Dr. Steven Morris attended one of our meetings when Dr. Kenneth Anderson, Immunology professor at California State University, Los Angeles, was our speaker. We received Morris' challenging letter concerning this subject (copied below).

The following year, he and I debated. Unfortunately, he spent little time on scientific issues and contented himself with attacking the Bible. Prior to the debate, I published the article on star formation, hoping he would spend a few minutes attempting to refute it, especially since he is a physicist and would have some knowledge of the physics involved. The debate was recorded and the videos are available (See our video list).

A Scientist Attends

Steven Morris, Ph.D.

I attended my first Creationist meeting on February 22, and listened to Dr. Ken Anderson discourse on blood and the Bible. I was amazed that no one in the audience raised questions that were begging to be asked.

"The life is in the blood," Anderson kept repeating as if it were the moral of a sermon. But people can die without any disorder in the blood; indeed, this frequently happens. Why did nobody point out that his statement was totally at odds with plain facts and common experience? The variety of blood types were discussed, but why did nobody point out that such a flawed "design" made a mockery of the idea of a Designer? What use are blood types, which only make blood transfusions difficult? If we’re all descended from Adam and Eve, where’d we get all these blood types? Evolution? The audience didn’t care to ask.

Most surprising of all, Anderson quoted this part of the Genesis story (Chapter 2); "God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. Thus the man became a living creature." This completely destroys Anderson’s point, since Adam was formed, blood and all, as a lifeless thing, until he received the breath of life. Did anyone notice that Anderson had turned his own argument to dust? Not that I noticed.

Your group needs a scientific viewpoint! I volunteer to come in and give a lecture.

Dear Dr. Steven Morris,

About questions that begged to be asked, you should have asked them! Most of us who attend these meetings already know the answers to those questions.

The type A and type B antigens (a substance that will provoke immune responses) are found on the surface of the red blood cell, and their production is under the control of DNA. A child of type AB parents can have one of three blood types: AA, AB, or BB, since each parent can contribute either A or B. The O type is the lack of both the A and B transferases, which are discussed below. The probable ancestral gene was type A. Several point mutations converted this gene to code for type B tranferase. Type O is the result of a single nucleotide deletion that results in a frameshift mutation which produces a nonsense code that codes for an ineffective transferase.

The A and B antigens develop from a red blood cell surface precursor called H substance, which is common to A, B and O. Type A results from the placement of N-acetylgalactosamine by type A transferase on the H substance. Type B transferase attachs galactose to H. The type O frameshift mutation mainly destroyed or greatly reduced the ability of the transferase to attach N-acetylgalactosamine to H substance. This ineffective A transferase is called circulating protein. This mutation probably happened in the early human population, since type O is ubiquitous. The ineffectiveness of type O’s circulating protein depends upon the point in the DNA where the mutation happened, because some type O’s attach more N-acetylgalactosamine to H than others. This will sometimes cause discrepancies between blood banks.

In order for you to know that the AB blood type is a flawed design, you must have knowledge of a better design. That is, you must have some idea of what the perfect design would be. God’s original design was flawless, but that design has been flawed by entropic effects: mutations in the DNA code that once was flawless. Some creationists believe entropy came from God’s curse in Genesis 3:17-19.

You ask, "What use are blood types?" The mistake of evolutionists in the 1860~1970 period was to assume the human body was loaded with vestigial organs—organs that were useless and had no known function. One person said that number was 180 (Wiedersheim, 1895)! This was because of our ignorance about their functions (such as the thymus, the pineal gland, and the tonsils). These organs do have important functions. Some biology textbooks still persist in claiming there are about 100 such useless organs and proceed to list only five or six.

[Incidentally, it was ignorance that led Darwin and 19^th century biologists to say cells were simple. They are not simple. There is no such thing as a simple cell. They are incredibly complex. Yet, it was the idea that cells were simple that gave plausibility to the idea that a living cell could arise from inanimate matter by a series of accidents. This was going to be the topic of this issue of Creation in the Crossfire, but circumstances changed that. Next month’s subject will be on the chemistry involved in the origin of life experiments.]

