Imaginary Mechanism of Evolution

By A. O.

Imaginary Mechanism of Evolution

The neo-Darwinist model, which we shall take as the “mainstream” theory of evolution today, argues that life has evolved through two naturalistic mechanisms: “natural selection” and “mutation”. The basic assertion of the theory is as follows: Natural selection and mutation are two complementary mechanisms. The origin of evolutionary modifications is random mutations that take place in the genetic structure of living things. The traits brought about by the mutations are selected by the mechanism of natural selection and therefore the living things evolve.

When we further probe into this theory, we find that there is no such evolutionary mechanism at all, because neither natural selection nor mutations make any contribution to the claim that different species have evolved and transformed into one another.

Natural Selection

As process of nature, natural selection was familiar to biologists before Darwin, who defined it as a “mechanism that keeps species unchanging without being corrupted”. Darwin was the first person to put forward the assertion that this process had evolutionary power and he then erected his entire theory on the foundation of this assertion. The name he gave to his book indicates that natural selection was the basis of Darwin’s theory: The Origin of Species, by means of Natural Selection.

However since Darwin’s time, there has not been a single shred of evidence put forward to show that natural selection causes living beings to evolve. Colin Patterson, the senior paleontologist of the Museum of Natural History in England, who is also a prominent evolutionist by the way, stresses that natural selection has never been observed to have the power to cause things to evolve:

No one has ever produced a species by mechanisms of natural selection. No one has ever got near it and most of the current argument in neo-Darwinism is about this question.

Natural selection holds that those living things that are more suited to the natural conditions of their habitats will prevail by having offspring that will survive, whereas those that are unfit will disappear. For example, in a deer herd under the threat of wild animals, naturally those that can run faster will survive. That is true. But no matter how long this process goes on, it will not transform those deer into another living species. The deer will always remain deer.

When we look at the few incidents the evolutionists have put forth as observed examples of natural selection, we see that these are nothing but a simple attempt to hoodwink.

“Industrial Melanism”

In 1986 Douglas Futuyma published a book, The Biology of Evolution, which is accepted as one of the sources explaining the theory of evolution by natural selection in the most explicit way. The most famous of his examples on this subject is about the color of the moth population, which appeared to darken during the Industrial Revolution in England.

According to the account, around the outset of the Industrial Revolution in England, the color of the tree barks around Manchester was quite light. Because of this, dark-colored moths resting on those trees could easily be noticed by the birds that fed on them and therefore they had very little chance of survival. Fifty years later, as a result of pollution, the barks of the trees had darkened, and this time the light-colored moths became the most hunted. As a result, the number of light-colored moths decreased whereas that of the dark-colored ones increased since the latter were not easily noticed. Evolutionists use this as a great evidence to their theory. Evolutionists, on the other hand, take refuge and solace in window-dressing by showing how light-colored moths “evolved” into dark-colored ones.

However, it should be quite clear that this situation can in no way be used as evidence for the theory of evolution, for natural selection did not give rise to a new form that had not existed before. Dark colored moths existed in the moth population before the Industrial Revolution. Only the relative proportions of the existing moth varieties in the population changed. The moths had not acquired a new trait or an organ, which would cause a “speciation”. In order to have a moth turn into another living species, a bird for example, new additions would have had to be made to the genes. That is, an entirely separate genetic program would have had to be loaded so as to include information about the physical traits of the bird.

Briefly, natural selection does not have the capability to add a new organ to a living organism, remove one, or change the organism into another species-quite contrary to the image that evolutionists conjure up. The “greatest” evidence put forward since Darwin has been able to go no further than the “industrial melanism” of the moths in England.

Can Natural Selection Explain Complexity?

There is nothing that natural selection contributes to the theory of evolution, because this mechanism can never increase or improve the genetic information of a species. Neither can it transform one species into another: a starfish into a fish, a fish into a frog, a frog into a crocodile, or a crocodile into a bird. The biggest defender of punctuated equilibrium, Gould, refers to this deadlock of natural selection as follows:

The essence of Darwinism lies in a single phrase: natural selection is the creative force of evolutionary change. No one denies that natural selection will play a negative role in eliminating the unfit. Darwinian theories require that it create the fit as well.

Another of the misleading methods that evolutionists employ on the issue of natural selection is their effort to present this mechanism as a conscious designer. However, natural selection has no consciousness. It does not possess a will that can decide what is good and what is bad for living beings. As a result, natural selection cannot explain biological systems and organs that have the feature of “irreducible complexity”. These systems and organs are composed of the co-operation of a great number of parts and they are of no use if even one of these parts is missing or defective. (For example, human eye does not function unless it exists with all its details). Therefore, the will that brings all these parts together should be able to figure the future in advance and aim directly for the benefit that is to be acquired at the last stage. Since natural mechanism has no consciousness or will, it can do no such thing. This fact which also demolishes the foundations of the theory of evolution, also worried Darwin: “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.”

Natural selection only selects out the disfigured, weak, or unfit individuals of a species. It cannot produce new species, new genetic information, or new organs. That is, it cannot make anything evolve. Darwin accepted this reality by saying: “Natural selection can do nothing until favorable variations chance to occur”. This is why neo-Darwinism has had to elevate mutations next to natural selection as the “cause of beneficial changes”. However as we shall see, mutations can only be “the cause for harmful changes”.

Mutations

Mutations are defined as breaks or replacements taking place in the DNA molecule, which is found in the nucleus of the cell of a living organism and which holds all the genetic information. These breaks or replacements are the result of external effects such as radiation or chemical action. Every mutation is an “accident” and either damages the nucleotides making up the DNA or changes their locations. Most of the time, they cause so much damage and modification that the cell cannot repair them.

Mutation, which evolutionists frequently hide behind, is not a magic wand that transforms living organisms into a more advanced and perfect form. The direct effect of mutations is harmful. The changes effected by mutations can only be like those experienced by the people in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Chernobyl: that is, death, disability, and freaks of nature…

The reason for this is very simple: DNA has a very complex structure and random effects can only cause harm to this structure. B.G. Ranganathan states:

Mutations are small, random, and harmful. They rarely occur and the best possibility is that they will be ineffectual. These four characteristics of mutations imply that mutations cannot lead to an evolutionary development. A random change in a highly specialized organism is either ineffectual or harmful. A random change in a watch cannot improve the watch. It will most probably harm it or at best be ineffectual. An earthquake does not improve the city, it brings destruction.

Not surprisingly, no useful mutation has been observed so far. All mutations have proved to be harmful. The evolutionist scientist Warren Weaver comments on the report prepared by the Committee on Genetic Effects of Atomic Radiation, which had been formed to investigate mutations that may have been caused by the nuclear weapons used in the Second World War:

Many will be puzzled about the statement that practically all known mutant genes are harmful. For mutations are a necessary part of the process of evolution. How can a good effect – evolution to higher forms of life – results from mutations practically all of which are harmful?

Every effort put into “generating a useful mutation” has resulted in failure. For decades, evolutionists carried out many experiments to produce mutations in fruit flies as these insects reproduce very rapidly and so mutations would show up quickly. Generation upon generation of these flies were mutated, yet no useful mutation was ever observed. Evolutionist geneticist Gordon Taylor writes thus:

In all the thousands of fly-breeding experiments carried out all over the world for more than fifty years, a distinct new species has never been seen to emerge… or even a new enzyme.

Another researcher, Michael Pitman, comments on the failure of the experiments carried out on fruit flies:

Morgan, Goldschmidt, Muller, and other geneticists have subjected generations of fruit flies to extreme conditions of heat, cold, light, dark, and treatment by chemicals and radiation. All sorts of mutations, practically all trivial or positively deleterious, have been produced. Man-made evolution? Not really: Few of the geneticists’ monsters could have survived outside the bottles they were bred in. In practice mutants die, are sterile, or tend to revert to the wild type.

The same holds true for man. All mutations that have been observed in human beings have deleterious results. On this issue, evolutionists throw up a smokescreen and try to show even examples of such deleterious mutation as “evidence for evolution”. All mutations that take place in humans result in physical deformities, in infirmities such as mongolism, Down syndrome, albinism, dwarfism or cancer. These mutations are presented in evolutionist textbooks as examples of “the evolutionary mechanism at work”. Needless to say, a process that leaves people disabled or sick cannot be “an evolutionary mechanism”-evolution is supposed to produce better forms that are more fit to survive.

To summarize, there are three main reasons why mutations cannot be pressed into the service of supporting evolutionists’ assertions:

– The direct effect of mutations is harmful: Since they occur randomly, they almost always damage the living organism that undergoes them. Reason tells us that unconscious intervention in a perfect and complex structure will not improve that structure but impair it. Indeed, no “useful mutation” has ever been observed.

– Mutations add no new information to an organism’s DNA: The particles making up the genetic information are either torn from their places, destroyed, or carried off to different places. Mutations cannot make a living thing acquire a new organ or a new trait. They only cause abnormalities like a leg sticking out of the back, or an ear from the abdomen.

– In order for a mutation to be transferred to the subsequent generation, it has to have taken place in the reproductive cells of the organism: A random change that occurs in a casual cell or organ of the body cannot be transferred to the next generation. For example, a human eye altered by the effects of radiation or by other causes will not be passed on to subsequent generations.

– Briefly, it is impossible for living beings to have evolved, because there exists no mechanism in nature that can cause them to evolve. This agrees with the evidence of the fossil record, which demonstrates that this scenario is far removed from reality.

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Taken with slight editorial modifications from Harun Yahyah’s book, The Collapse of the Theory of Evolution.

A. O. is a Turkish writer and author.