Creationist Answer to Bacterial Resistance

Author:
Christopher J. E. Johnson
Published: July 11, 2012
Updated: Apr 16, 2014

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All evolutionists I have spoken with claim that bacterial resistance is proof that mutations produce brand new information that has never existed before. This is the foundational belief for the religious concept of MACRO-evolution (a horse and banana having a common ancestor) over millions of years because without constantly adding new information into gene pools, MACRO changes could not occur.

"Here's a favorite example of mine to show how witnessing evolution in action is possible: antibiotic resistance. Scientists can observe how the frequencies of genes that make a microbe resistant to antibiotics increase when the environment changes to include an antibiotic."

-Greg Krukonis & Tracy Barr, Evolution for Dummies, John Wiley & Sons, 2008, p. 28-29, ISBN: 9780470117736

The first thing we need to remember when reading these statements from evolutionists is that their experiment started with bacteria, and ended with bacteria. This does not demonstrate MACRO-evolution; it only shows us variation within bacteria because actual demonstrationg of MACRO-evolution is impossible.

The next thing we need to point out is that the evolutionist does not take into consideration that the "resistance" they see is actually a LOSS of genetic information, not a gain:
"For example, to destroy a bacterium, the antibiotic streptomycin attaches to a part of the bacterial cell called ribosomes. Mutations sometimes cause a structural deformity in ribosomes. Since the antibiotic cannot connect with the misshapen ribosome, the bacterium is resistant. But even though this mutation turns out to be beneficial, it still constitutes a loss of genetic information, not a gain. No 'evolution' has taken place; the bacteria are not 'stronger.' In fact, under normal conditions, with no antibiotic present, they are weaker than their nonmutated cousins."
-James Perloff, The Case Against Darwin: Why the Evidence Should Be Examined, Refuge Books, 2002, p. 24, ISBN: 9780966816013

In case you may not have understood what was just said:

"Streptomycin, which was discovered by Selman Waksman and Albert Schatz and first reported in 1944, is an antibiotic against which bacteria can acquire resistance... But although the mutation they undergo in the process is beneficial to the microorganism in the presence of streptomycin, it cannot serve as a prototype for the kind of mutations needed by NDT. [i.e. Neo Darwinan Theory] The type of mutation that grants resistance to streptomycin is manifest in the ribosome and degrades its molecular match with the antibiotic molecule. This change in the surface of the microorganism’s ribosome prevents the streptomycin molecule from attaching and carrying out its antibiotic function. It turns out that this degradation is a loss of specificity and therefore a loss of information. The main point is that Evolution cannot be achieved by mutations of this sort, no matter how many of them there are. Evolution cannot be built by accumulating mutations that only degrade specificity."
-Dr. Lee M. Spetner, "A Scientific Critique of Evolution, Dr. Lee Spetner in exchange with Dr. Edward E. Max," 2000, retrieved Apr 16, 2014, [http://reformation.edu/scripture-science-stott/evolution/pages/019-critique-of-evolution.htm]

If you were born without theeth, you would be "resistant" to cavities, but if you get blended into a population of people with teeth, you're at a disadvantage to everyone else. Being born without teeth is a mutation, but it's not new information, it's not "beneficial," and it's certainly not a process that will change hot soup to a human over 3 billion years.

Despite the fact that resistance is LOSS of genetic information, evolutionists I have spoken with, and in email correspondance, choose to believe it's new information anyway because they have a presuppositional religious belief in evolution. That means, they want to believe evolution is true, and so they will ignore any evidence to the contrary, which means it's a heart problem, not a head problem.

Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts... For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water:
-2 Peter 3:3-5

And finally, the evolutionist believes that mutations, without any intelligent input, can randomly produce brand-new information that never existed before. Every evolutionist I have ever spoken to has been unwilling to consider that these genes selected for in bacteria were NOT new information, but instead were already in the gene pool, and recent discoveries have demonstrated that resistances are indeed already in the gene pools of different creatures, which simply boils down to selection of dominate or recessive traits.

Antibiotic resistance has been found in bacteria
that PRE-dates the invention of antibiotics.

-Lee Siegel, "Bacteria From Long-Dead Sailors Proves Resistant to Antibiotics," The Item News, South Carolina, Oct 26, 1988

"Bacteria taken from the frozen bodies of 19th-century explorers are resistant to certain types of antibiotics. Antibiotics came into general use 40 years ago, so the discovery challenges the view that only the widespread use and abuse of antibiotics has built up resistance to them. Kay Kowalewska-Grochowska and coleagues from the University of Alberta Hospital at Edmonton in Canada, isolated six strains of bacteria of the genus Clostridium from the bodies of William Braine and John Hartnell, members of the Franklin expedition to the Artctic in 1845.

Kowalewska-Grochowska grew the bacteria, which are part of the normal flora present in people's intestines, and tested the mocrobes' resistance to various antibiotics... surprisingly, the 140 year-old bacteria were resistant to two other antibiotics, cefoxitin and clindamycin."
-Rhonda Siddal, "Ancient Bacteria Resistant to Some Antibiotics,"New Scientist, Feb 11, 1989, p. 34

Explorers (led by Sir John Franklin in 1845) were sent north to look for a faster water-based trade route which would be better than having to sail all the way around the southern tip of South America to trade between the east coast and west coast of North America, and in a nutshell, they died in their search. The frozen bodies of dead men were discovered preserved in the waters north of Canada, and the bacteria tested in their system was found to be resistant to antibiotics that would not have been invented for another 120 years.

When reading the entire article from New Scientist Magazine, it forced the researchers to look for another explanation for how the bacteria were becoming resistant outside of the "new information" idea. The hilarious thing about this article is that they are listing out many possibilities, but the one they don't consider is that it's just a recessive trait (that causes damage and information loss to the ribosome). They won't consider a simple recessive gene because it doesn't help their religious evolutionary presuppositions.

"In 1988, researchers did autopsies on three of the Northwest Passage explorers who froze to death in the Arctic in 1845. Bacteria from their colons were carefully cultured, and many were already resistant to the most powerful modern antibiotics."
-Dr. Carl Wieland, "Antibiotic Resistance in Bacteria," CEN Tech Journal, Vol. 8, No. 1, 1994, p. 2

Keep in mind, if you show this article to evolutionists, they will simply ignore the information because they have a presuppositional bias in their hearts that needs evolution to be true. For this reason, one of the more common dismissals of the documentation will be, "They must have had contaminated samples," but according to research done by the Medical Tribune, contamination was eliminated as a possibility.

"Well-preserved bodies of members of the Franklin expedition, frozen in the Canadian Arctic in 1845, contain bacteria resistant to antibiotics. Because the first antibiotics were developed in the early 1940s, these resistant bacteria could not have evolved in response to antibiotics. Contamination has been eliminated as a possibility."
-Rick McGuire, "Eerie: Human Arctic Fossils Yield Resistant Bacteria," Medical Tribune, Dec 29, 1988, p. 1

If an evolutionist wants to believe with all his heart and soul that evolution is true, then he is welcome to his beliefs. I don't care what he wants to believe. Evolution is a religious presupposition built on a tower of faith-based assumptions, and I just don't have enough faith to believe in it.