A Primer on Young-Earth Views of Speciation, Mutations and Natural Selection

How did the earth become populated by billions of species of living things? Conventional evolutionary biology provides an explanatory framework to answer that question. Intelligent Design advocates provide another as do Progressive Creationists (Old Earth Creationists).  But a large segment of the population looks to creation scientists (Young-earth creationists—YECs) to answer the question.

How do YECs respond to the question, “Where did all the species come from?”

I have answered this many times however I just listened to a talk given at Ken Ham’s Creation Museum on this very question.  Presented by Karina Altman (B.S. Marine Biology and current zookeeper for Answers in Genesis) it provides a good overview of their current thinking on the topic.  I don’t know Ms. Altman but who the speaker is matters little since most of the AiG speakers are simply reading the slides.  The presentations are carefully crafted by just a few individuals and so no matter who is speaking they are always presenting the view of Answers in Genesis as a collective. As a result, we can safely assume that the new slides in this talk represent the latest YEC-thinking (see footnote for caveat) on this topic.

I have taken a series of screenshots to provide a summary of the YEC answer to the question: Where did all the species come from?  I will show those screenshots in the order they were presented and provide some commentary as a way of reviewing the YEC view of speciation.

Altman begins her talk with the standard preliminary remarks about contrasting views and seeing the evidence through the correct glasses.   She then asks where species came from and begins by introducing the audience to the evolutionary explanation for the diversity of species.  Her characterization of evolutionary theory is critical since she will contrast it with the creation model of species origins.  In particular the idea that “life came from non-life” and the statement that changes in organisms are “undirected” will be especially important going forward.

Creation is “directed” while evolution is “undirected” is the strong wedge used to force the audience into one of two camps: atheistic evolution or young-earth creationism.  But are these properly framed options?  I don’t think so but let’s stay on task and look at how the YECs are selling their version of evolution to their audience.

All of the above statements contain substantial misconceptions or misrepresentations and yet they form the foundation of the creation model in response to evolutionary biology.

After setting the table by defining the evolutionary biology model the YEC model is introduced.  I think this set of statements provides an accurate summary of the current YEC understanding of the origins of biological diversity.   Let me explain in more detail what Altman (ie AIG) said about some of these points in the talk:

“Life came from Life”  This was contrasted with the evolutionary biology view that the original life came from non-living material.  Altman says that God made life and thus life came from life.  Yes, God made life and since God is alive it isn’t wrong to say that life came from life or was made by life.  But isn’t this a bit odd to say.   Does a plant or an animal or our being alive really the same as God’s life? His traits are not directly related to ours.  Our cellular metabolism isn’t related to His being alive.   But this statement is also contrary to the word of God.  In Genesis 1:25 God says “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind.”   One could hardly say that the “land” was living and so life gave rise to life.

And what about man?  Genesis 1:7 says “Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”  Now Altman might find a connection here between God and man in that God breathed into man but we generally agree that this isn’t referring to God making Adam’s cells start to function. This is usually taken to be the origin or endowment of the soul/nephesh/image of God on man.  We are told that man’s body was formed from the physical substance—non-living matter—of the earth.

“Changes within animal kinds are directed”  Altman claims that unlike the conventional evolutionary model which she claims involves “no direction” or just randomness the creationist’ evolution model asserts that all changes in species “are designed features that God placed in the genetics of these creatures at creation.”  She is suggesting that the features that we observe that distinguish species were present in the creation and that each of those features was directed (guided?) to their present configuration during the time since creation.

Now it gets more interesting.  After claiming that changes within animal kinds are “directed” we are now told how that direction happens.  You may be surprised that the way that God “directs” changes in species is via natural selection and mutation. Yes, this non-random directing of changes from one species into multiple species is accomplished via the process we call natural selection.

Yes, YECs are claiming that the variation necessary for all natural selection was created in the beginning—except for new mutations which is confusing but we will get there soon enough—but to take that variation and get it to become new species is being described here in completely naturalistic ways.  This suggests that God’s means of making new species can be ascribed to natural mechanisms that we can explore and understand with scientific methodology.

If you don’t think that YECs are ascribing creative capacity to the processes of natural selection just look at the next slide.

Answers in Genesis is defining natural selection as “a non-direction process” right after they have explained that “what caused diversity” which they claim is the product of “direction” is the process of natural selection.   Are you as confused as I am?

They are saying it is non-directional but can result in changes to organisms that make them more fit for their environment. How is that not changing an organism in a direction?  Probably we don’t understand what is meant by directional.

