RSF: Interview with Dr. Rob Carter on Genetics and Creation

* Fred Williams interviews Dr. Rob Carter of Creation Ministries International (creation.com). Dr Carter spent several years teaching high school biology, chemistry, physics and electronics before venturing off to the University of Miami, where he earned a PhD in marine biology.  He is one of the featured scholars in an upcoming film called "The Voyage That Shook The World" (http://www.thevoyage.tv), a docudrama that traces Darwin's journey from England, to South America, and ultimately the Galapagos islands.  This film has received rave reviews from early screenings, and will be available to the public in September.

Dr Carter spent time rebutting some of the common claims made by evolutionists, such as:

1)      Chimps and humans share 97% DNA similarity - This is not a valid argument , since common design is a reasonable explanation. Also, 3% would still amount to 90 million base pair differences, an enormous genetic feat to achieve in just 5 million years. Regardless, new data is pushing the differences higher, as more of the so-called "junk" DNA is turning out to have important functions.

2)      Psuedo-genes between simians and humans share common "mistakes" - this is based on the faulty assumption that "pseudo"-genes (allegedly "broken" genes) have no function. It turns out they are highly conserved over time; that is, they show very little mutational change over time. Also, why do recent studies provide examples of mutations in these genes that are attributable to a disease? It means they must have a useful function.

3)      Noah couldn't fit millions of species on the ark - this is a strawman argument, Noah would not be required to take "species", he would be required to take "kinds" of animals. Dr Carter used the example of dogs, coyotes, wolves, as all being able to interbreed and thus Noah would have only needed one dog "kind" on the ark. Dr. Carter also mentioned the book "Noah's Ark,  a Feasibility Study", that shows, using conservative estimates, that all the world's animal life could have easily originated from 12,000 "kinds" of animals on the ark.

Be sure to regularly visit creation.com to get the latest news on topics related to origins. It is also a great resource for creation materials.