As Dr. Anderson mentioned, the thymus is intimately and indispensably involved in the immune system. It is the first organ to produce lymphocytes in the embryo, and it is where the T lymphocytes are made. Severe immunodeficiencies result when the thymus is rendered useless or removed. This is the main problem with AIDS victims. Their T lympho-cytes are destroyed by the virus. "The thymus is central to the development and function of the immune system (Basic and Clinical Immunology, 4^th ed., p. 65).

However, we have since discovered many functions of these "vestigial" organs and more are being elucidated. No one can confidently say we have any vestigial organs, because the next discovery will make him false. It is a mistake to assume there is no use for the blood types, when there are immunological relationships between type A, B, and H antigens and those of bacteria and vegetable matter and how our bodies respond to invading microorganisms without destroying self. There seems to be a relation-ship between blood type and heart problems (not the Type A behavior relationship). Type A blood has more cryoprecipitate, containing more of the clotting factors, which blood banks want. People with type A have a greater risk for stomach cancer, while type O is related to stomach ulcers.

You say that blood types only make blood transfusions difficult. This is an artificial and erroneous standard by which to judge the wisdom of creating blood types. First, it is not incumbent upon the Creator to make things easy for us to know and understand. If physics were easy to understand, you would be out of a job. Thank God it is difficult. It has been a source of much intellectual stimulation to you and has given you a sense of accomplishment, a source of income, and respectability. Second, blood transfusions were unknown for most of human history. Third, most blood transfusions are not so difficult once the principles are understood. Our blood bank does dozens of type and cross-matches daily. Only a few cause us any problems, and those are usually related to minor antigens unknown to most people, not the ABO and Rh systems. Fourth, brilliantly designed medical equipment, cars, etc., sometimes are a nightmare to repair. Our inability to work with something or understand it does not disqualify its divine design or make a mockery of the Designer. That is simply your own conviction of what God should or should not be like or do.

I’m glad you mentioned the apparent discrepancy between Anderson’s quote, "The life is in the blood," Leviticus 17:11, and Genesis 2:7 where it says God reathed the breath of life into Adam’s lifeless nostrils. It seems that Dr. Anderson is guilty of misapplying "For the life of the flesh is in the blood." The word "life" in this verse is the Hebrew word nephesh. nephesh is better translated as "soul," which is seen in the margin of the New American Standard Bible (NASB—the version probably quoted by Anderson). The King James Version (KJV) and other translations render nephesh as "soul."

The seventy Jewish scholars who translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek before 285 B.C., producing what is now called the Septuagint (LXX, seventy referring to the translators), chose to translate nephesh as psyche (where we get the word "psychology"). Abbott-Smith’s Greek Lexicon says, the Greek word for "breath of life, life (Latin: anima > animal); the soul, (a) as the seat of the will, desires, and affections; (b) as a periphrasis for person or self; (c) as the object of divine grace and eternal salvation." It does not refer to biological life, nor is it used that way in Lev. 17:11 and the verses of that section.

The Hebrew word denoting biological life is related the culturally familiar L’Chaim ("to life"). This word is chay, which means "alive, living," and was translated in the Septuagint as zoe, where we get the word "zoology," and is a synonym of bios--biology). chay is the word used in Genesis 2:7, "the breath of life (chay)." Much could be said about this. However, because of these things, there is no problem between these two verses, since they are not referring to the same thing. Dr. Anderson receives this newsletter, so he has now been corrected. There is a sense in which he is correct and in the meaning he meant, but we would have to digress greatly and go far beyond the scope of this newsletter.

You are welcome, Dr. Morris, to come make an hour long, uninterrupted presentation on evolution at one of our meetings. I will, in turn, give an hour-long presentation for creation. After our presentations, we can take questions from the audience. This kind of format would have made the CSUDH mini-debate more enjoyable, but there was a time constraint. Furthermore, a debate format would dampen the volatility of the question and answer session.