Debunking Evolution:
problems, errors, and lies exposed,
in plain language for non-scientists
"Evolution" mixes two things together,
one real, one imaginary. Variation
is the real part. The types of bird beaks, the colors of moths, leg sizes, etc. are variation. Each
type and length of beak a finch can have is already in the gene pool for
finches. Creationists have always agreed that there is variation within
species. What evolutionists do not want you to know is that there are strict limits to variation
that are never crossed, something every breeder of animals or plants is
aware of. Whenever variation is pushed to extremes by selective breeding
(to get the most milk from cows, sugar from beets, bristles on fruit flies, or
any other characteristic), the line becomes sterile and dies out. And as
one characteristic increases, others diminish. But evolutionists want you
to believe that changes continue, merging gradually into new kinds of
creatures. This is where the imaginary part of the theory of evolution
comes in. It says that new
information is added to the gene pool by mutation and natural selection
to create frogs from fish, reptiles from frogs, and mammals from reptiles, to
name a few.
Do these big changes really happen?
Evolutionists tell us we cannot see evolution taking place because it
happens too slowly. A human generation takes about 20 years from birth to
parenthood. They say it took tens of thousands of generations to form man
from a common ancestor with the ape, from populations of only hundreds or
thousands. We do not have these problems with bacteria. A new
generation of bacteria grows in as short as 12 minutes or up to 24 hours or
more, depending on the type of bacteria and the environment, but typically 20
minutes to a few hours. There are more bacteria in the world than there
are grains of sand on all of the beaches of the world (and many grains of sand
are covered with bacteria). They exist in just about any environment:
heat, cold, dry, wet, high pressure, low pressure, small groups, large
colonies, isolated, much food, little food, much oxygen, no oxygen, in toxic chemicals,
etc. There is much variation in bacteria. There are many mutations
(in fact, evolutionists say that smaller organisms have a faster mutation rate
than larger ones6). But
they never turn into anything new. They always remain bacteria.
Fruit flies are much more complex than already complex single-cell
bacteria. Scientists like to study them because a generation (from egg to
adult) takes only 9 days. In the lab, fruit flies are studied under every
conceivable condition. There is much variation in fruit flies.
There are many mutations. But
they never turn into anything new. They always remain fruit flies.
Many years of study of countless generations of bacteria and fruit flies
all over the world shows that evolution is not happening today.
This is how the imaginary part is supposed to
happen: On rare occasions a mutation in DNA improves a creature's
ability to survive, so it is more likely to reproduce (natural selection).
That is evolution's only tool for making new creatures. It
might even work if it took just one gene to make and control one part.
But parts of living creatures are constructed of intricate components
with connections that all need to be in place for the thing to work, controlled
by many genes that have to act in the proper sequence. Natural selection would not choose parts
that did not have all their components existing, in place, connected, and
regulated because the parts would not work. Thus all the
right mutations (and none of the destructive ones) must happen at the same
time by pure chance. That is physically impossible. To
illustrate just how impossible it is, imagine this: on the ground are all the
materials needed to build a house (nails, boards, shingles, windows, etc.).
We tie a hammer to the wagging tail of a dog and let him wander about the
work site for as long as you please, even millions of years. The swinging
hammer on the dog is as likely to build a house as mutation-natural selection
is to make a single new working part in an animal, let alone a new creature.
Only mutations in the reproductive (germ) cells of
an animal or plant would be passed on. Mutations in the eye or skin of an
animal would not matter. Mutations in DNA happen fairly often, but most
are repaired or destroyed by mechanisms in animals and plants. All known
mutations in animal and plant germ cells are neutral, harmful, or fatal.
But evolutionists are eternally optimistic. They believe that
millions of beneficial mutations built every type of creature that ever
existed.
There are two versions of evolution. The
first (neo-Darwinism) proposed that many tiny changes made new creatures.
They could not find these tiny changes between one type of creature and
another in the fossil record, so a few evolutionists proposed instead that
change occurred by occasional leaps (punctuated equilibrium). Each
hypothetical beneficial mutation could only make a slight change. Any
more than that would be so disruptive as to cause death. So punctuated
equilibrium is not really one leap at a time. It envisions a lot of
slight changes over thousands of years, then nothing
happens for millions of years. Evolutionists say with a straight face
that no fossils have been found from a leap because thousands of years is too
fast in the billions of years of "geologic time" to leave any.
On the other hand, without fossils there is no evidence that any leaps
ever happened, and of course there is no evidence that leaps or gradual changes
are happening today in any of the millions of species that still exist.
Evolution is all about constant change, whether
gradual or in leaps. Consider a cloud in the sky: it is constantly
changing shape due to natural forces. It might look like, say, a rabbit
now, and a few minutes later appear to be, say, a horse. In between, the
whole mass is shifting about. In a few more minutes it may look like a
bird. The problem for evolution is that we never see the shifting between
shapes in the fossil record. All
fossils are of complete animals and plants, not works in progress "under
construction". That is why we can give each distinct plant
or animal a name. If evolution's continuous morphing were really going
on, every fossil would show change underway throughout the creature,
with parts in various stages of completion. For every successful change
there should be many more that lead to nothing. The whole process is
random trial and error, without direction. So every plant and animal,
living or fossil, should be covered inside and out with useless growths and
have parts under construction. It is a grotesque image, and just what the
theory of evolution really predicts. Even Charles Darwin had a glimpse of
the problem in his day. He wrote
in his book The Origin of Species: "The number of intermediate varieties which have formerly
existed on Earth must be truly enormous. Why then is not every geological
formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology
assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this,
perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against
my theory." The more fossils that are found, the better
sense we have of what lived in the past. Since
The platypus has a duck-like bill, swims with
webbed feet, and lays eggs. Yet nobody calls it a transitional creature
between mammals and ducks.
