Natural Selection: Evolution’s Deceptive Disconnect

[Note: This paper is the first installment of three parts exploring how natural selection is disconnected from what it purports to explain. This first part deals with the Material Disconnect. The second part will address the Intellectual Disconnect. The third part will speak to the Spiritual Disconnect.]

The Material Disconnect

Abstract

Evolutionary theory sets forth two change mechanisms for biological evolution: descent with modification (via inherited genetic variation) and natural selection.[1] Each change mechanism explains “change over time” and both together are purported to explain the necessary evolutionary changes to transform a first life form into all current life forms. Examining the necessary evolutionary change required to explain all current life forms reveals the true role of natural selection. In fact, natural selection plays no role in producing necessary evolutionary change, and this “deceptive disconnect” carries implications materially, intellectually, and spiritually.[2] This first installment reveals the material disconnect by showing that natural selection did nothing to cause or explain any evolutionary change leading to any current living thing.

Evolution’s Necessary Change

After more than 150 years, Darwin’s theory purporting to explain the origin of species enjoys virtually irrefutable status in the field of biology. Often termed “evolution by natural selection,” or sometimes simply as “the theory of natural selection,” one thing is clear: Natural selection stands as the key mechanism at work in modern evolutionary theory. Darwin himself referred to natural selection as the keystone in the metaphorical arch of his book.[3]

Whether key or keystone, developing the idea of a natural “selector” in nature to sort among competing varieties of organisms also set Darwin apart in the annals of science. And his theory has survived mainly on the widely accepted idea that natural selection does something key in the evolutionary process. Central among the attributes of natural selection is the notion that it operates non-randomly to bring streams of order out of the rivers of disorder flowing into nature from random genetic variation in offspring.

Most evolutionists reject Darwin’s characterization of natural selection “scrutinizing” or “sensibly working” in nature. But modern evolutionists come close to the same personification of natural selection when they variously describe it as a being a “direction giving force”[4] or capable of “guiding” each step of the evolutionary process.[5] Others, steering away from any “sensibly working” connotations land on metaphors of passive “sieves” or “rachets” to describe natural selection’s “doing something” role in nature to explain evolutionary change.[6]

All the various descriptions of natural selection can be rejected as irrelevant if it can be shown that natural selection, by any characterization, is disconnected from any explanation of the necessary evolutionary change required for evolution of current life forms. “Necessary evolutionary change” consists of change required to explain how a first living thing evolved into every current living thing. Despite other types of evolutionary change, necessary evolutionary change includes only change sufficient to explain how the genetic code of the first replicating life form changed into the genetic code of all current life forms, including human beings.

The focus on “necessary evolutionary change” resolves many of the common conflicts encountered when discussing the general topic of “evolution.” First, there is no need to attack “evolution” per se; evolution in some sense clearly happens in nature. Even Christian scripture describes evolution in a broad sense. In Acts 17:26 the Apostle Paul explains the true God to an audience of religious pagans: “From one man [Adam] he [‘the God who made the world and everything in it’] has made every nationality to live over the whole earth and has determined their appointed times and the boundaries of where they live.” Every person on earth evolved from Adam and the current human population exhibits an extremely wide array of differing physical traits and features.

Second, examining necessary evolutionary change removes the need for peripheral notions such as “micro-evolution” and “macro-evolution” often raised by creationists but generally disregarded by evolutionists. Further, focusing on necessary evolutionary change avoids getting sidetracked by otherwise worthwhile studies of “genetic drift,” “gene flow,” and other descriptions of the chance changes in numbers or location of existing gene variants in a population.