These terms, “directional” and “non-directional,” are so vague and mixed with the use of “directed” earlier in the talk that we can read almost anything we want into them but I think to the AiG audience at the Creation Museum these terms are very powerful and do convey a particular message.  It is the idea of God is sovereign and in control and there is a plan for each species since God knows and has determined the future.  Likewise, their audience has been trained to believe that evolution is equivalent to atheism and therefore evolution requires there be no God and thus no possible direction to what will happen.

Natural selection has no “goal” it is striving for, however, this doesn’t mean that natural selection is powerless to change organisms. If they environment gets colder you can expect that natural selection is going to selection genetic combinations, in conjunction with new mutations, that yield adaptive advantages in that colder environment. In this sense there is a move toward a endpoint. That endpoint is to be more adapted to a new environment.

I’m still confused.  Natural selection is “non-directional” and yet is responsible for guiding and directing the evolution of new species?  Maybe the speaker has something else in mind when she says changes are “directed” which is confused with “directional” here? Nonetheless, YECs are relying on natural selection to achieve the goals of God in His plan to fill the world with diverse creatures that are adapted to this world.   It is hard to say how this is different than how an evolutionary creationists or theistic evolutionist might describe the origin of species.

Ah, but now here comes the rub with YECs, they claim that natural selection can’t bring any new information into this world.  So natural selection can’t make anything other than from the variation that already exists in the “kind” at the beginning.  But think about this for a moment.  Even if we grant, despite being scientifically unsubstantiated, an enormous reservoir of genetic variation in the created kind, YECs are still claiming that it is natural selection that “chooses” combinations of genes (alleles) in organisms making them change into distinct species that are adapted to different environments.  How is this God’s directing?  Is this God using means to achieve an end and if we were to measure, study, and describe this process of natural selection could we identify how God acts in the process any differently than any evolutionary biologist might describe the action of natural selection?

Again, I have to say, all of this is very confusing and makes one wonder, exactly how do they think that God is directing natural selection?

In this slide we also see the common charge that natural selection doesn’t make new information but rather decreases or eliminates variation.  This is mostly true but they are wrong to think that evolutionary theory says that natural selection adds information or created information since it doesn’t. That is the role of mutations.

And if you thought this creation view of the origins of diversity was confusing, let us now look at their view of mutations.

The now familiar mantra that mutations do NOT result in a gain of information is repeated as is doing so repeatedly will make it true.  But there is a hint here at a slight shift in YEC views of mutations.  They now acknowledge that mutations DO contribute to the variation that we see within a kind and that mutations may result in differences that allow us to distinguish different species. The new way of talking about mutations is that they don’t add new information necessary to make new traits—read that as new body plans/organs—but they may add variation to previously existing features (e.g. changes to metabolic rates, skin and hair color, and scaling of body size).  They don’t consider this “new information” but rather just tweaking of genes that already exist.  The total package of genes—programs for making traits in their thinking—were all placed in the original kind so no new programs are created but these programs can be altered in ways that result in the appearance of new traits.  These are presumably still part of God’s directed plan because mutations were part of His plan to make variation that then could be selected to allow for adaptation to new habitats.

Do you see how YECs are talking about random mutations and non-directional actions of natural selection but still saying it’s all guided by God? How does this really differ from theistic evolution and evolutionary creation positions other than the timescale?  And if God is guiding the process why can’t he add new genetic information by way of mutation if mutations are allowed to change programs so that they can be adapted to new environments?

Now we get to the nub of the problem with mutations for YECs.  They are forced to admit that there are beneficial mutations.  They can’t just say that all mutations are bad anymore.  But again they stress that such mutations are not adding information but are causing losses of information.  The example provided to their audience is albinism.  Here a bird which normally is brown and matches its environment has had a mutation that causes it to lose the ability to make pigment and so is white.  This is claimed to be a “loss” of information because the “brown” working version of the gene has lost the ability to function. But this mutation could be considered beneficial if these birds with the white mutation where to migrate to a snowy environment.   Now the mutation confers an advantage (because of natural selection).  But according to YECs that benefit is only local and hasn’t added a new gene to the bird.  Therefore, this is just modifying the instruction set that already existed and so doesn’t count as new information or anything that could contribute to evolution.

These loss of function examples are YEC favorites because they believe this demonstrates the degradation of the genome (genetic entropy). What they usually don’t do is tell their audience about mutations which change the function of a gene such that it forms a new product resulting in new traits.  When confronted with such cases YECs will claim there is still no new information because it is a change in function of a program not the evolution of a whole new function via addition of a whole new set of programs.

