CAN MUTATIONS EXPLAIN EVOLUTION FROM MICROBES TO MEN?

DNA Mutations

We now know for certain that the variations needed to fuel evolutionary progress from one kind of animal to another could only have resulted from random DNA mutations. Given what we now know about mutation and the irreducible complexity of even the smallest parts of all living things, this fact is absolutely fatal to Darwinian evolution theory.

To understand mutations you have to know something about DNA. Some of the links below are helpful on the structure and function of DNA (deoxyribose nucleic acid). The easiest way to understand it is as information molecules, containing masses of instructions in digital form on gigantic molecules stored curled up in the nucleus of every cell (bacteria are different, the DNA is in loose packets inside the cell). The digital information carried on DNA molecules tells the machines inside living cells what to do, and ultimately builds and maintains the whole organism. As Bill Gates says, DNA is rather like computer software in the way it carries meaningful digitally encoded information. Its much more complex and compact than any man made computer programme. Since all computer programmes are known to be intelligently designed, the fact that DNA is similar to computer code but millions of times more sophisticated should make us think.

Creationists believe that God designed and made DNA, evolutionists believe it came into being by accident. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to examine the facts and decide which theory fits them best. DNA mutations which confer increased complexity are the only possible theoretical mechanism for evolution. If this mechanism fails, Darwinian evolution fails utterly and beyond any hope of being put together again. It does fail, as I will discuss under the following headings.

why is mutation important?
what are mutations?
what are the usual results of mutation?
what about beneficial mutations?
what about antibiotic resistance?
DNA check and repair, protecting us from mutations and preventing evolution

Darwinian evolution can be defined as natural selection action on random mutations. Basically, in evolutionary theory can be stated as(common ancestor + variations(which we now know can only be due to random mutation)+ natural selection + time = all life forms.)No evolutionists dare deny this, and since they axiomatically rule out special creation they have no other possible mechanism to explain life.

Evolutionists tend however to be a bit shy about this, since the word ‘mutation’ rings alarm bells with people. There is a very good reason for this. Mutations are unplanned alterations in DNA which cause many of the most horrible diseases on the planet. Putting genetic + mutation + disease into Google produces many millions of hits, do try it. As you would expect from random jumbling of any meaningful message or precise instructions, the results of randomly re-arranging DNA are chaotic and unhelpful. Many mutations are small enough to make little or no noticeable difference, at least in the short term, but ‘serious’ phenotypic mutations, big enough to make the kind of changes we would need to get from a reptile to a bird as evolution requires are almost always disastrous. This is not creationist propaganda but hard reproducible science. Read on, check everything carefully (your DNA check and repair mechanism does, or else you’d die!).Typical examples of phenotypic mutations are, Down’s syndrome, Huntingdon’s disease, cystic fibrosis, sickle cell disease and all known forms of cancer.

Mutations occur when the DNA molecule which contains the encoded information of life is changed by random jumbling up during the process of cell division or if the DNA is damaged by some external insult such as radiation or poisons. Different kinds of mutation include duplication (a piece of DNA is doubled, as in Down’s syndrome), deletion (the DNA section is destroyed or lost)substitution (2 pieces of DNA exchange places) etc. This is by no means an exhaustive list. There used to be a very good factual discussion of mutations I linked to from here on the Darwin Day site, which showed the nuts and bolts of how things go wrong but failed to demonstrate how beneficial mutations which add new information arise. I just checked the site (28.12.12) and can’t find the item on mutations. There was nothing on the old site about how DNA mutations can build new features.

It is in the evolutionists’ interest to demonstrate evidence for beneficial mutations that add meaningful information, but they can’t. If you want to see an evolutionist squirm, swear or change the subject, try asking them for examples of mutations that create meaningful new information.

Mutations are just like random copying errors in computer software-they wreck things, not make them. Big DNA copying errors or errors affecting critical sites will case immediate failure, smaller errors will slowly reduce efficiency with a gradual dropping off of performance, just as in computer sortware. Isn’t this rather obvious?

