Can Natural Selection and Mutations Really Be the Drivers of Long Term Evolution?
Introduction
Actually, the short answer is no. I’m pretty sure that most people don’t know this.
For evolution to be true, there must be some mechanism that adds new genetic information as life develops from simple to complex. But natural selection removes information, and mutations corrupt it. Darwin didn’t understand this in his day.
Information and DNA
The field of Genetics really exploded in the 1950s. In 1952 the Hershey-Chase experiment proved that the DNA molecule, present in the nucleus of every cell of our body, was the carrier of heredity.[1] Then in 1953 Watson and Crick discovered its double helix form.
We now know that DNA is an extremely sophisticated digital code that uses four nucleotides, or “letters” A, T, C, G, and contains massive amounts of encoded genetic information. What kind of information? DNA provides the instructions for how an organism will develop body structures. Such as blood, nerves, muscles, lungs, hearts, eyes, feathers, and wings.
Now the DNA, or we could say genome, of a simple microbe contains about 500,000 letters. A standard page of text contains several thousand letters, so this would be the information equivalent of about 175 pages.[2] The human genome contains 3 billion letters, the information equivalent of over a million pages. As an illustration, consider that the average Bible contains about 3.5 million letters. If we printed the human genome and bound it into Bible sized books, it would take 850 Bibles to hold it.[3]
If evolution is true, there must be some naturalistic process that has added all of the genetic information in the DNA of all of life on earth today. We could ask: where did all the information come from to go from a single-celled microbe to a horse?
Descent With Modification
Now let’s step back in time to Darwin’s day.
When Charles Darwin visited the Galapagos islands in 1835, he was able to observe adaptation in a population of finches. He noticed that some of the birds had large, strong beaks, while others did not. In years of drought when seeds became harder to eat, only the birds with stronger beaks survived. And after just a few generations, all of the birds in that population of finches had the larger, stronger beaks.
Darwin speculated that small changes like this might add up to very big changes if there was enough time. He called the adaptation Natural Selection, and he called his theoretical change over time Descent with Modification. Thus, Darwinism became the idea that natural selection drives long term evolution of life. In fact, Darwin further suggested that all of life on earth is descended from a single common ancestor. The tree of life model was born. And in 1859, he published his ideas in the book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.
Natural Selection: Information Loss
But it wasn’t until Gregor Mendel, now known as the father of genetics, completed his experiments with pea plants in 1863 that we began to really understand natural selection and heredity.[4] The result is known as Mendelian genetics, and is found in every biology textbook today. Let’s review the basics of heredity in light of natural selection.
Suppose we have a breeding pair of dogs. And suppose that both of these dogs happen to have the genetic information that codes for both short fur and long fur. We’ll say they both have the “S” gene for short fur and the “L” gene for long fur. Those dogs will both have medium length fur.
We all know that if these dogs have puppies, each of those puppies will inherit some combination of those two genes as received from both parents. Some of them will inherit both the L and the S gene and have medium length fur like their parents. Some will inherit only the S gene and have short fur. Some will inherit only the L gene and have long fur.
Now what if that growing family of dogs finds itself in a cold climate in northern Canada. In this case, only the dogs with long fur would survive. Any of the dogs with medium or short fur, if they’re smart, will head south for the beaches in Mexico.
Within just a few generations, those dogs in Canada will all have only long fur. As the group adapted to their local habitat, they lost the S gene that codes for short fur.
So Darwin had it wrong. His birds didn’t develop the genetic information for bigger, stronger beaks. They had it all along. Rather, they lost the information for smaller beaks. Natural selection only works with available information, and if anything, loses information as animals adapt to their environment.[5]
Mutations: Information Corruption
Darwinists began to understand that natural selection alone could not drive evolution. So when mutations were discovered in the early 1900s, Darwinists adopted mutations as the mechanism they needed for the addition of new information. By the 1920s, the New Darwinism, or the Modern Synthesis emerged. The idea was that every once in a while a mutation would come along that added information. Natural selection would keep the good and discard the bad, thus providing a process of long term evolution.
But we now know that mutations don’t add any new genetic information either. Mutations are simply copy mistakes as the DNA molecule is copied during cell division. Mutations can also occur in different ways when damage is done to the DNA through other causes, such as radiation.[6]
There are many different kinds of mutations. One example would be when a couple of letters in the DNA are swapped. Another would be when a sequence of several letters is swapped. Yet another would be a duplicate of a letter or sequence of letters.
In every case, no new information is created that can code for new and novel body structures. Rather, the DNA is corrupted.
Most mutations are neutral and do not cause a problem. Some are harmful and result in diseases such as sickle cell anemia, cystic fibrosis, or a thousand other genetic diseases. Interestingly, there are mutations that can be beneficial.
Consider beetles that live on a windy island. Every time they fly, many of them are blown out to sea and drown. Then a mutation comes along that damages the genetic information responsible for their wings to develop properly. They can no longer fly, so they survive.
Or consider bacteria that has become resistant to antibiotics. In this case, a mutation has come along that has damaged the genetic information responsible for that bacteria to be able to transport the poison molecule in through the cell wall. The bacteria can not ingest the poison, so it survives.
Although there are beneficial mutations, they are all a result of something in the genetic code being broken. Again, there is no new information added.
Dr. Lee Spetner, a highly qualified scientist who taught information and communication theory at Johns Hopkins University wrote:
“…In all the reading I’ve done in the life-sciences literature, I’ve never found a mutation that added information… All point mutations that have been studied on the molecular level turn out to reduce the genetic information and not to increase it… Information cannot be built up by mutations that lose it. A business can’t make money by losing it a little at a time.”[7]
Richard Dawkins, author of The Blind Watchmaker and The Greatest Show on Earth is one of the most well-known advocates of evolution. In an interview, he was asked if he could provide just one example of a mutation that added genetic information. Through several moments of awkward silence, he could not, and ended up evading the question. Click here to see the 2-minute video.
Conclusion
Darwin thought that small changes seen in adaptation might add up to big changes given enough time. This was naïve. Darwin knew nothing of genetic information and the principles of heredity.
Natural Selection acting on random mutations can not be the driver of long term evolution. This process does not add genetic information. Natural selection removes information, and mutations corrupt it.
So why isn’t the idea abandoned? Those who want to believe in evolution hang onto it because it’s all they’ve got. But the idea is bankrupt.
What, then, do Biblical creationists believe? We’ll discuss that in our next post.
[1]The exception would be red blood cells, which don’t have a nucleus.
[2]Robert Carter, ed., Evolution’s Achilles Heels (Powder Springs, GA: Creation Books Publishers, 2014), 34.
[3]Ibid., 52.
[4]It is interesting that Mendel was working on his experiments from 1856 to 1863, the very time that Darwin was writing his book.
[5]In the case of Darwin’s finches, birds with smaller beaks actually came back after the drought years ended. Evidently there was not enough time and generations passed for them to fully eradicate the genetic information for the small beaks.
[6]https://www.genome.gov/genetics-glossary/Mutation, accessed 6/7/21.
[7]Lee Spetner, Not By Chance (The Judaica Press, Brooklyn, New York, 1997, 131-132, 138, 143; quoted in Ken Ham and Bodie Hodge, eds. The New Answers Book 1, 14.