Episode Transcript
SPEAKER A
You've heard the phrase "survival of the fittest," but did you know that natural selection actually prevents evolution? It sounds crazy, but when we look at the genetic data, selection is a process that weeds out information, while evolution requires adding it. Today we're going to look at why survival of the fittest explains survival, but not the arrival of the fittest. Welcome to Faith and Science, I'm Kaysie Vokurka. Joining me to discuss this topic is Dr. John Ashton. Welcome to the program, Dr. John.
SPEAKER B
Hello, Kaysie.
SPEAKER A
Dr. John has written a book called The Big Argument: Does God Exist? And in today’s program, we’ll be examining some of the insights in chapter 8 by David Catchpole. So John, the chapter in here argues that natural selection can explain how an animal could get thicker fur, but not where the fur came from in the first place. So how does distinguishing between sorting genes and creating new genes influence your view of adaptation?
SPEAKER B
Yeah, sure. So it’s, it’s very clear and we have a lot of evidence that species have adapted to changes in the environment. And I can remember actually in 2009 when they had the 150th anniversary of Darwin publishing his book.
SPEAKER A
Okay.
SPEAKER B
There was a sort of a feature displays at the Smithsonian Institute in the United States, a very strong proponent of evolution there at that institute. And they again used a similar situation, not so much long and short fur, but they looked at mice with light and dark fur. And that as an area with lower rainfall, an area became slowly changed into desert, those with the dark-coloured fur stood out more on the light yellow sand, and they were much more easily picked off by the birds.
SPEAKER A
Predators.
SPEAKER B
And So again, this was illustrating, you know, Darwin’s main theme of natural selection, survival of the fittest, that this led to xampl in organisms. And hence this was seen initially as a mechanism that— or part of the mechanism together with mutations. Now, what has happened is that there’s a— become this general understanding that natural selection then is part of the evolutionary process to produce new organisms. But of course, that isn’t the case. The— well, essentially, the theory looks at that mutations are going to produce a lot of different changes, if they do produce changes. And it’s only the changes that are going to survive in the environment. The fittest changes are likely to go on and produce the most offspring. But again, this also paints a very poor picture because in actual fact, most mutations destroy information. Hmm. They make the, the functioning of the organism less efficient, or they do nothing. And so there’s a big difference between a mutation producing new genetic information. Now, what the reason for this is, that the genetic code is so complex that the chances of a mutation producing a sufficient change in the DNA to be able to produce a viable change in the organism is very small. And most of these viable changes are going to be fairly small or insignificant anyway. One of the things that is also missed though, and this is something that comes back to, really is powerful evidence for the biblical account, is that if we understand the creation picture, that was revealed to us supernaturally through inspiration of the people that wrote the Bible and the Genesis account is that God originally created species with a huge amount of diversity in their DNA. And gradually over time, through natural selection, we have been losing this diversity.
SPEAKER A
So this is what you mean by we are losing genetic information, we’re losing genes as this process is unfolding.
SPEAKER B
Yes. So in actual fact— but what happens is a lot of genes are dormant, they haven’t been switched on, they haven’t needed to be used, and they’re just sitting there. And so we can get a situation where these genes then become switched on. Now, a classic example of this, although it’s not mentioned in this chapter of the book, was Dr.— I think his name was Richard Lenski’s work at Michigan State University. So what he did was he said, right, we’re going to try and demonstrate evolution occurring, right, through these mutations and so forth and natural selection. And so what they did was they took 12 lots of E. coli bacteria that they had chosen could not use citrate as a food. And they were then able to use citrate to buffer the solutions because as the metabolism goes on, the bacteria produce more acid and so this needed to be buffered. And so they fed the bacteria on glucose and so forth. And they bred them through heaps and heaps of generations, right? Now, eventually, after about 30 generations, they noticed that one group were multiplying much more quickly and they were producing a lot more offspring. And they found that that particular group were now able to use citrate as a food.
SPEAKER A
Oh, wow.
SPEAKER B
Hmm. Right. And so in Richard Dawkins’ book Evolution: The Greatest Show on Earth, this, I think, is the only example that I could find anyway from memory where he talks about new information being formed, right? As evidence that evolution can produce new information. But when they did further research into this scenario, they found that in actual fact, what had happened was there was a mutation that— and I may not be remembering the mechanism exactly, but One of these mutations allowed a particular switching mechanism to be transferred next to a transfer gene that switched on that transfer gene that now allowed citrate to be used as a food. So the genetic information was already there, it was just dormant.
SPEAKER A
Right.
