Viruses, Coronaviruses and the Theory of Evolution

Do you know it’s impossible to kill a virus? That’s because viruses are not living organisms. Viruses do not eat and they do not excrete. Viruses have no respiration. Viruses consist of a protein sheath that surrounds a small genome consisting of DNA or RNA. Antibiotics kill bacteria but have no effect on viruses. You can’t kill viruses but you can destroy them.

 

Viruses can’t reproduce by cell division like bacteria. A virus invades a cell, such as a bacterium or a human cell. The virus then hijacks the cell’s reproductive machinery and forces the cell to reproduce viruses. A disease causing virus causes a human cell to become full of viruses and explode and die, releasing viruses and toxins into the body causing illness and death. Since viruses invade the DNA of host cells, viruses can also cause cells to mutate into cancer cells.

 

There are approximately 37 trillion cells in the average human body. There are approximately 20 times that number (740 trillion) microorganisms in the human body, consisting of bacteria and viruses. Human cells are much larger than the microorganisms. Some of the microorganisms are so small, 400,000 of them could fit inside one human cell. Most of the microorganisms are either neutral or beneficial to the body. A small fraction are harmful or pathogenic.

 

Most of the 150 trillion viruses estimated to inhabit a human body are harmless and they destroy bacteria. There is much scientific literature these days discussing the fact that many viruses are actually beneficial to the human body.

 

Harmful viruses include: rhinoviruses (cause common cold), influenza viruses (seasonal flu virus), measles virus, HIV (AIDS) viruses, and coronaviruses  which inhabit animals, can cause the common cold in humans and cause SARS, MERS and the present deadly COVID-19 pandemic.

 

During reproduction of viruses, there are often transcription errors that cause mutations in the DNA of the newly reproduced viruses. All viruses mutate over time. Some viruses mutate very rapidly into more deadly or less deadly forms.

 

Other viruses are very stable and seldom mutate at all. For instance the virus that causes measles is in nearly the same form that it was back in the 1950s. The HIV (AIDS) virus is also rather stable and not prone to much mutation, though there are several strains of HIV virus now.

 

The seasonal flu virus mutates rapidly and the mutations are often predictable. Microbiologists studying flu viruses can predict, with some degree of accuracy, how the virus will mutate and develop a vaccine in advance of that mutated strain of virus. This is why we have different flu virus vaccines every year. Personally I never get a flu shot. The record of the flu vaccine in actually preventing the flu is a bit spotty. Vaccines also carry other health risks but that’s a topic for another article.

 

Seasonal flu viruses usually arise in east Asia. The reason for this is the type of intense animal husbandry practiced in densely populated east Asian lands. Chickens, ducks, geese and pigs are raised in extremely close proximity on Asian farms and ranches. Pigs are often fed chicken dung as their primary food source. This causes viruses that infect fowl (avian viruses) to cross over into pigs. The avian viruses and swine viruses can on occasion infect the same cell in the body of a pig. The two viruses sometimes form a mutated hybrid under these conditions. Some strains of these new hybrid flu viruses can infect humans and be transmissible from human to human.

 

The influenza virus of 1918-19 was especially deadly. It infected about 500 million people, almost a third of the world population at the time. Estimates of deaths range from 30 million to 100 million, including 675,000 in the United States. It progressed in three waves, the first being deadly but mild compared to the fierce second wave. The virus mutated to a deadlier form by the summer of 1918 and the peak month of deaths was October 1918.

 

The 1918 pandemic was caused by an avian virus (H1N1) and the geographic origin is unknown. It followed an unusual seasonal flu virus timeframe, peaking in the summer and fall of 1918. Most seasonal flu outbreaks peak in winter. My own family lost a great-aunt in the pandemic. My maternal grandfather’s sister, Marie May (1894-1918) died of the flu in December 1918. It was just three months after she was maid of honor at my grandparents’ wedding. She was sick only three days.

 

This brings us to the present coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic that originated in Wuhan China in December 2019. Some have speculated that it’s a bio-engineered virus but microbiologists who’ve studied it say the RNA doesn’t have markers typical of an engineered genome. The origin of the outbreak is thought to have been through transmission from animal to human at the Wuhan seafood and live animal market. This is  because some researchers point to the fact that the virus is 96% similar to a strain of bat virus. Bats are eaten as food in China. A search on the internet will bring up pictures of Chinese people eating bats and pictures of roasted bats and bat soup. People selling or cooking bats are exposed to raw bat flesh and bat blood. It’s easy to see how a bat virus could spread to humans.

 

The rapid spread of COVID-19 from human to human is very alarming. The high death rate (over 25,000 deaths among 565,000+ cases, as I write this) gives a death rate far higher than that of seasonal flu. Contagious and deadly is a bad combination. It is more severe than the SARS virus (2002-2003) and the MERS virus (2012- present) which are also coronaviruses. The MERS virus spreads very inefficiently from human to human. SARS was also suspected to have been transmitted from bats to humans.

 

This year’s seasonal flu has infected over 34 million Americans so far, causing about 350,000 hospitalizations and over 20,000 deaths. Seasonal flu runs from October to April. If COVID-19 were allowed to infect 34 million Americans, it’s high death rate would likely cause over 350,000 deaths.

 

We can be thankful that viruses mutate over time. A genetic mutation is a destructive error that occurs in the genome (DNA or RNA) of the virus during the reproduction of the virus in host cells. Mutations cause a rearrangement or loss of nucleotide base pairs in the virus DNA or RNA. (Some viruses have genomes that consist of DNA and some have genomes that consist of RNA.)

 

Mutations don’t bring a new strand of base pairs to the virus genome but rather scramble pre-existing base pairs in the genome. Even transfer of base pairs from virus to virus is not a new strand of DNA but merely a pre-existing strand of DNA from the other virus which would cause hybridization. Mutations result in an overall net loss of information in the DNA or RNA of the virus gene pool. This loss of information is called genetic entropy  and it is the breakdown of virus genomes over time. (See book: Genetic Entropy & The Mystery of the Genome by Dr. John C. Sanford, FMS Publications, 2005.)

 

The genomes of all the viruses of a particular kind tend to mutate in the same way at the same time because of vulnerabilities in the structure of the viral genome. Let’s pray that the COVID-19 virus quickly mutates to a mild, non-deadly form and this pandemic ends now!

 

Viruses are far simpler than bacteria but are nonetheless extremely complex organisms. Bacteria are smaller than a thousandth of a millimeter. Viruses are far smaller than that. A bacterium is more complex than a smartphone. A virus is more complex than a wristwatch. Neither of them could ever form by chance. They had to be created.

 

Evolutionists can’t explain how the first virus could have formed by random collisions of atoms in the prebiotic earth. Viruses can’t reproduce without host cells such as bacteria. So in the evolutionist mind, which came first, the bacteria cell or the virus? That’s the question Dr. Andrew Fabich, as an undergraduate, asked his virology professor. The professor couldn’t answer him and candidly said that he had no evolutionary explanation for the origin of viruses. (See “Celebrate Your Inner Virus”  by Dr. Andrew Fabich, available at answersingenesis.org.)

