Question & Objection

Does Natural Selection Explain the Origin of Biological Information?

Biological Information, DNA and the Genetic Code
A Visit With Jesus

Evolution by natural selection can preserve beneficial genetic changes and eliminate many harmful ones.

Over generations, mutation and selection can therefore alter genes and produce new biological functions.

If natural selection can increase functional biological complexity, why invoke design to explain biological information?

Why This Matters

Natural selection is a demonstrated process and must be taken seriously in any investigation of biological information.

The important distinction is between the evolution of an existing hereditary system and the origin of the first system capable of heredity, functional sequence relationships, and cumulative evolution.

Response

Mutation, recombination, duplication, natural selection, genetic drift, and other evolutionary processes can alter genetic sequences. Existing genes can change, duplicate, acquire new functions, or be lost.

An Intelligent Design argument should therefore not depend upon the claim that natural selection is incapable of producing any new biological information.

The origin question reaches farther back. Natural selection requires some form of heredity. Variants must reproduce with sufficient fidelity for differences in reproductive success to accumulate through generations.

Origin researchers therefore investigate increasingly simple replicating systems that might have existed before modern DNA-based life.

The design question is not whether selection operates. It clearly does. The question is whether selection and related natural processes provide a sufficient explanation for the origin of the information-bearing and information-processing relationships upon which later biological evolution depends.

Question That Remains

How simple could a hereditary system be while still supporting cumulative selection?

How did the first sequence-dependent functions become connected with replication?

At what point could selection begin improving coding, translation, and error control?

Can processes that modify an existing hereditary system also account for the origin of that system?

Research Sources

Koonin — The Meaning of Biological Information
Eugene V. Koonin • Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A • 2016
Use: Scientific Foundation
Relevance: Discusses biological information in the context of genomic function, evolutionary conservation, and changing sequence meaning.
Source note: Establishes that biological information is subject to evolutionary processes and should not be treated as static.
Koonin and Novozhilov — Universal Genetic Code
Eugene V. Koonin; Artem S. Novozhilov • 2017
Use: Evolutionary Model
Relevance: Reviews evolutionary processes proposed to shape and optimize the genetic code after coding relationships exist.
Source note: Provides evidence for natural evolutionary modification of biological information systems.
Wolf and Koonin — Origin of Translation and the Genetic Code
Yuri I. Wolf; Eugene V. Koonin • Biology Direct • 2007
Use: Origin Model
Relevance: Develops an evolutionary model for the emergence of translation through simpler stages involving selection and exaptation.
Source note: Addresses how selection might operate increasingly early in the history of information processing.
Meyer — Signature in the Cell
Stephen C. Meyer • 2009
Use: Design Interpretation
Relevance: Argues that evolutionary modification of existing genetic information does not by itself explain the ultimate origin of functionally specified biological information.
Source note: Provides the Intelligent Design distinction between evolution of an existing information system and its origin.
 The objection and response are presented separately so the reader can consider the question and the evidence for themselves.