Key point-evolution theory predicts and requires large numbers of mutations which sequentially add coherent genetic information that leads to new and better structures. Science observes the opposite.

Beneficial mutations

This is necessarily a very brief discussion! A small number of debatable changes have been seen in clones of bacteria, but pretty well nothing else. An internet search on the word ‘mutation’ will bring up vast numbers of diseases. However, as has been shown, since DNA is very well organised with all the appearance of deliberate and very skilful design, when anything is changed randomly you would predict that functionality would decrease. In fact, this is exactly what we find when we try the experiment.

2 commonly cited examples of beneficial mutation will be dealt with (peppered moth is dealt with elsewhere since there is no genetic change, merely an adjustment in the population frequency of existing genes for colour variation, so it is not an example of mutation at all, although it is falsely claimed to be so on some evolutionist sites).

Sickle cell disease

Otherwise known as sickle cell anaemia, this is a genetic condition prevalent in Africa in which due to a random DNA mutation changes the molecular structure of haemoglobin (Hb) the complex protein which carries dissolved oxygen in red cells through the bloodstream. Just one amino acid molecule out of 240 is wrong on the Hb, as a result of which it does not fold properly. The mutation is not so bad it causes death, but the red cells carrying the deformed Hb have a reduced life span and tend to clump up in the small blood vessels, causing thrombosis. Sickle cell disease occurs in partial (inherited from one parent) or full blown (inherited from both parents) forms, the full blown form is usually fatal at a young age, the less severe form tends to shorten life expectancy but not so severely that the person cannot get on with life and have children, or the mutation would have been selected out and eliminated millennia ago.

The interesting thing about sickle cell disease from an evolutionary point of view is that the diseased cells are less likely to be taken over by the Malaria parasite, because of their deformity. Malaria is a disease common in parts of Africa which can kill within days, although recovery is common especially where medicine is available. Sickle cell disease therefore gives some survival benefit where malaria is prevalent. This is commonly cited as an example of a beneficial mutation. However, if we look at the plain facts, here is a mutation which amounts to a loss of information leading to a demonstrably less functional molecule which produces a disease state which can cause pain, disability and death.

The fact that sickle cell disease gives some protection against an even worse disease is comparable to the idea that a broken arm or deafness in a man of military age might lead to him avoiding being called up to fight in a war. The disability might save his life, but if not for the war he would be much better off without it. To call the sickle mutation beneficial and an example of ‘onwards and upwards’evolution is special pleading of the highest order.

Ask yourself, or your biology teacher, if evolutionists had any better examples, would they have used one this bad as their flagship‘beneficial mutation’ for the last 40 years?

Key point-sickle cell disease is an example of a DNA mutation leading to a damaged protein causing disease and death. This is taught in schools as an example of a beneficial mutation. In fact, it is a very nasty disease.  As Professor Michael Behe wrote in his book ‘The Edge of Evolution’ sickle cell disease is an example of a ‘broken or blunted gene’ conferring limited situational benefit. Based on direct observations, this seems to be the most that unguided evolution can do.

Antibiotic resistant bacteria

Even the most convinced evolutionists know that sickle cell anaemia is a rotten example of so called beneficial mutation. Although it is still widely quoted, they search hard for better examples, and currently the one used most often is that of antibiotic resistance in bacteria. Most people are aware of Methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) which is an example of a disease causing bacterium which used to be killed by antibiotics but now cannot be. This is a major public health problem with which the NHS is struggling. There we are, they will say, bacteria have evolved resistance to antibiotics, so that proves evolution. Well as it happens it does not. In order to explain why it is necessary to quote a fair amount of biology which might be difficult for some readers.

In order to consider antibiotic resistance it is first necessary to ask how antibiotics can kill bacteria at all. Antibiotics by the way were discovered, not invented. They are naturally occurring chemicals produced by soil organisms, they have always been around and presumably have a ‘balance of nature’ role in the microbial environment. It must also be remembered that some bacteria have always been resistant to antibiotics. Antibiotic resistant microbes have been found in the frozen guts of men who died and were buried in permafrost in the ‘pre-antibiotic era’. There never was an antibiotic which could kill all bacteria. Antibiotic resistance pre-dates the medical use of antibiotics, that is just a historical fact.

