PLANNED BREEDING VS. NATURAL SELECTION: 2

Natural selection is supposed, through random action, to have produced all the species. But when men intelligently and methodically work with plants and animals they produce new subspecies. Yet, in doing so, they never produce new species. If planned breeding cannot produce new species, how could random accidents ever do it? The truth is that accidents never select anything worthwhile. In contrast, planned breeding, which is "selective breeding," never produces new species—and the making of new species is what evolution is all about. Evolutionary theory is a myth. This is science vs. evolution—a Creation-Evolution Encyclopedia, brought to you by Creation Science Facts.

CONTENT: Planned Breeding vs. Natural Selection: 2

There Is an Outer Wall: There is always a limit, beyond which the species cannot go
Reduced Fitness as the species Move Away from the Norm: The farther from the basic species type, the greater the reduction in ability to cope
The Sugar Beet Experiment: Even specific factors reach an outer limit.
Conclusion: Not even purposive breeding can go across the species barrier

This material is excerpted from the book, NATURAL SELECTION. (SeeBOOKSTORE) An asterisk ( * ) by a name indicates that person is not known to be a creationist. Of over 4,000 quotations in the books this Encyclopedia is based on, only 164 statements are by creationists.
You will have a better understanding of the following statements by scientists if you will also read the web page, Natural Selection.

THERE IS AN OUTER WALL

There is always a limit, beyond which the species cannot go.

In breeding, there is always an ultimate limit:

"Breeders usually find that, after a few generations, an optimum is reached beyond which further improvement is impossible, and there has been no new species formed . . Breeding procedures, therefore, would seem to refute rather than support evolution."—On Call, July 3, 1972, p. 9.

"I know from my experience that I can develop a plum half an inch long or one two and a half inches long, with every possible length in between, but I am willing to admit that it is hopeless to try to get a plum the size of a small pea or one as big as a grapefruit . . In short, there are limits to the developments possible, and these limits follow a law . .

"In the law [of reversion toward the mean, or average], experiments carried on extensively have given us scientific proof of what we already guessed by observation: namely, that plants and animals all tend to revert, in successive generations, toward a given mean, or average . . In short, there is undoubtedly a pull toward the mean which keeps all living things within more or less fixed limitations."—*Luther Burbank, Partner of Nature (1939), pp. 89-99.

Selective breeding never crosses the species barrier:

"Some remarkable things have been done by crossbreeding and selection inside the species barrier or within a larger circle of closely related species, such as the wheats. But wheat is still wheat, and not, for instance, grapefruit; and we can no more grow wings on pigs than hens can make cylindrical eggs."—*E. Deevey, "The Reply: Letter from Birman Wood," in Yale Review, (1967), Vol. 61, pp. 631, 636.

"It would appear that careful domestic breeding, whatever it may do to improve the quality of race horses or cabbages, is not actually in itself the road to the endless biological deviation, which is evolution."—*Loren Eiseley, The Immense Journey, (1958), p. 223.

REDUCED FITNESS AS THE SPECIES MOVE AWAY FROM THE NORM

The farther from the basic species type, the greater the reduction in ability to cope.

Improvements in certain features tend to reduce overall fitness for living in the wild:

"The improvements that have been made by selection in these [domesticated breeds] have clearly been accompanied by a reduction of fitness for life under natural conditions; and only the fact that domesticated animals and plants do not live under natural conditions has allowed these improvements to be made."—*D. Falconer, Introduction to Quantitative Genetics (1960), p. 186.

For a time it was hoped that polyploidy might be the cause of evolution. But it produces variations which only occur in plants, never crosses the species barrier, and always results in weakening overall vigor. (Polyploidy occurs when the chromosome count is double or more than the basic, or haploid, number.)

"The only hope of geneticists in producing a variety of any lasting value is in the phenomenon of polyploidy. But this hardly exists among animals and so cannot account for the evolution of organisms in general. Polyploidy should be considered as a secondary phenomenon mainly observed among plants; polyploids have the same lowering of viability and consequent loss of competitive power as the mutants and therefore are not promising material for progressive evolution."—H. Enoch, Evolution or Creation (1966), p. 82.

In 78 years of careful breeding, the DNA wall in sugar beets was reached, as far as a single trait (sugar content) was concerned:

"Similar results have been observed in other species, but in those which are normally cross-pollinated it takes longer to reach the limit of effective selection than in beans, which are self-pollinated. In France, beets were selected for sugar; and, from 1800 to 1878, the sugar content rose from 6 percent to 17 percent. From 1878 to 1924, however, the percentage remains 17, even though the same selection methods were used."—*D.F. Jones, Genetics in Plant and Animal Improvement (1924), pp. 414.

In five generations, the DNA wall was reached in the eye facets of fruit flies. (This is dedication! How would you like to spend months counting the compound eyes on generations of fruit flies!)

"Results of selection were tested by Charles Zeleny working with a compound eye in Drosophila [the fruit fly]. The normal eye is made up of 859 facets, while the mutant type may have as few as 65. In a white bar race, Zeleny selected a line having the highest number of facets and also a line having the least number. Selection caused a rapid increase in mean facet number during the first five generations; but, after the fifth generation, the effectiveness of selection ceased, although flies with the most facets were selected for 25 more generations [C. Zeleny." "The Effect of Selection on Eye Facet Number," in Genetics, 7 (January):1-115 (1922)].

THE SUGAR BEET EXPERIMENT

Even specific factors reach an outer limit.

"Similar limits of effective selection have been found in sugar beets and corn, showing that, while there may be selection in the types of gene, the gene itself rarely changes.

"In any case the change brought about by selection tends to reach a limit, as was shown by sugar beets in France. These have been developed from ordinary table beets starting with roots having 6 percent of sugar. By planting seed from the best (i. e., richest in sugar) each year, after about 100 years, 17 percent of sugar was attained. This, of course, was a good result; but the same process of selection, continued for 40 years more, and gave no higher percentage of sugar [D.F. Jones, Genetics in Plant and Animal Improvement (1924), p. 414]. This is the situation found time and again in nature with genes, which do not increase in effectiveness . . Charles Darwin, with no observation of such behavior but his neighbor's rule of thumb selection, guessed wrongly that genes change slightly in each reproduction, in every possible direction, and without limit."—William J. Tinkle, "Genetics Favors Creation," in Creation Research Society Quarterly, December 1977, p. 156.

Here is additional information on the sugar beet experiment, cited above, plus other facts:

"In 1800, experiments were conducted in France to increase the amount of sugar in table beets (at the time around 6 percent). Artificial selection was conducted on a large scale, selecting the sweetest to produce seed for the next crop. By 1878, the average sugar content of the table beets have risen to 17 percent. However, further selection failed to increase the sugar content from there on; the limits of genetic variation have been reached.

"A similar example is the reduction in the number of bristles on the thorax of fruit flies by artificial selection and breeding. In each generation, the number was reduced, until the 20th generation, after which the number remained the same. The limit of variation by artificial selection had been reached, and any experiment involving cross-breeding and artificial selection, even if it proves the existence of great genetic variations, always demonstrates the limits of the potential for variations fairly soon.

CONCLUSION

Not even purposive breeding can go across the species barrier.

"In the opinion of the well-known zoologist Pierre Grasse, the limits of variation established by artificial selection are in profound contradiction to the Neo-Darwinian argument [P.P. Grasse, L' evolution du Vivant (1973)]. For thousands of years, the dog has been subjected to artificial selection, revealing a great amount of variation, but not allowing the emergence of a new species. The genetic potential is limited. Grasse applies a similar argument to other domesticated animals (cows bred for 4,000 years; chickens bred for 4,000 years; sheep bred for 4,000 years).

"Grasse furthermore argues that artificial selection produces a much greater variety than natural selection. As an example he compares the dog and the jackal, which he considers to be closely related. The dog (Canis familiaris) and the jackal (Canis aureus) are genetically related (in the evolutionary model) and are subject, with some minor differences, to the same kind of mutations. The jackal, however, appears to be very stable genetically, whereas the dog species is divided into numerous races and sub-races. Grasse concludes that this is due to the fact that the dog has been subject to artificial selection whereas the jackal has only been subject to natural selection."—Christopher Bluth, "Creationism Defended," in Creation Research Society Quarterly, June 1983, p. 17.

There are instances in which the true species (the Genesis species) is to be found at the genus level rather than the species. This is due to faulty classification work by researchers. It does not mean that the true species level has been bridged.

"Cross breeding . . is almost never satisfactorily possible at the level of the genera, and absolutely never above that level."—*George G. Simpson, The Major Features of Evolution (1953), p. 340.

There are millions of different species. If intelligent men cannot breed beyond the species barrier, why should we expect that raw chance did it?

"A rule that all breeders recognize is that there are fixed limits to the amount of change that can be produced."—Lane P. Lester and Raymond G. Bohlin, The Natural Limits to Biological Change (1984), p. 96.

The experts all know the truth of the matter, but it is best to avoid mentioning it when expounding the virtues of evolutionary theory.

"All competent biologists acknowledge the limited nature of the variation breeders can produce, although they do not like to discuss it much when grinding the evolutionary ax."—*William R. Fix, The Bone Peddlers: Selling Evolution (1984), pp. 184-185.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

Forward to the first major topic in the next series: MUTATIONS: Mutations, the only other alternate evolutionary mechanism for producing new life forms, can only produce damaged results which die within a few generations, without having produced new species.