Archaeopteryx has long been held up as the
great example of a transitional creature, appearing to be part dinosaur and
part bird. However, it is a fully formed, complete animal with no
half-finished components or useless growths. That is also the case for
the other birds in the evolutionary tree. Evolutionists just placed some
of the many living and extinct species next to each other to make the bird
series.
The same is true for the famous horse series.
Each of the supposed ancestors is a complete animal. They are not
full of failed growths and there are no parts under construction. There
are many more differences between each type of animal than their size and the
number of toes. Every change in structure, function, and process would
have had to develop through random trial-and-error if evolution
were true, but no transitional forms have been found. The fossils
have not caught any changes in the midst of being created, even though they
should have occurred over long periods of time. In the late 1800's, evolutionists
simply placed living and extinct species next to each other to make the horse
series. However, evolutionists no longer believe there was the direct
ancestry (orthogenesis) shown in this chart...
Evolutionists now imagine it to be this branching
bush. Many of the supposed ancestors apparently lived at the same time,
especially after Mesohippus. It is doubtful
that Hyracotherium (formerly Eohippus) has any connection
to horses. So the progression of toes is an illusion that was useful when
the theory of evolution was first being sold to the public. Several
hundred species are extinct; only one genus, Equus,
survives.
New discoveries are bringing down the whole notion
of a "tree of life", as passages from an article in the mainstream
magazine New Scientist show:12
"The tree-of-life concept was absolutely central to
"But today the project lies in tatters, torn
to pieces by an onslaught of negative evidence. Many biologists now argue
that the tree concept is obsolete and needs to be discarded. 'We have no
evidence at all that the tree of life is a reality,' says Bapteste.
That bombshell has even persuaded some that our fundamental view of
biology needs to change." "The problems began in the early
1990s when it became possible to sequence actual bacterial and archaeal genes". "As more and more genes
were sequenced, it became clear that the patterns of relatedness could only be
explained if bacteria and archaea were routinely
swapping genetic material with other species - often across huge taxonomic
distances". " 'There's promiscuous
exchange of genetic information across diverse groups,' says Michael Rose, an
evolutionary biologist at the
"Recent research suggests that the evolution
of animals and plants isn't exactly tree-like either." "A team
at the University of Texas at Arlington found a peculiar chunk of DNA in the
genomes of eight animals - the mouse, rat, bushbaby,
little brown bat, tenrec, opossum, anole lizard and
African clawed frog - but not in 25 others, including humans, elephants,
chickens and fish. This patchy distribution suggests that the sequence
must have entered each genome independently by horizontal transfer."18 "HGT [horizontal gene transfer] has
been documented in insects, fish and plants, and a few years ago a piece of
snake DNA was found in cows." "Biologist Michael Syvanen of the
"The problem was that different genes told
contradictory evolutionary stories." " 'We've
just annihilated the tree of life. It's not a tree any more, it's a
different topology entirely,' says Syvanen."
"It is clear that the Darwinian tree is no longer an adequate
description of how evolution in general works." "Rose goes even
further. 'The tree of life is politely buried, we all know that,' he
says. 'What's less accepted is that our whole fundamental view of biology
needs to change.' Biology is vastly more complex than we thought, he
says." " 'The tree of life was useful,' says Bapteste. 'It helped us to understand that evolution
was real. But now we know more about evolution, it's time to move on.'
"12
This is huge. Professional evolutionists
spend most of their time adjusting their "tree of life". They
have fun thinking how one type of creature "developed" into another
type, how abilities "emerged" here and there, but that is just
playing at science. This article shows that, while they still cling to
their belief in evolution, the truth is becoming inescapable to the few
evolutionists who dare to look at the facts:
When researchers began "reading" the
amino acids in proteins in the 1960's, evolutionists expected that proteins
such as hemoglobin or cytochrome
C, common to many types of creatures, would be more alike for creatures close
to each other on the evolutionist's "tree of life", and more unlike
for creatures farther apart on the "tree of life". Instead,
this comparative biochemistry found that the protein sequences were just as
different between creatures near each other on the tree as between those far
apart, using percent of sequence differences. We find lots of variation
in these proteins, but no evolutionary progression.
An old evolution myth still hanging around is the
notion that things that look like gill-slits, tails, etc. in developing human
embryos show the embryo repeating all the stages of evolution.
In 1866, Ernst Haeckel proposed his "biogenitic law" (not to be confused with the law of
biogenesis that says life only comes from life). His idea was that
growing vertebrate embryos went through all the forms of their supposed
evolutionary ancestors ("ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny"). He
published drawings comparing growing embryos of a number of animals such as the
pig, cat, salamander, etc. to growing human embryos. The similarities
that he said he found helped persuade people to believe the theory of
evolution. Scientists eventually discovered enough about embryology to
quietly discard the "biogenetic law", but it was not until a careful
photographic study of growing vertebrate embryos was conducted in 1997 that Haeckel's deceit was fully revealed. They found that
his drawings were so far from reality that they could not have been done from
the actual embryos.20 He must have
faked them.
