staurm said:

In what way are mutations degrading life?

First thing I would like to mention for you to keep in mind is that
mutations became the supposed mechanism for neo-darwinian evolution when it was shown that Darwin's original theory of pangenesis and aquired characteristics was proven false. More can be read about pangenesis here.

Pangenesis: use and disuse

Neo-darwinianism still keeps natural selection, but mutations are now added. It now teaches that new traits come about by chance from random mutations in genes and not use and disuse.

You may have seen supposed mutations take place in movies such as Teenage mutant ninja turtles where the slime covers the creatures and they turn into a new "super creature" more powerful and greater than the one before. This is not how mutations work. This is fantasy.

In the real world, mutations cause a number of defects such as hemophilia , loss of protective color in the skin and eyes (albinism), and certain kinds of cancer and brain malfunction.

There is lots of evidence that different kinds of radiations, errors in DNA replication, and certain chemicals can indeed produce mutations, and mutations in reproductive cells can be passed on to future generations.

One example of a common mutation experiment is fruit flies. People have been hitting these bugs with mutations for decades and decades. Some of the effects of mutations are shorter wings, very short wings, curled wings, spread-apart wings, miniature wings, wings without cross veins. But there has never once been an increase in genetic information. In some genetics classes, students cross different fruit flies and work out inheritence patterns.

There are several challanges for evolution when it comes to mutations. One of them is mathmatical. This problem is written in many books and widely acknowledged by evolutionists themselves as a serious problem for their theory.

Mutations are very rare. They occur on an average of perhaps once in every ten million duplications of a DNA molecule . That??s fairly rare. On the other hand, it??s not that rare.

The mathmatical problem for evolution comes when it needs a series of related changes. The odds of getting two mutations that are related to one another is the product of the separate probabilities: one in 10 to 7th x 10 to 7th, or 10 to 14th. That??s a one followed by 14 zeroes, a hundred trillion.

Two mutations might cause a slightly longer wing. This is a long way from producing a new structure, and a really long way from
changing the fly into a new organism. What then would be the chance of getting three mutations in a row? One in a billion trillion (1021). The oceans aren't even big enough to hold enough bacteria for you to be able to likely find one with three simultaneous or three sequential and related mutations.

How about four related mutations? The earth isn't even big enough to holdenough organisms to make it likely. That's one in 10 to 28th. That's 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 ! It would take many more mutations than this even to cause any real start into evolution. Very soon, the mathematics become astronomically huge.

At this point some evolutionists have given up on the classic idea of evolution because it obviously doesn't work. It was at this level ( four related mutations) that microbiologists gave up on the idea that mutations could explain why some bacteria are resistant to four different antibiotics at the same time. The odds were just too great. They looked for another solution, and they found it. Using cultures that are routinely kept for long periods, they discovered that bacteria were resistant to antibiotics ever before commercial antibiotics were developed.

Genetic variability was built right into the bacteria. Resistant forms were already there to begin with. Also, certain bacteria have little rings of dna called plasmids they trade around themselves and they passed on resistance to antibiotics.

Bacteria can be made resitant to antibiotics by mutations, but these are really "crippling" effects. The mutation typically damages some growth factor, and the mutationally crippled bacteria can hardly even survive outside a lab. The reistance carried by plasmids though is from enzymes made to break down the antibiotic, and this resistance is by design.

One idea why God would create anibiotic resistance in organisms is to balance the growth of prolific organisms in the soil. Only after the fall did some bacteria become disease causers.

drug resistance in bacteria does not show evolution, and it doesn't even show the production of favorable mutations. It does show natural selection or a sort of artificial selection but only selection within existing variations in a kind.

But evolutionsts also beleve that Time will solve the problem. But even with 5 billion years, that's only about 10 to 17 seconds, and the whole universe contains fewer than 10 to 80th atoms.

Here is one telling encounter evolutionists had with this problem back in 1967:


Way back in 1967, a prestigious group of internationally known biologists and mathematicians gathered at the Wistar Institute to consider Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution.10 All present were evolutionists, and they agreed, as the preface clearly states, that no one would be questioning evolution itself. The only question was, could mutations serve as the basis??with natural selection??as a mechanism for evolutionary change? The answer of the mathematicians: no. Just plain no!

Emotions ran high. After a particularly telling paper by Marcel Schutzenberger of the University of Paris, the chairman of the gathering, C. H. Waddington, said, ??Your argument is simply that life must have come about by special creation!? The stenographer records, ??Schutzenberger: No! Voices: No!? Anything but creation; it wasn??t even fair (in spite of the evidence!) to bring up the word.

