Creation: Question Evolution Campaign — 8 of 15
A Sunday guest post by my brilliant husband, Gregg.
Every Sunday, my clever husband offers me a “day of rest” by taking over the homemaker duties here. His primary topic, the Biblical Truth of Creation vs. Darwinism, is a subject that has broad reaching scientific, social, and metaphysical implications and is gaining more and more attention in our modern culture. For believers and non-believers alike, the primary purpose is to present scientific, historical, logical, and/or sociological data in an empirical and defensible fashion, as much as possible written in layman’s terms, and in a format suitable for supplementing any homeschool curriculum whether you choose to believe the Biblical account — or secular guesses — about the origins of human life on earth.
Today’s Sexy Topic
Question number 8 in the creation.com Question Evolution campaign is, “How did sex originate?”
Asexual reproduction gives up to twice as much reproductive success (‘fitness’) for the same resources as sexual reproduction. While discussing the advantages of a fully functional sexual reproductive system, don’t think that misleadingly implies that such is sufficient to explain its origin.
Given the facts, how could sexual reproduction ever gain enough advantage to be “selected” over asexual reproduction? How could mere physics and chemistry simultaneously invent the needed complementary apparatuses for sexual reproduction to work? Non-intelligent processes cannot plan for future coordination of male and female organs. “Nature” cannot forecast against future need and stockpile utterly superfluous apparatus until the day they are finally needed.
Why not “simple” asexual reproduction? Why not even far more “simple” parthenogenesis? There are breeds of reptiles, such as lizards in Texas, that are entirely female. They lay eggs that hatch into lizards that are essentially clones of the mother. They seem to do very well, so what’s the point of sexual reproduction? Where is the “evolutionary” advantage?
Speaking of advantage, sexual reproduction has many disadvantages. Afterall, in either asexual reproduction or parthogenetic reproduction, 100% of the parent’s genetic material is passed on to subsequent generations. In sexual reproduction, only half of each parent’s genetic material can possibly be passed on, a mere 50%. How does “evolution” deem this advantageous?
It’s also very “costly” in terms of fitness to maintain sexual organs, to keep the male’s own immune system from destroying his own (genetically different) sperm cells, and the female’s immune system from destroying either the incoming spermatozoa or the (genetically different) offspring while gestating. Think of how vulnerable females are while gestating and immediately after bearing live young. How does evolution account for any of this?
The biblical account of creation explains the origin of fully functioning sexual reproduction, from the start, in an optimal and genetically diverse population. Once the mechanisms are already in place, they have these advantages. But simply having advantages doesn’t remotely explain how they could be built from scratch. Hypothetical transitional forms would be highly disadvantageous, therefore natural selection would work against them. In many cases, the male and female genitalia are precisely designed to fit with each other, meaning that these mechanisms logically could not have independently “evolved”.
For more information about this topic, visit creation.com/evosex
The Truth
Believers in the Biblical account of Creation deny neither natural nor sexual selection. For example, we think it’s likely that sexual selection augmented natural selection in producing the different people groups (‘races’) from a single population of humans that were isolated after Babel.
The difference is that we recognize that selection can only work on existing genetic information. Darwinists believe mutation provides new information for selection. But no known mutation has ever increased genetic information, although there should be many hundreds or thousands of examples observable today if mutation/selection were truly adequate to explain the goo-to-you hypothesis.
I commit to you that I will publish every single comment that meets this blog’s commenting criteria. You may want to review that criteria before adding your opinion here.
God Bless you and yours.
Gregg
Resources:
Additional Posts dealing with Creation and Darwinism
….”While discussing the advantages of a fully functional sexual reproductive system, don’t think that misleadingly implies that such is sufficient to explain its origin.”
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….”The biblical account of creation explains the origin of fully functioning sexual reproduction, from the start, in an optimal and genetically diverse population. Once the mechanisms are already in place, they have these advantages.”
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You didn’t list any advantages. What do you think the advantages are?
If there are no advantages, then that fully supports my argument. How could a state of being with fewer/no advantages have “evolved” or been “selected” as advantageous.
