Creation Facts of Life (15 page)

In his chapter "Beyond the Reach of Chance," Denton
⁵¹
discusses attempts to simulate evolutionary processes on computers. He concludes with these strong words:

If complex computer programs cannot be changed by random mechanisms, then surely the same must apply to the genetic programs of living organisms.
The fact that systems in every way analogous to living organisms cannot undergo evolution by pure trial and error
[i.e., by mutation and selection] and that their functional distribution invariably conforms to an improbable discontinuum
comes, in my opinion, very close to a formal disproof of the whole Darwinian paradigm of nature.
By what strange capacity do living organisms
defy the laws of chance
which are apparently obeyed by all analogous complex systems? (emphasis added).

Most gratifyingly, Denton seems to look beyond the merely negative insufficiency of chance to glimpse a solution to "The Puzzle of Perfection," as he calls it, in the "design hypothesis":

It is the sheer universality of perfection, the fact that everywhere we look, we find an elegance and ingenuity of an absolutely transcending quality, which so mitigates against the idea of chance…. In practically every field of fundamental biological research ever-increasing levels of design and complexity are being revealed at an ever-accelerating rate. The credibility of natural selection is weakened, therefore, not only by the perfection we have already glimpsed but by the expectation of further as yet undreampt of depths of ingenuity and complexity (p. 342).

In God's handiwork, unlike man's, the closer we look, the more marvelous is the perfection we see. Unfortunately, we also have evidence that the transcendent ingenuity and design Denton sees has been marred and scarred. In that sense, mathematics isn't even the most serious challenge to using mutations as the basis for evolution.

(2) Upward or downward?
Even more serious is the fact that mutations are "going the wrong way" as far as evolution is concerned. Almost every mutation we know is identified by the disease or abnormality that it causes. Creationists use
mutations
to explain the
origin of parasites and disease,
the
origin of hereditary defects,
and the
loss of traits.
In other words, time, chance, and random changes do just what we normally expect: tear things down and make matters worse. Using mutations to explain the
breakdown
of existing genetic order (creation-corruption) is quite the opposite of using mutations to explain the
build up
of genetic order (evolution). Clearly, creation-corruption is the most direct inference from the effects of mutations that scientists actually observe.

By producing defects or blocking the normal function of certain genes, mutations have introduced numerous genetic abnormalities into the human population. The hemophilia (bleeders' disease) that afflicted the royal houses of Europe may have arisen as a mutant of a clotting-factor gene in Queen Victoria, for example; and the dreaded Tay-Sach's Disease may have arisen in Czechoslovakia in the 1920s as a mutation in the gene for producing an enzyme crucial to brain function.

Some people like to call mutations "the means of creation," but mutations don't create; they corrupt! Both logically and often observationally, as in the examples above, the ordered state must come before mutations can disorder it. Mutations are real, all right, but they point to a
corruption
of the created order by time and chance.

As a matter of fact, human beings are now subject to over 5,000 mutational disorders. Fortunately, we don't show as many defects as we carry. The reason they don't show up is that we each have two sets of genes, one set of genes from our mothers and another set from our fathers. The "bad genes" we inherit from our mothers' side are usually covered up by our fathers' genes, and vice versa. We can see what is likely to happen when an animal is born with only one set of genes. Figure 17, based on a description in a genetics textbook, represents the rare case of a turkey that was hatched from an unfertilized egg, so it had just one set of chromosomes. The poor bird couldn't hold its head up; instead, it bobbed up and down from a neurological disorder. The feathers were missing in patches, and it finally had to be transferred to a germ-free chamber because its resistance to disease was so low.

Figure 17. Mutations are mostly harmful, and, as time goes on, they impose an increasingly heavy "genetic burden" on a species. The turkey above, lacking a second set of genes to mask its hereditary defects, could scarcely survive. Creationists use mutations to help explain the origin of parasites and disease. Some evolutionists still believe that time, chance, and occasional favorable mutations provide the raw material for "upward-onward" progress, but the "post-neo-Darwinists" are looking for other means to explain evolution.

Now here's the basis for a good horror story. Picture a mirror at the end of a dark hall. You claw your way through the spider webs to reach the mirror, and then you press a button. The mirror then splits you in two halves, so you can see what you would look like if you had only those genes you inherited from your mother's genes or only those from your father. In the next scene, you're writhing there in agony, your hair turning white as you fall over backward and die of fright! Unfortunately, that picture exaggerates only slightly what mutations have done to human beings and to the various kinds of plants and animals as well. If it weren't for having two sets of genes, few of us would be able to survive.

Evolutionists recognize, of course, the problem of trying to explain "onward and upward" evolution on the basis of mutations that are harmful at least 1,000 times more often than they are helpful. No evolutionist believes that standing in front of x-ray machines would eventually improve human beings. No evolutionist argues that destruction of the earth's ozone layer is good because it increases mutation rates and, therefore, speeds up evolution. Evolutionists know that decrease in the ozone layer will increase mutation rates, but they, like everyone else, recognize that this will lead only to increased skin cancer and to other harmful changes. Perhaps a helpful change
might
occur, but it would be
drowned in the sea of harmful changes
.

