Despite Diversity Dogs Defy Definition

OK, so it’s a silly title, but I just like the alliteration. So, what is this all about? It’s about the fact that there is no way to distinguish a poodle from a wolf!

I’m Not Joking

This is not a joke. What we all take for granted as enormous physiological distinctions, clearly visible to our eyes, are almost non-existent! There is just about no way to distinguish between the myriad breeds of dog scientifically.

Isn’t that amazing? I am really stunned by that fact.

I have always assumed that a visible distinction would be clearly discernible in the DNA of a creature and that these very obvious features would have equally obvious genetic descriptors. It is not so!

What the Experts Say

I know you won’t believe me, so let me quote from an authority on the subject.

Here is a published quote based on a letter written by a Research Professor on Jan 30, 1990.

“….Breeds of dogs can not be distinguished from each other by any known anatomical attribute or even biochemical genetic test, including DNA fingerprinting. Since a given breed of dog can not be defined by any scientific means currently known, our contention is that it is not possible to write any ordinance or law that would single them out for special treatment since they cannot be so defined in a legal sense. “Recently I attended a canine genetics workshop at Texas A & M University in which it was further emphasized that there is no biochemical genetic test that can even distinguish wolves from domestic dogs. “….I would taxonomically identify all wolves, wolf hybrids and domestic dogs as the species Canis lupus. Technically, the domestic dog and wolf hybrids should be designated as the sub-species “domesticus”. I. Lehr Brisbin, Jr., Research Professor, Savannah River Ecology Laboratory, The University of Georgia. Letter, 30, Jan. 1990

Those Distracting Physical Distinctions

If dogs that are as diverse as the Chihuahua, the Great Dane and the Poodle can defy definition despite diversity (just to use my alliteration again) then we see the opposite of evolution before our eyes.

What the diversity of dogs does is do a deadly duel with dilly-dallying dodos ……

Oops… Sorry about that.

Evolutionary thought starts with observation of diversity and superiority of function and tries to imagine how these things emerged from nothing. Evolution must justify distinctions that facilitate the survival of the fittest, allowing for natural selection. It must then imagine how the very physical feature itself could have developed through progressive stages.

Evolution’s starting point is those distracting physical distinctions. But we have seen that those wonderfully diverse and distinct evidences creating quite individual superiorities of function can be invisible in the genetic code.

Punctuated Equilibrium

The progressive evolutionary concept is so fraught with difficulties, such as degeneration of the existing structure in the process of moving toward a more suitable structure, that it simply defies all logical suggestion.

Thus some evolutionists have tried to conceive of a more miraculous (all evolution is a miracle) spontaneous transition process. Stephen Jay Gould proposed the concept of Punctuated Equilibrium, which recognises that transitional forms do not exist but that rapid transition is more supportable from evolutionary interpretation of fossil layers (note that Noah’s global flood gives another much more plausible explanation for the fossil layers – but that factor is not acceptable to atheistic scientists who must reject the evidence and the historical records to support their empty theories).

Punctuation, then, is the magical process by which a new expression of an animal species can suddenly appear as if from nowhere. Those who believe in Punctuated Equilibrium do so with sober expression on their faces and then expect the waiting world to accept such explanations as: “What Is The Mechanism Of Evolution In These Cases? The theory of Punctuated Equilibrium does not say, and it shouldn’t.”

It shouldn’t? I beg your pardon, sirs, but you MUST! Otherwise you are simply distracting the wonderful minds which God created into a backwater of vain speculation so they will commit intellectual suicide and throw their marvellous minds into the trash can of evolutionary delusion.

The Amazing Genetic Library

The scientific study of dogs, however, is not supportive of progressive evolutionary progress nor of punctuation. Instead it supports the concept of an amazing genetic library from which each species can draw to find its most suitable advantage in diverse settings.

Natural Selection is not a tool of evolution, but a servant of the created genetic code. Charles Darwin’s observations do not support the God-less ideas of the evolutionists but the very opposite. The concepts of natural selection and “survival of the fittest” fit the scientific evidence of a profound genetic pool for each species, from which diversity can spring, even in a punctuated expression, contrary to evolution.

Punctuation Is God’s Tool, not Evolution

Describing Punctuated Evolution it is said that, “The point of the theory is only that evolution is more likely to happen to small groups, isolated from the homogenizing effect of the larger main group.”

This is not a description of evolution at work, but of natural selection drawing particular gene expressions from the pre-existing genetic pool. An isolated small group will experience in-breeding and thus the accentuation of some genetic expressions. That smaller group will either be weakened or strengthened by the resultant manifestation of selected features. Survival of the fittest will allow the appropriate expressions to gain some ascendancy.

Voila! God’s amazing and loving provision for His creation is activated to positive effect. A new breed of dog emerges, better adapted to the situation.

No New Genetic Information

Yet, as we saw earlier, there is no discernible change in the genetic information. Scientists cannot take the gene and distinguish it from the gene of the parent community, or even the originating source community after thousands of years.

There is no new genetic information. There is simply a fresh genetic expression.

Gene expressors and selectors are probably the key elements here. But that is not good news for the evolutionists. Gene expressors are not part of the creation of new genetic code, but simply the switching from one piece of code to another.