Third, concentrating on necessary evolutionary change constrains the inquiry to what kind of change is necessary to explain evolutionary development of life’s diversity. If evolutionary processes explain life’s current diversity from a theorized first life form with its genotype and phenotype, then necessary evolutionary change must be the kind capable of explaining new genotypes (genetic coded building instructions) and phenotypes (physical traits and features built by the new coded building instructions).[7]

We consider for discussion purposes that the first living thing that started the evolutionary process was a microbe.[8] It was a microbe because it had a genetic code to build a microbe with a microbe’s traits and features. If the offspring of that microbe never inherited genetic change, and offspring never passed heritable genetic change to their offspring, then the only life on earth today would be a large population of microbes.

Because billions of different genotypes and phenotypes live on Earth today, we must consider the necessary evolutionary change required for the current diversity of life, including humans. Like the microbe, a human is a human because it has a genetic code to build a human with a human’s traits and features. Evolutionary processes must explain how the coded building instructions to build a microbe without eyes, lungs, a heart, hands, feet, or a brain got reprogrammed into the coded building instructions for all those things and much, much more needed to build a human.

As depicted in Diagram 1, “necessary evolutionary change” refers to the change that must have occurred if evolutionary theory explains all current life forms.

Diagram 1: Necessary Evolutionary Change

Addressing the Meaning of the Term Evolution

Inquiring about necessary evolutionary change offers the great advantage of divorcing the inquiry from any one description or definition of evolution. Popular textbook definitions of evolution, for example, tend toward those involving changes in the “frequency of alleles” in a population of organisms.[9] Here is one typical definition: “[E]volution can be precisely defined as any change in the frequency of alleles within a gene pool from one generation to the next.” (Curtis and Barnes 1989: 974).[10] Many leading evolutionists—including Ernst Mayr, “America’s foremost evolutionary biologist”[11]—reject such “population genetics” definitions of evolution as “not explanatory” and even “misleading”[12] because they fail to account for the origin and existence of the alleles in the population to start with.

While modern evolutionists describe evolution as a change in allele frequencies among generations, this meaning is quite different from other, primarily earlier meanings. One leading evolutionist and textbook author, for example, recognizes the difference in earlier and later descriptions of biological evolution. This prominent author and educator notes that fundamentally evolution is about “the change in the properties of groups of organisms over the course of generations [and] it embraces everything from [1] slight changes in the proportions of different forms of a gene within a population to [2] the alterations that led from the earliest organism to dinosaurs, bees, oaks, and humans.”[13]

By considering necessary evolutionary change, any meaningful view of evolution—regardless of its definition—must account for more than “slight changes in the proportions of different forms of a gene within a population.” To explain how a microbe evolved into every current living thing on earth today, necessary evolutionary change must at least also account for “alterations that led from the earliest organism to dinosaurs, bees, oaks, and humans.” Teaching one form of evolution as true (changes in population demographics) and implying another as true (change from microbe to all current life) is the reason why definitions can be “misleading” and will be discussed in the next installment of this paper.

Ironically, given it is usually presented as an undeniable safe haven by evolutionists and considered by others as a dodgy canard, a solid place to start may be this definition: evolution is “change over time.” To ground it more solidly in biology, we can agree with the Cambridge Dictionary that “change over time” refers to “the way in which living things change and develop over millions of years: Darwin’s theory of evolution”.[14] The inquiry into evolutionary theory, then, must center on the way things change, and the kind of change produced.

Evolutionary Change Over Time

To explain evolutionary “change over time” in any meaningful manner is to fully explain the necessary evolutionary change that led from the earliest organism to dinosaurs, bees, oaks, and humans. For discussion purposes we will refer to this as “microbe-to-man” evolution. Microbe-to-man evolutionary change is distinct from popular illustrations of evolution showing finch beak variations, peppered moth populations, or a rise in drought-resistant plants. Such intra-genus change over time due to environmental changes and “selection pressure” is interesting, but does not explain the origin of the finches, the moths, or the plants subjected to the environmental changes and selection pressures.

What does explain the origin of finches, moths, or plants? As mentioned above, evolutionary theory offers only two mechanisms for change. First, heritable genetic variation passed to offspring results in change to the genetic building instructions in the parent-to-offspring lineage. Darwin referred to this phenomenon as descent with modification and modern evolutionists recognize that modifications arise primarily via random genetic variations. Second, natural selection changes the number of survivors who live to reproduce by removing those not adapted and fit for their environment.

