The Origin of Species
In the BBC series ‘Great Britons’ in 2002,Charles Darwin was listed as the 4th greatest Briton ever to havelived. In his contribution to the series, BBC correspondent Andrew Marr stated:“We have many local heroes; we have only one world changer. His nameis Charles Darwin.” In a similar vein James Watson, co-discoverer of thestructure of DNA, stated, “Charles Darwin will eventually be seen as a farmore influential figure in the history of human thought than either JesusChrist or Mohammed.”
Darwin’s claim to fame goes back to 1838 whenhe became convinced of a radical idea: “species are mutable productions.”In layman’s terms that means there’s nothing to stop fish evolving intoamphibians. Back in the 19th century, so sacred and universal wasbelief in the fixity of species that just verbalising his contrary conclusionfelt to Darwin like “confessing a murder.”
Prior to Darwin, the Bible’s statement thatliving things reproduced “after their kind ” was unknowingly being takentoo far by theologians and scientists. It was widely thought that everyvariation now visible in nature had existed in its current form inthe Garden of Eden. Against this background, when Darwin observed thevariations that dog-breeders were producing, it made him wonder – if man couldbring about such changes in so short a time, perhaps over millions of yearsnature, without God’s help, had produced all the various species of plants andanimals in the world from a single-celled ancestor.1
Then there were the thirteen diversified butsimilar species of finches Darwin documented on the Galapagos Islands. Ratherthan God’s creating each separate species of finch, Darwin reasoned that allthe finch types probably originated naturally from a common ancestor by gradualmodification and ‘natural selection’. Darwin’s theory was sublimely simple:favourable advantageous variations in offspring, naturally selected in thestruggle of life over long periods of time, result in the formation of newspecies. His idea had some truth in it, but in positing that organismchange was to all intents and purposes unlimited and infinitelyvariable, he far exceeded what was scientifically verifiable. (Hardlysurprising since Darwin, along with all his contemporaries, was ignorant ofgenetics).
The fact is, natural selection’s effect onfinch beak size could never begin to explain where the finches came from in thefirst place, nor did it prove that all of nature was one great continuum ortree of life. In truth, other considerations, such as the fossil record, stoodagainst Darwin’s whole idea. Darwin puzzled, ‘‘Why then is not everygeological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geologyassuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this,perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged againstmy theory.’’2
Still, Darwin decided to set forth histheory, burying his doubts under what he called “the extreme imperfection ofthe geological record.” The Origin of Species was a publishing sensation.Almost overnight, the prevailing belief that all the beautiful and ingeniouscontrivances in nature were creations of God collapsed. ‘Design’ was merely the‘appearance of design’ brought about by ‘natural selection’. God, if He existedat all, was clearly redundant – and man, far from being created in the image ofGod, was a mere cousin of the ape. Small wonder that Ernst Mayr, the 20thCentury’s most prestigious Darwinist authority called Darwinism “…perhapsthe most fundamental of all intellectual revolutions in the history of mankind.”3
So, what is the truth? Did every species innature evolve by mutation and natural selection from an ancient spontaneouslygenerated ‘replicator’, or did God create each plant and animal as we seethem today and place them in their current location during creationweek? Actually, neither idea is true. It is essential to understand that the‘created kind’ mentioned repeatedly in Genesis chapter 1 is often at a higherlevel of classification than the modern-day species or even the genus. It’squite possible that even some whole ‘orders’ of animals may have derived froman original ‘created kind’. The fact that different species and genera can beinterbred – a zebra with a horse, a lion with a tiger and a camel with a llama– proves that, even if their offspring are in some cases sterile, they musthave descended from the same original created kind.
