A- A A+

Article from:

Creation  Volume 30Issue 4 Cover

Creation 30(4):45–47
September 2008

auf Deutsch lesen
View in German
Xem tiếng Việt
View in Vietnamese
Free Email News
The Mystery of Our Declining Genes

US $13.00
View Item
How Evolution Hurts Science

US $13.00
View Item
Busting Myths
by J Sarfati & G Bates, edited

US $15.00
View Item
Evolution's Achilles' Heels
by Nine Ph.D. scientists

US $14.00
View Item
Evolution's Achilles' Heels

US $19.00
View Item
Creatures Do Change But It's Not Evolution

US $13.00
View Item

Plant geneticist: ‘Darwinian evolution is impossible’

Don Batten chats with plant geneticist John Sanford

Plant geneticist Dr John Sanford began working as a research scientist at Cornell University in 1980. He co-invented the ‘gene gun’ approach to genetic engineering of plants. This technology has had a major impact on agriculture around the world.

Images from stockxpert


Dr Sanford: ‘As a new Assistant Professor, I was responsible for crop improvement. I worked on conventional breeding of fruit crops and became very familiar with the power of genetic selection and the limited range of changes that were possible through selective breeding. I soon became involved in plant genetic engineering research. At that time there were numerous genes which seemed potentially useful in crop plants, but there was no method for delivering these genes into the plant genome. There was no “transformation technology”.

‘I explored many gene delivery options before my colleague Ed Wolf (also of Cornell) and I came up with the idea of shooting DNA into cells, thereby penetrating cell walls and membranes. This initiated an exciting period of scientific exploration, involving many collaborating scientists from Cornell and other universities. In seven years the “gene gun” concept went from a laughable and crazy idea to an extremely effective gene delivery system. Almost all the early transgenic crops were transformed with the gene gun—especially corn and soybeans. A large fraction of today’s transgenic crops were genetically engineered using our gene gun process.

‘The gene gun has been only one of many areas of research for me. But it was this research that opened doors for me—providing recognition and financial resources.

‘I look at the gene gun success as a special blessing that paved the way for my current work—which I consider much more significant.’

Plant geneticist Dr John Sanford and gene gun

Dr Sanford was one of the scientists who developed the ‘gene gun’. It fires genes into plant cells and revolutionized genetic engineering and plant breeding.

A change of mind

Dr Sanford was an evolutionist but changed his mind:


‘On a personal level this was a time of spiritual awakening, but professionally I remained “in the closet”. I did not feel I could defend my faith in an academic setting. So I felt the need to take temporary leave from academia and institutional science because of the tension I felt in this regard, and the enormous potential hostility I sensed from my academic colleagues.

‘I think the academic environment is very hostile to the very idea of a living and active God, making it almost impossible for a genuine Christian to feel open or welcome. I needed some distance from academia to get a hold of my own beliefs and why I hold them. I feel I have now grown to the point where I can re-enter institutional academia (to the extent that I am not expelled), without compromising my basic Christian beliefs.’

Is evolution important to science?

I asked John what he thought of the necessity of evolution for doing biological research.

Images from stockxpert/stock.xchng



‘Institutional science has systematically “evolutionized” every aspect of human thought. Contrary to popular thinking, this is not because evolution is central to all human understanding, but rather has arisen due to a primarily political and ideological process. Consequently, in the present intellectual climate, to reject evolutionary theory has the appearance of rejecting science itself. This is totally upside down.

‘An axiomatic statement often repeated by biologists is: “Nothing makes sense in biology, except in the light of evolution”. However, nothing could be further from the truth! I believe that apart from ideology, the truth is exactly the opposite: “Nothing makes sense in biology except in the light of design”.

‘We cannot really explain how any biological system might have “evolved”, but we can all see that virtually everything we look at has extraordinary underlying design.

‘I am not aware of any type of operational science (computer science, transportation, medicine, agriculture, engineering, etc.), which has benefited from evolutionary theory. But after the fact, real advances in science are systematically given an evolutionary spin. This reflects the pervasive politicization of science.’

