Rev. D. James Kennedy Interviews Dr. Gary Parker in 2005.
Kennedy: How much evidence did Darwin have for evolution? How accurate were his theories? Is there evidence you can share with your friends to refute that supposed evidence?
We will ask these questions of Gary Parker, a biologist, paleontologist, educator, lecturer, and author of many books. One book is Creation, facts of life.
What is your present ministry?
Gary Parker: My wife Mary and I in Arcadia, Florida have the Creation Adventures Museum, where we have on display fossils from around the world, although we feature Florida fossils, including replicas of the discoveries of Creations Studies Ministries led by Tom De Rosa. Mary and I do programs for Christian schools and public schools. We have public schools coming through regularly as well as home schoolers. We do day programs and week long programs, calling them creation adventure vacations. We also do graduate programs for the Institute for Creation Research.
Kennedy: Many think that Darwin grew up an atheist and a materialist. But surprisingly he grew up in the church and for a time went to seminary. What caused him to make such a great change from faith to atheism?
Parker: It seems that the change for Darwin was based on a factor that affects many people. He looked at the world personally and as a man with a scientific interest and saw cruelty. When he sailed around the world and stopped at the Galapagos Islands and watched the little sea turtles hatch and how many of them get killed by birds before they ever got into the sea, it looked like nature was horribly cruel. The death of his oldest daughter, Annie, at the tender young age of 9 made it personal. How could there be an all-loving, all-powerful God with so much cruelty?
He wound up, and that is the real tragedy of it, rejecting God as the only deliverance from the cruelty in this world, and replacing God with what he himself called “The war of nature, struggle and death.” He substituted millions of years of struggle and death for the plan and purpose of redemption of the Lord God in Christ. He looked at the world, missing the evidence for creation, blaming what he saw on God at first, and then on nature without God later on. He failed to recognize that God had created a perfect world and it was our sin, our rebellion, that brought death, disease and disaster, and the judgment of the flood on the world, and that it was Jesus Christ who came to conquer that death, to put an end to pain and misery, and raise us to new life, and a living relationship with our risen Lord.
Kennedy: Natural selection is one of the key elements of Darwin’s theory. In fact Darwin at one time referred to natural selection as “my God.” But isn’t natural selection also a reality in nature, though it is very different from the way that Darwin distorted it?
Parker: I say to my students and audiences “Natural selection, yes. It’s a process we can see and observe. Evolution NO!” In a world ruined by man’s sin and God’s judgment on man and man’s domain, death did enter. There is a struggle for survival. Darwin’s concept is deceptively simple. I used to teach and preach evolution. I would say to my students, “Observe the variety everywhere you look. There is a struggle for survival everywhere you look. If there is this constant struggle for survival, if there are different varieties, then some are more likely to survive than others. “Survival of the fittest.” That’s what came to be called “natural selection.” It is a fact based on observation.
Problem: all that is true. But it is true only after sin ruined God’s perfect world and brought in struggle and death. But it doesn’t change things from one kind to another. It only explains how and where things live and survive as they multiply and fill a fallen world. The examples that Darwin used are actually contrary to evolution.
One of his examples was the origin of the finches on the Galapagos Islands, with their little beaks and big beaks. Some ate seeds, some ate insects. How did he explain the origin of the different beaks? Exactly the way a knowledgeable Biblical Christian would. When he sailed around and stopped on the So. American mainland, he noticed finches with a variety of beak types. Variation already existed. They didn’t get some new trait. As the birds blew out from the mainland (perhaps on a mat of vegetation) to the island archipelago about 600 miles west of Ecuador, they scattered out into different environments. The ones with big beaks survived where there were large tough seeds; the ones with little beaks, did not survive in the tough seed environment, but did survive where they could eat insects. This is how and where they survived. But the finches did not change from one kind to another kind. This is horizontal or lateral variation. There is not a hint of vertical evolution that evolutionists insist on, such as fish to philosopher or amoeba to man. Nothing like that is implied or even hinted at in natural selection.
Kennedy: One of the supposed evidences that evolutionists love to use is the peppered moth. Tell us how this does not support evolution at all.
Parker: It is especially embarrassing to me because when I was teaching and preaching evolution in my classes, I would say, “I can prove evolution is a fact. Look at the Galapagos finches; look at the peppered moth.”
Back in the early 1800’s the moth species, Bison Bitularia, in the forests of England existed in a variety of color forms from very light to very dark. In those days lichen encrusted the trees like it does here in Florida, and the light colored peppered moth fit into the background better. The moth would rest on the trees during the day. The birds would fly around looking for something to eat, and they could see the dark colored moth more easily than the light colored. So in those days the population was 98 % light and 2% dark. Then the industrial revolution with its coal dust sooted up the trees and killed the lichen. Now the dark form were more camouflaged. In just a 100 years, the evolutionists used to say, as I used to say, “the population went from 98% light to 98% dark. Evolution going on today!” Except what? The moth never changed at all. It didn’t even get a new trait. All the color forms exist from the earliest observations in moth and butterfly collections made for centuries before the 1800’s in England.