The evidence available through, for example,the study of genetics and the fossil record, points to the fact that Godcreated thousands of pairs of basic types in the beginning, each of whichpossessed the genetic information and flexibility to produce wide variety in itsoffspring depending on its environment and location. Selective breeding byhumans and genetic mutation have also contributed to variation. Chihuahuas,Terriers and Pekinese all have a mutation in the gene for an important growthregulator (IGF1) which results in less production. Whippets with one mutatedcopy of the myostatin (MTSN) gene and one normal copy end up being more muscledthan normal whippets and consequently can run faster. Thus creation scientistsdo not believe that God created all the species exactly as we see them today.4
Thedifferences between Chihuahuas and Great Danes are of a different kindaltogether to the radical differences between classes like mammals, reptiles,fish, amphibians and birds. (Which is why they were classified as differentclasses in the first place). Each class possesses a number of unique definingcharacteristics which are not found in any other class. So, theevolution of mammals from reptilian type ancestors requires the development ofnew features such as mammary glands and a milk supply, a hair covering, atemperature control system, a corti, a diaphragm and a fourth chamber in theheart. Is this kind of change possible by random mutation and natural selection?Sadly for Darwinists the answer is no. Why? There are too many geneticobstacles in the way, even given vast ages of time.
Since mutations are almost always harmful, amajor function of genes is to resist mutation, not facilitate it. In aDarwinian world every single mutation must be advantageous or it will bequickly weeded out. The science literature is replete with discussions of otherobstacles to mutation-based evolution, from a too slow mutation rate to thefact that mutations are often recessive and prevailed against by dominant genesin reproduction. Then there’s the problem of information. Just as turning asingle short telegram message into an Encyclopaedia would demand theintroduction of thousands of intelligent grammatically correct sentences, soevolving new biological organs and systems demands a huge gain in complexgenetic information. By ‘information’ scientists mean novel, meaningful sequencesof DNA. Yet, no mutation known to man has ever led to an increase insuch genetic information.
Probably the gravest problem with theneo-Darwinian theory - that mutations naturally selected have built all ofnature - is the simple fact that such a theory ignores what Michael Behe callsthe ‘edge of evolution’. Behe is Professor of Biological Sciences at LehighUniversity in Pennsylvania. In addition to publishing over 35 articles inrefereed biochemical journals, he has written editorial features in BostonReview, The American Spectator, and The New York Times. His book, Darwin’sBlack Box, has sold over250,000 copies and has been called one of the 100 most influential books of the20th century. Behe points out in his second book, The Edge ofEvolution (Free Press, New York, 2007), that newly available genetic data on humans and our microbial parasites(malaria, HIV, E.coli) allows us to give a scientificanswer to the question, “Based on hard empirical data, what can Darwinianevolutionary processes actually do?” The answer? Astonishingly, even underintense selective pressure, and given an astronomical number of opportunities,random mutation and natural selection yield only trivial, mostly degenerative, changes. For example, selectionof a random mutation in the malarial parasite explains its development ofresistance to chloroquine, but only because it has a huge population and ashort life-cycle. That won’t work for large, complex creatures with smallerpopulations and longer generations.
Not that it hasn’t been tried. Eminentevolutionary geneticist Richard Goldschmidt bred gypsy moths for 20 years and amillion generations. All he ever produced were gypsy moths. Famed Americanplant breeder Luther Burbank admitted that though he could breed a plumanywhere from ½” to 2½” long (1.3cm to 6.3cm), he could neither go as small asa pea nor as big as a grapefruit. As biology Professor Lane Lester (PhD ingenetics) and Ray Bohlin (PhD in molecular biology) have observed, “Naturalselection, recombination, mutation and speciation can all interact in concertto bring about startling variation within the created prototype [kind]…butthere are limits to biological change.”5
All of this goes to show that the Bible’sancient claim that plants and animals reproduce only ‘after their kind’ standsas a scientifically sound statement, provided we understand that being in thesame ‘created kind’ means descending from the same ancestral gene pool.However, Darwin’s claim that all of life, including humans, came from a single-celledorganism in a little warm pond millions of years ago by nothing more thanaccidental mutations selected by nature, collapses through lack of evidence.
Notes:- Theeffects of selective dog breeding remain an important icon of neo-Darwinism. While it istrue that turning some existing genes or regulatoryelements on or off, or changing them slightly by simple, single mutations, cancertainly affect the shapes and other properties
- CharlesDarwin, The Origin of Species, (London, Penguin Classics, 1985), p. 292
- ErnstMayr, Science, June 2, 1972 p. 981
- http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/271
- LaneLester & Raymond Bohlin, The Natural Limits To Biological Change (Dallas,Probe Books, 1989), p. 175-6, 14