Darwinian evolution impossible

John explained how mutations, which supposedly provide the new genetic information to make evolution possible don’t do the job:


Does natural selection help?

Dr Sanford: ‘Selection does help. Selection gets rid of the worst mutations. This slows mutational degeneration.

‘Additionally, very rarely a beneficial mutation arises that has enough effect to be selected for—resulting in some adaptive variation, or some degree of fine-tuning. This also helps slow degeneration. But selection only eliminates a very small fraction of the bad mutations. The overwhelming majority of bad mutations accumulate relentlessly, being much too subtle—of too small an effect—to significantly affect their persistence. On the flip side, almost all beneficials (to the extent they occur) are immune to the selective process—because they invariably cause only tiny increases in biological functionality.

‘So most beneficials drift out of the population and are lost—even in the presence of intense selection. This raises the question—since most information-bearing nucleotides [DNA ‘letters’] make an infinitesimally small contribution to the genome—how did they get there, and how do they stay there through “deep time”?


Dr Sanford has written a book: Genetic Entropy and the Mystery of the Genome.

Selection slows mutational degeneration, but does not even begin to actually stop it. So even with intense selection, evolution is going the wrong way—toward extinction!—Plant geneticist Dr John Sanford


‘The problem of genetic entropy (genomes are all degenerating), is powerful evidence that life and mankind must be young. Genetic entropy is probably also the fundamental underlying mechanism explaining the extinction process. Extinctions in the past and in the present can best be understood, not in terms of environmental change, but in terms of mutation accumulation. All this is consistent with a miraculous beginning, a young earth, and a perishing earth—which “will wear out like a garment” (Hebrews 1:11). Only the touch of the Creator can make all things new.

‘All of the problems with evolutionary theory, as outlined in Genetic Entropy and the Mystery of the Genome, have now been rigorously proven using numerical simulation. We did this using “Mendel’s Accountant”, a state-of-the-art computer analytical tool for genetic systems. Five scientists—John Baumgardner, Wes Brewer, Paul Gibson, Walter ReMine, and I—developed this tool. We reported these new findings in two secular publications, and they will soon be discussed in a second book, Genetic Entropy and Mendel’s Accountant.’

Dr Sanford also sees great potential for creation researchers:

‘There is a desperate need for more creation researchers. The fields are white and ready for harvest, but the workers are very few [John 4]. Although there are thousands of creation-believing scientists and engineers, there is very little original research being done that significantly impacts the creation issue. Mainstream funding patterns, ideological presuppositions, and ideological filters ensure that almost all origins-related research will continue to beat the Darwinian drum. Bright, independently-minded scientists are desperately needed to swim against the current, critically examining all the Darwinian assumptions, and analyzing raw data for themselves. Even as I have found that evolution’s “Primary Axiom” (i.e., mutation plus selection created all higher life functions) is demonstrably false, so there are many other “sacred cows” waiting to be de-throned.

‘I believe the Lord is saying, “Whom shall I send?”’

Related Articles

References and notes

  1. Even the rare beneficial mutations still lose information. See many examples at: Mutations Q&A; <> Return to text.
  2. Physically close to one another on the same chromosome, so that meiosis rarely separates them. Return to text.

(Also available in German and Vietnamese)


Comments closed
Article closed for commenting.
Only available for 14 days from appearance on front page.
Readers’ comments
Dreas D., South Africa, 17 December 2012

On the subject of average life expectancy, I would think that if evolution and natural selection was of any worth, modern humans would live longer, however I suspect that if one removes artificial means such as medicine and surgery from the world, that the degradation would prove fatal to mankind and evolution by implication!

Don Batten responds

To play 'the devil's advocate', living beyond reproductive age (that is, the age required to establish offspring as viable) would actually have no evolutionary advantage, and in fact would likely be selected against because the old could be consuming resources that the offspring could utilize for their survival. So, from an evolutionary point of view, longevity could be selected against, if there was competition for resources, such as food.

