Alternative Splicing Damage Control Still Underway

They Don’t Realize How Silly This Is

The headline says it all: “Evolution by Splicing.” Evolutionists once believed that the species arose by mutations that altered the nucleotide sequences of protein-coding genes. But these genetic differences between species do not seem to be very significant. Next evolutionists thought perhaps the differing expression levels of the genes did the job. Perhaps it was quantity rather than quality that created the species. But again the expression level differences are not so great. Now evolutionists have a new mechanism, and it is yet another example of evolution’s reliance on complexity, serendipity and misrepresentation.

As we reported recently, new research is showing that similar genes, in different species, are spliced differently. So the resulting protein products tend to differ between species.

You learned in high school biology that a gene consists of a long sequence of nucleotides—small molecules that comprise the DNA double helix. But in the higher species the nucleotides are grouped into building blocks or exons (expressed regions). So while the gene nucleotide sequences do not differ greatly between species, and while the gene expression levels also do not differ greatly between species, the exons that are used can differ. In other words, the building blocks themselves do not differ greatly, but which building blocks are used does differ. So for the same gene, you obtain a different gene product.

So now evolutionists are saying that new species can arise from changes in these building blocks. The process is called alternative splicing. Hence the headling, “Evolution by Splicing.”

But note the trend of ever increasing complexity and serendipity. Like entropy, the complexity and serendipity of evolutionary theory inexorably grows. First, it was mutations that inserted, deleted or altered the individual nucleotides that made up a gene. Next, it was mutations that altered the signals and machinery that govern the gene expression level. And now it is mutations that alter the signals that control the splicing machinery.

At each step in this progression, as evolutionists try to keep pace with the scientific results, the theory relies on increasing levels of pre constructed molecular machinery, instructions and processes. A tremendous infrastructure must be in place in order for evolution to occur.

And of course all of that infrastructure must have evolved. Once again, evolution creates evolution and what headlines, such as “Evolution by Splicing,” do not reveal is the ever increasing and quite frankly incredible levels of complexity and serendipity that evolutionary thought entails.

Unfortunately the disingenuous reporting does not stop there. Consider how Brent Graveley, professor of genetics and developmental biology at the University of Connecticut, portrayed these new findings:

These are very important papers that provide for the first time a large-scale view of the evolution of alternative splicing in vertebrates. They demonstrate how dramatically rapidly alternative splicing evolves, and suggest that it might play a role in speciation.

It would be difficult to imagine a greater misrepresentation of the science. There was nothing in the new results that demonstrates the evolution of alternative splicing, rapidly or otherwise. The misrepresentation relies on the prior, unspoken, assumption that evolution is true—that all of biology arose spontaneously as a consequence of random events such as mutations.

With that non scientific belief as his starting point, the evolutionist then reasons that the differing splicing patterns must have evolved. And since they are found in relatively similar species, those splicing differences must have evolved rapidly. So the evolutionist then arrives at the conclusion that the new findings “demonstrate how dramatically rapidly alternative splicing evolves.”

Is it any surprise then that journalists, in turn, misrepresent the science? Here is how one journalist reported the new findings:

The results suggest that differences in the ways genetic messages are spliced have played a major role in the evolution of fundamental characteristics of species.

It is yet another example of, as I explained in Science’s Blind Spot, how religion drives science. Theology is still queen of the sciences.