The theory of Evolution violates two laws of
science. The Second Law of Thermodynamics (law of increasing
entropy) says that things which start out concentrated together spread out over
time. If you heat one room in a house, then open the door to that room,
eventually the temperature in the whole house evens out (reaches equilibrium).
Knowing how far this evening-out has progressed at any point in time
tells you the entropy. Entropy can measure the loss of a system's ability
to do work. Entropy is also a measure of disorder, and that is where
evolution theory hits an impenetrable wall. Natural processes proceed in
only one direction, toward equilibrium and disorder. Things fall apart
over time, they do not get more organized. We
can overcome this by making a machine and adding energy, but the Second Law
prevents such a machine from assembling spontaneously from raw materials.
The Law of Biogenesis was established by Louis Pasteur three years
after
When confronted with the Second Law of
Thermodynamics, evolutionists usually use two tricks to try to escape.
The first is to state that "it only applies to closed
systems, and biological creatures are open systems, so it doesn't affect
evolution." The fact is that the
Second Law applies to all systems, open or closed, and to all actions and
chemical reactions, from molecules to galaxies. The words "except
for..." are not in this universal law. A thermodynamics
system is simply any part of the universe we want to study. If we are
doing an experiment in a bottle, the inside of the bottle is our system and the
bottle itself is the "walls" of the system. There are only 3
kinds of systems: if no energy or matter can pass through the walls, it is an isolated
system; if energy can pass through but matter cannot, it is a closed
system; if both energy and matter can pass through the walls, it is an open
system. Now, it is true that the laws of thermodynamics and entropy are
defined in terms of isolated systems, because that is the simplest way
to express them. However, experts who write textbooks on the subject are
quick to say that isolated systems do not occur in nature. For practical
applications, a procedure called the Legendre
Transform mathematically converts entropy to a variable called Gibbs free
energy that is useful for working with real-world systems. Most natural
systems are open, but it is convenient to model them as closed. For
example, even though a bacterium is an open system, modeling
it as a closed system makes it easier to understand chemical reactions in it.2,6 You are an open system. You eat food (which
comes from outside yourself) and your body survives and grows.
Evolutionists believe that all we need is an open system with sufficient
energy flowing into it for evolution to succeed. If that were so, you
could just stand right behind a jet engine as the aircraft prepares for
takeoff, absorb that blast of energy, and evolve to a higher life form.
In reality, of course, you would be incinerated because absorbing energy
without a mechanism to convert it to a useful form and employ it is destructive
or useless. The mechanism must be very specific. Sticking food in
your ear will not work; it must go into your mouth and through the digestive
system. And the mechanism must be in place and functioning first, before
energy is added, or the energy is wasted. The "open system"
ploy is just an attempt to avoid dealing with the Second Law because the Law
prohibits any functioning biological mechanism from falling together by pure
chance, without assistance or plan, using only the properties of matter.
The second trick they use is to say that "when
you freeze water, the disordered molecules become beautifully ordered ice
crystals or snowflakes. If water can bypass the Second Law and organize
its molecules by a natural process, why not the chemicals of life?"
At room temperature, water molecules are bouncing off each other and you
have water. When you take away heat and they freeze, water molecules
stick to each other with weak molecular bonds, forming ice crystals and
snowflakes because of the shape of the H2O molecule. The same
thing happens if you put a bunch of weak magnets in a jar and shake it.
The magnets bounce around. When you stop, the magnets stick
together. They are at a lower energy level. There is order, yet no
complexity - just a simple repetitive structure that does not do anything.
The Second Law is not bypassed or violated. But guess what. Amino acid molecules that form proteins, and nucleotide molecules that form DNA and RNA resist
combining at any temperature. To combine, they need the help of
mechanisms in a living cell or a biochemist in an organic chemistry laboratory.10 It means that nothing
happens in the primeval soup, the pond of chemicals where evolutionists believe
life began. DNA and RNA
dissolve in water23, so there could not even be water in the
primeval soup. DNA is made of only right-handed versions of
nucleotides, while proteins are made of only left-handed versions of
amino acids. Yet any random chemical reaction that produced nucleotides
or amino acids would make an equal mix of left and right-handed versions of
each. Even if the thousands of
nucleotides or amino acids needed to form individual DNA or protein molecules
were able to combine from this mix, they would be a jumble of left and
right-handed versions that could not function at all. Ilya Prigogene coauthored a paper in 1972 that says in an open
"system there exists a possibility for formation of ordered, low-entropy
structures at sufficiently low temperatures. This ordering principle is
responsible for the appearance of ordered structures such as crystals...
Unfortunately this principle cannot explain the formation of biological
structures."19 Prigogene
won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1977 for research on dissipative
structures, such as tornados, for contributions to nonequilibrium
thermodynamics, and for bridging the gap between biology and other sciences.
Evolutionists wrongly claim he won for showing how thermodynamics could
explain the formation of organized systems, from fluctuations in chaos, that
lead to the origin of life. They thought he was their hero. Over
thirty years later, nothing has come of it. There is no escape from the
Second Law of Thermodynamics. It prohibits the spontaneous origin of life
and the progression from microbes to man.
