The Evolution of a Creationist

Chapter 9 - DO MUTATIONS PRODUCE NEW LIFE FORMS?

When I began to feel the pressure of having no experimentally testable facts to substantiate my position as a theistic evolutionist, I turned to what I thought was my ace in the hole: Genetics. Didn't everyone know that the science of genetics had irrevocably shown evolution in progress?  Without mutations (changes in the genes and chromosomes), there is no evolutionary change. The question my students asked was, "Do mutations produce new life forms or improvements in present life forms?" Naturally I assumed they produce new forms and I thought I could prove it from the scientific literature. I was due for another rude awakening!

Many creationists^[1] and evolutionists study the phenomenon of genetic mutation. The predominant view of evolutionists was expressed by Dr. Ernst Mayr of Harvard: "Ultimately, all variation is, of course, due to mutation."^[2] Dr. Mayr instructs us that all variation (different types of plants and animals) observable in life is due to changes in the genes and chromosomes. These mutations occur in the make-up of DNA.

DNA: LANGUAGE OF THE CELL

DNA, the basic information system of the cell, contains the blue prints needed to manufacture twenty or more different proteins. Each of these proteins is manufactured in little "cell-factories" at the direction of the DNA and is essential for the maintenance of life. So, which came first? If DNA is essential in the manufacturing process of proteins, and the manufacturing process produces the proteins essential to DNA, then you can't have one without the other. This means they both must have been created fully functional and at exactly the same point in time. In other words, God must have created the information system of all cells at a point in time and fully functional. DNA is needed to make DNA! DNA provides the instructions to the chemical factories inside the cell for making itself.

Scientists call DNA the "language of the cell." All scientists agree that language requires intelligence. Could there be an implication here that DNA, the "language of the cell" required intelligence to create it? Could it be that DNA was created fully functional in all the different kinds of life by an intelligent Designer, the God of the Bible! Evolution offers no answers to this weighty problem. Yet the God of Creation proclaims through His Holy Scriptures, "I created, created, created!"

The genetic information of DNA cannot be improved upon in any normal, healthy organism. Natural selection or "survival of the fittest" does not produce new genes, it merely selects the best suited animal or plant life for a specific niche or environment. This is adaptation to a specific environment and not mutation. Yet mutation is the only mechanism scientists have proposed to generate the "new" genetic information needed for evolutionary change in the molecules-to-man model. This presents an enormous problem for the evolution model, especially when we learn that mutation in a gene is a rare event.^[3]

How could life have evolved into all its millions of forms if the very mechanism that causes it to evolve (mutation) is a rare event? When mutations do occur, geneticists tell us that mutations are 99.9% harmful.

"The process of mutation is the only source of the raw materials of genetic variability, and hence, of evolution....The mutants which arise are, with rare exceptions, deleterious to their carriers, at least in the environments which the species normally encounters." (Theodosius Dobzhansky)^[4]

Dobzhansky spent his professional life breeding and mutating fruit flies. In the end, he had somewhat strange fruit flies, but fruit flies nonetheless. Some of those flies were not even able to reproduce because they had become sterile. Dobzhansky writes that mutations are the only source of evolution, but that they are almost always harmful (which means the mutation makes the life-form that gets it less able to survive where it lives). If "survival of the fittest" is true, then mutations should, cause extinctions, not new and better life forms. Of course what we observe in nature are extinctions of plants and animals rather than emerging, new life forms. There are millions of living things from plants to insects, but we hear almost weekly of more extinctions. How many newly evolved creatures have you heard about in your lifetime? With all the millions of living things in the world surely mutations are happening and something is or has evolved into something else. The evolutionists are frantically searching for the smallest hint that something will evolve and prove their theory to be true.

A few years ago the evolutionary community presented to the public their best example of evolution in progress. It was a guppy family that had been separated from their old friends for several years. When the guppies were reunited they would not mate. Evolutionists consider a life-form to be a new species when it will no longer mate with its old friends. Maybe the guppy didn't smell good when it came back from its temporary environment. Or maybe its old friends didn't recognize it, or maybe the researchers didn't wait long enough to see if the guppy would be accepted again. The fact is that both populations of guppies were still unmistakably identifiable to scientists and laymen as guppies. Where is the evidence for the evolution of one creature into another when after more than eleven years of breeding guppies they are still guppies.

