Join Real Science Radio as we delve into the complexities of mutations and the challenge they pose to evolutionary theory. With insights from molecular biologist Dr. Jerry Bergman, we explore the fallacies of circular reasoning and the concept of beneficial mutations. Uncover why these topics are critical in debunking common evolutionary claims, especially when it comes to explaining the origins of life.
Hi, this is Bob Enyart. At Real Science Radio, we have a great science store. You can get great science materials from us. DVDs, debates, books, online. RealScienceRadio.com. Click on the store or by calling us 1-800-8-ENYART. So here’s a list of what you can get. DVDs from Illustra Media that we carry. The Privileged Planet, Unlocking the Mystery of Life, and Darwin’s Dilemma. And then there are the two fabulous DVDs from Dr. Carl Werner on Evolution, the Grand Experiment, Living Fossils. You’ll want to see those. And then Spike Pissarro, formerly with the U.S. Military Space Program, What You Aren’t Being Told About Astronomy. And then there’s the BEL Debates, Bob Debates an Evolutionist, Dr. Eugenie Scott on DVD, and a book, Does God Exist? Bob Enyart Debates Atheist Zaketh, a Psychologist. We also have two DVDs on our seminar, Does God Exist?, and then Mount St. Helens, the explosive evidence for catastrophe. We also have our debate on the age of the Earth, where I got to debate a mathematician from CU up in Boulder and a geophysicist on this MP3 CD. And finally, my favorite science book, In the Beginning, by Dr. Walt Brown. Just call us at 800-8N-YARTS. 800-836-9278, or check out our online store in the science department, either at kgov.com or realscienceradio.com.
SPEAKER 04 :
I can almost hear Professor Dave’s mom. David James Farina, that’s circular reasoning. If you don’t cut it out, your father’s going to pull this car over and give you a spanking right at this instant.
SPEAKER 03 :
Intelligent design and DNA Scholars can’t explain it all away. Get ready to be awed by the handiwork of God.
SPEAKER 1 :
Tune in to Real Science Radio.
SPEAKER 03 :
Turn up the Real Science Radio. Keeping it real.
SPEAKER 08 :
About a month ago, we did a show debunking Professor Dave’s alleged debunking of our original debunking of his show claiming to debunk young earth creation. Of his now 29 debunked claims, we picked the top three. But in that show, we only got to how missing antimatter by itself refutes the Big Bang and how carbon-14 is powerful evidence for a young world.
SPEAKER 06 :
That’s right, Fred. And… While neither of those debunks of ours made Professor Dave’s rational wiki page, guess what did make it, Fred? The fact that I called Dave a communist. That made his Rational Wiki page, which we will link to so that people can check for themselves and decide. Rational Wiki did not link. They called us pseudoscience. They say on their Rational Wiki, they say that Dave supported Bernie Sanders during the 2016 presidential election. That’s what made me think he might be a communist. Not might be. That he’s a communist. Dave has been accused of being a communist by the co-host of Real Science Radio, a Christian pseudoscience YouTube channel. So they accuse us of being pseudoscience and they link to pseudoscience where you go find out what’s their opinion of pseudoscience is. But they don’t link to our page so that people can check us out and decide for themselves. But we will link to Rational Wiki. so that people can look and decide for themselves.
SPEAKER 08 :
All right, so the third of Professor Dave’s biggest bunk claim we decided to hold off on, and I’ll get to that in a second. And it was because we had a molecular biologist in town here a couple weeks ago, and he’s well qualified to deal with Professor Dave, given his experience in the area. But due to a flu that was running amok in my family, we had to postpone this interview. But Dave’s just not going to get off so lucky on his next big mistake, and it’s this one. He’s doubling down on his faith in beneficial mutations. Let’s roll the clip. It says, in fact, most mutations with observable phenotypic effects are deleterious, which means most are harmful.
SPEAKER 02 :
Can you dumb f***s even read? I am seriously asking you if you are physically able to read. What did my graphics say? Harmful mutations do not persist. The ones you are referencing are the ones that would not persist in a population of organisms and thus would not be broadly observed in nature.
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, Professor Dave, I actually have read that article. Do you have a problem understanding what observable phenotypic effects are? This is a classic case of circular reasoning. The good professor, he assumes that mutations we observe are beneficial. So here’s the circle. He says mutations are observed. Yes. Evolution requires beneficial mutations. And guess what? The observed mutations are beneficial. It’s a totally circular logic.
