Does Natural Selection Create Diversity?

It's very common for evolutionists to claim that natural selection creates diversity. I could provide a hundred sources where they say this but I chose one succinct one to include here:

After spending time on the islands, he [Charles Darwin] soon developed a theory that would contradict the creation of man and imply that all species derived from common ancestors through a process called natural selection. Natural selection is considered to be the biggest factor resulting in the diversity of species and their genomes. (source)

On the one hand, I can understand the confusion: from a single bear-kind, we have 8 modern species of bear. That's diversification, right? But is natural selection the tool that creates diversity? According to evolutionists, it is. I think they're more than a little confused. There's no doubt that part of their problem is that they notoriously conflate evolution and natural selection. It's compounded by the fact that people who reject the Bible necessarily hold irrational beliefs. It's typical for Bible critics to have opinions in direct contradiction to reality.

Here's the problem: natural selection removes unsuitable traits from a population. That's all it ever does. So it's rather bizarre to believe that removing traits can create diversity. To illustrate the utter folly of such a notion, I will appeal once again to the most famous of all examples of evolution – the peppered moth. If you have a population of light and dark colored moths, and if birds continuously ate the light colored moths, what would you have left? That's right, you would eventually have a population of only dark moths. You see, the population is less diverse than it was; a population of light/dark moths becomes a population of dark moths.

Here's still one more, real world example. A while back, I blogged about a Science Daily article where scientists studied the effect on the population of indigenous lizards when predatory lizards were released onto a group of islands. The predatory lizards began eating the smaller lizards and, in a few months, it was noticed that the surviving lizards tended to have shorter legs. They speculated that the short-legged lizards could climb better and so could escape the predatory lizards. Here's a quote from the article:

Evolutionary biology is by its nature an historical science, but the combination of microevolutionary experimentation and macroevolutionary historical analysis can provide a rich understanding about the genesis of biological diversity.

Perhaps the researcher cannot see the absurdity of this statement. The population previously contained long and short-legged lizards. After the experiment, the islands contained short-legged lizards. Once again, the population is less diverse.

Natural selection cannot explain the origin of diversity. Instead, it only acts upon diversity already present in the creature. It's easy to see, for example, how natural selection can select short-legged lizards from a population which has both long and short legs. However, natural selection doesn't explain how the population came to have both long and short legs in the first place!

Biblical creation explains wonderfully what we observe. God created diversity in the original kinds. Just like two mutt dogs can have pups of all shapes, sizes, and colors, so too could the ancestral kinds on the Ark have offspring that looked different from themselves. Natural selection acted on this diversity and turned varied creatures into specialized creatures, well adapted to their environment. God created diversity; natural selection created species.

I would dare say that evolutionists don't even understand their own theory. The only candidate that could possibly add diversity to a population is mutation. Theoretically, mutations can add feet to fish. Mutations might make short legs become long legs. Mutations (as the theory goes) could explain the origin of diversity. Once mutations have introduced diversity, only then does natural selection begin her methodical task of removing the unsuitable features. Mutations are the hero of evolution. Natural selection is the opposite of evolution.

But as I've already said, evolutionists conflate natural selection and evolution. The addition of novel traits to a population (i.e. diversity) is evolution. The removal of unsuitable traits is natural selection. If evolutionists want to demonstrate the origin of diversity, they need to spend their time talking about trait-adding mutations. However, trait-adding mutations are exceedingly rare - if they exist at all - so they really have no examples they can put forth as evidence for their theory. Therefore, all they can do is talk about is natural selection. They can say that natural selection creates diversity. We know it can't. They can say that light/dark moths becoming dark moths is evolution. We know it isn't. They can say natural selection is evolution. Like I said, they deny reality.

Happy Labor Day 2012

To many people, Labor Day seems to be one of those holidays that means little more than a day off work. I'm sure I'm not the first one to notice the irony in celebrating working people by having a day without work but it is what it is.

Anyway, I've come to view Labor Day as a day to assess our freedom. The freedom to work for money is a sign of liberty. To choose how to invest your time and effort , to earn a paycheck, and to spend the money as you wish are things that free people do. Conversely, to be forced to work and then turn over your earnings to someone else is the very definition of slavery. I fear we're becoming a nation of slaves.