Now I don't believe that this is what has happened, but when we argue against evolutionary ideas, we need to try to walk in the boots of the evolutionist and think about how he would answer such things, otherwise we end up using 'straw man' arguments or 'boxing at shadows'.

Rocky C., United States, 21 October 2012

Fantastic website! I 'accidently' came upon it while scouring through Conservapedia's article links. What a find! We think alike in this way:

As soon as you drop everything that has been 'taught' by evolutionary idealogists and look at the evidence as it naturally appears the only conclusion you can come to is Intelligent Design, and only God could be intelligent enough to create this universe and all of its wonders. It's so good to know that there are others out there that think the same way I do about creation and God. May God Bless Your Work.

Sam H., Australia, 28 August 2012

Excellent article i just finished reading Dr Sanfords book fascinating stuff thank you very much.

Richard G., United States, 6 August 2012

Thank you for the wonderful article. I've read dozens of articles since finding this site a few weeks ago, and it has really bolstered my faith. We serve a wonderful Creator! Please keep up this important work.

Lawrence M., United Kingdom, 17 June 2012

fascinating article. As a biologist, I am struck by the fact that selection does not ever lead or rarely leads to the generation of anything that is new but merely preserves a complex system and/or a workable solution to a problem, such as camoflqaue. ~As Dr Sanford says, it weeds out the bad mutations but not everything. Humans have been around for a long while with lots of mutations (supposedly what evolution by natural selection would need) but, still, the physiological/anatomical form of a human being has been pretty much preserved. Mutations do not lead to an increase in information at all. Information brings as back full-circle for it needs a purpose or semantic meaning to make any sense at all, for unlike DNA, etc, it is not a material entity. Tells me that there needs to be a code-master or programmer, i.e. God.

I guess another problem I have with evolution originates from the current thinking on non-coding or "junk" DNA, which is an unfortunate misnomer. Although the term "junk" was helpful for the formulation of the evolutionary paradigm, it becoming more and more apparent than the syntax or form on a given regulatory sequence can influence the regulation of genes and not the other way round (i.e. function follows form as opposed to form follows function, which is an argument central to the evolutionary schema). I would also say the field of epigenetics is shedding some interesting, thought-provoking light on the whole evolution/creation debate. It is quite clear to me that this is evidence of something anticipatory as regards as organism's response (whether it is the relativly simple response of a bacterium to its environment or something a little more complex like the human brain to experience) to its environment. Transcriptional regulation, my main sort of interest right now, is extraordinarily complex that I find it quite miraculous, if imaginative to believe that such a system could ever evolve by evolution by natural selection.

I feel there are many problems with evolution both from a scientific/philosophical viewpoint and theological point of view. I am also not sure how evolution would allow for morality, free will, and even the ability to actually understand evolution :s but that is quite beyond the scope of the article I think.

Darryl W., Australia, 15 May 2012

I think that there are no beneficial mutations unless it is something that restores the original code. Maybe some mutations may at first appear to be beneficial but I imagine that God didn't use that 'good' code for reasons that are not yet obvious to the researchers.

Don Batten responds

It depends how you define "beneficial". Mutations can be beneficial for survival; see:

Are mutations ever beneficial?

However, could they aid in the transformation of a microbe into a microbiologist? That is, are they 'beneficial' for evolution? No, the sort of changes typically caused by mutations involve the degradation of existing genes and gene control systems, not their creation.

Sue B., South Africa, 26 September 2011

I hadn’t considered it before but this article would seem to confirm the biblical “dying you shall die” of Genesis 2:17

Oh that eyes might be opened!

Comments closed
Article closed for commenting.
Only available for 14 days from appearance on front page.
Copied to clipboard
Product added to cart.
Click store to checkout.
In your shopping cart

Remove All Products in Cart
Go to store and Checkout
Go to store