So there was no change at all in the moth. All that changed was the environment. Again the theory explains how and where they survive. But it doesn’t change them from one kind into another. Not at all. This is not evolution at all.
Kennedy: Isn’t it amazing that all these supposed evidences, which on the surface, when they are told by a teacher like you used to be, are accepted so easily as possible explanations. Yet, when you look at them more deeply, it turns out that they are just the opposite of what they are supposed to say.
Critics say that given enough time, evolution would produce a change in species. Is time really the answer to the problem in cases like this?
Parker: Not at all. I like to use an example like this: How long would it take you to roll a thirteen on a pair of dice? You just roll and roll and roll. No matter how you roll, the numbers are never going to add up to thirteen. The possibility is not there. The probability is absolute zero. It’s not close to zero. Its not 10 followed by 10 million zeros. Its much lower than that. It’s just absolute zero. Until the evolutionists come up with some kind of process to add information, to increase the number of functioning genes, evolution is impossible. Period. Absolute zero. Therefore the time doesn’t matter. Millions, billions, trillions, quadrillions, zillions af years, it’s just not going to happen.
Kennedy: How important are mutations to the evolutionary hypothesis? Can they really produce the kind of changes evolution requires, especially in cases where compound traits are involved like the woodpecker for example?
Parker: Again it’s like natural selection, yes; evolution, NO. Mutations, yes; evolution, NO. Mutations really do occur. And that’s unfortunate, because mutations are normally identified by the disease or defect they cause. So mutations do an excellent job of explaining the origin of birth defects, disease , disease organisms. But evolutionists, and I’m embarrassed to say that this included me at one time, say “Once in a while there’s a good mutation that adds genetic information. It makes things better.” But they don’t have any examples of that. The example that they still use from the 1950’s all the way to the present in textbooks is sickle cell anemia. That certainly doesn’t sound like a good mutation. It sounds like a blood disease, and it is. People with sickle cell anemia are sick enough that malaria will leave them alone. The malaria parasite eats hemoglobin and the parasite doesn’t like the taste of sickle cell hemoglobin.
But to get evolution you have to have some kind of a change in DNA. Mutations don’t make new DNA, they change old DNA that already exists. Already you are looking at variations in created kinds.
When Richard Dawkins, the leading spokesman for evolution today, the Englishman, (Sagan and Gould have died here in America,)……
Kennedy: (They’ve had a post graduate course in creation.)
Parker: …. when Dawkins was asked in a film by the narrator, “Would you please give us an example of a mutation that adds information.” That’s a very simple straight-forward question. And he starts to talk, then stammers, then his eyes start to dart back and forth, then he starts to talk again. This actually went on for 19 seconds before he finally said: “Cut, cut. I need time to think.” If evolution were true he would have just rattled on: “Oh, my favorite example of a mutation that adds information is this. My next favorite is this. There are pages of them listed in the handbook.” But no there aren’t. The handbook of biological data just lists those that cause disease and defects.
Kennedy: Tell us some other examples of creatures whose combination of traits can not be explained by evolution, like the dentist fish.
Parker: If you don’t mind, I’ll back up for that woodpecker you mentioned. That’s one of my personal favorites. Here’s a bird that makes its living banging its head into trees. To do so without knocking itself silly, it needs a heavy duty bill, a heavy duty skull, shock absorbing tissue between the two. To get that by time, chance, the struggle of death, random mutations taxes credulity to say the least. If it got the heavy duty bill first, tried it out, it would smash in the front of its face, crush its skull. It would be dead. No gradual evolution for that bird. If it got the heavy duty skull first, it would krinkle up the bill or knock it off. No gradual evolution for that bird either. Both of those would have to happen at the same time before either one could have survival value. And that’s what evolution can’t do. It can’t plan ahead. It can’t save one mutation, hoping later on another one would be added.
In the case of the woodpecker after the fall when it is doing more than drilling holes to store acorns, and tries to reach beetles or their larva who crawl down tunnels under the bark, it needs a long sticky tongue. If you get a long sticky tongue just by chance, it would be dangling out of the bill. You trip over it while you are hopping along. Or you wrap it around a long twig as you’re flying along. That’s not going to work. The answer for the woodpecker is to slip that tongue in a sheath that goes all the way around the skull under the scalp and inserts into the right nostril. But again there would be no point in having a tongue sheath without a tongue to put in it. It would be dangerous to have a tongue without that tongue sheath. You must have both at the same time. So you are right back to what some evolutionists like Richard Lewontin of Harvard have grudgingly admitted is the chief evidence of a supreme designer.
