Darwin’s original conception of simple-to-complex evolution maintained that nature selected certain individuals with superior features, and in this way gradually, one tiny feature at a time, an entirely different creature could eventually form.

Some science media outlets are hailing a recent study as “live evolution witnessed,” but what researchers at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique actually saw isn’t evolution at all. They observed, over the course of 300 generations, predator bacteria adapting to overcome certain defenses erected by its prey.

Parasites are a topic that often makes people cringe. Some like to use parasites as an argument against creation, because after all, how could a good God create “bad” organisms like these?

The parasitic disease known as malaria continues to devastate millions of people. It is acute in Africa, where over two million people die per year—most of them children.

Because mutations are random relative to need and because organisms generally fit well into their environments, mutations normally are either neutral or harmful; only very rarely are they helpful—just as a random change made by poking a screwdriver into the guts of your computer will rarely improve its performance. ¹