Charles Darwin assumed that natural selection would make humans fitter. New research shows he was wrong. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.
Joel Kontinen
Our generation has, on average, 100-200 more mutations than our parents have and they have as much more than their parents. There is a simple yet not altogether welcome explanation for this: Each time DNA is passed from one generation to the next, it accumulates more mutations.
Most mutations are deleterious. Mutations are genetic copying mistakes but according to Darwinian evolution they should increase the fitness of species over millions of years. Evolutionists assume that natural selection chooses the mutations that are to be passed on to the next generation.
However, evolution is going in the wrong direction.
John Sanford, a professor at Cornell University, lectured on the topic recently at the Darwin Was Wrong Conference. Sanford, who is a geneticist, said that Darwinists had underestimated the amount of harmful mutations since they had not included ”junk DNA” in their calculations. They had thus overlooked 90 per cent of all mutations.
Professor Sanford is not the only one who says that humans are becoming less fit. Recently, research reported by Nature News supported his conclusions. As the researchers sequenced the Y chromosome, they were able to measure the human mutation rate and came up with the numbers Sanford gave in his lecture.
Two Finnish creationists, Pekka Reinikainen, a medical doctor, and Pauli Ojala, who is a biochemist, have also suggested that instead of evolution we are actually seeing devolution, i.e. instead of becoming fitter, humans are deteriorating.
In contrast to what some apologists for evolution have been saying, time is not the hero in this story. Given the high mutation rate, millions of years of earth history would have meant certain extinction for humankind.
Sources:
Dolgin, Elie. 2009. Human mutation rate revealed. Nature News (27 August). http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090827/full/news.2009.864.html
Sanford, John. 2009. Darwin Was Wrong about Natural Selection. Lecture at the Darwin Was Wrong Conference in Costa Mesa, California. (14 November)
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