Evidence for evolution: pseudogenes

by Bernie Dehler
9-29-07

  Personally, I think the claim that pseudogenes are strong and overwhelming evidence that biological evolution actually happened.  The evidence seems to be in the DNA... biological fossils.  That's why I'm leaning towards being a "Theistic Evolutionist."

  Therefore, I'm very curious as to how those in the "young earth" and "old earth" creationist camps explain away this pseudogene question, since both are against theistic evolution.  A friend lent me a book by Hugh Ross and Fazelle Rana (old earth creationists, of the "Reasons to Believe" ministry) called "Who was Adam?"

  Although this book doesn't put forth the strong evidence and claim for "pseudogenes indicating evolution," they do a fantastic job of explaining the details of what a pseudogene is.  In the summary part, however (and to my surprise), they admit they have no response to the claim that pseudogenes strongly demonstrate that evolution happen.  Here is their own wording, pg. 243:

What about the genetic material without a known function, such as the GLO unitary pseudogenes that humans and chimpanzees share? Currently the RTB model offers no explanation for this feature.  The model does predict, however, that as with other classes of noncoding DNA, function will one day be discovered for these uniting pseudogenes.

  The reason why I think that the GLO (as just one example) pseudogene is evidence for (theistic) evolution is because it is essentially a "copying error" of DNA.  Lower life forms have it, but it got messed-up somewhere in one of the ancestors to human and ape, so human and ape both have the messed-up and unused GLO pseudogene.  Because of this, our body can't make its own "vitamin C" (ascorbic acid), but we don't die because we get it from our diet.

  I think the biological argument of pseudogenes is by far the strongest evidence for (theistic) evolution.  As Christians, it is hard to deal with this information because it is different than what we were taught at church and by evangelical Christian ministries; but deal with it we must do... just as we have dealt with the discovery that the earth rotates around the sun contrary to the mainstream religion (Catholic and Protestant) in the day of Galileo. 

Comments

[Michael Pavlides]

First, I'd like to note that "mainstream religion" (especially Catholic and Protestant) has little to do with G-d. The Bible does not contradict Copernicus. Genesis descriptions of creation does follow an "evolutionary trajectory" up until the advent of man (grasses to fruit-bearing trees, etc.). Man was then made as a separate thought out of "clay". For clay, read "basic building material already in existence", or DNA. Man was created by manipulating the genetic matrix of the Earth. The Bible can be literal without being symantically accurate. We are talking about G-d's explanations as described to, or by, the technologically primative (see Ezekiel's "wheel within a wheel" vision). G-d "brought forth" all the other stuff of creation, but he had to form man out of something he found lying around. Why? Creation came in two distinct phases: stuff, and conscious stuff to reflect upon the other stuff.