Occasionally genetic mutations cause a living thing to do something it has never done before,
but does that support evolution?
'Gain-of-function' mutations are not evidence for evolution
this week on Creation Magazine LIVE!
Welcome to Creation Magazine LIVE!
My name is Thomas Bailey.
and I'm Matt Bondy.
This week, our topic is: Gain-of-function mutations are not evidence for evolution.
So, we've given away the conclusion already, now we'll give you a summary of evidences
to support that statement.
Right.
We'll show examples of genetic change producing features in living things that
they haven't done before.
Things like bacteria becoming resistant to antibiotics, fish becoming resistant to polluted
rivers, sickle cell anemia, beetles on windy islands losing their wings so that they don't
get blown off the island and die.
These are all new features that resulted from genetic change.
Yes, these types of things are often hailed by evolutionists as evidence for evolution.
"Look, it's evolution happening right before our eyes.
You Christians, how silly you are, can't you see the evidence for evolution
happening right here?"
But is that really evolution?
We could ask questions like: is all change in living things evidence for evolution?
What kinds of changes are evidence for evolution?
Are there types of changes that would not be evidence for evolution?
Those are helpful questions to ask, and we're going ask those questions today as we explore
examples of genetic change that evolutionists insist support the evolution of particles
into people.
Ok, let's start with the basics: what are mutations and what is the genetic code?
The genetic code is like software that runs the hardware of living things.
It's a very complex instruction code that directs the activity of cells.
Every one of your trillions of cells has the complete genetic code to build and operate
you.
That code is written on a part of the cell called DNA.
And all living things, of course, have DNA.
That's right. Genetic mutations are random changes to the genetic code.
And that's what evolutionists look to as the main mechanism for evolution.
The code changes, which results in new programming, and the organism does
something it hasn't done before.
Now, without the information written on DNA, life would be impossible.
Even if you had all the chemicals to assemble a cell in the hypothetical 'primordial soup',
you still wouldn't have life.
It's the instruction code, the information, that makes life possible.
So let's think for a moment about the type of change that evolution requires.
Think of the story of evolution, let's start with the single cell.
Don't ask where that came from, but let's just start there.
This cell is supposedly going to give rise to all the life we see on earth today.
Now think of the genetic code required for that cell.
We could represent that here with these books.
The cell would have needed the information for things like the thousands of components
inside the cell.
Even granting that it may have been simpler in the past, for it to be living and to reproduce
it must have been extremely complex.
Right.
Now evolution says that the single cell went on, over millions of years, to evolve into
a multi-cellular creature, for example, like this.
So, the kinds of changes to the genetic code that would be needed involve adding huge
amounts of new, never-before-existing, genetic instructions to build all of the things that
the single cell didn't have.
That's right.
The single cell didn't have the genetic instructions for things like hands and fingers, fingernails,
muscles, hair, heart, arms, legs, knees, feet.
It just wasn't there.
So then, for evolution to work, the central feature, the main thing we should see, is
that genetic information is
increasing, to build all these bigger and better structures
that the single cell didn't have.
And after a quick break we'll begin looking at examples in living things where there has
been genetic change to see if it's the right kind of change for evolution.
See you in just a minute.
Have the fish in New York's Hudson River evolved into 'super mutants'?
A large proportion of the river's Atlantic tomcod fish have developed resistance to certain
poisons, and the mass media has heralded this as a dramatic example of evolution in action!
However, far from supporting microbes-to-man evolution, these mutant fish have actually
devolved, not evolved!
That's because the fish have become resistant through a loss of genetic information.
Non-resistant fish have special proteins in their cells that allow the poisons to bind.
However, due to a genetic mutation, the proteins of resistant fish cannot bind the poisons
as readily.
So, 'corrupted' proteins have made the fish resistant.
And in the poison-rich environment of the Hudson River, it's no wonder that the mutated
gene facilitating resistance has quickly spread throughout the tomcod population.
It is misleading to call these changes 'evolution', because evolution requires the addition of
new genetic information, but these resistant fish have only demonstrated information loss.
To find out more from Creation Ministries International, visit our website creation.com.
If you've just tuned in, this week we're looking at genetic changes and seeing if they are
the kinds of changes that would be predicted if evolution was true.
Yeah, well, there's no mystery here, we already gave away the conclusion: scientists haven't
found the kinds of changes required for evolution.
