Speciation Is Not Evolution

The entire premise of the skit lies in the confusion that arises because of the lack of understanding of the definition of terms being used between the two of them while discussing a baseball game.

While Abbott tries to explain to Costello the last names of the players on their baseball team (Who, What, and I Don’t Know), Costello is confounded by the switch up of the words being used in their natural sense as questions and or/declarations rather than the supposed proper names of the fictional players.

And it gets very amusing and confusing when they discuss “Who” is on first, “What” is on second, and “I Don't Know” is on third base, all with a blisteringly fast delivery that showcases their comedic intelligence quite dynamically.

Talking Past One Another

Of course, as amusing as the confusion is when watching the comedy routine, in real-life situations (especially when dealing with important issues), talking past one another because of a lack of definition in terms is often very frustrating and detrimental to building understanding between different parties.

And this is very common among creationists and evolutionists discussing the origins debate, especially when biblical creationists use the English translation of the Hebrew word min (which means “kind”) when describing animal kinds, alongside modern terms like genus and species, etc. And what do I mean by that?

Tightening Up Terms

Well, biblical creationists believe what the book of Genesis clearly reveals—that God created distinct kinds of animals to reproduce after their own kind—and use terminology (such as the term baramin) that reflects this belief.

The word baramin comes from two Hebrew words, bara meaning “created” and min meaning “kind.”

The word baramin comes from two Hebrew words, bara meaning “created” and min meaning “kind.” So baramin literally means “created kind.” And the study of the biblical animal kinds is called baraminology.

The idea of animals reproducing “after their kind” connotes the idea that in a plain sense (as examples) the dog kind will only reproduce and make more dogs, and when the cat or the elephant or whale kind produce offspring, they will only result in more cats or elephants or whales respectively etc. Biblical creationists do not believe that one kind of creature will ever evolve into another, no matter how long they might reproduce.

Kind versus Species

However, this leads to the question: what exactly is a “kind,” because we see a tremendous amount of variety in just the cat or dog types, for example. How do we explain where lions and tigers and tabby cats along with wolves and foxes and French Poodles came from (let alone the incredible variety of all other plants and animals we see) if God created individual kinds in the beginning?

Wouldn’t all that variety coming about support the story of evolution rather than the idea of some manner of fixity between different sorts of animals?

Well, no, because by our modern classification system, a baramin would most likely fit at the family level. In case it’s been a while since you took high school science, you might remember the classification system is based on similarities in obvious physical traits in creatures and consists of a hierarchy of taxa, from the kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus down to the species.

So, for example, most creation scientists would assume that Noah didn’t need to have pairs of coyotes, foxes, dingoes, and dachshunds (and a large number of other present-day species representative of the “dog kind” which fall under the family classification canidae), but rather, a pair of creatures which contained the genetic diversity to account for all these species on board Noah’s ark.

Lots of Dogs—That Keep Making Dogs

Interestingly, there are around 500 dog breeds around the world, and amazingly, the vast majority of these dog breeds are less than 500 years old, and most of them are fewer than 150 years old. And evolutionists have admitted that all modern dogs have been bred from wolves, which means wolves are likely very similar to the parent dog kind that Noah took aboard and then exited the ark after the Genesis flood.

The origin of the domestic dog from wolves has been established . . . suggesting a common origin from a single gene pool for all dog populations.1

Just this example alone begs the question: how can simply breeding dogs cause us to see genetic changes that produce so many dog varieties in such a short time? Well, there are really only two possible explanations for the elegantly complex, programmed genetic systems we observe in nature.

The vast majority of variation in kinds of animals has either come about through the slow addition of novel, individual traits over millions of years (this is what the story of evolution professes) or through the divvying up and expression of subsets of preexisting genetic information that had been front-loaded into the genomes of all the different kinds of creatures God made in the beginning.

This is what biblical creationists believe, and everything we’ve observed in science supports that idea, such as the example of the variety of dog types from wolves demonstrates. Interestingly, National Geographic made our point for us in an article (discussing the supposed evolution of dogs) when they said,

Genetic studies show that dogs evolved from wolves and remain as similar to the creatures from which they came as humans with different physical characteristics are to each other, which is to say not much difference at all.2

Well, if we took random samples of people from Europe, Asia, North and South America, or Africa—despite any genetic differences—they would all be considered people (human beings). And if we take various dog types from around the world, they are all still dogs.

