Why Evolution’s Selection/Mutation Mechanism Fails

What part of neo-Darwinian evolution is actually random? Can random mutational processes account for the new information needed to drive the diversity of life on Earth? On this ID The Future, host Andrew McDiarmid reads selections from Dr. Stephen Meyer and Dr. Casey Luskin to find answers to these questions.

As Dr. Stephen Meyer writes, as a mechanism for the production of novel genetic information, it’s important to remember that natural selection does nothing to help generate functional DNA base sequences. It can only preserve such sequences IF they confer a functional advantage AND ONCE they have originated. The part of the evolutionary mechanism that gets credited with generating functional DNA base sequences is random mutational processes. So the all-important question becomes: do random mutational processes have the power to generate new base or amino acid sequences for natural selection to act upon within the time available to it in the history of life on Earth? McDiarmid shares insights into this question.

And it turns out that it’s not just multi-part machines which are beyond the reach of Darwinian evolution. The protein-parts themselves which build these machines would also require multiple simultaneous mutations in order to arise. McDiarmid shares insights from Dr. Casey Luskin on the extreme unlikelihood that a Darwinian process could produce the necessary innovation needed to get the credit for life’s biodiversity.

If you want the confidence to be able to tell your friends, family, and associates why modern evolutionary theory fails to account for the origin and diversity of life on Earth, you’ve got to, as Michael Behe says, “bite the bullet of complexity” and learn why evolution’s selection/mutation mechanism fails to deliver the goods. This commentary reviews a key tenet of the evolutionary perspective and shows why it weakens the argument for a naturalistic explanation for life on Earth.

Dig Deeper

• Read Dr. Meyer’s response to Richard Dawkins on whether the evolutionary process is random or non-random.

• Read Dr. Casey Luskin’s article on why random mutations cannot generate the information needed for irreducible complexity.

• Watch Dr. Meyer, David Berlinski, and David Gelernter discuss the mathematical challenges to Darwinian evolution: