Mutations are accidents; things don't get built by accident (Talk.Origins)

Claim: CB101.1


 * Mutations are accidents, and things do not get built by accident.

Source: Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. 1985. Life--How Did It Get Here? Brooklyn, NY, pg. 102.

Morris, Henry M. 1985. Scientific Creationism. Green Forest, AR: Master Books, p. 55.

Creation Wiki response: (Talk Origins quotes in blue)

This is hardly a fair explanation of the issue at hand. While natural selection is not a random process the mutations that it selects for are random. This fact makes randomness a key part of the process. Furthermore, this distracts from the more important issue that the combination of random mutations and natural selection cannot build anything new. Indeed, this process does occur, but it is only useful for weeding out defective organisms. Evolutionists resort to this argument because it seems to be the only alternative to the idea that all living things were intelligently designed by a creator. The above process may allow certain organisms to adapt to their particular environment so they are more likely to survive and pass down their genes, but this process will not build anything new.

However, they all originally required some kind of intelligent input to substantiate them, which is why the analogy is an invalid one. Not one of those discoveries would have taken shape without an intelligent thought process behind it(creator) to guide it through development and then apply it to where it would be most valuable.

There is nothing evolutionary about that process. Selection is a natural process that only stabilizes and does not create. Creating would require more than natural selection and mutation. Human design correctly done (such as the architecture of buildings) does not need to be destroyed as part of the design process. Improvements in design are because of intelligent recognition of a need or desire of the inhabitants and changes to a new design. Natural evolution has no designer supplying improvements or direction but only random chance allowing some genetic changes to survive and others to not survive (evolutionists are aware that beneficial mutations often do not survive). Calling design an evolutionary process is at least an unnecessary confusion of terms.

There are definite limits to the adaptation that results from the selection process, as selection can only draw from available information. This claim is accurate, selection cannot create, and mutations, which are random, cannot provide specified information that are required to build from the bottom-up.

Sources:

 * Muddy Waters: Clarifying the confusion about natural selection by Carl Wieland Creation 23(3):26–29 June 2001
 * Not by Chance! by Lee Spetner. Brooklyn: Judaica Press, 1998.