Okay, but let's look at some examples.
Let's start with antibiotic resistance.
Most of you are probably familiar with that term.
It occurs when bacteria are found to be resistant to the antibiotics that are meant
to kill them.
And that can be very dangerous, even deadly, if you happen to have these resistant bacteria.
Yeah, this actually happened to Dr Wieland, the founder of Creation magazine.
He wrote an article in the magazine about the experience that he had with resistant bacteria.
He says, "After over 12 years as a medical practitioner, I suddenly found myself an avid
consumer, rather than a provider, of medical care.
Involved in a serious road accident in 1986, I spent many months in hospital, including
weeks in an intensive care unit.
While in intensive care, I became infected with one of the varieties of so-called 'supergerms',
which are the scourge of modern hospitals.
These are strains of bacteria which are resistant to almost every (and in some cases every)
type of antibiotic known to man."
He continues, "Several others in the same unit with me died as a result of infection
by the same bacterial strain.
The germs overwhelmed their immune systems and invaded their bloodstream, untouched by
the most expensive and sophisticated antibiotics available.
This 'supergerm' problem is an increasingly serious concern in Western countries.
It strikes precisely those hospitals which are more 'high-tech', and handle more
serious illnesses.
Applying more disinfectant is not the answer; some strains of germs have actually been found
thriving in bottles of hospital disinfectant!
The more antibacterial chemical 'weapons' are being used, the more bacteria are becoming
resistant to them.
The reality of increasing bacterial resistance seems at first to be an obvious example of
onwards and upwards evolution.
But the facts, when carefully examined, show otherwise."
Okay, he hinted here at the end that this antibiotic resistance is not evidence for
evolution.
Does that surprise you?
Most people have heard, through the media and the education system that antibiotic resistance
is evidence for evolution.
So let's look at why it isn't.
Well, f or starters, note that there are a number of different ways that these 'superbugs' can
become resistant to the antibiotics that are meant to kill them.
A 'superbug' is, by definition, resistant to many different antibiotics.
It may have become resistant to antibiotic A in one way, to antibiotic B in a completely
different way, and to antibiotic C in another way.
So if we look at all the known ways of resistance arising in a population of germs, let's see
if any of them are uphill, information-adding processes.
Yeah, okay. Firstly, some germs already had the resistance.
I mean, out of a million bacteria, if five already have a feature which makes them resistant
to say, penicillin, then soaking them in penicillin will kill all of them except for the five.
That's right. The body's natural defences will often mop up such a small population before it can multiply
and cause harm, so resistance won't become a problem.
But if that doesn't happen, and those five germs multiply, their offspring will also
be resistant and within a short time, there will be millions of germs resistant to penicillin.
Ok, a couple of things to notice here: First, this is why multiple resistances to major
antibiotics is more common in hospitals which treat more serious conditions.
It's because these are the hospitals that will be using the sophisticated, expensive
'heavy artillery' antibiotics, so this sort of 'natural selection' will happen more often.
And secondly, in this kind of instance, the information to resist the antibiotic was already
there in the bacterial population.
It didn't arise by itself, or in response to the antibiotic.
So this is, obviously, not evidence for evolution.
No, it's not
Ok, but how do scientists know that some germs were already resistant to man-made antibiotics?
Well, it's actually common knowledge to microbiologists.
Germs in soil samples from villages where modern antibiotics have never been used, show
that some germs are already resistant to drugs, like methicillin, which has never
existed before in nature.
Also, bacteria revived from the frozen intestines of explorers who died in polar expeditions
carried resistance to several modern antibiotics, which hadn't been invented when the explorers
died.
Okay , so no evidence for evolution here.
Number 2, Some germs directly transfer their resistance to others.
In an amazing process which is, I guess, the closest thing to sex in bacteria, one germ inserts
a tiny tube into another, and a little loop of DNA called a 'plasmid' transfers from one
to another.
This sort of gene transfer, which can pass on information for resistance to a drug, can
even happen between different species of the same bacteria.
But, notice, again, that the information for the resistance must already exist in nature
before it can be passed on.
Exactly
There's no evidence of anything totally new arising which was not there before.
This is information transfer, not information creation.
Right! Okay, now so far, we've dealt with situations in which resistance was already there.
The final way in which bacteria can become resistant is through a mutation.
But where this happens, there is, once again, no clearcut evidence of information arising.
