Mutations and Natural Selection

Response

This is really the central claim of Darwinism.  However, it has several problems.  First, with all the mutations we have observed, none has increased genetic information (even beneficial mutations).  Also, the ratio of harmful to beneficial mutations is a million to one, and most of these are too small to be detected by natural selection.  These arguments are enough to make Darwinian evolution impossible by scientific standards.

However, even if we ignore the arguments above, natural selection still cannot work fast enough for evolution.  Sources of “noise” that waste almost all of natural selection include the environment, environment-by-genotype interaction, gametic sampling, homeostasis, non-heritable genetic variation (cyclic selection, dominance, epigenetic and epistatic effects), probability selection and selection interference.

Even ignoring all of the problems so far, there are others which make evolution impossible.  For instance, irreducible complexity makes it impossible for many things in nature to arise gradually (examples include the eye, bacterial flagella, blood clotting, butterfly metamorphosis, and others).  Another problem is that the “fitness terrain” is not a simple, uphill climb as evolutionists portray, but rather a mountainous region with gulfs, valleys and small hills.  If evolution is always upward, organisms will get stuck on a “small hill” and never make it through a canyon and up the mountain.

Ignoring all of these, there is still not enough time for evolution to occur due to a problem known as “Haldane’s Dilemma.”

An interesting side note is that informed evolutionists realize that natural selection acting on mutations and reproduction is not sufficient to account for life’s adaptions, and belief that it is sufficient is naive. ¹  Informed evolutionists realize that many more assumptions and mechanisms are required besides natural selection and mutations. ²  However, naive natural selection makes much more sense to the public, and so evolutionists use this definition publicly, but privately they realize it could not be this simple.