Once again, I get to write about a study that changes everything evolutionists believed about evolution! (It seems we cover these kinds of stories constantly!) This time, the study looked at genetic mutations and whether they are mostly harmful, mostly beneficial, or mostly neutral, and what researchers found was surprising. Based on previous evolutionary hypotheses, many more mutations are beneficial than was previously thought.
So what does this all mean? AiGโs director of research and molecular geneticist, Dr. Georgia Purdom, explains:
Welcome to this weekโs installment of how observational science shows evolutionary ideas fail!
The Neutral Theory of Molecularย Evolutionย states that most mutations result in neither harm nor help to an organism. Harmful mutations are removed by natural selection (aka death!), beneficial mutations are rare, so observed DNA differences between organisms are neutral.
Hereโs two major problems with that โtheory.โ For one kind of organism to evolve into a different kind of organism, many, many beneficial mutations must occur. The problem is that beneficial mutations are thought to be very rare. In addition, mutations are context dependent, so what is beneficial in one environment may not be beneficial in a different one. Take for example antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Mutations that lead to resistance may be beneficial to bacteria living in a hospital where there are a lot of antibiotics, but that resistance comes at a cost. Those same mutations result in degradation such that certain normal functions are lost or hampered. If the antibiotic-resistant bacteria are placed in an environment without antibiotics, they likely will not be able to compete effectively against other bacteria that donโt have those mutations.
To address some of the problems with the Neutral Theory of Molecularย Evolution, the scientists in this study asked: โAre beneficial mutations really that scarce?โ Studying one-celled organisms likeย E. coliย and yeast, they determined that beneficial mutations may be quite common. BUT they donโt typically get โfixedโ in a population (meaning they never become dominant in the population). Why? Because the environments they live in can change quickly, and so what might be beneficial in one environment is not beneficial in another (like with antibiotic-resistant bacteria).
Anย articleย describing the research said,
The findings point to a more restless view ofย evolution. Rather than steadily marching toward a perfect fit between organisms and their environments, populations may often be stuck in pursuit of conditions that keep changingย .ย .ย .
Evolutionย may be less like climbing steadily toward perfection and more like running after a world that keeps moving.
It seems likeย evolutionย is on the inevitable hamster wheel going nowhere! If beneficial mutations are common but canโt become dominant and are context dependent, then how can organisms gain the necessary structures and functions to evolve into other organisms? Evolutionists might posit time is the key. However, time is irrelevant because what is needed is a genetic mechanism, and they just donโt have one.
In other words, beneficial (and what that means is not what many people think it means) mutations might indeed be more common than thought, but it doesnโt actually help evolution because they donโt โstickโ in a population, due to ever-changing conditions. So evolution still doesnโt have a mechanism to create the information necessary to turn a single-celled organism into all the life-forms we have today (think about the mind-boggling amount of genetic information you need to do that!).
And we canโt forget that mutations (and natural selection as well) occur on information that already exists. Thereโs no known naturalistic mechanism that can create brand-new, functioning genetic information. That simply doesnโt occur. Evolution is nothing more than a story, accepted on faith, about the past. And the observational science keeps contradicting it!
Information in DNA exists because God created it from the very beginning, and mutations exist because of the Fall corrupting the โvery goodโ information that God originally created.ย The biblical worldview explains what we observe!