All these types of mutations appear to be losses of information, degenerative changes,
and those kinds of changes will never evolve a single cell into a human.
It's the wrong kind of change!
For example, loss of a control gene may enhance resistance to penicillin.
Some antibiotics need to be taken into the bacterium to do their work.
There are sophisticated chemical pumps in bacteria that can pump nutrients from the
outside, through the cell wall, into the germ's interior.
The germs that do this efficiently, when in the presence of one of these antibiotics,
is going to pump into themselves their own executioner.
Okay, but what if one of these bacteria inherits a defective gene, by way of a DNA copying
mistake or a mutation, which will interfere with the efficiency of the pumping mechanism?
Well, of course the bacterium won't be as good at surviving in normal circumstances, but
the defect actually gives it a survival advantage when there's a man-made poison
right outside the cell.
But once again, we see that information has been lost or corrupted, not gained.
Antibiotic resistance, while on the surface seems to provide support for evolution, when
you examine why the bacteria are resistant, it's actually going in exactly the opposite
direction for evolution.
And we'll continue with that thought after the break.
With all the responsibilities most pastors have it is often too much to ask them to keep
up with all the latest science that supports the Bible and creation.
The Information Department at CMI reviews the leading evolutionary
science publications so that our scientists and speakers are both constantly updated with
the latest evolutionist information and able to refute it.
Give your pastor a break.
Book a CMI speaker into your church for a faith-strengthening Sunday morning message.
Visit creation.com to contact your nearest CMI office.
Ok, welcome back.
So, as we were just saying, antibiotic resistance doesn't provide evidence for evolution.
The germs are actually going in the opposite direction that evolution requires.
It does seem kinda strange though.
I mean, the germs seem to have gained power over the antibiotic.
But it's because the mutations that cause the resistance are in some form or another
defects.
The so-called supergerms are not really 'super' at all.
They're actually 'wimpy' compared to their close cousins.
Yeah, that's right.
Dr Wieland recalls, "When I was finally discharged from hospital, I still had a strain
of supergerm colonizing my body.
Nothing had been able to get rid of it, after months in hospital.
However, I was told that all I had to do on going home was to 'get outdoors a lot, occasionally
even roll around in the dirt, and wait.'
In less than two weeks of this advice, the supergerms were gone.
Why?
The reason is that supergerms are actually defective in other ways, as explained.
Therefore, when they are forced to compete with the ordinary bacteria which normally
thrive on our skin, they do not have a chance.
They thrive in hospital because all the antibiotics and antiseptics being used there keep wiping
out the ordinary bacteria which would normally outcompete, wipe out and otherwise keep in
check these 'superwimps'."
Let's go roll in the dirt.
Yeah!
So they're 'weaker', and the reason they cause so much death and misery in hospitals is because
the 'normal' bacteria have been eliminated in the clean hospital environment, so the
weaker but resistant bacteria are able to thrive.
Also, environments that tend to 'select' such resistant germs, like intensive care units,
are precisely the places where there will be critically injured people, physically weakened
and often with open wounds.
Okay, so there are four conclusions we can draw.
Number one: 'Supergerms' are actually not 'super' at all.
They are generally less hardy, and less fit to survive outside of the special conditions
in hospitals anyway.
Two: There are many instances in which germs become resistant by simple selection of resistance
which already existed, including that 'imported' from other bacteria.
And three: where a mutational defect causes resistance, the survival advantage is always
caused by a loss of information.
In no case is there any evidence of an information-adding type of 'uphill' change.
Four: 'Supergerms' give no evidence to sustain the claim that living things evolved from
simple to complex, by adding information progressively over millions of years.
Okay, there are other examples that we'll mention, but we've spent a lot of time walking
through the details of this example of antibiotic resistance.
Why?
Because you'll see similarities between this example and the many other examples of genetic
change that evolutionists use to try to support the idea that mutations can cause a
single cell to eventually turn into a horse or a human.
Right.
And it can get complicated because evolutionists focus attention on the new feature (in this
case, resistance to antibiotics) and say that's evolution.
It's complicated because the organism is, in fact, doing something it hasn't done before,
from a certain point of view.
Everyone can see that.
But when the details are examined, that type of change, even though it's doing something
new, is not the kind of change that evolution needs.
Yeah, okay
So after the break we'll look at other examples where there's been a change
( the organism is doing something new) and it's written up as evidence for evolution, but
it isn't evolution at all.
