WHAT IS EVOLUTION? One definition of “evolution” is: “A process of change in a certain direction.” However, the term is used in several ways. For example, it is used to describe big changes in inanimate things—the development of the universe. In addition, the term is used to describe small changes in living things—the way plants and animals adapt to their environment. The word is most commonly used, though, to describe the theory that life arose from inanimate chemicals, formed into self-replicating cells, and slowly developed into more and more complex creatures, with man being the most intelligent of its productions. This third notion is what is meant by the term “evolution” as used in the context of our discussions!
So we need to clear up something. Many scientists have noted that over time, the descendants of living things may change slightly. For example, humans can selectively breed dogs so that eventually the descendants have shorter legs or longer hair than their forebears. Some scientists attach to such slight changes the term “microevolution.”
However, evolutionists teach that small changes accumulated slowly over billions of years and produced the big changes needed to make fish into amphibians and apelike creatures into men. These proposed big changes are defined as “macroevolution.”
The teaching of macroevolution is built on the claim that mutations—random changes in the genetic code of plants and animals—can produce not only new species but also entirely new families of plants and animals.
However, the facts are this: There are many characteristics of a plant or an animal that are determined by the instructions contained in its genetic code, the blueprints that are wrapped up in the nucleus of each cell. Researchers have discovered that mutations can produce alterations in the descendants of plants and animals. But do mutations
really produce entirely new species?
What has a century of study in the field of genetic research revealed?
After more than
40 years of intensive research, what were the results? “In spite of an
enormous financial expenditure,” says researcher Peter von Sengbusch, “the attempt to cultivate increasingly productive varieties by irradiation [to cause mutations], widely proved to be a failure.” And Lönnig said: “By the 1980’s, the hopes and euphoria among scientists had ended in worldwide failure. Mutation breeding as a separate branch of research was abandoned in Western countries. Almost all the mutants . . . died or were weaker than wild varieties.”
And the data now gathered from some 100 years of mutation research in general and 70 years of mutation breeding in particular enable scientists to draw conclusions regarding the ability of mutations to produce new species. After examining the evidence, Lönnig concluded: “Mutations
cannot transform an original species [of plant or animal]
into an entirely new one. This conclusion agrees with all the experiences and results of mutation research of the 20th century taken together as well as with the laws of probability.”
So, can mutations cause one species to evolve into a completely new kind of creature? The evidence answers no! Lönnig’s research has led him to the conclusion that
“properly defined species have real boundaries that cannot be abolished or transgressed by accidental mutations.”