Even a single cell is not simple. In
Cells are made of proteins, and everything that
goes on in a creature involves proteins interacting with each other.
Proteins are generally 50 to 2000 amino acids long; a typical one has
about 300 amino acids.1 A protein is
not just a long ribbon of amino acids strung together from the DNA pattern.
It folds itself into a 3D structure.
A folded protein
Origami
The temperature and chemical concentrations must be
right for it to fold correctly, and many proteins get help from special
proteins called "molecular chaperones". Chaperones can keep
proteins separated from each other while they are folding, prevent mistakes in
folding, and even unfold mistakes to give the protein a second chance to get it
right. After helping one protein fold, a chaperone will go help another
one fold.
"A chaperone protein (bottom, yellow) called SecB
guides the folding of another protein (transparent)
in this artist's illustration." --Science News,
Making and folding proteins goes on continuously
throughout the body. Misfolding can lead to
more than proteins that don't work. In humans, bunches of them
(aggregates) can lead to diseases such as Alzheimer's,
So evolutionists have to believe that for each
protein, pure chance laid out long strings of amino acids that fold themselves
into the exact shapes needed to interact with other specialized proteins and,
where needed, get help from chaperone proteins which themselves appeared by
chance. The necessary proteins cannot be invented one at a time.
Either they are all there, ready to work together, or nothing happens and
they disintegrate. Yet even if it could design proteins, mutation-natural
selection would only work on one at a time sporadically over many years.
Considering just the complexity of proteins, the notion of
creating them with mutation-natural selection is as silly as asking someone to
build a television set with a spoon and a toothbrush. If
Do evolutionists admit defeat? Never! They
temporarily set aside natural selection, saying all mutations in DNA needed to
build a complicated new part quietly accumulate in the population because by
themselves each one is neutral, neither beneficial nor harmful. Then,
millions of years later, all are in place. The new part starts working,
natural selection chooses it, and the improved creature is off to the races.
This scenario exists only in the mind of the evolutionist. As
pointed out earlier, we do not find new parts under construction in living
creatures or fossils, so it obviously does not happen. Furthermore,
everyone agrees that harmful mutations appear many, many times more often than
mutations needed for new construction ever could. Over those millions of
years, slightly harmful mutations that are hidden, or not destructive enough
for natural selection to remove, would also quietly accumulate. This
would produce creatures loaded up with highly polluted genes. Survival of
the barely functional? We do not find this either because cells
have mechanisms that maintain the original design of a creature within it's variation boundaries, and minimize the accumulation of
mutations. These include:
·
A proofreading system
that catches almost all errors
·
A mismatch repair
system to back up the proofreading system
·
Photoreactivation (light repair)
·
Removal of methyl or
ethyl groups by O6 - methylguanine methyltransferase
·
Base excision repair
·
Nucleotide excision
repair
·
Double-strand DNA
break repair
·
Recombination repair
·
Error-prone bypass22
Harmful mutations happen constantly. Without
repair mechanisms, life would be very short and might not even get started
because mutations often lead to disease, deformity, or death. So even the
earliest, "simple" creatures in the evolutionist's primeval soup or
tree of life would have needed a sophisticated repair system. But the
mechanisms not only remove harmful mutations from DNA, they would also remove
mutations that evolutionists believe build new parts. How can the
evolutionist explain the evolution of mechanisms that prevent evolution?
Clearly, natural processes cannot produce new types of creatures from
existing ones.
A new science, Systems Biology, began around the
year 2000. At the Institute for
Systems Biology website, they
write: "As scientists have developed the tools and technologies which
allow them to delve deeper into the foundations of biological activity — genes and proteins — they have learned
that these components almost never work alone. They interact with each
other and with other molecules in highly structured but incredibly complex
ways, similar to the complex interactions among the countless computers on the
Internet. Systems biology seeks to understand these complex interactions,
as these are the keys to understanding life."
A small section of a biological system in an organism, displayed as a 3D
network
"To make sense of the genome, systems
biologists think in terms of networks. If two kinds of proteins or other
biological molecules interact, they are connected on the network."
"These network diagrams... show how individual pathways crisscross
to form a tangled web. Each protein in a pathway can interact with
molecules in other pathways, sometimes dozens of them."
Additionally, "systems biologists produce complex maps of how genes
and proteins interact, and these maps help scientists analyze results from drug
screening." "Cells 'talk' to each other by passing chemical
signals back and forth. They also sense their physical surroundings
through proteins on their surfaces called integrins.
All these cues serve to orient the cells in the body and inform them
about how to behave so that they cooperate with the rest of the cells in the
tissue." "The cells are not complete by themselves. They
need signals from outside," says Mina J. Bissell of Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory. "The unit of function literally is the
tissue."-- Patrick Barry.
Mutation-natural selection could no more build the
vast, intricate networks in living creatures than a beaver could build the
DNA has special handling devices. About 200
base pairs of DNA wrap around a spool of histone
protein. Histone H1 clamps it together.
Each DNA-histone unit is
a nucleosome. These are folded into tangled
loops that are called chromatin. When certain molecules attach to tails
on the histones, they affect how tightly packed the
chromatin will be. If it is loose, the DNA is more accessible and active;
if it is tightly packed, the DNA is inactive.