We'll be right back.
In 1994 the prestigious journal Science shocked the scientific world by publishing sequence
data from DNA retrieved from dinosaur bone said to be 80 million years old.
DNA is a fragile molecule, and so it breaks down quickly.
Measurements of DNA stability suggest it could last thousands of years, at best, under the
likely conditions.
But 80 million years was just too incredible for other skeptical scientists.
Eventually, these skeptics were vindicated as it became apparent that the original researchers
had sequenced contaminating human DNA, not dinosaur DNA.
However, in 2012 a different group of researchers published new results supporting the discovery
of actual dinosaur DNA.
These new results appear much harder to disprove, with the researchers applying multiple checks
against contamination from non-dinosaur sources.
The preservation of dinosaur DNA doesn't make sense from an evolutionary perspective.
But it fits biblical history, whereby dinosaurs lived thousands of years ago,
not millions of years ago.
To find out more from Creation Ministries International, visit our website Creation.com.
Our subject this week is: gain-of-function mutations are not evidence for evolution.
Let's look at other examples to clarify why new features in living things, when carefully
examined, turn out to be evidence against evolution.
Living things are actually de-volving not evolving.
Okay, here's an example of genetic change that was, again, cited as evidence for evolution.
This is an example from long ago.
Darwin called attention to wingless beetles on the island of Madeira.
It's often windy on Madeira and many of the normal winged beetles get blown off the island
into the ocean and die.
Ooooh
Yeah
There was a mutation that caused some beetles to lose the ability to produce wings.
The wingless, mutant beetles then became the dominant population on the island, and that's
still the situation today.
So, a genetic mutation causing a loss of wings, caused population change over time.
So, just like in the example of antibiotics, the beetles have become adapted to their environment,
in this case as a result of a mutation.
These wingless beetles are now better adapted to the windy environment than the non-mutant,
winged beetles.
That's a great example of natural selection and adaptation' but it's not evolution.
Still confused?
It's about the kind of change that took place.
The beetles used to have wings, now they don't.
That's actually the opposite of what evolution needs.
They've lost the ability to fly.
If they keep losing abilities, eventually they're going to lose the ability to live.
Yikes!
That sounds more like extinction not evolution!
By the way, creationists wrote on natural selection and adaptation long before Darwin.
Those are scientific facts supported by a lot of good examples.
God created living things with the amazing ability to adapt to changing environments
without going extinct at the slightest climate change for example.
It's good engineering!
It's exactly what we would expect if God created.
Exactly. That's right.
Think of the term 'beneficial mutation'.
Evolutionists use that term quite a bit.
But is there such a thing as a beneficial mutation?
Yes, there is.
A beneficial mutation is simply one that makes it possible for its possessors to contribute
more offspring to future generations than the creatures that lack the mutation.
The mutation in these beetles can be called a 'beneficial mutation'.
I guess from a certain point of view.
But it's not beneficial for evolution!
The mutation puts the beetle on the path to extinction.
It is becoming genetically worse.
And that's the point.
At a genetic level it's going downhill, not uphill; the exact opposite of evolution.
That's right
Another famous example is sickle cell anemia.
Sickle cell refers to the shape of the blood cell.
This terrible disease causes the normally roundish, doughnut shaped red blood cells
to take on a sickle shape.
And this causes all kinds of problems including a higher chance of blood clots.
Yes, but this is taught as evidence for evolution because the people who have this disease are
less susceptible to malaria.
But, again, by looking more closely at the details, it is not evidence for evolution.
Dr Felix Konotey-Ahulu, one of the world's leading experts in sickle-cell anemia says,
"People who have both the sickle gene and the 'good' gene (heterozygosity is the technical
term) will have the benefit of suffering neither from sickle-cell anemia nor dying from malaria
in childhood.
They are therefore more likely to pass on their genes to the next generation than those
with both of the 'good' genes.
Thus, the sickle gene is much commoner in malaria-infested places, especially in Africa."
Hmmmm, so does this mean that Darwinian evolution is a fact?
Well, Dr Konotey-Ahulu firmly rejects this.
He said, "Observing selection/adaptation involving a mutation does not indicate that the more
complicated forms seen today arose from simpler forms traced back ultimately to one-cell organisms."
