ONCE AGAIN, dear reader, your Curmudgeon brings you the view from Answers in Genesis (AIG), one of the major sources of creationist wisdom. They have posted an article that retraces not only Darwin’s visit to the Galapagos Islands, but also his thinking, in order to show where the great man went wrong: Finding God in Galapagos.
The author is Dr. Roger Sanders. We’re informed that he earned his PhD in botany from the University of Texas. Currently he is “the [sic] associate professor of science at Bryan College and is assistant director of CORE (Center for Origins Research).” [Curmudgeonly query: Is this man really “the” associate professor of science?]
To be properly oriented for this article, you should know that Bryan College, according to Wikipedia, is located in Dayton, Tennessee, and “was established in the aftermath of the 1925 Scopes Trial, which took place in Dayton with William Jennings Bryan prosecuting John Scopes for the crime of teaching evolution.”
Hey, we found the author’s page at Bryan College’s website: Dr. Roger Sanders. No professional publications are listed, but it mentions his academic specialties, among which is baraminology. Surely you know what Baraminology is. According to Wikipedia: “Baraminology is a creationist system for classifying life into groups having no common ancestry, called “baramins”. Classification is based on a literal creationist reading of ‘kinds’ in Genesis …”
Okay, now we’re ready to look at some excerpts from this scholar’s article. The bold font was added by us. The article begins, promisingly enough, by correcting a commonly-held misconception, and then it foreshadows the author’s personal conclusion:
Darwin discovered evolution on the Galápagos Islands — a popular story, yes, but it’s not true. Darwin’s ideas were formulated much later, drawn from a variety of sources. If Darwin had interpreted the islands from a biblical perspective, he might have reached a very different conclusion.
Okay, let’s dive right into it:
To Darwin’s surprise, many of the animals and plants were similar to what he had seen earlier on the continent of South America. And there were often multiple species of each sort, more similar to one another than to any species outside the islands. Trained in England to believe in the “doctrine of creation of each separate species,” he was astonished at what he had found in the wider world.
Why would a Creator put similar but discrete species on islands and then make them look most similar to species on the nearest continent? This was the sort of question that Darwin’s trip made him ask.
That’s not bad. Much of the article is like that, actually. For example:
Darwin recognized that most of the animals and plants in the Galápagos were unique, and yet they seemed related to other creatures on the mainland: “The organic beings found on this archipelago are peculiar to it; and yet that their general form strongly partakes of an American character.” If species were specially created in place, he wondered why they should be so clearly recognizable as South American. Why shouldn’t they be just as easily African, Asian, Pacific, or unrelated to every other region of the world?
Most startling to him was that these creatures were not single species with varieties but actually different species, and yet they were more similar to one another than to any other species outside the islands. Did this mean that God created unique species on each island and on the nearby continent, even though those species just happened to resemble each other more than any other species at other locations on the earth? That was too hard for him to swallow. His evidence suggested that species from South America had migrated from the mainland to the islands; then the immigrant species gave birth to new species on the islands.
The author really seems to understand the reasoning that Darwin went through. He then goes on to describe how Darwin got the idea for natural selection after reading Thomas Malthus, and after that how he got the idea for the common descent of all life on earth. This is most surprising in a creationist article. But where does the author go from there?
He describes how he himself traveled to the Galapagos Islands, and saw the same things that Darwin saw. But then he says: “If we read biblical history as fact, this pattern makes perfect sense.”
Oh? Let’s read on:
God created various organisms by their kinds. Only a few members of each kind survived the Flood, and these reproduced and diversified to fill the post-Flood habitats. While the receding Flood waters probably deposited plant fragments and seedlings in the Americas, the land animals on the Ark had to spread from the mountains of Ararat to the Americas.
It’s all so obvious! How could Darwin have missed it? We continue:
The Galápagos Islands apparently rose up in the Pacific after the Flood as a result of extensive volcanic activity. From the American continents, a few of each kind was carried by wind and waves to the small, isolated islands. As animal and plant colonists from each kind produced offspring in explosive numbers, their descendants spread over the islands, and a number of new species were born. Certain species expressed some of the remarkable modifications that God programmed into the capabilities of the various biblical kinds, such as the ocean-feeding ability in iguanas, beak variability in finches, and gigantism in tortoises and daisies.
But that’s a lot of new species popping up. How does the author dismiss Darwin’s idea of evolution? Let’s see:
Certainly we cannot see evidence in the Galápagos that reptiles evolved into birds or the origin of one biblical kind from another. Nor are the islands old enough, even by conventional radiometric dating, to support such an idea.
And if it didn’t happen on those few islands, then it didn’t happen elsewhere, at any time. We’re starting to understand. Here comes the conclusion:
Moreover, God has given us His Word as a guide. He also gave us our minds, our time, and our resources. We should invest these wisely to advance our understanding of how He “replenished the earth” after the Flood. We have nothing to fear from the Galápagos Islands but much to gain.
So there you are, dear reader. The Galapagos Islands are evidence of Noah’s Flood. Now you know.
Copyright © 2008. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.
The Sensuous Curmudgeon 
“Darwin’s ideas were formulated much later, drawn from a variety of sources. If Darwin had interpreted the islands from a biblical perspective, he might have reached a very different conclusion.”