Bacteria have no nucleus and so their DNA floats free in the cell in packets of information called plasmids. They can exchange plasmid DNA with other bacteria by a process called conjugation, and combined with their extremely rapid rate of multiplication, many variations can occur. This is described as evolution, but the end result is always bacteria of the same species, even if there are some small changes which can be accounted for by DNA exchange and natural selection.

An internet search will find a tiny number of overhyped examples of supposed beneficial mutations, practically all in cultured bacteria such as the Lenski E.Coli cultures. The minor changes to citrate metabolism here can be attributed to DNA exchange and gene switches, not the creation of new processes that didn’t previously exist. After millions of generations they are still E.Coli. They haven’t turned into a different species of bacterium, let alone something that isn’t a bacterium. and this is evidence of evolution?

DNA check and repair

Since the process of DNA replication normally runs very well, mutations are relatively uncommon compared to the millions of times DNA is replicated in the life of an individual plant, animal or human. However, even when mutations do occur, every living plant, animal and human cell has DNA check and repair mechanisms which study the DNA during replication and fix any misplaced base pair sequences. In the case of a very badly damaged section of DNA, something rather wonderful called DNA excision repair takes place. The damaged section of DNA, having been identified, is snipped out with special enzymes, disposed of, and a new correct section of DNA is synthesised and stitched back on so that the information encoded in the DNA is as good as new.

This remarkable check and repair mechanism has all the appearance of being designed, and in fact in rare genetic disorders in which it does not work such as Xeroderma Pigmentosum, affected people tend to age prematurely and die young from skin cancer. This begs the question, how did DNA manage to survive before it’s check and repair mechanism (which is coded for in the DNA) supposedly evolved?

DNA check and repair appears to be essential to survival in all known life forms, so it’s extremely difficult to argue that it developed gradually. Without it, you die. Even theoretically it is hard to see how any supposed ‘primitive’ life forms could have existed without it since DNA is DNA is DNA. It wears out in use and if it isn’t fixed, the organism will cease functioning and die. There is no such thing in nature as DNA without DNA check and repair (excluding viruses, which are obligate parasites that cannot survive without ‘borrowing’ a living cell’s apparatus, so don’t count).

An item here in Science Daily discusses the role of DNA check and repair partial failure in Huntingdon’s disease, a horrible degenerative condition caused by a mutation. As this brief extract shows, ‘oxidative lesions’ occur when oxygen damages DNA. These lesions are fixed by normally working repair mechanisms, but in Huntingdon’s disease, the gradual failure of one part of the DNA check and repair leads to progressive neurological failure due to corrupted DNA.

>>>>>>>>.“McMurray’s study shows that the inserted segment grows when cells try to remove oxidative lesions, which are caused by by-products of the oxygen we breathe. DNA repair enzymes initially keep oxidative lesions in check, but over time, increasing numbers of lesions overwhelm the repair systems. Oxidative lesions also accumulate in people who do not have Huntington’s disease, but because their Huntingtin gene lacks the extra segment it is not prone to expansion.”<<<<<<

Note that a relatively small failure in one gene coding for one protein (among thousands), caused by a mutation, causes disease and death in this case because everyday damage to DNA could not be repaired by the mechanism which usually does the job. This example came up in a Google search on DNA check repair-there are manymore, go take a look. Contrast the vast amount of disabling and fatal diseases caused by DNA mutations with tiny number of weak examples of marginally beneficial mutations like sickle cell disease and antibiotic resistant bacteria. On which side is the ‘overwhelming mountain of evidence’ about the nature and effect of mutations?

