Natural Selection to the Rescue?
It is assumed by believers in evolution that some mutations find a useful purpose. It is proposed that even a slight advantage will be passed onto the next generation, which, exceedingly slowly, transforms one type of creature to another. This process is known as natural selection, but how does natural selection hold up under the light of scientific scrutiny as the directing force behind life’s origin and diversity? Dr. John Sanford, retired Cornell University geneticist, inventor of the “gene gun†and 25 other patented discoveries, uses the following illustration to expose the fallacy of this evolutionary belief.1
According to Dr. Sanford, the amount of information required to transform a single-celled organism into a human being would be greater than the information required to transform the manufacturing plant for a Little Red WagonTM into the Star Ship Enterprise -- complete with warp drive engines and holodeck! Can natural selection, acting on accidental changes to the assembly directions of the little red wagon, accomplish this transformation?
Natural selection is similar to the quality control department at the wagon assembly plant and our genetic code is similar to a document containing the entire manufacturing process for the red wagon. Everything needed to manufacture the wagon, including the specifications for all of the materials of construction...all of the individual components...the processes needed to manufacture them...all of the metal press specifications...all of the robotics and programming language...the assembly instructions...the paint specifications...the employee benefits manual... EVERYTHING needed for the wagon’s construction needs to be attached as a manual to the bottom of the wagon. The next wagon to be produced must use only the information in the existing wagon to make the next copy. The quality department (natural selection) can only see the finished wagon, not the enormous amount of information in the manufacturing manual (the genetic code of the wagon). The question is: can random changes in the assembly manual (the genetic code) allow the quality control department (natural selection) to transform the little red wagon into a better wagon and ultimately into the USS Enterprise?
The amount of information contained within the simplest single cell organism (similar to the information required to build a wagon assembly plant) would fill a small library. Suppose you started with a perfect set of instructions in this library and randomly changed hundreds of individual letters throughout the instructions. Very few of these changes would be critical for assembly or cause a faulty wagon which the quality control department (natural selection) would reject. It is far more likely that almost all of the random changes (these are called mutations in living organisms) would result in no noticeable change and the wagons would roll off the assembly line with mistakes in their manuals intact -- to be used in the creation of the next generation of wagons. This next generation would then have another set of barely noticeable mistakes added, one random letter mistake at a time. Given enough generations of the wagons, and with every increasing letter-by-letter mistake in their assembly manuals; eventually the point would be reached when wagons could no longer be produced from the instructions because there are so many tiny mistakes present. Large mistakes can be eliminated by natural selection, but not the small mistakes because, one wrong “letter†at a time, they are essentially undetectable in the final product. Yet, in the end they will drive the manufacturing process to extinction the same way one rust molecule at a time will destroy a car. This is exactly what is happening to the human genome at an alarming rate. Thousands of tiny mistakes are building up with each generation.
It would seem that neither mutations, nor natural selection, can remotely justify the dogmatic belief in evolution as the explanation for either life’s development or its origin.
1. Dr. J.C. Sanford, Genetic Entropy: The Mystery of the Genome, Ivan Press, 2005.
It is assumed by believers in evolution that some mutations find a useful purpose. It is proposed that even a slight advantage will be passed onto the next generation, which, exceedingly slowly, transforms one type of creature to another. This process is known as natural selection, but how does natural selection hold up under the light of scientific scrutiny as the directing force behind life’s origin and diversity? Dr. John Sanford, retired Cornell University geneticist, inventor of the “gene gun†and 25 other patented discoveries, uses the following illustration to expose the fallacy of this evolutionary belief.1
According to Dr. Sanford, the amount of information required to transform a single-celled organism into a human being would be greater than the information required to transform the manufacturing plant for a Little Red WagonTM into the Star Ship Enterprise -- complete with warp drive engines and holodeck! Can natural selection, acting on accidental changes to the assembly directions of the little red wagon, accomplish this transformation?
Natural selection is similar to the quality control department at the wagon assembly plant and our genetic code is similar to a document containing the entire manufacturing process for the red wagon. Everything needed to manufacture the wagon, including the specifications for all of the materials of construction...all of the individual components...the processes needed to manufacture them...all of the metal press specifications...all of the robotics and programming language...the assembly instructions...the paint specifications...the employee benefits manual... EVERYTHING needed for the wagon’s construction needs to be attached as a manual to the bottom of the wagon. The next wagon to be produced must use only the information in the existing wagon to make the next copy. The quality department (natural selection) can only see the finished wagon, not the enormous amount of information in the manufacturing manual (the genetic code of the wagon). The question is: can random changes in the assembly manual (the genetic code) allow the quality control department (natural selection) to transform the little red wagon into a better wagon and ultimately into the USS Enterprise?
The amount of information contained within the simplest single cell organism (similar to the information required to build a wagon assembly plant) would fill a small library. Suppose you started with a perfect set of instructions in this library and randomly changed hundreds of individual letters throughout the instructions. Very few of these changes would be critical for assembly or cause a faulty wagon which the quality control department (natural selection) would reject. It is far more likely that almost all of the random changes (these are called mutations in living organisms) would result in no noticeable change and the wagons would roll off the assembly line with mistakes in their manuals intact -- to be used in the creation of the next generation of wagons. This next generation would then have another set of barely noticeable mistakes added, one random letter mistake at a time. Given enough generations of the wagons, and with every increasing letter-by-letter mistake in their assembly manuals; eventually the point would be reached when wagons could no longer be produced from the instructions because there are so many tiny mistakes present. Large mistakes can be eliminated by natural selection, but not the small mistakes because, one wrong “letter†at a time, they are essentially undetectable in the final product. Yet, in the end they will drive the manufacturing process to extinction the same way one rust molecule at a time will destroy a car. This is exactly what is happening to the human genome at an alarming rate. Thousands of tiny mistakes are building up with each generation.
It would seem that neither mutations, nor natural selection, can remotely justify the dogmatic belief in evolution as the explanation for either life’s development or its origin.
1. Dr. J.C. Sanford, Genetic Entropy: The Mystery of the Genome, Ivan Press, 2005.