reason and Earth
History: a Paradigm of Earth and Biological Origins by Intelligent Design
(Andrews University Press).This situation however may be ab out
to change.

In 1997 the Baraminology Study Group was formed. The mandate of this small,
semi-formal group was to provide a forum for discussion of
creation biology and systematics. Its first objective was to promote the
development of baraminology into a scientifi cally rigorous discipline
with Biblically sound precepts. Among the founding members were palaeontologist
Dr. Kurt Wise of Bryan College in Dayton, Tennessee and
Dr. Peter J. Williams (specialist in Old Testament Hebrew) from Cambridge
University in Engla nd. This group, in close collaboration with the
Biology/Chemistry Department at Liberty University in Lynchburg, organized the
conference on the theme "Baraminology '99: Creation Biology
for the 21st Century." The program was loosely divided into two sec tions. The
first was concerned with theories and methods relevant to
baraminology. The second part would involve a case study. Camels were chosen as
the object of the case study since information on these
animals is available from the Bible, palaeontology , hybridization experiments
and DNA sequencing.

A consideration of the Biblical treatment of the Hebrew word min was the first
order of business. According to Dr. Williams, this word occurs
thirty one times in the Old Testament, four times in the Apocrypha and seven
times in the Dead Sea Scro lls. The usage in the latter two sources
however is not like that in the Old Testament. The Biblical occurrences are
unusual in that they are all preceded by the preposition lamedh
(according to), have a possessive suffix and with one possible exce ption, are
singular. Dr. Williams suggested that the singular usage might in
fact be a "distributive singular", understood as a plural. He also mentioned
attempts to define the boundaries of baramin by considering
creatures mentioned in Leviticus 11 and D ueteronomy 14. Apparently many readers
consider that each creature mentioned in these passages is
in fact a separate min, and this may indeed be the case, but it is not demanded
by the text.

Traditionally, of course, Bible believing Christians have understood the various
animals named in the Bible, each to be a separate kind.
Alternatively, the model promoted by some of the speakers was that a burst of
change, within each created kind, too k place during
approximately a 500 year period following the end of Noah's flood. One of the
speakers is developing a model which might explain such a burst
of change. The process might have resembled modern biotechnology. However unlike
biotechnology, th ese events would proceed without
human intervention. Scientists of the Baraminology Study Group contend that the
burst of change ended as quickly as it began. If these
speculations were correct, then the created animal kinds on the ark might have
been as few as 2000, if we assume that the baramins were
roughly comparable to the family level recognized in our present taxonomic
classification schemes. According to this view, there would be on
average about 100 present day species in each mammal baramin and about 1000
species in each insect baramin. Alternatively, if the creation
kinds are comparable to the genus rather than family level, there would have
been about 16,000 different kinds of animal on the ark. According
to John Woodmorappe in his 1996 book < I>Noah's Ark: A Feasibility Study
(Institute for Creation Research), there was plenty of room to
accommodate even this many creatures.

It is all very well to speculate on the nature of baramins, but by what
technique(s) do these scientists propose to identify them? The first
criterion for such identification is hybridization. It is the assumption of
these scientists that only organisms within a created kind can
successfully engage in sexual reproduction. While the Bible does not necessarily
deny that successful hybridization between created kinds is
possible, this is the working assumption of the model. Obviously hybridization
experim ents between appropriate species and genera is the first
step in such a research program. Also considerable data already exist in the
scientific literature. These trials do not have to be repeated.
Moreover the criterion of hybridization can be used to t est other
distinguishing features of separate baramins such as DNA sequence
differences. Despite its advantages as a distinguishing tool, hybridization is
not a fool proof criterion. Failure to produce a hybrid does not
necessarily mean that two organisms are in separate baramins. Some quite simple
barriers to breeding can exist even within a kind (such as a St.
Bernard dog and a Chihuahua). Moreover different people might adopt different
measures of success. Everyone agrees that offspring which
reach fu lly fertile sexual maturity are a successful outcome. However, what
about fully mature offspring which are sterile (like mules)? Or what
about offspring that die before birth, or even embryos that at least manage a
few cell divisions? In general, as long as the observed
development results only when the egg has been fertilized, then these scientists
consider all the above possibilities as "positive" outcomes.
Based on such criteria, the geese, swans and ducks for example, members of the
family Anatidae, w ould all be considered members of one
baramin.

Biology at the end of this century however has moved far beyond breeding
experiments. We now find ourselves preoccupied with computer
based studies. The speakers assured us that such research has the potential to
strengthen conclusions about the identi ty of baramins. One
graduate student discussed the use of computers in searches for lines of
descent, commonly called evolutionary trees or phylogenies. On this
topic another participant at the conference once remarked "One can build a
phylogeny based on any set of sequences. Evolutionary
relationship is always, always, always (did I emphasize that enough?) an
assumption. Using current methodologies to build phylogenies does
not really provide evidence for evolution." Despite the close tie of such analys
is to evolution theory, our speakers maintained that computer
analysis can be used to distinguish baramins.

The graduate student pointed out that the number of possible lines of descent
goes up astronomically with even small numbers of species
added to a calculation. For example, for ten species, two million different
lines of descent can be plotted whereas for fifty species, the numbers
expand to 10 followed by 73 more zeros!! Obviously powerful computers are
required to deal with such numbers. But how does a scientists
wade through all the possibilities? A number of fancy equations are available,
each wit h advantages and disadvantages. The objective of such
analysis is generally to discover an evolutionary line of descent. If the data
are not mathematically constrained into a branching tree pattern
however they often seem to fall naturally into star shape d patterns and
net-like groupings of species. These latter patterns are easily
accommodated within the creation model but not within evolutionary scenarios.
Moreover when one or several species in the analysis are
positioned far from the main cluster, it is most likely that individuals from
more than one baramin are involved.

Another speaker, a recent Ph.D. in DNA sequence analysis, discussed another
technique for identifying gaps between baramins. Neither this
nor the analysis above, stands alone. They merely provide additional information
on the identity of baramins. Any numerical data can be used
in such a study. When DNA sequences are used, the computer must first calculate
degree of similarity within a group of related species. The
computer then calculates a number of possible phylogenies (lines of descent) for
this data set. Normally the data do not exactly fit any
calculated pattern. The difference between a pattern and the actual data is
calculated as error and the error is squared. If another species from
the same baramin is substituted for one of the original se t, the error sum of
squares will not differ significantly. If however a species from a
different baramin is substituted, there will be a significant difference in the
sum of squares value. Thus numerical data can help to distinguish
which organisms are i n separate baramins. Obviously this mathematics based task
is monumental.

Such intensive material was a feature of the conference. In addition, we heard
about interesting new approaches to the identification of
designed biological systems. It is evident that the story of creation-based
research in biology is about to expand tremendously. The important
thing is that creation-based questions are being asked and creation-based
research is being pursued. Not all hypotheses will prove valid.
Nobody expects that. However in time, some very interesting new insights about
the creati on will have been gained. It is an exciting time to
study biology.

Oryginal:
http://freenet.edmonton.ab.ca/create/articles/general/baramin.html