Macroevolution vs. Microevolution
Does biological evolution exist? The surprising answer is yes! However, the type of evolution that is evident is not the evolution that is so commonly taught as fact today.
There are two categories of evolution: One is called microevolution and the other macroevolution. Microevolution happens within species, when small adaptations either take place to accommodate environment or are brought about by breeding. Macroevolution is the idea that one species evolves into another, the commonly understood theory of evolution. This second type of evolution has never been observed to occur.
An example of microevolution is seen in the many different breeds of dogs. The range is expansive, from the miniature chihuahua to the huge Saint Bernard, with every imaginable size and shape in between. However, one thing is certain: They are all dogs. There is no instance where a dog has evolved into a cat or a horse or any other species. The reason for this lies in the internal DNA information of the dog.
Common Ancestry
We are learning more about DNA and the information stored in the genomes of species. Although there is no biological process whereby more information can be added, some of that information can be lost. For macroevolution to work and one species to become another, information has to be added, which as already stated is impossible by any known biological means. However, in microevolution information is actually being lost. When an animal adapts to its environment, the information on how to adapt was actually in the animal’s DNA to start with. But in the process of this adaptation it is losing information about how to revert back to its original state.
Microevolution occurs but is the direct opposite process described by the theory of evolution.
This can be observed in dogs. All dogs at present on the earth come from the same ancestral couple that climbed down out of Noah’s Ark some 4,300 years ago. Within those ancestors lay the information to give rise to the multitudes of breeds today. However, take any breed of dog-collie, basset hound, German shepherd, and so on-and you will not be able to revert back to the original by selective breeding to what those two ancestors looked like. That is because as dogs bred into the various breeds, they lost information vital to reversing the process. The original and more complex information store has been simplified by the discarding of some of that information each time microevolution occurred.
Evolutionists claim that microevolution (adaptations within species) is proof of macroevolution, but this is untrue. In reality, the microevolutionary process is just the opposite of the process that evolutionists claim drives macroevolution.
Dazzling Design in Miniature
[Footnote: Excerpts from an article first published in: Creation Ex Nihilo 20(1):6, December 1997-February 1998.]
Prof. Werner Gitt
[Footnote: Dr. Werner Gitt is an information scientist. He is a director and professor at the German Federal Institute of Physics and Technology (Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt, Braunschweig) and is the Head of the Department of Information Technology. Dr. Gitt has written numerous scientific papers in the fields of information science, mathematics, and control engineering. He has also written several creationist books.]
The cells of the human body can produce at least 100,000 different types of proteins, all with a unique function. The information to make each of these complicated molecular machines is stored on the well-known molecule, DNA.
DNA
We think that we have done very well with human technology, packing information very densely on to computer hard drives, chips, and CD-ROM disks. However, these all store information on the surface, whereas DNA stores it in three dimensions. It is by far the densest information storage mechanism known in the universe.
Let’s look at the amount of information that could be contained in a pinhead volume of DNA. If all this information were written into paperback books, it would make a pile of such books 500 times higher than from here to the moon! The design of such an incredible system of information storage indicates a vastly intelligent Designer.
In addition, there is the information itself, which is stored on DNA, and transmitted from generation to generation of living things. There are no laws of science that support the idea that life, with all its information, could have come from non-living chemicals. On the contrary, we know from the laws of science, particularly in my own area of expertise [information science, mathematics, and control engineering], that messages (such as those that we find in all living things) always point back to an intelligent message sender. When we look at living things in the light of DNA, Genesis Creation makes real sense of the scientific evidence.
Cheating with Chance
[Footnote: Excerpts from Creation Ex Nihilo 17(2):14-15, March-May 1995.]
Don Batten
[Footnote: Dr. Donald James Batten is a creationist agricultural scientist from Australia. He received a Ph.D degree from the University of Sydney, Department of Agronomy and Horticultural Science. His specialty is in plant physiology. He worked in the New South Wales state research facilities for 18 years before becoming a private horticultural consultant while working also with the Creation Science Foundation, Brisbane, Australia.]
The argument from probability that life could not form by natural processes but must have been created is sometimes acknowledged by evolutionists as a strong argument. The probability of the chance formation of a hypothetical functional ‘simple’ cell, given all the ingredients, is acknowledged [Footnote: D.A. Bradbury, ‘Reply to Landau and Landau’ Creation/Evolution 13(2):48-49, 1993.] to be worse than 1 in 1057800. This is a chance of 1 in a number with 57,800 zeros. It would take 11 full pages of magazine type to print this number. To try to put this in perspective, there are about 1080 (a number with 80 zeros) electrons in the universe. Even if every electron in our universe were another universe the same size as ours, that would ‘only’ amount to 10160 electrons.
These numbers defy our ability to comprehend their size. Fred Hoyle, British mathematician and astronomer, has used analogies to try to convey the immensity of the problem. For example, Hoyle said the probability of the formation of just one of the many proteins on which life depends is comparable to that of the solar system packed full of blind people randomly shuffling Rubik’s cubes all arriving at the solution at the same time. [Footnote: F. Hoyle, ‘The big bang in astronomy’ New Scientist, 92 (1 280):527, 1981.]- and this is the chance of getting only one of the 400 or more proteins of the hypothetical minimum cell proposed by the evolutionists (real world ‘simple’ bacteria have about 2,000 proteins and are incredibly complex). As Hoyle points out, the program of the cell, encoded on the DNA, is also needed. In other words, life could not form by natural (random) processes.
Creationists do not argue that life is merely complex, but that it is ordered in such a way as to defy a natural explanation. The order in the proteins and DNA of living things is independent of the properties of the chemicals of which they consist-unlike an ice crystal, where the structure results from the properties of the water molecule. The order in living things parallels that in printed books where the information is not contained in the ink, or even in the letters, but in the complex arrangement of letters which make up words, words which make up sentences, sentences which make up paragraphs, paragraphs which make up chapters and chapters which make up books. These components of written language respectively parallel the nucleic acid bases, codons, genes, operons, chromosomes and genomes which make up the genetic programs of living cells. The order in living things shows they are the product of intelligence.