Because harmful mutations so greatly outnumber any supposed helpful ones, it's considered unwise nowadays (and illegal in many states) to marry someone too closely related to you. Why? Because you greatly increase the odds that bad genes will show up. By the way, you also increase the odds of bringing out really excellent trait combinations. But did you ever hear anybody say, "Don't marry your first cousin or you'll have a genius for a child?" They don't usually say that, because the odds of something bad happening are far, far, far, far, far greater.

That would not have been a problem, by the way, shortly after creation (no problem for Cain and his wife, for example). Until mutations had a chance to accumulate in the human population, no such risk of bad combinations existed. Mutations are often carried as "hidden genes" (recessives) that are difficult to eliminate by selection, so they tend to build up in populations. The build-up of mutations with time poses a serious problem for plants and animals, as well as for human beings, and time, evolution's "hero," only
worsens
the problem of mutational decay.

Geneticists, even evolutionary geneticists, refer to the problem as
"genetic load"
or
"genetic burden,"
terms meant to imply a burden that "weighs down" a species and lowers its genetic quality. In his article "The Mechanisms of Evolution" in the
Scientific American
book
Evolution
, Francisco Ayala
⁵²
defines a mutation as "an error" in DNA. Then he explains that inbreeding has revealed that mutations in fruit flies have produced "extremely short wings, deformed bristles, blindness, and other serious defects." Does that sound like "the raw material for evolution?"

It's not that beneficial mutations are theoretically impossible. Bacteria that lose the ability to digest certain sugars, for example, can regain that ability by mutation. That's no help to evolution, however, since the bacterium only gets back to where it started, but at least the mutation is helpful.

A classic example used for decades to illustrate a beneficial mutation is
sickle-cell anemia.
Sickle-cell anemia is a disease of red blood cells. Why would anyone call that a beneficial mutation? Well, in certain parts of Africa, the death rate from malaria is quite high. Malaria is caused by a tiny, one-celled organism that gets inside the red blood cells and eats up the hemoglobin. Now, that particular germ doesn't like sickle-cell hemoglobin. Carriers of one sickle-cell gene produce about half normal and half sickle-cell hemoglobin, and the malaria germ leaves them alone, too. So, carriers don't get malaria. But the cost is high: 25 percent of the children of carriers can die of sickle-cell anemia, and another 25 percent are subject to malaria. If you want to call that a good mutation, you're welcome to it! It seems doubtful to me that real improvement of human beings would result from accumulating that kind of "beneficial" mutation, and certainly hemoglobin's ability to carry oxygen was not improved.

The gene for sickle-cell anemia has built up to high levels in certain African populations, not because it is "beneficial" in some abstract sense, but simply because the death rate from anemia in those areas is less than the death rate from malaria. Natural selection is a "blind" process that automatically accumulates genes for short-term survival, even if it reduces the long-term survival of the species. For that reason, evolutionists recognize that natural selection can occasionally lead to "mischievous results" detrimental to genetic quality. That's the effect I think we're seeing with sickle-cell anemia (Figure 18).

Figure 18. "Sickle-cell anemia" is often given as an example of a favorable mutation, because people carrying sickle-cell hemoglobin in their red blood cells (Ss) are resistant to malaria. But the price for this protection is high: 25 percent of the children of carriers may die of the anemia (ss), and another 25 percent (SS) are subject to malaria. The gene will automatically be selected where the death rate from malaria is high, but evolutionists themselves admit that short-term advantages — all that natural selection can ever favor — can produce "mischievous results" detrimental to long-term survival. What do you think? Is sickle-cell anemia a "mischievous result," or a good example of evolutionary progress? (Drawing from Parker, Reynolds, and Reynolds , Heredity, 2nd edition [Chicago, IL: Educational Methods, Inc., 1977]).

Furthermore, when the frequency of the sickle-cell gene reaches 18 percent, natural selection for it "stops." That's the point at which the death rates from sickle-cell anemia and malaria balance, demonstrating conclusively that sickle-cell anemia is not a suitable model for the continuous genetic expansion that evolutionists seek.

Suppose I told you I had found a way to make cars run uphill without using gasoline. Then, as you watched in eager anticipation, I showed you how applying the brakes would make the car run downhill more slowly. Would you believe I had discovered a means for getting cars to run uphill without fuel? Similarly, natural selection can and does slow the rate of genetic decay produced by accumulating mutations (as it does with sickle-cell hemoglobin), but that hardly proves that mutation-selection produces upward and onward progress!

A better example of favorable mutation might be found in a change from teosinte into corn, but the mutation was favorable to people, not to corn, which has been described as a "biological monstrosity" that could not survive on its own without man's special care. There are many other examples of mutations "beneficial" to people: seedless grapes, short-legged sheep, hairless dogs, but these would all be harmful to the organism in its own environment and, hence, harmful in evolutionary perspective.