Only a small portion of a creature's DNA is
protein-coding genes (around 1.5% in humans). In the 1970s,
evolutionists began calling the rest of it "junk DNA", saying this
collection of useless evolutionary debris showed there was no intelligent
design involved. Decades later, researchers are finding that the
"junk" does vital work. Some of this DNA plays a role in
turning genes on and off at the right moments in a developing embryo14.
Other bits separate coding and regulating sections, like punctuation
marks in writing, so that DNA is not a long run-on sentence15.
Other bits called Alu elements, found only in
primates, can be spliced in or out during RNA processing to make different
versions of the same gene.16 The "junk" label
discouraged research into this part of the genome for many years; who would
want to waste their time studying it?
Scientists have found that the number of genes a
creature has is not a good measure of how complex it is. For example, the
human genome is 21 times larger than the fruit fly genome (3 billion base pairs
versus 140 million), yet humans have only a little more than 2 times the number
of protein coding genes (40,000 versus 17,000). Tiny yeast has 6,000.
The main reason for biological complexity must be in the rest of the
genome, the non-coding part, which determines how those genes are used.
Today there is an explosion of knowledge going on
in the study of gene regulation networks. But it is not led, assisted, or
even inspired by the theory of evolution. In fact, evolution theory has
always predicted that researchers would find simple devices that
mutation-natural selection, their little one-at-a-time change mechanism, could
conceivably work on. Yet each discovery has opened up higher levels of
complexity in even the tiniest organisms.
The Bottom Line
There are only two possibilities. Either every part of every living thing
arose by random chance, or an intelligence designed
them. It is now clear that the theory of evolution's only mechanism for building
new parts and creatures, mutation-natural selection, is totally, utterly,
pathetically inadequate. In spite of overwhelming evidence that the
theory of evolution is dead wrong, many are not ready to throw in the towel.
They desperately hope that some natural process will be found that causes
things to fall together into organized complexity. These are people of
great faith. And they are so afraid of connecting God with science that,
like the Japanese Army of World War II, they would rather die than surrender.
Unfortunately, the staunchest defenders sit in places of esteem and
authority as professors, scientists, and editors, and have the full faith of
the news media. The public is naturally in awe of their prestige.
But once the facts are understood it becomes obvious that the theory of
evolution is long overdue for the trash can, and to perpetuate it is a fraud.
Perhaps it made sense for what was known when The Origin of Species
was published in 1859, but not today.
Some revealing quotes
Philip S. Skell, a member of the National Academy of
Sciences, wrote in the
Philip S. Skell is Evan
Pugh Professor of Chemistry, Emeritus at
Ernst
Chain (1906-1979) and two others were awarded the 1945 Nobel Prize for
Physiology or Medicine. Chain identified the structure of penicillin,
and isolated the active substance. He is considered to be one of the
founders of the field of antibiotics. Concerning
A.
Clark, R.W. 1985. The Life of Ernst Chain: Penicillin and Beyond.
B.
Chain, E. 1970. Social Responsibility and the Scientist
in Modern Western Society (Robert Waley Cohen
memorial lecture).
Richard
C. Strohman, professor emeritus of molecular and cell
biology at
Sean
B. Carroll, of the Medical Institute and Laboratory of Molecular Biology at the
A
symposium on evolution was held at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in
"Origin of Life" research
The theory of evolution says life started from raw
chemicals. Evolutionists long ago handed the problem off to specialists,
trusting that they would come up with something. Here are excerpts from
candid reports by two scientists who have spent many years in this effort.
These men support evolution, but insist that experimental evidence back
up every claim.
This is "what has been called the NASA
definition of life: Life is a self-sustained chemical system capable of
undergoing Darwinian evolution." "Richard Dawkins elaborated on
this image of the earliest living entity in his book The Selfish Gene:
'At some point a particularly remarkable molecule was formed by accident.
We will call it the Replicator. It may not have been the
biggest or the most complex molecule around, but it had the extraordinary
property of being able to create copies of itself.'
When Dawkins wrote these words 30 years ago, DNA was the most likely
candidate for this role." "Unfortunately...
DNA replication cannot proceed without the assistance of a number of
proteins". So "which came first, the chicken or the egg?
DNA holds the recipe for protein construction. Yet that information
cannot be retrieved or copied without the assistance of proteins. Which
large molecule, then, appeared first in getting life started--proteins (the
chicken) or DNA (the egg).?"
"A possible solution appeared when attention
shifted to a new champion--RNA." According to this view, "life
began with the appearance of the first RNA molecule. In a... 1986
article, Nobel Laureate Walter Gilbert of
"How did that first self-replicating RNA
arise?" Most people know of an "experiment published in 1953 by
Stanley Miller. He applied a spark discharge to a mixture of simple gases
that were then thought to represent the atmosphere of the early Earth.
Two amino acids of the set of 20 used to construct proteins were formed
in significant quantities, with others from that set present in small
amounts." "Some writers have presumed that all of life's
building blocks could be formed with ease in Miller-type experiments and were
present in meteorites and other extraterrestrial bodies. This is not the
case."
"A careful examination of the results of the
analysis of several meteorites led the scientists who conducted the work to a
different conclusion: inanimate nature has a bias toward the formation of
molecules made of fewer rather than greater numbers of carbon atoms, and thus
show no partiality in favor of creating the building
blocks of our kind of life." "RNA's building blocks,
nucleotides, are complex substances as organic molecules go."