““If we read biblical history as fact, this pattern makes perfect sense.””
Doesn’t anyone else see the problem with statements such as these? By looking at the evidence in this manner, you’re trying to mesh it with what you already believe.
“We have nothing to fear from the Galápagos Islands but much to gain.”
Now that is something I can agree with. The Galapagos, and what we have learned from them, are not something to be feared–even by religious groups.
airtightnoodle says: “Doesn’t anyone else see the problem with statements such as these?”
I thought it was sufficiently obvious that it required no further discussion.
Well you did a “dive” into the article and elsewhere, Tony W. did a “dove”.
Where’s the dumpster?
MF asks: “Where’s the dumpster?”
That’s in Seattle.
Creationoids always do this. They do it so much, there’s an expression that captures the essence of what they are doing:
Behold — Outcome-based reasoning — where the facts are interpreted, invented, twisted, or ignored as needed to support a pre-established world view.
It is important to note that this is diametrically opposite the proper way to do science, in which conclusions follow from deduction, observation, and experimental result, not the other way around.
Longie said: “Behold — Outcome-based reasoning — where the facts are interpreted, invented, twisted, or ignored as needed to support a pre-established world view.”
The irony is that they always say that “Darwinists” are twisting things to reach our conclusions because of our naturalistic bias.
Indeed! But which group is the one which is really guilty of Outcome-based reasoning? Here’s the acid test: Did Darwin board the HMS Beagle with his Theory of Evolution via Hereditary Traits and Natural Selection already fully-formed, as though it sprang forth from the head of Zeus, and then proceed to cherry pick the plant and animal evidence he saw during the sea voyage, so he could return with convenient evidence to back up his already established beliefs?
or….. did he take the voyage to study the plants and animal life, and only after studying his findings did he begin to fathom an explanation for the entire body of evidence he saw during the Beagle’s voyage?
Longie says: “Here’s the acid test: Did Darwin board the HMS Beagle with his Theory of Evolution via Hereditary Traits and Natural Selection already fully-formed …”
He was probably already in the grip of the devil..
In the early 70’s I was teaching at the School of the Ozarks (now the College of the Ozarks. [C of O]) Roger was a student of mine in both Organic Chem and Biochem where he was an A-/A student. In biochem he was quite struck by what was known at that time in pre-biological evolution (Miller & Urey, Sydney Fox, Carl Sagan, etc.) and in the comparative structures of the hemoglobins and the implications for evolution. He planned to go to the U of Texas where there was a good bit of pre-biological research going on. I always wondered what happened to Roger. On Sunday, while looking at a C of O site for something else, I discovered that he had been given an alumni achievement award. I found out that “Dr. Roger Sanders graduated from College of the Ozarks in 1972 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Biology. Soon after, he earned an MS in Botany from the University of Michigan and a Ph.D. in Evolutionary Botany from the University of Texas. (http://www.cofo.edu/images/alumni/fall05.pdf)
Later in the article it says “He has also been a guest lecturer for Galapagos tours and an essay contributor for the Institute for Creation Research. He has edited the Occasional Papers of the Baraminology Study Group, has been a
member of the Creation Research Society and
Creation Science Fellowship (Pittsburgh), and he is active in an informal creation-evolution discussion group in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.”
(Roger, how could you! Where did I go wrong??)
Today I found in a a later edition of the C of O alumni news that “Roger ’72 and Connie (Stanley) Sanders ’72 moved from Weatherford, TX, to Dayton, TN, in September. Roger accepted the position of Assistant Director of the Center of Origins Research at Bryan College in Dayton. Email them at rcsanders@academicplanet.com. (http://www.cofo.edu/images/alumni/fall06.pdf)
Further googling brought me to you. I wonder what in the world brought him from a PhD in “evolutionary botany” to “baraminology” Once well-trained in evolution how can you possibly backslide? I do know that one of his C of O professors in biology, Wayne Davis (PhD fro U of Arkansas) didn’t believe in evolution. I’ve found it hard to understand for 40 years how Davis ever got his PhD, even from the U of Ark,
Welcome, David Neff. Thanks for the comment. Sorry it got hung up in moderation. I don’t know why that happened. We’ve seen biology majors turn to the Dark Side — the current governor of Louisiana is an example. And from time to time we write about people with PhDs in scientific disciplines who work for creationist outfits. Strange, but somehow possible.
Just goes to show that education isn’t a total cure for irrational thinking. You can lead a horse to water…
(BTW I’m not related to Roger Sanders.)
It is important to note that this is diametrically opposite the proper way to do science, in which conclusions follow from deduction, observation, and experimental result, not the other way around.
Sometimes Karl Popper’s students used to say this. And his reponse was, “Write down your observations, right now, and produce a scientific theory”.
Of course that is impossible. You cannot interpret the significance or meaning of what you observe without SOME KIND OF HYPOTHESIS already formed. Forming the hypothesis is the hard part.
Science is not something passive generated in the minds of scientists by the Universe acting on their senses.
Darwin probably went to the Galapagos Islands with the conventional wisdom as his hypothesis, without even being aware of it. After seeing things on the island that did not make sense in terms of that hypothesis, he formulated another.
But in each case he used his hypothesis to evaluate the observations. It is impossible to do this the other way around.