 

A coronavirus is an RNA-based virus and its single nucleotide strand consists of roughly 26,000 – 32,000 nucleotide base pairs, all properly sequenced. To say that such a long chain of nucleotides just randomly fell together in the prebiotic earth by random churning of atoms is a probabilistic absurdity. The number of possible sequences of 26,000 base pairs is an astronomically huge number.

 

I’ve shown in a previous article that the number of possible sequences of the cards in an ordinary 52 card, playing card deck is factorial 52 which is 52 x 51 x 50 x 49 . . . 3 x 2 x 1 which yields a number larger than the number of atoms in the known universe. Can you imagine the number of possible combinations of base pairs in a 26,000 nucleotide RNA chain? A viable coronavirus RNA couldn’t form in a trillion years of random churning of atoms.

 

Secular evolutionist biologists have great faith in chance to produce complex organisms. Viruses, bacteria and all organisms were created by God. Many viruses are good. However, some viruses became deadly after the fall of creation into sin, which brought the curse of evil on the earth.The fact that the theory of evolution can’t explain the origin of viruses is just one more piece of evidence that serves to disprove evolution.

 

Many scientists are taking a fresh look at Christianity. God sent Jesus Christ, the promised Messiah of Israel, to be the redeemer of humankind. Christ came in fulfillment of over three hundred prophecies that were written in the Old Testament hundreds of years before His birth. Additionally, Christ worked miracles of healing in front of eyewitnesses. Miracles of healing still occur today in answer to prayer in Christian gatherings all around the world. The fulfilled prophecies and the miraclesprove Christ is the Son of God.

 

The prophet Isaiah foretold that Christ would suffer and die, taking upon Himself the punishment that we deserved because of our sins. “He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities” (Isaiah 53:5). Christ died for our sins and was raised from the dead to offer forgiveness of sins to all who turn to Him in repentance. I invite you to turn to Jesus Christ today to receive forgiveness of sins.

 

Sources: cdc.gov, Wikipedia, book: Genetic Entropy & The Mystery of the Genome by Dr. John C. Sanford, FMS Publications, 2005 and article: “Celebrate Your Inner Virus” by Dr. Andrew Fabich at answersingenesis.org.

Steps to salvation:

Jesus said “Ye must be born again.” (John 3:7)
1) Believe that God loves you and sent the Messiah (Messiah is Hebrew for Christ) to redeem you.
2) Believe that Jesus Christ came to die for you, to take upon Himself the penalty of your sins (Isaiah 53:5-6, John 6:29, Romans 4:5, First Peter 3:18).
3) Repent of your sins and call on the name of Jesus Christ to ask for forgiveness of sins (Romans 10:13).
4) Receive Jesus as Savior and experience the new birth (John 1:12, Acts 2:38).
5) Follow Jesus Christ as Lord (John 14:15).

Prayer to receive salvation:

To receive the salvation which Jesus purchased for us at the terrible cost of His suffering and death on our behalf I invite you to pray this simple prayer: 

“Dear heavenly Father, I thank you for sending Jesus, the promised Messiah, to die for my sins. I admit that I’m a sinner. I repent of my sins and I ask you to forgive me on the basis of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I ask you to fill me with your Holy Spirit to empower me to serve you under the Lordship of Jesus Christ, Amen.” 

If you prayed this prayer in the humble sincerity of your heart, then you have received everlasting life, which includes power to live right in this life and entrance into heaven in the afterlife!

Bill Nugent, Overcomer Ministries of Fort Mill, South Carolina, USA

(C) 2020 William P. Nugent, permission granted to email or republish for Christian outreach.

Christian book, Lawful or Legalistic by Bill Nugent available in paperback!
Info and ordering link available at our website: www.bnugent.org
Back issues of articles archived on our website. <>{

What a Deck of Cards Shows Us About the Probability of Genetic Mutation Driven Evolution

You’re out for a walk and happen to find a deck of playing cards by the side of the path. You flip through the cards and notice that they’re all in numerical order by suit. In other words the diamonds are in order from 2 through 10 and Jack to Ace, and the same is true for hearts, clubs and spades. You have in your hands a deck of cards arranged in straight flush in all four suits.

You say to yourself “What an amazing coincidence, someone shuffled a deck of cards and the cards all came out in perfect flush order.” In fact you are so amazed that when you get home you try and calculate the odds of getting a 52 card straight flush by shuffling a deck of cards over and over.

What is the chance that the first card in a newly shuffled deck comes out to be the 2 of diamonds? That’s easy, it’s 1 in 52. And once you’ve gotten that card to come up first what’s the chance of the second card being the 3 of diamonds? That too is easy, it’s 1 in 51. The chance of getting just the first two cards in the right order would be 1 in 52 x 51 which would equal 1 in 2,652.

You then realize that the number of possible combinations of 52 cards is expressed by what your math teacher called “factorial 52” which is 52 x 51 x 50 x 49 x 48 x 47 x 46 . . . x 3 x 2 x 1. You get out your calculator and find that factorial 52 is equal to a sum greater than 8.07 x 10 to the 67th power! Think about how huge that number is. Scientists have estimated that the number of atoms in the Milky Way Galaxy is only 1 x 10 to the 65th power. The number of possible combinations of cards in an ordinary 52 card deck is nearly a thousand times greater than the number of atoms in the Milky Way Galaxy!

Now let’s see if we can get a 52 card straight flush by randomly shuffling decks of cards. If we were to put six and a half billion people on to work shuffling decks of cards and they shuffled the card decks at the rate of one million decks per second and we employed them for fifteen billion years you would have less than a tenth of one percent chance of coming up with a 52 card straight flush in any of those decks at the end of fifteen billion years!!!

You then come to the conclusion that the straight flush deck of cards you found was arranged not by chance but by a human being or some other intelligent designer who deliberately arranged the cards in that order.

What does this little card deck example have to do with evolution? We can use it to illustrate the probability of the occurrence of one small step in evolution.

The alleged mechanism of evolution is genetic mutations. Mutations are copying errors in the DNA. The DNA molecule in a cell of an animal is composed of many millions of nucleotide base pairs arranged in an exact orderly sequence. You can think of DNA as a deck of cards and the base pairs as the cards in the deck.

A mutation rearranges or shuffles some of the base pairs. If the mutational shuffling garbles or disorganizes the design information in the DNA, the offspring will be deformed or even die.

Evolutionists claim that random mutations of the nucleotide base pairs in the DNA of living organisms can cause advantageous changes in body structure. Evolutionists also claim that the accumulation of such changes has caused new species and even new orders and new phyla of living organisms to form. However, even evolutionists acknowledge that the overwhelming majority of mutations are harmful or neutral.

Let’s examine the odds of the probability of unguided evolution producing a humble ordinary woodpecker. The woodpecker is different from other birds in that it has an extra heavy duty beak, a very thick skull, thick cartilage behind the beak to act as shock absorber, an extra long tongue and incredibly . . . a flap of skin around the top of the head to act as a storage pouch for the long tongue!

The evolutionist says that all those unique features of the woodpecker evolved from an ordinary bird by the accumulation of random rearrangements of DNA base pairs. I would point out that the number of base pairs that would have needed to be rearranged to turn a sparrow into a woodpecker would likely have been a lot larger than 52.

Furthermore, the list of unique woodpecker features (heavy duty beak, thick skull, long tongue, storage pouch, etc.) had to evolve in tandem. In other words if an ordinary bird got a mutation giving it a long tongue but no storage pouch in which to store the tongue, that would not be advantageous! That bird and its mutation would die out from the gene pool.