The key to determining evolutionary theory’s ability to explain microbe-to-man change lies in considering the kinds of change explained by each of evolutionary theory’s two change mechanisms. To understand this difference, consider Diagram 2: Evolution: Change Over Time, which shows an evolutionary change cycle in the context of the famous Peppered Moth example of evolution. Employed in biology textbooks as an illustration of natural selection’s role in evolution, the Peppered Moth example is based on an observed phenomena in 19th-century England.

A good summary of the Peppered Moth story can be found at BioMed Central (BMC): “Prior to 1848, peppered moths in Britain where [sic, were] white or off-white, more or less speckled with black: the typica form [online shows an image of light-colored moth]. In 1848, in Manchester, a black, or melanic, form of peppered moth, f. carbonaria [online shows an image of dark-colored moth], was recorded (Edleston 1864). By 1895, 98% of the Mancunian [from or relating to Manchester, England] peppered moths were of this black form.”[15] The BMC account introduces this example as “one of the clearest and most easily understood examples of Darwinian evolution in action and that it should be taught as such in biology classes.”[16] BMC explains why: “Most people have heard of the peppered moth story. This is, in brief, the story of a moth, Biston betularia, that turned black following the industrial revolution and subsequently is turning back to its original white and black speckled pattern.[17]

Referring to Diagram 2, the first column shows time passing from top to bottom. The time frame indicated is clearly limited as it relates specifically to the Peppered Moth example. But evolutionists maintain that the evolutionary change illustrated by the Peppered Moth example has operated repeatedly through time, eventually producing all current living things.

Moving right on the diagram there is a column to note “Environment Change” (discussed below) and then a column labeled Peppered Moth Example which contains a flowchart of evolutionary change. The flowchart is explained with reference to the circled numbers 1-6.

Diagram 2: Evolution: Change Over Time

We start at 1 on the flowchart with the existing light-colored Peppered Moth called Biston betularia typica, its origin having occurred in the past. This light-colored moth was essentially the only moth known in the population of moths at that time. The light-colored moth was light-colored (its phenotype) because its coded building instructions (its genotype) included a gene for coding color, and this gene coded for a light-colored moth.

The light-colored moth produces offspring, and at 2 on the flowchart the question arises as to whether any genetic change passed to the offspring. If no, then the genotype of the offspring did not change, and no evolutionary change has occurred. If yes, the process moves to the next inquiry at 3 on the flowchart: was there also a change in the phenotype of the offspring. If no, then the random genetic variation produced a change in the offspring’s genotype only. Thus, as indicated in the “What Changed” column, only the genotype changed in a way unrelated to color, and the moth population remains all light-colored.

If the inquiry at 3 on the flowchart is answered yes, then as indicated in the Mechanism of Change column, random genetic variation produced a change in the offspring’s genotype sufficient to produce a new phenotype, specifically a dark-colored moth. As indicated in the “What Changed” column, the genotype and phenotype have now changed over time to produce two moth variants. When did this change happen? It is difficult to know, but according to the University of Oxford, “in 1811 a dark form of the Peppered Moth, called carbonaria, was discovered in Britain for the first time.”[18]

After phenotypic change happens, as indicated at 4 on the flowchart, two varieties of the Peppered Moth now exist. What explains the new dark-colored moth? The University of Oxford continues, “Previous experiments had shown that the colour of British Peppered Moths was determined by a single gene. Individuals with one variant of the gene (allele) were light, and individuals with another allele were dark.”[19]

Note that both the light- and dark-colored Peppered Moths derived their coloration from the same gene locus in their genetic building instructions. But the two varieties exist because at some time before 1811 the gene for coloration passed from a light-colored moth to an offspring with random genetic variation producing a new code to build a dark color in the moth offspring. This new code in a gene variant, called an allele, produced a new organism: the dark-colored moth. As shown in the column “Mechanism of Change,” the production of the gene variant, i.e., the allele, that produced dark-colored moths occurred due to random genetic variation in offspring and is an example of descent with modification.

