Creation Biologists

The term "Creationism" is often associated with a belief in a young Earth of several thousand years. However, all Christian Creationism indicates a belief that God created our universe, life and diverse species. Therefore, some Creationists think a Big Bang, billions of years ago, started things rolling. The question many are grappling with is how, in the sense of in how much time and by what means, God did it.

Some Christians don't think it is very important for us to know the details. They say that faith in the Trinity (Father, Son, Jesus Christ, and Holy Spirit) is the focal point, and they are right about that. However, in the culture of our day, two of the factors that draw many people away from our faith are philosophical materialism and scientism, which go hand in hand. Scientists in general insist we may not even consider that God formed anything physical, such as a species (much less life), directly. Science, they say, has all the answers and religious belief only gets in the way. Many Christians therefore emphasize the need to be precise about where they think God truly came into the Creation process.

Humans are complicated and honest motives vary, much less accusations of dishonest motives from various sources. Christians are suspected of disguising the truth no matter our knowledge of facts, or being so unintelligent that we fail to see that scientists will figure it all out in the end. To make things worse, among Christians there are some deep disagreements of opinions, especially when it comes to evolution of life.

In contrast to Christians who believe God directly created life and at least some of its types supernaturally, there are advocates of "Theistic Evolution" (TE) who think God made species, including humans, through the Darwinian processes of mutation and natural selection. Their science is basically the same as the secular scientists' version, except that we are supposed to imagine God was somehow involved.

One of the main proponents of TE has been Francis Collins, MD, PhD, director of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD. He has made it a mission to convert Christians to Theistic Evolution. Why would this difference matter so much?

Dr. Collins promotes research that includes the use and destruction of human embryos and human fetal tissue. He encourages human cloning and human-animal chimeras, that is, the mixing of animal and human genetic material in single individuals. David Prentice, PhD, and vice president and research director of Charlotte Lozier Institute, a life-promoting agency, called for a replacement of Collins as director for NIH in an article in USA Today (April 25, 2017), linked HERE. Prentice provided background material that clearly documented Collin's stance on these issues. The link is HERE. Information on Dr. Prentice is HERE.

Collins says research on human fetal and embryonic tissue is needed for the sake of improving medicine. But this falls into the category of those in power profiting from the helpless and oppressed. Anyone who considers the human fetus and embryo “real” humans can see the problem.

Many people are convinced that the worldview of totally materialistic evolution blunts the idea of the dignity of humans and their worth. Though some think this reasoning does not follow, those who don’t see the value of the forming yet unborn humans may have subtly obtained this mindset from the very pervasiveness of the Darwinian theory, which is based on random events. How seriously should we take ourselves if we came about by accident? Even Christians become confused, especially with the emphasis our culture has, not only on science, but on philosophical materialism.

Another aspect of evolution in the devaluing of human life is the potential for racism. I have an article from a prominent research journal that describes a study about DNA. Though the “Out of Africa” human evolution and migration theory pervades our thinking, I was still shocked to see that the DNA of people of African descent was actually used as research material for “less evolved.” There have now been fossils of humans found in other areas of the world that have put this long and hard-held theory into question (see article HERE), and the whole theory of humans from non-humans should be put to rest this instant.

Many people fear Creationism stops science. But in just one example, Darwinian evolutionists had insisted that much of our DNA was “junk,” and this is turning out to be untrue. This belief had stopped science for many years, as well as other similar cases. An atom is an atom, no matter your faith. We can all make progress together.

“Creation Biology” (CB) is a catch phrase, since it doesn’t spell out all aspects of Creationism, including age of the Earth. But CB points out the falsification of Darwinian evolution no matter whether the Earth is 4-some billion years old or several thousand. CB infers that no human being was born of any other species. “Creation Biologists” can advocate that life itself was created supernaturally by God and that not all of the other diverse life forms came from a single origin. We can believe all human life is very special, created directly by God in His own image.

Creation Biology is obviously a subject of great interest to me. I would like to someday get involved in discussions at Catholic Answers Forums about Creationism now that I finished the latest CB series on the blog, with the related posts since October of 2019 in particular. Though I’ve been writing about biology a long time, I learned a lot in doing these recent entries and I am glad for the time and opportunity I had to do them. I’d like to share them more than I am doing by writing my blog alone, and yet I want to learn about some other subjects before getting tied up at the Forums, which looks pretty inevitable if you get involved with anything related to the subject of Creationism or evolution. I ask God to guide me, so I do my best to try to follow Him and trust He will use this work as He will. Thanks to anyone who has taken time to read my posts.

Type III Secretion System

Some bacteria use "secretion systems" (SS) to do various things: they help humans digest food, they are capable of horizontal gene transfer, and some use them to inject toxins into their victims. There are different types, and I had described two of them, Type II SS and IV, in a previous post HERE. Since the beginning of gene sequencing in the 1990s, scientists are becoming aware that not all genes are following the expected Darwinian tree. So they used horizontal gene transfer as their explanation: some genes went to different species under different conditions than the strict mutation and natural selection model that Darwin proposed. I also discussed that in the post mentioned above.

