Comment on Dr. John Sanford Lectures on Inevitable Genomic Deterioration by Sean Pitman.

@Ron:

The hundreds of mutations in a fruit fly would correspond to the random variation that exists at the beginning of the evolutionary experiment. We don’t know which mutations are going to be beneficial or detrimental until the environment changes. The definition depends entirely on what happens in the environment.

Given knowledge about the genome of the parent population at the beginning of the experiment, the average mutation rate per offspring per generation can be determined.

This mutation rate is now known. As Dr. Sanford explained, it is on the order of 100 novel mutations per individual per generation for humans (with a similar mutation rate for most other living things over a given span of time). Of these 100 mutations, greater than 30 are now considered to be functionally relevant to one degree or another. Of these 30, almost all of them are thought to be only slightly detrimental in their functional effect. The odds that one will be beneficial to any degree are generally agreed to be less than 1/1000 (with some estimates of less than 1/1,000,000).

In order to keep up with this rate of detrimental mutations, slowly reproducing creatures, like humans, would have to produce an average of over a trillion offspring per woman per generation – just to stay genetically neutral. This required reproductive rate would also require an equivalent death rate per generation. Obviously, this sort of reproductive/death rate isn’t remotely plausible for humans.

So, the obvious question, how can anyone possibly argue that we aren’t and haven’t always been headed for extinction as a species?

An example of this in humans is sickle cell anemia. In an otherwise minimally stressful environment with a high prevalence of malaria, sickle cell disease is beneficial because it makes it harder for the malaria to infect. As a result, natural selection is in favor of sickle cell.

Dr. Sanford mentioned the popular example of sickle cell anemia as a “beneficial” mutation as a classic example of devolutionary, or downhill, change. While this change is selectable in certain environments by natural selection, it is based on a loss of functionality from the perspective of the individual who suffered this particular mutation. There is no genetic improvement here. If more and more of these types of mutations were suffered by an individual, that individual would function less and less well and would eventually die given enough of these mutations. Just because he/she may be given a survival advantage in a particular environment relative to other individuals is irrelevant to the fact that this individual is not functioning as well. The hemoglobin molecule in SSA is damaged to the point where not even the malaria parasite can use it. Additional genetic insults of this type within a given gene pool will cause that gene pool to head downhill toward eventual extinction.

The challenge is that, we can be pretty certain neither Adam nor Eve had sickle cell disease in the garden of Eden. So then where did sickle cell come from? It came as a random mutation of a single base pair in the hemoglobin gene. This event, by definition, since it wasn’t there in the garden of Eden is an example of evolution which has occurred since creation.

Perfectly true. You’re absolutely correct. You just don’t seem to grasp the significance of the functionally downhill direction of this mutation…

The next question becomes, then what was God’s role in that event? Did it happen “naturally” with no involvement by God? Maybe as the result of sin? If you answer is yes, then you believe in a-theistic evolution. If you answer is no, I believe that God was involved in that apparently random event, then you believe in theistic evolution.

So, you believe that God directly causes sickle cell anemia? You do realize that the only people with sickle cell anemia that gain a survival advantage are those who are heterozygous for the disease? Who only have a single mutation instead of two? Those who are homozygous for sickle cell (have two sickle cell mutations), are very sick people with a markedly reduced survival rate. These people would die in childhood without the involvement of modern medical treatments. And you think God is directly responsible for that?

I suppose you think God also deliberately causes the mutations that produce childhood leukemia or Down Syndrome or cri du chat syndrome? – all of which are the result of apparently random mutations?

Of course, if you take my position, then you have to answer, how can a loving God create, or at minimum, allow sickle cell disease to cause so much suffering as it does in our world today. The answer to that question is more complex than I want to get into now. I believe it was the same reason he allowed sin in the first place. There are larger issues at stake which justify allowing the suffering.

Your position seems to me to make God out to be a monster far more evil and sinister than Hitler ever dreamed of being…

It is far better to simply say, as the Bible does, that decay and eventual death are the natural result of a separation from God’s constant personal care and regenerative creative power. We have separated ourselves from God, to at least some degree, at the moral Fall… and have been in a state of steady decay and degeneration, as a species, ever since.

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com

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