Dr. Waddington later called himself, impressively, a ??post-neo-Darwinist,? someone who believes in evolution, but who also believes that mutation-selection cannot explain how evolution can occur. Many research evolutionists (but not many textbook writers or teachers) recognize the need for a new generation of evolutionists to forge the ??post-neo-Darwinian synthesis.?
Now mutations are also going the wrong way as far as evolution is concerned. Almost every mutation known is identified by the disease or abnormality it causes. Creationists use mutations to explain the origin of diseases and parasites, hereditary defects, and the loss of traits. Time and chance and random changes do just what you'd expect: tear things down and make matters worse.

By producing defects or blocking the function of genes, mutations have introduced numerous genetic abnormalities into the human population.

Human beings now have over 3500 mutational disorders. Thankfully, we don't show all the defects we carry.The reason they don??t show up is that we each have two sets of genes, one set of genes from our mothers and another set from our fathers. The ??bad genes? we inherit from our mothers?? side are usually covered up by our fathers?? genes, and vice versa.

When an animal is born with one set of genes, like a textbook example of a turkey which was born from an unfertilized egg and had one set of chromasomes. The bird couldn't hold it's head up, it bobbed up and down from a neurological disorder. The feathers were missing in patches and ultimately it had to be moved to a germ free chamber because it's disease resistance was low.

Evolutionists recognize the problem of trying to explain onward and upward evolution on the basis of mutations that are harmful at least 1000 times more often than they are helpful. No evolutionist believes that standing in front of X-ray machines would improve human beings. No evolutionist argues that destruction of the earth??s ozone layer is good because it increases mutation rates and, therefore, speeds up evolution. Evolutionists know that decrease in the ozone layer will increase mutation rates, but they, like everyone else, recognize that this will lead only to increased skin cancer and to other harmful changes. Perhaps a helpful change might occur, but it would be drowned in a sea of harmful changes.

Because harmful mutations so greatly outnumber any supposed helpful mutations, it's now unwise and even illegal in some states to marry someone closely related to you because it greatly increases the odds that the bad genes will show up.

Mutations are often carried by recessive (hidden) genes and are difficult to elimate by selection and tend to build up in populations.

Benefitial mutations are not theorecially impossible though. Bacteria that loseb the ability to digest certain sugars can regain the ability byu mutation. It's not helpful for evolution though because the bacteria only gets back to where it started.

There is only one common benefitial mutation given by evolutionists as proof of evolution, and this is sickel cell anemia. Sickle cell animia creates a resistance to maleria in it's carriers. But sickel cell anemia is a disease itself, and the cost is high: 25% of the children of carriers can die of sickle-cell anemia, and another 25% are subject to malaria. Obviously this is not an example of evolution.

There are many other examples of mutations ??beneficial? to people: seedless grapes, short-legged sheep, hairless dogs, but these are all harmful to the organism in its own environment and, harmful in evolutionary perspective.

It's not that benefitial mutations are theoretically impossible, it's just that the price is too high. To explain evolution by the gradual selection of beneficial mutations, you must also factor in the millions of harmful mutations that would have to occur aas well

Time only makes the problem worse. Thanks to our accumulated genetic burden, serious hereditary defects are present in perhaps 5% of all human births, and that percentage greatly increases among the children of closely related parents. All of us have some genetic errors, and it??s really only by common consent ( and ignorance) that most of us call each other ??normal.?

If early evolutionists knew what we know now about mutations, it??s unlikely that mutations would ever have been proposed as machanism for evoluntionary progress

Most mutations are caused by radiation or replication errors. But what do you have to have before you can have a mutation? The gene has to be there first, before the radiation can hit it or before it can make a copying mistake. In It's as simple as that: the gene has to be there before it can mutate. All you get as a result of mutation is just a varied form of an already-existing gene, i.e., variation within kind..

In this light, mutations actually presuppose creation.


Random changes in the complex coded information in living organisms are usually lethal, harmful or useless and even the rare ??beneficial?? mutations, e.g. wingless beetles on windy islands and fish in caves with shrivelled eyes, are information losses.

I continue to suggest you study information science, and especially the book by Werner gitt, In the beginning was information:

In the Beginning Was Information - Answers Bookstore

Or if you're running short on time you can even get the 53 min. movie:

In the Beginning Was Information - Answers Bookstore

Here is an a more technical article on mutations if you care to read:


part 1: A Scientific Defense of a Creationist Position on Evolution

part2: Dr. Lee Spetner's continued exchange with Dr. Edward E. Max
natureisawesome Reviewed by natureisawesome on . A path to faith with science Some people don't think that faith and science are compatible. This is to demonstrate that is not the case and that science plays a part in helping to confirm God's existence and reveal his divine nature. This is to demonstrate one path to God. There is contained within both evidence for God's existence and attributes from the nature of the physical universe, and also evidence from direct communication from God and mankind. Finding out whether God exists or not is not just for philosophers Rating: 5