googlef87758e9b6df9bec.html A Sure Word: Who doesn't understand evolution? Part 2

Monday, May 28, 2018

Who doesn't understand evolution? Part 2

3. You think macroevolution is an inherently different process than microevolution.

In his article, THE TOP 10 SIGNS THAT YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND EVOLUTION AT ALL, Tyler Francke said, At its core, “macroevolution” is simply the steady accumulation of the small changes we observe in “microevolution.” Francke has repeated one of the 10 lies told by evolutionists. In fact, this is perhaps one of the better examples of the lie; I think I'll probably cite it many times in future posts.

Not all change is equal. For a species to evolve, new traits would have to be added to the population. To turn a dinosaur into a bird, for example, you would have to add feathers. The supposed, first common ancestor had neither scales nor feathers. Neither did it have skin or bones or blood or organs of any kind. To turn a molecule into a man, it would require a millions of years long parade of new features constantly being added. Natural selection, on the other hand, can only remove traits already present in the population. It should be agonizingly clear that you cannot add traits by continuously removing traits.


In the famous example of peppered moth “evolution,” the ratio of light/dark moths changed over time in response to changes in the environment. Some people call this “microevolution” and it does fit the technical definition of evolution. But please explain to me how birds continuously eating one color of moth can ever add new colors to the population? You cannot add colors by continuously removing colors no matter how long you do it.

Francke said, “It seems any sane person must admit that, if small changes can occur, then it is logically consistent that small changes adding up over extremely long periods of time would result in very large changes.”

Evolutionists like Francke would have us believe that birds continuously eating one color of moth could eventually change it into something that is not a moth – it just has to continue for a long enough time. What sane person would believe that?!

If evolutionists want to convince people that evolution is possible, they need to stop talking about examples like the peppered moth and start showing us examples of trait-adding mutations. There's a reason they don't. It's because examples of natural selection removing traits are common place while examples of trait-adding mutations are scare or non-existent. By continuing to repeat the lie that any change over time can result in big change, evolutionists are either ignorant of their own theory or are preying on the ignorance of the less informed.

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4. You think mutations are always negative.

This is another one of those incredibly common and completely untrue statements that nothing more than a few minutes’ research on the Internet could have corrected. The truth is that mutations in nature are usually neutral — i.e., they have no effect on the gene or resulting protein.

Francke should be more careful with his wording. Even “neutral” mutations have an effect on the gene. What he means to say is that neutral mutations seem to have no effect on the host animal. This is a significant point and not merely a game of semantics. In a real sense, genetic mutations are always negative in that they are mistakes or errors in the genome. Even if they seem to have no effect on the host they are still present in the gene and will be passed along to the offspring. Over many generations, the mutations will continue to accumulate and there becomes a greater danger of some mutation becoming expressed.

Expressed mutations in genes are usually called genetic disorders. My son, for example, has a fairly ordinary genetic disorder – he's color blind. He probably inherited it from his maternal grandfather who is also color blind. It's not a debilitating disorder and my son leads a fairly normal life. There are occasions, though, when his color blindness has caused a certain amount of difficulty. Once, when he was younger, he followed me out into the parking lot of our church and he was attempting to get into the wrong car. My car was red and he was trying the door of a green car.

Some genetic disorders are very serious – even life threatening. Francke mentioned sickle-cell anemia, which is a genetic disorder that causes red blood cells to be deformed. People with sickle-cell suffer a variety of symptoms and tend to live shorter lives. But it is true that the deformed, blood cells cannot host malaria parasites so people who have sickle-cell cannot have malaria. Perhaps this is an advantage in environments where malaria is a real threat. Otherwise, the small benefit of malaria immunity does not outweigh the host of maladies people with sickle-cell suffer. It's a wonder how evolutionists continue using this as an example of “evolution.”

We actually have observed several genetic mutations that convey a benefit to the hosts in certain environments – blind cave fish, wingless beetles, and tusk-less elephants are examples. However, nearly all of these represent mutations where the host creature looses something (like eyes, wings, or tusks). Furthermore, the mutation is usually weeded out of the gene pool when the animal is reintroduced back into the general population. Even so, examples of mutations removing traits from animals doesn't really help evolution which requires animals to acquire new traits. That is, a fish born without eyes doesn't explain how a dinosaur could acquire feathers. The blind fish may have an advantage in a cave where there's no light but it really doesn't help the theory of evolution in the least.

Why do evolutionists continue to hold up such weak examples of “beneficial” mutations? They're certainly not convincing examples of “evolution.” It's for the same reason I've already stated above: examples of trait-adding mutations are astonishingly scare. When I ask for examples of new traits being observed in a population, I only ever hear the same 3-4 questionable examples. If evolution were true, new traits would have to appear in populations fairly frequently. We should have plenty of examples – but we don't. That's why they continuously trot out the same few over and over and over and over.

