Question Evolution! - CMI's Rebuttals to Responses to Questions 4 through 8

 Please keep the snark to a minimum and focus on strong and well-sourced responses.

Introduction
On September 14, 2011, CMI posted rebuttals to various general objections to the "15 Questions for Evolutionists" that form the core of its '''Question Evolution! Campaign'''.

Have a look at the original article: Question Evolution! - "15 critically important questions that evolutionists cannot adequately answer" and our responses to CMI's latest attempts to rebut answers to its questions:
 * Question Evolution! - CMI's Rebuttals to General Objections to the 15 Questions
 * Question Evolution! - CMI's Rebuttals to Responses to Questions 1 through 3
 * Question Evolution! - CMI's Rebuttals to Responses to Questions 9 through 15

{{sbs|1= Answer 2: There are over 100 new mutations for every child born. It is inevitable that evolution would happen with this rate of mutation. Those with the best mutations survive and reproduce.

Rebuttal: We’ve noted the mutation rate—and that it’s a huge problem for evolution. 100 mutations is actually the lowest (unrealistically low) possible number of new mutations per person, and that’s already extremely problematic for evolution. You see, in the evolutionary view, there have been 100 new mutations for every child for millions and millions of years. That’s billions of mutations. This also collapses a common argument for human-ape similarity: why should there be any similarity at all in the alleged five or six million years since their alleged common ancestor (but see also Evolutionists abandon the idea of 99% DNA similarity between humans and chimps).

When a person reproduces, his genes as a whole (half of them) are passed on, with both beneficial and non-beneficial mutations. It’s not as if a certain gene gets selected—it’s the group of genes that the person has. Most mutations are nearly neutral, emphasis on nearly. We don’t need to worry about the really catastrophic mutations being passed on most of the time; they often result in the death of the individual or otherwise prevent reproduction (natural selection operates here to remove the lethal ones, thus acting as a conserving force).

But most mutations aren’t like that—the person can survive. The deleterious effect may be so small that it’s imperceptible by itself. But add up thousands, hundreds of thousands, of those mutations, and you have a substantially ‘less fit’ individual than someone from the first generation. This person isn’t an example of evolution—he’s an example of devolution. He’s more likely to have problems like allergies and immune system disorders, he’s more likely to have trouble reproducing, and he’s probably got a shorter lifespan (without modern medical help), just for starters. And it gets worse for his descendants, because eventually all these mutations build up to an unsustainable level, and we get a situation that Dr John Sanford, geneticist, describes in Genetic Entropy and the Mystery of the Genome (see our review):


 * “When selection is unable to counter the loss of information due to mutations, a situation arises called ‘error catastrophe’. If not rapidly corrected, this situation leads to the eventual death of the species—extinction! In its final stages, genomic degeneration leads to declining fertility, which curtails further selection (selection always requires a surplus population, some of which can then be eliminated each generation). Inbreeding and genetic drift then take over entirely, rapidly finishing off the population. The process is an irreversible downward spiral. This advanced stage of genomic degeneration is called ‘mutational meltdown’. Mutational meltdown is recognized as an immediate threat to all of today’s endangered species. The same process appears to potentially be a theoretical threat for mankind” (p. 41).

{{sbs|1= Answer 2: Furthermore, looking at the biochemical processes in detail at a moment in time does not indicate the evolutionary history of an organism. Scaffolding is a means to develop a process. Furthermore, evolution is established on the macroscopic level through morphology as well as on the molecular level with genetics. As the understanding of biochemistry proceeds (as it is a much younger science), a better understanding will develop. Furthermore, as Michael Behe learned at the Dover trial, there is a lot known about the evolution of proteins, such as with the immune system.

Rebuttal: Lots of assertions here with little to back them up. Taking each sentence in turn:

In one sense, it is good to see that some evolutionists have finally abandoned the discredited “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” argument applied to biochemistry. But this also exposes the inconsistency of a major evolutionary argument: supposedly the many biochemical similarities prove evolution from a common ancestor with these features. But then it turns out that the ancestor didn’t have these features at all! E.g., all life uses DNA because of common ancestry, but then this common ancestor didn’t use DNA. Or, there is a common pentadactyl (five-digit) limb pattern in all tetrapods, because they all came from a common ancestor that walked up on the land from the sea. But the usual candidates for this common ancestor don’t have five digits—Acanthostega had eight, while Ichthyostega had seven, although all of these, including the much hyped Tiktaalik, have been trumped by more recent fossil evidence.

Scaffolding is really the “spandrel” argument by Lewontin and Gould. Yet there is no further evidence presented.

The morphological evidence is dealt with elsewhere, and is a change of subject.

There is yet another quasi-prophetic appeal to what we will understand in the future, but this is of course a tacit admission that evolutionists don’t have an answer now.

Lots of rubbish has been talked about the Dover Trial, where a previously unknown judge became the darling of the liberal media and evolution-pushing organizations by parroting the ACLU submission in his verdict. See our analysis.