The Mutants Are Coming! (Or Going?)

Now, “when Darwin proposed his version of evolution, he cited one mechanism (hinting there might be others) over and over again [that he believed could evolve creatures over time]: natural selection.”3

Unfortunately for atheistic materialists, “there was only one problem with the idea [transforming one creature into new, never-before-seen life forms] that natural selection was the answer to where we came from . It simply didn’t work.”4

Selection Isn’t Creative

Why? Well, “relatively soon after his theory became popular it was pointed out [by his detractors] that any selection process (whether natural or not) can only choose from things that already exist.”5 It’s a culling process, not a creative one.

“Living things have built-in variation and the environment may select for certain traits [that work better than others in that environment], but natural selection does not produce new genetic information”6 for traits that never existed before.

For example, a dog population that adapts to a cold environment may do so by losing genes for short hair, leaving only long-hair genes in the population (the dogs with genes for short hair may die off due to the cold, leaving the ones with long hair that can survive in that climate to pass on their genes). The reverse situation could happen with short-haired dogs in a warm, desert setting.

However, the parent population of dogs already had genes for long and short hair in the first place, or else those genes couldn’t have been selected for. And, in fact, by choosing some information in preference to others, natural selection may eventually get rid of information not selected “for” in certain populations. But a loss of genes is the opposite of evolution (which requires gaining novel information).

What Evolution Needs

To really emphasize the issue here, understand that evolutionists believe that primitive single-celled organisms have slowly changed into various different kinds of creatures (like mice, meerkats, moose, monkeys, and men) over millions of years.

And yet if this were true, the original DNA “library” of a microbe would have undergone a massive net increase of information during the stages of transformation during the alleged millions of years, because single-celled organisms don’t have genetic instructions for blood, bones, blood clotting systems, lungs, eyes, ears, and a myriad of other things the other creatures have.

For the story of evolution to be true, there would have to be some mechanism that constantly gives rise to new genetic information.

For the story of evolution to be true, there would have to be some mechanism that constantly gives rise to new genetic information. And evolutionary scientists admit that natural selection can’t do that.

As an example, if you and your friend go out to a buffet dinner, you might both select different items from the platters, but the food you chose was already there. And your selecting food from a buffet table doesn’t cause new kinds of (never-seen-before) food to pop up onto it. Also, the food you end up with on your plate likely is less than the total variety available from the buffet. “So selection tends to reduce the amount of variation [in DNA], not increase it.”7

“Natural selection has never been seen to produce new words, sentences or chapters in the [DNA] library of genetic information in living things. [Metaphorically] Natural selection is like choosing books out of a library. It cannot write new books [that never existed before] into the libraries of information in living things.”8

And because of this, “evolutionary scientists realized that in order for the theory of evolution to remain plausible, they needed a new ‘mechanism.’ They needed something to produce brand new genetic information that could lead to different features in living things. . . . These new features (i.e. greater variation) could then be selected from.”9

Genetic Mutation: Helpful or Harmful?

The most widely accepted new mechanism is of course genetic mutation. Mutations are basically spelling mistakes in DNA—either copying mistakes that occur when DNA replicates/produces copies of itself or misspellings of DNA sequences brought about by external environmental factors such as UV light, cigarette smoke, radiation, excessive alcohol consumption, etc.

This inclusion of genetic mutation—combined with natural selection—into the evolutionary story led to what’s known as “Neo-Darwinian Theory” (new Darwinism), which “basically says that mutations provide variety [in genetic information] while natural selection sorts out new genetic information [the best of it]. This one-two punch was supposed to explain away any opposition to a naturalistic view of life’s origin.”10

However, as an analogy, this is like saying that if we start off with a simple children’s book (like Little Red Riding Hood for example), and we make a copy with some spelling errors in it and then continue the process over and over again (with new spelling errors introduced into each subsequent manuscript), then eventually it could turn into the works of Shakespeare.

But of course no one has ever seen the equivalent happen in living things—that is the stuff of science fiction, not observational science.

Children of the Atom?

Now, popular sci-fi movies and comic books—like the X-Men—might portray “mutants” as genetically superior, gifted with special abilities and more highly evolved. But reality is a far different story.

Comic book portrayals of evolved superheroes may appeal to the imagination of young and old alike, but in the real world, doctors discovering a significant mutation in someone is unlikely to be cause for celebration. Far from it—mutations can cause severe disease such as cystic fibrosis, cancers, sickle cell anemia, Marfan syndrome, and Huntington’s disease, just to name a few. Mutations are most often fairly harmless, but they tend to break things overall.

And this is because—like natural selection—“mutation is an information-losing mechanism.”11 Like scrambling the information in a computer program, the corruption of the DNA code has never been seen (even once) to add novel, functional, genetic information for never-before-seen forms, functions, and features of a living thing.

Let’s Make It Happen

Scientists have used radiation on various animals to study the effects of genetic mutation for a while now in an attempt to “speed up” and observe the supposed evolutionary process. Its results have been observed to range from no effect to severe defects, but never additional, truly novel and functional genetic information. Results such as hairless and cancer-ridden mice, wingless fruit flies, and even flies with legs growing out of their eyes have been observed. But there have been no examples of fruit flies turning into butterflies (or anything else other than fruit flies, for that matter). No creatures developing new, never-seen-before functional structures—i.e., no “evolution.”

