Is Speciation Evidence for Creation or Evolution?

In a debate at a major Texas university, the creationist was challenged with this claim: Hawaiian fruit flies that could once all interbreed had changed into numerous reproductively isolated species, and that, said the challenger to considerable applause, “proved evolution.” The creationist responded (also to considerable applause) that such a change would be the opposite of evolution. Losing the ability to interbreed, each “new species” would have less genetic variability, less ability to meet changes in its existing environment, and less ability to explore new environments — all suggesting decline and demise rather than the expansion of genetic potential required for what Darwin called “the production of higher animals.”

Which of these views is more consistent with our present understanding of genetic science and with the biblical record of earth history?

Basic Genetics

The Bible records several key events in early earth history that suggest concepts geneticists can test scientifically. Genesis 1 states that God created many distinct “kinds.” We infer from a plain reading of Scripture that animals and plants were created to reproduce within the boundaries of their kinds (Genesis 1, 6, and 8). A created kind is typically equivalent to the level of family in modern classification schemes as many members of a family can interbreed and produce offspring. The kinds were also “to fill” (scatter, move into) earth’s varied environments (Genesis 1:22, 8:17). Multiple biological mechanisms accounted for this filling and resulted in variation within kinds, or speciation. Do these fundamental concepts in God’s Word — discrete created kinds, or baramins (Hebrew: bara = create and min = kind), having broad but limited variability — help scientists understand the genetic changes in organisms and speciation found in God’s world? Indeed, they do!

The complete set of DNA specifying a kind is called its genome. The human genome includes approximately 20,000 to 25,000 protein-coding chromosomal segments commonly called genes. The genes and the information they encode are largely responsible for the set of biological traits that distinguish human beings from other kinds of life. All humans have essentially the same genes, and they are over 99 percent similar in all seven billion of us; hence, geneticists refer to the human genome and have concluded that we are all members of one race, the human race (as the Apostle Paul preached in ancient Greece, Acts 17:26).

The similarity among all human beings is obvious, but so is the tremendous variation!

The similarity among all human beings is obvious, but so is the tremendous variation! The genes we share in the human genome make us all the same (100 percent human), but different versions of these shared genes, called alleles, produce the spectacular variation that makes each individual unique. For any given gene, God could have created it in four different allelic varieties (two in both Adam and Eve). Genetic alterations occurring since sin corrupted creation have introduced many new alleles, but no new genes.

The human genome, for example, has genes for producing hair and controlling its shape; allelic versions of these genes result in individuals with straight, wavy, curly, and tightly-curled hair; all variations within the human kind. Although, genetically speaking, skin color is more complex, the variation in human skin tone can be described as the action of two pairs of genes with different alleles (A/a and B/b) that influence the production of the skin pigment melanin. As shown in figure 1,1 two people with medium-brown skin tone and genes AaBb could have children with the full range of skin tones — from very dark (AABB), to dark (AABb or AaBB), to medium (like AaBb), to light (like Aabb), to very light (aabb). That would certainly be “change through time” but a lot of change in a little time (one generation!) With no genes added, this is just variation within a kind.

Mutations, changes in DNA that occurred after man’s sin corrupted God’s creation, do not produce new genes. Rather, mutations only produce alleles, variations in pre-existing genes. Alleles are not different genes in the sense that genes for skin color and genes for making sickle-cell hemoglobin (resulting in sickle-cell anemia) are. Similarly, the sickle-cell gene is a different allele (version) of the hemoglobin gene in the sense that it was not present at creation, but it is only a different harmful version of a pre-existing gene. In fact, the allele for sickle-cell hemoglobin differs in sequence in only one position out of several hundred from the normal gene for making hemoglobin. Again, we see mutations leading to different versions of pre-existing genes resulting in a variety of alleles but not
the creation of brand new genes encoding novel proteins with novel functions
of the type necessary for molecules-to-man evolution.

Variation Within a Kind

All the genes in one generation available to be passed on to the next are
called the gene pool. Members of the same kind may also be defined as organisms
that share the same gene pool. The number of genes for different kinds
of traits, the number in a complete genome, can be called the depth of the
gene pool. The human gene pool is around 20,000–25,000 genes deep. The
width of the gene pool refers to the amount of its allelic variation. Among
dogs, for example, the width of a greyhound’s gene pool is very narrow; crossing
purebred greyhounds just gives you more greyhounds, all very similar in
speed, color, intelligence, hair length, nose length, etc. Crossing two mongrels,
however, can give you big dogs and small dogs, dark and light and splotchy-colored
dogs, dogs with long and short hair, yappy and quiet dogs, mean and
affectionate dogs, and the list goes on! The width of the mongrel’s gene pool
(its allelic variability) is quite large compared to the greyhound’s, but the depth
of the gene pool (the number of genes per genome) is the same for both dogs.