"Amino acids, such as those produced or found in these experiments,
are far less complex than nucleotides". "No nucleotides of any
kind have been reported as products of spark discharge experiments or in
studies of meteorites."
"To rescue the RNA-first concept from this
otherwise lethal defect, its advocates have created a discipline called prebiotic synthesis. They have attempted to show that
RNA and its components can be prepared in their laboratories in a sequence of
carefully controlled reactions." Finding "a specific organic
chemical in any quantity... would justify its classification as 'prebiotic,' a substance that supposedly had been proved to
be present on the early Earth. Once awarded this distinction, the
chemical could then be used in pure form, in any quantity, in another prebiotic reaction. The products of such a reaction
would also be considered 'prebiotic' and employed in
the next step in the sequence." "Unfortunately, neither
chemists nor laboratories were present on the early Earth to produce RNA."
"The analogy that comes to mind is that of a golfer, who having
played a golf ball through an 18-hole course, then
assumed that the ball could also play itself around the course in his absence.
He had demonstrated the possibility of the event; it was only necessary
to presume that some combination of natural forces (earthquakes, winds,
tornadoes and floods, for example) could produce the same result, given enough
time."
"Many chemists, confronted with these
difficulties, have fled the RNA-first hypothesis as if it were a building on
fire. One group, however, still captured by the vision of the
self-copying molecule, has opted for an exit that leads to similar hazards.
In these revised theories, a simpler replicator
arose first and governed life in a 'pre-RNA world.' Variations have been
proposed in which the bases, the sugar or the entire backbone of RNA have been
replaced by simpler substances, more accessible to prebiotic
syntheses. Presumably, this first replicator
would also have the catalytic capabilities of RNA. Because no trace of
this hypothetical primal replicator and catalyst has
been recognized so far in modern biology, RNA must have completely taken over
all of its functions at some point following its emergence."
"Further, the spontaneous appearance of any
such replicator without the assistance of a chemist
faces implausibilities that dwarf those involved in
the preparation of a mere nucleotide soup. Let us presume that a soup
enriched in the building blocks of all of these proposed replicators
has somehow been assembled, under conditions that favor
their connection into chains. They would be accompanied by hordes of
defective building blocks, the inclusion of which would ruin the ability of the
chain to act as a replicator." "There
is no reason to presume that an indifferent nature would not combine units at
random".
"Probability calculations could be made, but I
prefer a variation on a much-used analogy. Picture a gorilla (very long
arms are needed) at an immense keyboard connected to a word processor.
The keyboard contains not only the symbols used in English and European
languages but also a huge excess drawn from every other known language and all
of the symbol sets stored in a typical computer. The chances for the
spontaneous assembly of a replicator in the pool I
described above can be compared to those of the gorilla composing, in English,
a coherent recipe for the preparation of chili con
carne. With similar considerations in mind, Gerald F. Joyce of the
Scripps Research Institute and Leslie Orgel of the
Salk Institute concluded that the spontaneous appearance of RNA chains on the
lifeless Earth 'would have been a near miracle.' I would extend this
conclusion to all of the proposed RNA substitutes that I mentioned above."
"Nobel Laureate Christian
de Duve has called for 'a rejection of
improbabilities so incommensurably high that they can only be called miracles,
phenomena that fall outside the scope of scientific inquiry.' DNA, RNA,
proteins and other elaborate large molecules must then be set aside as
participants in the origin of life."
What is left? Theories that "employ a
thermodynamic rather than a genetic definition of life, under a scheme put
forth by Carl Sagan in the Encyclopedia
Britannica: A localized region which increases in order (decreases in entropy)
through cycles driven by an energy flow would be considered alive."
"I estimate that about a third of the chemists involved in the study
of the origin of life subscribe to theories based on this idea."
It requires: "1) A boundary... to separate
life from non-life." "2) An energy
source". "3) A coupling mechanism must link the release
of energy to the organization process that produces and sustains life.
The release of energy does not necessarily produce a useful result.
Chemical energy is released when gasoline is burned within the cylinders
of my automobile, but the vehicle will not move unless that energy is used to
turn the wheels. A mechanical connection, or coupling, is required."
"4) A chemical network must be formed, to permit adaptation and
evolution" "on a path that leads to increased organization."
"5) The network must grow and reproduce." "We can
imagine, on the early Earth, a situation where many startups
of this type occur, involving many alternative driver reactions and external
energy sources. Finally, a particularly hardy one would take root and
sustain itself." "A system of reproduction must eventually
develop." "Once independent units were extablished,
they could evolve in different ways and compete with one another for raw
materials; we would have made the transition from life that emerges from
nonliving matter through the action of an available energy source to life that
adapts to its environment by Darwinian evolution." "Many
further steps in evolution would be needed to 'invent' the elaborate mechanisms
for replication and specific protein synthesis that we observe in life
today." They "would not reveal the specific events that led to
the familiar DNA-RNA-protein-based organisms of today."
"Systems of the type I have described usually
have been classified under the heading 'metabolism first', which implies that
they do not contain a mechanism for heredity. In other words, they
contain no obvious molecule or structure that allows the information stored in
them (their heredity) to be duplicated and passed on to their
descendants." "Over the years, many theoretical papers have
advanced particular metabolism first schemes, but relatively little
experimental work has been presented in support of them." "They
have not yet demonstrated the operation of a complete cycle or its ability to
sustain itself and undergo further evolution. A 'smoking gun' experiment
displaying those three features is needed to establish the validity of the
small molecule approach."
Shapiro, Robert. June 2007. A Simpler Origin for Life.
Scientific American, Vol. 296, pp. 24-31.
Robert Shapiro, Ph.D. Harvard, is professor emeritus of chemistry and senior
research scientist at
"The feasibility of any particular proposed prebiotic cycle must depend on arguments about chemical
plausibility, rather than on a decision about logical possibility."
The metabolic cycles that have been identified by biochemists are of two
kinds: simple cycles and autocatalytic cycles. The citric acid
cycle" is an example of a simple cycle. "The reverse citric
acid cycle" is an example of an autocatalytic cycle. "Each
molecule of citric acid introduced into the cycle results... in the generation
of two molecules of citric acid." "That is why the cycle is
described as autocatalytic." "The proposal that the reverse
citric acid cycle operated... on the primitive Earth has been a prominent
feature of some scenarios for the origin of life."
"A different kind of autocatalytic cycle, which
has no analog in biochemistry, has been hypothesized
by Stuart Kauffman to self-organize spontaneously whenever amino acids condense
together to form peptides." "Could prebiotic
molecules and catalysts plausibly have the attributes... to make the self-organization
of the cycles possible?"
"The identification of a cycle of plausible prebiotic reactions is a necessary but not a sufficient
step toward the formulation of a plausible self-organizing prebiotic
cycle. The next, and more difficult step, is justifying the exclusion of
side reactions that would disrupt the cycle." "It is not
completely impossible that sufficiently specific mineral catalysts exist for
each of the reactions of the reverse citric acid cycle, but the chance of a
full set of such catalysts occurring at a single locality on the primitive
Earth in the absence of catalysts for disruptive side reactions seems remote in
the extreme."
"It has sometimes been implied or claimed that
[autocatalytic] cycles are not only stable, but also are capable of evolving to
form nonenzymatic networks of great complexity.
Genetic materials are then seen as late additions to already fairly
complex evolved life forms. According to this view, a genetic material
merely adds stability to systems that already have a
substantial 'information content'. "
"One way of achieving something useful might
be to use one of the constituents of the core cycle as the starting point of a
second independent autocatalytic cycle." "Another suggestion
that might be explored is the possibility of a side reaction generating a
catalyst for one of the reactions of the core cycle." "However,
neither of these possibilities, nor any others with which I am familiar
explains how a complex, interconnected family of cycles capable of evolution
could arise or why it should be stable." "What is essential,
therefore, is a reasonably detailed description, hopefully supported by
experimental evidence, of how an evolvable family of cycles might
operate." "Without such a description, acceptance of the
possibility of complex nonenzymatic cyclic
organizations that are capable of evolution can only be based on faith, a
notoriously dangerous route to scientific progress."
"Kauffman takes it for granted that if it is
possible to write down on paper a closed peptide cycle and a set of catalyzed ligations leading from monomeric
amino acids to the peptides of the cycle, then that cycle would self-organize
spontaneously and come to dominate the chemistry of a reaction system.
This... is unlikely because peptide molecules do not have the properties
that Kauffman assigns to them." "I have also explored a number
of alternative systems with different numbers of amino acids or with inputs of
random families of short peptides, and I find that they all encounter similar
or more severe difficulties."
"Kauffman assumes that, in sufficiently
concentrated solution, the naturally occurring amino acids or some subset of
them would condense spontaneously to form a mixture of long peptides in
substantial yield. In practice, this would not happen."
"The catalytic properties of enzymes are remarkable. They not
only accelerate reaction rates by many orders of magnitude, but they also
discriminate between potential substrates that differ very slightly in
structure. Would one expect similar discrimination in the catalytic
potential of peptides of length ten or less? The answer is clearly 'no',
and it is this conclusion that ultimately undermines the peptide cycle
theory."
"Protein catalysis is dependent on the stable
three-dimensional structures of enzymes and enzyme-substrate complexes.
Highly specific catalytic activity could only be expected from short
peptides if they, too, adopted stable structures." "In fact,
short peptides rarely form stable structures, and when they do, the structures
are only marginally stable. The synthesis of a decapeptide
that would catalyze the ligation in the correct order
of two particular pentapeptides out of a mixture of
ten pentapeptides that are required to form the five
cycle components, while failing to bring about any of the other possible ligations, would present an extremely difficult challenge
to peptide chemistry. It seems certain that the additional requirement
that this peptide should also catalyze specifically many of the reactions
leading from amino acids to the pentamer precursors
of the decamers of the cysle
could never be met. Of course, the decamers
need not be formed only from pairs of pentamers, but
the difficulties are no less severe for more complex synthetic networks.
There are a number of possible ways in which this difficulty might be
circumvented, but none seems relevant to the origin of life."
"It is unlikely, therefore, that Kauffman's
theory describes any system relevant to the origin of life."
"It is essential to subject metabolist proposals to the same kind of detailed
examination and criticism that has rightly been applied to genetic
theories." "Because little experimental work has been
attempted, appraisal must be based on chemical plausibility."