The ordinary bird on its way to evolve into a woodpecker would have had to have an incredibly large favorable mutation to give it several woodpecker features all at once.

Human DNA contains more than three billion base pairs. If we suppose that a bird has just half that number of base pairs, how many of those base pairs would have to be rearranged in precise orderly sequence to redesign the skull, beak, tongue and add a tongue storage pouch to make an even remotely functioning woodpecker? For the sake of our illustration let’s conservatively estimate that about 52,000 base pairs would have to be precisely rearranged.

We saw in our card deck illustration the incredibly large number of possible sequences of just 52 cards. How can we even begin to calculate the number of possible sequences of 52,000 base pairs? Also consider that genetic mutations are rare and a mutation with even one base pair out of place can be very harmful.

Any objective probability analysis would show that an unguided random shuffling of 52,000 base pairs needed to redesign a bird skull would have such a low probability of success that it would essentially never happen. Evolutionists usually attempt to rebut such a statement by saying that such a change would not happen with one large mutation. They would claim that it would require many smaller mutations in a step by step incremental way involving relatively few base pairs in each step.

An evolutionist would probably say that a mutation that shuffled just 52 base pairs would be a small mutation. The evolutionist could say that a series of 1,000 mutations, each involving just 52 base pairs would be sufficient to redesign a bird’s skull.

I would counter that even if each mutation rearranged only 52 base pairs in each of 1,000 small mutational steps to accumulate to a total of 52,000 precisely rearranged base pairs it would still be an absurdly low probability for random mutations to turn a sparrow into a woodpecker. Our card deck illustration above shows the outrageously huge number of possible sequences of just 52 base pairs. Imagine the odds of correctly and precisely rearranging 52 different base pairs in each of 1,000 mutations!

This shows that a woodpecker or any complex life form could not evolve by random processes in a trillion years!!! This is just one of the many glaring flaws in the theory of evolution.

Evolution is the origins myth of atheistic materialism. It is taught in our taxpayer funded schools. Evolution is taught as an “unguided,” therefore atheistic process. This promotes atheism and undermines the faith of school children. It is high time that children are taught about the flaws in the theory of evolution.*

*Some material in the above article is adapted from an uncopyrighted email by “Jim in Vermont” of the “evolution vs intelligent design” debate group at yahoogroups.com.

 

Steps to salvation:

Jesus said “Ye must be born again” (John 3:7).
1) Believe that God created you and loves you and sent the Messiah (Messiah is Hebrew for Christ) to redeem you.
2) Believe that Jesus Christ came to die for you, to take upon Himself the penalty of your sins (Isaiah 53:5-6, John 6:29, Romans 4:5, First Peter 3:18).
3) Repent of your sins and call on the name of Jesus to receive forgiveness of sins (Romans 10:13).
4) Receive Jesus as Savior and experience the new birth (John 1:12, Acts 2:38).
5) Follow Jesus Christ as Lord (John 14:15).

Prayer to receive salvation:

To receive the salvation which Jesus purchased for us at the terrible cost of His suffering and death on our behalf I invite you to pray this simple prayer: 

“Dear heavenly Father, I thank you for sending Jesus, the promised Messiah, to die for my sins. I admit that I’m a sinner. I repent of my sins and I ask you to forgive me on the basis of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I ask you to fill me with your Holy Spirit to empower me to serve you under the Lordship of Jesus Christ, Amen.” 

If you prayed this prayer in the humble sincerity of your heart, then you have received everlasting life, which includes power to live right in this life and entrance into heaven in the afterlife!

Bill Nugent, Overcomer Ministries of Fort Mill, South Carolina, USA

(C) 2019 William P. Nugent, permission granted to email or republish for Christian outreach.

Christian book, Lawful or Legalistic by Bill Nugent available in paperback!
Info and ordering link available at our website: www.bnugent.org
Back issues of Defending the Faith archived on our website. <>{

Bill’s book titled “The Cross, Self-Denial and the Manifestation of the Sons of God.” is now on Kindle!   Below is a link to the book on Kindle:

 

https://www.amazon.com/Cross-Self-Denial-Manifestation-Sons-God-ebook/dp/B07NCL9B82/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1550282110&sr=8-1&keywords=the+cross+self-denial+and+the+manifestation+of+the+sons+of+God

Whale Evolution Collides With Findings in Genetics

Evolutionists claim that whales evolved from a doglike creature that dwelt on land. They have put forward an alleged transitional form called “Ambulocetus” based on a few bones and fragments found in Pakistan. An article titled A Whale of a Tale? in Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal 8(1):2-3, 1994 exposes the shallowness of this claim.

The above mentioned article discusses the fossils in the Pakistani find and comments on the incompleteness of the skeleton and the broad assumptions and speculations made by the evolutionists. In this article I will explore two theories of genetic mutational mechanism put forward by evolutionists to try to account for how a land animal could evolve into a whale.

Imagine for a moment the vast design changes that would have to take place to evolve just one feature of a whale such as the ability of a whale to breathe through a blowhole on the back of its head. Think of the amount of design changes encoded in the DNA that would be needed to remodel the skull and reroute the trachea. Imagine this occurring by a blind, random incremental process and you have an idea of the leap of faith that the evolutionists expect us to take.

According to the standard theory of evolution taught in American public schools and colleges, large numbers of small genetic changes (genetic mutations) occurred incrementally over a long period of time. This is the micromutation theory of genetic change. It claims that forelimbs gradually changed into flippers. The nasal passage gradually, over the course of many generations, became a blowhole on the top rear of the head to facilitate breathing when swimming.

Such a major redesign of the animal’s head would require a multitude of favorable mutations. Genetic mutations are rare. Favorable genetic mutations are extremely rare. The overwhelming majority of genetic mutations are disadvantageous or neutral (neither good or bad).

It is not just changes to the DNA that are needed but more specifically the addition of new base pairs to the DNA with new information to remodel the skull of the proto-whale. It is the matter of adding new genetic information to the DNA that presents the evolutionists with perhaps their biggest problem.

Prominent scientist and author Dr. Lee Spetner has stated that no genetic mutation ever studied adds information to the DNA. The DNA molecule is composed of huge coiled chains of nucleotide base pairs. Mutations almost never add base pairs to the DNA. When mutations do add base pairs it is typically a case where a gene is duplicated in the copying process. Such a duplication is not new information but simply a duplicate of old genetic information. Mutations almost always scramble or delete genetic information. Even genetic splicing doesn’t solve the dilemma since it merely transfers preexisting genetic base pairs from one organism to another.

Geneticist Richard B. Goldschmidt rode to the rescue with his macromutation “hopeful monster” theory. The essence of this theory is that mutations occurred in bunches and caused evolution to be not a gradual process but rather a series of dramatic leaps. A lizard lays an egg and out hatches a bird. A semi-aquatic doglike creature gives birth to an offspring that breathes through the top of its head!

In reality Goldschmidt didn’t even begin to solve the central conundrum facing the evolutionist. If micromutations are rare and nearly always detrimental, macromutations are rarer still and nearly always fatal or extremely detrimental! You also run squarely up against Spetner’s objection which is that no genetic mutation — even a macromutation — adds new chemical base pairs to the DNA. A macromutation is simply a major scrambling of preexisting genetic information.

