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IMAGINARY MECHANISMS OF EVOLUTION
The neo-Darwinist model, which we shall take as the "mainstream" theory
of evolution today, argues that life has evolved through two naturalistic
mechanisms: "natural selection" and "mutation". The basic assertion of
the theory is as follows: Natural selection and mutation are two complementary
mechanisms. The origin of evolutionary modifications is random mutations
that take place in the genetic structure of living things. The traits
brought about by the mutations are selected by the mechanism of natural
selection and therefore the living things evolve.
When we further probe into this theory, we find that there is no such
evolutionary mechanism at all, because neither natural selection nor mutations
make any contribution to the claim that different species have evolved
and transformed into one another.
Natural Selection
As process of nature, natural selection was familiar to biologists before
Darwin, who defined it as a "mechanism that keeps species unchanging without
being corrupted". Darwin was the first person to put forward the assertion
that this process had evolutionary power and he then erected his entire
theory on the foundation of this assertion. The name he gave to his book
indicates that natural selection was the basis of Darwin's theory: The
Origin of Species, by means of Natural Selection...
However since Darwin's time, there has not been a single shred of evidence
put forward to show that natural selection causes living beings to evolve.
Colin Patterson, the senior paleontologist of the Museum of Natural History
in England, who is also a prominent evolutionist by the way, stresses
that natural selection has never been observed to have the power to cause
things to evolve:
No one has ever produced a species by mechanisms
of natural selection. No one has ever got near it and most of the
current argument in neo-Darwinism is about this question.5
Natural selection holds that those living things that are more suited
to the natural conditions of their habitats will prevail by having offspring
that will survive, whereas those that are unfit will disappear. For
example, in a deer herd under the threat of wild animals, naturally those
that can run faster will survive. That is true. But no matter how long
this process goes on, it will not transform those deer into another living
species. The deer will always remain deer.
When we look at the few incidents the evolutionists have put forth as
observed examples of natural selection, we see that these are nothing
but a simple attempt to hoodwink.
"Industrial Melanism"
In 1986 Douglas Futuyma published a book, The Biology of Evolution, which
is accepted as one of the sources explaining the theory of evolution by
natural selection in the most explicit way. The most famous of his examples
on this subject is about the colour of the moth population, which appeared
to darken during the Industrial Revolution in England.
According to the account, around the outset of the Industrial Revolution
in England, the colour of the tree barks around Manchester was quite light.
Because of this, dark-coloured moths resting on those trees could easily
be noticed by the birds that fed on them and therefore they had very little
chance of survival. Fifty years later, as a result of pollution, the barks
of the trees had darkened, and this time the light-coloured moths became
the most hunted. As a result, the number of light-coloured moths decreased
whereas that of the dark-coloured ones increased since the latter were
not easily noticed. Evolutionists use this as a great evidence to their
theory. Evolutionists, on the other hand, take refuge and solace in window-dressing
by showing how light-coloured moths "evolved" into dark-coloured ones.
However, it should be quite clear that this situation can in no way be
used as evidence for the theory of evolution, for natural selection did
not give rise to a new form that had not existed before. Dark coloured
moths existed in the moth population before the Industrial Revolution.
Only the relative proportions of the existing moth varieties in the population
changed. The moths had not acquired a new trait or an organ, which would
cause a "speciation". In order to have a moth turn into another living
species, a bird for example, new additions would have had to be made to
the genes. That is, an entirely separate genetic program would have had
to be loaded so as to include information about the physical traits of
the bird.
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The example of the moths of the Industrial Evolution
is advanced as the greatest evidence for evolution by natural selection.
However evolution is out of the question in this example as no new
moth species is formed. On the left above are trees and moths of
the pre-Industrial Revolution era, and on the right are those of
the post-Industrial Revolution era.
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Briefly, natural selection does not have the capability to add a new
organ to a living organism, remove one, or change the organism into another
species-quite contrary to the image that evolutionists conjure up. The
"greatest" evidence put forward since Darwin has been able to go no further
than the "industrial melanism" of the moths in England.
Can Natural Selection Explain Complexity?
There is nothing that natural selection contributes to the theory of
evolution, because this mechanism can never increase or improve the
genetic information of a species. Neither can it transform one species
into another: a starfish into a fish, a fish into a frog, a frog into
a crocodile, or a crocodile into a bird. The biggest defender of punctuated
equilibrium, Gould, refers to this deadlock of natural selection as follows;
The essence of Darwism lies in a single phrase: natural
selection is the creative force of evolutionary change. No one denies
that natural selection will play a negative role in eliminating the unfit.
Darwinian theories require that it create the fit as well.6
Another of the misleading methods that evolutionists
employ on the issue of natural selection is their effort to present this
mechanism as a conscious designer. However, natural selection has no
consciousness. It does not possess a will that can decide what is
good and what is bad for living beings. As a result, natural selection
cannot explain biological systems and organs that have the feature of
"irreducible complexity". These systems and organs are composed
of the co-operation of a great number of parts and they are of no use
if even one of these parts is missing or defective. (For example, human
eye does not function unless it exists with all its details). Therefore,
the will that brings all these parts together should be able to figure
the future in advance and aim directly for the benefit that is to be acquired
at the last stage. Since natural mechanism has no consciousness or will,
it can do no such thing. This fact which also demolishes the foundations
of the theory of evolution, also worried Darwin: "If it could be demonstrated
that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed
by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down."7
Natural selection only selects out the disfigured, weak,
or unfit individuals of a species. It cannot produce new species, new
genetic information, or new organs. That is, it cannot make anything evolve.
