By: Chuck Nelson

Chuck Nelson contributes frequently to Creation Digest feature material.  He consistently offers insightful food for thought deserving the attention of any thoughtful reader.

As I read articles in the popular media covering the creation versus evolution controversies in Kansas, Georgia, Ohio and elsewhere, I must confess that I grow weary of ad hominem attacks against creationists as well as the misinformation and spin that passes for journalism.  In particular, I tire of non-Darwinists being referred to by such titles as “renegade scientists” and of the ubiquitous quotes from “mainstream scientists” who cite “antibiotic-resistant bacteria” and “natural selection” as “proof that species change.”  As compelling as such quotes from the “experts” may appear to the uninformed and half-informed, they are actually irrelevant to the crux of the creation versus evolution issue. 

In most cases, when Darwinists reference observable and repeatable phenomena such as “natural selection,” “antibiotic-resistance in bacteria” and “species change” in the context of the creation versus evolution debate they are adding spin rather than information to the debate.  Darwinists tend to under-define evolution in order to equate it with virtually any change in a population of organisms.  Having defined “change” as “evolution” Darwinists will then cite almost any change, such as bacterial resistance to antibiotics, as evidence that evolution is scientific fact.  In reality both creationists and evolutionists recognize that species can and do change but the type of change that we can observe and which Darwinists cite as evidence of “evolution” is not the type of change on which the “real” theory of evolution is built.  Darwinism is based on a different sort of biological change, a type of change that has never been observed and that is qualitatively and quantitatively different from the change we actually observe.  

Lets get past the spin and take a closer look at the ad hominem attacks and references to biological change to see how these issues relate to the core issues in the creation versus evolution debate. 

AD HOMINEM AD NAUSEAM

Scientists and academics who accept creation or intelligent design as the best scientific model of origins are often the subject of ad hominem attacks in the popular media.  Frequently they are referred to as “renegades” and contrasted with “mainstream scientists” who subscribe to Darwinian orthodoxy.  While it is true that Darwinism is the majority view within origins-science today, it is also true that literally thousands of practicing scientists are creationists or advocates of intelligent design.  Having a minority view is not necessarily the same thing as being a “renegade.”

If proposing an alternative theory to explain scientific data makes a scientist a “renegade” then I suppose creation and design advocates are guilty as charged but then so is/was every other scientist that ever proposed a new or alternative theory.  When we look at the history of science, it appears that “renegade scientists” have always played a major role in the advancement of science.  Louis Pasteur was certainly a “renegade” when he proposed then proved that “spontaneous generation” was impossible.  Nicolas Copernicus was also a “renegade” when he proposed the heliocentric solar system.  History indicates that  “renegade scientists” often have a way of often becoming “mainstream scientists.”  Pasteur and Copernicus along with many other famous scientists such as Bacon, Boyle, Faraday, Kelvin, Newton, von Braun, etc. would all be considered “renegades” in today’s science because they were all creationists.

History has illustrated the fact that if anything on earth evolves, it’s science.  Today’s majority view in science is often tomorrow’s joke.  Darwinism may be the majority view today but Increasingly we are finding working scientists “evolving” into advocates of intelligent design or creation.  Many are taking sides with parents and educators who are calling for a balanced public school science curriculum that “teaches the controversy” in origins-science rather than presenting Darwinism as assumed fact. 

Ad hominem characterizations of creation and design advocates add heat and smoke to the origins controversy without adding light to the subject.  They attack the messenger without addressing the message.  I look forward to the day when journalists would address the creation versus evolution debate on a more objective basis.  The theories of creation and evolution should be evaluated on the basis of their ability to interpret present data and make predictions about future findings rather than their theological or philosophical implications and the relative popularity of the positions.  Ad hominem attacks do not address these issues.

When it comes to origins, there is an abundance of scientific evidence that can be interpreted in a number of ways.  Much of the scientific evidence makes a compelling case for the design hypothesis and contradicts Darwinian orthodoxy.  When Darwinists can’t make the facts go away they sometimes resort to ad hominem attacks to see if they can make the carrier of the facts go away.  Name calling, however, doesn’t change the facts and it doesn’t make them go away.  Non-Darwinian interpretations of the evidence should not be ignored or censored simply because the conclusions they lead to are philosophically displeasing to Darwinists.  

NATURAL SELECTION AND BIOLOGICAL CHANGE

In spite of media implications and characterizations to the contrary, virtually all creationists and design advocates recognize natural selection and biological or species change.  For that matter, it was a creationist (Edward Blythe 1810-1873) who first recognized and described the concept of natural selection – a quarter of a century before Charles Darwin borrowed the idea for his theory of evolution. 