A kind is defined in terms of depth of the gene pool, which is the total
number of different genes in a genome and a list of traits they encode for. Variation
within a kind is defined in terms of the width of the gene pool, the number
of possible alleles at each gene site (locus).

Geneticists call the shuffling of pre-existing genes recombination. Perhaps
you have played a game with a common deck of 52 cards that includes four
groups (hearts, diamonds, clubs, and spades), each with 13 different numbers
or “faces” (2–10 plus J, Q, K, A). In a game called bridge, each of four players
gets a “hand” of 13 cards. You can play bridge for 50 years (and some people
do!) without ever getting the same group of 13 cards. The hands you are dealt
are constantly changing, and each is unique — but the deck of cards remains
always the same.

Although the comparison is not perfect, a deck of cards illustrates the concept
of variation within a created kind. The bridge hands dealt are unique, different,
and constantly changing, like the individual members of a population.
But the deck of 52 cards remains constant, never changing, always the same,
like the kind. Individual variation plus group constancy equals variation within
a created kind.

Faith in Man Versus Faith in God’s Word

Based on faith in Darwin’s words, evolutionists assume that all life started
from one or a few chemically evolved life forms with an extremely small gene
pool. For evolutionists, enlargement of the gene pool by Darwinian selection
(struggle and death) among random mutations is a slow, tedious, grim process
that burdens each type with a staggering “death load” and “genetic load” of
harmful mutations and evolutionary leftovers. Based on faith in God’s Word,
creationists assume each created kind began with a large gene pool, designed
to multiply and fill the earth with its tremendous ecological and geographic
variety.

Neither creationists nor evolutionists were there at the beginning to see
how it was done, of course, but the creationist can build on the Word of the
One who was there “in the beginning” (Genesis 1:1; John 1:1–3). Furthermore,
the creationist mechanism is consistent with scientific observation. The evolutionary
mechanism doesn’t work and is not consistent with present scientific
knowledge of genetics and reproduction. As a scientist, I prefer ideas that do
work and do help to explain what we can observe, and that’s biblical creation!

Since animals were commanded to multiply and fill the earth, we can infer
that the created kinds were “endowed by their Creator” with tremendous allelic
variability and allelic potential in very wide gene pools. Geneticists now know,
for example, that alleles for the full range of normal human variation — darkest
to lightest skin tone, Pygmy to Watusi heights, wide to thin lips, hair from
straight to wavy to curly to tightly-curled, eyelids producing round to oval
shapes, etc. — are possible, beginning with just two people. Genetics problems
solved by high school students (figure 1) show how such parents could produce
children with traits from darkest to lightest, shortest to tallest, with hair of any
style, and eyes and lips of any shape in just one generation — all with NONE
of the deep time, chance mutations, and ceaseless struggle to the death that evolutionists
use to explain variation in beak sizes in finches or amounts of black
pigment in moth wings.

What Does This Awesome Variability Within Kinds Mean?

We still see God’s creativity
unfolding before our very eyes in a different way in the birth of each child. As they relate to the genetic potential God created in our first parents, we may not
yet have seen the fastest runner or the greatest mathematical or musical genius.

For one thing, such awesome variation reflects God’s creativity. God created
the first man from the dust of the ground and the first woman from a rib
from his side (Genesis 2:7, 21–22). Then, God rested from His creative acts at
the end of the creation week (Genesis 2:1–2). But we still see God’s creativity
unfolding before our very eyes in a different way in the birth of each child. As they relate to the genetic potential God created in our first parents, we may not
yet have seen the fastest runner or the greatest mathematical or musical genius.
Genes were not produced one at a time by evolutionary processes — time,
chance, mutations, struggle, and death over millions of years. This unfolding of
genetic variability in pre-existing genes is all stunning variation within a kind,
but it is NOT the formation of new genetic information of the type required
for molecules-to-man evolution.

As the descendants of each created kind multiplied to fill the earth, we see
their genetic potential unfolding. God created the bear kind, for example. But
as bears moved into different environments around the world after the Flood,
their built-in variability and ability to genetically change came to visible expression
in black bears, brown bears, grizzly bears, polar bears, etc. The created dog
kind diversified into specialized subtypes: wolves, coyotes, domestic dogs, etc.
Think also about the tremendous genetic variability brought to visible expression
in the cat kind, rose kind, tomato kind, etc.

There is a strong tendency, both in nature and in experimental breeding,
for generalized, adaptable organisms to produce a variety of specialized, adaptable
subgroups. Figure 1, discussed earlier, showed that if Adam and Eve, for
example, had a variety of alleles for skin tone (AaBb) they could have children
with skin tones from darkest to lightest. However, some of that initial genetic
variability would be lost when subgroups of the human population moved apart
and remained reproductively isolated, as they did at the Tower of Babel (Genesis
11). Some language groups may have included only A and B alleles, losing
a and b; in such AABB subgroups, parents could only have children with very
dark skin. Subgroups without the A and B alleles (only a and b) would produce
only very light-skinned children, and either AAbb or aaBB subgroups would
always be medium brown. AaBb subgroups would continue to produce the
entire color range, like some groups in India still do today.

