Does Survival of the Fittest (Natural Selection) Prove Evolution?

Survival of the Fittest (also called Natural Selection) is a process in nature in which the weaker plants and animals die and the strong survive and reproduce. The weak animals are culled out.

Natural selection doesn’t create DNA. Natural selection doesn’t add information to DNA which would add new features to plants and animals. Natural Selection simply sorts out the gene pool.

Survival of the fittest is not a principle that would account for the formation of life. Rather, survival of the fittest is a sorting mechanism.

Natural Selection Sorts Out Life, it Doesn’t Form Life

DNA is an immensely complex molecule consisting of a long chain of base pairs of amino acids. An architect writes blueprints as the plan for a building. DNA is the blueprints of plants and animals.

The great dilemma for those who believe in Darwinian evolution is how life originated in the first place. How did the first DNA form without the intervention of a Creator? Nobody disagrees with the fact that living things are sorted out by the struggle for survival. Evolutionists can explain the survival of the fittest but they can’t explain the arrival of the fittest.

Evolutionists Have No Explanation for the Origin of the First Cell

Evolutionists have never been able to discover an assembly mechanism. They have the sorting mechanism but they don’t have an assembly mechanism. How do evolutionists explain how life assembled itself at the beginning?

The standard Darwinian evolution explanation for the origin of life is given as spontaneous generation which is the self-assembly of life from random churning of atoms. The random churning of atoms in the prebiotic earth supposedly assembled atoms into amino acids and the amino acids assembled to form the building blocks of life such as proteins, DNA and RNA.

Evolutionists have put forward many theories to try to explain the origin of the first cell. However, evolutionists can’t unite around any one of the spontaneous generation theories.

I’ve studied many of these theories. The spontaneous generation theories are far-fetched and frankly, require a huge amount of faith to believe. Atheism, also called secularism, is a faith. It requires great faith to believe life formed by chance.

While the claim of spontaneous generation might convince a 9th grader it will certainly not pass the rigors of unbiased scientific examination. This is especially true of a scientific analysis of self-assembly of life in which mathematical probability analysis is applied.

Microbiologist Harold Morowitz has done excellent work applying probability analysis to the possibility of even the first simple protein forming by chance in the prebiotic earth. Morowitz’s numbers show that self-assembly of a living cell would be utterly impossible even in a trillion years of random churning of atoms.

No Such Thing as a Simple Living Thing

We’ve read a lot about viruses lately because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Let’s look at a virus to see how “simple” it really is. A coronavirus has roughly 26,000 to 32,000 nucleotide base pairs in its RNA strand (Coronaviruses have RNA, not DNA). All of these nucleotide base pairs have to be sequenced in precise order or the virus will not function.

The number of possible sequences of 26,000 nucleotide base pairs is a number so huge it boggles the mind. To say that it formed by chance in the prebiotic earth is like saying that somebody could win the sweepstakes grand prize a hundred days in a row and then do the same thing every year for 20 years.

Let’s consider a bacterium. A bacterium is far more complicated than a virus. A bacterium, even the “simplest” bacterium, would have at minimum, 500,000 nucleotide base pairs in its DNA. And that’s just the DNA. One also have to consider that a simple bacterium would consist of over 200 different types of protein and each protein would have 400 or more nucleotide base pairs, all precisely sequenced.

Even a simple bacterium is more complicated than your smartphone. A bacterium could not form by chance even in a trillion years.

Genetic Mutations Are No Mechanism for Evolution

Darwinian evolutionists often appeal to genetic mutations. However genetic mutations are destructive errors to DNA. Genetic mutations are mostly caused by toxic chemicals, radiation and other stressors that interfere with the replication of DNA during cell division. Toxic chemicals and radiation don’t bring new base pairs to the DNA. They simply scramble or delete previously existing base pairs in the DNA.

Genetic mutations are no mechanism for either the initial assembly of the first DNA or the change of DNA into a larger molecule to add new features to a plant or animal.

Evolutionists have no explanation for the arrival of the simplest living things. They have no mechanism that would account for the change of “simple” living things into more complex living things.

Evolutionists claim that human beings evolved from animals. Implicit in this claim is that there is no need for a Creator and human beings have no souls and no conscious existence after death. They want us to bet our souls that there is no God. I bet my soul that there is a God!

The best explanation is that we have a super intelligent Creator God who created all living things. God created the ecosystem. The ecosystem is sorted out by natural selection which is survival of the fittest. The complexity and interdependence of nature loudly cries out as evidence for the existence of the Creator God.

The Creator Loves Us and Redeems Us

Many evolutionists are taking a fresh look at Christianity. They learn that Jesus of Nazareth came in fulfillment of hundreds of Old Testament Bible prophecies. No other figure in all of world history fulfills the Bible’s Messianic prophecies. Jesus Christ is the promised Messiah of Israel.

God has great love for all humanity. The prophets foretold that Christ would suffer and die for the sins of the people. “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6). God sent Christ to die for our sins. The prophets also foretold that Christ would rise from the dead and offer forgiveness of sins to all who turn to Him in repentance. I invite you to turn to Christ today to receive forgiveness of sins.

Steps to salvation:

Jesus said “Ye must be born again” (John 3:7).

1) Believe that God loves you and sent the Messiah (Messiah is Hebrew for Christ) to redeem you.
2) Believe that Jesus Christ came to die for you, to take upon Himself the penalty of your sins (Isaiah 53:5–6, John 6:29, Romans 4:5, First Peter 3:18).
3) Repent of your sins and call on Jesus Christ to ask for forgiveness of sins (Romans 10:13).
4) Receive Jesus as Savior and experience the new birth (John 1:12, Acts 2:38).
5) Follow Jesus Christ as Lord and be baptized (John 14:15, Acts 2:38).

Prayer to receive salvation:

To receive the salvation which Jesus purchased for us at the terrible cost of His suffering and death on our behalf I invite you to pray this simple prayer:

“Dear heavenly Father, I thank you for sending Jesus, the promised Messiah, to die for my sins. I admit that I’m a sinner. I repent of my sins and I ask you to forgive me on the basis of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I ask you to fill me with your Holy Spirit to empower me to serve you under the Lordship of Jesus Christ, Amen.”

If you prayed this prayer in the humble sincerity of your heart, then you have received everlasting life, which includes power to live right in this life and entrance into heaven in the afterlife!

William P. (Bill) Nugent, Overcomer Ministries of Fort Mill, South Carolina, USA

© 2023 William P. Nugent, permission granted to email or republish for Christian outreach.

Christian book, Lawful or Legalistic by Bill Nugent is available in paperback and Kindle!
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