Then he cautions, "Demonstrating natural selection does not demonstrate that 'upward evolution'
is a fact, yet many schoolchildren are taught this as a 'proof' of evolution."
He pointed out that "the sickle-cell gene is still a defect, not an increase in complexity
or an improvement in function which is being selected for".
And he pointed out the unhappy downside, that "having more carriers of the sickle-cell genes
results in more people suffering from this terrible disease."
Yeah, and as he mentioned, this is yet another example that is taught as evidence for evolution.
But can you see how it isn't?
We'll be right back with one more example.
Refuting Evolution is a powerful, concise summary that explains where the common 'evidences'
used to promote evolution in textbooks are wrong, while at the same time showing how
creation is better supported by scientific observations.
It will stimulate much discussion and help students and teachers think more critically
about the creation/evolution debate, particularly the often overlooked differences between operational
and historical science and how they relate to the topic of origins.
Order your copy today at creation.com.
Welcome back.
Let's give one more example that was hailed as evidence for evolution, but when scientists
dug deeper, it turns out to be evidence against evolution.
Yes, helicobacter pylori is a bacteria that lives in your stomach.
It attacks the lining of your stomach and can lead to ulcers and even stomach cancer.
Now, it's treated with an antibiotic.
And here's how it works; the antibiotic is absorbed into the cell, into the bacteria,
and inside the bacteria there's an enzyme, which reacts with the antibiotic, and it converts
the antibiotic into a poison.
The poison kills the bacteria.
Yes, however there's a mutant variety of h. pylori.
The mutation causes the bacteria to lose the ability to produce the enzyme.
So the antibiotic is not converted into a poison, and the bacteria lives.
In other words, it survived because of a loss of function.
Notice the similarities here to the other examples we've mentioned.
And that is: a loss of something produces a survival advantage.
Or, let's say something that was working becomes degraded, or stops functioning altogether,
and that produces a survival advantage.
Yes, these are great examples of natural selection and adaptation, but terrible examples of evolution.
Evolutionists focus on the new thing that the organism is doing, and, from a certain
point of view we could agree that new things are happening.
But 'gain-of-function' mutations are not evidence for evolution.
That's right. To clarify these examples, and how they don't help evolution, we could change the terminology
a little.
In the case of the H. pylori, for example, instead of saying that the enzyme not metabolizing
the antibiotic was H. pylori 'doing something new', it's perhaps more accurate to say that
it's just not doing something old, that is, something that it did before
which was metabolizing the antibiotic.
Right.
So then it's not really doing anything new.
You can think of it this way: if I used to run but then had an injury and am no longer able to run
my not running isn't doing something new, it's not doing something old simply because
I've lost that ability.
And, by the way, adding millions of years isn't the answer.
For instance, a challenger might say, 'Mosquitoes have evolved resistance to DDT in
just forty years.
If that's not evolution happening before our eyes, what is?
Most Christian responses focus on the amount of change.
For instance, they will say, 'Well, that's just variation within a kind.'
Or, 'The mosquito's still a mosquito'.
Yeah, well both those replies are true, but they're not completely adequate, because they miss
the main point.
It's also rarely impresses the challenger, who thinks, 'Well, give it a million years
and imagine what sort of change will happen then!'
The point is the direction of the change.
Right
If the sorts of changes that scientists see happening in living things, like the examples
we mentioned today, continue for millions of years those creatures will be extinct.
They will not have evolved into something bigger or better or more robust.
All groups of living things are getting worse over time not better.
Yeah, that's right.
So things like antibiotic resistance are not a gain of function, they are a loss of function.
And of course, evolution needs genetic information to increase over time, and science doesn't
support that.
On the other hand, the creation account in the Bible has the information for all living
things appearing right at the start.
Genetics, and what we know about the information in living things supports the biblical account
in this area.
Genetic information, or programming must have been there when living things began.
Yeah, that's right.
Originally the creation was described as "very good" by God.
There was no sin, death or disease, and the Bible also describes the current world as
cursed.
Once again, science confirms that things are deteriorating, the creation groans, so we
would expect to see genetic information getting corrupted.
And science supports that, it happens all over the place really.
For those of you who've never considered the Bible and the claims that it makes about God,
Heaven, Jesus and what happens after we die, can we encourage you to think about what the
Bible says about these things?
Amen.
So we'll see you next week and remember Christianity is an evidence based faith.
And science supports scripture.
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