It is impossible to fathom the utter remoteness of the possibility that a major mutation of the genes would result in a superbly designed blowhole on the back of the head of a semi-aquatic animal. Evolutionists are forced to conclude that this infinitesimally remote possibility occurred not once but thousands of times in other animals in the evolution of wings, beaks, feathers, flippers, skunk spray, snake venom,  fangs, retractable claws, canine teeth, tusks, pupae, cocoons, vertebrae, gills, etc., etc.

Evolutionists have great faith in their materialistic theory. They have bet their souls that there is no God. They have also wagered that death results in the abolition of consciousness. I’m thankful that with the advancement of the science of genetics and computer driven probability analyses many people are rejecting evolution and are turning to the God of the Bible. They, like me, have come to realize that evolution is just a whale of a tale.

Steps to salvation:

1) Believe that God created you and loves you and sent the Messiah (Messiah is Hebrew for Christ) to redeem you.
2) Believe that Jesus Christ came to die for you, to take upon Himself the penalty of your sins (Isaiah 53:5-6, John 6:29, Romans 4:5, First Peter 3:18).
3) Repent of your sins and call on the name of Jesus Christ to receive forgiveness of sins (Romans 10:13).
4) Receive Jesus Christ as Savior and experience the new birth (John 1:12, Acts 2:38).
5) Follow Jesus Christ as Lord (John 14:15).

Prayer to receive salvation:

To receive the salvation which Jesus purchased for us at the terrible cost of His suffering and death on our behalf I invite you to pray this simple prayer: 

“Dear heavenly Father, I thank you for sending Jesus, the promised Messiah, to die for my sins. I admit that I’m a sinner. I repent of my sins and I ask you to forgive me on the basis of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I ask you to fill me with your Holy Spirit to empower me to serve you under the Lordship of Jesus Christ, Amen.” 

If you prayed this prayer in the humble sincerity of your heart, then you have received everlasting life, which includes power to live right in this life and entrance into heaven in the afterlife!

Bill Nugent, Overcomer Ministries of Fort Mill, South Carolina, USA

(C) 2019 William P. Nugent, permission granted to email or republish for Christian outreach.

Christian book, Lawful or Legalistic by Bill Nugent available in paperback!
Info and ordering link available at our website: www.bnugent.org
Back issues of Defending the Faith archived on our website. <>{

Bill’s book titled “The Cross, Self-Denial and the Manifestation of the Sons of God.”

is now on Kindle! Below is a link to the book on Kindle:

 

https://www.amazon.com/Cross-Self-Denial-Manifestation-Sons-God-ebook/dp/B07NCL9B82/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1550282110&sr=8-1&keywords=the+cross+self-denial+and+the+manifestation+of+the+sons+of+God

 

Biochemistry Professor Refutes Evolution With Irreducible Complexity

by Bill Nugent

 

Michael Behe, Ph. D., professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University and author of Darwin’s Black Box has lectured on the fact that single celled organisms such as bacteria are not only complex but their complexity is irreducible. Irreducible complexity means that if just one component of a complex system is missing then that system is nonfunctional.

    

Dr. Behe claims that the first living cell had to form all at once or not at all. He maintains that it is impossible for a cell to form piece by piece because none of the cell’s parts can function without the others. If a cell bio-chemical, such as DNA, somehow formed by random collisions of atoms it would not last long. The DNA would immediately dissolve because it had no other cell structures to protect it. The fruit of all the amazing (and statistically impossible) chemical coincidences that randomly formed a long chain DNA molecule would be instantly lost.

   

Dr. Behe used the illustration of a mousetrap. A mousetrap consists of a small board, a spring, a bar, a lever, a bait holder and bait. If any part is missing, it won’t function. It won’t perform the simple function of catching a mouse. Now try to imagine a mousetrap forming randomly in nature. By a bizarre coincidence erosion from an iron deposit yields a steel spring attached to a curved steel bar. this naturally formed mechanism somehow, by blind chance becomes attached to a piece of wood. Another piece of metal washes up and gets attached to it and acts like a lever to hold the spring open but since there’s no bait holder or bait the system cannot catch any mice and the whole thing simply rusts away into oblivion.

   

A cell nucleus, mitochondria, protoplasm and other organelles are far more complex than any mousetrap. Each of these cellular organelles, along with their unfathomable complexity of proteins, RNA, DNA and other biochemicals must form simultaneously and then be assembled immediately. For any person to teach that this happened by random, unguided processes enters into the realm of unscientific speculation and storytelling.

   

The concept of irreducible complexity is not limited to the analysis of single celled organisms. Every organ system in every living thing is seen to be irreducibly complex. For instance, the wings of an insect, so exquisitely formed as a miniature flying machine with perfect size, surface area and musculature are useless unless all parts are present and fully formed.

 

The principle of irreducible complexity applies to the retractable fangs, venom bladder, venom ducts and mouth musculature of a rattlesnake.  Partial formation of the fang and poison system of the snake would be disadvantageous and such a freakish, partially formed poisonous snake would be eliminated by natural selection. Therefore a very large number of favorable genetic mutations must occur simultaneously to form a complete fang and bladder system. This is a statistical impossibility.

   

Early in the 20th century researchers irradiated fruit flies in order to cause genetic mutations and bring evolutionary change. Fruit flies have short life spans and many generations can be observed in a short period. The radiation only produced deformed fruit flies and the experiment was abandoned. Famous evolutionist, Richard Goldschmidt, irradiated generations of Gypsy moths and only got dead or deformed moths.

   

I chuckle when I read of the excitement at NASA over the recent discovery of the evidence that water once existed on Mars. Some secularists even express faith that life could have formed on Mars because water was there. Knowing what scientists have discovered about the complexity of “simple” microorganisms, any speculation that life could have formed randomly in water on Mars is just wishful thinking on the part of those who reject God as creator.

   

Dr. Behe has shown through his elucidation of irreducible complexity that life could not have formed randomly. The foundation of Darwinian evolution is therefore totally destroyed. This is just one more proof that there is an intelligent designer of life. The intelligent designer is God.

   

God has spoken to humanity. His revelatory words are recorded in the Bible. The Bible has the ring of truth because it is confirmed by archeology, history, science and manuscript evidence. It is also confirmed by the many predictive prophecies contained in its pages that are authentically and verifiably fulfilled. The natural and supernatural backing of the Bible’s claim to be inspired by God is convincing. The Bible is in a class by itself and no other alleged holy book has anything like the mountain of evidence that confirms that the Bible is inspired by God.

 

My Personal Journey Through Darwinian Evolution

Sitting in public school science class in the fifth grade, I saw a classmate flip through an evolution picture book. The boy excitedly exclaimed that apes could turn into people over time.  I got a dramatic lesson in evolution in that teachable moment. I was converted to the religion of blind chance plus apes equals human beings. It was the year 1966 and I had recently made the transition from Catholic parochial school to public school. I went from being a devout Catholic to budding atheist within a few months.

 

Darwinism is the taproot of secularism. Darwinian evolution is the origins myth of atheism. Darwinism is taught in public schools at taxpayer expense and it destroys the faith of many. I was one of millions of young people who cast aside Christian faith and morals.

 

I was a very serious little boy. Before my embrace of atheism I was very religious and conscientious. I was the teacher’s pet. I observed things. I analyzed and pondered. For years I paid close attention in religion class in Saint Mary’s Elementary School in Katonah, New York. I remember a nun teaching me that Christ was raised from the dead. My parents took me to Saint Mary’s church every Sunday. I went to confession every few months and did acts of contrition as commanded to me by the priests.

 

Paradoxically, I also had a great interest in nature. I loved the outdoor world. I spent countless hours at nearby Todd’s Pond, catching turtles and frogs. I also had an interest in dinosaurs and fossils. My parents took me to the Museum of Natural History in New York City. The full scale skeletons of dinosaurs were fascinating for adults, much more so to an impressionable child.

 

I learned about fossils and paleontology at an earlier age than most kids in the New York City suburbs. My inordinate interest in fossils set me up for the public school lessons on atheistic, blind chance, goo to you by way of the zoo, Darwinian evolution. I swallowed it hook line and sinker. The public school teachers seldom mentioned the gaps in the fossil record or the lack of transitional forms.

 

My devout Catholicism fell by the wayside. Atheism seemed so liberating. I didn’t have to obey religious laws, rules, precepts and commands. I could make my own rules and break any rules anytime. I could live for myself and live for pleasure. I began to live recklessly and got into trouble.

 

As a ten year old kid I didn’t do much in the way of grievous sin or varsity venality. As I got older, though, my troubles increased. As I got bigger, my sins got bigger. Foul language and schoolboy pranks grew into drugs, drunkenness and larceny. I was headed downhill fast by the time I arrived on college campus in the fall of ’74.

 

Getting back to my public school lessons on evolution, I found it easy to believe that the accumulation of beneficial mutations in DNA could change one animal into another. We studied genetics in biology class in the ninth grade. It all seemed so simple and so reasonable. Reasonable, that is, until you looked at it a little more closely. In my extensive studies in genetics since those early boyhood years, I’ve come to find out that beneficial genetic mutations are an extremely tiny percentage of the overall number of mutations. Mutations are overwhelmingly destructive to the DNA.

 

Any internet search of genetic diseases will show thousands of diseases and conditions caused by bad mutations. Thousands of diseases caused by genetic mutations are listed on websites all over the internet. There are only a few, perhaps a dozen, beneficial genetic mutations in the human genome being studied. Any geneticist will freely admit that beneficial mutations are extremely rare. Creationists and even many nonreligious scientists see this as a major flaw in the evolution hypothesis. I wish I knew that when I was ten or fifteen or eighteen years old!

 

Also consider that mutations don’t add new information to the DNA that would cause the addition of new biological structures. The mutagenic chemicals and radiation that causes mutations don’t bring new, additional nucleotide base pairs to the DNA. Nucleotide base pairs are like letters of words giving information in DNA. It would take thousands, if not millions of new base pairs added to the DNA to put wings on a lizard to make a bird or add a smart brain to an ape to make a human. Radiation does not add base pairs to DNA.

 

Now, many years after my primary school indoctrination into the church of Darwin, I look at nature in a different way. I see superbly engineered, fine tuned biological structures. I see the retractable poisonous fangs of a snake with its poison bladders and ducts. How could that gradually form, step by step, by accident? I read that it takes 30 muscles to flap the wings of an insect. The metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly is an amazingly complex and inscrutable process in a “simple” lower form of life. These structures are irreducibly complex, meaning that a partially formed organ system such as the fangs of a snake would be very disadvantageous. The fang and poison bladder system of a snake would have to be formed all at once or not at all.

 

Mutations simply shuffle pre-existing base pairs in DNA, usually causing a loss of information. There is virtually never a net gain of any useful information in DNA caused by mutations. Even genetic duplication is just an extra copy of pre-existing base pairs in the DNA.

 

In public school I was not informed of the glaring flaws in the theory of evolution. The genetic evidence and even the fossil evidence that undermined Darwinism was seldom, if ever discussed. There are many skunks in the woodpile of Darwinism. I was not allowed to see them or smell them. Darwinism was taught in a biased way as the dogma of a new secular faith. It would be many years later that I would read scientific literature that exposed the major shortcomings of Darwinism.

 

However, as a young teenager, I began to hear of reports of Christian miracles. There were reliable reports of extraordinary miraculous healings that occurred in answer to prayer. My own father, Paul C. Nugent, told me of some accounts of miracles.

 

The nuns in Catholic school had taught me, back when I was in parochial school, that the prophets foretold the coming of Christ. Fulfillment of prophecy is also a type of miracle. I pondered these things. As a young atheist, hearing about miracles and reflecting on my boyhood Christian training, I began to doubt atheism.

 

I also came to find out that Christ died for our sins. Christ died in our place. The prophets foretold in Isaiah 53 and other Old Testament passages that Christ, in His suffering and death, would bear the penalty of our sins. I never understood that or had it clearly explained to me in my parochial school training in Catholicism. The nuns taught many things from the Bible and from the Catholic catechism but I don’t remember anything on substitutionary atonement.

 

I eventually learned that the Bible teaches that our good works can’t earn salvation. Good works are important but only the atoning death of Christ could pay the penalty of our sins and give us forgiveness of sins and right standing with God.

 

“For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9). “For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God” (First Peter 3:18).

 

I turned away from my sins as a young man in college and made a commitment to Christ. I received Christ as Savior and I follow Him as Lord. I left evolution behind. I regard Darwinism as a flawed hypothesis. I continue to enjoy nature and I realize that even nature itself, by its very complexity, reveals the work of the Creator. I invite you to turn to Christ today to receive forgiveness of sins.

 

Steps to salvation: Jesus said “Ye must be born again” (John 3:7).

1) Believe that God created you and loves you and sent the Messiah (Messiah is Hebrew for Christ) to redeem you.

2) Believe that Jesus Christ came in fulfillment of over 300 Bible prophecies to die for you, to take upon Himself the penalty of your sins (Isaiah 53:5-6, John 6:29, Romans 4:5, First Peter 3:18).

3) Turn from sin and call on the name of Jesus to receive forgiveness of sins (Romans 10:13).

4) Receive Jesus as Savior and experience the new birth (John 1:12, Acts 2:38).

5) Follow Jesus Christ as Lord (John 14:15).

Prayer to receive salvation:

“Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Romans 10:13). To receive the salvation that Jesus purchased for us at the terrible cost of His suffering and death on our behalf I invite you to pray this simple prayer: 

“Dear heavenly Father, I thank you for sending Jesus, the promised Messiah, to die for my sins. I admit that I am a sinner. I repent of my sins and I ask you to forgive me on the basis of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I ask you to fill me with your Holy Spirit to empower me to serve you under the Lordship of Jesus Christ, Amen.” 

If you prayed this prayer in the humble sincerity of your heart then you have received everlasting life, which includes power to live right in this life and entrance into heaven in the afterlife!

Bill Nugent, Overcomer Ministries of Fort Mill, South Carolina, USA

Christian book, Lawful or Legalistic by Bill Nugent available in paperback!  Info and ordering link available at his website: www.bnugent.org

(C) 2017 William P. Nugent, permission granted to email or republish for Christian outreach.

