Tag Archives: Evolution

CHRISTIAN LIVING, GOD

THE ANNA KARENINA PRINCIPLE — BOB PRICHARD

Pulitzer Prize winning author Jared Diamond cites the “Anna Karenina Principle” in explaining why early man was able to domesticate some wild animals (dogs, cats, etc.) but not others (like foxes). Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy begins his classic Anna Karenina with this sentence: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” 

Tolstoy meant that happiness in a family comes when many different aspects such as sexual attraction, agreement about money and child rearing and other vital issues all work out. But even if many of these aspects are good, the family will be unhappy if any one of the key aspects is missing. In similar fashion, Diamond says that many factors of geography, climate, culture, etc., had to work out perfectly to allow man to domesticate animals (Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel, New York: Norton, 1999, p. 157).

Diamond is an evolutionary biologist, and has some interesting insights into micro-evolution. Micro-evolution is the evolution we see within a species, such as the various breeds of dogs, derived from ancient dogs, or the domesticated sheep, cattle and horses, from ancient sheep, cattle and horses. Through processes over time, usually aided or planned by man, these changes have happened. But there is no evidence, of course, for macro-evolution, the change of one species or biblical “kind” into another.

Consider how the Anna Karenina Principle applies to our earth. How is it possible that our planet is just the right distance from the sun, just the right tilt and orbit around the sun, with just the right atmosphere, and so many other factors, so that life came about? Without this perfect planned combination, life as we know it could not exist on earth. With the domestication of animals, many factors have to be in place, but most important is human intelligence which makes it happen. The psalmist reminds us, “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handiwork” (Psalm 19:1). God the Creator put everything in place for His creation. Evidence of design and a Designer is everywhere in our earth!

BIBLE, BIBLE QUESTIONS, GENESIS, OLD TESTAMENT

WITH ONLY EIGHT ON THE ARK,  WHERE DID THE RACES COME FROM? — BOB PRICHARD

Genesis 7:13 gives us the census of people that were on the ark: “In the selfsame day entered Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and Noah’s wife, and the three wives of his sons with them, into the ark.” With these four men and four women, the earth was repopulated after the flood. Sin necessitated the flood. It was a time when “the earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth” (Genesis 6:11-12).

The Bible does not tell us when the races originated. It is possible that the races developed from the division of mankind at the tower of Babel, although Moses only says that God confounded their language and scattered them abroad (Genesis 11:1-9). As people scattered and separated, the races could have developed from the gene pool in each area. As people intermarried within a region, certain racial characteristics developed, as well as individual languages.

Modern science has tried to differentiate among the races, recognizing four basic races: Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Negroid and Australoid. The problem with these classifications, however, is that the dominant characteristics that are specific to a race, such as skin color or hair type, are found in the other racial groups. Skin color,  the most obvious racial characteristic, is determined primarily by the amount of melanin in the skin. Thus a “white” person may actually have darker skin than a “black” person. Although general racial characteristics may predominate among certain populations, all human beings are part of the same species, the human race.

We know that all human beings have come from the original man and woman, Adam and Eve, and also that all living human beings are descendants of Noah and his family. Paul declared that God “made of one every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed seasons, and the bounds of their habitation” (Acts 17:26 ASV). The words “of one,” literally mean “out of one male,” thus Adam. All mankind has descended from Adam.

Since all human beings have descended from the eight on the ark, then all racial characteristics must have been available in the genetic makeup of Noah and his family. Some suggest that Shem and his descendants were Asian, thus Mongoloid; Ham and his descendants were African, thus Negroid; and Japheth and his descendants were European, and thus Caucasoid. More likely, however, Noah and all of his family were a combination of all of our modern day races. The separation into current races was gradual over time.

Neither the biblical nor the non-biblical evidence supports the evolutionary theory, coming from racial prejudice, that the races descended from different primates or “prehuman” men. Since all races of humans can intermarry, all humans are interrelated, with the same ancestry in Adam and Eve.