The seed of the Black Mustard plant (Brassica nigra), the species found in present-day Israel, is approximately 1.0 mm in length. There are many plants, such as begonias, petunias, and wormwoods, that, today, have smaller seeds. The smallest known seed, which belongs to a species of jewel orchid (Anoectochilus imitans), measures a microscopic 0.05mm in length, though other species of orchid have seeds larger than a mustard seed. Evolutionists point to this seeming inconsistency in Jesus’ teaching and claim that science has disproved a part of the Bible, while others point to it and claim it is impossible to take the Bible literally. They then apply this supposed impossibility to Jesus’ statements about Genesis and the first 11 chapters of the book of Genesis.
This line of logic has several problems. First, it assumes a uniformitarian past. Uniformitarianism, popularized by Charles Lyell, deeply influenced Charles Darwin. Lyell used it to promote an old age of the earth, while Darwin built his theory of evolution upon it. Uniformitarianism asserts that the processes observable in the present happened at the same rates in the same ways in the past. This claim is demonstrably false, particularly as it relates to flood geology. Regarding the mustard seed, however, the assumption is less obvious.
Evolutionists are assuming that the seed sizes we observe in the present were the same in the past. It is quite possible that some or all of the plants with smaller seeds had yet to differentiate into the species we observe today. The jewel orchids, for example, might not have branched from the originally created orchid kind at the point Jesus made his statement. Even supposing these smaller seeds had branched from the orchid kind, the Jews would not have been familiar with them, so there would have been no point in Jesus citing them as an example. However, the roughly 2,000 years since Christ lived is certainly enough time for additional speciation to have occurred within the orchid kind, given the rapid rate of speciation.
If speciation is rapid, then evolutionists cannot make uniformitarian assumptions. Without these assumptions, evolutionists’ attempts to mock the Scripture lack foundation because what we observe today may not be what existed in the past. Ironically, even evolutionists admit that speciation can be rapid. Many studies have determined rapid rates of speciation in multiple life forms from algae to fish and mammals. Dr. Mark Ungerer, who specializes in evolutionary plant genetics, led one such study. Dr. Ungerer and his team studied how long it would take for a new species of sunflower to arise, and published their results in 1998. “The results of this comparison suggest that between 10 and 60 generations of recombination would be required to stabilize the H. anomalus genome.” The study found that it took a maximum of 60 generations to create a stable new species of sunflower. Given wild sunflower life cycles, this would equate to roughly 60 years, though the study suggested as few as 10 years was possible. With this rapid rate of change in mind, many species of plants with smaller seeds could have formed over the last 2,000 years, and therefore would not have existed when Jesus told the mustard seed parable. Thus the mustard seed could possibly have been the smallest seed in Jesus’ day. This is especially true since the context of the parable appears to point to seeds sown in the field, not every seed in existence and most farmers do not sow orchids in the field even today.