Not wanting to acknowledge that beneficial mutations could add truly new things to organisms they have created a new category called “truly beneficial” (see slide below) which they then claim that evolutionist must demonstrate exist in order to change organisms.  What is a “truly beneficial” mutation you ask? For YECs it seems that these are mutations that always increases fitness in every organism that they occur in.

A YEC blogger recently defined beneficial mutations similarly:  “In order for a mutation to be beneficial, it must have no drawbacks, no negatives. Tradeoff mutations do not advance the cause of evolution. For evolution to proceed on its upward trajectory, it requires completely beneficial mutations.”  This statement is chock full of misconceptions about evolution but to stay on point let’s focus on “it must have no drawbacks, no negatives” and “trade-off mutations do not advance.”   We agree that truly beneficial mutations by this definition don’t exist.  By using this definition they have made beneficial mutations impossible but this definition has no basis in reality.

Is there any allele of any gene that always increases fitness or has no drawbacks and no negatives? I can’t think of one. There is no trait that any organism possesses that is always positive in every individual in every species.  The value of every single genetic variant whether you want to think of them as created by God in the beginning of created by mutation is determined in the context of the environment in which it exists.  A brown fur allele is a beneficial allele for a grizzly bear but the same allele would have negative fitness effects if that grizzly bear where to live in the same environment as a polar bear.

A favorite example of a mutation that is NOT “truly beneficial” in the mind of YECs is antibiotic resistance in bacteria. They will claim that the mutation that confers resistance to bacteria is “beneficial” “only in very specific environment.” That environment is one in which an antibiotic is present.  They therefore conclude that since it is not always beneficial to every bacteria that this is not a “truly beneficial mutation” that can result in evolution since evolution is said to require mutations to be “truly beneficial.”   As I said above, this definition means nothing.

No one thinks that such mutations exist and every evolutionary biologist agrees that a mutation can result in positive fitness in one context and negative or neutral fitness effects in another.  They all agree that antibiotic resistance only is helpful to some bacteria but the same mutation has a negative effect on bacteria that are not exposed to antibiotics.  But remember, the variant (allele) of the gene which YECs seem to think is the original created variant has a negative fitness value in the presence of antibiotics and so even that original condition is also not a truly beneficial variant by their own definition.

Lastly, we should point out that trade-offs are part of every single genetic interaction in every single cell and organism on earth so defining evolution as requiring beneficial mutation that have no trade-offs is to define it out of existence without considering the evidence.

Here we have confirmation of their present thinking that there were, at most, 1400 “kinds” of land animals on the Ark and that the hundreds of species that have been created since creation are the product of a starting kind with massive genetic potential.  And how did that original genetic potential become dozens of species of felines and canines? By the action of natural selection and mutations.

We have also learned that this genetic potential doesn’t necessarily contain all of the genetic variants that were needed to give us today’s species diversity. Rather they expect that all the programs for making cats were present in the original cat but there have been mutations that resulted in variation on that theme such as changes in hair color.

There you have it. It’s simple.  For the young earth creationist, what is the origin of species?

Descendants of original kinds experienced genetic reorganization, modification by mutations and were subject to natural selection which chose the variants that most suited new environments thus changing them over time into groups of individuals with enough genetic differences for us to able to easily discriminate different species. 

Hmm, I feel like I’ve heard of something like that before but not from creationists.

The question I am left with is, where is God in this process? The presentation felt deistic despite the statement that “changes within animal kinds are directed”. God is portrayed as placing all this variation into the original creation and then let them run out their programming. But that programming is also effected by mutations and it is not clear if they believe these are random, pre-programmed, immediately directed or something else.

I don’t ask these questions without having my own answers but rather I ask these questions because I wonder if YECs have really thought about what they are proposing. Have they really thought about how God works in this world?  Have they asked themselves if their answer to “where did all the species come from?” is any kind of improvement or really all that different than those given by Christians who believe species were formed over much longer periods of time but through the same processes?

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Footnote:  The version of evolution that Answers in Genesis is espousing here is not completely shared by other young-earth organizations.  For example the Institute for Creation Research has a much less rosy view of the capacity of natural selection to make new species. Other independent YECs have proposed other mechanisms for the origin of species and have either more restrictive or more permissive views on mutations.  What they all have in common is that they all propose naturalistic mechanisms to explain the origin of present day species.