Jeffrey Tomkins

Genetics: A Creationist Perspective on the Diversity of Life, Biblical Kinds, and Adaptation

We are distinctly told in the historical narrative of the creation week in Genesis, that God created plants and animals according to their kind and that they reproduce after their kind.  While humans also certainly fit within this biological description, they are the only living thing that is created in the image of God and like God, they are endowed with a creative nature to engineer sophisticated things and systems.  Within the creation narrative, God also blessed each category of created animal kinds (days 5 and 6) and commanded them to be fruitful (multiply) and to fill their respective biomes in the sea and on land.

Later in Genesis, we have other major events that are directly influenced by these Genesis 1 biological paradigms. The two chief events are: 1) the fall of Adam and Eve in Genesis 3 that resulted in the earth, along with its creatures and systems falling under a curse and 2) the global flood which not only destroyed an enormous amount of life in the oceans and on land, but completely altered the global ecosystem and its subsystems. Another key event, with profound relevance to humankind and the formation of numerous people groups around the world, was the tower of Babel.

In his talk Dr Tomkins will discuss the concepts of created kinds and the innate abilities of creatures to adapt and fill the earth built into them by the Creator and how these biological realities connect with the other major events of Genesis. To have a correct worldview that accurately explains the present state of life on this planet, these paradigms must be understood within the context of Genesis 1-11.

About the speaker

PhD, Director of Research, Institute for Creation Research (ICR). Dr Tomkins earned a B.S. in agriculture education (1985) from Washington State University and a M.S. in plant science (1990) from the University of Idaho, where he performed research in plant hormones. He received his Ph.D. in genetics from Clemson University in 1996 performing research in quantitative and physiological genetics. After receiving his Ph.D., he performed several years of post-doctoral work in plant and microbial genomics and eventually became a faculty member in the Department of Genetics and Biochemistry at Clemson (2002) where he also served as the director of the genomics institute for five years.

After transitioning to full time creation science research in 2009 to work at ICR (Dallas, TX), Dr Tomkins has published 42 journal papers, numerous semi-technical articles, a variety of book chapters and several books. In his previous secular career at Clemson University, Dr Tomkins published 59 secular journal papers and 7 book chapters in genetics and genomics.