Here in Florida we have that dentist-fish that you mentioned. Big fish get their mouth full of junk and debris, fish like the barracudas you see in the Florida keys. There are little cleaner-fish, little dentist-fish that will swim inside their mouth, even some shrimp, who will take off the junk and debris. Then the big fish lets them back out again, and the big fish goes off eating other little fish.
A famous evolutionist, Albert Szent-Györgyi, a noble prize winner, when he looked at relationships like that, said it was impossible to conceive how these could have originated without at least an impersonal creative force. We know it was a personal creator God, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Kennedy: How do evolutionists today deal with these exceptions to their rules?
Parker: They have a lot of practice in dealing with exceptions to their rules, because that is all they ever find, are the exceptions. Sometimes, and I don’t mean to be cruel, historically we can document that the wide-spread acceptance of evolution was based on ignorance of biochemistry, ignorance of cell biology, ignorance of genetics, ignorance of ecology, ignorance of biosystematics. When Darwin was a young man in the early 1800’s and then in 1830 sailed around the world, people thought of cells as just sacks of enzymes, they are just drops of liquid with some proteins in them. Now we’ve seen how fantastically intricate living cells are. Biochemists even refer to proteins and protein complexes that are within the cell as “factories” and as “machinery.” And those are just parts of the living cell. The bacterial flagellum, not the complex flagellum, the bacterial flagellum, with a rotary motor way ahead of Mazda, has complex parts that show irreducible complexity, as some call it. I would like to call it “transcendent simplicity”, just an evidence of creation, so brilliantly displayed.
When Darwin wrote, he believed in the inheritance of acquired characteristics. For example many people then assumed that if a man grew huge biceps by lifting weights a lot, his son would be born with this new characteristic of big biceps. The laws of genetics weren’t really discovered until a few years after the Origin (1859). In 1865, Mendel, a monk, after 8 years of study, came up with the modern laws of heredity, by studying variations in peas. But they weren’t discovered by scientists until nearly 40 or 50 years later. And they showed that traits are not just made up. They don’t come from use and dis-use, from inheritance of acquired characteristics. The DNA for those traits already exist ahead of time, and you are limited to variations within the kinds of DNA chains that exist. If ecology had been known as a science, a lot of what Darwin saw would just be a little rule, a little paragraph in ecology textbooks about what happens when different varieties encounter different environments, not at all some revolutionary transformation of species.
Kennedy: Darwin’s book was The Origin of Species, but did Darwin ever really explain the origin of species, as the title of his book claims?
Parker: No. He never even explained the origin of a single trait, let alone the origin of species. So it was an ambitious title. Of course the full title was The origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favored races in the struggle for life. All he ever talked about really , and gave examples of, was the second half of the full title: the preservation of favored races in the struggle for life.
In a fallen world ruined by human sin, there is a struggle for life, and natural selection in that context is not a creative process. It is a preservative. It conserves genetic variability. It directs adaptation as living things multiply and fill the earth into the right environment. But it does not change one kind into another. What he really discovered was how natural selection preserves variations among the created kinds. And because so little was known about science, it got misinterpreted by people who were really using evolution to justify their ungodly life style.
Kennedy: It does seem clear that more and more people are ready to take on the battle over creation vs. evolution, especially in our schools. What are some of the key areas they should focus on to help bring creation teaching or at least the concept of intelligent design back into the public arena?
Parker: The one thing that I really like is that so far, it’s not illegal in our ACLU schools…… (and unfortunately that’s what we are stuck with in many parts of the country. The schools are no longer public schools, not even government schools, but ACLU schools.)…. but even the ACLU so far has not made it impossible for students to raise their hand and ask a question. An informed student who is familiar with some of the programs of Coral Ridge, or who has read some of the literature on creation, and in the spirit of I Peter 3:15 “Be ready to give a reason for the hope that is within you, but in gentleness and meekness”, can raise questions in class.
For example, lots of key questions can be asked when you look at fossils. How do you know that it is a fossil and not a rock? It is evidence for design that you see in fossil material that points to creation. It’s dead, it may be diseased so it points to the corruption of the created order. It was rapidly buried and turned to stone before it had time to rot, so it is evidence of a world wide flood on a world wide scale. And yet you see the re-population of the earth with different kinds of organisms like those that once existed. This renewal is a foretaste of the renewal in Christ. So that whole Gospel message can be shared by students willing to raise their hand and ask questions about fossils, or questions about the genetic code, about mutations, about natural selection.
I’d like to see a shift in the debate. Right now in schools, the last line always seems to be “separation of church and state,” the establishment clause. But the constitution also has the prohibition clause: “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” We have a lot of courageous Christian young people as was demonstrated at Columbine School in Colorado. They could raise their hands, and not skip the issue. Bring God in. God is relevant. The Bible is the history book of the world. Then when problems arise and the ACLU tries to stop, you say to the ACLU : you are prohibiting the free exercise of my religion, you are violating my constitutional right in your arguments and in your attempt to censor me. That C in ACLU really stands for censorship.
