Natural selection verses evolution?

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You've been reading a creationist website, haven't you?

They're the only ones who attempt to misuse information theory as evidence against evolution like that. That argument is based on creationist pseudoscience, where they talk about "increasing information" without ever defining what they mean. They simply assert that it isn't possible, and then build their whole argument on that flawed premise. If you start with false premises you can "prove" ANYTHING.

The statement "Natural selection thins the gene pool" is a twist on the phrase "thinning the herd", so superficially it _sounds_ reasonable, however in reality that is not usually the case. "Thinning the gene pool" means reducing the amount of variation within a species' gene pool. While natural selection may select against some negative traits, reducing their frequency, it also selects for positive traits, increasing their frequency. In a large population, usually only the worst traits vanish entirely, the rest just become less common. Still, mutations of many varieties can produce new traits, so "lost" traits can reappear or brand new traits can emerge.

The phrase "evolution demands that information be added" is just wrong. Evolution is the change in the frequencies of alleles in a population over time. It doesn't require anything be added or lost. Furthermore, people using phrases like that usually don't define what "information" means in any specific way, preferring to simply state that mutations can't create new "information", because every time they do define it, scientists come up with a dozens of examples of mutations that create new "information" under that definition.

Creationists who misuse information theory like this try to claim that evolution can only reduce "information", and cannot create "information", because then they can claim that some "intelligent designer" (a.k.a. the Christian God) had to infuse that original information, and life has only deteriorated since then. Not only is that an untestable claim, but they usually ignore the evolution of new genes in things like nylon eating bacteria, when nylon, an entirely synthetic material with no natural analog, didn't exist until 1935, so a gene to metabolize it would have no purpose before nylon existed. They also either ignore the fossil record, which shows that life evolved over billions of years into the forms we see today, or they make an untestable and unnecessary claim that God... er... I mean an "intelligent agent" directed those changes. However computer simulations of evolution, such as genetic algorithms, demonstrate that intelligent intervention is totally unnecessary for evolution to work successfully.

In short, this fraudulent use of information theory is just more example of pseudoscience from the creationists, put forth to bamboozle the too frequently ignorant public into believing that evolution is wrong. Those who want to believe it's true will often swallow this claim whole without understanding it; ignoring all of the evidence that it just isn't true. Even if the basis of their argument were true (which is isn't), the facts demonstrate that their conclusions are incorrect.

P.S. I've found that "increasing information" and "Darwinists" are generally key words that indicate that you're dealing with a creationist, and not someone who understands science....Show more

Be careful with any site that makes the "no new information" argument. They are engaging in intellectual deceit.

The answer is fairly simple. In any large gene pool, there are many new genes entering all the time through mutations (and sexual recombination ... but lets ignore that for now). Natural selection is both the constant *culling* (removal) of those mutations that provide some disadvantage, and the *propagation* (spreading into the population) of mutations that provide some advantage.

Creationists who make this argument are focusing on the culling aspect, and deliberately ignoring the propagation aspect! The fact that mutations (no matter how rare) that provide some advantage (no matter how slight) will tend on average to spread into the population.


In this way, natural selection causes the gene pool to change over generations ... accumulating "new information" about the environment right in the DNA.

Let me give you an example:

Japanese scientists have discovered a strain of bacteria living in a waste pond near a factory, that has developed the ability to digest *nylon* (a man-made material)! They have traced the exact protein that allows the bacteria to digest nylon, and even the precise mutation (called a frameshift mutation) that changed a protein seen in other bacteria of its type, and accidentally produced a nylon-digesting enzyme.

Natural selection didn't *cause* that mutation. But it did cause that mutation to spread into the population from the single individual bacterium in which the mutation occurred. The very act of "thinning the gene pool" did indeed produce "new information" ... a gene that is now part of the species (in this case a bacterium strain) that did not exist before (as we know this because nylon wasn't invented until 1935).

If the genetic code to produce a new enzyme is not "new information" resulting from natural selection ... then I would challenge any creationist to give us a definition of what they *mean* by "new information."

-- P.S. --

I wrote this before realizing that HiEv used exactly the same example. It is particularly *CLEAR* example, but by no means the only one! The reason it is so clear is that nylon didn't even exist before 1935, and so any enzyme that digests it is *undisputably* new....Show more

Evolution doesn't demand anything. Evolution is just change in genetic makeup and gene frequencies over time. This could be a reduction in gene number, an increase in gene number, or a change in the proportion of genes in one population compared to another, among other things.

Natural selection is a single agent of evolution. It is a very powerful agent, and usually what we think of when we think about evolution, but it isn't the only evolutionary force at work. Others include gene flow, genetic drift, sexual selection, artificial selection, and mutation.

Natural selection does actually work to reduce variation. In a population with large amounts of diversity, those individuals that are the best adapted to their particular environment will be selected for, and those least adapted will be weeded out. Remember, though, that some of the other evolutionary forces actively increase variation at the same time. New mutations and sexual reproduction both generate variation. Gene flow (movement of genes between populations) can also produce increased variation. If you have two very different populations that come to interbreed, variation will go up as foreign genes are introduced into each population from the other.

Again, evolution has no requirements. It is just a process of change. It is the individual forces of evolution that can either work in unison or work in opposition to produce different types of change. Evolution as a whole is powerless because it is just the term for a process....Show more

A brief example- Natural selection is like some people failing to pass into the special forces while others get into it due to person strenght health etc (survival of the fittest) evolution on the other hand is the need to change age no matter what you will grow up (Constant compulsory change).

Evolution is an unstoppable machine
Natural selection can be a part of evolution or not occur at all its up to the conditions. Remember you dont have to upply to the special forces but you cant stop growing....Show more

DNA recombines endlessly, leading to huge variable characteristics. Results far outweigh the combinations of a state lottery. If the resultant combination is lacking, the creature does not survive. Natural Selection culls them out of the herd.

If a combination comes up that makes the creature better able to deal with the environment, it is said to have evolved, it survives, and passes on the trait. That is the upside of Natural Selection.

For Darwin, natural recombination of DNA, sometimes requiring interesting mutations, is the basis of Natural Selection, and Natural Selection is the mechanism by which Evolution works. Nothing needs to be added; what already exists needs merely to change....Show more