Scientific Evidence Lacking for Evolution
28 March 2021 |
Dear Editor,
This is a response to the article by Paul Priest titled, “The Correspondence Between the Creation of the Universe in Science and the Bible,” dated 22 February 2021.
There is abundant scientific evidence supporting an old universe and old earth. However, scientific evidence is lacking for the origin of life and the evolution of subsequent disparate life forms by random mutations and natural selection. The embryo of the acorn contains all of the coded instructions to build a tree. That is not analogous to the appearance of disparate life forms, each with unique coded instructions to produce a specific body plan. Any model of theistic evolution is incompatible with the belief of evolutionary biologists that unique coded instructions must be generated without any supernatural intervention. No empirical science has supported the notion by Denis O. Lamoureux that “God put in motion extremely well-designed natural processes which he used to self-assemble the entire world.”1 Self-assembly requires unique instructions as noted by the late Robert M. Macnab, an evolutionary biologist from Yale University. He published an elegant 19-page review article on the self-assembly of the bacterial flagellum, titled “How Bacteria Assemble Flagella.” He concluded that “the process of flagellar assembly is a remarkable one, involving many genes and gene products……How they evolved is another matter.”2
Some evolutionary biologists recognize that the origin of coded instructions is elusive. In 2007, Harvard chemist George Whitesides was awarded the Priestley Medal, the highest award of the American Chemical Society. During his acceptance speech, he offered this analysis: “Most chemists believe, as do I, that life emerged spontaneously from mixtures of molecules in the prebiotic Earth. How? I have no idea.”3 Thornton and DeSalle wrote in the Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics, “It remains a mystery how the undirected process of mutation, combined with natural selection, has resulted in the creation of thousands of new proteins with extraordinary diverse and well optimized functions.”4 Pierre-Paul Grasse, past president of the French Academy of Sciences, contended: “mutations have a very limited constructive capacity” …. He further stated, “If evolution takes place without the acquisition of new genes, we must assume that the first living creature contained in itself enough genes to engender, by mutation of them, all past, present, and future faunas and floras. This is absurd.”5 Evolutionary biologist George C. Williams writes: “Evolutionary biologists have failed to realize that they work in two more or less incommensurable domains: that of information and that of matter.” Information has no dimensions, no mass, and no charge, and matter has no bytes. “The gene is a package of information, not an object.”6
Coding for, and producing proteins, only produces biologic building material. The chimpanzee and humans have virtually identical DNA coding for such material, but there is additional complex specified information in non-coding DNA and epigenetic information in the fertilized eggs and developing embryos that define the end product. There are at least three sites for epigenetic information, the specific arrangement of microtubules in the cytoskeleton, the specific arrangement of ion-specific channels in the cell wall, and the specific arrangement of sugar molecules complexed to proteins and lipids on the surface of the cell membrane. This “sugar code” contains more information storage capacity than DNA in the cell. DNA can be mutated repeatedly without interrupting the role that epigenetic information plays in the development of body plans.
The late Eric Davidson, an evolutionary biologist from Cal Tech, was one of the leading scientists in the field of evolutionary development (evo-devo). He stated that, “contrary to classical evolution theory, the processes that drive the small changes observed as species diverge cannot be taken as models for the evolution of body plans in animals.”7 Davidson described Developmental Gene Regulatory Networks (dGRN) in the non-coding DNA that are best described as complex circuit boards that switch many genes off and on. He explained it this way: “There is always an observable consequence if a dGRN subcircuit is interrupted. Since these consequences are always catastrophically bad, flexibility is minimal, and since the subcircuits are all interconnected, the whole network partakes of the quality that there is only one way for things to work. And indeed, the embryos of each species develop in only one way.”8 Davidson concluded: “Thus, how evolution of the animal body plan has occurred is a question that in the end can only be addressed in the terms of transcriptional regulatory systems biology.”9
There is no empirical scientific support for the self-assembly of complex living organisms. Wolfgang Smith writes: “The point, however, is that the doctrine of evolution has swept the world …. It affirms, in effect, that living beings created themselves, which is, in essence, a metaphysical claim.”10
Mutation of genes degrades unique codes, rather than create new unique codes for complex body plans. The Journal of Molecular Evolution, since its inception in 1971, has not published an article on the origin of new genes capable of producing disparate body plans such as elephants and giraffes. Despite oncogenic experiments for over 100 years, the origin of new genes has not been elucidated by evolutionary science. Evolutionary Creationism would answer the question concerning the origin of instructional codes imbedded in biologic life forms. Presumably Evolutionary Creationism introduces new unique instructional codes, by the Creator, intermittently into life’s long evolutionary history. Such a postulate is counter to the belief system in the evolutionary science community, and would be promptly dismissed. Thus, Evolutionary Creationism is discordant with evolutionary science.
George M. Grames
LLU School of Medicine in 1960
Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Nephrology and Nuclear Medicine
References:
1. Denis O. Lamoureux, “Evolution: Scripture and Nature Say Yes”, Goodreads, p 50,53,64, 2016.
2. Robert M. Macnab, “How Bacteria Assemble Flagella”, The Annual Review of Microbiology, vol 57, p 77-100, 2003.
3. George M. Whitesides, “Revolutions In Chemistry: Priestley Medalist George M. Whitesides’ Address,” Chemical and Engineering News, vol 85, issue 13, p 12-17, March 26, 2007.
4. Joseph W. Thornton and Rob DeSalle, “Gene Family Evolution and Homology: Genomics Meets Phylogenetics,” Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics, 1: p 64, 2000.
5. Pierre-Paul Grasse, “Evolution of Living Organisms: Evidence for a New Theory of Transformation”, Academic Press: New York NY, pp 97, 103, 163, 245, 1977.
6. George C. Williams, “A Package of Information”, from The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution, edited by John Brockman (Simon and Schuster, 1995), p 42-43.
7. Davidson, “Evolutionary Bioscience as Regulatory Systems Biology”, Developmental Biology, vol 357, Issue 1, September 1, 2011, p 35-36.
8. Davidson, “Evolutionary Bioscience as Regulatory Systems Biology”, Developmental Biology, vol 357, Issue 1, September 1, 2011, p 38.
9. Davidson, “Evolutionary Bioscience as Regulatory Systems Biology”, Developmental Biology, vol 357, Issue 1, September 1, 2011, p 40.
10. Smith, Wolfgang, Teilhardism and the New Religion
Tan Books and Publishers, 1998, Rockford, Illinois, p.242