Darwin accepted this reality by saying: "Natural selection can do nothing
until favourable variations chance to occur".8
This is why neo-Darwinism has had to elevate mutations next to natural
selection as the "cause of beneficial changes". However as we shall see,
mutations can only be "the cause for harmful changes".
Mutations
Mutations are defined as breaks or replacements taking place in the DNA
molecule, which is found in the nucleus of the cell of a living organism
and which holds all the genetic information. These breaks or replacements
are the result of external effects such as radiation or chemical action.
Every mutation is an "accident" and either damages the nucleotides making
up the DNA or changes their locations. Most of the time, they cause so
much damage and modification that the cell cannot repair them.
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Left : A normal fruit fly (drosophila). Right
: A fruit fly with its legs jutting drom its head ; a mutation induced
by radiation.
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Mutation, which evolutionists frequently hide behind, is not a magic
wand that transforms living organisms into a more advanced and perfect
form. The direct effect of mutations is harmful. The changes effected
by mutations can only be like those experienced by the people in Hiroshima,
Nagasaki, and Chernobyl: that is, death, disability, and freaks of nature
The reason for this is very simple: DNA has a very complex structure
and random effects can only cause harm to this structure. B.G. Ranganathan
states:
Mutations are small, random, and harmful. They rarely
occur and the best possibility is that they will be ineffectual. These
four characteristics of mutations imply that mutations cannot lead to
an evolutionary development. A random change in a highly specialised
organism is either ineffectual or harmful. A random change in a watch
cannot improve the watch. It will most probably harm it or at best be
ineffectual. An earthquake does not improve the city, it brings destruction.9
Not surprisingly, no useful mutation has been observed so far.
All mutations have proved to be harmful. The evolutionist scientist Warren
Weaver comments on the report prepared by the Committee on Genetic Effects
of Atomic Radiation, which had been formed to investigate mutations that
may have been caused by the nuclear weapons used in the Second World War:
Many will be puzzled about the statement that practically
all known mutant genes are harmful. For mutations are a necessary part
of the process of evolution. How can a good effect - evolution to higher
forms of life - results from mutations practically all of which are
harmful?10
Every effort put into "generating a useful mutation" has resulted in
failure. For decades, evolutionists carried out many experiments to produce
mutations in fruit flies as these insects reproduce very rapidly and so
mutations would show up quickly. Generation upon generation of these flies
were mutated, yet no useful mutation was ever observed. Evolutionist geneticist
Gordon Taylor writes thus:
In all the thousands of fly-breeding experiments
carried out all over the world for more than fifty years, a distinct new
species has never been seen to emerge... or even a new enzyme.11
Another researcher, Michael Pitman, comments on the failure of the experiments
carried out on fruit flies:
Morgan, Goldschmidt, Muller, and other geneticists
have subjected generations of fruit flies to extreme conditions of heat,
cold, light, dark, and treatment by chemicals and radiation. All sorts
of mutations, practically all trivial or positively deleterious, have
been produced. Man-made evolution? Not really: Few of the geneticists'
monsters could have survived outside the bottles they were bred in. In
practice mutants die, are sterile, or tend to revert to the wild type.12
The same holds true for man. All mutations that have been observed in
human beings have deleterious results. On this issue, evolutionists throw
up a smokescreen and try to show even examples of such deleterious mutation
as "evidence for evolution". All mutations that take place in humans result
in physical deformities, in infirmities such as mongolism, Down syndrome,
albinism, dwarfism or cancer. These mutations are presented in evolutionist
textbooks as examples of "the evolutionary mechanism at work". Needless
to say, a process that leaves people disabled or sick cannot be "an evolutionary
mechanism"-evolution is supposed to produce better forms that are more
fit to survive.
To summarise, there are three main reasons why mutations cannot be pressed
into the service of supporting evolutionists' assertions:
The direct effect of mutations is harmful: Since they occur randomly,
they almost always damage the living organism that undergoes them. Reason
tells us that unconscious intervention in a perfect and complex structure
will not improve that structure but impair it. Indeed, no "useful mutation"
has ever been observed.
Mutations add no new information to an organism's DNA: The particles
making up the genetic information are either torn from their places, destroyed,
or carried off to different places. Mutations cannot make a living thing
acquire a new organ or a new trait. They only cause abnormalities like
a leg sticking out of the back, or an ear from the abdomen.
In order for a mutation to be transferred to the subsequent generation,
it has to have taken place in the reproductive cells of the organism:
A random change that occurs in a casual cell or organ of the body cannot
be transferred to the next generation. For example, a human eye altered
by the effects of radiation or by other causes will not be passed on to
subsequent generations.
Briefly, it is impossible for living beings to have evolved, because
there exists no mechanism in nature that can cause them to evolve. This
agrees with the evidence of the fossil record, which demonstrates that
this scenario is far removed from reality.
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