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(4)
Natural selection cannot account for the instincts of the honey bee which has in
effect anticipated some of the more profound discoveries of mathematics. The
parents of the honey-bee--the queen and the drone--neither gather honey nor
build the comb, yet their offspring do this with infallible accuracy. How is this
instinct passed on and preserved?
(5)
Natural selection could not make use of slight initial changes. For example, what
use would the reptile make of the first primitive feathers that it is supposed to have
evolved? Would not these have been a hindrance rather than a help, and have led
to the early elimination of such abnormalities.
We must now leave this realm of "dogmatic uncertainty", and which is falsely called
Science, and turn to the sure Word of the Living God. We cannot attempt an examination
of the whole problem of creation, but we do draw attention to the persistent use in Gen. 1:
and 2: of a phrase which is certainly misleading if evolution be a fact. In the record of
creation given in Gen. 1: 3 - 2: 3 this phrase--"after his (or their) kind"--occurs ten
times. It is used in the following connections:
(1)
The fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed was in itself "after his kind"
(Gen. 1: 11, 12).
(2)
The herb yielding seed "after his kind" (Gen. 1: 12).
(3)
Great whales, every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth
abundantly "after their kind" (Gen. 1: 21).
(4)
Every winged fowl "after his kind" (Gen. 1: 21).
(5)
The earth brought forth the living creature "after his kind", cattle and creeping
thing, and beast of the earth "after his kind" (Gen. 1: 24, 25).
No believer in the Divine inspiration of all Scripture can set aside this tenfold
insistence upon the fact that each created thing, whether vegetable or animal, was created
"after its kind". If creation had proceeded upon the lines of any process involving the
transmutation of species, these words would be misleading and untrue.
The Hebrew word for "kind" is min, and is derived from manah, a verb meaning
"to distribute by number, order or the like":
"If a man can number the dust" (Gen. 13: 16).
"The Lord had prepared a great fish" (Jonah 1: 17).
"The Lord God prepared a gourd" (Jonah 4: 6).
"God prepared a worm" (Jonah 4: 7).
"God prepared a vehement east wind" (Jonah 4: 8).
The word manah also gives us temunah, "similitude" (Numb. 12: 8), and maneh,
"a particular weight or sum of money" (Ezek. 45: 12).
The translators of the Septuagint version were aware of the importance of the phrase
"after its kind", and knew also that the word min, "kind" was associated with temunah,
"similitude". Accordingly we find in the Greek version of Gen. 1: 11, 12: "Kata genos
kai kath' homoioteta" (according to its kind, and according to its likeness). The word
genos here supplies the scientific term "genus", which is defined in the Oxford
Dictionary as follows: