Creation: Mutations Refutations Part I
A Sunday guest post by my brilliant husband, Gregg.
Every Sunday, my clever husband offers me a “day of rest” by taking over the homemaker duties here. His primary topic, the Biblical Truth of Creation vs. Darwinism, is a subject that has broad reaching scientific, social, and metaphysical implications and is gaining more and more attention in our modern culture.
For believers and non-believers alike, the primary purpose is to present scientific, historical, logical, and/or sociological data in an empirical and defensible fashion, as much as possible written in layman’s terms, and in a format suitable for supplementing any homeschool curriculum whether you choose to believe the Biblical account — or secular guesses — about the origins of human life on earth.
A Mutation Refutation
The year 1967 was a very important year for me, personally. After all, I was born that year. A number of significant events took place that year and some not so well remembered.
For example, in 1967, a prestigious group of internationally known biologists and mathematicians gathered together at the world renowned Wistar Institute to consider Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution. Present there were such famous Darwinists as Paul A. Moorehead, Martin M. Kaplan, C. H. Waddington, and even Marcel Schutzenberger of the University of Paris.
This was a time during which the principles of the “Modern Neo-Darwinian Synthesis” had only recently been largely embraced. Many public schools had not surrendered to wholesale methods of Orwellian indoctrination in their curricula. Many persons in positions of influence were still permitted to question assumptions in a scientific method without fear of reprisals such as denial of tenure or rejection from publication in peer reviewed journals.
Even so, none of these men were gathered at the Wister Symposium number 5, as the Symposium’s title clearly proclaimed, to question the religious beliefs espoused by evolution itself. That was very far from their intent. Rather, they had gathered to satisfy a far more bothersome question outside of that rather massive question begging assumption. They needed to answer the question, ” Can mutation—coupled with natural selection—serve as the basis that forms the mechanism for evolutionary change?”
Emotions ran surprisingly high when the overwhelming answer these most learned men arrived at was an overwhelming and rather irrifutable, “No.”
We have evidence of mutations in the real world. For example, rare mutations sometimes lead to extra limbs, extra organs, or even conjoined twins. While rare, mutations can be responsible for a number of birth defects like Down’s syndrome, genetic defects like hemophilia, loss of protective coloration in the skin and eyes, and certain kinds of cancer, and even brain malfunction. There is abundant evidence that certain kinds of radiation, errors in DNA replication, and certain chemicals can produce mutations, and mutations in reproductive cells can be passed on to future generations.
More commonly, consider the flu virus. Part of the problem in curing influenza is that this year’s vaccine and your own antibodies are only good against last year’s strain. The flu virus mutates quite easily, so each year its proteins are slightly different the previous year. While they remain influenza, they don’t quite fit our antibodies, so we have to build up our immunity from scratch. When the influenza virus recombines with animal viruses such as pigs, the problem is gets even bigger.
So, obviously, mutations occur and mutations are certainly real. The point is that according to the modern neo-Darwinian Sythesis, mutations are the very basis, the raw material and foundation, for Darwinian evolution when coupled with simple selection. That is the rather grand claim in light of the evidence.
Ask yourself, can mutations actually produce real evolutionary changes? Make no mistake. Mutations ARE real; they’re observed; they make changes in genetic traits. Whether mutations occur is NOT the question. The question is: do mutations produce evolutionary changes on the scale claimed by Darwinists? Do they produce new traits? Do they ADD information to the gene. Do mutations explain the Darwinist theory that postulates change from molecules to monkeys?
In the final analysis, mutations don’t help Darwinian theory at all. There are three major limiting factors that preclude scientific extrapolation from mutational change to evolutionary change on a Darwinian scale. First, there are mathematical challenges.
Math
Mutations are fairly rare. On average, mutations occur about once in every ten million duplications of a DNA molecule, or 10^-7, which is the number one followed by seven zeroes, or one mutation about every 10,000,000 changes. The human body contains nearly 100 trillion cells (10^-14). Therefore, the odds are good that we all have at least a couple of cells with a mutation.
Environmental and other factors can increase the incidents of mutation; radiation, chemicals, and heredity for example.
The mathematical problem for Darwinists is that they require a series of related mutations. The odds of getting two mutations that are related to one another is the product of the separate probabilities: one in 10^-7 x 10^-7, or 10^-14. That’s a one followed by 14 zeroes, or a hundred trillion to one odds.
Consider that any two mutations might produce no more than an enlarged toe and a lizard or a slight bend to the leading edge of a locust wing. That’s a long way from producing a truly new structure, and millions of causal mutations away from changing an asexual single celled organism into an entirely new sexually reproducing organism. So, what are the odds of getting just three mutations in series? That’s one chance in a billion trillion (10^-21). With those kinds of odds, all of the oceans on the entire planet isn’t enough volume to hold enough bacteria to make it likely that we might find a bacterium with three simultaneous or sequential related mutations.
In order for mutation to be the engine of Darwinian evolution, it would require numerous sequential related mutations. How about the odds of getting just four mutations in series? The odds are one in 10^-28. Suddenly, the entire earth isn’t big enough to hold enough organisms to make that even somewhat likely, and we’re only calculating for a mere four simultaneous or sequential related mutations. It would take many more than that to change a cell to a fish or a fish into a frog. Four mutations don’t even make a tentative start toward any real evolution as proposed by Darwinists. Already, at this point, intellectually honest evolutionists give up the classic idea of evolution, because it is plainly impossible.
In an attempt to hold back on the impossible, some stubborn Darwinists fall back on time. “Time is the hero of the plot in the story of evolution. Sure, the odds are low, but there’s nearly 5 billion years!” But 5 billion years is only about 10^-17 seconds, and the whole known universe contains fewer than 10^-80 atoms to work with.
Remarkably, following the Wister Symposium more than 4 decades ago back in 1967 when faced with this evidence, Dr. C. H. Waddington referred to himself as a “post-neo-Darwinist,” which he defined as someone who still religiously believes in Darwinian evolution, but who also believes that mutation-selection does not and cannot possibly explain how evolution might occur. Many Darwinists recognize the need for a new generation of evolutionists to forge the “post-neo-Darwinian synthesis.”
Any kind of Darwinism is a religious belief at its heart because it is a faith based belief system. It is a stubborn belief in the unexplained and patently impossible in a wake of an almost complete lack of supporting evidence and in the face of convincing evidence to the contrary.
Many, MANY, computer simulations have been invented in an attempt to prove the impossible and validate the Darwinian faith. In computer models, the odds are input, the parameters are set, and the simulation is run at hundreds of times the speed of life. The result? It remains impossible.
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? Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, Burnett Books, London, 1985.
The Truth
Contrary to popular belief, the mutation that leads to drug resistance in bacteria does not demonstrate Darwinian evolution. It doesn’t even demonstrate the production of favorable mutations. It demonstrates natural selection (well, really it demonstrates artificial selection but the mechanism is identical), but only selection among already existing variations within a particular kind. It demonstrates that when the odds that a particular process will produce a given effect get too low, good scientists normally look for a better explanation, such as the plasmid explanation for resistance to multiple antibiotics.
At just four related mutations, microbiologists gave up on the idea that mutations could reasonably explain why some bacteria are resistant to four different antibiotics at the same time. The odds against the mutation hypothesis were simply too vast, so they had to look for another mechanism—and they found it.
Using cultures from well before the invention of modern commercial bacteria, they discovered that bacteria were resistant to antibiotics, even long before antibiotics were “invented.” Genetic variability was already built (designed) right into the bacteria. The nonresistant varieties did not become resistant via mutation. Rather, resistant forms were already present.
Furthermore, certain bacteria have little rings of DNA, called plasmids, that they trade around among themselves, and they passed on their resistance to antibiotics in that way. It wasn’t mutation, selection, and asexual reproduction at all, just ordinary recombination and variation within a particular kind. The risistance was already there in the original kind.
Why would God create mutations such as antibiotic resistance? Well, it’s possible God designed antibiotic resistance in bacteria, and antibiotic production by fungi, in order to balance the growth of these prolific organisms in the soil of the earth. This fits the Biblical model of creation in that only after the corruption of the fall would some bacteria become disease vectors, thus making antibiotic resistance a medical problem in the modern age.
What is certain is that mutation is not the engine of Darwinian evolution that Darwinists claim it to be. Intellectually honest Darwinists know this and hope against hope that some other engine will come to light. Until design is once more an accepted principle, I think they may be in for a very long wait.
I commit to you that I will publish every single comment that meets this blog’s commenting criteria. You may want to review that criteria before adding your opinion here.
God Bless you and yours.
Gregg
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Hi Gregg,
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Your maths seems to be a bit off. For a start, the mutation rate in humans is about 10^-8 per base pair per generation of 20 years, not 10^-7 per DNA molecule. Since you have about 3*10^9 base pairs in your genome, you’ll pick up an average of 10 mutations per cell over a 20 year period. That’s 1000 trillion mutations in your whole body. Those mutations will stack up. After 40 years, you’ll have picked up 20 mutations per cell and so on. All of this excludes those mutations which are sufficiently damaging that the cells no longer function. Cells which suffer damage like that are cleared out by the body.
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Then you claim to have calculated the probability of getting two related mutations. But what you seem to have worked out is the probability of getting two specific mutations in a single generation. If you consider the probabilities over several generations, the probabilities are quite a bit higher. You also ignored the effect of population size. The more individuals, the higher the probability that one of them will have the specified mutation. You’re also aiming for the wrong target. Evolution doesn’t need to produce two or more specific mutations to succeed. It just need to produce a steady flow of beneficial mutations. It doesn’t matter what those mutations are, providing they are beneficial.
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May peace be with you,
Neil.
You siad this:
….For example, in 1967, a prestigious group of internationally known biologists and mathematicians gathered together at the world renowned Wistar Institute to consider Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution. Present there were such famous Darwinists as Paul A. Moorehead, Martin M. Kaplan, C. H. Waddington, and even Marcel Schutzenberger of the University of Paris.
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Emotions ran surprisingly high when the overwhelming answer these most learned men arrived at was an overwhelming and rather irrifutable, “No.”
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I’d ask you what the basis for their “no” was, but I don’t actually think you’ve read the book. (If you tell me you have, I will believe you.)
One reason I don’t think you’ve actually read the book is that it seems very hard to find. If I wanted to read it, my only choice seems to be interlibrary loan, which I don’t think you’d be able to do at your current location. Another reason is that the actual date of the meeting was 1966 which you might know if you had tried to google it. So I think you took all this from another source. You gave a source for the actual book, but you didn’t give a source for your conclusion that their response was a no.
Assuming that your source was accurate that the general response was no, I would like to know the exact basis for that response, which I expect was expressed in more detail and precision than a single word no. Scientists usually qualify their conclusions.
I would also ask why you respect the authority and renown of these people enough to use their opinion on mutations but reject their opinion on evolution?
I would point out that this is 45 years old. There have been big increases in knowledge about genetics and big increases in computing power. What has happened since then to follow up on this question? A 45 year old opinion (especially without explanation of detail) is useless now without bringing it up to date as much as possible.
Mathematics depends on models. Were the models of these people good ones? Was the information on which they based their models accurate or is there better information now which would have improved their calculations?
Without some answers to these questions I think your point about the Wistar symposium is empty, made to impress any uncritical readers but adds nothing to the issue.
(Gregg, FYI, Jonathan Wells has a new book out, “The Myth of Junk DNA”. I haven’t seen the book. But if it’s something you’re going to be interested in, there is a blog, Sandwalk, where the blogger is responding to several of the chapters in that book. If you plan to write about junk DNA or that book in particular, that would be a place to see a critique of the book. Moran also links to some other essays on the idea of junk DNA, for instance the one on T. Ryan Gregory’s site.
Since this is a link to other sites, I will understand if you’d rather not post it.
http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2011/03/junk-jonathan-part-1-history-correct.html
…..”Mutations are fairly rare. On average, mutations occur about once in every ten million duplications of a DNA molecule, or 10^-7, which is the number one followed by seven zeroes, or one mutation about every 10,000,000 changes. …”
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This is an interesting point and I’m trying to think about it and read about it.
It seems to me that it is not an easy calculation to make without some study because there are so many factors that could be considered.
It would help to have a reference for that number to see what they are calling a mutation and what they are calling a duplication. (For example, some examples of mutation rate are related to base changes while others are related to changes in genes. Some are calculated per DNA replication while others are calculated per generation.) I think you also have to remember that this is happening in a population, and so there are parallel duplications going on.
Also the types of mutations and their effects are a factor.
(This is not an answer, obviously, just some thoughts.)
You are quoting the innacurate and quite old (75 years +) estimates put forth by J. S. Haldane. This doesn’t really apply for a few reasons. First of all, I don’t know your sources but you probably want to dig a little deeper than Wikapedia for example. Secondly, the Haldane data ONLY applied to the hemophilia gene and even so is very dated in light of recent data.
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After tossing out false positives and mutations that popped up in the cell lines in 2009, Chinese and British researchers were left with just 4 substitutions in 10 million base pairs. This data was published in Current Biology Online on 27 August 2009 and has been verified and validated ever since. Therefore, the very best analysis even among ardent Darwinists (and thus a very safe conclusion) is just 1 base substitution in every 30 million nucleotides per single generation, or about 10^-7 per DNA molecule based on the number of nucleotides in the human genome.
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“The ability to reliably measure rates of DNA mutation means we can begin to ask how mutation rates vary between different regions of the genome and perhaps also between different individuals,” Chris Tyler-Smith, evolutionary biologist at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute.
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You say, “Then you claim to have calculated the probability of getting two related mutations. But what you seem to have worked out is the probability of getting two specific mutations in a single generation. If you consider the probabilities over several generations, the probabilities are quite a bit higher.”
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This is not how probability works. If you roll a dice, your odds of rolling a 1 is 1 in 6. Having successfully rolled a 1, the next time you roll the dice, your odds remain 1 in 6. The odds do not diminish nor increase based on historical performance. When you roll two dice, the odds of rolling two ones is “1 in 6 x 1 in 6” every single time you roll both dice. The probability neither increases nor decreases over time. That is, in fact, a formal fallacy known as the GAMBLER’S FALLACY which keeps Casinos in business.
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The odds of obtaining two sequential or simultaneous mutations are accurate for each generation, that of one in 10^-7 x 10^-7, or 10^-14 for each and every generation. But for the model proposed by Neo-Darwinism to be true, it would require MULTIPLE sequential/simultaneous mutations per generation, AND those mutations would have to be passed down into subsequent progeny.
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The odds of only FOUR sequential/simultaneous mutations per generation taking place are 10^-28 and the odds of those mutations being passed on to subsequent generations are 1 in 4 which means that the probability of mutations being passed on to subsequent descendant generations even over several generations is QUITE low (approaching mathematical impossibility) based on simple math.
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Simple math doesn’t even tell the whole story. You and I know that most mutations prohibit procreation. In human terms, those with Downs, just by way of example, very rarely reproduce and pass on that mutation. That makes the odds of those mutations being passed on to subsequent generations a statistical zero. A statistical zero far exceeds the limits of mathematical impossibility.
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Thanks for your comment.
Gregg
It may take several mutations for a structure to change from its original form to what we recognize as different in a different species. But the mutations do not have necessarily have to occur all in the same single animal.
(I think the word ‘generation’ is tricky because in some cases it might mean one reproductive event (as in the paper about the Chinese relatives and the Y chromosome) and in other cases it refers to the whole population, the way we use it for instance in the phrase ‘greatest generation’.}
As long as the mutations is not seriously negative, a mutation can exist and be passed on and spread in the population over many years. The chance for a second mutation is not just the probability of a mutation for a single birth but for the probability of a single birth combined with the values for all the reproductive events in the population over all those years.
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Neil has a good point:
….Evolution doesn’t need to produce two or more specific mutations to succeed. It just need to produce a steady flow of beneficial mutations.”
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Looking back you can say that those two or four mutations had to happen for a structure to acquire its current form. But there was no goal in the evolutionary process. (I wouldn’t use the word ‘succeed, myself; I’d use the word ‘occur.) There was no requirement that those particular mutations had to happen, no requirement that that structure had to occur or reach its current form. The mutation leading to the new structure is no more improbable than the random set of mutations in the population which did not result in the final structure. (can’t put this into words very well at the moment.)
…”Emotions ran surprisingly high when the overwhelming answer these most learned men arrived at was an overwhelming and rather irrifutable, “No.””
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My reading of this is that they did NOT arrive at an overwhelming answer, there was NOT an overwhelming or irrefutable “No”, just a lot of discussion and debate.
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I did get this book from inter-library loan. Things have been complicated for me recently and I wasn’t able to read most of it (and I’m not sure I would have anyway). Each presentation was followed by a discussion session which was included in the text, as was a summary by the chairperson at the end. What parts I looked at seemed like a lot of back and forth discussion and disagreement. There was a lot of argumentative discussion about details and examples. Any one topic of discussion would itself have required some amount of reading for me to really understand, not to mention the fact that the details discussed were 45 years old . Even in the summary I didn’t see where any conclusion was reached, more a polite summing up with the idea that people were now better informed about other approaches. There was no sign of a conclusion such as you have suggested, and definitely no “overwhelming “No” by the group.
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It does seem like Schutzenberger kept his opinion and never changed it, so you could call that a “no”, but from the comments it seemed that the biologists thought he might have been missing the point, so they were saying “no” to his understanding of how to evaluate the biological information.
There was also a discussion at one point of whether evolution was falsifiable; there was too much discussion and detail to sum up (by me anyway), but again it did not end in a conclusion but rambled around.
I did find both Schutzenberger’s and Eden’s presentations online on someone’s webpage along with the comments. (They were on some Berkeley site but it seemed like more like a personal page so I hesitate to post the link; I think I found them by including Wistar in the search.)