Due to the evolutionary mechanism of descent with modification, we see in the “What Changed” column that the genetic code of the original light-colored moths changed over time sufficiently to produce a new phenotype, the dark-colored moths. Now, two moth alleles exist in nature. That is, two variants of the gene in the moth genome exist, one producing light-colored moths, and one producing dark-colored moths. The phenotypes produced by these two alleles in nature exist together in a population of moths, as indicated at 5 on the flowchart. So far, natural selection has yet to play a role in evolutionary change over time.

As indicated in the “Time” column, around 1848, scientists began observing changes in the proportions of light- and dark-colored moths in the moth population. For about 50 years after 1848, as indicated in the flowchart, the proportion of dark-colored moths steadily increased until around the turn of the century when virtually all the light-colored moths were gone. In evolutionary terms, the “frequency” of “alleles” in the population of moths changed over time as the relative numbers of dark-colored moths increased and the relative numbers of light-colored moths decreased.

As indicated in the “Environment Change” column, the reason for this change is attributed to a change in the environment, specifically soot production on tree trunks due to England’s rapid industrialization during the Industrial Revolution. It seems that birds feeding on the moths could more easily spot the light-colored moths on darkened tree trunks, leaving the now-camouflaged dark-colored moths to survive in greater numbers. In evolutionary terms, the inherited genetic variation of the dark-colored moths rendered them better adapted and fit in a changed environment, enabling them to survive and reproduce in greater numbers. This change in the relative numbers of color (alleles) in the moth population forms the basis for popular textbook definitions of evolution focusing on “changes in the frequency of alleles.”

As indicated in the “Mechanism of Change” column for the population of moths indicated at 5 on the flowchart, the mechanism for the change over time in numbers of light- and dark-colored moths is natural selection. The inherited genetic code in light-colored moths left them poorly adapted to the changed environment. With no evolutionary change mechanism available to adapt further, the more visible light-colored moths were eaten by birds in larger numbers than the better-adapted dark-colored moths.

Further changes in the environment, such as those following the Clean Air Act of 1956, began to reverse the situation. As indicated in the “Time” column, by about 1962 the proportions of light-colored moths had recovered appreciably. With the changed environment in which dark-colored moths no longer blended into tree trunks darkened by industrial soot, the proportions of dark- versus light-colored moths changed accordingly. It appears that at least partially because of Britian’s Clean Air Act of 1956, today the “frequency of alleles” in England’s moth population again shows a high proportion of light-colored moths.[20]

The changed environment of the Peppered Moth population illustrates how natural selection operates. One moth’s allele rendered it adapted to survive during an environmental change, while the other moth’s allele rendered it unfit for survival in the same period. Further environmental changes continued to determine what inherited adaptations led to fitness and survival, or unfitness and removal.

Importantly, however, as noted in the “What Changed” column, no necessary evolutionary change occurred due to natural selection operating during the years of environmentally driven change over time. After two moth alleles arose in a population via descent with modification, the only additional changes were (1) the environment, and (2) the population demographics of the already evolved alleles. The “change over time” produced by natural selection is a change in proportions of existing phenotypes, not a change to any genotype or phenotype. As indicated at 6 on the flowchart, after natural selection operated to cause fluctuations in the numbers of light- and dark-colored moths, the two alleles, i.e., the two varieties of Peppered Moths, remain unchanged by the effects of natural selection.

Natural selection plays no role in producing, adapting, changing, or otherwise modifying any genotypes or phenotypes in nature. Natural selection comes into play only after random genetic variation produces new alleles in genotypes by descent with modification. And the only change that natural selection can explain after the appearance of evolved organisms is the removal of some already-evolved organisms to alter population demographics relative to other already-evolved organisms.

