Truth Really Matters

The “best” evidence cited for ongoing evolution is pitifully weak.

The most vivid memory I have from my youth in the public education system regarding the “evidence” for evolution is the story of the peppered moths in England at the beginning of the heavy industrial age. The moths’ light color camouflaged it from birds against light vegetative backgrounds.

Soot from industrial pollution darkened many of the urban surfaces where sat the moths, however. Within a hundred years the moths apparently evolved to a dark color to protect themselves. But the dark-colored variant was already in the population at the beginning of this adventure. Dark moths simply survived as the light moths were depleted over the years. When air pollution got cleaned up in the 1960s, the light moth population recovered.

So where was the evolution? Did moths evolve into something more complex? Perhaps this is a nice little example of natural selection, but it has nothing to do with amoeba-to-man evolution.

Another evolutionary foundation stone in the high school literature involves the synthesis of amino acids, the molecular building block of proteins. In the 1960s chemists, notably Stanley Miller and Nobel laureate Harold Urey, discovered that amino acids could be synthesized using conditions that conceivably could have been found on the ancient earth. A number of experiments showed that with the right mix of chemicals at the right temperatures and with the right spark of energy (reminiscent of lightning!), amino acids could form.

Evolutionists were ecstatic. Over the years enough experiments were done to show that all 20 of life’s amino acids could form under the “right” conditions.

But . . . so what! The real problem is the synthesis of a useful protein chain hundreds of amino acids long, folded into a precise 3-dimensional geometry. No quantitative scientific explanation has been offered for this impossibility. Also, proteins in life only work in the presence of DNA, RNA, and all the machinery of the cell. Evolutionists have suggested that the building blocks of genes — the nucleotides — could form naturally. Unfortunately for them, the “natural” conditions that would allow formation of amino acids are incompatible with the conditions that would allow for “spontaneous generation” of nucleotides.

Quick aside: There are also lots of problems regarding Miller & Urey’s argument that they demonstrated that amino acids could form “naturally.” For example: the initial chemicals were all wrong, having nothing to do with earth’s natural atmosphere. The spark discharge that initiated the chemistry would also destroy the molecules if not trapped right away. Not just L-type amino acids were formed, but D-type also, preventing even the possibility of “life-like” chains. Toxic sludge was also produced. Furthermore, the concentrations were woefully weak for any hope to get the building blocks together.

Interestingly, the cell’s machinery for protein synthesis is not simple at all. It involves wondrous complexity with a multitude of intermediate steps and molecules. Protein synthesis in cells defies the imagination of anyone who would suggest an origin based on incremental mutation/natural selection. George Wald, a Nobel laureate, once observed that a change in any one amino acid almost always markedly changes the properties of a protein. Proteins are intricate and optimally designed machines!

Perhaps the most dramatic observable “evidence” for evolution is in the area of mutations that make insects resistant to insecticides and bacteria resistant to drugs.

DDT works through a molecule that binds itself to the nervous system of an insect, interfering with operation of nerves until the bug’s system just shuts down. There is apparently a mutation that can arise in an insect population that changes the shape of a molecule on the nerve site, spoiling the match with the DDT molecule. The insect loses its sensitivity to the DDT.

A mutation in bacteria can make it resistant to streptomycin. The drug has a molecule that locks onto the ribosome, interfering with protein synthesis. The bacteria can’t make the right proteins and dies. A mutation in bacteria can make the ribosome less “specific” so that the drug can’t bind to the ribosome.

In both cases, insects and bacteria, the resistivity comes at a price. The organism does not function as well as before, with the exception of its survivability in the presence of the attacking drugs. The mutated bacterium does not produce proteins as effectively. The insect’s nervous system is more sluggish than his non-mutated forbear.

The mutations have actually made these creatures LESS COMPLEX, fortuitously allowing them to survive under a particular mode of attack. But where is the evolution? Where is the march toward higher complexity? The genetic codes have actually been reduced in complexity and in performance. Behe’s second book listed below does a wonderful job detailing such cases.

One of the foundational elements of the whole construct of evolution is the variation exhibited by species, such as the finches Darwin so carefully observed in the Galapagos islands. Even creationists allow that some simple variations may arise through mutations and natural selection. But recent evidence disputes this particular example.

In 1967 about a hundred finches (all alike!) were relocated from one island group to another (hundreds of miles away) in the North Pacific. With some human help the birds dispersed among the 4 islands in the group. When checked again in 1984, the birds numbered about 800 and had changed from their ancestors in some noticeable ways, particularly in bill shape!

Even evolutionary biologists admit that it is unreasonable to presume that mutation and natural selection could have operated so fast — over just a few generations. A more reasonable explanation would be that the genetic variation was already in the genome and was triggered by chemical, dietary, or other influences in the environment. A separate study of finches in Africa indicate that 3 different species of finches can produce 2 different bill sizes and that the choice is adaptive to the particular feeding environment the birds find themselves in.

Work in the area of quick, adaptive changes points more and more to inherently designed flexibility in a given creature’s genome. It’s interesting that even the simplest variations — as far from evolution as the variations among dogs or cats — may be explained entirely from pre-existing genetic information, designed so cleverly that environmental triggers can bring it out in one or a few generations. Whereas population models that assume random mutation and natural selection require enormous time to allow even the alleged possibility of such changes. See Behe’s books to understand just how impossible this actually is.

What about the evolution of horses? Evolutionary textbooks for school children typically show a chart that shows a series of horse-like creatures, from a 4-toed fox-sized creature to a 3-toed eohippus to a 2-toed merychippus to the present 1-toed equus. (From 4 to 1? Sounds like de-volution.) But even evolutionists have admitted publicly for the last several decades that this is a deceptive story, even though the museums and children’s textbooks continue the lies. For one thing, there are just a handful of these so-called transitional forms and these creatures are quite distinct, appearing in the fossil record abruptly with no hint of a series of intermediates between them. More importantly, some of these 3-toed and 1-toed horses show up in the same fossil bed, indicating that they lived together. Clearly we can’t have evolutionary ancestors living together with their “improved” descendants — natural selection is supposed to weed out the older versions.

If you discuss these issues with an evolutionist, simply ask what his best evidence is. If evolution is such an overwhelming “fact,” on a par with gravitational science or atomic theory, surely there must be some evidence supporting it!

Yo — you evolutionists out there — Come on! Give us your best stuff. Why in the world do you bet your scientific integrity (if you’re a scientist), your worldview, and your very soul on this fantasy? You must have some reason. What is it? Is it just that so many scientists “believe” in it? But that just makes it a blind-faith-based religion.

shrinkingly References:

R. L. Wysong, The Creation-Evolution Controversy, Inquiry Press, 1976.
Michael J. Behe, Darwin’s Black Box, Simon & Schuster, 1996.
Michale J. Behe, The Edge of Evolution — The Search for the Limits of Darwinism, Simon & Schuster, 2007.
Lee Spetner, Not By Chance, Judaica Press, 1998.
Duane T. Gish, Evolution: The Fossils Still Say No!, Institute for Creation Research, 1995.

– Dr. Dave