Creationist Argument — “Mutations cannot increase information”
01Dec. 08
Before reading this article, please read ‘An Introduction to Christian Creationism’, which should inform you on the nature of creationism as I refer to it here. It will make understanding this a lot easier. Be warned that a basic understanding of genetics would also be helpful.
Over the next few months/years, I’m going to be writing articles on the specific arguments that creationists use to try and undermine the validity of the theory of evolution. Today, I’m going to be talking about a classic argument used by basically every creationist out there: the argument that evolutionary changes cannot be brought about by genetic mutations.
The argument goes as follows:
Genetic mutations cannot cause an increase in the information content in the genome, and therefore cannot produce evolutionary changes like the theory of evolution predicts.
The above statement is the basic form of the argument that you will see everywhere, from Answers in Genesis to the Discovery Institute. Creationists consider it to be one of their strongest arguments against evolution (and therefore, in their eyes, for creationism).
Let’s examine this argument in detail. Firstly, what are the premises of the argument? Well, it could be reasonably said that they are that evolutionary change requires informational increases in the genomes of organisms, that mutations are the only ways that this can happen (if other processes accounted for an increase, it would not be an argument against evolution), and, of course, that mutations themselves cannot produce informational increase. The first premise is not strictly true: evolution is defined as the adaptation of a population of organisms to its natural environment, and this does not necessarily require the information of the genome to increase. It can as easily decrease.
Let me explain with an example.
Say you have a population of organisms that have long tails. The genetic coding for tail length lies within a certain region in the genome of the organism, and the number of genes in that region that any organism has is directly proportional to the length of its tail. One day, a predator is introduced to the habitat of these organisms, and due to their long tails, it finds it easy to catch and eat them. In such a situation, having a tail that is shorter than the rest of the population would be an advantage, no? So, due to random mutations in the next generation of organisms, some members of the population now have shorter tails than the rest. This means that they get eaten less often, and therefore have more offspring with short tails. After a while, the entire population has short tails.
Evolution, or adaptation to the environment, has unquestionably occurred. But what has happened to the genomes of the organisms? Recall that the number of genes in a particular area controls the length of the tail. So, for the tail to get shorter, one or more of the genes in the “tail length” region must have disappeared! Is that not a decrease in the information of the genome? I would say so.
How about the other premises? Creationists are most certainly defining a “mutation” as a point mutation, which, if you don’t know, is a single nucleotide base pair substitution (for example, going from adenine to guanine). Other mutations do exist, such as chromosomal inversions, where parts of chromosomes are inverted around a certain point, causing genes to be rearranged, and gene duplication, where a certain gene is copied incorrectly during cell division and one cell ends up with two copies and the other no copies, but I’ll talk about these later.
So, do point mutations cause informational increases in the genomes of organisms, like creationists say they don’t? Well, no, they don’t.
Yes, it’s true, the creationists are correct about something. However, like most of their arguments, this one revolves around a central speck of truth with horrifically false extrapolations grafted onto the side caused by a lack of further knowledge. Point mutations don’t cause an increase in the individual genome’s informational content, but rather in the population’s gene pool as a whole. Think about it: changing one base pair in a genome doesn’t change the informational content at all, you’ve just removed one allele (gene variation) and replaced it with another. But when you talk about the gene pool, where multiple alleles can exist side by side, a point mutation becomes the bringer of new genetic variation, which then can be pruned back with natural selection into a different population of organisms.
Right now, the creationist reading this article (yes, you!), is thinking/yelling: “But that doesn’t allow for the types of changes that evolution predicts! What about molecules to man? It’ll require a little bit more than shuffling the alleles of a couple of genes to turn a bacteria into a cat!”
Well yes, my probably American friend, but I’m not finished yet. Remember gene duplications? Yes, those things. Well, they play a big role in the increase of information in the gene pool and the genomes of individual organisms.
As previously mentioned, gene duplications occur when one gene is copied incorrectly and the organism gets two copies of the same gene in its genome. How does this relate to information increase? I mean, you’ve only got a copy of something you already had! But remember point mutations, and how they changed one gene into an allele of itself. What if you had a point mutation in one of the copies, and the other remained the same? You would end up with the original gene and a variant of that gene, in the same organism. This means there can be a completely new gene, given enough mutation, and evolution can progress on its merry way, adding different body morphologies, biochemical pathways and transcription factors. Going back to our tailed organisms, such a gene duplication could allow for the recently short-tailed organisms to change back into long-tailed variants if the environment required it. And by logical extension, if a loss of a tail length gene was a decrease in information, then gaining a gene is an increase in information.
