Darwinism Neo-Darwinism Symbiogenesis Punctuated-Equilibrium Neutral Mutation With Random Drift

"……...We certainly agree that random heritable changes or gene mutations occur. ……. Altered proteins that can be traced back to gene mutations in living organisms have been massively demonstrated. The major difference between our view and the standard Neo- Darwinist doctrine today concerns the importance of random mutation in evolution. We believe random mutation is wildly over emphasized as a source of hereditary variation. Mutations, and genetic changes in live organisms, are inducible; this can be done by x-ray radiation or by addition of mutagenic chemicals to food. Many ways to induce mutations are known but none lead to new organisms. Mutation accumulation does not lead to new species or even to new organs or new tissues. If the egg and a batch of sperm of a mammal is subjected to mutation, yes, hereditary changes occur, but as was pointed out very early by Hermann J. Mueller (1890-1967), the Nobel Prize winner who showed x-rays to be mutagenic in fruit flies, 99.9 percent of the mutations are deleterious. Even professional evolutionary biologists are hard put to find Mutations, experimentally induced or spontaneous, that lead in a positive way to evolutionary change."

Margulis and Sagan believe in the concept known as Symbiogenesis; a concept in which the genomes of various organisms amalgamate into new organisms. Gould and Eldridge, along with the late R. Goldschmidt believe in the concept of "Punctuated Equilibrium," a concept in which sudden giant mutations occur to produce new organisms. Professor Richard Dawkins still favors the neo-Darwinist approach. Professor Motoo Kimura prefers the concept of neutral mutation with random drift as the causation of species transmutation. What the reader must remember, is that when there are multiple explanations for a postulated circumstance such as evolution, none of the hypotheses are correct; otherwise, there would be only one!

Not even an amalgamation of the concepts of Darwinism, mutation, and genetics -- the so-called modern synthesis/neo-Darwinism -- have been able to salvage Darwin's hypothesis; except in the minds of those who want to believe; and, who choose to disregard the complexities of neurophysiology, the chicken egg relationship between DNA, RNA, protein; Eigen's Paradox; and the fact that 99 percent of all mutations are either deleterious or fatal. To believe in evolution is to speculate. To believe in evolution is to hope against hope, to disregard fact and logic, and to adhere to philosophy rather than science. There is one logical answer, and only one logical answer capable of explaining the reliable replication of large molecules and the maintenance of various species and their differences. That answer is the designed enzymatic shaped-space of enzymatic proteins.

Perspective On Evolution From the Standpoint of Design: Supporters of the chance origin of life and evolution mistakenly believe that the finite amount of genetic information available in simple organisms can be a rearranged to produce organisms of ever increasing complexity. The laws of statistical chemistry prohibit such increases in complexity, even in an open system. The reason is the absence of an independent method for producing chromatin, i.e., DNA. A cell can only duplicate the chromatin naturally inherent within its cell membrane, molecule-by-molecule; sequence by sequence. A cell cannot produce new, virgin, chromatin, denovo; then mold that chromatin into genes or chromosomes. In addition denovo chromatin production is subject to a chicken and egg relationship between DNA, RNA, protein, and Eigen's Paradox. Life cannot exist without protein to support enzymatic reactions structural tissues internal organs, etc. But protein production requires the presence of DNA and RNA; both of which require the proteins DNA-polymerase and RNA-polymerase for their own production -- accordingly the chicken and egg relationship. There is also a chicken and egg relationship which contradicts a spontaneous origin life and evolution apart from the denovo formation of chromatin. The contradiction is Eigen's Paradox which states that: "large genomes are only possible in the presence of replication enzymes but replication enzymes (proteins), require large genomes." This is because replication errors increase in a polymeric system in direct proportion to the increasing length of the polymers in question - in the absence of specific enzymes. DNA is a very long polymer. Thus, the probability of reproducing DNA with fidelity, in the absence of the catalytic space provided by DNA-polymerase, a protein, becomes prohibitive.

Moreover the rearrangement of existing finite information within a popuation's genome doesn't produce any new information or increase in genetic complexity. All that one receives from such random mixing is a recombination of old information; with the same limits on complexity. Additional chromatin is required to produce increases in information and complexity. But where would additional chromatin come from? Chromatin is just another name for the polymeric DNA molecules, which constitute chromosomes. Thus chromatin remains under the constraints of statistical chemistry, as already discussed above.

Could "mutations" provide the additional chromatin? No! First of all, mutations, as described in molecular biology, are nothing more than simple base-substitutions, or genetic insertions or deletions; or, as recognized in cellular biology, mutations are nothing more than chromosomal recombination of existing chromatin. Secondly, the confines, of the catalytic shaped-space of DNA replication forks and RNA transcription bubbles do not allow the type of saltation mutation jumps postulated by DeVries, and hoped for by evolutionists such as Niles Eldridge, and the late Stephen Gould (Gould, Stephen J.: The Structure of Evolutionary Theory; Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA, 2002).

From the very beginning, DeVries was wrong about the power of mutations because he based his postulate on the evening primrose, a hybrid, subject to producing radical jumps in phenotypes, as an inherent consequence of its being a hybrid. Secondly, the type of mutation postulated by DeVries, or Eldridge and Gould, is the same type of change we think of in medicine: a radical deviation from normal -- never a good thing -- because almost all mutations degrade or destroy the optimal function of an enzyme's specified protein.

In medicine, we think of a mutation as producing "mutants" -- catastrophic departures from the norm -- caused by ionizing radiation, or by mutagens such as rubella (German measles), etc. However, in biology and related fields, mutations are mistakenly regarded as minor, random variations in the normal process of cellular reproduction. Variations capable of producing small, random, stepwise, benign changes in a population's genome; magically leading to an overall improvement of the species and eventually to new "higher" species; all by means of chance "mutation" and "natural selection". The concept is absolutely contrary to logic, probability, and scientific fact.

The problem with the hypothesis is fourfold. First, there's no method for the production of increased amounts of chromatin. Secondly, the chicken and egg relationship between DNA, RNA and protein, along with Eigen's Paradox prevents the formation of new species. Thirdly, significant mutations are bad for an organism, and normally cause death, when significant. And lastly, any randomly occurring variations in DNA molecules, within the limits of allowable physiologic change, at the molecular level, can never be made subject to a selection process. Selection processes can only work on already functional genotypes; after random uncontrollable genetic variation has already taken place,and after a functional phenotype, with an already modified and established genotype, has been produced , not before. Therefore, selection has to take what it gets. And what it gets is normally worse than what it had. It is hard to climb an evolutionary ladder with that kind of scenario, against the limitations of probability. DeVries may have been wrong about mutations, but he was absolutely right about the shortcomings of Darwinism: natural selection might explain, "survival of the fittest; but it can't explain arrival of the fittest."