SPEAKER B
And there was a mutation. No, it wasn’t new at all. And in actual fact, most E. coli bacteria in the wild can metabolize citrate. They had deliberately picked bacteria where that transfer gene had been switched off. And it was a mutation that switched it on. So this is a very small mutation that had a magnified effect, right? So we could actually see it. But what is lost in all this is the fact that, hang on, there was no major new information. There was no mechanism there that was producing some new biochemical function. That biochemistry was already in place. It just wasn’t switched on. And the amount of genetic information to cause a switch is tiny, absolutely tiny, compared to the amount of information to make some new biochemical system or something like that. And what it turns out is that virtually all the xample where people say, oh, there’s been a change like Darwinian finches and all this sort of thing, with those birds, the original birds were carrying a diversity of information with regard to beak shape. Beak shape.
SPEAKER A
Yes.
SPEAKER B
And so depending on the type of food they were exposed to and so forth, The genes were epigenetically switched on that enabled those particular beaks to just slightly modify to do that. But all the basic code was there. It was already there in place. There was selection for the one that worked best. And this is the important point, as you mentioned just really in your introduction, that natural selection doesn’t produce new code. Natural selection can never produce a new species. It can never produce a new organism. It simply removes some of the information that is already there. And that beautifully fits what we observe if we have a creation scenario and we have a general loss of genetic information over time, which is what we are seeing. And we are seeing that from a number of aspects. But what people think is, oh, hang on, Through this natural selection, we’ve got fish changing into amphibians. You know, because the fish that happens to develop a bigger fin and so forth can pull itself on land better, and this slowly changes into a leg. And so this is the story that is being told. But it doesn’t work that way. It can’t work that way. Because all the code has to be there. And it’s just that there’s a diversity in the type of fin. Maybe in the original some were big fins, some were short fins. The same with long fur, short fur. That diversity was there originally. But, and through natural selection, this enables, say, long-haired fur to not be produced so much or not breed so much under hot desert conditions, and the short, but where that long fur would breed and be more successful in very cold conditions, and so they survived. So we observed these changes.
SPEAKER A
[Speaker] Yeah, so interesting, all of those perspectives. My question is, why do you think, like you’ve explained this broken, you know, state of genes as the natural selection process goes through, there’s more and more loss of information. Why do you think this broken state is mistaken for evolutionary progress? Like, that is widespread how we are led to understand what’s going on, but you’re saying no, it’s a breakdown of genetic information. Why are we misunderstanding this?
SPEAKER B
Well, I think they’re clinging to something because they want it to be true. But the other thing is too, probably the education system hasn’t caught up with a lot of this. You know, it’s not being explained because the teachers themselves that are teaching our children and, you know, new students have been taught this information. And that, you know, natural selection combined with mutation can produce new species. But what we were saying before is with, say, the development of the fin slowly into a leg, The fact that we don’t find the intermediates in all these stages, again, is powerful evidence showing that, hang on, we get changes because there’s a lot of diversity initially. We’re losing some of that. And that explains beautifully why we don’t find the intermediates. Why? Because all the species must have been created with their intact, very diverse areas of genetic information with a lot of diversity. But just restricted to that particular type of organism that can reproduce itself. So this is very important, this whole concept that mutations and natural selection is responsible for all the diversity of life. The two important things: the mutations don’t produce big enough changes to produce the changes. Any mutation changes that we see are very, very small. They trigger large pre-existing codes. They don’t generate any major new codes. That’s very important. The other thing is that natural selection destroys existing code. So when we had those long-haired fur or short-haired fur, whichever way around it was, surviving, sure, they’re very good. And the same with antibiotic resistance. If we have germs, if we have bacteria that for a number of different reasons. Again, usually they lack a transfer gene and therefore the antibiotic can’t get in and kill the bacteria, or they produce— they switch on a particular mechanism that reacts with, say, penicillin and immobilizes the penicillin. What happens is that all the bacteria around all get destroyed by the penicillin, those that survive are now all resistant to it. So they’ve carried on that gene, but it’s not new genetic information. It’s preexisting code that has been activated, or it is protective code that has been switched off and now allows the antibiotic to enter.
SPEAKER A
So really it’s very much a, like it’s a contrast in terms of what we’re expecting because we’re getting the genetic information that’s reduced. So there’s actually less diversity within the code.
SPEAKER B
And that’s what we’re observing.
SPEAKER A
And over time, less resilience even, you know, they might be adapted to this situation, but they’re not going to be able to go back to the original place they were because they’ve lost the information instead of gained it. So—
SPEAKER B
And that’s why species become extinct. And that’s why we’re observing more and more.
SPEAKER A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. “Thank you for making that clear, John.” Have you ever struggled with doubts about God’s existence or known someone who has? What helped you through it? Share your thoughts and stories in the comments. Your journey could inspire someone else who’s searching for answers.
