For those just joining us, this series on Creation versus Evolution started awhile ago (see links at bottom) and is exploring the issue by means of an article published in Scientific American that alleged to provide fifteen arguments against creationism. So far we have evaluated nine of them and found them woefully invalid. If you are going to defend a position, at least have the decency and intellectual honesty to use correct argumentation and solid data. It would be appropriate in this year of Darwin to finish this series, which I will be trying to do in the upcoming months. So, on to argument number 10:

10. Mutations are essential to evolution theory, but mutations can only eliminate traits. They cannot produce new features.

On the contrary, biology has catalogued many traits produced by point mutations (changes at precise positions in an organism's DNA)—bacterial resistance to antibiotics, for example.

Mutations that arise in the homeobox (Hox) family of development-regulating genes in animals can also have complex effects. Hox genes direct where legs, wings, antennae and body segments should grow. In fruit flies, for instance, the mutation called Antennapedia causes legs to sprout where antennae should grow. These abnormal limbs are not functional, but their existence demonstrates that genetic mistakes can produce complex structures, which natural selection can then test for possible uses.

Moreover, molecular biology has discovered mechanisms for genetic change that go beyond point mutations, and these expand the ways in which new traits can appear. Functional modules within genes can be spliced together in novel ways. Whole genes can be accidentally duplicated in an organism's DNA, and the duplicates are free to mutate into genes for new, complex features. Comparisons of the DNA from a wide variety of organisms indicate that this is how the globin family of blood proteins evolved over millions of years.

Once again, Mr. Rennie has failed to understand his opponent. The above is a subtle but significant misstatement of the creationist position. The issue is not new traits, the issue is new genetic information. His example of antibiotic resistance falls far short of his purpose, for there is no known case in which such resistance has been introduced by new information being added to the genome. In fact, there are several ways where an information loss can confer resistance.

The Hox gene family likewise only shows what happens when an important regulatory gene is mutated to turn on preexisting information at the wrong place. Let me be very blunt here: THERE IS NO NEW INFORMATION BEING GENERATED! (Hmm…did I say that loud enough?)

And then we have the amazing claim that natural selection can test for “possible uses” of “non-functional” (i.e., by definition, non-operational, and therefore, useless!) limbs in the wrong place. The irony is apparently lost on Mr. Rennie. If they are “non-functional,” how can they have a “function” in any selection process? Natural selection requires genes to be functional so that maladapted genes can be killed off.

Mr. Rennie’s allegations finally approach a level of sophistication with his last paragraph, but it is sophistication in appearance only. In reality, he relies on the ignorance and willful gullibility of his audience and his case falls apart upon close scrutiny in the light of the facts. The mechanisms he lists, gene duplication, polyploidy, insertions, and the like, only provide for an increase in the amount of DNA, not an increase in the amount of functional genetic information. It does not, for example, provide the information necessary to transform the scales of a dinosaur’s skin to feathers for flight.

Polyploidy is found in plants, but not in animals (possibly with rare exceptions), and is the phenomenon of the doubling of all the chromosomes.  The result is an individual which can no longer interbreed with the parent type.  Although this may technically be called a new species, because of the breeding isolation, no new information has been produced, just repetitious doubling of existing information.

As for gene duplication, the fact is that duplication of a single chromosome is normally harmful, as in Down’s Syndrome, and insertions are a very efficient way of completely destroying the functionality of existing genes. The gene duplication theory supposedly works as follows: an existing gene gets doubled, and one copy does its normal work while the other copy is redundant and non-expressed.  This lack of expression frees the genetic material to mutate free of selection pressure.  However, such “neutral” mutations are still only acting upon pre-existing genetic material and are powerless to produce genuinely new information.  The theory continues to state that these random changes somehow produce a new function while not being expressed, then this redundant gene miraculously turns on somehow, and thus comes under the selective pressure necessary to fine tune its function. Talk about hand-waving! The whole scenario relies on a chance copying event, only one set of the duplicate genes somehow being switched off, randomly mutated to something approximating a new function, and then being switched on again so natural selection can tune it.  And they say creationists operate by faith?!

Problem: mutations do not just occur in the duplicated gene; they occur throughout the genome. Consequently, all the deleterious mutations have to be eliminated by the death of the unfit.  Mutations in this target duplicate gene will be extremely rare—it might represent only 1 part in 30,000 of the genome of an animal.  The larger the genome, the bigger the problem, for a larger genome can sustain a lower mutation to avoid an error catastrophe (complete removal of the individual from the gene pool = immediate death!). Consequently, one has to wait longer for any mutation, let alone a desirable one, in the desired duplicated gene.  Unfortunately (for the Darwinist) there just has not been enough time for such a naturalistic process to account for the amount of genetic information that we see in living things.

Dr. Sarfati continues on this point:

Dawkins and others have recognised that the “information space” possible within just one gene is so huge that random changes without some guiding force could never come up with a new function.  There could never be enough experiments (mutating generations of organisms) to find anything useful by such a process. Note that an average gene of 1,000 base pairs represents 4¹⁰⁰⁰ possibilities — that is 10⁶⁰² (compare this with the number of atoms in the universe estimated at “only” 10⁸⁰).  If every atom in the universe were an experiment every millisecond for the supposed 15 billion years of the universe, this could only try a maximum 10¹⁰⁰ of the possibilities.  So such a “neutral” process cannot find any sequence with specificity (usefulness), even allowing for the fact that there may be more than just one sequence that is functional to some extent.

So Dawkins and company have the same problem as the neutral selection theory advocates.  Increasing knowledge of the molecular basis of biological functions has exploded the known “information space” such that mutations and natural selection, with or without gene duplication, or any other known natural process, cannot account for the irreducibly complex nature of living systems.

Finally, we come to Rennie’s concluding sentence about the globin family of proteins. He states as fact what is, in reality, only an inference based on similarities in structure that have been interpreted under a materialistic paradigm. Questions: is this the only possible interpretation of the data? Can this observation be fit into a creationist model? Answers: No. Yes. Think critically, not emotionally!

In fact, the situation is much worse for the evolutionist. Dr. Sarfati explains:

There is no actual demonstration that hemoglobin (with four polypeptides) evolved from myoglobin (with one polypeptide), or any adequate explanation of how the hypothetical intermediates would have had selective advantages. In fact, it’s far more complicated than Rennie implies. The α- and β-globin chains are encoded on genes on different chromosomes, so they are expressed independently. This expression must be controlled precisely, otherwise various types of a disease called thallassemia results. Also, there is an essential protein called AHSP (Alpha Hemoglobin Stabilizing Protein) which, as the name implies, stabilizes the α-chains, and also brings it to the β-chains. Otherwise the α-chains would precipitate and damage the red blood cells. AHSP is one of many examples of a class of protein called chaperones which govern the folding of other proteins.¹ This is yet another problem for chemical evolutionary theories—how did the first proteins fold correctly without chaperones, and since the chaperones themselves are complex proteins, how did they fold?

In conclusion, a critical analysis of this alleged refutation of creationism once again has been weighed in the balance of reason and found wanting. The impression of refutation is an illusion, based on enough hand waving to confuse the audience into thinking its heard something substantial when in reality the smoke and mirrors are ever present.

¹ Kihm, A. et al., An abundant erythroid protein that stabilizes free α-haemoglobin, Nature 417 (6890):758–763, 13 June 2002; comment by Luzzatto, L. and Notaro, R., Haemoglobin’s chaperone, same issue, pp. 703–705.

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