So, all we have ever observed scientifically is exactly what the Bible says. The various kinds of creatures we study around the world reproduce according to their kinds.

Common Confusion

As confusing as terms creationists use might seem to evolutionists, we also find that evolutionists often confuse definitions when discussing what we see in biology in relation to the story of evolution as well.

For example, it is quite common for the average evolution believer to point to present-day examples of new species of animals arising as observational examples of the story of evolution occurring in real time.

However, these examples fit the biblical creation model perfectly. Rapid speciation has always been a cornerstone of young-earth-creationist belief. Why? Because if all the present-day animals we observe are descended from the limited number (approximately 1,400) of the various air-breathing kinds of creatures that went aboard and exited Noah’s ark, then rapid speciation must have occurred since then to account for the diversity of kinds we see today.

Creationists have pointed out for a long time now that “big picture” evolution is the idea that pond scum has slowly become protozoa, pine trees, parrots, pandas, and eventually people over millions of years. And, if it were true, it must have involved natural processes which would require increases in never-before-seen genetic information for forms, functions, and features that never existed.

Obviously, if lizard-like creatures somehow turned into birds over millions of years, then that lizard-like creature must have gained substantive increases in genetic information that provided new functional complexity for wings, feathers, preening glands, flight navigation systems, and a myriad of other features that birds have but lizards don’t.

However, this is not the case in what we see when new species arise. These new species only have subsets and rearrangements of genetic information from the parent species from which they came, not never before seen genetic information for brand-new functions.

So, how can they be seen as examples of what the story of evolution proposes, especially when these examples fit beautifully with the biblical creation model? To put it simply, moths turning into moths, finches turning into finches, and fruit flies turning into varieties of fruit flies is not what most people think of when considering the story of evolution.

The general theory of evolution is the idea that there was a supposed “first life-form” that somehow arose from nonlife and gained more and more unique forms, functions, and features over a vast amount of time—producing every living thing that has ever been. And this “general theory of evolution” (GTE) was clearly stated by the famous evolutionist Kerkut in his Implications of Evolution.

The theory that all the living forms in the world have arisen from a single source which itself came from an inorganic form.3

Evolving Ideas?

Now some evolutionists have accused biblical creationists of changing their beliefs about speciation now because the undeniable evidence from science has demonstrated that the idea of fixity of species has been overturned, and thus, creationists have only recently been forced to shift the goalposts regarding rapid speciation to adapt their beliefs to changing times.

However, beliefs about what the word species means could only have begun when the term was first coined, and the word species was created (alongside much of the modern classification system we use today) by the biblical creationist Carolus Linnaeus.

Linnaeus, who passed away in 1778, was a Swedish biologist and physician who formalized binomial nomenclature, the modern system of naming organisms.

Now, although Linnaeus began with a basic concept of biblical created kinds and initially believed in the fixity of species in that sense (i.e., God had created separate kinds of creatures that would not turn into other kinds), as he continued his research and observed various examples of hybridization occurring, he realized that God’s created kinds should be identified categorically above the species level.

It is clear that Linnaeus always believed in variation within the biblical kinds, and he referred to these changes as “varieties.”4 In his own words regarding plants, for example,

“The number of varieties is the number of differing plants that are produced from the seed of the same species.”5

By the time he died, Linnaeus had modified his view based on observational science of the created kind from the species level to roughly where it is today, essentially identical to the modern creationist view.

Despite some critics latching on to quotes from some of his earlier work and straw-manning him and other creationists as having believed in fixity of “species,” by the time he died, Linnaeus had modified his view based on observational science of the created kind from the species level to roughly where it is today, essentially identical to the modern creationist view. And this is well-documented from his own works and acknowledged by honest evolutionists.

[Linnaeus] proposed that dog, wolf and fox belonged to the same created genus and that they were products of hybridization.6

It has even been acknowledged that Darwin knew of Linnaeus’ conclusions as well.