Of course neither Blythe nor Darwin were familiar with DNA or the genetic mechanisms involved in natural selection because the science of genetics had not been established in their day.  Both, however, saw that plants and animals had an amazing ability to adapt to different conditions, habitats and environments.  Blythe believed that the Creator had provided organisms with the ability to adapt to changing environmental conditions and Darwin believed that organisms evolved adaptive characteristics through naturalistic means.  Neither man understood the mechanisms of biological change as we do today.    

The key issue in the creation versus evolution debate has little to do with natural selection or change because both sides of the debate already believe in these.  The key issue is the nature and scope of biological change.  How does change take place and what role does natural selection play in micro and macroevolution?

At the center of the debate is the question of whether the natural properties inherent in matter and energy are capable of causing non-living chemicals to self-organize into the extremely complex structures and systems required to support and sustain life and whether genetic mutations and natural selection are capable of producing goo to you by way of the zoo evolution.  This is the type of change that is at the core of the creation versus evolution debate and Darwinists consistently fail to address this type of change. 

When the laws of physics and probability along with observable and repeatable science are brought to bear on the key issues of biological change in the origins debate, Darwinism begins to look like tautology while creation/design begins to look like the more scientific model of origins.  It’s no wonder that Darwinists would rather call names and spin the debate into the apples and oranges of religion versus science or debate non-issues such as natural selection and species change.

Darwinists are required to believe in abiogenesis – the evolution of non-living chemicals into cellular life.  This phenomenon has never been observed in nature and has never been replicated in the laboratory but abiogenesis is a foundational doctrine in Darwinism because it’s a necessary starting place for biological evolution.  Only after life already exists can the mechanisms of genetic mutation and natural selection play the role they have been assigned in the modern theory of onward and upward evolution.  Only a living organism can experience a “benefit” from mutational change so that “natural selection” can select the change for the benefit of the organism.  Lifeless chemicals and pond scum can experience all sorts of change but non-living goo experiences neither benefit nor disadvantage through change.  Quite frankly, chemicals and goo don’t give a hoot about change because they are not alive - it’s just “stuff” and “stuff” doesn’t care.

Rather than getting bogged down on the impossibility of abiogenesis, let’s just go along with the Darwinists and assume that miracles can happen in a naturalistic universe.  For the sake of the argument, let’s assume that we now have a single celled organism complete with all the systems and structures required to ingest and metabolize nutrients, maintain and repair itself and reproduce.  From this humble starting point, Darwinism maintains that time, chance and random genetic mutations coupled with natural selection can turn this amoeba into an accountant.  Actually Darwinism maintains that some original single celled organism evolved into virtually all of the plant and animal diversity we find in the fossil record and living today.   

In its essence, Darwinism is about amoebas turning into accountants.  Nobody has ever seen this type of change happen.  All we have ever seen is genetic mutations and natural selection but, as we will see, these mechanisms- individually or taken together - produce devolution rather than evolution.  They work to reduce the total preexisting genetic information.  Mutations and natural selection are frequently cited as evidence supporting evolution but, in reality, the change they produce is going in the wrong direction so far as macroevolution or Darwinism is concerned.

Genetic mutations are random changes in preexisting genetic code.  Random processes, including genetic mutations, destroy information they do not produce information.  Darwinism requires genetic information to increase but genetic mutations are incapable meeting this requirement.  Random genetic mutations cannot account for or explain the origin of DNA or the information contained in the genome of even the simplest living organisms.   Statistical theory, information theory and observable repeatable science tell us that random genetic mutations did not and could no originate or add to the information content of DNA.  Accordingly, it is no surprise that all mutations observed in nature or induced in the laboratory have resulted in a net loss of preexisting genetic information.   

Darwinists tout genetic mutation coupled with natural selection as the central mechanism of evolution.  This reflects wishful thinking more than observable and repeatable science.  As an information-loosing process, mutations are problematic for evolution but natural selection is also an information reducing process.  Combining and two information-loosing processes does not save the day for Darwinism, it compounds the problem.

Natural selection cannot create information it can only play with the cards it has been dealt.  If genetic mutations cannot produce the information required for evolution then natural selection cannot select it.  Natural selection is a conservational mechanism that selects favorable genetic attributes and weeds out organisms with unfavorable genetic attributes.  In this context, favorable genetic attributes would be those that convey a survival and/or reproductive advantage in any particular environment.  Dogs with the genetic capability for long hair are selected for survival in the arctic and beetles that have lost the genetic capability for flight are selected to survive on a windy island while their flying relatives are blown into the sea.  In both cases we will see a population shift - toward longhaired dogs in the arctic and flightless beetles on the windy island.  There has been species change in each case but natural selection didn’t add anything new.  Natural selection will select what works in any particular environment but it cannot add what doesn’t already exist.  In the process, the surviving population in each environment will be a bit less genetically rich than the population they came from.  The artic dog population will eventually loose the genetic capability for short hair and the beetles on the windy island will loose the genetic ability for flight.  Natural selection selects from what pre-exists and, in the long run, reduces genetic diversity.  It cannot create anything.