So, I hope you now see how this argument falls down. If you have any questions, please post a comment below and get the dialogue rolling. I’ll happy to answer any queries.
Tags: Creationism, Evolution, Jack Scanlan
October 22nd, 2009 at 12:34 am
this is certainly one of the most interesting articles i’ve read on youngausskeptics so far. Keep em coming!
October 31st, 2009 at 10:39 pm
Jack Scanlan said “The creationist literature I read (which is, if I may say so, quite a lot) for the most part does not mention gene duplication. Usually there might be one article on that specific website about it, but as the action of gene duplication is supposed to help resolve the “problem” with informational increase, you would expect it to be mentioned in the thousands of articles on AiG, ICR, Creation.com etc. about that “problem” with evolution. However… it’s not. If they mention it at all, it’s tucked away in the site, not readily visible. ”
i searched creation.com by putting gene duplication into the search bar. 46 articles came up. hardly hidden or obscure. perhaps they were not listed on the home page and u looked no further.
I know that if this situation were reversed their would be cries of “creationist liars” “lazy researchers” etc. all the usual skepticism that goes with the evolution side of the argument.
we will just put it down to a genuine mistake rather than intentionally misleading people to make your argument appear stronger than it is.
all good skeptics should do their own research.
regards
October 31st, 2009 at 10:52 pm
Jack Scanlan said “Again, this is just another possible reason. I’m not saying *all* creationists have this attitude, I’m not even saying most of them do. However, at least one creationist in the entire world thinks like this, I guarantee you.
I’d like to dispute your claim that there are very few “God put fossils in the ground to test our faith” creationists around. While the “to test our faith bit” might not be quite accurate, the notion that God (or the Intelligent Designer) sculpted our genomes in a recurring theme in creationist literature.”
what is your assertion? that one creationist who argues something ridiculous invalidates the whole concept of creation or ID?
based on that then evolution would be destroyed by numerous fools who come out with ridiculous ideas.
In a book entitled Life Itself: Its Origin and Nature (page 88),Sir Francis Crick a famous evolutionary scientist & discoverer of DNA wrote: “An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going.”
In the early 1970s, Crick and Orgel further speculated about the possibility that the production of living systems from molecules may have been a very rare event in the universe, but once it had developed it could be spread by intelligent life forms using space travel technology, a process they called “Directed Panspermia”.
so we definitely know that evolutionists at least one of them believe in Aliens and that this is how life started here. The discoverer of DNA who is an atheist committed to evolution basically acknowledges Intelligent Design. “A miracle” “Alien spread life” None of which answers the question but confirms he believed that ID of some sort was the most likely source of Life.
regards
November 1st, 2009 at 5:40 pm
@ andrew:
Just because something is easily search-able, that does not make it easy to find. Remember that the vast majority of the people who visit creationist websites know very little about genetics, so how do they know to search for “gene duplication” if they have never been exposed to the concept?
In the vast majority of articles on creationist websites talking about “increases in information”, gene duplication is never mentioned. However, in more technical articles, like the ones you no doubt found, attempts to rationalise gene duplications against creationist views are made — these are attempts that I am currently studying with some scrutiny. But the fact that they acknowledge gene duplications exist and could possibly account for informational increase is never mentioned in the more basic articles — this strikes me as highly intellectually-dishonest.
“what is your assertion? that one creationist who argues something ridiculous invalidates the whole concept of creation or ID?
based on that then evolution would be destroyed by numerous fools who come out with ridiculous ideas.”
No, that was not my point. I would never knowingly argue something so logically baseless. The point was me telling the commenter why I think some creationists think the way they do — this doesn’t necessarily reflect on the truth of creationism or intelligent design.
“In a book entitled Life Itself: Its Origin and Nature (page 88),Sir Francis Crick a famous evolutionary scientist & discoverer of DNA wrote: “An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going.”
In the early 1970s, Crick and Orgel further speculated about the possibility that the production of living systems from molecules may have been a very rare event in the universe, but once it had developed it could be spread by intelligent life forms using space travel technology, a process they called “Directed Panspermia”.
so we definitely know that evolutionists at least one of them believe in Aliens and that this is how life started here. The discoverer of DNA who is an atheist committed to evolution basically acknowledges Intelligent Design. “A miracle” “Alien spread life” None of which answers the question but confirms he believed that ID of some sort was the most likely source of Life.”