From a biblical standpoint I would expect that you’d think sexual reproduction has an advantage. If you assume that the pairs of animals on the ark were provided with enough genetic diversity to produce a variety of different species within a biblical kind, you’re relying on sexual reproduction with recombination to generate those species.
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Since virtually all types of living organisms have a way to exchange genetic material, including those organisms that can also reproduce asexually, it makes sense to assume that there is an advantage to the exchange of DNA. Mixing of DNA helps counteract the accumulation of negative mutations and lets a population maintain more variability.
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…”Think of how vulnerable females are while gestating and immediately after bearing live young. How does evolution account for any of this?”
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This is unrelated to sexual versus asexual reproduction.
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…” Non-intelligent processes cannot plan for future coordination of male and female organs. ”Nature” cannot forecast against future need and stockpile utterly superfluous apparatus until the day they are finally needed.”
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This makes no sense – there’s no ‘future coordination’ or ‘future need’. At every point in time, the two sexes or breeding types in a species must be able to interact or the species will end in that generation. The coordination has to be successful in the present. If a mutation affects some feature of an individual organism’s mating function so that it falls outside of an acceptable range of interaction, that individual will be unable to reproduce and the altered gene will not be passed to another generation.
You say …”Think of how vulnerable females are while gestating and immediately after bearing live young. How does evolution account for any of this?”
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This is unrelated to sexual versus asexual reproduction.
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Note that this was not the question I asked. I asked how evolution accounts for the vulnerability of females while gestating and immediately after bearing live young. I asked how such vulnerability is ultimately “selected” as favorable if evolutionary concepts are assumed true. The most common answer I ever get to questions so very baldly logical in nature about evolutionary concepts are fallacies such as “obviously it must have happened somehow, because here we are!” This is begging the question on a very grand scale.
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You say, “This makes no sense – there’s no ‘future coordination’ or ‘future need’. At every point in time, the two sexes or breeding types in a species must be able to interact or the species will end in that generation.”
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Agreed that it makes no sense. So, start with a single celled asexually producing original ancestor and walk me through the transitional forms that get us to sexually reproducing organisms without forecasting against future need and stockpiling utterly superfluous apparatus until the day they are finally needed.
You said:
…”I asked how evolution accounts for the vulnerability of females while gestating and immediately after bearing live young. I asked how such vulnerability is ultimately “selected” as favorable if evolutionary concepts are assumed true.”
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I’m guessing that mammals like mice, rabbits, deer, might be examples of types of animals you think of as having female vulnerability during gestation. All of these are mentioned in the Bible, so whether from an evolution or from a creation standpoint these types of animals have survived successfully for many generations and are currently flourishing despite any effect of female vulnerability during gestation. Vulnerability of females in those types of animals has not had the effect of making them become extinct.
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All animals are vulnerable – to predators, disease, starvation, accidents etc. All animals will eventually die. Some types of males also increase their vulnerability due to reproduction. For instance a brightly colored male bird announcing its territory by singing is revealing its presence to predators in a way that a quiet earth-toned female bird would not. But the most vulnerable of all are the immature animals. If the immature animals are not able to develop to adulthood and be able to reproduce, that species will become extinct. So there’s a balance between the vulnerability of immature forms versus females. An egg may be more vulnerable than an embryo retained inside the females body during development. So an increased risk to a female during gestation and while giving birth may be balanced by the increased survival of the offspring.
There are many ways to carry out reproduction successfully. For fish, amphibians, reptiles, there are many species that produce eggs (for fish, with a range of procedure, from just releasing eggs into the water to making types of nests, to guarding the nests, even to incubating the eggs in the mouth). There are also species which are livebearing (some fish, some frogs and other amphibians, some snakes). Some fish, amphibians, reptiles have their sex determined by the temperature during development. Some types of fish start out as males and later become females. Others start out as females and become males. So there are many variations on reproduction that result in successful reproduction and continuation of those species.