DNA Mutation Rate Disproves Darwinian Evolution

by Bill Nugent

The recent mapping of the human genome (DNA) has been revolutionizing science and has immense practical applications in many fields, including law enforcement. You’ve certainly read that DNA evidence compellingly links perpetrators to crimes and sends them to jail. DNA evidence has, in many cases, set innocent people free. DNA evidence also reveals the fatal flaws of Darwinism.

 

Did you know that each baby is born with more than one hundred new genetic mutations? These are usually very minor “point” mutations that each involve only one nucleotide base pair in the DNA. These new point mutations are usually neutral or slightly harmful to the child. Nevertheless, it is very significant that mainstream geneticists are writing about the commonplace occurrence of mutations in DNA.

 

I will show that this generation by generation mutational deterioration of the DNA gives a major blow to the Darwinian evolution hypothesis.

 

Recently a German scientist attacked one of my articles on my blog over at WordPress.com. He’s affiliated with the Max Planck Institute of Berlin. He questioned what I wrote in an article about the large number of genetic differences between humans and chimpanzees. In his comments he acknowledged that a conservative estimate of the mutation rate is twenty glitches or copying errors in the DNA every generation. This is extraordinary and is clear evidence of genetic entropy. Scientists now generally agree that the DNA of humans is mutating rapidly.

 

My German critic was actually a bit behind the times. His conservative estimate of the mutation rate as being twenty point mutations per generation is woefully low. Geneticists such as Kondrashov give a low estimate of one hundred. Nachman and Crowell estimate 175 mutations per generation (see Genetic Entropy by Dr. John Sanford, FMS Publ. p. 34). These are astounding numbers of mutations when applied to Darwinist, millions of years at 25 years per generation presuppositions. It is massive damage to the human DNA when extrapolated to the Darwinist time frame. I would say it’s fatal to Darwinism.

 

All geneticists, whether evolutionary or creationist, agree that the overwhelming majority of mutations are harmful or neutral. I hesitate to use the term “neutral.” Even the neutral mutations have not been proven to be totally harmless. Even neutral mutations constitute a subtle degradation of the genome.

 

Cornell University geneticist, Dr. John Sanford, in his book Genetic Entropy, discusses, on page 26, the findings of a leading geneticist who sorted through thousands of mutations to find only 186 beneficial mutations versus 453,732 harmful mutations. That’s a ratio of 2,439 harmful mutations to every one beneficial mutation. The upshot is that the human genome is devolving, not evolving.

 

Evolutionists claim that harmful mutations are being eliminated by natural selection but this is not true. The mildly harmful mutations only tend to be eliminated over generations. The truth is that scientists in the field of population genetics have found that bad mutations are gradually accumulating in human DNA.

 

Most of these point mutations are claimed to be neutral; they don’t hurt us or help us. A point mutation involving the sequence of one base pair in a gene that codes for a protein would result in a slightly modified protein that is still useful to the body. Yet, as I Mentioned earlier, even “neutral” mutations constitute a subtle degradation of the DNA with unknown overall consequences. However, some point mutations can be horribly crippling or deadly. The mapping of the human genome has shown that cystic fibrosis is caused by a random change of just three base pairs in a gene that codes for a 1,480 base pair long ion transport protein.

 

There are nearly 4,000 diseases caused by DNA mutations and they are being studied all the time. How many beneficial mutations are being studied? Do a web search and you will find very few and even these beneficial mutations are not unequivocally beneficial. In other words, the “beneficial” mutations also affect some other biological pathways negatively.

 

Let’s put this in theological perspective. The book of Genesis, in the third chapter, gives the historical narrative of man’s fall into sin against God. This passage continues to describe the consequences of sin which is the curse. The curse manifests itself in many ways including the gradual breakdown and degradation of complex biological systems.

 

Operational geneticists of all theological persuasions or no theological persuasion observe the compelling evidence that the genome is degrading. The few beneficial mutations are crushed by an avalanche of neutral and harmful mutations. Furthermore, we must remember that mutations are errors that don’t add new information to the DNA. Mutations don’t add new base pairs that would add new organs to a body. Even gene duplication is a mere repeat of pre-existing information in the DNA. One cause of genetic mutations is radiation. Radiation doesn’t carry nucleotide base pairs and add them to the DNA. Radiation damages DNA as it is synthesized and rearranges the sequence of base pairs that already exist in the DNA.

 

In short, the beneficial mutations are too few in number and their failure to add new information renders the “beneficial mutation followed by natural selection” paradigm insufficient to account for the arrival and uphill change of living organisms.

 

There is much dissent against Darwinism in the scientific community. Many scientists have embraced Intelligent Design as a new paradigm and affiliate with the Discovery Institute of Seattle Washington.

 

Other scientists go further and believe in the Christian God as Creator. God has provided for forgiveness of sins by sending Jesus Christ to die for our sins. Christ came in fulfillment of over 300 prophecies that were written in the Old Testament hundreds of years before His birth. The prophets foretold that during His suffering and death on our behalf, Christ would take upon Himself the penalty we deserved for our sins, thus making atonement. “The LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6). He rose from the dead to offer forgiveness of sins to all who repent and call on His name. Turn to Christ today to receive forgiveness of sins!

 

The Lack of Beneficial DNA Mutations is Troubling

There are over seven billion people alive on earth today. The DNA of all people is well over 99% similar. The less than one percent difference is in minor details including skin color and facial features. The “races” are each fully human and there is no subspecies of humans possessing markedly different DNA.

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Darwinian evolutionists claim that humans evolved from an ape-like common ancestor that lived 5 to 7 million years ago and they claim that the chimpanzee is our nearest animal relative. Evolutionists claim that evolution is still occurring today among humans. They claim that human evolution is driven by beneficial DNA mutations. Where are all the beneficial mutations?

 ,

I did several web searches, including “beneficial human mutations” and “genetic mutation disease.” What I found was extremely revealing and it served to severely undermine the theory of Darwinian evolution.

 ,

Let’s start with an article from an evolutionist. I read an article titled: “Evolution is Still Happening: Beneficial Mutations in Humans” by Adam Lee which is posted on an evolutionist blog. He describes a total of five beneficial human mutations:

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1) The mutation, Apolipoprotein AI-Milano gives resistance to heart disease.

2) Mutation to the LRP5 gene gives greater bone density and resistance to osteoporosis and fractures.

3) Mutation to Hbs gene gives resistance to malaria but two copies gives the dreaded sickle cell anemia. (Why is this on a list of beneficial mutations?)

4) Mutation to HbC gene gives resistance to malaria and two copies gives greater resistance to malaria but also gives mild anemia.

5) His fifth example is the rare Tetrachromatic vision mutation for which he mentions one study in which at least one woman had a mutation giving her four color discriminating cones in her eyes which gives her greater color discrimination.

 ,

Adam Lee includes the following absurd claim that these “beneficial mutations are the raw material that may, in time, be taken up by natural selection and spread through the population.” One could argue that the above mutations do confer a limited degree of advantage and survivability of offspring. To claim that such mutations “spread through the population” is to give the impression that mutations simply spread through a gene pool like an infectious disease!