Even if these fish refuse to breed with each other and are therefore categorized as a new species of guppy, does this prove evolution of one kind into another kind of creature. People have devised their definitions of and limits to species, but God refers to "kinds" in the Genesis account. Biblically, there are certain boundaries that no living form can cross. A specific "kind" of creature will never evolve into another "kind" of creature. Guppies are fish. Within the fish-kind there is a lot of room for change, even "evolutionary" change, but fish will forever be fish, big ones, little ones, fresh water and salt water, but still fish.

It doesn't seem right for scientists to tell us in school and college that the chief mechanism in our ever upward and onward evolutionary process is mutation in the genes when they say in the scientific literature mutations are harmful or deadly:  "Mutations are more than just sudden changes in heredity; they also affect viability, and, to the best of our knowledge, invariably affect it adversely." (C.P. Martin) ^[5],^[6],^[7]

So we learn that mutations in a healthy life-form invariably cause harmful changes or death (lethal) to the organism. How does evolution from molecules-to-man occur if the very process that supposedly causes it to happen, in truth, harms or kills the organism? To put this another way, why did the evolutionary scientists evacuate the area when the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor in Pennsylvania destroyed itself? Why didn't these scientists move their families into the area to be irradiated so mutations might develop and they could evolve into the next higher life form? The scientists knew that their offspring would inherit unhealthy characteristics from the Three Mile Island irradiation. They got away from the mutation-causing radiation as fast as they could!

Professor of Genetics at the University of Wisconsin, James Crow writes:

"...mutants would usually be detrimental. For a mutation is a random change of a highly organized reasonably smoothly functioning living body. A random change in the highly integrated system of chemical processes which constitute life is almost certain to impair it -- just as a random interchange of connections in a television set is not likely to improve the picture."^[8]

Dr. Crow's analogy is accurate. All of us know that stirring up and haphazardly reattaching wires in the back of a T.V. set will not improve the picture. In the same way random changes in the genes do not improve our ability to live and function. As a matter of fact no scientist has yet observed a random mutation produce a new hormone, enzyme, or simple organ.^[9] Nevertheless they teach us and our children the lie that we are here because our primeval ancestors had mutations occur in their genes that caused them to evolve higher and higher until here we are. Magic!! Listen to the words of the famous evolutionist from the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Loren Eiseley:

"With the failure of these many efforts (to prove evolution to be true), science was left in the somewhat embarrassing position of having to postulate theories of living origins which it could not demonstrate. After having chided the theologian for his reliance on myth and miracle, science found itself in the unenviable position of having to create a mythology of its own: namely, the assumption that what, after long effort could not be proved to take place today had in truth, taken place in the primeval past."^[10] (Emphasis added)

PLANT EVOLUTION

One of the world's leading experts on plant evolution and fossil plants, Dr. E. J. H. Corner of Cambridge University dogmatically states:

"The theory of evolution is not merely the theory of the origin of species, but the only explanation of the fact that organisms can be classified into this hierarchy of natural affinity. Much evidence can be adduced in favour of the theory of evolution -- from biology, bio-geography and paleontology, but I still think that, to the unprejudiced, the fossil record of plants is in favour of special creation."^[11] (Emphasis added)

According to expert Corner, there is no evidence for the evolution of plants. In fact, when plants are studied closely they appear to be a special creation! The field of botany (plants) does not prove evolution, and yet Dr. Corner still believes in an evolutionary mythological system. He is trusting his compatriots in "biology, bio-geography and paleontology" to prove evolution to be true. In Corner's field (plants), special creation appears to be the best option.

If there is no evidence for the evolution of people or plants, then how about evidence for the evolution of fish?

EVOLUTION OF FISH

"The geological record has so far provided no evidence as to the origin of the fishes,...[J.R. Norman (British Museum of Natural History)]^[12]

According to these experts, there is no evidence for the evolution of plants, and no evidence for the evolution of fish. What about amphibians?

EVOLUTION OF AMPHIBIANS

"...none of the known fishes is thought to be directly ancestral to the earliest land vertebrates. Most of them lived after the first amphibians appeared, and those that came before show no evidence of developing the stout limbs and ribs that characterized the primitive tetrapods...
Since the fossil material provides no evidence of other aspects of the transformation from fish to tetrapod, paleontologists have had to speculate how legs and aerial breathing evolved..." (Barbara J. Stahl)^[13] (Emphasis added).

No evidence for the evolution of plants and no evidence for fish. What's more, the only evidence for amphibians is the "speculations" of the fossil experts. The evidence, then, for evolution of creatures as they supposedly developed the ability to crawl out of water and live as land animals is in the imagination of the evolutionist. There are no fossils and no facts to support belief in the evolution of amphibians. How about birds?