It’s A Dog’s Day for Darwin

Dear Charles, Sir, you were wrong. You were desperately and deceptively wrong. You turned everyone’s attention to the visible, discernible qualities, such as those you observed at Galapagos, when all along it wasn’t about the physically discernible distinctions at all.

You distracted science from its core business of exploring the glory of God and had wonderful young men and women digging in the dirt for non-existent missing links and scouring the world for evidence of something that simply does not happen. You destroyed several generations of brilliant minds. Shame on you.

It is recorded that you loved dogs and had eight of them in your large household. You should have asked them about your theories – they have more to reveal about the things you questioned than your own books possess.

You should have talked with your dog.

For more information about the failure of evolution and for evidence for special creation go to: http://creationontheweb.com

Allow me to take you through a simple explanation of Genetics. This is “Genetics for Dummies”. It’s not meant to get anyone a post-graduate degree, but rather to give ordinary people a sense for the territory which comes under the general heading “Genetics”.

One hundred years before I was born takes us back to the middle of the 1800’s. No, that’s not when I was born! I was born in 1953. (I had no idea working with “Dummies” could be so frustrating!).

OK, all jokes aside, let me take you back to the middle of the 1800’s to a German Monk who patiently and meticulously worked on a theory that heredity is carried by both parents and its impact can be anticipated in advance and measured afterward. This man was Gregory Mendel. Amazingly he conceived his accurate notion of the process before being able to prove it. Here was a great man of science. His experiments with different kinds of pea varieties almost confirmed what he expected. He documented his findings, but in fact he had to doctor the evidence, since there was more inconsistency than he hoped for. (And isn’t that like so many scientists today? Doctoring the findings to make it look like they have discovered something? But I’m jesting again and that’s not a fair way to treat ‘dummies’.)

What most of us were taught about Mendel at school is based on his doctored, summarized, notes, not what he actually found. Which only goes to prove the text book writers must think we are Dummies!

At the same time as Mendel’s work another man of science proposed a theory about superior species outlasting weaker ones. The man was Charles Darwin, and his book was On The Origin of Species.

Mendel was concerned about how each species survived as a distinct entity and how genetic information was passed from parent to child. His landmark work led on to the modern day science involving amazing genetic insights, genome mapping, cloning, medical breakthrough, and so on.

Darwin was concerned about how each species came into existence, as some kind of deviation from previously existing species. His landmark work led on to:
the vain quest for missing links;
hoaxes which deceived men of science and wasted their energies;
genocide and social upheaval through Marxism, Nazism and the like;
erosion of social values through widespread rejection of the Bible; and
No Serious Scientific or Technological Consequence at all.

Darwin’s legacy is confusion, vain quests, dogma, blind adherence to a failed theory and the kind of intellectual tyranny described in Ben Stein’s recent documentary “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed”. (No intelligence allowed – that sounds like the place for “Dummies”!)

Enough of this comparison. Back to Genetics for Dummies. Gregory Mendel, a contemporary of Charles Darwin, opened up for us the most amazing world of genetic understanding. He directed our attention to the human cell as the place where different chromosomes interact to pass on inherited differences. In 1996 Michael J. Behe wrote about the cell, Mendel’s area of interest, as “Darwin’s Black Box”, pointing out how the human cell provides an insurmountable biochemical challenge to evolution. Darwin dismissed the very thing that attracted Mendel, the cell. Mendel was right. Darwin was misguided.

In 1900 interest in the genetic processes in the cell began to gain momentum. But it wasn’t until 1944 that DNA was finally identified as the key to genetic heredity. DNA had first been discovered back in 1869, so it waited a long time for the respect it deserved. In time the spiraling coil of proteins has undergone intense investigation, its sequences have been mapped and chemicals have been identified which allow for people to cut and paste different bits together in new arrangements.

DNA discoveries prompt belief that we can build completely new DNA combinations, creating monsters or developing the perfect race of people. So that leads on to cloning, DNA reconstruction, gene mapping and so on.

Since the DNA pieces specify the physical qualities a person can have it was at first thought that playing with the DNA itself is all that matters. More recent discoveries, however, reveal that there is more to the picture. Other components of the cell are responsible for building new stands of DNA and making sure the new ones are a perfect duplicate of the one being copied. RNA not only helps in the formation of DNA, but it also has a part to play in the process of switching various genes on or off.

Genetics is more than a look at what beads are on the string. We used to think that dominant genes simply over-ruled recessive genes. We now recognize a further process of turning genes on or off. An inactive gene can sit in everyone’s cells, having no impact. But if other processes turn on the inactive gene the impact of the genes is felt differently. It’s not only a matter of what eye colour you have in your genes, it’s also a matter of whether there are proteins at work to pre-select one of those genes.

Recent research has even gone so far as to show that the way a person is treated will impact how their genes are turned on and off. And that’s really interesting, because it goes to the heart of the long debated question of whether heredity or life expearience is more important in making us who we are.

I’ll have more to say on that question in a later post. I trust that the dummies of the world are at least a little more comfortable with the topic of genetics.