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Mutations to DNA are transmitted to other humans by only one mechanism, namely, reproduction. Those with a beneficial mutation will enjoy a slightly higher degree of survival and produce more offspring that survive. For any beneficial mutation to predominate in the human gene pool and advance humans one small step in evolution would require hundreds of generations. During these hundreds of generations, the unfortunate humans without the beneficial mutation would gradually die off and gradually be replaced by the humans with the slightly higher survivability rate. The gene pool would then have the beneficial mutation as a feature in the genes of all humans.

 ,

Why do I insist that the beneficial mutation be substituted into the DNA of all humans? That’s because, as mentioned above, the DNA of all of the human race is over 99% similar and there is no subspecies of humans with DNA containing significant beneficial mutations that would set them apart. This scientifically verified uniformity of the gene pool shows that any alleged evolution in the past must have resulted in substitution of genetic mutations into the entire gene pool of 7 billion humans spread across six continents.

 ,

All humans have the same brain structure; all have thumbs as opposing finger digits; all have the same knee structure that facilitates walking upright; all have hair on the head but little to no hair on the body. All people are remarkably similar whether from northern Sweden or central Africa. All people groups can intermarry and reproduce.

 ,

The long complex process of a beneficial mutation being substituted into a gene pool is a feature of population genetics. The fact that it takes hundreds of generations to fully substitute a mutation into a population has been calculated by Haldane and others. The fact that 7 million years is not enough time to substitute the millions of mutations needed to change an ape into a human is called Haldane’s Dilemma after evolution researcher, J. B. S. Haldane.

 ,

Let’s look at Adam Lee’s list of beneficial mutations. I find the mutation that causes greater bone density to be especially intriguing. Let’s look at what’s really going on in the human gene pool of 7 billion individuals. Do people with this bone density mutation reproduce at a higher rate than others? Are they having ten or twelve children in their families? Adam Lee’s article mentions only one family in the Midwestern United States with this mutation and he says nothing about their reproduction rate. Does a guy say “Give me a gal with dense bones and I’ll marry her and we’ll have twelve kids!”?

 ,

What about the mutation that gives resistance to heart disease? It benefits middle aged people. People die of heart disease in their fifties and later and that’s long after they have kids. How would that mutation influence their rate of reproduction?

 ,

Does observational science see any of these or other beneficial mutations gradually being substituted into the human gene pool? Is there a subspecies of humans developing with beneficial mutations and becoming a master race? (Don’t ask the Germans!) The answer is a resounding no! Beneficial mutations are few, isolated and not much more than curiosities.

 ,

I also did a web search on genetic mutation diseases. I had read in an article that there are thousands of diseases caused by bad mutations. I thought surely “thousands” of such diseases was an exaggeration. That is until I web searched such diseases. I found a Wikipedia site that  gave an extremely long list of genetic mutation related diseases.

 ,

I’ve heard of Down syndrome and cystic Fibrosis but what about Noack syndrome, Neurofibromatosis type II, Menkes disease and Menkea syndrome? The list, tragically, goes on and on! It shows that bad mutations overwhelmingly outnumber the good. This is just further evidence that mutations are no mechanism for uphill evolutionary change.

 ,

The bottom line is that observational science clearly shows that beneficial mutations are rare, only slightly advantageous to reproduction rates and can’t dominate in the human gene pool due to Haldane’s dilemma even if millions of years are claimed.

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The more the science of genetics progresses, the more it reveals the mind boggling complexity of human DNA as an information storage and retrieval system. Science shows that such a complex system as DNA is seldom improved by tweaks caused by mutations. Studies overwhelmingly show that genetic mutations are destructive errors that scramble or delete pre-existing information in the DNA. Most importantly, researchers have discovered that mutations, whether good or bad, almost never add new information to the DNA. Some researchers say that mutations never add new information to DNA.

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The best scientific evidence shows that complex, interdependant biological systems are evidence of deliberate intelligent design. This design argument is called the teleological argument for the existence of a designer. I maintain that life was designed and built by an intelligent designer who is the Creator God. God created sentient beings, called humans, for a purpose. That purpose is to love God and to enjoy Him forever.

 ,

Jesus Christ came in fulfillment of over 300 prophecies that were written in the Old Testament hundreds of years before His birth. No other person in all of world history can make this claim. The prophecies foretold that Christ would suffer and die, taking the penalty of our sins upon Himself, thus making atonement. The prophecies foretold that He would rise from the dead and that He would offer forgiveness of sins to all who repent and call upon Him. Turn to Jesus Christ today to receive forgiveness of sins!

 ,

Steps to salvation:
Jesus said “Ye must be born again.” (John 3:7)

,
1) Believe that God created you and loves you and sent the Messiah (Messiah is Hebrew for Christ) to redeem you.
2) Believe that Jesus the Messiah came in fulfillment of over 300 Bible prophecies to die for you to take upon Himself the penalty of your sins. (Isaiah 53:5-6, John 6:29, Romans 4:5, First Peter 3:18)
3) Turn from sin and call on the name of Jesus to receive forgiveness. (Romans 10:13)
4) Receive Jesus as Savior and experience the new birth. (John 1:12, Acts 2:38)
5) Follow Him as Lord. (John 14:21)

Prayer to receive salvation:

“Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Romans 10:13)
To receive the salvation that Jesus purchased for us at the terrible cost of His suffering and death on our behalf I invite you to pray this simple prayer: “Dear heavenly Father, I thank you for sending Jesus, the promised Messiah, to die for my sins. I admit that I am a sinner. I repent of my sins and I ask for your forgiveness on the basis of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I ask you to fill me with your Holy Spirit to empower me to serve you under the Lordship of Jesus Christ, Amen.”
If you prayed this prayer in the humble sincerity of your heart then you have received everlasting life, which includes power to live right in this life and entrance into heaven in the afterlife!

,
Bill Nugent, Overcomer Ministries of Fort Mill, South Carolina, USA
New Christian book, Lawful or Legalistic by Bill Nugent available in paperback!
Info and ordering link available at his website: www.gracelawandsonship.comBack issues of Defending the Faith archived on website. <>{
(C) 2016 William P. Nugent, permission granted to email or republish for Christian outreach.

Proof that Genetic Mutations are Not a Mechanism for Evolution

Darwinists claim that the accumulation of favorable genetic mutations is how humans evolved from “goo to you by way of the zoo.” Recent advances in the science of genetics, especially the mapping of the human genome (DNA) and the mapping of animal genomes, has exposed the impossibility of mutations of being a Darwinian change mechanism.

You may remember from biology class that the DNA of humans and animals is composed of long chains of nucleotide base pairs. The base pairs are like the letters of an alphabet that contain information and that information is the design or body plan of the organism. A mutation is a change in the order or “sequence” of the base pairs or an elimination of base pairs or a duplication of base pairs.

All sides agree that mutations are rare and the large majority of mutations are either unfavorable or neutral. Of extreme importance to note is that mutations don’t add new information to the DNA. Mutations simply shuffle or delete pre-existing information. Mutations garble information. You’ve heard on the news that a virus has mutated but they often neglect to say that the mutation of the virus DNA resulted in a net loss of information in the virus DNA. No mutation has been shown to result in a net addition of information. No mutation adds base pairs except in cases of duplication of genes. Genetic duplication is simply giving the DNA an extra copy of the gene. It is not new information.

