Natural Selection's Limitations

In this round we shall be defending our arguments. I ask Con not to posit any further rebuttals as I would be unable to respond to them in this debate as this is the final round. My Defense of Natural Selection's Limitations The resolution clearly concerns the power of natural selection to produce novel structures or traits. Obviously mutations can produce new traits, but such changes are limited and in no way help the grand theory of evolution. My opponent has chosen to support his argument purely from genetic mutations and has not incorporated natural selection in such a way that would address the resolution. Never did Con show how natural selection could create new traits, merely, he stated that natural selection guides mutations. If mutations create genes, then natural selection only selects them, thus my argument stands. In further considering the power of natural selection, we must recognize that the term describes environmental forces which allow a population to survive or not. Artificial dog breeding is a great example of natural selection. Existing dog breeds have a particular set of traits derived from their genomes as well as the potential for other traits which, though they may not be displayed in that particular breed's phenotype, are nevertheless available in their genomes. From the blueprint of two different breeds, breeders can select for the most desirable traits, as well as unknowingly select for some that are not so desirable, and create a new breed. Think about this carefully; now if Con is correct, this should support his position, and if I am right, this should support my position. But how can two opposite views be supported by the same example? Clearly one of us is missing something in their understanding of what is taking place in the production of a new breed of dog. Now if we truly investigate what is taking place, we will find that, while a new variation of dog has been created, it has merely utilized the genes from its parents to display the traits it does, it has not created a truly new trait. It still has fur, four legs, two eyes, one nose, etc. And to further drive home the idea that nothing new has been created, just a mixing of traits, imagine if a dog was born with two heads. Woof woof! Yes this would be due to genetic mutation, but the principle remains the same. The parents did not have two heads, so you might claim a new trait has been produced (via mutation not selection), but really the information to build a head was already available, mutations have merely caused the cells to grow a secondary head. What we truly witness in the change between parent and offspring, even given millions of imagined years, is the rearrangement, removal and degradation of genetic information (http://creation.com...). Beyond the fact that nothing new is created via natural selection, it is demonstrably true that natural selection eliminates genetic information, even beyond the elimination through sexual reproduction. Consider the following illustration: Above we see that the last generation of dogs has lost the genetic information which limits the growth of the dog. In this hypothetical scenario, nature has selected against the small and medium dogs and only the large dogs remain. Thus we see a downhill process for evolution. In the above illustration a single gene pair is shown under each dog as coming in two possible forms. One form of the gene (S) carries instructions for large size, the other (s) for small size. In row 1, we start with medium-sized animals (Ss) interbreeding. Each of the offspring of these dogs can get one of either gene from each parent to make up their two genes. In row 2, we see that the resultant offspring can have either large (SS), medium (Ss) or small (ss) size. But let’s suppose that breeders want large dogs. They would select the largest dogs in the next generation to breed. Thus only the big dogs pass on genes to the next generation (line 3). So from then on, all the dogs will be a new, large variety. This is artificial selection, but natural selection would work on the same principle, if large dogs would do better in their environment. Note that: They are now adapted to their environment, in this case breeders who want big dogs. They are now more specialized than their ancestors on row 1. This has occurred through artificial selection, and could have occurred through natural selection. There have been no new genes added In fact, genes have been lost from the population—i.e. there has been a loss of genetic information, the opposite of what microbe-to-man evolution needs in order to be credible. Not only genes for smallness were lost, but any other genes these small dogs carried. They may have had genes for endurance, strong sense of smell, and other things, but they are lost from the population. Genes on their own are not selected; it’s the whole creature and all the genes they carried. Now the population is less able to adapt to future environmental changes—if small dogs became fashionable, or would perform better in some environment, they could not be bred from this population. They are also genetically impoverished since they lack the good genes that happened to be carried by the small dogs. Conclusion I posted this debate to magnify the fallacy of those who claim that natural selection can in fact create new traits. We hear about it on public television shows and read about it on popular nature articles and news posts online. Worst of all we hear it in school, and children today are being deceived by a bait-and-switch deception. They are told natural selection helps organisms in the formation of a new trait, but are then shown examples such as dog breeding which clearly show a rearrangement, degeneration, and loss of genetic information. In this debate I have remained on point with the resolution and simply addressed the failure of natural selection to actually produce new traits. Con has argued from evolution only and has not tied his argument in with natural selection. Since Con did not address the resolution in his argument based on mutation, I did not offer a thorough rebuttal to his claims, rather I merely pointed out the easily seen detrimental problem of random genetic errors, even ones which duplicate or recombine genetic code, producing viable blueprint for novel structures. If Con would like to have a debate purely on the power of genetic mutation I would be glad to do so, but as for this debate it is clear that Con has lost since he did not address the resolution, and if he formulates a whole new argument in the next round he will have violated the terms of the debate and warranted a loss.