Darwin thought otherwise, but scientists now recognize that people groups
who express only part of the full range of melanin color variation (such as very
dark skin) are 100 percent human. But among animals and plants, both in nature
and from selective breeding, subgroups of some kinds may become so different
(e.g., size, courtship ritual, mating season, chromosomal rearrangements, aggressiveness,
etc.) that they can no longer interbreed (even though their identity as
members of the same created kind can still be confirmed by genetic testing). Such
reproductive isolation was once used as the key criterion for defining species.

What? Two or more specialized species descended from one generalized
ancestral kind? Doesn’t that prove evolution after all? Exactly the opposite.

Speciation, yes; evolution, no. Molecules-to-man evolution requires a net
increase in novel genetic information, the addition of genes for new trait categories
to a genome. Reproductive isolation and subsequent speciation result in
a loss of genetic variability (alleles), converting a large gene pool into subgroups
with smaller gene pools (i.e., “new species” with less ability to meet changes in
their environment, restricted ability to explore new environments, and reduced
prospects for long-term survival). Indeed, evolutionists now regularly use the
term overspecialization in speciation as an explanation for extinction versus
evolutionary progress.

The Florida panther, for example, is considered an endangered species.
What endangers it? The small, inbred population was so riddled with mutations
that no cubs could survive to reproductive age. The cure? Since it is only a
species within a kind, it was bred with western panthers (members of the same
kind) having different post-Fall mutations. The former Florida panther is now
recovering from its flirt with extinction and being restored to health.

Distinctive genetic diseases and abnormalities characterize many purebred
dogs, which have often reached the end of the line, genetically speaking. Each
has all the genetic information in its genome to be 100 percent dog (so each has
the same gene pool depth), but the allelic variability (gene pool width) could
be reduced ultimately to 0 percent (only one allele per locus in a population).
Therefore, crossing purebred poodles with poodles, for example, would produce
only poodles and would not be a promising path for recapturing the ancestral
wolf or generalized dog kind. If a “poodle plague” wiped out the poodle, however,
poodles could be brought back again over several generations through
breeding wolves or mongrel dogs. Even the quagga, an extinct subspecies of
zebra, is being brought back through cross-breeding varied members of the
horse kind.

The Wrong Kind of Change

Speciation is moving in the wrong direction to support the evolutionary
belief in upward changes between kinds, or molecules-to-man evolution. Speciation
produces only variation within kinds as a result of the subdivision and/
or alteration of pre-existing genetic variability. Speciation also brings to visible
expression the magnificent variability and potential for variation that God programmed
into the members of each of the original created kinds.

After man’s sin, mutations introduced many “negative variations,” helping
scientists to explain the origin of birth defects and disease. Evolutionists had
hoped mutations would provide the new genetic information required to move organisms up the so-called evolutionary tree. But mutations only produce
variation in pre-existing genes, which are alleles that only make a gene pool
wider rather than deeper. So mutations result in variation within a kind and not
the formation of new and different kinds, which Darwin called the “production
of higher animals.”

Uncritical acceptance of evolution has so stunted scientific thinking that
people give mutations god-like qualities. They act as if a cosmic ray striking a
cell can cause a mutation that somehow assembles over 1,500 DNA nucleotides
into a brand new gene, regulators and all, that suddenly begins producing
a brand-new protein responsible for a brand-new trait, raising the lucky
mutated organism to the next higher limb on the evolutionary tree! NOTHING
remotely like that has ever been observed, nor will it be!

Mutations have no ability to compose genetic sentences, no ability to produce novel genetic information, and, hence, no ability to make evolution happen, at all.

Mutations are NOT genetic “scriptwriters”; they are merely typographic
alterations in a genetic script that has already been written. Typically, a mutation
changes only one letter in a genetic sentence averaging 1,500 letters long.
To make evolution happen—or even to make evolution a theory fit for scientific
discussion—evolutionists desperately need some kind of genetic scriptwriter to create novel genetic information, increasing the size of a genome and
the depth of a gene pool. Mutations have no ability to compose genetic sentences,
no ability to produce novel genetic information, and, hence, no ability
to make evolution happen, at all.

Yet molecules-to-man evolution requires phenomenal expansion of genetic
information. It would take thousands of mutations adding novel information
to change simple cells into invertebrates, vertebrates, and mankind. The evolutionist’s
problem is with the fundamental nature of information itself. The
information in a book, for example, cannot be reduced to nor derived from the
properties of the ink and paper used to write it. Similarly, the information in the
genetic code cannot be reduced to nor derived from the properties of matter or
the allelic variations caused by mutations. Its message and meaning originated
instead in the mind of its Maker, Jesus Christ, the Author of life (John 1:1–3).
What we see in God’s world agrees with what we read in God’s Word.

SourceThis article originally appeared on answersingenesis.org

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