Some Darwinian scientists may be so bold as to claim that in rare instances mutations add new information to the DNA. However, the evidence furnished by real operational genetic science is against them.

Now let’s look at a simple illustration. In the jungle of East Africa there is an australopithecine ape. Evolutionists would call it a proto-human or prehuman. It walks on all fours and is just starting to leave the jungle and hunt in the surrounding fields. According to Darwinism it’s on its way to evolving into a human. Let’s say that a genetic mutation involving just 52 base pairs is about to happen to a gamete cell (reproductive cell such as egg or sperm) in the ape that will affect the design of the knee in the future offspring of the ape. The knee is the most complex and finely tuned joint in the ape’s body.

The design of an ape’s knee is likely determined by the sequence of thousands or perhaps tens of thousands of base pairs in the DNA. For simplicity let’s say that a reshuffling of just 52 base pairs can substantially alter knee structure in this ape’s offspring that will enable it to walk slightly more upright. But those 52 base pairs have to be shuffled into just the right sequence to affect the design of the knee in this advantageous way.

Fifty two happens to be the number of cards in a deck of ordinary playing cards. Let’s say that the reshuffling of the 52 base pairs to put the base pairs in a precise advantageous sequence is like shuffling a deck of cards and getting all four suits of cards in straight flush. Imagine shuffling cards and getting the hearts all in order: 2 of hearts, 3 of hearts, 4 of hearts all the way up to queen, king and ace of hearts and then the same for diamonds, clubs and spades.

Let’s say that radiation hits the gamete, causing a mutation involving 52 base pairs and the base pairs are reshuffled. The DNA doesn’t gain information but the preexisting information is garbled and it affects the design of the knee in a way that enables the ape offspring to walk slightly more upright. What is the probability of this actually happening in nature? That is a very big and important question!

Darwinism says that evolution is an unguided process involving genetic mutations that happen by blind chance. Natural selection then sorts out the products of blind chance and eliminates the weak. Natural selection is not a guiding mechanism but is a sorting mechanism.

Get out a deck of cards and start shuffling. Did you shuffle and get all four suits in straight flush? No? Let’s try again and again. Let’s calculate the odds of getting a 52 card straight flush. What is the chance that the first card in a newly shuffled deck comes out to be a 2 of hearts? That’s easy, it’s 1 in 52. You shuffle your deck 52 times and on average the 2 of hearts would be on top only once in that 52 shufflings. And once you’ve gotten that card to come up first what’s the chance of the second card being the 3 of hearts? That too is easy, it’s 1 in 51. The chance of getting just the first two cards in the right order would be 1 in 52 x 51 which would equal 1 in 2,652. Imagine sitting at your desk and shuffling a deck of cards 2,652 times just to have the top two cards be a 2 of hearts and a 3 of hearts one time during all that shuffling!

You then realize that the number of possible combinations of 52 cards is expressed by what your math teacher called “factorial 52” which is 52 x 51 x 50 x 49 x 48 x 47 x 46 . . . x 3 x 2 x 1. You get out your calculator and find that factorial 52 is equal to a sum greater than 8.07 x 10 to the 67th power! Think about how huge that number is. Scientists have estimated that the number of atoms in the Milky Way Galaxy is only 1 x 10 to the 65th power. The number of possible combinations of cards in an ordinary 52 card deck is nearly a thousand times greater than the number of atoms in the Milky Way Galaxy!

Now let’s see if we can get a 52 card straight flush by randomly shuffling decks of cards. If we were to put six and a half billion people to work shuffling decks of cards and they shuffled the card decks at the rate of one million decks per second and we employed them for fifteen billion years you would have less than a tenth of one percent chance of coming up with a 52 card hearts to spades straight flush in any of those decks at the end of fifteen billion years!!!

Now imagine a mutation that shuffles 52 base pairs in an ape’s DNA. If even one base pair is in the wrong sequence that could make the mutation disadvantageous. Even one base pair out of order could make the knee joint of the ape dysfunctional. Our card illustration showed that even if there were a million mutations per second there would be less than a tenth of one percent chance of getting that one properly sequenced 52 base pair favorable mutation in 15 billion years!

According to the results of the prodigious effort to map the human genome, human DNA contains about one billion nucleotide base pairs arranged in precise sequence. If even one is out of sequence it can be disadvantageous or even in some cases fatal to the human body. Chimpanzee DNA has also been mapped. Geneticists have determined that there are more than 30 million differences in nucleotide base pair sequences between chimpanzee DNA and human DNA. Evolutionists claim that chimps are our closest “cousins” and that chimps and humans supposedly evolved from the same apelike ancestor. Imagine the sheer number of favorable mutations and the number of base pairs involved that the Darwinist claims to have occurred during the alleged evolution from apelike creature to human!

The bottom line is that Darwinian blind chance shuffling of DNA base pairs caused by radiation or chemical mutagens is not even remotely capable of causing uphill macroevolutionary change in plants, animals or humans! The genetic evidence clearly points to the inadequacy of mutations as being the mechanism of evolution. This is just one of many fatal flaws in the theory of Darwinian evolution. Since secularists have no backup theory of materialistic origins they have to defend evolution tooth and nail or abandon secularism altogether and become theists.

All of the secularists, atheists and agnostics are surrounded by evidence that points to the necessity of God as Creator. As Romans 1:20 says: “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse” (NASB).

God has provided for our redemption by sending Jesus of Nazareth, the promised Messiah of Israel. Jesus came in fulfillment of over 300 Old Testament prophecies. No other figure in all of world history can make this claim! Jesus died for our sins which means that when He suffered and died He took the penalty of our sins upon Himself. He rose from the dead to offer forgiveness to all who call upon Him. Turn to Christ today to receive forgiveness of sins!

Steps to salvation:
Jesus said “Ye must be born again.” (John 3:7)
1) Believe that God created you and loves you and sent the Messiah (Messiah is Hebrew for Christ) to redeem you.
2) Believe that Jesus the Messiah came in fulfillment of over 300 Bible prophecies to die for you and take upon Himself the penalty of your sins. (Isaiah 53:5-6, John 6:29, Romans 4:5, First Peter 3:18)
3) Turn from sin and call on the name of Jesus to receive forgiveness. (Romans 10:13)
4) Receive Jesus as Savior and experience the new birth. (John 1:12, Acts 2:38)
5) Follow Him as Lord. (John 14:21)
Prayer to receive salvation:

“Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Romans 10:13)
To receive the salvation that Jesus purchased for you at the terrible cost of His suffering and death on your behalf I invite you to pray this simple prayer: “Dear heavenly Father, I thank you for sending Jesus, the promised Messiah, to die for my sins. I admit that I am a sinner. I repent of my sins and I ask for your forgiveness on the basis of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I ask you to fill me with your Holy Spirit to empower me to serve you under the Lordship of Jesus Christ, Amen.”
If you prayed that prayer in the humble sincerity of your heart then you have received everlasting life, which includes power to live right in this life and entrance into heaven in the afterlife!

Bill Nugent, Overcomer Ministries of West Harrison, New York, USA
New Christian book, Lawful or Legalistic by Bill Nugent available in paperback!
Info and ordering link available on his website: http://www.gracelawandsonship.com

Back issues of Defending the Faith archived on website. {
(C) 2014 William P. Nugent, permission granted to email or republish for Christian outreach purposes.