|
|
First published: 
Morning Glory’s Designer Label clothing
Reading through secular scientific journals and magazines, I have yet to see a writer ‘Ascribe to the Lord the glory due to his name’ (Psalm 29:2). Instead, when researchers report their studies of animals, plants, Earth and starry skies, they implicitly give the glory to ‘evolution’. A recent genetic study of the ‘morning glory’ plant, for example, speaks of the ‘evolutionary transition’ from purple/blue flowers (Ipomoea purpurea) to red flowers (Ipomoea quamoclit).1 A closer look, though, shows it is not evolution at all. Evolution—in the sense of pond scum becoming petunias, or molecules becoming morning glory—requires an uphill change, an increase in genetic information. But the researchers describe how their claimed ‘evolutionary transition’ from blue to red flowers in morning glory is actually a downhill change; a decrease in information. Purple loss leaves evolution in the red
The ancestral (normal) blue/purple floral colour is due to pigments derived from a chemical called cyanidin. But the researchers discovered that mutations in Ipomoea quamoclit block production of cyanidin. Therefore a different chemical called pelargonidin builds up, resulting in red pigments and flowers. The researchers readily acknowledge this has been a downhill change, using such phrases as ‘pathway degeneration’ and ‘loss of the ability [to perform certain chemical processes1]’. Thus the researchers concluded, starkly: ‘This degeneration makes it very unlikely that I. quamoclit would be able to re-evolve cyanidin-based blue/purple pigments … ’. Why? Because, the researchers say, it would require multiple simultaneous mutations. These mutations would have to add information, i.e. it would require an uphill change.
But this is the opposite direction to observed mutations today.2,3 So instead of saying that reversing the blue-to-red change was ‘very unlikely’, the researchers might just as well have said ‘impossible’. Indeed, they cite ‘Dollo’s law’—which states that character elimination is irreversible—as applying in this case. Thus the net information change in going from purple to red is one of debit, not credit, leaving evolution on the wrong side of the ledger—bankrupt of the necessary information (or any mechanism to generate it) to climb out of the red. Created, not evolved
If chance processes (evolution) cannot explain the origin of morning glory’s blue/purple flowers—let alone morning glory itself—what is the explanation? the net information change in going from purple to red is one of debit, not credit, leaving evolution on the wrong side of the ledger—bankrupt of the necessary information (or any mechanism to generate it) to climb out of the red The Bible (Genesis 1:11–12) tells us that God made the plants (and everything else) as part of an originally ‘very good’ Creation (Genesis 1:31). But because of the first man’s disobedience the whole creation is now cursed (Genesis 3, Romans 8:19–22)—which logically explains the downhill slide from blue/purple to red (see box). The Bible also tells us that from studying plants it ought to be obvious that they must have had a Designer (Romans 1:20). How could you ever get something that grows from a seed, extracts its own construction and maintenance materials from its surroundings, all fuelled by solar energy,4 arising by chance? And as we delve further into the inner workings of plants, their mind-blowing intricacies become ever more apparent—man has not yet even fully described or identified all the processes going on in plants, let alone been able to duplicate them. It’s as if every plant comes with its own label proclaiming: ‘Designed!’ How apt that the words of our Creator, Lord and Saviour about the ‘lilies of the field’ reflect the superiority of what He has made over that which is man-made: ‘I tell you, not even Solomon in all his glory was clothed like one of these’ (Luke 12:27).
References and notes
|
||
