Natural Selection

And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good. (Genesis 1:24-25)

Natural selection is the means by which Charles Darwin proposed all life on earth sprang from a common source. From where or how that common source first appeared he did not explain nor can his modern devotees.

According to Dictionary.Com, natural selection is “the process by which forms of life having traits that better enable them to adapt to specific environmental pressures, as predators, changes in climate, or competition for food or mates, will tend to survive and reproduce in greater numbers than others of their kind, thus ensuring the perpetuation of those favorable traits in succeeding generations” (emphasis mine). That is a very reasonable definition of what we observe in nature. (For purposes of this discussion, I will limit “life” to those creatures that have “breath” and “blood” in keeping with the biblical definition of life.) All living things possess traits that enable them to survive and thrive in their unique environments. A population achieves stasis when the dominant traits pass on to succeeding generations. Weaker elements of the population are eliminated either through infanticide (mothers kill their own young when they detect abnormalities) or through genetic deficiencies that prevent certain individuals from surviving in their environment. This “process” assures a healthy population.

Not long ago, my wife and I visited a raptor rescue organization in Sitka, Alaska dedicated to restoring to health bald eagles and other predatory birds found wounded in one fashion or another. Once the birds are healthy, they are returned to the wild. At the shelter, they had a female bald eagle that they kept for public education purposes. She was beautiful except that her upper and lower beak overlapped – crossed over each other – in a way that would prevent her survival in the wild. With her distorted beak, she would not be able kill and eat her prey. She could survive in the shelter only because she was handfed small portions of food that she could manage. The staff at the shelter neutered her so that she could not reproduce and pass on the defective trait to her progeny. However, in the wild, the process of natural selection would ensure that her defect would not propagate because she would likely starve to death before procreating. That is what natural selection accomplishes; it prevents perpetuation of unfavorable traits in succeeding generations.

Darwinian evolutionists acknowledge this attribute of natural selection but further attribute an additional process whereby minor changes in the traits over long periods enhance a creature’s ability to adapt to its environment. They suggest that minor beneficial mutations over time improve the creature’s chances of adapting to changing environments. Never mind that such beneficial mutations have never been observed or that such a notion violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics, i.e. entropy. Things in nature tend to degenerate; they do not improve. That is why natural selection is important to maintain stasis in a species.  Without it entropy takes over, and a species degenerates to the point of extinction.

Evolutionists “believe it is totally rational to explain that life’s complexity results from the ever-upward pressure of natural selection’s ability to see and save traits, though it, itself, is undirected and absolutely blind to any goal. [They] must use words like ‘undirected’ and ‘blind’ to reinforce that natural selection, not God, creates nature’s design.”[1] “Genetic alterations called mutations can profoundly affect expression. Evolutionists believe a major source of new genetic material is mutation. The vital need, however, is some type of management—a substitute designer that ‘sees,’ ‘selects,’ ‘saves,’ and ‘builds’ with mutations. ‘Natural selection’ is intended to fill this role.”[2]

So, unwittingly, evolutionists attribute to nature intelligence and discernment to select traits suited for the creature as dictated by their environment. Nature and natural selection effectively take the place of God as Designer and Creator.

The absurdity of the evolutionists’ notion of natural selection presents several problems besides the obvious. Nature is just what is. It does not possess the ability to think, to choose, or to select. Nature is simply what exists around us – our environment. It is the air around us, the earth beneath us, and the creatures that share our planet. That is all nature is. That aside, for nature to produce the diversity that we see in life, it would have to overcome the hurdle of irreducible complexity, i.e. everything needed for life and for reproduction must be present all at once in order for the creature to survive. Even the simplest single-cell life form is so complex that it cannot survive if a single protein is missing in its makeup. Not only that, but if nature could manage to create the first single-cell creature from which all other life would spring, it must accomplish this feat not only once, but multiple millions of times simultaneously to ensure survival of the prototype. Nature must then overcome or reverse the effects of entropy to allow minor beneficial mutations to change the creature into other forms without losing the original prototype. Variations at first reproduce asexually, but as they become increasingly complex over millions of years, sexual reproduction becomes necessary. Here nature must jump another huge hurdle. Nature now must create male and female simultaneously. If nature creates a male and no female, or vice versa, the new species dies – no evolution. The more we ponder this belief, the more the problems exacerbate. One wonders how such a notion qualifies as “science.” Of those who religiously hold to this fantasy, the Bible says, “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools” (Romans 1:22).

God built into His creation a system by which stasis can be achieved and maintained. This system might be called natural selection or it might be called survival of the fittest, but in either case, the purpose is to maintain the health – the good traits – in a population. In nature, there exists a food chain where predator lives off prey, but if the predator exhausts its food supply, the predator will starve and die out as well. When the jackrabbit population explodes, the coyotes feast, until the jackrabbit population diminishes. Then the coyote population begins to die off. Only the strongest of the population survive. Meanwhile, with the diminishing coyote population, the jackrabbits multiply and there is resurgence. Eventually the coyote population comes back due to the abundance of food, and the cycle starts over. This is by God’s design and it has nothing to do with evolution. Following the Global Flood recorded in Genesis 6-9 God promised, “While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease” (Genesis 8:22). This is exactly what we see in nature. When God created sea creatures and creatures of the air on Day Five (Genesis 1:20-23), He determined that they would reproduce “after their kind.” He created them all complete and perfectly suited to their environments, and He declared His creation “good” (Genesis 1:21). When God created the land animals on Day Six (Genesis 1:24-25), He determined that they would reproduce “after their kind.” He created them all complete and perfectly suited to their environments. The Bible makes no allowance for evolution. Natural selection, as a system designed by the Creator, serves to maintain the health of a population, but its design does not promote evolution of one “kind” into another. God does not need “nature” to help Him create. He created nature, and all the systems needed to run this wonderfully complex world in which we live. Nature does not “select.” God creates!

Notes:

[1]  Randy Guliuzza, P.E., M.D., “Natural Selection Is Not ‘Nature’s Intelligence’” http://www.icr.org/article/natural-selection-not-natures-intelligence/

[2]  Randy Guliuzza, P.E., M.D., “Darwin’s Sacred Imposter: How Natural Selection Is Given Credit for Design in Nature” http://www.icr.org/article/darwins-sacred-imposter-how-natural/