Welcome to morganton.com. Skip directly to: our Keyword Search, Section Navigation, Content.

Morganton.com - Morganton - The News Herald

HomeNewsEntertainmentSportsLifestylesOpinionCommunityWeather Online Tools Jobs | Real Estate | Shopping | Classified

There seems to be a fly in the soup

By Noel Francis | Truth or Consequences - The News Herald

Published: October 3, 2008

In the last article I said that there was evidence that change from one species to another, macroevolution, does not occur. The following is a very cursory cross-section of evidence against such change.
Taking as little as 10 days for generational turn around, there have been tens of thousands of generations of fruit flies used for genetics studies over the past 102 years.
During a study started by geneticists Morgan and Muller, 442 generations of fruit flies over 17 years were exposed to chemicals and radiation producing up to 400 mutations. Most of these mutations were fatal and most of the surviving adults were sterile.
The remaining few mutations are either harmful (for example, curly wings are flightless) or of no known helpful or harmful use (eye color). One researcher concluded that "x-rays have been used to increase the mutation rate in the fruit fly by 15,000 percent," so that scientists have "catalyze(d) the fruit flies evolutionary process, such that what has been seen to occur in Drosophila (fruit flies) is the equivalent of the many millions of years of normal mutation and evolution." And yet they are still fruit flies with the same number of limited viable mutations. Geneticist Maurice Caullery said, "It does not seem, therefore, that the central problem of evolution can be solved by mutations."
Without the helpful mutations natural selection has nothing to drive evolution forward. It seems we have been deceived about what natural selection accomplishes. Still today in biology texts the peppered moth of England is hailed as the clear and simple example of natural selection.
But what was accomplished? The Industrial Revolution came along in England turning the tree bark sooty black. Birds ate far more white peppered moths which were easily seen on this black background. Black peppered moths were more likely to survive and increased in the population.
What is frequently not taught is the return of larger percentages of white peppered moths after smokestack pollution was reduced. There is no knowledge that black moths were a mutation and at any rate they are still moths. Jerry Boone comments on the lack of beneficial mutations by saying, "From 4,000 B.C. when Sumerians began keeping records called pictographs on clay records until today, we have had approximately 6,000 years of recorded history.
Several billion people have populated the world during this period. It is interesting to note, over all this time and with all these generations, not even one example of an unqualified beneficial mutation in mankind has surfaced. If we broaden our scope to include plants and animals, nature has not provided us with any obvious permanent, positive mutations there either. We find no observations of one species mutating into another. And we find no eyewitness accounts of any plant or animal developing a new organ — internal or external. If beneficial errors are really the creative force that has made every living thing what it is, then it is reasonable to expect a few straightforward examples to spring up somewhere given six thousand years, two million species, and untold opportunities in the form of people, animals, and plants."
Consider vestigial organs. These are organs that are said to be leftover from past stages of evolutionary change. It turns out that they are really a product of ignorance. As Bird says in Origin of the Species Revisited, "The alleged vestigial organs- such as human 'gill slits' (which do not exist),… tonsils, appendix, coccyx ('tailbone'), thymus, and facial muscles- almost all have been found to have functions and not be vestigial." Perhaps over time we will figure out what the functions of other "vestigial" organs are.
Furthermore, the fossil record is no help. So called "missing links" or transition forms between species do not exist. Coffin discusses the most talked about "missing link," the bird fossil Archaeopteryx, by noting several ways in which "the feathers of Archaeopteryx appear identical to modern ones. We see no evidence of intermediate development here." Where are the half formed stomachs and eyes and whatever else in the fossil record?
To the believing Naturalist the statements above may seem like sweeping generalities and antidotal evidence. But where is the evidence for macroevolution? There seems to be a fly in the soup (and perhaps a moth and a bird and so forth) spoiling the whole course of evolutionary change.

Noel Francis may be contacted at noel_francis@yahoo.com for further discussion of these and other evidences supporting the Creator's work.