May 21, 2009

  • Evolution: science or nonsense by Reggie Boenig

    One of the members of our church has spent many years studying creation and evolution, and has amassed an incredible amount of information.  He spent two Bible Study sessions showing us power points, videos, and quotations and scientific papers to help us grasp what is being taught, so that we can better understand creation vs evolution.  This was so detailed that there was no way to take the notes necessary to present this completely so I am going to touch upon some of the main points that he shared. 

    We covered in great depth some of the basic concepts.

    Species – a group of natural populations that mate and reproduce themselves.  That can only happen if you are of the same species, if not there can’t be any offspring.  This is called REPRODUCTIVE ISOLATION.

    Darwin in his Origin of the Species used fossils to try and prove, but fossils cannot show if there is a way to reproduce.  MORPHOLOGY – gross differences (for example a dog has four legs, a human two).  We can have variation WITHIN a species, but no mating between species.  So a human can breed a different type of a dog, but it is still a dog.  Different breeds/same species. Dogs can be developed (he showed a daschund) Now a daschund cannot survive in the wild the way a dog closer to a wolf would be able to survive – it’s little legs would make it ill suited to survival in the wild. So when there are changes across a species it is not always for the best.

    Darwin spent time on the Galapagos Islands and studied finches and their various beaks. He realized there were different styles of beaks for different kinds of work.  He presumed that over millions of years the different types of beaks developed.  And that is ok for it again is within a species.

    Edward Blyth in 1835 stated that he was a creationist, but that he stopped at natural selection, creating variation within a species.  But did not think that animals evolved into another species.

    Reggie showed us an October 1991 Scientific American which was pro evolution. This article pointed out that climate changes on the Galapagos Islands caused a drought and that beak shapes and sizes shifted around, but never did one species develop into another. 

    We then looked at the study regarding the PEPPERED MOTHS that was done in the 1800′s and covered DIRECTIONAL SELECTON.  The gist is that because of industrialization and pollution the white moth became spotted with dark spots.  But this was not evolution, just natural selection and there were disputes about the accuracy of the reporting of this scientific paper.

    Evolution is one species changing into another.

    Artificial selection – man doing it (as in dog breeding)

    Natural selection – variation within types.

    Entropy – the tendency for matter to become disordered. It is natural for a system to move from order to disorder and chaos.

    If evolution is true it is the only natural process that is contrary to entropy.

    NATURE OF MUTATIONS – a mutation is any alteration in the structure of a gene.  DNA is responsible for replication and if damage occurs in the structure of a gene, then the organism mutates.   This can also be caused by ionizing radiation and chemicals.

    Our body can repair damage.  But at times mutation is accidental and random.

    H J Muller who won a Nobel Prize told us that mutations were truly random.

    He studied fruit flies, for they had a new generation every 10-14 days.

    He had 1000 fruit flies as a control group and 1000 fruit flies with low levels of ionizing radiation. 

    Control group 100 mutations of some sort
    Ionizing group – 400 mutations (the mutations in both groups were things like stinted wings, missing of eyes, leg missing, etc.)

    Yet a surprising result occurred in both groups:

    Control – 5% were resistant to radiation
    Ionizing – 5% were resistant to radiation

    The percentage was the same in both groups, when he had expected that the one with the radiation would have developed a greater percentage of fruit flies resistant to radiation.

    That kind of blows apart the theory that cockroaches will be able to mutate to resist radiation of a nuclear sort.

    Evolution depends on a false idea.

    Sickled Cell Anemia – red blood cells are misshaped.

    Now when a person has this kind of sickled cell anemia they are resistant to malaria, but that does not become a survival advantage for the person, for they suffer the affects of the anemia.

    We spent some time talking about the SUPER BUGS.

    That now there are certain bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics, but it is found that these only grow in certain situations such as hospital wards where the environment is perfect for them to grow and infect people.  Take that same virus and put it out in the wild, in the woods for example, and it does not survive.

    We then watched a video about the SAVANT SYNDDROME.

    And we discovered that savants have advantages in a specific area, for example playing music, calculating math, knowing the day of the week a particular date falls on.  The musician we saw was blind, and unable to see or function well.  But put him in front of a piano and he could reproduce any song he heard. 

    But if these savants were put out in the world to survive on their own they would not be able to do so.

    It is believed that one mutation affects many characteristics.  DNA is like rungs on a ladder, and most mutations affect a few rungs on the ladder but their mutation is unnoticeable.  There are a few examples of beneficial mutations, but most do not make the life of the species better.

    Downs Syndrome, has specific characteristics that affect the person’s mental capacity, finger size, and also the person has cardiac problems.

    In most circumstances mutations are created by man, not by nature.  Charles Darwin believed that truly beneficial mutations would give an overall advantage to the survival of the species. 

    An example was give about taking a part a TV and leaving the parts in the parking lot – that if left for some time in the parking lot there would be little chance that the TV would come together again and work, much less come together improved.

    In order for a species to evolve in complexity there would have to be an increase in the base pairings of the DNA ladder, and new rungs would have to be added. 

    Today evolutionists have gong to a pro-evolution, anti God stance.  But they cannot answer where the extra rungs of the ladder came from.  Evolution does not address mutations.

    Mutations do one of three things:  

    1. deleting the existing information,
    2 scrambling existing information, and
    3. duplicating existing information.  Never does a mutation add new information.

    Viruses, are they life?  Viruses can take over the genetics of the cell, they attach themselves to human DNA. 

    If we all evolved from a single cell, where did that extra DNA come from?

    Dr. James Allen in his research on fruit flies pointed out that in 40 generations no new fruit flies ever appeared.

    Dr. Creadie said that there is no new information in a cell. So this new information had to arise from some where.

    The fossil record does not support Darwin for the sudden appearance of complex life in the Cambrian Explosion, said to have occurred 540 to 550 million years ago occurred all over the entire world.

    Stephen Gould in the Structure of Evolutionary theory says that there is a lack of evidence and the same scenario of subpopulation isolates had to be reproduced countless numbers of times. 

    The next thing is the idea of Irreducible Complexity.  An example of a Rube Goldberg machine was used.  If one piece of the complex machinery is missing the whole does not work.

    Then we were given the example of blood clotting and how that works.  We have five quarts of blood and if our blood did not clot we could bleed to death. That could not have taken millions of years to develop.

    We were shown an example of how the heart works with the ventricles and the atria, and how the whole heart is irreducibly complex.  If one part did not work our circulatory system would fail.

    There is a drive in living matter to perfect itself,

    Then the idea of symbiosis, where two animals interact with each other to the benefit of both.  Evolution can’t explain that.

    EVOLUTION CANNOT EXPLAIN THE ORIGIN OF LIFE.

    If there is not much evidence for evolution, why do so many believe it? 

    Some say rational reasons – for if truth is existing in science it is seen through direct observation, but for evolution direct observation is not possible.  We make a hypothesis and observations to see if they support the hypothesis.

    There is a confirmation bias in the study of evolution where a person goes through the data and picks out information that confirms what they want to prove.

    Dr. Reggie Boenig then pointed out that people come to the discussion of evolution and creation with their own biases, and that they are really not willing to change their bias, so that the discussion is somewhat fruitless.  Most come with tough questions like my grandmother died after I prayed for her, where was God in that?  Or they don’t want to submit their lives under authority, but the real reason for an evolution and creation discussion has nothing to do with the science or proofs behind it, but rather with theological issues. 

    I hope you found some useful information in this presentation.  There was far more that I was unable to capture in notes.

    Heather