There's one more thing about mutations that spell trouble for evolution. For every beneficial mutations that might happen, there are far, far more neutral or harmful mutations that occur. A creature may have 1,000 neutral or harmful mutations to every one beneficial mutation. Why can't evolutionists see the obvious problem with this? The genome is deteriorating 1,000 faster than it's improving. For a creature to inherit just two beneficial mutations means there would be 1,000,000 neutral or harmful mutations! To inherit 3 successful mutations means there would be 1,000,000,000 unsuccessful mutations. How long could such a wasteful process continue until the genome becomes to corrupt to sustain life?

Yikes!

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4 comments:

Steven J. said...

For a species to evolve, new traits would have to be added to the population.

What counts as a "trait," in this case? Peppered moths, in the 18th century, had no black individuals; the carbonaria morph is itself a mutation. Is it a new "trait?" All domestic hamsters are descended from a single pregnant female captured in the early 20th century; all their variations in color and fur patters are the results of mutations that occurred in her descendants and which were cultivated by breeders. In bacteria, mutations for antibiotic resistance are many and various, and every time such a mutation appears in a formerly genetically uniform ("monoclonal") colony is a "new trait" appearing in a population with no history of such a trait.

To turn a dinosaur into a bird, for example, you would have to add feathers.

True, but you don't have to do it in one step, and no one supposes that this happened. Prum and Brush have identified a set of steps, each a small modification of the previous one, that would lead from small barbules on scaly skin to fully-developed modern feathers. It is, granted, difficult to tell whether a are fossil skin impression records the elaboration of simpler structures or the simplification of more complex feathers (e.g. is the down on compsognathids a step on the path to more complex feathers or a degenerate form of more complex feathers on its ancestors?), but seemingly intermediate feather forms are known from dinosaur fossils.

You would also, of course, need to modify the dinosaur skeleton into something suitable for flight; as noted, theropods with such modifications are known.

Steven J. said...

Over many generations, the mutations will continue to accumulate and there becomes a greater danger of some mutation becoming expressed.

If a mutation is, e.g. a change to the exact sequence of amino acids in some fibrin protein (these proteins are extremely variable; small differences seem to make no difference), they are presumably expressed from the time they first occur. The same applies, of course, to novel colors in hamster populations (or peppered moths, or goldfish, etc.). A lot of creationists, it seems to me, seem to think that genetics works by magic -- that it was somehow possible for two chimpanzees aboard Noah's Ark to contain more genetic variation than currently exists in the entire human race, or, basically, for two individuals to carry more than four different alleles for any particular genetic locus. As far as we know, genetics does not work by magic; mutation is ubiquitous and generally neutral.

A point that should be noted is that natural selection not only removes traits; it causes (or is) other traits becoming more common. If traits that originally don't occur together (because both are rare) become more common because both are spreading through the population, natural selection can produce novel combinations of alleles and the traits they code for.

Known sorts of mutations (single nucleotide substitutions, insertions or deletions of one or more nucleotides, retroviral insertions, translocations of sequences of DNA, etc. can, in sequence, change any genome into any other. There's no obvious barrier to mutations in sequence, over time, modifying genomes to "add traits" in immense numbers and variety: the only plausible thing that could stop this would be that all "trait adding" mutations reduce fitness and would be removed by natural selection as they occur.

A creature may have 1,000 neutral or harmful mutations to every one beneficial mutation. Why can't evolutionists see the obvious problem with this?

Because all these different mutations aren't occurring in the same individual. They are spread through myriad competing variant offspring, most of whom, in the vast majority of species, will not survive to adulthood. It's not so obvious in humans, but look even at birds: one pair produce multiple eggs per breeding season. The fact that we're not buried in robins show that most of these eggs don't result in new adult robins. For many insects, breeding results on one surviving offspring for thousands of eggs laid. Those thousands of harmful mutations have a real tendency to fall by the wayside, extinct with their bearers, while the much rarer beneficial mutations have a much better chance of surviving (neutral mutations have, pretty much by definition, an average chance of surviving; their long-term accumulation is why scientists can reconstruct phylogenic trees by comparing neutral genetic differences between populations).

Unknown said...

Discussing mutations and their ability to produce novel traits with an evolutionist is always difficult because they don't seem to get the kinds of change involved and the implications. They see no why the accumulation of small changes can't change an amphibian into a mammal, even though there are no such examples we can point to, except for the assumption that it happened based on biased inferences.

RKBentley said...

If I believed in evolution, I would discuss trait adding mutations non-stop. Why don't they? Like I've said before, it's because trait-adding-mutations are astonishingly scare or non-existent. What they do instead is show examples of traits being removed from a population and say, "just give it time." It's one of the big lies continuously told by evolutionists.

Thanks for visiting and for your comments. Please keep them coming! God bless!!

RKBentley