But the Type III secretion system (T3SS) itself has been used as a possible structure that could be a Darwinian source for the bacterial flagellum, a tiny biological tail with a motor that is used as a model of design by the Intelligent Design movement. I would like to describe this T3SS to add to the previous information I have on Types II and IV.

I’ll start with an overall image of one which is from the article: S. Wagner et al., “Bacterialtype III secretion systems: a complex device for the delivery of bacterialeffector proteins into eukaryotic host cells,” FEMS Microbiology Letters 365, 19 (Aug. 9, 2018). FEMS stands for Federation of European Microbiological Societies. I'll call this the Wagner image.

(This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs licence 4.0 International.)

The drawing at top left (A) shows the bacteria using the T3SS to inject toxin into its victim. The system with number keys (B) is at right. The numbers label the protein components of the system. The lists at lower left (C) are two separate protein labeling systems for the T3SS. More details can be found at the article link given above.

As you can see, 20 different proteins are listed for this general depiction of the T3SS. Some are used multiple times.

More detailed looks at the needle complex are shown at the Research Collaboratory for Structural Bioinformatics Protein Data Bank (RCSB) entry 6Q15. These are based on an article from J Hu et al., "T3S injectisome needle complex structures in four distinct states reveal the basis of membrane coupling and assembly," Nature Microbiology 4, 11 (Nov. 2019): 2010-2019. The abstract is at the same web page given for the image (link at entry number). A side look:

The proteins interact with both the same and different proteins to form working structures. In the needle complex structure pictured above, the webpage lists 8 of the 20 proteins pictured in the Wagner image. Details of each are given, such as the number of amino acids per protein and depictions of the proteins isolated from each other. The first one listed, PrgK (number 4 on the Wagner image), has 252 amino acids. The second, PrgH (no. 5 on Wagner), has 392. The third, InvG (no. 1 on Wagner), has 562. The other counts of amino acids in this group of 8 range from 80 to 263.

And part of a base from another angle at RCSB 6PEM (same article citation as above is at this webpage, although this webpage lists only 6 proteins):

At the website, these images can be manipulated in 3D. Hit the 3D View Structure link below the image.

Though I've had images before in this blog of the 20 biological amino acids, I'll show a chart here. They join together in a specific chemical formation to make the various proteins of our bodies.

These subunits must have the right shapes and charges in the right places for the T3SS to work. The system also requires energy from the respiration of the cell, an extremely complex system in its own right. It takes DNA and separate proteins to make these proteins and the bacterial cells must conduct other life-sustaining metabolism in the meantime.

A last image shows even more of a close-up of a protein in the T3SS, called SipD, which is needed for the invasion of other cells (in the Wagner image it is #18). A chain has 346 amino acids, but several chains combine for the whole protein. The image comes from the article, M Lunelli et al., “Crystal Structure of Prgi-Sipd: Insight Into a Secretion Competent State of the Type Three Secretion System Needle Tip and its Interaction with Host Ligands,” PLOS Pathogens 7, 8 (Aug. 2011): e1002163. More information is at RCSB, entry 2YM9:

Citation for RCSB: Helen M. Berman, John Westbrook, Zukang Feng, Gary Gilliland, T. N. Bhat, Helge Weissig, Ilya N. Shindyalov, Philip E. Bourne, "TheProtein Data Bank," Nucleic Acids Research 28, 1 (Jan. 1, 2000): 235–242.

As stated before, the T3SS is used as an example of a source for the bacterial flagellum, but it is described in authentic scientific literature as a complex system itself. Complex systems are found throughout all life and needed for survival. Together, they have almost countless atoms working in fabulous harmony. Where is their source?

Though Intelligent Design Theory technically defines the term "complexity" in relation to computer language, we do not have to be computer experts to understand the familiar meaning of the word "complex." People who believe God directly formed life can easily cite Romans 1:20, written by the Apostle Paul, "Ever since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes of eternal power and divinity have been able to be understood and perceived in what he has made…" (NABRE).

We all know about Galileo and the shifts of assumptions after discovery of planetary moons. But in the same way humanity was surprised because of what we learned in the scientific discipline of astronomy, we may well be even more surprised by biology. Many think a paradigm shift away from God came through reason, but the way back to God is even more logical if we cleanse ourselves of false premises. Let us not be afraid of dire "God of the Gaps" warnings. Of Jesus Christ, Paul said, “For in him were created all things in heaven and on earth…all things were created through him and for him” (Col. 1:16). Have faith that the more we discover, the more our knowledge will point us to appreciate all of God's handiwork.

A Blessed Fourth to You

May all of us in the US have a blessed Fourth of July, with thanks to the Lord for what we have and sincere desire to do better where we fail.

May all people have the liberty that hearts long for.