So God created man in his own image,...Genesis 1:27
Massive Genetic Study Purporting Human Evolution Debunked
"The recent publication of a research paper evoked such headlines as “Massive genetic study shows how humans are evolving.” Despite the improvement of health-care technology, many other studies indicate that chronic disease among humans is increasing worldwide—and that mutations are commonly associated with disease, not upward evolutionary improvement.
A closer analysis of this new study shows that its evolutionary conclusions are deeply flawed and humans are actually devolving. This is exactly what modern biomedical data shows and the Bible indicates is happening due to the effects of the Fall where the whole creation is subject to corruption.
In the highly theoretical study of human evolution, scientists postulate that mystical and mostly undefinable selective pressures operate to somehow mold the genome over time leading to upward improvement and change. It’s claimed that the effects of these selective processes can be statistically detected when analyzing large genetic data sets.
In this recent study, scientists analyzed large biomedical and genetic datasets of common human DNA variants in the United Kingdom, including those with data on longevity looking for selective effects. Not surprisingly, they could hardly find any effects of alleged selection except for a few disease-related genetic variants that correlated with human longevity. In summarizing their lack of success, the authors state, “We only found a few individual genetic variants, almost all of which were identified in previous studies.”
But what about the data linking some variants with life span, including one odd association between delayed fertility and longevity? The problem with these results is that they provide no evolutionary support for the scientist’s naturalistic presuppositions. In the fundamental definition of evolution, progress is not defined by longevity per se but is based on reproductive success as an indicator of fitness. This was noted by one evolutionary author who summarized the research in the prestigious journal Nature. He says, “This is not, by itself, evidence of evolution at work,” and, “In evolutionary terms, having a long life isn’t as important as having a reproductively fruitful one.”
In reality, there are a variety of serious problems with the conclusions made in this paper. Most importantly, the researchers were analyzing common genetic variants in living, generally healthy humans, so it’s not surprising that very few negative associations with human health were found.
If the researchers had been analyzing rare genetic variants, they would have uncovered many associations with disease—a fact that is well-known among biomedical geneticists and documented in a variety of research papers.
These rare variants are evidence of harmful mutations that have occurred in the human genome since the original creation and are commonly associated with an overall loss of information and genome deterioration over time. The human genome is not evolving and improving over time, but instead is in a devolving process referred to as genetic entropy as documented by Cornell University geneticist John Sanford." ICR