In the context of our Peppered Moth example, natural selection played no role in producing the dark-colored moth variety. Further, after the environment changed and the inherited traits of the light-colored moths rendered them more visible to birds, the only additional change explained by natural selection was not further adaptation by phenotypic change, but only their death in greater numbers relative to the dark-colored moths. This “change over time” in the population demographics cannot and does not lead to any additional genotypic or phenotypic change.

Evolution’s Material Deceptive Disconnect

Focusing on the “Mechanism of Change” and the “What Changed” columns of Diagram 2 illustrates evolution’s deceptive disconnect. Only one of evolutionary theory’s change mechanisms explains the kind of change over time relevant to microbe-to-man evolution. And it is not natural selection. Natural selection contributed nothing to explain necessary evolutionary change. In any example of natural selection offered as evidence for evolution, the alleles that survive at greater frequencies in a population do so not because of natural selection, but despite natural selection removing other alleles. The disconnect is material to the validity of evolutionary theory’s place in modern biology.

The disconnect exists because organisms that survive natural selection do so “unchanged over time.” And it is only the survivors who populate the unbroken chain of parent-to-offspring descent with modification in every evolutionary lineage from first life to all current life forms. These survivors arrived alive in nature adapted and fit to survive in their environment due solely to their inherited traits and features. And they survived and reproduced in the unbroken ancestral lineage of current living things unchanged, again, not because of natural selection, but despite natural selection.

It is true that natural selection acts in nature. And it is true that natural selection causes evolutionary change over time. But the change over time that natural selection explains is limited solely to demographic changes by removal of some in a population of already-evolved organisms. This kind of change is irrelevant to the necessary change that produced the organisms in the first place.

Natural selection did nothing to cause or explain any evolutionary change leading to any current living thing. To believe evolutionary processes as the explanation for all current life forms, one must believe that the evolution of all current life forms from the first life form happened solely by descent with modification as heritable genetic variation repeatedly passed to offspring in an unbroken chain of microbe-to-man lineage.

No rational thinker can maintain that all current life forms originated solely as the product of descent with modification. That is why natural selection is guarded as the key and keystone of evolutionary theory. But the key unlocks nothing, and the keystone fits only mental arches in the minds of evolutionists. The fact that a useless key and an arch-less keystone continue to prop up evolution as an unassailable theory in biology illustrates natural selection as evolution’s deceptive disconnect.

About the author:

Roddy M. Bullock is a degreed engineer (BSME) and licensed attorney (JD). Bullock has studied and written about evolutionary theory for almost two decades. His first book, The Cave Painting: A Parable of Science, uses allegorical fiction (and non-fiction explanatory end notes) to explain principles of design in nature. Without Excuse, Evidence for Creation by God is Bullock’s latest book. Without Excuse provides evidence-based reasons to (1) reject natural selection as an explanation for human existence, and (2) embrace Genesis-account creation as true history.

Bullock is the founder of Creation Reformation, an organization focused on “taking back the creation narrative” by exposing the lie of evolution and the truth of God’s creation. A key component of Creation Reformation’s mission is promoting The Natural Selection Paradox: “Natural selection did nothing to cause or explain any evolutionary change leading to any current living thing.” Explanations can be found at www.naturalselectionparadox.com.

Creation Reformation’s web presence:

Website www.creationreformation.com

Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/CreationReformationWorld

Substack at https://creationreformation.substack.com/

[1] Online searches for “mechanisms of evolution” will yield more than these two changes. But other changes, usually “gene flow” and “genetic drift,” are only “mechanisms” in the sense that they contribute to changes of the kind explained by genetic variation or natural selection. Gene flow, for example, is movement of individuals (genetic material) into a population. No evolutionary change happens with this move absent consequent genetic mutation in offspring, i.e., descent with modification. Likewise, genetic drift involves the chance loss of alleles in a population. The “change” produced by chance loss of alleles is the same in kind as that produced by natural selection; the result in nature is the same. Further, “epigenetics” is often cited as a cause of evolutionary change. But epigenetic changes, however produced, affect evolutionary change only if they are passed to offspring as genetic variation in gametes. As such, the field of epigenitics simply posits another version of explaining inherited genetic variation in offspring.

