SCIENTISTS SPEAK ABOUT MUTATIONS 2
Here are more statements by reputable scientists, disproving a foundational teaching of evolution: that mutations can produce cross-species changes, which is evolution itself. This is science vs. evolution—a Creation-Evolution Encyclopedia, brought to you by Creation Science Facts.
CONTENTS: Scientists Speak about Mutations: 2
It Is Mathematically Impossible: It would be impossible for chance to produce enough beneficial mutations—and just the right ones—to accomplish anything worthwhile.
Mutations Do Not Produce Evolution: Cross-species changes are not resulting from them
Conclusion: It is hopeless to expect mutations to produce evolutionary change.
This material is excerpted from the book, MUTATIONS. An asterisk ( * ) by a name indicates that person is not known to be a creationist. Of over 4,000 quotations in the books this Encyclopedia is based on, only 164 statements are by creationists. You will have a better understanding of the following statements by scientists if you will also read the web page, Mutations.
IT IS MATHEMATICALLY IMPOSSIBLE
It would be impossible for chance to produce enough beneficial mutations—and just the right ones—to accomplish anything worthwhile.
"Based on probability factors . . any viable DNA strand having over 84
nucleotides cannot be the result of haphazard mutations. At that stage, the
probabilities are 1 in 4.80 x 1050. Such a number, if written out,
would read 480,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
"Mathematicians agree that any requisite number beyond 1050 has, statistically, a zero probability of occurrence."—I.L. Cohen, Darwin Was Wrong (1984), p. 205.
"As a generation principle, providing the raw material for natural selection, random mutation is inadequate, both in scope and theoretical grounding."—*Jeffrey S. Wicken, "The Generation of Complexity in Evolution: A Thermodynamic and Information-Theoretical Discussion," Journal of Theoretical Biology, April 1979, p. 349.
"If evolution is to occur . . living things must be capable of acquiring new information or alteration of their stored information."—*George Gaylord Simpson, "The Nonprevalence of Humanoids," in Science, 143, (1964), p. 772.
"There is no single instance where it can be maintained that any of the mutants studied has a higher vitality than the mother species . . It is, therefore, absolutely impossible to build a current evolution on mutations or on recombinations."—*N. Herbert Nilsson, Synthetische Artbildung [Synthetic Speciation] (1953), p. 1157 [italics his].
MUTATIONS DO NOT PRODUCE EVOLUTION
Cross-species changes are not resulting from them.
"No matter how numerous they may be, mutations do not produce any kind of evolution."—*Pierre-Paul de Grasse, Evolution of Living Organisms (1977), p. 88.
"It is true that nobody thus far has produced a new species or genus, etc., by macromutation [a combination of many mutations]; it is equally true that nobody has produced even a species by the selection of micromutation [one or only a few mutations]."—*Richard Goldschmidt, "Evolution, As Viewed by One Geneticist," American Scientist, January 1952, p. 94.
"Do we, therefore, ever see mutations going about the business of producing new structures for selection to work on? No nascent organ has ever been observed emerging, though their origin in pre-functional form is basic to evolutionary theory. Some should be visible today, occurring in organisms at various stages up to integration of a functional new system, but we don't see them: There is no sign at all of this kind of radical novelty. Neither observation nor controlled experiments has shown natural selection manipulating mutations so as to produce a new gene, hormone, enzyme system, or organ."—*Michael Pitman, Adam and Evolution (1984), pp. 67-68.
"Obviously, such a process [species change through mutations] has played no part whatever in evolution."—*Julian Huxley, Major Features of Evolution, p. 7.
"Accordingly, mutations are more than just sudden changes in heredity; they also affect viability, and, to the best of our knowledge, invariably affect it adversely."—*C.P. Martin, "A Non-Geneticist Looks at Evolution," American Scientist, January 1953, p. 102.
"Living things are enormously diverse in form, but form is remarkably constant within any given line of descent: Pigs remain pigs and oak trees remain oak trees, generation after generation."—*Edouard Kellenberger, "The Genetic Control of the Shape of a Virus," in Scientific American, December 1966, p. 32.
"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 [such as advanced computers], in every way analogous to the living organism, cannot undergo evolution by pure trial and error [by mutation and natural 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 (1985), p. 342.
". . I took a little trouble to find whether a single amino acid change in a hemoglobin mutation is known that doesn't affect seriously the function of that hemoglobin. One is hard put to find such an instance."—*George Wald, in *Paul S. Moorehead and *Martin M. Kaplan, Mathematical Challenges to the Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution, pp. 18-19.
CONCLUSION
It is hopeless to expect mutations to produce evolutionary change.
"The one systematic effect of mutation seems to be a tendency towards degeneration."—*Sewall Wright, in Julian Huxley, "The Statistical Consequences of Mendelian Heredity in relation to Speciation," The New Systematics (1949), p. 174.
"The process of mutation is the only known source of the raw materials of genetic variability, and hence of evolution . . The mutants which arise are, with rare exceptions, deleterious to their carriers, at least in the environments which the species normally encounters."—*Theodosious Dobzhansky, "On Methods of Evolutionary Biology and Anthropology," American Scientist, Winter, December 1957, p. 385.
"Like radiation-induced mutations, nearly all spontaneous mutations with detectable effects are harmful."—Arthur Custance, Longevity in Antiquity (1957), p. 1160.
" `Creatures with shriveled-up wings and defective vision, or no eyes, offer poor material for evolutionary progress.' "—*E.W. Macbride, Quoted in H. Enoch, Evolution or Creation (1966), p. 75.
"The fact that most mutations are damaging to the organism seems hard to reconcile with the view that mutation is the source of raw materials for evolution. Indeed, mutants illustrated in biology textbooks are a collection of freaks and monstrosities, and mutations seem to be destructive rather than a constructive process."—*Encyclopedia Americana, Vol. 10, p. 742 (1977 edition).
" `It must be admitted that the direct and complete proof of the utilization of mutation in evolution under natural conditions has not yet been given.' "—*Julian Huxley, quoted in H. Enoch, Evolution or Creation (1966), p. 78.
"This is really the theory that [says] if you start with fourteen lines of coherent English and change it one letter at a time, keeping only those things that still make sense, you will eventually finish up with one of the sonnets of Shakespeare . . it strikes me as a lunatic sort of logic, and I think we should be able to do better."—*C.H. Waddington [a geneticist], "Evolution," in Science Today, p. 38.
"Upon rigorous examination and analysis, any dogmatic assertion . . that gene mutations are the raw material for an evolutionary process involving natural selection is an utterance of a myth."—*John N. Moore, On Chromosomes, Mutations, and Phylogeny, p. 5.
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SIX STRANGE TEACHINGS OF EVOLUTION: Six peculiar ideas, which evolutionists declare to be basic operating requirements of evolution.