Episode Transcript
Welcome to evolution. Impossible. A production of Three ABN, Australia television.
Our host is Dr. Sven Ostring with special guest Dr. John Ashton.
And our panel we're back on the journey of Evolution Impossible, an exciting journey where we are exploring whether one of the biggest theories about the origin of life is even possible. I'm Dr. Sven Ostring, and I'm glad you can join us once again.
Together with me today in the studio is Melvin Sandelin. Good to have you. Pleasure.
Tim Turner. Great to have you back with us. And of course, Blair Lemke, representing the young adults.
Good to see you with us as well. And of course, Dr. John Ashton.
It's good to have you back in the studio. And isn't it amazing to have an expert like Dr. Ashton with us as we go on this journey together? Today we're talking about one of the most important components of Darwin's theory of evolution random mutations.
And I must admit that every time I hear the word mutations, I immediately think mutants. And the picture of those turtles with headbands who could fight with swords. What was their name again? Teenage meat? Ninja turtles.
That's it, guys. But seriously, the fact is that Darwin believed that we all evolved through a series of genetic mutations. We're all mutants of a common ancestor.
But tell us, John, what are genetic mutations and how do they come about? Well, yes, they're where we get changes to the genetic code DNA that are caused by some sort of extraneous chemical reaction, usually. But one of the things, as I looked at the introduction there of those amazing creatures, those tall forest trees, the hummingbird and the butterfly, all those different structures, according to theory of evolution, arose by chance in a code. And one of the important things is that the code looks nothing like the creature.
So for example, if we write the word apple, we write APLE, or if it's in French, maybe P-O-M-E. But that code and those letters don't look anything like an apple, but to us they represent an apple because our mind reads that code and we interpret that as an apple. We may even visualize that in our mind.
So the important thing to recognize is that the code for all those amazing structures that we saw the tree, the birds, the butterfly, the flowers, the plants, beetles, insects, all these things, the codes to make those complete organisms are represented by a code that looks nothing like them. And I think one of the fallacies that people or adopt or the misconceptions that people adopt is that some sort of physical change, like there might be a drought, and therefore a fish that was able to somehow pull itself across to the next pond had stronger limbs, over time evolved as sort of a shoulder blade arm system. And that's how fish solely evolved into amphibians.
This sort of scenario that's painted by some evolutionists, we need to understand that the code is totally unrelated to the physical environment and is formed by total random mutations. So it's sort of like if we take the word fin and we've got to now apply a mutation to it to make it into the word arm. But if we look at the word Finn, F-I-N and A-R-M they're totally new letters.
So those totally new letters have to arise by chance in the code. But the code doesn't know that it needs those new letters because it doesn't know that that is going to solve the problem. And when we look at the probability of those codes arising by chance, as we've already discussed in a previous program, it's absolutely impossible, the chances that these random mutations.
The other important aspect is that these mutations are pure chemical mutations because some of my detractors have said at times, well, Ashton is a chemist. What would he know about this? But what we need to understand is that evolution is underpinned by chemical reactions. And these are chemical reactions that we call mutations.
Now, that can cause changes to the code. Now, there are different types of mutations that may involve, for example, replication of parts of the code or deletions of parts of the code, these sort of things. But if we're going to produce totally new information, we have to actually produce totally new code.
And then that code has to work. So you've got your DNA, you've got this string of letters ACTG, and on it goes. And so the mutations are where you kind of switch letters or combinations of letters or whole words.
Shall I say that's what's happening with mutations, is that correct? Well, you can get that type of mutation that occurs and there are many different types of mutations. So evolution talks. Well, textbooks talk about evolution occurring.
The most common examples that are listed in textbooks on evolution are where pieces of code have been deleted, right? And so through some or become damaged and therefore they're not operable in any way and so they no longer function within that organism. And so, for example, Darwin's wingless beetles. So the codes to produce perfectly the wing part of that code became damaged.
The wings didn't form properly or it may be deletion for a pigment or something like that. So the mutations which are damaged or the DNA which is damaged, is that what the geneticist would say is junk DNA? Is that no, the junk DNA is DNA that they didn't really understand how it played a part in producing the organism in terms of genes. So the so called junk DNA is really other codes that they couldn't relate to any particular functional structure at the time, but we now know is associated with switching on and off particular genes and result can be affected by environmental pressures.
So one of the things that we have is we have these pieces of code, but we also have pieces of code that switch on pieces of code. And so there's a lot of dormant code that are sitting in DNA that has potential to be switched on. And of course this fits the biblical position of creation that when God originally created all the different kinds and the kinds are simply species that can interbreed in some way.
There was a huge amount of genetic diversity and part of this genetic diversity would have been codes that weren't even switched on yet, but later had the potential to be switched on. And they can be switched on by simple environmental pressures, just physical pressure or stress within the body, changes in blood pressure, these sort of things can trigger the switching on and off of genes, as can particular chemicals in the environment and environmental pressure. So it's a very complex system and the environment plays a part.
But all these systems use preexisting code and that's an important point. But certainly gene deletion is a common mutation generally responsible for disease, right? Yeah, as you said, incredibly complex. And I just wanted to check before we go on, did you have any questions on what John has described in terms of genetics and mutations? Yeah, I was curious.
You mentioned that all of the genetic information is pre existing genetic information. Is that to say that it's not been observed the creation of new genetic information? Exactly. Now, I guess to get back to the mutation thing, we can have mutations where part of the code is damaged and therefore doesn't work anymore.
It's very common. We can also have duplication of little pieces of code in another place and that say, is typical. Say you might have people born with an extra finger or something like that and so you can get different combinations of preexisting code being duplicated and that can have sometimes a beneficial effect within the organism, but still the same type of organism.
Or you can have transfer of genes from one organism to another so you can have genetic transfer. So for example, it's widely believed that the top ten food poisoning bacteria that the food industry has to worry about these days evolved since 1970. And they've evolved where genes to produce a toxin that was present in a bacteria that would not survive in us because it didn't have acid resistant genes, it didn't have adherence genes and so it couldn't survive in us.
So it wasn't a problem was transferred to some organism, some particular bacteria, for example, that did survive in us but didn't have any toxins, so it wasn't a problem. And so you can have a little prior and a little piece of genetic material can transfer across under conditions so that's preexisting code for a toxin then went into a prior harmless bacteria, it now becomes toxic and it can survive in us. And so that's gene transfer.
But in all those cases it's preexisting code. The big issue is how does a new body part form that requires totally new code, just like the word arm. Arm is totally different code to F-I-N.
And it's very complex though, the codes that are required. Yes. Yeah, I just wanted to ask a question that immediately pops up when you say that is, what does the theory then say? Where does this new information come from? What is their reasoning of like, this is where it came from.
Right? That's one of their major research questions. That's what the government is funding, lots of research in this area to try and understand how mutations can produce new code. No one knows.
There's no mechanism for that. And this is a very, very important point to understand that people claim that evolution is a fact, but there's actually no known scientific mechanism to explain how the complex codes required to form a new viable body part can form by chance. No known mechanism.
And you can go on, for example, top websites like University of California, Berkeley go onto their evolution website and just Google big issues in evolution that will come up as one of them. Scientists are trying to work out how the code for new body parts can form. And when we look at our biochemistry that we know today, it's absolutely impossible statistically for that to form.
So this is a major stumbling block, actually, for accepting the theory of evolution. And they've done experiments, of course, to try and elucidate this. And Tim.
What about yourself? Did you have any questions? I did have a question because I was looking at Lensky's experiment with E. Coli. Yes, right.
And you mentioned in your book that for E. Coli to become a different organism, so for example, yeast, it's going to have to multiply a whole bunch of different genes. And so I was wondering, well, how complex are the genes? But also if those genes weren't to be expressed, could an E.
Coli just copy and copy genes until it had about 6000 genes, until something got switched on and sort of changed it? Or is that impossible? Yes, the issue is that they're totally different genes. So just duplicating genes isn't going to do it just duplicating genetic material. So if we go from a bacterium to a yeast, for example, we've got a huge amount of increased genetic code, say E.
Coli about four and a half million bases to about seven and a half million bases. Oh no. About 12 million bases in a yeast.
So we've got another seven and a half million bases that have got a form. So it's seven and a half million letters of code. That's enormous amount of code.
And what we've got in a yeast, we've got organisms that can have sexual reproduction. They've got Nucleus, where a bacteria doesn't have a Nucleus. There's a whole lot of different biochemistry biochemical machines involved and that requires totally new code to make those machines.
You just can't duplicate existing code or the probability of existing code being duplicated in such a way that could produce that meaningful code is statistically impossible. Absolutely impossible. And I use that word absolutely in its absolute sense.
It's absolutely impossible. So in your book, you talk about three different types of evolution type one, type two, type three, and how it relates to mutations. So maybe if you could just walk through that with us, just so we get a clear picture of what those different types are.
Yeah. So type one evolution, it's mentioned, is the common evolution referred to in book, where you have dilution of information, and that's very common. That's the first type.
Yes, that's the first type. So the second type is where you have, for example, transfer of existing code to a new organism or duplication of existing code. That type is.
But type three, evolution is where you have a completely new type of code form that produces a new body part and that's never been observed. No one has observed the evolution of a new type of animal. Now, people argue, okay, you can have a definition of new type of species, but then we get into what is a new type of species? So I prefer to say a new type of body part.
And it's fascinating that in some of the recent research papers that are coming out now that I read in publications, we find them talking about nature somehow learned how to make this new type of organism or make this new type of connection. So it's a real personification of nature in many ways. Yes.
And I think the reason is that they recognize that these codes represent well, they're huge codes, and as I said, they look nothing like the structures. But what we're observing in nature is these like you saw in your hummingbird, you've got this creature that can perform all these amazing feats that has so many different body parts in it to achieve that. And human biochemistry, when we look at biochemistry, textbooks are typically this thick explaining all the biochemical reactions for the amazing biochemistry taking on in us.
But when we look at just little simple, like cells in plants and this sort of thing, they have amazing biochemistry as well. We've got molecular machines like Photosystem Two that actually is a system that takes light photons and concentrates it and splits water into hydrogen, active hydrogen and oxygen. The oxygen is released, and that active hydrogen is combined with carbon dioxide that the plant has absorbed to produce sugars and starches and cellulose the food.
And really, the structure of Photosystem Two that uses unique elements like manganese and so forth, has only recently been structured. It's a little molecular machine. And we still don't know how the water molecules are combined because what happens is the machine holds two water molecules and then zaps it with the energy from four photons that are collected through the green chlorophyll, not three but yeah, and again, just has just the right energy to split the water into hydrogen and oxygen.
The oxygen comes out and when we think about, we think of a plant, a leaf, we just pick it and mow it with our lawn mower and this sort of thing, all this amazing biochemistry is going on in there at that time. And those designs, those machines, just a powerful evidence of a unique design. We've got top electrical engineers in the world, you're electrical engineer, and we haven't designed anything that cool.
And what more is that it is self reproducing as well. We don't have self reproducing solar panels on our roof that we can harness the electricity from. We got to have them made in factories and so forth.
And that's the result of lots of engineers. And yet we're expecting that random mutations produced a code written using the letters AC. Well, the chemicals represented by the letters act and G that could produce a machine like that or the bacteria flagellum.
This little mini projector sort of thing, making me feel very humble here. It's an amazing jetty. But the question is this is that we have observed living organisms undergo mutations.
So the bacteria, E. Coli, we have observed it. So my question is, as we've seen them mutating, what has happened? I mean, how many mutations have we gone through? What's happened to those bacteria? Right, yes.
Well, earlier on you mentioned the Richard Lensky experiment. And Dr. Richard Lensky is a researcher at I think it's at Michigan State University for Memory.
And essentially his experiment involved taking twelve groups of E. Coli bacteria, twelve populations of E. Coli bacteria, and breeding them through lots and lots of cycles.
And the idea was to attempt to observe what types of evolution took place. And nothing much happened for a while, but I think up around about 30,000 generations, a couple of the groups began to flourish and reproduce more quickly than the other groups. And they found that those groups could use the chemical citrate, which was being used as a buffer in their selection.
Now, what happened was in the wild, E. Coli can use citrate, but they had selected four E. Coli that could not use citrate, so they could use a citrate buffer system in their experiment.
And so Richard Dawkins, I think, in his book Evolution the Greatest Show on Earth, uses this example of the example of new code forming. Matter of fact, I think as I read the book, that was the only example that he could give of new code being observed. But when they researched this down, what had simply happened was that a promoter gene had been duplicated to be next to a dormant citrate transfer gene.
And this was a gene that produced the right proteins that allowed citrate to be transferred through the cell wall and therefore the bacterium to use citrate as a food. And so that code was already there but it was dormant. And there was a mutation that allowed it put the promoter gene was a switch on gene.
So it now switched it on so they can now knew the code. Now they've bred those through to 60,000 generations now and the rate of mutation is that essentially the probability of a mutation in every part of the code was possible during that time. And of course Darwin, but no new species occurred.
So Darwin was thinking after 1000 generations or maybe 10,000 we'd start to branch and we'd get new species, new living organisms. We've had 60,000 60,000 with E cola and in the lab they reproduce about every 30 minutes from memory. And so we've had this massive opportunity.
And at the end of that time they were still E. Coli. They hadn't even evolved into a different type of bacteria.
Incredible. And of course, one of the questions is does nature, does our genetic system actually are they prepared for these mutations? Is there any anti evolutionist? Kind of and Blair, did you have any comments or thoughts on that topic? Yeah, as I was reading in your book in chapter four you talk about, I guess, anti evolution mechanisms that are built into observable in nature. And you gave some examples of these sorts of things that are kind of there to preserve the integrity of the species and to minimize the possibility of mutations.
I guess my question is how do proponents of evolution explain these sorts of mechanisms? Rival there are the massive repair mechanisms that are there and often in some reproduction systems. If the mutation goes through, if it's a really bad mutation, then the creature doesn't reproduce, it dies. But what they're counting on is that some mutations do survive, some mutations do get through the system.
But what we've observed in all the experiments is that these mutations generally result in disease. They may offer a protection in some areas, for example, they may give us a protection against a certain disease. But the downside is we become more vulnerable to something else in just about every case and most mutations end up in disease in case of human diseases.
For example, I think the John Hopkins library there of possible human mutations caused by genetic mutations is over 10,000 different types of diseases are caused by genetic mutations. So we don't have improved human beings being produced by genetic mutations. Sorry, go ahead.
So does that mean that we're coming to some sort of an extinction genetically like as human beings? And what would be the mutation rate be for people? Well, that's right. Mitochondrial DNA is accumulating mutations and that's of course, responsible for our energy system. So once that gets really bad we're going to be closed down.
But every living organism on this planet, mitochondrial DNA is part of the energy system and it's solely accumulating mutations. And when we look at this, this is one of the reasons why we know that life on Earth cannot be millions of years old because we've measured the rate at which we're accumulating mutations. And if we extrapolate backwards, then life on Earth cannot be more than about 10,000 or 10,0000 years.
Absolute max most likely can't be more than 10,000 years because of the rate at which we're accumulating mutations. And if it was any older, there would be so many mutations that life wouldn't be working, the mitochondrial DNA wouldn't be functioning anymore. So this is powerful, actually, evidence for the biblical position for a young Earth.
Powerful evidence. And that's called genetic entropy, is that right? Yes. The book has been written by John Sanford on genetic infant.
And so he's a geneticist that worked at Stanford University and did a lot of work in this area. But the research in this area is published in the major journals like Nature and so forth. But again, people aren't really being told that.
So we overall have more mutations in us than our parents and our children will have more mutations than we have. Melvin so everything's running down. Yeah, I'm just trying to wrap my head around this.
What we've been talking about, what I get so far, is that the theory of evolution does not give any explanation for where new information would come from. It has never been observed. Correct.
What we do observe is what Blair referenced to, like anti evolution mechanisms that prevent or that keep the integrity, as you said, it good integrity of the species that has been observed. How does that not know? Just science itself, like the whole theory? Why is it still it's so upside down for my understanding, I think that's why. At last, as I said, a thousand scientists have come out and signed this descent from Darwin.org
website and put their names up. The evidence is overwhelming. It's impossible.
But one of the things is a number of science are king. Well, we do see evolution. What they're not recognizing is that it's evolution that involves preexisting genetic code or the deletion of preexisting genetic code.
What they're not getting across to the students is hang on, we're not actually seeing the type of evolution that produces new code. And that's the type of evolution that Darwin was talking about. So Darwinian evolution hasn't been observed.
But it's a confusion. It's this semantics that's used to confuse students and they just keep on pushing it and making these assertions. But no, we have no scientific evidence for Darwinian evolution occurring.
It hasn't been observed. There's no known molecular mechanism for it to occur to produce the evolution for a new body part. I think what you say is what I noticed, too in my life where people ask me if I believe in evolution as a Christian.
And I say, well, that depends how you define evolution. I agree. And as we can observe is that within a species we see things happening like you describe in your book.
With what animal was it that you referred to? With the fur? The black fur? Oh, yes, just the mice out in the desert. Yeah, the mice. Yeah.
So we see that it's hard to say that that doesn't exist. But when you go to something that has never been observed, we can't repeat it, all of these things. Then I'm like, no, I don't believe that.
And it's amazing to think of all of these topics in terms of evolution and what are the most fundamental pillars. The fact is, you may be wanting to dig deeper into this topic, and if you are, I'd like to invite you to go to one of the many online bookstores around the world and you can actually order and get Dr. John Ashton's book Evolution Impossible.
It's a great, great book. And you can just dig more into this topic. It's quite sobering to think that one of the main components of evolution, random mutations, cannot generate new types of organisms.
The question is, where does that leave evolution? Is evolution impossible? That's the question that we're asking. And we are looking forward to having you join us again on this journey as we go underground, start digging for fossils. And of course, if you've missed any of our past programs, you can watch them on our website, Three ABN, australia.org
au. Till next time. We look forward to see you.
Thank you for joining us on Evolution Impossible, a production of Three ABN Australia television. If you have any comments or questions, send an email to Radio at threeABN australia.org au or call us within Australia on 024-973-3456.
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