“Why I am Not an Evolutionist
…”
The Science
Lecture Class Handout
By Andy Carmichael ©
2003
Creation School Online
with Andy Carmichael is hosted
at the website www.SloppyNoodle.com/ev.html
Andy_Ally@hotmail.com
12. There is no scientific mechanism for
any evolution ever to occur
·
“Natural selection by survival of the fittest” is no
mechanism for evolution
“Natural selection by survival
of the fittest” is the central (but still hypothetical)
mechanism of creative change for the theories of evolution.
The term “natural selection” is a misnomer – a deliberately
misleading term – as “nature” is not a person (and cannot
be personified) and so “nature” cannot “select” supposedly
good or useful characteristics in an individual. Natural
selection by survival of the fittest is more accurately
termed “random destruction”, because it is the
random elimination or destruction of individuals (and
thus their genetic information) from a population. Natural
selection can only whittle away what was created. Natural
selection thus cannot create any new kind of animal, person
or plant. Natural selection takes away more and more,
and can of itself create or add nothing :
“But natural selection per
se does not work to create new species.”
(Dr Niles Eldredge, evolutionist,
paleontologist and Curator of the American Museum of Natural
History, 1980 [42] )
“No one has ever produced
a species by mechanisms of natural selection. No one has
ever gotten near it …”
(Dr. Colin Patterson,
evolutionist, senior palaeontologist at the British Natural
History Museum, 1982
[43] )
The phrase “survival of the
fittest” (the assumed “struggle for life”) is also a meaningless
tautology as a supposed evolutionist mechanism. Evolutionists
define it as follows : those individuals that survive
are fit, and those that are fit survive. This says nothing
at all. It is a circular definition that simply restates
itself, saying merely that “the survivors survive and
that is how everything came into existence !” Survival
of the fittest simply means that some creatures die sooner
than others and so may leave fewer offspring than those
of their kind that die slightly later. So it is entirely
irrelevant as to how animals, plants and people originate
and then self-improve themselves :
“Someone asked how we determine
who are the fittest. The answer came back that we determine
this by the test of survival; there is no other criterion.
But this means that a species survives because it is the
fittest and is the fittest because it survives, which
is circular reasoning and equivalent to saying that whatever
is, is fit. The gist is that some survive and some die,
but we knew this at the onset. Nothing has been explained.”
(Dr Norman Macbeth, evolutionist,
lawyer from Harvard Law School, Darwin Retried,
1971 [44]
)
“I argued that it [natural
selection] was a tautology in my book because it seemed
to go round in a circle. It was, in effect, defining survival
as due to fitness and fitness as due to survival. … I
think the phrase [natural selection] is utterly empty.
It doesn’t describe anything.”
(Dr. Norman Macbeth, evolutionist
and retired lawyer from Harvard Law School, 1982 [45] )
“Of one thing, however, I
am certain, and that is that ‘natural selection’ … means
nothing more than ‘the survivors survive’.”
(E.W. MacBride, Nature,
1929 [46]
)
“There, you do come to what
is, in effect, a vacuous statement : Natural selection
is that some things leave more offspring than others;
and you ask, which leave more offspring than others; and
it is those that leave more offspring; and there is nothing
more to it than that.
The whole real guts of evolution
– which is, how do you come to have horses and tigers,
and things – is outside the mathematical theory.”
(Dr C.H. Waddington, evolutionist,
1967 [47] )
·
“Genetic mutations” are no mechanism for
evolution
Evolutionists claim that every
kind of living and extinct animal, plant and person (somehow)
came into existence by genetic mutations of their DNA
:
“Ultimately, all variation
is, of course, due to mutation.”
(Dr Ernst Mayr, evolutionist
and Professor of Zoology in the Museum of Comparative
Zoology at Harvard University, 1966 [48] )
A genetic mutation is a
copying error that causes a harmful loss of
complex, coded information. All mutations are faulty copies
of the original correct genetic instructions. No living
or extinct person, plant or animal can reprogram their
own DNA to change themselves into a different and improved
kind of person, plant or animal. In terms of genetics,
a mutation is a mistake in transmission of highly
complex hereditary information. Mutations are mutilations.
A mutated animal or person is in fact a mutilated
animal or person, and not an improved species.
Mutations in genetic material
cannot be a mechanism of evolution. All known mutations
are lethal, harmful, neutral or reversible. If mutations
survive at all, they build up a “genetic load” in the
population, reducing its overall viability. Yet
evolutionists continue to believe in the existence
of positive, beneficial mutations that somehow create
brand new, complex genetic information (although they
have never seen any). Genetic mutations do not and cannot
add anything that was not already in existence and hence
cannot cause any kind of evolution.
None of natural selection,
survival of the fittest or genetic mutations can even
in principle account for the existence of living things
as they are all mechanisms of destruction
and they all also require pre-existing, fully-formed,
reproducing, living people, plants and animals with 100%
operative DNA on which to work. Hence they cannot account
for the origin, or any improvement, of people,
plants and animals. Natural selection, survival of the
fittest and genetic mutations delete, destroy, corrupt
and eliminate what already exists. As mechanisms only
of destruction, they cannot create or
bring anything new into existence nor can they
improve living (or dead) organisms, as destruction is
the opposite of bringing something into existence and
is the opposite of improving something.