Mutations and predictions

It is clear from direct, repeatable observation that large mutations are generally harmful. Even small mutations add up over time to cumulatively damage the genome, as set out in Cornell geneticistJohn Sanford’s book ‘Genetic Entropy and the Mystery of the Genome.’ This is what the intelligent design hypothesis predicts, but it is a catastrophic problem for evolutionism. Charles Darwin admitted his complete ignorance of how features were transmitted from one generation to the next (nobody knew back then) but we have no such excuse today.

One of the features of a successful scientific hypothesis is that you can make predictions with it which can be confirmed. Evolution predicts that a significant proportion of mutations will be beneficial, and that by adding mutation to mutation to mutation to mutation over thousands of generations, new features and new sorts of plant and animal will arise. ID (Intelligent Design) predicts that mutations where they occur will tend to disrupt a well ordered and designed system and mess it up, just as you see then an ignorant person tinkers with a machine or other designed contraption, or random copying errors occur in computer software. ID notes that improvements to human designed systems come through careful thought and planning followed by trial and error and that meaningful information only ever arises from intelligent sources. An unbiased observer of DNA with its sophisticated, multi-layered specified and meaningful complexity would have to conclude that ID fits it better than the  random changes and natural selection model.

In 2012 it became even clearer that so-called ‘junk DNA’ (DNA that does not code for proteins) is nothing of the kind. It’s part of the operating system without which the DNA that codes for proteins can’t actually assemble an organism. This was predicted by ID.

So if the ID model fits direct observations better and makes better predictions about mutations, the central engine of evolution, why do scientists persist in dismissing ID as pseudoscience and religion in disguise? Why do they put so much effort into preventing it even being discussed? Several possibilities exist.

1) Despite the evidence that phenotypic mutations do not lead to improvements, quite the reverse, the other evidence for evolution is so overwhelming that this evidence can be discounted (in the same way that overwhelming circumstantial evidence against a murderer is discounted if he has a strong alibi.

2) The evidence against ID is so overwhelming it can be discounted.

3) Mutations in the distant past were more favourable to evolution than those we see today. We have no evidence for this or any explanation why it shold be so.

4) The scientific establishment has decided to stick with the Darwinian paradigm no matter what because of their determination that a Designer may not be considered for non-negotiable philosophical reasons.

CONCLUSION if atoms to us evolution by unguided random natural processes occurred, it can only have done so (setting aside the problem of the original beginning of life from non-life) by natural selection acting on mutations. It follows that ENOUGH of these mutations must have conferred benefit for progress from simple to complex to have occurred, leading to all the wonderful forms of life we see today arising by a series of unguided accidents from an original single celled common ancestor. This has not been observed nor does it make any sense given the complexity of DNA.

Mutations have been studied in nature and in the laboratory (e.g. fruit flies) for 100 years. Vast sums of money have been spent employing researchers to try to find proof of evolution and confound and silence the creationists. Our knowledge of the human DNA genome has increased vastly in recent times, and every new discovery adds layers of complexity whcih make a non-designed cause for DNA ever less likely. The main outcome of genetic research so far has been to reveal the extent to which human diseases are caused by bits of DNA being corrupted by mutations so they stop working. They haven’t worked out how to fix any genetic diseases yet despite great effort. DNA is very easy to break, very hard to fix-so how did it create itself by accident?

Only a tiny number of arguably beneficial biochemical mutations have been observed, almost all in bacteria which have different kinds of cell to other organisms (they are simpler, have no nucleus and can exchange DNA easily). Most of these involve loss of information or duplication of existing information, which is clearly not a mechanism that can cause forward progress of the kind which would be required to evolve from microbe to microbiologist.

NB the standard appeal to ‘deep evolutionary time’ does not help, because based on what we observe today, harmful mutations vastly outnumber benefitial ones and this would still be so even over millions of years. The gradual changes Charles Darwin speculated about needed to be sequential-one step forward and a thousand steps back would not solve that problem even given a billion years or more.

Mutations demonstrably cannot explain the development of new features or new creatures. There is no other potential creative mechanism available to the evolution theorist. It therefore follows that the overwhelmingly deleterious nature of mutations and their failure to produce increased meaningful information leading to new and/or better structures falsifies unguided molecules to man evolution.