His Brother Was Joktan, If That Helps

In his next chapter, Coyne addresses the subject of biogeography, “the study of the distribution of species on earth” (p. 88). In responding to this chapter, I want to begin by pointing out how much of it was beside the point. Coyne spent a great deal of time and energy showing the various ways that creationists would be wrong if we were maintaining something that was wrong, but which we don’t actually hold anyway. Well, that was close.

Coyne points to a number of similarities and dissimilarities of critters in various geographical locations, and wonders aloud why God would have gone all over the planet, creating different kinds of animals in such a way as to make us all think they must have evolved.

But of course, Genesis describes the creation of life in one place, that then needed to spread out and “fill” and “multiply,” just like the human race needed to.

“And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. And the evening and the morning were the fifth day”(Gen. 1:22-23).

And whether or not that was the case with the creation account, it was certainly the case when the animals that survived the Flood spread out from that one place (Gen. 8:19). So Coyne’s argument engageth with the air, failing to connect.

Coyne accounts for these variations and such by postulating that there was originally one monster continent that has since divided up into the continents we know and love today. But this is beside the point as well. There would be obvious differences about time frames and so forth, but creationists are at least open to the possibility that the continents were once attached to each other. (I will say in passing that if Coyne wants to engage with biblical creationists, as distinct from our ID friends, he needs to have a better grasp of what is involved in Flood geology. He is not engaging with the arguments otherwise.)

For example, Genesis has a cryptic reference to something big that happened a few generations after the Flood. Shem’s great-great-grandson was named Peleg, and in his days “the earth was divided” (Gen. 10:21-25). We are not quite sure what this means, but his brother was Joktan, if that helps any. Some creationists believe this represents a continental rupture (as distinct from the continents drifting inches a year for millions of years). As soon as you allow that as a possibility, Coyne’s argument curls up in a ball and won’t stop whimpering.

But I must also say that even though creationists are not necessarily opposed to the idea of one super-continent existing at one time, everyone who loves God rightly must unite to oppose Coyne’s name for that continent, which is Gondwana. I am sure he got this name from what he thought was a reputable source, but in this he was tragically mistaken. Gondwana sounds like a backward province of a country that ought not to be allowed to sit on the United Nations Human Rights Council. It sounds like it was named by a couple of paleo-geologists who were up too late at one of their conferences, having had one too many beers, and who then started naming things in a cluster of giggles.

Now when you combine this with what I previously pointed out about the creationist acknowledgement of significant variation within kinds, Coyne’s efforts in this chapter really are beside the point. But still, even with that noted, it should also be mentioned that Coyne believes that the only kind of god who is allowed into his thought experiments is a god who has the mentality of some dullard bureaucrat, the kind who sleeps at his desk so often that one side of his head is flat, and who consequently has no imagination at all.

“Why would a creator put plants that are fundamentally different, but look so similar in diverse areas of the world that seem ecologically identical? Wouldn’t it make more sense . . .” (p. 91).

“If animals were specially created, why would the creator produce on different continents fundamentally different animals that nevertheless look and act so much alike?” (p. 92)

“All they can do is invoke the inscrutable whims of the creator” (p. 92).

Given what creationists actually argue for, Coyne is just shooting his revolvers into the air. But suppose we did think what Coyne alleges. Suppose God did not fill up the world by having all living creatures fan out from one place like it was the Oklahoma land rush. Suppose we thought what Coyne thinks we think. Why then ask questions like “why would God . . .”? The God who created the giraffe, the peacock, the walrus, and the toucan, for just a rudimentary indication, cannot be relied upon to take this question as seriously as Coyne would like Him to. God keeps messing around. “And now, we really need a mammal that lays eggs . . . and what other parts do we have left? . . . a duck bill! Just the thing.”

Now all this is just bundles of fun to address, but I do want to make one other point, one that I am not sure Coyne really meant to introduce. This chapter is all about biogeography, and he presents, as one of the central jewels in his argument, the fact that Darwin predicted that fossils of the first paleo-humans would be found in . . . Africa. And then, son of gun, they were (pp. 96-97). But what on earth would possess Darwin to make such a prediction? Well, there would be distribution of species n’ stuff, and biogeography . . . and scientific racism.

Coyne quoted Haeckel earlier in this book, which is not necessarily a sin, but he was not quoting him in order to hoot and throw popcorn. Coyne failed to note that, when quoting Haeckel on the embryo argument, he was quoting a man who also believed that “the differences between the highest and the lowest human is greater than that between the lowest human and the highest animal” (Ernst Haeckel, Generelle Morphologie, II/435, emphasis original). Later, Haeckel divided the human race into 10-12 species, and grouped them together in four genera. Lest anyone mistake his meaning, he published a chart of twelve profiles, the top six being human, and the bottom six being our simian cousins. Number 1 was a European (Yay, Europe! Yay, science!). Number 5 was a black African, and number 6 was a Tasmanian. Then, just inches of stellar scientific reasoning below that, came the gorilla. Is everybody still proud of the fact that Darwin called our point of origin for Africa beforehand?

Now this scientific racism (in which Darwin fully participated) got all tied up with the eugenics craze, as well as tied up with the increasingly accepted theory of evolution, and lots of scientific, chin-stroking words like biogeography. In the  Introduction to The Descent of Man, Darwin said that one of the three goals of his book was to show “the value of the differences between the so-called races of man.” He needed that as part of his argument.

This was before eugenics and the rest of all this foolishness covered itself with dishonor in the heyday of scientific racism, the German version, and so it was still possible back then for scientists to talk about differences in humans the way Coyne talks about finches. Since they could, they did. Since Coyne can’t, he doesn’t, but I would love to be present at a Q & A session where for some reason they couldn’t turn my microphone off. I will put it this way — on the principles Coyne has been arguing for here, the theory of evolution justifies scientific racism as a clear possibility.It must be on the table. If we all evolved from a common ancestor, and if there are diverse populations of us, and if the rate of evolution is not a fixed constant like 9.8 meters per second squared, it follows that somebody could easily be a lot closer to that common ancestor than somebody else. Follow the argument wherever it leads, man. I thought scientists were supposed to be courageous.

But — in stark contrast to this folly — biblical Christians have always believed the entire human race consists of cousins. We are all one in Adam, we are one in Noah, and we are offered in the gospel the opportunity of being all one in Christ. Moreover, the racial differences between humans demonstrate how much monogenistic Christians believe that significant variation within a single kind can easily occur. And what this also means, taking it one step further, is that Coyne knows what he believes, but he has only the faintest grasp of what the people he is seeking to refute believe. Not a good showing.