Jumping ship
Dr Jim Allan, a geneticist, tells of his ‘double conversion’
by Dr Don Batten and Carl Wieland
Dr James Allan, M.Sc.Agric. (Stellenbosch), Ph.D. (Edinburgh), retired as senior
lecturer in the Department of Genetics, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa,
in 1992. He has researched the genetics of fruit flies, snails, chickens, dairy
cattle, and fish, and taught students quantitative and population genetics, particularly
in its application to the breeding of animals. He spoke recently with Dr Don Batten
and Dr Carl Wieland.
 Dr Allan told us that he
accepted evolution as a young student at university ‘virtually from the word
go.’ He says, ‘For about 40 years I believed in the theory of evolution.’
He thought that evolution explained the similarities that exist between living things—such
as all living things sharing the system of coding genetic information on DNA—and
never questioned the idea. Things shared the DNA code because they had a common
ancestor, he thought.
Jim started to go to a different church and heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ for
the first time. He says:
‘I saw my weaknesses, my sin, my faults. I was converted and I began to read
Scripture really meaningfully for the first time.’
However, he carried on believing in evolution, until one day his wife said, ‘Is
there any reason why God should not have created all forms of life on the basis
of a universal genetic code?’
Jim shared his response:
‘My immediate reaction was one of annoyance. What is she on about?—absolute
nonsense! What does she know about such things? And then I got up in a state of
irritation and I stalked out of the house. As I walked, I found myself thinking,
and I really believe at that stage God spoke to me. He humbled me. I suddenly found
myself thinking, you know, maybe she does have a point. Maybe God did
create all forms of life on the basis of a universal genetic code. I mean,
why should we expect God to do otherwise?
‘This whole argument of DNA—the universality of DNA—is a major
plank of the common ancestry argument. I became aware that the Word of God was more
important than my concept of science. And I truly can say that I became aware that
I’d been worshipping and serving created things rather than the Creator, as
Paul said (Romans
1:25).’
Jim says he had a ‘double conversion’—his spiritual conversion
and his conversion from evolution to accepting creation. He says that this brought
about a ‘radical change’ in the way he regarded God. He says that previously,
he had a god of his own making, one he kept ‘in a box,’ not the God
of the Bible. But now, the beauty, perfection and the wonder of the Scriptures just
‘jump out’ at him.
We asked him how he now viewed the supposed evidence for evolution. He said:
‘I began to look more critically at the assumptions underlying some of those
things that seemed so logical. For example, I came to see that resemblances between
taxonomic families, orders, classes, etc. are due to the work of a creator, not
common ancestry.’
Jim Allan says that previously, when people brought up creationist interpretations
of the evidence he would say, ‘Why bring that nonsense to me?—it’s
not science.’
But in the last decade or so, as he has considered a number of these, he has found
that they are perfectly reasonable and intellectually acceptable. He now finds it
sad that anyone should insist on evolutionary interpretations, which are ‘unproven
and unprovable.’ ‘Science,’ he says:
‘becomes much more meaningful and satisfying in the light of Scripture, rather
than in rejecting it. And I certainly believe it is only as we consider together
with legitimate science, the truth learned from Scripture, that we can ever really
understand and appreciate the physical universe in which we live.’
What about the six days of creation? Jim says:
‘Jesus refers in various ways to the earliest part of Scripture and says that
no part of the Scripture can be broken [John
10:35]. A lot of people I have spoken to have said, "Well, you know,
I believe in Jesus Christ, but I don’t believe—no, no, no— it
doesn’t have to be in six days." But God did not say it took Him six
billion years to do this and then He rested for a billion years. It says six days.
And I believe six days. It has brought me a vastly greater awareness of the reality
of God. If you think in terms of millions of years to now, you automatically think
of millions of years in the future. And God, Scripture, Jesus Christ and saving
Grace all become something rather wishy-washy and lost in the midst of this vastness.
‘But if one accepts six creation days and the genealogies of Scripture, so
the time overall is a question of about six thousand years—this is something
the human mind can comprehend more clearly, and it brings, for me, the whole reality
of God so much closer.’
Dr Allan says that when he was a ‘Christian evolutionist,’ he had not
thought of the fact that believing that the fossils formed millions of years before
man meant that there was death and bloodshed before sin. However, he was now acutely
aware of the problem. He is now crystal clear about it; God created in perfection,
and there was no death in the world until Adam sinned.
Asked how he coped as a creationist university lecturer, he said he used to give
two lectures on evolution. One was what the theory said, and the other why he didn’t
believe it.
We raised the issue of new species forming by natural selection, to which he replied:
‘It doesn’t matter if one population breaks into several subgroups,
even to the extent of not reproducing with each other anymore. In fact, you would
expect that to happen after the Flood, so coyotes, wolves, dingoes, and so on might
have had a common ancestor, but the key is that there’s no new information—that
natural processes don’t create any new DNA information. I’ve observed
40 generations of selection of fruit flies. I’ve seen lots of defective flies
because of mutations, but I’ve never seen new, additional genetic information
appear which would give hope to evolutionists. The belief in amoeba-to-man evolution
needs a huge amount of new genetic information.’
Having retired from secular education, Dr Allan now lectures in churches, schools,
and universities on the reality of biblical Creation.
Related articles
| Besides the many thousands of articles that are freely available on this site, our staff answer many hundreds of emails in response to it. Help us help advance the gospel.  | | |
|