EVOLUTION OF BIRDS

"The [evolutionary] origin of birds is largely a matter of deduction. There is no fossil evidence of the stages through which the remarkable change from reptile to bird was achieved." (W.E. Swinton)^[14]

The evolution of birds is a "matter of deduction". "Deduction" in this case is a polite synonym for imagination. There is not a single, undisputed fossil that shows the evolutionary transitions of reptiles into birds.

According to the above evolutionary experts, evolution is grossly lacking in hard evidence! Although we are told that mutations are good because they generate new life and produce evolution, we do not see this "good" happening in reality. Genetic mutations cannot be the driving force behind evolution. Nor do the evolutionists provide evidence to prove the evolution of any creature.

TIME GENERATES MIRACLES

But what if earth history was counted in billions of years? The old argument always comes along at this point that anything can happen in a random-chance system if it is given enough time. The miracle of life can come from dead chemicals if given enough time. We will discuss the "billions of years" argument in Chapter 10. But before leaving Chapter 9, let us not forget that changes in the genes (random mutations) do not improve present life forms, nor is there any solid factual evidence that they generate new plants or animals. The evacuation of Three Mile Island spoke volumes! (If, indeed, mutations are helpful then we should gladly and willingly expose ourselves to them to "improve" our evolutionary opportunities!)

[1] Dr. Walter Brown wrote a paper several years ago on the evidences for creation. In his footnotes was a selection of quotes from the pro-evolutionary literature dealing with genetics. For this valuable information, please contact Dr. Walter Brown, The Center for Scientific Creation, 5612 North 20th Place, Phoenix, AZ 85016.

[2] Ernst Mayr, Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution (Philadelphia: Wister Institute Press, 1967), p. 50.

[3] "Although mutation is the ultimate source of all genetic variation, it is a relatively rare event..." , Francisco Ayala, "The Mechanics of Evolution," Scientific American, September 1978, p. 63.

[4] Theodosius Dobzhansky, "On Methods of Evolutionary Biology and Anthropology," American Scientist, Winter, December 1957, p. 385.

[5] C. P. Martin, "A Non-Geneticist Looks at Evolution," American Scientist, January 1953, p. 162.

[6] "If we say that it is only by chance that they (mutations) are useful, we are still speaking too leniently. In general, they are useless, detrimental, or lethal." W. R. Thompson, Introduction to the Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1956), p. 10.

[7] "Lethal mutations outnumber visibles (Albinism, Dwarfism, Hemophilism) by about 20 to 1. Mutations that have harmful effects are even more frequent than lethal ones." A. M. Winchester, Genetics, 5th ed. (Boston: Houghton Mufflin Co., 1977), p. 356.

[8] James Crow, "Genetic Effects of Radiation," Bulletin of Atomic Sciences, 14 (1958), 19-20.

[9] "Do we, therefore, ever see mutations going about the business of producing new structures for selection to work on? No nascent organ has ever been observed emerging, though their origin in prefunctional form is basic to evolutionary theory. Some should be visible today, occurring in organisms at various stages up to integration of a functional new system, but we don't see them: there is no sign at all of this kind of radical novelty. Neither observation or controlled experiment has shown natural selection manipulating mutations so as to produce a new gene, hormone, enzyme system or organ." Michael Pitman, Adam and Evolution (London: Rider Press, 1981), pp. 67,68.

[10] Dr. Loren Eiseley, The Immense Journey (New York: Random House, 1957), p. 199.

[11] E. J. H. Corner, 'Evolution' in Contemporary Botanical Thought, eds. Anna M. Macleod and L. S. Cobley, Oliver and Boyd, for the Botanical Society of Edinburg, 1961, p. 97. As quoted (partially) from The Quote Book, p. 11.

[12] J. R. Norman, "Classification and Pedigrees: Fossils," in A History of Fishes, 3rd ed., ed. Dr. P. H. Greenwood, British Museum of Natural History, London, 1975, p. 343. As quoted (partially) from The Quote Book, p. 11.

[13] Barbara J. Stahl, Vertebrate History: Problems in Evolution (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974), pp. 148,195. As quoted in The Quote Book, p. 11.

[14] Wo. E. Swinton, "The Origin of Birds," Chapter 1 in Biology and Comparative Physiology of Birds, A. J. Marshall, ed., Vol. I (New York: Academic Press, 1960), p. 1. As quoted in The Quote Book, p. 11.