Page 234 - The Errors the American National Academy of Sciences
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The Errors of the American National Academy of Sciences
plex, they will still be left facing the same difficulty.
In addition, the NAS authors also refer to natural selection as if it
were a conscious force. They speak of it as though it already knew what
the future desired function was and as though it always produced a use-
ful function by gradually adding the appropriate components together.
In point of fact, however, natural selection is an unconscious natural
mechanism and cannot act according to any plan.
What is the origin of the particular organs and systems in living
things? How did new genetic information to describe them come
about? Like all evolutionists, the NAS authors have not the slightest
idea. As we saw in earlier chapters, mutations cannot acquire benefi-
cial characteristics for living things. So, how are the new functions
they hope will be chosen by natural selection acquired? That vital
question goes unanswered. The world's most prominent evolution-
ists merely say, "Natural selection does this," without offering any ev-
idence, believing that they have thus put forward an evolutionary
explanation of the irreducible complexity in the structures and sys-
tems in living things.
For example, the NAS evolutionist authors attempt to explain
the complicated biochemical processes that take place during blood
clotting in terms of genes' being duplicated and altered, and their ef-
fects amplified by natural selection. Gene copying is one answer that
the NAS authors give to the question of how genetic information can
be added to a living thing. According to this account, a living thing
makes more than one copy of its genes. A mutation then takes place in
that extra copy and a change thus takes place in the living thing's ge-
netic information. Since this change occurs in the duplicate gene, it
does not affect the organism, and thus the functioning of the gene is
not impaired. The mutated gene is a copy.
Unfortunately, however, the gene duplication explanation con-
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