Natural Selection

Often when talking to an evolutionist or reading their materiel, you will run across the phrase natural selection. This phrase is often used when trying to prove evolution. Because it is so strongly associated with evolution, many people will get scared off by it, assuming it may as well be evolution itself. Natural selection isn’t in and of itself bad. It’s the application that evolutionists use that is bad. A simple definition may clear up some problems. Natural selection is simply the process by which favorable heritable traits become more common in successive generations of a population of reproducing organisms, and unfavorable heritable traits become less common. Sounds like a lot of garble, but it really isn’t. Let us look first at how genetics work before understanding what natural selection is all about.

Many people get scared off by genetics as soon as they see all these random letters and Punnet squares. It’s really not that hard. In fact, after breeding gerbils, figuring out genetics has become rather addicting for me. I figure out genetics like other people would do Sudoku. After I’ve unlocked something new about a gerbil’s genes, all I can do when I go to sleep, is try to figure out what their offspring might be. Just for the sake of not boring you all before I even get to natural selection, I’ll keep this very simple. On a chromosome, there is a specific place where a gene is located. This place is call the locus. There are seven known loci that exist in gerbils: A, C, D, E, G, P, Sp. Each of these letters represent how the locus will affect the gerbil. For example, the A gene controls whether the belly will be white and if there will be ticking. For each letter, there is a dominant gene (A, C, D, E, G, P) and a recessive gene (a, c, d, e, g, p). The capitol "A" will make the belly white, but a lower case "a" will make the belly solid with the rest of the coat. The two gerbil parents always give the a pup a set of letters (the letters represent the gene). These letters may be all dominant letters, all recessive letters, or some of each. The dominant gene will always be the one that shows up in the gerbil. If one gerbil parent gave a pup an A and the other gerbil gave a pup an a, the A will be the gene to show up in the pup’s coat, making that pup have a white belly. The only way to make a recessive gene (a, c, d, e, g, p) show up in a pup is for both of the parents to give the pup a recessive gene. In order for the pup to have an "a" show up in their coat, making them have the same color of belly as the rest of their coat, would be for both parents to give it an "a." Now, because both parents give their pups a set up genes, each pup has two of each letter. Thus, if one gerbil parent were to give the pup an "A" and the other gerbil were to give the pup an "a," the genetic code for its A gene would be "Aa." If one gerbil were to give the pup an "A," and the other gerbil were to give it an "A" also, its genetic code for the A gene would be "AA." And finally, if one gerbil were to give a pup an "a," and the other gerbil were to give the same pup an "a," the pup’s genetic code would be "aa." This can be repeated with all letters. For now, we’ll only focus on the A gene and the P gene. The A gene controls the color of the belly. The dominant gene (A) makes the belly white, while the recessive gene (a) makes the belly the same color as the rest of the coat. The P gene determines whether the gerbil’s eyes will be red or black. The dominant gene (P) makes the eyes black, and the recessive gene (p) makes the eyes red. It also has a lightening affect on the whole coat. Now, let’s learn something about their actual colors. This is an agouti gerbil: notice its black eyes. This gerbil does have a white belly, though you can't see it.


An agouti gerbil is the most basic color of gerbil. It wasn’t until about 30-40 years ago that they started being able to get colors besides agouti. The agouti gerbil has a white belly, meaning that it had to have an "A." We don’t know whether the second A gene is upper or lower case. Remember, there can be hidden recessive genes that won’t ever show up unless they get paired up with another recessive gene of the same letter. Notice that the gerbil’s eyes are black, meaning that it had to have a "P." It may have a "p" as its second letter, but that will not show up unless it is paired up with another "p." We will use the "-" to show that we don’t know what the second letter out of a gene is. Thus, this agouti gerbil’s genetic code for the A gene and the P gene is A-P-. Now, by knowing this agouti’s parents’ genetic code, I can say that this gerbil has a recessive gene for the second P gene and a dominant gene for the second A gene. Therefore, we know that its genetic code for the A gene and the P gene is AAPp. If I were to breed this gerbil with another gerbil that had the same genetic code, all the gerbils would have the dominant A for their A genes. Since gerbils can give either a dominant or a recessive gene to a pup, however, a recessive "p" will probably be paired up with another recessive "p" about half the time. Since both genes have to be recessive for it to show up in the gerbil’s coloring (as is the case here), the pup will have red eyes. This gerbil’s genetic code for the A gene will be AA, and its genetic code for the P gene will be pp. Because the p gene also lightens up the gerbil’s coat, this is what a gerbil with AApp genes will look like. It is called an argente.


This is just a very basic explanation of how genetics work. There are also many ways in which some of the other genes will work together to make a completely different color of coat. If you are wondering how the Punnet square works into all of this, it is just the way in which you can easily organize your genes and see how many variations you could possibly have with a given set of parents.

I may have lost many of you through that lengthy explanation of genetics, but I think it will make natural selection easier to understand.

There really isn’t a problem with natural selection itself. It is in how it is applied to evolution that is the problem. It is often said that natural selection is the driving force behind evolution. When natural selection is in action, the "selection" will only be selecting information that already existed. Face it, with everything you already know about genetics, you don’t see any possible way that you could arrange all those genes to make, say, a hamster, right? Sure you can make variations off of a gerbil that may cause the gerbil to look completely different that your original gerbil, but it is still not a hamster. Evolutionists basically will say that natural selection can add new information to the genetic code. This is not true, however. Natural selection only works with information that is already there.

From a creationist’s perspective, natural selection is the way in which organisms possessing specific characteristics survive in a given climate better than those who don’t have those characteristics. Those without the characteristics diminish in number or die. This can be seen in even noticing where certain people groups settled. Those with darker skin tended to settle down where there was much sunshine and heat. People with light complexion tended to head up north where there wasn’t as much sun and heat. Because people stayed in their own people group, darker skinned people married darker skinned people, producing babies that had darker skin. Of course, there could be recessive genes that could have caused a baby to have light skin, but in a hot, humid, bright climate without sun screen, light-skinned people aren’t going to do as well because they will run into radiation problems.

From an evolutionist’s perspective, natural selection is the way in which new information is put into genetics, causing a completely different organism to come from two parents which were the same.

Natural selection is not necessarily a bad phrase, but if you do not define what you mean by natural selection, you may lose a few friends over them thinking you have gone off the deep end. Natural selection is a very real and true thing, but not when it is used interchangeably with the word evolution.