Keeping Christ in His Creation
A recent study came out that claimed that some plants have evolved explicitly to avoid harvesting by humans. The study claimed that a species of plant, Fritillaria delavayi, a plant whose bulb is used regularly in Chinese herbal medicine, has evolved to make it harder for humans to find it and harvest it. The study, published in the journal Current Biology, is very interesting, but equivocates on the word “evolution”, like most so called evidences for evolution do.
The problem here is three fold. One, the evolutionists are very inconsistent with their application of this definition. Second, measuring fitness in this way is, in a sense, the ultimate rescuing device. Third, fitness must be measured at the organismal level, not the genetic level, but evolutionists almost always appeal to genetic fitness.
We are constantly told that evolution can build the genome over time, through chance mutations favored by natural selection. But what if this claim is false? What if the genome is not improving? What if, instead, it is actually degrading over time? Further, what if the scientific community has known this for decades and refuses to acknowledge it because of the damage it would do to evolution? Welcome to the premise of Dr. John Sanford’s book, Genetic Entropy. In the book, Sanford, a former evolutionist and emeritus professor at Cornell University looks at whether evolution, the “primary axiom” as he terms it, can work, using population genetics.
Animals with deleterious mutations were less likely to breed and pass on their mutations. This is a sort of differential reproduction but at the organismal level. It is foolish to speak of natural selection at the genetic level, but at the organismal level, it makes more sense.
In His Image 