15 Answers to John Rennie and Scientific American’s Nonsense--
Argument #10 ||Bert Thompson, Ph.D. Brad Harrub, Ph.D. 10.
[Creationists suggest that] mutations are essential to evolution
theory, but mutations can only eliminate traits. They cannot
produce new features. On the contrary, biology has catalogued
many traits produced by point mutations (changes at precise
positions in an organism’s DNA)—bacterial resistance to
antibiotics, for example. Mutations that arise in the homeobox
(Hox) family of development-regulating genes in animals can also
have complex effects. Hox genes direct where legs, wings,
antennae and body segments should grow. In fruit flies, for
instance, the mutation called Antennapedia causes legs to sprout
where antennae should grow. These abnormal limbs are not
functional, but their existence demonstrates that genetic
mistakes can produce complex structures, which natural selection
can then test for possible uses (2002, 287:282, parenthetical
items in orig.). In trying to go from single-c