SPEAKER 04 :
I can almost hear Professor Dave’s mom. David James Farina, that’s circular reasoning. If you don’t cut it out, your father’s going to pull this car over and give you a spanking right at this instant.
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, second, I hope our good professor doesn’t teach genetics and just sticks to freshman level chemistry. And has Professor Dave ever heard of genetic load? So for example, from the article, Estimating Mutation Load in Human Genomes, the process of mutation constantly creates deleterious variation in a population. These mutations can persist for some time, which is honestly being generous. But hey, don’t take our word for it. I would like to welcome to the show, none other than molecular biologist and retired professor, Dr. Jerry Bergman. It’s good to be here. Well, Jerry, what do you think? Do you think all mutations are beneficial that we observe?
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, don’t we wish, I guess. The work I did at the medical school was with cancer, and we know that there’s 5,000 diseases caused by mutations. That’s a lot. In fact, the only causes of diseases are, well, birth defects, and of course that’s a problem with mutations, and the only other causes are pathogens, diet, and toxins. So, It’s really important in the medical field. And we know a lot about mutations because we study them in order to treat diseases like cancer. And therefore, we know there’s a number of issues that are very important. One is hot spots. And that is just like when you break your arm, generally, it’s in a certain area of the bone. There’s a weak area, and that’s where the vast majority of breaks occur. Every now and then, of course, one occurs somewhere else, but we know the same thing is true in the genes. There are weak areas in the genes which, in essence, produces a hotspot. And what that means, and people, I think I need to explain it better than I have in the past, but basically, when we have a mutation, it occurs over and over in the same place. And therefore, you’re going to get a problem, but you’re not going to get the number of mutations you need to produce a new gene. An example would be you have a gene that’s got, I don’t know, 80 letters. They’re in groups of three, of course. And then you have, so you have 80 letters. And in order to go from one gene to another, which is what evolution proposes, you have to have mutations. And those mutations change the genome. And therefore, eventually you go from one genome, one gene in this case, to another. and that’s what they claim. The problem is you’re not going to go from one gene to another very easily because the vast majority of mutations are going to occur in certain areas and that causes damage to the genome. The idea that some mutations are good and therefore they’re saved Well, that may be true in a limited sense, but the problem is the vast majority of mutations we know are not all deleterious, but the vast majority are near neutral. And that means they don’t cause major problems. But the fact is they add up. And adding up basically means that in time you end up with what they call a genetic catastrophe.
SPEAKER 08 :
Genetic what? What’s that? Genetic catastrophe. Gotcha. Okay. Well, I know they say that like a gene can duplicate and then that particular gene takes on all these mutations and becomes a new gene and somehow beneficial mutations cause an increase in information and it leads to evolution.
SPEAKER 01 :
A lot of speculation. As you mentioned earlier, they believe in evolution and therefore they see the evidence according to those evolutionary glasses and those evolutionary glasses distort the real world. Well, in cancer research, we can’t do that. We cannot allow beliefs to get in the way. We’re talking about, we need to find the cause of cancer, and we need to deal with it. And in general, with cancer, what we find, it’s an enormously complex process of developing cancer. And basically, the main cause is genes are broken. And what that means is that the vast majority of cases that were the mutations add up you have a broken gene and they don’t work and that’s essentially what causes cancer there are other factors as well but so we have a huge amount of information and we understand quite adequately because again there i would say there’s probably 50 60 000 different research studies done on mutations and causing cancer in particular and we know from these basically that you’re going to end up with again, eventually deterioration of the genome, and you’re going to end up with not producing a new gene and thus a new animal, as they claim, but you’re going to end up with problems in the genome. And of course, the cancer research we’re doing primarily deals with not germline cancers, but somatic cancers in the body cells. But nonetheless, some of the same principles apply.
SPEAKER 08 :
You were a retired professor, but before you were a professor, you were involved in cancer research, weren’t you?
SPEAKER 01 :
Right, at the medical school, Medical College of Ohio. They changed the name, well, University of Toledo and the medical school changed They saved money, you know, so they basically united, so now it’s part of the University of Toledo. But when I was there for quite a few years, I have several degrees from there, actually, and then they liked me as a student, so they just hired me as a faculty and doing research with Ming Yu when he was doing cancer research in the Department of Experimental Pathology. We know a lot about cancer. I did a study of my own on the research, and of half a million people articles which dealt with mutation of those I found that only 186 were claimed to be beneficial and then I looked at those 186 and of those they were beneficial in most cases not for the animal or for the plant but for humans a good example is seedless fruit which is not beneficial for the animal in this case the plant But on the other hand, they are beneficial for humans. And so many were along that line. It’s very hard. I’m saying they don’t exist, but they’re clearly very, very rare. And therefore, when you find a few that appear to be beneficial, the evolutionists, of course, jump on that and try to use that as their main line of evidence.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah, I’ve had evolutionists tell me that cancer is evolution.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, in a sense it is, and of course it tells us where evolution leads, at least to death.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yes, de-evolution, exactly.