And that, my friend, is some sort of appeal to authority — why does Francis Crick get any special immunity from criticism? Co-discovering DNA doesn’t give you intellectual superpowers. He could have been wrong, and probably was wrong. That was the 70s, and scientific knowledge progresses rapidly.
November 1st, 2009 at 8:08 pm
jack dont apply the logic to creationism that you do not want applied to your own beliefs.
creationism has moved on from the guy who believed God put fossils in the ground to fool people.
you seem like a fairly rational guy. perhaps you could be the only guy on the evolutionist side to apply rational arguments without the condescending “creationists are idiots” commentary.
Both sides can and have made scientific mistakes. There is nothing wrong with both sides keeping each other honest.
It is a false idea that there are no decent scientists who believe in ID.
Michael Behe serves as professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania where he has tenure and therefore can say what he likes without fear of the Darwinist lobby.
Behe accepts the common descent of species, including that humans descended from other primates, although he states that common descent does not by itself explain the differences between species. He also accepts the scientific consensus on the age of the Earth and the age of the Universe.
Beware not to lump all proponents of an idea in together. Keep arguments to the issue not the man.
regards
November 1st, 2009 at 8:26 pm
@ andrew:
“jack dont apply the logic to creationism that you do not want applied to your own beliefs.”
Of course I wouldn’t. I don’t think I’ve done this.
“creationism has moved on from the guy who believed God put fossils in the ground to fool people.”
I’m well aware of that, but in a rudimentary sense, some essence of that thought remains in ID circles, as it must — everything must have some design purpose to an IDer (to a YEC, this is not necessarily the case, I know — the Fall, etc.).
“you seem like a fairly rational guy. perhaps you could be the only guy on the evolutionist side to apply rational arguments without the condescending “creationists are idiots” commentary.”
Why thank you. But more people than just me on the evolutionary biology side are not condescending. Some people just get tired of the same old arguments over and over again.
“Both sides can and have made scientific mistakes. There is nothing wrong with both sides keeping each other honest.”
Of course. I would just say that the creationist/ID side has made far, far more scientific mistakes.
“It is a false idea that there are no decent scientists who believe in ID.
Michael Behe serves as professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania where he has tenure and therefore can say what he likes without fear of the Darwinist lobby.”
Stepping aside from the issue of calling evolutionary biologists the “Darwinist lobby” (a bold accusation), Michael Behe may be a decent scientist, but what he publishes on evolution is usually fraught with some level misunderstanding on his part and over-exaggeration on the ID community’s part.
However, Behe is not an evolutionary biologist. No ID proponent or creationist is an evolutionary biologist. Without such credentials, it’s hard to take someone who is supposedly challenging a whole section of the biological community seriously.
“Behe accepts the common descent of species, including that humans descended from other primates, although he states that common descent does not by itself explain the differences between species. He also accepts the scientific consensus on the age of the Earth and the age of the Universe.”
Yep, he might be good in some areas, but that doesn’t make him perfect.
“Beware not to lump all proponents of an idea in together. Keep arguments to the issue not the man.”
I couldn’t agree more.
November 1st, 2009 at 8:44 pm
“Both sides can and have made scientific mistakes.”
Mistakes, yes. Don’t know if I’d call anything the creationists have done ‘scientific’ quite yet.
“There is nothing wrong with both sides keeping each other honest.”
Let me know when the Discovery Institute starts being honest and I’ll endeavour to keep them that way.
(Forgive me, Andrew — I’m the resident snark :-p)
November 1st, 2009 at 9:04 pm
Jack Scanlan said .…“The creationist literature I read (which is, if I may say so, quite a lot) for the most part does not mention gene duplication. Usually there might be one article on that specific website about it, but as the action of gene duplication is supposed to help resolve the “problem” with informational increase, you would expect it to be mentioned in the thousands of articles on AiG, ICR, Creation.com etc. about that “problem” with evolution. However… it’s not. If they mention it at all, it’s tucked away in the site, not readily visible. ”
Andrew said.…“i searched creation.com by putting gene duplication into the search bar. 46 articles came up. hardly hidden or obscure. perhaps they were not listed on the home page and u looked no further.”
Then Jack Scanlan said.…
“Just because something is easily search-able, that does not make it easy to find. Remember that the vast majority of the people who visit creationist websites know very little about genetics, so how do they know to search for “gene duplication” if they have never been exposed to the concept?
In the vast majority of articles on creationist websites talking about “increases in information”, gene duplication is never mentioned.”
The first article on creation.com under the search for gene duplication says.….“Proponents of the gene-duplication hypothesis of evolution argue that a mutation can cause the duplication of a gene that allows one copy of the gene to mutate and evolve to perform a novel function, while allowing the other copy of the gene to continue to perform the original gene’s function. Gene duplication is now widely believed by Darwinists to be the main source of all new genes. A review of the evidence shows that there are numerous problems and contradictions in this theory and the empirical evidence indicates that gene duplication has a role in variation within kinds but not in evolution. “
Article 2 is a copy of Article 1.
Article 3…“Gene duplication
SEC raises an old canard, about new functions by gene duplication: RE2 ch. 5 points out the many problems with this idea. What would keep the duplicated gene ‘off’ while it mutates, until a new function arose totally by chance — natural selection can’t work on this gene unless it is translated — then be switched on with this new function? ”
Article 4…“Evolution requires a simple form of life to have morphed into increasingly complex organisms. Since the
basis for biological complexity is genetic complexity, some biologists propose that the complicated genomes in
modern organisms arose from one or a few genes in a common ancestor through duplication, with subsequent
neofunctionalization through mutation and natural selection. Here we examine the known mechanisms of gene
duplication in the light of genomic complexity and post-duplication events, and argue that: (1) gene duplications are
aberrations of cell division processes and are more likely to cause malformation or diseases rather than selective
advantage; (2) duplicated genes are usually silenced and subjected to degenerative mutations; (3) regulation
of supposedly duplicated gene clusters and gene families is irreducibly complex, and demands simultaneous
development of fully functional multiple genes and switching networks, contrary to Darwinian gradualism.”
Article 5…“Increased amounts of DNA don’t mean increased function
Biologists have discovered a whole range of mechanisms that can cause radical changes in the amount of DNA possessed by an organism. Gene duplication, polyploidy, insertions, etc., do not help explain evolution, however. They represent an increase in amount of DNA, but not an increase in the amount of functional genetic information — these mechanisms create nothing new. ”
Article 6.…“It is suggested here that diazinon resistance and multiple resistance from gene duplication may be the result of designed mechanisms that allow for adaptation in created life. It is pointed out that evolutionists are increasingly discussing genetic and metabolic systems within the context of computer programming. ”
do i need to go on?
obviously all 46 articles mention gene duplication and thats why they came up.
It is not the fault of creation.com if their visitors do not know to look for gene duplication. But that is not the real issue here.
The real issue is that you said .….“The creationist literature I read (which is, if I may say so, quite a lot) for the most part does not mention gene duplication. Usually there might be one article on that specific website about it, but as the action of gene duplication is supposed to help resolve the “problem” with informational increase, you would expect it to be mentioned in the thousands of articles on AiG, ICR, Creation.com etc. about that “problem” with evolution. However… it’s not. If they mention it at all, it’s tucked away in the site, not readily visible. “
This is clearly not true or perhaps you are the person that did not know to search for gene duplication.…or were you appealing to the ignorance of the readers not to verify your research and just accept that creation websites dont even mention gene duplication?
Answers in Genesis .….38 articles
ICR .….140 articles but not all appear to be gene duplication but appear to have searched gene (not as effective a search function)
of course all the sites are not supporting common ancestry. Creation.com is a big promoter of evolution but not common ancestry.
I think an apology is warranted.
regards
November 1st, 2009 at 10:05 pm
@ andrew:
“The first article on creation.com under the search for gene duplication says.….“Proponents of the gene-duplication hypothesis of evolution argue that a mutation can cause the duplication of a gene that allows one copy of the gene to mutate and evolve to perform a novel function, while allowing the other copy of the gene to continue to perform the original gene’s function. Gene duplication is now widely believed by Darwinists to be the main source of all new genes. A review of the evidence shows that there are numerous problems and contradictions in this theory and the empirical evidence indicates that gene duplication has a role in variation within kinds but not in evolution. ””
I have a link for you. You may not want to read it right now, but… here it is: http://www.naontiotami.com/?p=380
I’ve dealt with that article before. In February, actually. It contains one of my favourite “nonsensical” creationist phrases ever: “Some invertebrates can tolerate polyploidy. Male bees, for example, have a haploid number of chromosomes and females a diploid number. This does not cause the females to evolve faster, however, as the gene duplication theory might predict.” XD
“Article 2 is a copy of Article 1.”
