"We don't have a single example of a mutation resulting in a net gain of information. Not one" (But we do)

The title of this post quotes Eric Metaxas, and is part of a post, by him, on BreakPoint: "We don't have a single example of a mutation resulting in a net gain of information. Not one."

I appreciate Mr. Metaxas. I have read a couple of excellent books by him, and have previously posted about his writing, here and here. However, Mr. Metaxas, who has many gifts, and has done a great deal of good, is not an expert in genetics. He seems to be repeating a statement that he has heard from the Discovery Institute, an organization which argues that mutations did not bring about new functions in organisms. Please note that it is always possible to argue that any difference, however small, between two organisms is the result of God's specific miraculous intervention, and this cannot be experimentally disproved. (It has not been proved, either, and probably couldn't be, even if true.) But it can be doubted, and alternative mechanisms for the rise of new genetic information have been found.The Discovery Institute promotes the idea that God has, indeed, caused all changes in the DNA of two related species, because random changes cannot produce new functions. However, most scientists, Christian and otherwise, believe that most, or all, of such differences have come about through random mutation, followed by selection. Many Christian scientists believe that God has allowed random mutation and selection to exist, as a means of bringing about the diversity of organisms present on earth.

I'm not completely clear as to what Mr. Metaxas means by information. That is a complex subject, and different experts define it in different ways. But it seems clear that he is claiming that living things have never added a function as a result of a mutation. Sorry, but we do have such examples.

The first comment on Mr. Metaxas's post proposes that frameshift mutations have been a common means for the arrival of new functions, and provides a URL, which leads to this article, which is quite technical. The article claims that searching the genome of mice and humans has led to the discovery of several hundred genes that must have arisen by this type of mutation. The first two sentences of this article (after the abstract) are as follows:
"Several mechanisms, such as exon shuffling and alternative splicing, are responsible for novel gene functions, but they generate homologous domains and do not usually lead to drastic innovation. Major novelties can potentially be introduced by frameshift mutations and this idea can explain the creation of novel proteins."
The authors, then, believe that there are "several" mechanisms for the origin of novel gene functioning, including frameshift mutations.

The matter of the rise of new information has been discussed, in six posts in the BioLogos forum, by Dennis Venema. I briefly summarize these posts:
In the first, Venema discusses the position of the Discovery Institute, and the Intelligent Design Movement, and is related to the second paragraph of this post.
He says: "... describing how specified information can arise through natural means does not in any way imply God’s absence from the process. After all, natural processes are equally a manifestation of God’s activity as what one would call supernatural events."

In the second post, Venema describes the Long-Term Evolution Experiment. During this experiment, a colony of sexually reproducing bacteria experienced a mutation which allowed them to use citrate as an energy source, when, prior to that mutation, or series of mutations, they had not been able to do so.

In the third post, Venema discusses evidence that genes for hormone receptor proteins developed, in vertebrates, from duplication, and subsequent alteration, of an ancestral gene.

The fourth post argues, with evidence, that even the DNA responsible for complexly folded proteins may change so that a new function comes about, and that this has happened many times.

In his fifth post, Venema summarizes evidence that the entire vertebrate genome was duplicated, in an ancestor in the distant past, and that some of the "extra" copies of the genes thus formed have gone on to be responsible for new functions in vertebrates:
"This evidence is a strong indication that the modern vertebrate genome went through two rounds of [Whole Genome Duplication] early in its evolution, and that these events provided substantial 'raw material' for the acquisition of new information through gene divergence and neofunctionalization."

In his sixth, and last, post, Venema discusses the differences between the genes of humans and our closest relatives, the chimpanzees.

Thanks for reading. Mr. Venema, nor I, doubt that God is able to create, and change His creations, by any way He sees fit, including the miraculous. However we, and many other Christian scientists, believe that God designed the world so that random mutations, of various types, and natural selection, have given rise to much of the variety that is found in God's good creation. The assertion by Mr. Metaxas that forms the title of this post does not stand up the the evidence.

Added April 8, 2016: A later post on this blog refers to two other examples of recently arising functional genes.

describing how specified information can arise through natural means does not in any way imply God’s absence from the process. After all, natural processes are equally a manifestation of God’s activity as what one would call supernatural events. - See more at: https://biologos.org/blogs/dennis-venema-letters-to-the-duchess/evolution-and-the-origin-of-biological-information-part-1-intelligent-design#sthash.baHk5Eyt.dpuf

describing how specified information can arise through natural means does not in any way imply God’s absence from the process. After all, natural processes are equally a manifestation of God’s activity as what one would call supernatural events. - See more at: https://biologos.org/blogs/dennis-venema-letters-to-the-duchess/evolution-and-the-origin-of-biological-information-part-1-intelligent-design#sthash.baHk5Eyt.dpuf

Thoughts on Bonhoeffer

I recently read Bonhoeffer: pastor, martyr, prophet, spy, by Eric Metaxas. It was given to me, and I am grateful. It was a great book, but not for the faint-hearted, as it ran well over 500 pages. The book was well referenced. (Metaxas also wrote Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery. There was a movie based on that book. Bonhoeffer won the Christian Book Award for 2011.) Here's the Wikipedia article on Bonhoeffer.


Here's some of my reaction to the book, and to the life of Bonhoeffer, himself, but first, a brief biography and history lesson. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was one of eight children, born to an upper-class German family, in 1906. In the early part of the 20th Century, Germany lost the World War I, and was forced to agree to humiliating peace terms. They were a weak nation, politically and economically, ripe for taking over by a dictator. Bonhoeffer grew up knowing that he wanted to pursue theology, and did so, but also felt called to be a pastor. He served as pastor to expatriate Germans in Spain and the UK. When Hitler began to come to power, He claimed to be Christian, and many churches, and church leaders, were taken in. But he was using the church as one way to gain control over Germany. Hitler's Nazi party declared that Jews were an enemy, and that the Old Testament was not really part of the Bible, because it was Jewish. They also forced converted Jews out of the pastorate, and required pastors to swear allegiance to Hitler.

Bonhoeffer, and others, decided that they could not do this, and that much of the church, and its leaders, had sold out. They formed an association known as the Confessing Church, which emphasized the gospel, and refused to be governed by denominational leaders. Bonhoeffer became director of a illegal seminary for young Lutheran pastors-to-be, and exercised considerable influence on these young men.

Eventually, as Hitler and his Nazis did more outlandish, and evil things, Bonhoeffer, some other leaders of the confessing church, some disillusioned generals, and others, came to believe that Hitler must be assassinated, and Naziism overthrown. There were attempts to do this, but Bonhoeffer wasn't directly involved. Hitler survived a bomb explosion, from a bomb carried into the bunker where he was living. He had as many of the German underground as could be identified executed, including Bonhoeffer. Hitler committed suicide a few days later, before the Allies liberated Germany.

I learned several things that I had never heard from the book. One of them was that Martin Luther not only founded the Protestant church, but also, especially by giving Germans the Bible, a book to read in their own language, founded German national consciousness. He wrote some unfortunate contributions to anti-semitism, perhaps after suffering from dementia. 

I had already read Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship,  in which Bonhoeffer laid out what he believed to be the consequences of the Sermon on the Mount. (See here for a poster based on an important statement in the book, and here for a blog post about the book.) He was opposed to the idea of "cheap grace," because he thought that there was no such thing. Grace only comes with a serious commitment to following Christ as Lord. This biography forcefully showed that Bonhoeffer not only said this, but believed it, and acted upon it.

A few other thoughts:
1) Bonhoeffer never married. He was engaged to a young woman at the time of his death. Their letters to each other have been published, but I haven't read them.
2) Bonhoeffer was, indeed, a prophet, in that he saw what was coming, for Germany, and the church, when others did not. Prophets who predicted disaster were seldom honored in the Old Testament, and Bonhoeffer did not increase his popularity by prophesying the fall of Germany, or the deadly weakening of the church that would follow from not standing up to Hitler. However, according to the book, he didn't hate those who didn't see as he saw.
3) He was willing to work with the ecumenical movement, and, to some extent, that movement, in Europe at large, applied pressure to the Nazis. The ecumenical movement was not very popular with many evangelical Christians in the US, because it was seen as diluting the gospel of sin and redemption. Bonhoeffer didn't dilute these truths, but worked with ecumenical leaders.
4) Is the US in danger of falling to our own Hitler? Maybe, although I don't see it at present. It is unfortunately true that, when the church becomes too closely allied to some political idea, the church suffers, and its message is diluted, sometimes beyond recognition. What do you get when you mix politics with religion? Politics.
One the one hand, the Republican party in the US is often seen as the Christian party. That doesn't help Christianity, although it may help the Republicans. On the other, there are those on the other political side that want the church to uphold practices that the Bible calls sinful, such as homosexual activity. That doesn't help Christianity, either.
5) Political expedience can work in strange ways. The German underground, partly through Bonhoeffer, who had ties to church leaders in England, wanted the British to recognize them, and help them. But, according to the book, Churchill, the British war leader, felt that it was necessary to portray all Germans as Nazis, and hateful, in order to sustain enthusiasm for the war against Germany.
6) Bonhoeffer came to a couple of conclusions that I personally am not comfortable with, but perhaps he was right. First, he concluded that Hitler was so given to evil that he should be killed. Second, Bonhoeffer (and others) would have committed suicide to avoid betraying their families and others who were part of the German underground.
7) I guess the author had it right. Pastor came before martyr, prophet, and spy. Bonhoeffer served as unofficial pastor to his jailers and fellow prisoners during his last several months. He could not be a spy, or much of a teacher, while in prison. (Although he did write while imprisoned.)

Thanks for reading. We need more Bonhoeffers, and more books like this.

Note added June 10, 2014: See here for a chart, based on Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship. 

Added October 23, 2015: I added "Eric Metaxas" as a tag, and this link to a post, by me, about recent writing, by Mr. Metaxas, on a much different subject, in which he is not an expert. Thanks for reading!

"Amazing Grace"

May I add my small voice to those praising the film, "Amazing Grace," now showing in theaters?

The film is a biography of William Wilberforce, servant of God and politician, who led the fight to overthrow the slave trade in the British empire. He was, in the film, and in reality, inspired partly by John Newton, who wrote "Amazing Grace." Newton had been a slave trader himself, but had a spiritual awakening. All of us are wretches, without the grace of God, but Newton apparently felt himself more so because of his past.

In the film, Wilberforce must decide whether to serve God by withdrawing from society, or by trying to change society as a Member of Parliament. Wise Christians urge him to stay in the public arena.

The film has excellent acting, and is well done, and, above all, inspiring. I'd call it a must-see.

Thanks for reading.

Update, March 3, 2006: I just saw the author of Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery, Eric Metaxas, interviewed on C-SPAN2. This is the book that the movie was based on. The most remarkable thing that Metaxas said was that Wilberforce loved his enemies -- and he had some who wanted, not just to defeat him, but to kill him.

Update, October 23, 2015: I added the link, in the paragraph above, to the Wikipedia article on Mr. Metaxas. I also added his name as a tag, and enlarged the font size for the entire post. Here is a link to a recent post, by me, on some writing, by Mr. Metaxas, on another subject. He is not an expert in that subject.

Thanks for reading!