The domestication of plants and animals is a good illustration of how genetics and natural selection works.  Human beings exploit the preexisting genetic diversity of plants and animals to produce roses that smell better, corn with more protein, dogs that are smaller or meet some other desired characteristic.  In the process of domestication (artificial selection) the plants and animals we produce are less hardy than their wild counterparts because we have thinned out their genome by selecting certain attributes and rejecting others.  They have lost their “hybrid vigor.”  Your rose and your Chihuahua may thrive in your yard but they will not survive for long in the wild because they have been weakened to the point that they can only survive under the care and protection of humans. 

How does all of this relate to the Darwinist propensity to cite mutational change and natural selection as evidence for biological change?  It relates like this – when Darwinists cite natural selection to “prove” biological change they are not saying anything about amoeba to accountant evolution.  They are pointing to micro-evolutionary changes - that is minor changes at the same level of complexity or downward changes.  These are small, relatively minor changes that everybody can see and agrees with.  Darwinists are claiming this type of change as evidence for unobserved macroevolution.  It’s sort of like claiming that pigs can fly and citing the fact that sometimes a pig will jump as evidence for the premise that they can fly.  The observable, repeatable evidence tells us that pigs don’t fly and amoebas don’t evolve into accountants.         

Perhaps the point I want to make can be made better by evolutionists.  Regarding the role of genetic mutations in evolution, Pierre-Paul Grasse, past President of the French Academie des Sciences and editor of the 35 volume "Traite de Zoologie" notes that: 

“The opportune appearance of mutations permitting animals and plants to meet their needs seems hard to believe. Yet the Darwinian theory is even more demanding: a single plant, a single animal would require thousands and thousands of lucky, appropriate events. Thus, miracles would become the rule: events with an infinitesimal probability could not fail to occur ....There is no law against day dreaming, but science must not indulge in it."¹

H. J. Muller, an expert in radiation and mutations, adds: 

"It is entirely in line with the accidental nature of mutation that extensive tests have agreed in showing the vast majority of them detrimental to the organism in its job of surviving and reproducing, just as changes accidentally introduced into any artificial mechanism are predominantly harmful to its useful operation ... good ones are so rare that we can consider them all bad." ²

On the subject of natural selection, evolutionist Richard Lewontin agrees that it is more of a conservational mechanism than a force for evolutionary change:

"... natural selection over the long run does not seem to improve a species' chance of survival but simply enables it to 'track', or keep up with, the constantly changing environment."³

By underdefining evolution to be nothing more than change over time, Darwinists have led many to believe that all change is evidence of evolution.  This, of course, is precisely what they sought to do.  All the Darwinist has to do is to point to natural selection as evidence of species change and the uninformed or half-informed think that they have made the case for evolution.  In reality they have evaded and avoided the real issue.

ANTIBIOTIC-RESISTANT BACTERIA

The previous discussion of genetic mutations and natural selection provides useful background information to help us understand the significance of bacterial resistance to antibiotics.  One of the most common “evidences” of evolution cited by Darwinists is bacterial resistance to antibiotics.  If a population of bacteria can “evolve” resistance to an antibiotic, isn’t that evidence of evolution?  At least that’s the crux of the Darwinist’s argument.  The usually unstated implication is that if a bacterium can develop resistance to an antibiotic, why can’t an amoeba evolve into an accountant?  (If pigs can jump, why can’t they fly?)  It’s a good question so lets look at it.

It turns out that antibiotic-resistant bacteria do not illustrate or support amoeba to account evolution at all.  All it represents is natural selection and/or mutational loss of genetic information.  In other words it represents change but in the exact opposite direction of macroevolution.  In the long run, as we have seen, natural selection always results in a thinning down of genetic diversity and thus, loss of genetic information.  All observed and induced genetic mutations, including those found in antibiotic-resistant bacteria, represent a loss of pre-existing genetic information.

Bacteria can become immune or resistant to antibiotics in several ways so it is helpful to look at how it can happen.  To begin with, some strains of bacteria have been found to be immune or resistant to certain antibiotics even before the antibiotics were developed.  The classic example of this is when scientists recovered living bacteria from the frozen bodies of polar explorers and determined that the some of the bacteria were already immune to antibiotics that were developed after the men died.  The immunity pre-existed the antibiotic.

It turns out that bacteria can also transfer genetic information back and forth and in so doing they have been known to pass along antibiotic immunity.  Again, this is passing along pre-existing antibiotic resistance rather than the evolution of new resistance.    