That makes things simple. See above.
“Article 3…“Gene duplication
SEC raises an old canard, about new functions by gene duplication: RE2 ch. 5 points out the many problems with this idea. What would keep the duplicated gene ‘off’ while it mutates, until a new function arose totally by chance — natural selection can’t work on this gene unless it is translated — then be switched on with this new function? ””
This assumes that duplicated genes that have been mutated are, for some reason, selected against, or for some reason cannot be translated alongside the original gene. That has no genetic basis.
“Article 4…“Evolution requires a simple form of life to have morphed into increasingly complex organisms. Since the
basis for biological complexity is genetic complexity, some biologists propose that the complicated genomes in
modern organisms arose from one or a few genes in a common ancestor through duplication, with subsequent
neofunctionalization through mutation and natural selection. Here we examine the known mechanisms of gene
duplication in the light of genomic complexity and post-duplication events, and argue that: (1) gene duplications are
aberrations of cell division processes and are more likely to cause malformation or diseases rather than selective
advantage; (2) duplicated genes are usually silenced and subjected to degenerative mutations; (3) regulation
of supposedly duplicated gene clusters and gene families is irreducibly complex, and demands simultaneous
development of fully functional multiple genes and switching networks, contrary to Darwinian gradualism.””
Hmm. I’ll have to check that one out. Don’t hold that as a victory — just that I’m not an omniscient deity.
“Article 5…“Increased amounts of DNA don’t mean increased function
Biologists have discovered a whole range of mechanisms that can cause radical changes in the amount of DNA possessed by an organism. Gene duplication, polyploidy, insertions, etc., do not help explain evolution, however. They represent an increase in amount of DNA, but not an increase in the amount of functional genetic information — these mechanisms create nothing new. ””
Aha, but what about the mutation of the duplicated sequences? Seems a bit weird that they would suddenly forget about such a thing, considering that the articles above it explicitly mention it.
I’m going to call intellectual dishonesty here. For the time being.
“Article 6.…“It is suggested here that diazinon resistance and multiple resistance from gene duplication may be the result of designed mechanisms that allow for adaptation in created life. It is pointed out that evolutionists are increasingly discussing genetic and metabolic systems within the context of computer programming. ””
What suggests that? What evidence do they have to make such a design claim? I’ll check these articles out, but it doesn’t sound promising…
And that last sentence is not relevant.
“do i need to go on?”
Probably, but I’ll let you stop here. For now. If you want to.
“obviously all 46 articles mention gene duplication and thats why they came up.
It is not the fault of creation.com if their visitors do not know to look for gene duplication. But that is not the real issue here.
The real issue is that you said .….“The creationist literature I read (which is, if I may say so, quite a lot) for the most part does not mention gene duplication. Usually there might be one article on that specific website about it, but as the action of gene duplication is supposed to help resolve the “problem” with informational increase, you would expect it to be mentioned in the thousands of articles on AiG, ICR, Creation.com etc. about that “problem” with evolution. However… it’s not. If they mention it at all, it’s tucked away in the site, not readily visible. ”
This is clearly not true or perhaps you are the person that did not know to search for gene duplication.…or were you appealing to the ignorance of the readers not to verify your research and just accept that creation websites dont even mention gene duplication?”
Hey! Hey. I never said that they don’t mention gene duplication at all, I said that you usually don’t find it in articles talking about informational increase.
And it IS their fault if they don’t make the information clear! Jeez, they’re supposed to be persuading the general public — why implicitly withhold this information from them? It could at least have a mention in the thousands of articles about information theory, even if they think it doesn’t help the evolutionary situation.
“Answers in Genesis .….38 articles
ICR .….140 articles but not all appear to be gene duplication but appear to have searched gene (not as effective a search function)”
No, that wouldn’t be a good search term — you’ll get a whole lot of noise.
“of course all the sites are not supporting common ancestry. Creation.com is a big promoter of evolution but not common ancestry.”
Yes, I know. <.<
“I think an apology is warranted.”
I don’t. What am I apologising for?