Biochemist Michael Behe argues in his book Darwin Devolves that much of what is thought to be evolutionary progress is actually devolution from higher levels of information to lower levels. This comes about when genes are broken in one fashion or another, the loss of the broken gene allowing other genes to express themselves differently (See the video series Secrets of the Cell).
This, however, means that for change to have occurred there must have been a greater amount of genetic information at the start than at the culmination which is exactly opposite of what the standard evolutionary model states. Why is it so hard for evolution to proceed in the way normally supposed by the standard theory and which most high school students are taught? Geneticist John Sanford explains:
Most DNA sequences are poly-functional and therefore must also be poly-constrained. This means that DNA sequences have meaning on several different levels (poly-functional) and each level of meaning limits possible future change (poly-constrained).Thus, almost any change in an organisms DNA would be catastrophic for the organism, but if this is so how did complex organisms with high levels of information encoded in their DNA evolve from simpler organisms with lower levels of information?
For example, imagine a sentence that has a very specific message in its normal form but with an equally coherent message when read backwards.
Now let's suppose it also has a third message when reading every other letter and a fourth message when a simple encryption program is used to translate it. Such a message would be poly-functional and poly-constrained.
We know that misspellings in a normal sentence will not normally improve the message, but at least this would be possible.
However, a poly-constrained message is fascinating, in that it cannot be improved. It can only degenerate. Any misspellings which might possibly improve the normal sentence will be disruptive to the other levels of information.
Any change at all will diminish information with absolute certainty....Changing anything seems to potentially change everything!
The answer we often hear from our Neo-Darwinian friends goes something like this: "It must've happened somehow because we know evolution is true, and we know its true because here we are!"
Well, yes, we might reply, but couldn't there be some other explanation for how we got here? To that query our friends often give an answer something like, "The only other live explanation is that we were created by a supernatural Being, but we know that's false because we know there's no such Creator."
And how do we know there's no such Creator? we might ask. "Because," we're assured, "Darwinian evolution has made such a being unnecessary and irrelevant."
Hmmm. Somewhere in that chain of "reasoning" a circular argument or two seems to be lurking.