The great Swedish botanist had later in life changed his view of the fixity of species and integrated further experience with his basic concept of creation to accommodate his opinion about the created original kinds. . . . Darwin was quite surprised, when he . . . was told that Linnaeus has changed his mind.7

So, it is simply disingenuous for evolutionists to accuse modern creationists of having changed their views recently regarding these concepts when Linnaeus—known as the “father of modern taxonomy”—the creator of the word species, did not believe the word species designated the biblical created kind.

But just to be fair, I have seen modern lay creationists use the word species incorrectly as interchangeable with the word kind as well. Like Abbot and Costello, it often really comes down to terminology simply being used incorrectly for the concepts trying to be conveyed.

Rapid Speciation Is Happening All the Time

The fact is, new species of animals arising are being observed constantly, which is tremendous support for the biblical creation model. Although we would expect that the most intense period of diversification of each of the kinds of animals that came off Noah’s ark to have occurred immediately following the flood (as the wide variety of ecological niches and challenging environmental conditions would trigger adaptations through natural selection, epigenetic activation, and a wide variety of other mechanisms), the fact that it still occurs often today and with great rapidity is great support for what the Bible teaches. Why?

Because evolutionists have up until recently expected that speciation would be something that would occur over very long periods of time and would therefore be extremely rare and hardly ever observed. However, examples of rapid speciation are now commonplace.

Evolutionists often make a big deal about new species coming about as examples of evolution and emphasize the point that the new species cannot mate with the parent species as proof. However, breeding barriers between species can arise through genetic mutations that don’t add any functional information whatsoever.

An example comes from two forms of ferment flies (Drosophila) that produced offspring that were technically a new biological “species,” as they couldn’t breed with the parent species. They were virtually indistinguishable from them and obviously the same kind as the parents (since they came from them) but simply couldn’t produce offspring with them. But this was due to a slight chromosomal rearrangement, not any new genetic information in their DNA.

Think of DNA like a library of books, instruction manuals that contain everything about a creature and how to put it together and maintain it. Each “library” (genome) has books of information we call chromosomes. Each book (chromosome) of information has chapters in them made up of sentences we call genes, and the chapters are groups of genes that are read in a coordinated way.

So, what happened to these flies is akin to having someone mistakenly rearrange the books in your library, not write out brand-new books of information and adding them to your library, which is what the story of evolution would have to demonstrate if it were to be considered supported by repeatable, observable, operational science.

Rapid Evolution?

Today, headlines of rapid evolution pop up in headlines all the time and are wielded by Bible skeptics and online visitors to our comment sections constantly as undeniable proof of the story of evolution. However, when you dig just a little deeper, all these examples fail spectacularly as to what evolutionists need to demonstrate.

For example, when researchers in Trinidad relocated some guppy fish from a water pool full of predators to other pools containing only one known predator (that because of its size could prey only on smaller guppies), the descendants of the transplanted guppies adjusted by growing bigger, maturing later, and having fewer and bigger offspring.

The rapidity of these changes stunned the evolution-believing researchers because the standard dogma is that “evolution” requires long periods of time for creatures to adapt. And this was demonstrated by one of the scientists who commented.

The guppies adapted to their new environment in a mere four years—a rate of change some 10,000 to 10 million times faster than the average rates determined from the fossil record.8

Despite all the confusion in terms and miscommunication regarding the story of evolution we see, all we have ever observed scientifically is exactly what the Bible says.

But notice, the guppies are still guppies: they don’t have any forms, functions, or features that weren’t in the parent population, etc. All that happened is that guppies that produced smaller offspring were selected out of the environment, and those that contained the genetics to produce larger ones survived better. But the genetics for “largeness” already existed in the parent population before their environment was changed.

So, once again, despite all the confusion in terms and miscommunication regarding the story of evolution we see, all we have ever observed scientifically is exactly what the Bible says. The various kinds of creatures we study around the world reproduce according to their kinds. If you want to believe that one kind will magically morph into another over hundreds of thousands of years then you believe it on faith, not observational science.