Natural selection, survival
of the fittest and genetic mutations can only destroy
what already exists, a conclusion that follows perfectly
from the laws of thermodynamics. So evolutionists have
not and cannot scientifically answer the issue of origins,
namely : How did everything come into existence and where
did it all come from ?
“Viewing mutations as degradations
is in line with the Second Law of Thermodynamics which
states that matter goes from order to disorder.”
(Randall Hedtke, 1984
[49] )
“Apparently most mutations
are harmful – that’s an old story – because they foul
up in the development process. They are mistakes in copying,
that’s what they are.”
(Dr. Niles Eldredge, evolutionist,
1979 [50] )
“A mutation doesn’t produce
major new raw material. You don’t make a new species by
mutating the species.”
(Professor Stephen Jay
Gould, evolutionist, Professor of Geology and Paleontology
at Harvard University, 1980 [51] )
“If we say that it is only
by chance that they [genetic mutations] are useful, we
are still speaking too leniently. In general, they are
useless, detrimental, or lethal.”
(Professor W.R. Thompson,
Fellow of the Royal Society, evolutionist and entomologist,
in his Introduction to the Centenary Edition of Darwin’s
Origin of Species, 1956 [52] )
“Some contemporary biologists, as soon as they observe
a mutation, talk about evolution … No matter how numerous
they may be, mutations do not produce any kind of evolution.”
(Pierre-Paul Grasse, evolutionist
and zoologist, Director of the Laboratory of the Evolution
of Living Beings at the University of Paris, Head of the
Chair of Evolution at the Sorbonne in Paris for 20 years,
former President of the French Acadamie des Sciences,
1977 [53] )
Scientists have never found
a mutation that has advanced life. But what about sickle-cell
anaemia, you may say ? That is a mutation – doesn’t that
help the sufferer to be immune to malaria ? Yes, it does,
but only by accident and the patient with the sickle cell
disease is still anaemic, disadvantaged and not an
“improved species”. Mutations retard life rather than
improve life. And if the sickle-cell anaemia is inherited
from both parents, it is fatal. The mutation responsible
for sickle-cell anaemia results in its carrier being immune
to malaria only because the life-span of the defective
blood cell is shorter than the incubation period of the
malaria. This is not due to any improvement in the
blood cell. When the defective gene is inherited from
both parents, the sufferer usually dies before
reaching adulthood. The gene for sickle-cell anemia has
built up to high levels in certain African populations,
not because it is “beneficial”, but simply because the
death rate from sickle-cell anaemia in those areas is
slightly less than the death rate from malaria ... To
individuals and to the overall population, sickle-cell
anaemia is a highly destructive disease and kills
about 25% of the people who carry it :
“The resulting disease kills
about 25 percent of the population of black humans who
are affected. (Evolutionists often like to cite this highly
deleterious mutation as a good example of a beneficial
mutation because those afflicted with sickle-cell anemia
are less likely to die with malaria. To the overall population,
however, it is highly destructive.)”
(Luther Sunderland, Darwin’s
Enigma, 1998
[54] )
You can mutate all you like,
but you will never “evolve” :
“Mutation is
a pathological process which has had little or nothing
to do with evolution.”
(Professor C.P. Martin,
evolutionist, McGill University, Montreal, 1953 [55] )
“If the genetic blueprint
for an organism is initially optimal – like, say, the
design for a new TV set – then mutations appear as damage
incurred by wear and tear or misuse. Kicking a damaged
TV set might improve its performance but the treatment
is not generally recommended. In no way could random –
or even well-directed – kicking have been responsible
for the origin of the TV set in the first place. But the
neo-Darwinian, who asserts that mutations are the raw
material of evolution, and the only source of novelty
for natural selection to work on, is both denying the
existence of an optimal genetic blueprint (or archetype)
for a life-form, and accepting ‘kicking’ as a rational
means of improving it out of recognition.”
(Michael Pitman, evolutionist,
1984 [56] )
· “Genetic
recombination of chromosomes” is no mechanism for evolution
Genetic recombination is not
mutation. It is a well-designed, created part of reproduction
and is simply the reshuffling of inherited genetic information
to ensure some variation within the offspring. Recombination
is so that you can tell your children apart – God does
not want everyone looking like clones. Recombination is
analogous to playing keys on a (genetic) piano : the same
88 keys or notes of a piano can be played, but different
music is heard each time. Merely playing a different combination
of keys (i.e. merely playing a different song) on the
(genetic) piano cannot account for the origin of the piano
in the first place. Or another analogy is that genetic
recombination is like shuffling a pack of (genetic) cards.
Each hand dealt has a different combination of cards,
but no amount of shuffling (i.e. genetic recombinations)
can create a thirteen of spades nor can shuffling tell
us where the pack of cards came from in the first place.
“It is, therefore, absolutely
impossible to build a current evolution on mutations or
on recombinations.”
(Professor Nils Heribert-Nilsson,
botanist, geneticist and evolutionist, Lund University,
Sweden, 1953 [57] )
Some species are classified
as new species simply because they have lost genetic
material : the flightless rails (marsh hens), the flightless
cormorants of the Galapagos Islands and blind cave fish.
This is not evolution, it’s entropy.