[2] This idea is expressed and explained further as The Natural Selection Paradox. For more information, including examples of mainstream science organizations and universities that affirm The Natural Selection Paradox go to www.naturalselectionparadox.com.

[3] https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/people/about-darwin/origin-species/writing-origin.

[4] Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species, A Facsimile of the First Edition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964), introduction by Ernst Mayr. Mayr’s complete quote: “That natural selection is a direction-giving force, within the limitations of the evolutionary potential set for a given species by its genotype, has now been substantiated abundantly.”

[5] Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1996), 318. Dawkins attributes a “guiding” ability to natural selection when he states that chance variations can be “tamed…only if there is a mechanism for guiding each step in some particular direction, otherwise the sequence of steps will career off in an endless random walk.”

[6] See, e.g., Paul Davies, The Fifth Miracle, The Search for the Origin of Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999), p. 42. Davies describes natural selection as a great sieve to continually “sift” mutants, and acts like a “ratchet, locking in the advantageous errors and discarding the bad.”

[7] “Genotype” refers to the coded genetic building instructions contained in the DNA of every living thing. “Phenotype” refers to the physical traits and features produced by an organism’s coded genetic building instructions. As an analogy, think of the genotype as a blueprint and the phenotype as the building.

[8] What the first life form may have been nobody knows. All conjecture about a first life form is exactly that: conjecture. For our purposes it does not matter what the first life form was, and we choose a microbe to be consistent with modern science. See, e.g., https://naturalhistory.si.edu/education/teaching-resources/life-science/early-life-earth-animal-origins#:~:text=With%20an%20environment%20devoid%20of,about%203.7% 20billion%20years%20old.

[9] “Allele” is the word that we use to describe the alternative form or versions of a gene.” (https://www.genome.gov/genetics-glossary/Allele#:~:text=%22Allele%22%20is%20the%20word%20that,or%20 abnormal%2C%20or%20mutant%20alleles.) Genes are segments of an organism’s DNA that contain coded instructions for building the molecules that make the organism. If in a population of organisms two versions of a gene exist at the same locus on the organisms’ DNA and give rise to different traits, the gene is called an allele. For example, in the context of a moth population where a gene codes for light or dark coloration, “frequency of alleles” in a population is synonymous with “relative number of moths of a light or dark color” in a population.

[10] Note that this is not a definition; it is merely an observation of the supposed result of evolution. Consider if photosynthesis was “defined” the same way: “Photosynthesis can be precisely defined as any change in the frequency of color within a leaf pool from one season to the next.” For a good summary of definitions of evolution, consult the evolution-defending National Center for Science Education, https://ncse.ngo/defining-volution#:~:text=Evolution% 20may%20be%20defined%20as,%2C%20descent%20 with%20modification.

[11] Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species, A Facsimile of the First Edition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964), back cover.

[12] https://ncse.ngo/defining-evolution-0.

[13] See, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/evolution/, citing Douglas Futuyma, leading evolutionary biologist and textbook author (bracketed numbering added).

[14] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/evolution Nov. 28, 2023.

[15] https://evolution-outreach.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1007/s12052-008-0107-y

[16] Ibid.

[17] Ibid. (Italics for “that turned black” added. As will be explained in the next installment of this paper, this loose use of language hides natural selection’s intellectual disconnect from evolution).

[18] https://learningzone.oumnh.ox.ac.uk/peppered-moth-natural-selection-experiments#:~:text=However%2C%20in%201811%20a%20dark,more%20common%20in%20unpolluted%20areas.

[19] Ibid.

[20] https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/biston-betularia.