Still thinking about your question…
There are many types of marine invertebrates which have both sexual and asexual reproduction. For instance, jellyfish and flatworms. The tunicates (sea squirts) which are currently thought to be one of the closer relatives of the chordates (based on the anatomy of their larval form) have both sexual and asexual reproduction. For sexual reproduction they are hermaphrodites, making both kinds of reproductive cells. The release of sperm from the nearby sea squirts can cause fertilization from others, which is good for variety, or for a sea squirt that is more isolated there can be self-fertilization. It seems that being a hermaphrodite is useful if an animal is not mobile (or not very mobile) and/or isolated so that the animal may not run into many others of its type. If the odds are poor that an animal will meet another of its type, it’s statistically more favorable if the animal can reproduce with any animal it meets rather than needing to meet an animal of an opposite sex. Their asexual reproduction is by budding (IIRC).
Yeast (like bread yeast) can reproduce asexually by budding but can also reproduce by mating; they have two mating types (confusingly called ‘a’ and ‘alpha’).
trying a repost.
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I’m guessing that mammals like mice, rabbits, deer, might be examples of types of animals you think of as having female vulnerability during gestation. All of these are mentioned in the Bible, so whatever your viewpoint these types of animals have survived successfully for many generations and are currently flourishing despite any effect of female vulnerability during gestation. Vulnerability of females in those types of animals has not had the effect of making them become extinct.
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All animals are vulnerable – to predators, disease, starvation, accidents etc. All animals will eventually die. Some types of males also increase their vulnerability due to reproduction. For instance a brightly colored male bird announcing its territory by singing is revealing its presence to predators in a way that a quiet earth-toned female bird would not. But the most vulnerable of all are the immature animals. If the immature animals are not able to develop to adulthood and be able to reproduce, that species will become extinct. So there’s a balance between the vulnerability of immature forms versus females. An egg may be more vulnerable than an embryo retained inside the females body during development. So an increased risk to a female during gestation and while giving birth may be balanced by the increased survival of the offspring.
There are many ways to carry out reproduction successfully. For fish, amphibians, reptiles, there are many species that produce eggs (for fish, there are a range of procedure, from just releasing eggs into the water to making types of nests, to guarding the nests, even to incubating the eggs in the mouth). There are also species which are livebearing (some fish, some frogs and other amphibians, some snakes and lizards). Some fish, amphibians, reptiles have their sex determined by the temperature during development. Some types of fish start out as males and later become females. Others start out as females and become males. So there are many variations on reproduction that result in successful reproduction and continuation of those species.
The C. elegans nematode worm is so well-studied that the fate of every cell division is known. It has about 1000 cells, exact number depending on the sex of the animal. It has two sexes: hermaphrodite and male. (From googling, it sounds likely that this was case of evolving from a species that had female and male sexes.) Most of the time there are mostly hermaphrodites and they reproduce by self-fertilization. Occasionally males are produced and the eggs of the hermaphrodite can be fertilized by a male instead of by self-fertilization.
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From googling, it sounds like the ‘simplest’ animal type is the sponge. It has several cell types but it doesn’t have organs. It doesn’t have specific nerve or muscle cells. It can reproduce sexually by releasing sperm (and in some cases eggs) into the water to combine and it has ways of reproducing asexually.
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Some single-celled eukaryotes like paramecia can use either asexual reproduction or a form of sexual reproduction called conjugation.
I said that sponges don’t have muscle cells but that was incorrect.
I’m still reading about question 7 and 8, lots of interesting biology. Mostly I read things and drift from topic to topic without getting a clear comment in my head.
But I do wish you’d post my previous comment (which I put in twice with a slight variation), or let me know what’s wrong with it. I figure Gregg is very busy lately, but it has been over a month.
I believe that sex originated because of a fact you actually discussed: 100% of the parent’s DNA is passed on in asexual reproduction. That is a big disadvantage because if the environment changed, they would all die. Sexual reproduction allowed for mixing of the genes, which meant that the children could be better equipped to survive.
Or…something like that. I read about it in a book.
The odds of them being better equipped are exactly the same as them being less better equipped. Asexual reproduction is a reductive process that does not add information to the progeny.
….”The odds of them being better equipped are exactly the same as them being less better equipped.”
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So then in that case the odds are that there would be some of each (some offspring better equipped, some less well equipped for some particular environmental situation). Does that fit with how you are envisioning this? So then if that particular environmental situation happened, there would be more likely to be some survivors instead of possibly none.