As Dr. Lee Spetner, a respected scientist that studied the subject for many years, said in his book, Not By Chance!,

All point mutations that have been studied on the molecular level turn out to reduce the genetic information and not to increase it.12 (emphasis mine)

And despite thousands of scientific papers on the subject being produced worldwide since then, no one has provided a hands-down argument in any scientific study that has empirically demonstrated anything that contradicts his statement.

The Mutants Are Coming . . .

Now, over the years, I’ve had many a person in a Q&A time object and say something like, “If mutations can cause chromosomes to double or new combinations of DNA “letters” to form, isn’t that an increase of genetic information?” And this is usually largely because they don’t understand the argument or the definition of “information” we’re talking about.

The creationist argument is that mutations almost always cause a net loss of useful information, not that statistical information does not increase. What do I mean by that? Well, consider the following sentence as an example.

I drove from Calgary to Edmonton.

Now, I can “mutate” this information and change it in several ways. I could simply delete some information.

I drove from Calgary.

I could even make it less specific by changing out one word for another, therefore reducing its information content.

I went from Calgary to Edmonton.

This is less information because now you don’t know specifically how I got to my destination (car, plane, on foot, etc.).

I could also increase the number of letters so that there is more statistical information, but that results in an overall reduction of useful coded information.

I dkwroppshvqioue from Calgary to Edmonton.

As you can see, even though there is a net gain of the number of symbols here, and the letters d-r-o-v-e are still present in the second word, the meaning is obscured by the added letters, resulting in a net loss of useful information.

I could also simply repeat the sentence over and over again, increasing the statistical amount of information, but never increasing the functional information.

I drove from Calgary to Edmonton. I drove from Calgary to Edmonton. I drove from Calgary to Edmonton. I drove from Calgary to Edmonton.

In all of these examples, there is not an increase in new, useful information. In order for the sentence to “evolve,” it would have to read something like:

I drove from Calgary to Edmonton in a Honda Civic, and it took me 3 1/2 hours to get there.

In this case, there would be novel and (potentially) useful information.

But genetic mutations have never been observed providing this kind of additional information to DNA—they are no help at all in explaining naturalism. However, it should be noted that mutations can be beneficial in certain circumstances, just not beneficial to the story of evolution.

Beneficial Mutations?

So-called beneficial mutations are often used by evolutionists as proof of evolution, but all fail to qualify when examined closely. Why? Because examples like wingless beetles (brought about by a mutation that stunts the normal growth of their already-existing wings) that live on a windy island surviving better (because they don’t get blown out to sea like the non-mutant winged beetles do), is a poor way to explain how amoebas supposedly turned into mankind over millions of years.

This specific mutation may be beneficial to those particular beetles in that particular environment, but again, it doesn’t benefit the story of evolution a bit. It is just another case of loss of genetic information (they used to have wings, now they don’t), which is the opposite of evolution. And that particular advantage would turn into a massive disadvantage if predators were introduced onto that island and the mutants could no longer fly away from them!

And for those that think perhaps we can observe evolution on a more microbial scale: even examples of bacteria “evolving” resistance to antibiotics can be due to loss of genetic information. Here’s an example.

H. pylori are bacteria that can attack the stomach and cause severe problems. To fight this, doctors prescribe an antibiotic, which is absorbed through the bacterium’s cell wall. Inside the bacterium is an enzyme that converts the antibiotic into a poison, which kills the “bugs.”

But sometimes these bacteria mutate, and they corrupt the proper DNA instructions for the enzyme so that it’s no longer produced by the bacteria (this isn’t enough of a loss to kill the bacteria). Because of the loss of the enzyme, the antibiotic can’t be converted to a poison, and the “bugs” now survive the same antibiotic that would have previously destroyed them.

So, it may appear that the acquired resistance is because the bacteria somehow developed new traits and/or features they never had before, but it isn’t. They survived because of a loss of genetic information, not an addition of it.

Often Hoped For, Never Seen . . .

“Fanatical atheist Richard Dawkins, (one of the leading champions of evolutionary ideas), has revealed his faith in the non-observable. He stated in an interview that:”13

Evolution has been observed. It’s just that it hasn’t been observed while it’s happening.14

“According to naturalists [like Dawkins], millions of years of chance random processes produced all the various life forms that have ever lived on earth through a process called [biological] evolution.”15 But even though this is believed by millions of people, perhaps the most revealing portion of Dawkins’ quote is that “it [evolution] . . . hasn’t been observed”!

“Evolution is often claimed to have the same credibility as any other scientific theory (gravity etc.).”16 However, “evolution is the only highly regarded scientific theory which contains no data from the scientific method [i.e., no one has observed a creature evolving new forms or features or one kind of creature turning into a different kind].”17 It’s “entirely theoretical with no repeatable experiments”18 or historical, eyewitness documentation to back it up.

We aren’t evolving; we’re devolving rapidly.

Ultimately, genetic mutations tend to break down genetic information in organisms. They are a part of the corruption introduced at the time of the fall, which is leading all living things in a downward genetic spiral toward eventual extinction. We aren’t evolving; we’re devolving rapidly. The mutants aren’t coming; they’re going.

“Christians are often accused of having ‘blind faith,’ meaning there is no observable evidence to support their beliefs in Christ as Lord and Saviour, or the Bible as credible.”19

“While it is true that historical events cannot be ‘proven’ with the scientific method (repeatable experiments), the historical, eyewitness accounts in the Bible can be powerfully defended”20 by someone who has looked into the evidence in support of it.

“Faith in the Bible and origin of man as revealed in the book of Genesis, witnessed by the Creator himself, is far more realistic and rational than a ‘theory’ with no historical or observable support.”21