by Lenny Flank
(c) copyright 2006
It did not take creationists long to link their "second law of thermodynamics" argument to their (mis)understanding of information theory, and declare yet another "disproof of evolution". Now, they argued, entropy, as applied to information theory, makes it impossible for any "new genetic information" to appear, and therefore evolution cannot happen:
"The Second Law of Thermodynamics could well be stated as follows: In any ordered system, open or closed, there exists a tendency for that system to decay to a state of disorder, which tendency can only be suspended or reversed by an external source of ordering energy directed by an informational program and transformed through an ingestion-storage-converter mechanism into the specific work required to build up the complex structure of that system. If either the information program or the converter mechanism is not available to that 'open' system, it will not increase in order, no matter how much external energy surrounds it. The system will proceed to decay in accordance with the Second Law of Thermodynamics." Henry Morris, ICR Impact #40)
"Genes do not evolve new information. They remain stable in their function or they degenerate and go through various steps of loss of efficiency which are increasingly detrimental to the organism." (AIG, Creation Magazine, Nov 1980)
"All observed biological changes involve only conservation or decay of the underlying genetic information." (Carl Weiland, AIG Creation Magazine, April 1991)
"Natural selection produces or uncovers previously unseen combinations of genes that have always been there and remain unchanged. . . . If evolution were true it certainly would produce a change in the ratio of the types of genes which were present, because it would be adding new genetic information which previously did not exist. But the converse of this is not necessarily true. You can change the gene frequency or the ratio of the genes that are already present as much as you like, but unless you add new genes you won’t get evolution. . . . Evolution, if it were to occur, would require the creation of completely new genetic information. " (John Creeper, AIG, Creation Magazine, May 1984)
"From all we know about mutations occurring today, they are virtually always harmful or, at best, neutral. Of all of the variations which appear to be true mutations, one can count on one hand the examples that can be considered as possibly beneficial. Because of this, the creation model predicts that almost never would adaptive variation in the prehistoric past be due to mutations, but rather would be a result of created variability." (Lane Lester, ICR Impact #18)
Creationism itself, of course, proves this notion to be wrong. After all, according to creationists, every human being alive today is descended from the eight people that got off Noah’s Ark. Since I assume those eight people were diploid like all of us, that means they had a maximum possible of 16 different alleles for every genetic locus (actually they must have had fewer, since some of them were descendents of others and therefore must have shared alleles, but I will give the creationists the maximum possible benefit of the doubt.) If the creationists are right and "genetic information cannot increase" and there are "no beneficial mutations", then this means there can be no human locus -- none at all -- that have more than 16 different alleles.
Yet there are over 200 known alleles for some of the hemoglobin genes, and over 400 alleles for some of the HLA genes.
Since there couldn’t have been more than 16 on the boat, and since there are well over 200 now, that means that genetic information has increased (after all, 200 is more than 16).
Despite creationist claims, there are observed instances of mutations which have produced totally new proteins with new functions. In 1975, for instance, Japanese biologists caused a stir when they discovered a variety of flavobacteria that had the unique ability to digest nylon. Since nylon itself didn't even exist until it was artificially produced in 1935, it was apparent that this bacteria couldn't have existed prior to that. When its genetics was examined, researchers discovered that the gene which normally produced the protein that helped the bacteria digest carbohydrates had suffered a mutation known as a "frame shift", in which an extra nucleotide had been inserted into the beginning of the gene. The effect of this was drastic; since the genetic code produces proteins by reading the nucleotides in groups of three, putting an extra nucleotide at the beginning produces different groups of three all along the gene, and thus results in a completely different protein, as this example illustrates:
normal gene: ATCCTGCGCTACGTCGTA
insert nucleotide: C
frame-shifted gene: CATCCTGCGCTACGTCGT
Instead of reading the gene as ATC CTG CGC TAC GTC GTA, it is now read as CAT CCT GCG CTA CGT CGT, a completely different protein.
In most circumstances, this would be a disaster -- the new protein would likely be nonfunctional, and the organism would likely die. In the case of the Japanese flavobacteria, however, the new protein had the very weak ability to break down nylon into edible components, thus allowing the bacteria to digest previously-inedible nylon, instead of its normal food of carbohydrates. And, since nylon itself didn't exist until 1935, and wasn't very abundant in the environment for several years after that, the bacteria must have undergone this mutation only recently, within the last 40 years.