SPEAKER 01 :
Oh yeah, in a sense that’s true, it is, it’s evolving, it’s true.
SPEAKER 06 :
So this might be a really dumb question, but in all the research papers and all the research activities that have gone on over the past 100, 150 years, Have there been mutations observed that have helped cancer go away? Like stop a cancer?
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, I suppose if it destroyed the cancerous cell and it can’t replicate, I guess that’d be one case of where the mutations kill the cell and therefore it can’t replicate. For cancer to work, of course, the cells have to replicate.
SPEAKER 06 :
Has there ever been a mutation that occurred randomly that stopped a cancer?
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, there would have been, yeah, but it stops the cancer by killing the cell. So hopefully, in fact, there’s a process that’s a very well-designed process, basically, with P53. P53 is an extremely important system in the body. Basically, what it does is during cell division, it checks out the cell to see whether or not there’s any mutations. If there are, then it causes a system to repair those mutations. And by the way, the vast majority of mutations are repaired. So about 99.99% of all mutations are fixed. And so this repair process, and there are several that function, so this repair process, of course, works against evolution. because it does repair the damage.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah, that’s something they always tend to skip. Yeah, the quality control system, if you do take a mutation on, that thing probably won’t manifest anyways. Most of them won’t, like you said. Yeah, right.
SPEAKER 01 :
So anyway, that’s why 99.99% of the mutations are fixed. And the problem with mutations is the ones that are not fixed is the problem. And so in many ways, we’re talking about not mutations, but mutations that are not fixed properly or not fixed for some reason. And those are the ones that show up. And those are the ones, of course, that cause a problem. And so, obviously, mutations are quite common. But again, the vast majority are repaired and reduced. And therefore, they don’t cause a problem for the organism.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yep. Well, so I wanted to go through really quickly, hopefully, some math for our good professor, Dave. So I don’t know, Dr. Bergman, if you remember Haldane’s Dilemma, you’ve probably heard of that. I took a great interest in that many years ago, and I actually corresponded with Professor James Crow. He was a prolific writer at Nature magazine, and mostly on all things genetics. And there was an article I wrote years ago that I sent him, and he actually corresponded with me. It was really nice. And it’s an article where I used a Poisson distribution to show how insanely impossible evolution is. And quickly, here’s that math. So assuming just 5% functional genome, and we take a harmful mutation rate of 3.4, and this is a number that James Crow had come up with, to determine the reproductive impact, let P equals probability of an individual’s genome that does not receive a new defect this generation. A female is required to produce two offspring, one to replace herself and her mate. So she needs to produce at least two divided by P to pay this cost and maintain the population. So let B represent the birth threshold, so B equals 2 over P, the probability. So the probability P of an offspring escaping error-free is given by a derivation of the Poisson distribution of E to the minus U. Therefore, if you make the substitution, make a long story short, you would need 60 births per female just to stay even. So Professor Crowe, He was a professor emeritus of genetics at the University of Wisconsin. He responded to me in this correspondence we had. He said this, yours is a serious letter and deserves a serious answer. And you know what his answer was? He was largely admitting that other fields of science support evolution, but his doesn’t. I mean, he actually admitted that. He admitted that this was a problem that makes evolution not tenable in his field of expertise. He was a geneticist. That was his expertise. But he said, oh, we’ve got to look at paleontology. It’s unbelievable to me.
SPEAKER 01 :
I’ve known professors that believe the same thing. Yeah, my field doesn’t prove it, but other fields do. That’s common.
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, and you know, so that was many years ago. I think that was at least 15 years ago when I had that correspondence with Professor Crow. But you know, the problem is much, much worse. We had Sal Cordova on, and now we’ve got the ENCODE project. And despite Professor Dave also clinging to the fake science of junk DNA, Here’s something from just this month. They’re finding many, many more genes. So this particular article, tens of thousands of hidden dark genes discovered in humans. And this added over 3,000 new peptide-coding genes to the human genome. And we’re showing this study, a link to the study. And here’s what that means for that math I just went through. You would actually need, if you use the new ENCODE numbers, You would need 10 to the 43rd power of offspring per breeding couple. 10 to the 43rd power.
SPEAKER 06 :
So, Professor Dave, if you want to contribute to the evolution of our species, you and your wife have to have 10 to the 43 power number of kids just for evolution to have a fighting chance.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s a lot of babies, Sheldon.
SPEAKER 08 :
You know, evolution predicted and expected wanted there to be a high percent of junk DNA. You remember, Jerry, back in, I don’t know, they’ve been preaching junk DNA for a long time. And a lot of them, they’re not preaching it anymore. And that’s huge for us because as you get rid of junk DNA, so back then when Professor Crow made his estimates of three mutations per generation, that was based on 97% of the genome being junk. As you have less junk, that number goes up. That mutation number goes up. So… It’s not good for them. That’s true.
SPEAKER 01 :
It’s a good point.
SPEAKER 08 :
And, you know, I find it interesting, too. There’s this, you know, the Wistar was this big debate among mathematicians and geneticists. This was years ago. And as mathematicians, they’re like, hey, guys, you’ve got to give up this whole thing. neo-Darwinian viewpoint of, you know, random mutations and blind selection. It just doesn’t work mathematically.
SPEAKER 01 :
You talked about genetic duplication where genes are duplicated. That’s true, that does occur. One problem is the more duplication you have, generally the more problems you have. And number two is the genes that duplicate, you’re going to have mutations in both genes. They assume that they duplicate and the one will continue working, no problem. the other mutations will occur and it will evolve into another kind of gene. That’s very fallacious reasoning because both genes have an equal if not greater than equal likelihood of causing mutations and therefore destroying it. We know a number of diseases that are caused by genetic duplication. So that, in general, is a problem. But it’s very fallacious to think that you’re going to have one gene doing its job and the other gene will evolve into some other gene to produce some other effect. And that’s very, very naive. And it’s just not supported by the evidence.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah. So, yeah, there’s papers out there, like you mentioned, that talk about how gene duplication is responsible for this particular cancer or this particular disease. So they’re appealing to really adjust those stories. Somehow they get a gene duplication that isn’t a problem. Have we ever observed such a duplication that then got mutated beneficially and somehow led to some new function? I’m not aware of any. Yeah, that’s the claim.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yep. Again, it’s a belief and a belief that tend to see the world according to those evolution glasses they’re wearing and the world’s distorted. And to do science, you have to look at the reality. You have to look at the data. You cannot be encumbered by beliefs. And to me, that’s a major problem with evolutionists. They’re encumbered by beliefs, and it distorts the world. And that is not good for science. Scientists must clearly look at the evidence and go from there.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yep. Well, let’s look at this last clip from the good professor.
SPEAKER 02 :
We disproportionately observed beneficial mutations and improved function.
SPEAKER 1 :
Ready?
SPEAKER 02 :
A function is not an increase in information, idiots. Now that is desperation.
SPEAKER 06 :
I would ask the good professor, is it a loss of information? It reminds me, Fred, of our show with biophysics researcher Sal Cordova and all the papers. Dave likes to point to piles of papers. Well, how about this? Evolution by gene loss. Genomic reduction as the dominant mode of evolution. Genomes decay despite sustained fitness gains. Selection-driven gene loss in bacteria. And articles like, What’s Wrong with Evolutionary Biology? Or this article, where the author admits that the modern synthesis is gone. And books like Darwinism as a Religion by Michael Ruse. where we read, so not to mince words, the modern synthesis is gone. And that reminds me, Fred, we mentioned Professor Dave’s wife and kids earlier. You remember they had to have 10 to the 46 if they want their evolutionary theory to work, okay? So, but that reminded me, I want to apologize to the professor for making light of the fact that he never completed his master’s in synthetic organic chemistry, and that he lost his job as a government school teacher. I’m sure that there are difficult stories behind both of those events, and it was out of bounds for me to bring them up, not knowing him personally or what he’s been through. You know, Fred and Jerry, it’s really true. Every atheist… has a sad story and a broken heart lurking under all their bravado. And while we’re zealous to defend the science, the real science and the truth, our bigger objective is to get to David’s heart. David is a sinner under a sentence of death, and he needs forgiveness from Jesus Christ before he meets a righteous judge and creator on Judgment Day. Dave, I’m sorry about that and hopefully we can get together sometime and get to know each other personally.
SPEAKER 08 :
Hey guys, and I wanted to make a special announcement. So this February 21st and 22nd, there’s a Creation Summit and you go to creationsummit.com. And Dr. Jerry Bergman will be presenting at that conference, and so will Dr. James Tour. Yours truly will present on information. So please sign up for that conference. I think you’ll really enjoy it. Again, it’s a virtual conference, and we’re really looking forward to that. So before we close the show, Doug, I know our fans are going to want us to do an interesting fact of the week. All right.
SPEAKER 06 :
Do I get to ask for help from Dr. Jerry Bergman if I can’t?
SPEAKER 08 :
You can, but this one I think you have a pretty good chance. I’m giving you a 50-50. Okay.
SPEAKER 06 :
Oh, well, I hope I don’t disappoint. All right.
SPEAKER 08 :
Okay, so here is the interesting fact of the week. So, do identical twins have the same or different fingerprints?
SPEAKER 06 :
Identical twins… So you’ve got maternal and paternal and identical, right? Aren’t those, are there three kinds of twins? I get myself confused by asking myself more questions. Yeah, so identical twins. Fred, they do not. Otherwise, the cops couldn’t bust you on your fingerprint.
SPEAKER 02 :
Right?
SPEAKER 06 :
All right, yeah.
SPEAKER 08 :
I gave you an easy one, Doug. Well, congratulations.
SPEAKER 06 :
Too easy, Fred. I appreciate the generosity.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yep. So, Dr. Bergman, any last thoughts on beneficial mutations? Anything you’d like to share with the audience?
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, it would be nice if there was a few, but not very many. And again, I spent a lot of time looking at the few claims, and they’re all problematic relative to… gaining new information. And of course that’s what evolution has to do. It has to have a source of new information. And it simply doesn’t have that. Darwin recognized that’s a big problem. And today they still recognize that’s a major problem. But evolutionists see it as a problem to be solved. It occurred. We just have to figure out how it occurred and where the information comes from. It comes from somewhere. We know it does. So we have to look for the information source. And of course mutations doesn’t work. And no other idea they proposed doesn’t work.
SPEAKER 06 :
But what if they just keep saying that mutations do work, Jerry? What if they just keep saying that? Well, that’s what they’re doing. It seems to me that’s what they’re doing. And I really appreciate you helping me understand the idea of a beneficial mutation when it comes to cancer. Yes, beneficial, because it destroys the cell. Again, reiterating the point that… Genetic mutations tend to lead to the loss of life, which that’s not good for evolution. When the evolving creature dies.
SPEAKER 01 :
By the way, that’s what we use to treat cancer. We use X radiation, which causes more mutations. Hopefully the mutations are enough to kill the cancer cells. non-cancer cells can repair the mutations and therefore they are hopefully less affected. They’re still affected, but they are less affected. But by and large, we kill cancer by using an increased level of mutations caused by X radiation. Wow. So that’s what we do. And of course that then destroys, hopefully destroys all the cancer cells and not any of the normal cells. Because of course cancer cells are damaged and so therefore they can’t repair themselves like other cells. And so that’s what they look forward to in this method of treatment. that they won’t be able to, ideally, in most cases they can’t. They can’t repair themselves, so they die. So the cancer cells die, and other cells that are healthy live, and that is how they kill the cancers, by radiation. It seems contradictory. Why do we cure cancer by causing the same problem that caused the cancer? Well, that’s why.
SPEAKER 08 :
Hopefully they’ll continue to make advancements in immunology, where you use God’s design of the immune system to attack cancer cells. So I know there’s been some promise in that, and hopefully that field will continue to grow. And I know Bob and I talked about that years ago, where that field, because there’s such a worldview of evolution, that that field was probably suppressed. They didn’t want to appeal to actual design in the body to fight cancer. And we think that it may have thwarted that advancement in the menuology for years.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, and advancements hopefully will lead to… be able to do more and more with less and less radiation, hopefully, as we figure out the immune system. But for now, radiation therapy is an important part of cancer therapy, and that was very enlightening in helping us understand why and how that refutes the ridiculous notion of beneficial mutations. Thank you, Dr. Bergman. Yeah, thank you, Dr. Bergman. You’re welcome.
SPEAKER 08 :
Really appreciate your time. So, for Dr. Jerry Bergman and my co-host Doug McBurney, I’m Fred Williams of Real Science Radio. May God bless you.
SPEAKER 03 :
Intelligent design and DNA Scholars can’t explain it all away Get ready to be awed By the handiwork of God Tune in to Real Science Radio Turn up the Real Science Radio Keepin’ it real
SPEAKER 07 :
This is Bob Inyart inviting you to read our manuscript, The Plot, for an overview of the whole Bible. Call us at 800-836-9278. That’s 836-9278.
