Biological Devolution

One fairly recent development in evolutionary biology that has the potential to revolutionize our understanding of Darwinism (or Neo-Darwinism, if the reader prefers) is the discovery that evolution is, so far as researchers have been able to ascertain, a process which proceeds from the top down rather than from the bottom up.

In other words, change occurs when pre-existing genes are blunted or broken, not newly created by genetic mutation. As Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe explains in his book Darwin Devolves the variation we see in living things is the result of a devolutionary process. Mutations only rarely create new genes, rather, they break old ones, a process which causes new traits to appear.

A recent paper by Andrew Murray at Current Biology confirms Behe's thesis. Murray writes this:

In laboratory-based experimental evolution of novel phenotypes [structural appearance] and the human domestication of crops, the majority of the mutations that lead to adaptation are loss-of-function mutations that impair or eliminate the function of genes rather than gain-of-function mutations that increase or qualitatively alter the function of proteins. Here, I speculate that easier access to loss-of-function mutations has led them to play a major role in the adaptive radiations that occur when populations have access to many unoccupied ecological niches.

The standard naturalistic Darwinian theory holds that life originated as a primitive self-replicating cell and over the eons evolved, by creating genes through the process of mutation, into the grand diversity of living things we see today.

On the contrary, the devolutionary theory implies that the genetic material was present at the outset, that many kinds of organisms already existed, and that through a process of genetic deterioration those primitive kinds devolved into the even more diverse array of different species that we see today.

The significance of this is that if this devolutionary theory continues to gain traction among researchers it would inevitably raise the question of how the pre-existing genome, from which descended all the various kinds of plants and animals, came to be in the first place.

That question has not only immense biological significance but equally immense philosophical and theological significance since it would not only turns the standard Darwinian view on its head, it would also dramatically conform to the view of an initial creation by an intelligent agent.

You can watch a series of five short (6 minutes or so) easy to follow videos on this new development in biology by going here. Here's the trailer for the series: