Winding Down: The Reality of Deterioration

My computer had flat-lined. The tech-people explained that they gradually accumulate corrupted information. They don’t correct themselves. A dedicated software expert has to go in to correct them, and this does require a lot of intelligent dedication.

It’s like the mutations and corruptions that gradually accumulate in our own human genome and are passed along from generation to generation. I began to wonder why the information decay within my computer program wouldn’t produce at least one beneficial change. My computer never gets faster, smarter, or acquires more memory on its own. I’ve never heard of a computer that began performing a new and improved operation, and why should it?

Everything falls apart. Our tech-person told me that I might want to consider purchasing a new computer in a year or two. I didn’t think of asking him about the possibility that my computer might just improve with age. However, this is the very thing that macro-evolution asserts – development in time.

However, this is not what we are finding. Instead, our genome continues to suffer deterioration, just like my computer programs. Bruce Malone writes,

• This [collection of defects] is exactly what is happening to the human genome at an alarming rate. Thousands of tiny mistakes are building up with each generation.

The commitments and presuppositions of evolution can blind us to the weight of these findings, according to John C. Stanford:

• Modern science has difficulty explaining why cells stop making perfect copies. This is because modern science assumes evolution to be a fact which requires a belief that we are increasing in complexity – evolving upwards. Therefore, cell reproduction should be getting better with time, not worse. Furthermore, if humans have been around for 1 million years (or more), then there have been over 20,000 generations of humans in existence. It is documented that every generation has between 100 and 1000 mistakes added to the DNA code. (Genetic Entropy and the Mystery of the Genome, Third Ed. 2008, 45-88)

If this is the case, we should expect to find de-evolution and not evolution, and this is exactly what we find in many respects. Richard Kleiss observes that

• One-third of all known species [of birds] on the [Hawaiian] islands have become extinct within the last 1,500 years. Yet no new species of Hawaiian birds have developed over the same period…This evidence implies that the millions of different life forms on Earth could not have come from evolution, because creatures become extinct far faster than they could possibly evolve into new types. (A Closer Look at the Evidence)

Tangentially, Kleiss also observes,

• If humans have evolved from less intelligent creatures, one would expect the earliest written languages to be the least complex. The opposite is true. The oldest languages are the most complex.

Our garbage dumps are a profound testimony that our computer do not last for long. Likewise, we have already lost 98% of our known species. Where are the replacement species, which evolution would expect to see? Instead, we seem to be winding down. Anyone see any new human species appearing or at least in progress?