{"id":511,"date":"2013-02-24T11:39:42","date_gmt":"2013-02-24T17:39:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/?p=511"},"modified":"2013-02-23T22:17:56","modified_gmt":"2013-02-24T04:17:56","slug":"weaknesses-of-evolution-part-9","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/2013\/02\/24\/weaknesses-of-evolution-part-9\/","title":{"rendered":"Weaknesses of Evolution – Part 9 – Induced Mutations"},"content":{"rendered":"

Creationists complain<\/a> when science can’t do in 20 minutes what it takes nature millions of years to do.<\/p>\n

Induced mutations followed by selection in laboratory experiments have not produced any beneficial structural changes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What is a beneficial\u00a0structural<\/strong> change? \u00a0To scientists a structural change is where a protein is changed in a way that causes the protein to change shape. \u00a0Not all mutations have this affect and are called neutral mutations. \u00a0If the protein changes shape then it might not perform the function is was originally supposed to, it might perform the function just not as\u00a0efficiently<\/a>, it might perform its original function better<\/a>, or it might so something completely different<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There we go, those last two papers show that the claim by the creationists is wrong. \u00a0Beneficial structural protein changes by induced mutation. \u00a0I could stop there, but what fun would that be?<\/p>\n

I guess, that it could be argued that the creationists mean a morphology change, not just a protein change. \u00a0That is a larger scale change at the organism level rather than the cellular level.<\/p>\n

That’s much more difficult to show because major morphological changes are often very bad. \u00a0However, with diligent searching I was able to find this (in about 2 minutes, if anyone is keeping track).<\/p>\n

Mice with an induced mutation in collagen 8A2 develop larger eyes and are resistant to retinal ganglion cell damage in an experimental glaucoma model<\/a><\/p>\n

In this paper, the authors induced mutations in the eyes of mice using a chemical method resulting in a single point mutation in a particular gene. \u00a0The resulting animals had physically larger eyes that normal mice and reduced the loss of retinal ganglion cells due to glaucoma.<\/p>\n

There we go, a chemically induced mutation that resulted in a beneficial, physical change in a higher organism.<\/p>\n

The creationist claims… again… are fundamentally wrong. \u00a0The kicker of this is that I didn’t know about this paper until after I started writing this article. \u00a0It still took me less than 5 minutes in Google Scholar to find this paper.<\/p>\n

To me this indicates one of three things<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Creationists do sloppy research<\/li>\n
  2. Creationists know about this and are willfully lying<\/li>\n
  3. Creationists have a vested interest in NOT learning this kind of thing.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Honestly, it’s probably a mix of all three things.<\/p>\n

    I don’t do this to prove Christians wrong. \u00a0That it’s a side effect is not my problem. \u00a0If creationists do sloppy research, then they should learn to do correct research.<\/p>\n

    But more importantly, they should do the research, find out what is going on in the realm of science. \u00a0Because when they say things that are easily proven fundamentally wrong, it’s makes them look bad. \u00a0It makes them look sloppy or like liars.<\/p>\n

    It turns people who do know something off. \u00a0And in this world of instant access to all the content of the internet, anyone who is reasonably competent can prove these claims wrong in minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Creationists complain when science can’t do in 20 minutes what it takes nature millions of years to do. Induced mutations…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,8,6],"tags":[939,938,283,118,38,937],"class_list":["post-511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-creationism","category-evolution","category-science","tag-creationism","tag-evolution","tag-intelligent-design","tag-mutations","tag-religion-2","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}