Sometimes genetic mutations in bacteria have been known to result in immunity to certain antibiotics but when this happens, all indications are that the mutations have been degenerative in nature resulting in a net loss of pre-existing genetic information.  In other words, the bacteria with mutational resistance to a particular antibiotic are typically less hardy in other ways.  For example, bacteria must take in nutrients in order to survive.  Some antibiotics must be taken inside the bacteria in order to kill it.  When a bacterium experiences a mutational change that inhibits its ability to take in nutrients it can sometimes become immune to an antibiotic that must be ingested to be effective.  In other words, the bacteria with the mutation are too weak to eat the food that will kill it.

Just as human beings with the genetic defect that produces sickle cell anemia are resistant to malaria, some mutational defects make bacteria resistant to antibiotics.  Such mutational “innovations” may be beneficial in a limited environment but they are hardly the information increasing changes required for onward and upward evolution.  If Darwinists were consistent in their message, we should be hearing them citing sickle cell anemia as evidence of onward and upward evolution.           

In any population of organisms there are always differences.  Some people are allergic to bee stings some are not.  Some people become deathly ill if they eat peanuts, others are unaffected, some people have serious or lethal side affects to drugs while others have none.  Bacteria are the same way, some are immune to certain antibiotics and some are not. 

Bacterial resistance to antibiotics is a classic example of natural selection at work.  When an antibiotic is introduced into a large population of bacteria, it may well be that some of the bacteria will be immune to that particular antibiotic.  In that case, all of the bacteria except for the ones immune to the antibiotic will die out.  The immune population will reproduce and their offspring will all be immune to the antibiotic.  This is how natural selection works.  The population has changed from a non-resistant to a resistant strain for that particular antibiotic but they are still bacteria and not evolving toward becoming accountants.

CHANGE HAPPENS
 

Nobody denies that biological change happens.  We observe it around us, we observe it in the fossil record and we experience it in ourselves.  The changes that we observe are the product of several mechanisms.  Genetic mutations are one of the mechanisms that result in species change.  Mutations are generally neutral, harmful or fatal to the organism.  Some mutations can be considered beneficial in a particular environment (beetle loss of flight on a windy island) but no genetic mutation has been observed to actually increase the genetic information in the manner necessary to drive onward and upward evolution.  We have not seen genetic mutations produce wings or feathers or eyes where the genetic information for wings, feathers and eyes did not preexist.  We can point to hundreds of diseases that are the product of genetic mutations but nobody can point to an new organ that evolved as the result of genetic mutations.  Mutations can produce change but it’s usually the type of change that a bull brings to a china shop. 

Natural selection produces change also but it’s limited to the options found in the preexisting genetic diversity of the organism or population.  In the long run, natural selection results in a reduction of genetic diversity by selecting what works and rejecting what doesn’t work in a particular population in a particular environment.  If mutations can be considered to be something like a bull in a china shop, natural selection can be seen as a conservational mechanism that saves some of the china. 

Populations also change by genetic drift and the founder’s effect.  Genetic drift comes into play when a small population becomes isolated from the main group.  The isolated population has a fixed slice of the larger population’s gene pool and soon manifests the features and attributes that are unique to that population.  Accordingly the isolated population begins to look similar to each other but different from the main population.

The founder’s effect is a similar situation but involves a smaller gene pool.  If a pregnant female or a single couple of organisms become isolated from the main population they will produce a population unique to their limited slice of the gene pool. 

As different plant and animal populations interbreed, whether through natural or artificial selection, different traits will manifest.  This represents the sorting, mixing and recombination of preexisting genetic diversity.  When Darwinists cite this type of change as evidence of evolution they are begging the question of evolution rather than producing evidence to support it.

Why do Darwinists consistently cite two information-loosing mechanisms (genetic mutation and natural selection) as the source of new genetic information?  The answer is simple.  Darwinists can point to no examples of naturalistic or materialistic processes, including genetic mutations that are capable of producing information.  In all of history and all of observable and repeatable science, information always comes from an intelligent source.  Darwinists cite the distribution of genetic information as evidence for evolution because they cannot point to an observable and repeatable naturalistic mechanism capable of originating it.  The core issue of the creation versus evolution debate is the origin, not the distribution of genetic information.   Being unable to address the core issues of the creation versus evolution debate many Darwinists resort to ad hominem attacks or change the subject by making reference to irrelevant issues such as natural selection or species change.          

Biological change and the ability of organisms to adapt to new environments is not evidence of macroevolution.  It is evidence of a wise Creator who created different kinds of plant and animal life with enough genetic diversity to allow them to adapt, survive and propagate in diverse environments on the earth.  Natural selection, a mechanism first recognized by creationists, is merely the process by which organisms exploit preexisting (God-given) genetic diversity as they migrate into new environmental niches or adapt to changes in their environment.  Natural selection also removes harmful mutational “innovations” from the population.

In short, mutations and natural selection can help explain the survival of the fittest but they cannot account for the arrival of the fittest. 

11/23/02