Kennedy: That is a good strategy. I like that. There has recently been a controversy over a peer-reviewed intelligent design article that was published in a scientific journal. Tell us about that.
Parker: That is just plain humorous. An intelligent design scientist published an article about interacting parts in complex systems and gets it published. The editor, an evolutionist, who does not like the creationist argument, but is just being fair scientifically, printed it. And then this editor got all kinds of flack for that. In a way it’s kind of amusing to think about it.
In this story of this editor, the evolutionists are illustrations of Proverbs 18:17. “The first to plead his case seems just; until another comes and examines him.” In other words, a man arises and tells a story and people are awestruck with his wisdom. But then another man arises and tells a different story, that makes sense of the evidence. Now people have to think about it. The evolutionists in this proverb are “the first”. But they don’t want anybody thinking about the other who “comes along and examines him.” The ACLU, the American Censorship League United, wants to make sure people don’t hear the other idea, even the evidence. You’re not even supposed to criticize the evolutionary view with scientific evidence, because they know it can’t stand up to the evidence.
I like to chide my evolutionist friends with this. Back in the 20’s, when the public schools read the Bible in class and taught creation, you said, “It is wrong to teach only one view, when there is evidence on the other side.” Now in our day, why is it suddenly right to teach only one view?
Kennedy: In the 20’s it was called “The height of arrogance to teach just one view.” And now they are on the heights.
Parker: That’s right. They scaled the heights of arrogance and now call that arrogance wisdom, unfortunately.
Kennedy: Today we are told there is life on other planets. A lot of popular science fiction stories tell about moving to all kinds of other worlds, all kinds of different people. And now there is a current remake of The War of the Worlds where creatures from Mars invade America. Of course this involves life on other planets. Say a little about that.
Parker: I am kind of a “trekky”. I’ve always enjoyed science fiction about life on other worlds. But I realized it’s science fiction. As a young man I wrote the constitution for the first Martian government. I wanted to help colonize those other planets. But in reality when we look out at these other worlds, and we’ve had the privilege of exploring some of them closely, it’s kind of like opening Christmas presents from God, because these planets reveal how special His Christmas present, the earth is.
The Bible tells us how unique and special the earth is. Every time we visit another world, we say , “Wow, God you didn’t tell us the whole story. We, the people on earth, are just fantastically unique and special.” And this is one of the sad things about evolution. Evolutionists spend all their time trying to explain why the earth is really nothing special, because people are nothing special; people are just another species, destined for extinction. But praise God, when we read God’s Word, when we look at these evidences from God’s heaven, we get the exact opposite view from the view of evolution. The earth is an incredibly special place. People are incredibly special. We have coded information in terms of the science of DNA that makes us absolutely unique, each one of us with a special place in God’s plan. And all those heavens are not a waste of space that God created. It was created for the glory of God, for the glory of Christ. And also it was created for us to explore. We botched it when man sinned. But we may one day have an infinite amount of time to explore an infinite amount of space and learn about our infinite God that created us special in this very place right here.
Kennedy: Yes, it is a fascinating world that God has given to us. And we thank you Gary Parker for helping us understand more of it today.
Parker: Thank you. And praise God for your ministry .
* Gary Parker is a special friend of mine who taught biology at Dordt College in the early 70’s. This conversation with Pastor James Kennedy PhD was on radio in 2005 from Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church (PCA), in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Gary Parker spoke at a week-end creation conference at Dordt around 1998. Gary likes to use humor. He is such a gentle fellow, and our family got to really love and appreciate his generous and humble family. He is one third Cherokee Indian. (Transcribed by Gary Vander Hart from a CD named “Dismissing Darwin.”)
Gary Parker’s educational background: He received his BA in biology and chemistry, his Master of Science in biology and physiology, and his Ed Doctor’s degree in biology and geology all from Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. After teaching at Dordt, he joined the Institute for Creation Research in San Diego, then joined with Answers in Genesis as senior lecturer (1994-1999), then headed the science department at Clearwater Christian College in Florida. He presently hosts students in his creation museum in Florida, while lecturing from time to time in various countries.
Dr. Parker earned several academic awards, including admission to Phi Beta Kappa (the national scholastic honorary), election to the American Society of Zoologists (for his research on tadpoles), and a fifteen-month fellowship award from the National Science Foundation.
He has published five programmed textbooks in biology and six books in creation science. These last six books have been translated into eight languages. He has appeared in numerous films and television programs, and has debated and lectured worldwide on creation. The following link is an interview with Gary telling about his present work in digging fossils for his museum. https://creationtoday.org/what-made-a-biology-professor-evolve-into-a-creationist/
GVH