As I write this, our nation is $16 trillion in debt and we're adding more than a trillion more dollars every year. The only way the debt will ever be paid is by taxing future generations. A child born today will bear a portion of that debt that totals more than the child will earn in his entire lifetime so the debt is generational and will be an immediate liability owed by our children, and their children, and even their children. Every dime we're spending now will be taken from our great grand children's paychecks. They will be working for our benefit. By definition, they will be our slaves and will have to work to pay our bills even though we'll be dead and gone.

We should view Labor Day as a type of Independence Day. Let's make a vow to stop deficit spending and stop feeding the leviathan that is our federal government. Let each person enjoy the fruit of his own labor instead of turning over a larger and larger part of his paycheck in the form of taxes. More importantly, let our grandchildren do the same.

Hybrids: Different Species, Same Kind

During my recent discussions about dogs and foxes, the subject of hybrids came up. Some subjects are a little more weighty than others and the weightier ones are difficult to discuss in a few paragraphs. Hybridization happens to be one of those weightier ones since there are so many examples of hybridization that I can't explore them all. Nevertheless, I'm always eager to give a layman's opinion in my effort to defend the faith so I'm going to plow ahead.

“Hybrid” describes the offspring of two different species. Some people use reproductive tests to identify species. Thus polar bears (Ursus maritimus) are a different species than grizzly bears (Ursus arctos horribilis) because they don't normally reproduce together in the wild. However, we have discovered that, on rare occasions, these species have bred in the wild producing hybrid cubs. The offspring of such unions are called a “pizzly” if the father were a polar bear and a “grolar bear” if the father were a grizzly. Either way, the simple fact that these different species do occasionally hybridize in the wild undermines the use of a reproductive test to identify a species.

I've always favored using morphology to identify a species. Once a population has enough traits in common that they can all be identified as belonging to the same group, then they earn the moniker of species. Thus bears with large bodies, white fur, long necks, and pointed faces are “polar bears”; bears with smaller bodies, brown fur, short necks, and flat faces are “grizzly bears.” Admittedly that definition has it's own difficulties but at least it acknowledges the fact that identifying a species is more subjective than objective. It also dispels the mistaken impression that species are absolutely distinct and don't reproduce together.

The term “hybrid” is a sort of misnomer and gives a false impression of the importance of reproduction between different species. Hybridization is so common that I'm surprised that a reproductive test is even considered as a possible way to distinguish one species from another. The reproductive boundaries are crossed frequently in the wild and are absurdly common in captivity. Let's look at a few of the more interesting ones.

We've already talked about pizzly/grolar bear hybrids but there have been many crossovers between other bear “species” (usually in zoos): a Malayan Sun bear and a sloth bear, a sloth bear and an Asiatic black bear, a black bear and a spectacled bear, and a black bear and a sun bear.

Cat hybrids are fairly well known but the number of combinations is still remarkable. Lions + tigers is especially common; the offspring are called either ligers (lion fathers) or tigons (tiger fathers). Other examples among the Panthera genus include lion/leopard hybrids, lion/jaguars, tiger/jaguars, tiger/leopards, and jaguar/leopard. The features exhibited among the cubs of these unions sometimes blend the parents' features so well they appear to be Photoshopped together.

Horse and donkeys have been bred for centuries to produce mules. However, in spite of their differing chromosomes, horses call also reproduce with zebras (zorse) and zebras can breed with donkeys (zeedonks). The offspring of these combinations are almost always sterile.

Domestic cows can breed with buffalo (beefalo). 

Camels can breed with llamas (camas). 

Wolves can breed with domestic dogs (wolf dogs) and with coyotes (coywolves).

Besides mammal species, fish also hybridize. A while back, I blogged about hybrids between the Australian black-tip shark and the common black tip shark. Scientists called that “evolution in action” but I won't go into that now. It again represents the fact that the boundaries between species is not a reproductive one. Hybridization also occurs among birds, insects, and especially plants. Again, there are far more examples than I can begin to address in a single blog post.

Speciation and hybrization are especially relevant to an understanding of creation. The Bible says that God created animals “according to their kind” (Genesis 1). When Noah entered the Ark, he had “kinds” of animals on board with him. There are millions of known species and perhaps millions more undiscovered. However, the vast majority of these millions include bacteria, plants, algae, fungi, and insects. Noah did not have to make accommodations for any of these (though many probably did make their way on the Ark).

According to Wikipedia, there are only about 62,305 species of vertebrate animals. About ½ of these are fish and another 10% are amphibians. Noah did not have to provide for these either. That leaves less than 25K vertebrate species Noah had to concern himself with (never mind that some of the mammals and reptiles are also marine dwelling). So, does this mean that Noah had to take 50K animals on the Ark (a male and female of each species)? Hardly. We've already seen that “species” aren't distinct. There are eight species of bears but Noah did not have 16 bears on the Ark; he had 2. There are 41 cat species but Noah did not have 82 cats on the Ark; he had 2. Ditto for the many species of dogs, cattle, squirrels, deer, parrots, ducks, etc.

I've heard varying estimates of the number of animals Noah would have had to have on the Ark in order account for the number of species we have today. Some estimates are as low as 3,000 while others range as high as 15,000. Even the highest estimates are far less than the “millions of animals” caricature used by evolutionists to criticize the Flood event.

“Species” is a label we use for convenience. Though I sometimes chide evolutionists about it, I really don't have a problem with the term; I only object to the idea that when populations specieate that they have somehow “evolved.” The ancestral kinds on the Ark were necessarily genetically diverse. The descendants of the original Ark-kinds (cats for example) have adapted to their various ecological niches around the world. The resulting populations are called “species” (lions, tigers, lynxes, ocelots, cheetahs, etc). Each one possesses different combinations of features already present in the original kind. When the different species hybridize, they merely recombine the same features in new ways. We could potentially get new species but we won't get new kinds.

To Speciate or Not to Speciate; What's the Question?

Secular science is the epitome of contradiction. I see it so often that it seldom surprises me anymore. While looking for quotes for my last post, I came across still another amusing example. Since it wasn't relevant to the point of that post, I didn't bring it up then. However, I cannot let it pass without comment.

In my last post, I quoted a NY Times editorial. You can read the entire article here but I wanted highlight two points it made.

The key event for the young Earth creationist interpretations of geology and biology is the great flood, which the [Creation] museum places at 2348 B.C. Obviously, Noah’s ark could not fit two of every single land animal. The exhibit notes that the Bible says two of every “kind” of animal, so there weren’t two dogs, two wolves, two dingo dogs, etc., but rather one pair of wolf-like dogs. After the flood, the two wolf-like dogs multiplied and “diversified” into a panoply of species.

That's a fairly accurate description of the typical, creationist position. The animals taken on the Ark were representative kinds and the thousands of terrestrial species alive today are descended from the few thousand kinds on the Ark. However, in the same article, the author made this comment:

Usually, creationists make a distinction between “microevolution” — antibiotic resistance among microbes, for instance, which they accept — and “macroevolution” — the appearance of new species, which they dispute.

Isn't that funny? I mean, which is it? Do creationists believe in speciation or don't they? Obviously creationists don't “dispute” the appearance of new species – I just object to calling speciation, “evolution” (either micro- or macro-). However, this science blogger can't seem to make up his mind. How can he say at one point that creationists believe in hyper-evolution only to immediately assert that creationists deny speciation at all? Such is the irrational reasoning of non-believers.

Evolutionists will sometimes say anything to discredit creationists. They will even lie. It's rather typical for them to make up caricatures of creationists beliefs which they then ridicule. Their default position is that creationists deny “macroevolution,” which they say includes speciation. This very claim was raised in the video, “Things Every Creationist Must Deny” which I blogged about a while back. However, when creationists talk about speciation that has occurred since the Flood, evolutionists do a 180 and accuse creationists of believing in “hyper-evolution.”

I've heard both of these criticisms before, I just can't think of a time when I've heard them both used at the same time. This particular evolutionist couldn't keep his objections straight so he employed them both.  It's a sort of reflex.  I often suspect evolutionists of not being sincere but in this case, I'm sure of it.