"The lack of a supporting background in chemistry is even more
evident in proposals that metabolic cycles can evolve to 'life-like'
complexity. The most serious challenge to proponents of metabolic cycle
theories--the problems presented by the lack of specificity of most nonenzymatic catalysts--has, in general, not been
appreciated. If it has, it has been ignored.
Theories of the origin of life based on metabolic
cycles cannot be justified by the inadequacy of competing theories: they must
stand on their own." "Experimental proof that such cycles are
stable against the challenge of side reactions is even more important."
"The prebiotic syntheses that have been
investigated experimentally almost always lead to the formation of complex
mixtures. Proposed polymer replication schemes are unlikely to succeed
except with reasonably pure input monomers. No solution of the
origin-of-life problem will be possible until the gap between the two kinds of
chemistry is closed." "Solutions offered by supporters of
geneticist or metabolist scenarios that are dependent
on 'if pigs could fly' hypothetical chemistry are unlikely to help."
Orgel, Leslie E. January 2008. The
Implausibility of Metabolic Cycles on the Prebiotic
Earth. Public Library of Science (PLoS) Biology,
Vol. 6, No. 1, e18, pp. 5-13.
Leslie E. Orgel, Ph.D.
After the "tree of life"
In a paper about bacteria, two evolutionary biologists write, "we cannot
rely exclusively on traditional genealogical relationships." "A
single taxonomy will be likely to provide an overly coarse picture".
It should be replaced by "more taxonomies
based on real biological processes". "Discarding all but one of
these process-based taxonomies would be comparable to reducing a person's
identity to a single aspect of his or her life, even though he or she might
have an effective role in many organizations: professional, artistic, sports,
family and so on. To avoid overlooking any of the natural groups, it
seems legitimate to propose - rather than a single taxonomy of microbial
species - many taxonomies". "We
suggest giving up the unique hierarchy as the reference classification system
and instead encourage the production of a comprehensive interactive database in
which an individual could possibly belong to overlapping taxonomical
groups." "Any organism can then be characterized by many names
because it can belong to more than one group at once."
Bapteste, Eric, Yan
Boucher. 2008. Lateral gene transfer challenges principles of microbial systematics. Trends in Microbiology, Vol. 16, No. 5, pp.
200-207.
Epigenetics
These are excerpts from a March 2008 report in
Science News magazine: "Many people regard ribonucleic acid, as RNA is
formally known, as 'just a middleman between DNA and protein,' says Claes Wahlestedt, a
neuroscientist and genome researcher at the Scripps Research Institute in
Jupiter, Fla. Shuttling genetic information
from DNA to a cell's protein factories has long been recognized as RNA's day
job, summarized" as "DNA makes RNA makes protein."
"Some researchers estimate that as much as 98 percent of the human
genome is copied into RNA, says Sofie Salama of the
"More than 20 classes of noncoding
RNA have been discovered in the past decade. Many of these RNAs are much smaller than their protein-coding cousins,
the messenger RNAs. Some noncoding
RNAs contain a mere 20 nucleotides, the chemical
units corresponding to letters in the genetic alphabet. Scientists used
to throw away such short bits of RNA, thinking the tiny pieces were nothing
more than breakdown products of larger molecules--basically garbage, Wahlestedt says."
"Researchers now know that noncoding
RNAs get involved in virtually everything that happens
in or to a cell, says Georges St. Laurent III, a computational and molecular
biologist at
"One class of noncoding
RNAs, known as microRNAs,
modulates production of proteins. MicroRNAs get
their name from their minuscule size--most are only about 22 nucleotides long.
These short pieces of RNA find and bind to complementary sequences in
messenger RNAs. Usually that binding causes the
ribosome, the protein-building machinery in a cell, to grind to a halt.
The ribosome remains paused until other signals allow it to resume making
protein or until the RNA message is destroyed." " 'It's not
only important that you make a particular protein, but when and where you make
it,' Salama says."-- Tina Hesman
Saey.
Non-coding RNAs have
risen from "junk" to "drivers of complexity".21 "Sequencing the genomes of 85 species has
revealed that in any given organism, increasing biological complexity is
correlated with an increasing number of non-protein-coding DNA sequences and
not, as previously assumed, with an increasing number of protein-coding
genes."21 "The sheer number
of non-coding RNAs is estimated in the 100s of
thousands."7 "It is clear
that tens of thousands may operate within a cell".21
"Interference and activation can be caused by
the same transcript".3 "A
large part of the transcriptional activity in the human genome is derived from
repeat sequences".21 "Repeat elements... occupy
40-45% of a typical mammalian genome".3 "Alu repetitive elements constitute 10% of the human
genome".21 "Repeat elements, such as the Alu family in humans and B2 in mice have provided
regulatory signals for RNA PolII transcription."4 "Some of the Alu
elements... may have functions in stress response, chromatin organization or signaling events in the early embryo. Alu transcripts are... activated by heat shock and DNA
damaging agents".21
There are levels of non-coding RNA regulation that
have yet to be discovered.21 Studying the old "junk"
transcripts can lead to understanding hidden layers of cell regulation and how
deregulation can lead to the understanding of human disease.21
"The scientific community is getting more aware of the importance of
the formerly abandoned 'junk' DNA. What we have learned so far is likely
just the tip of the iceberg."21
It is clear that biological complexity depends less
on gene number and more on how those genes are used. Researchers are
realizing that regulation is on multiple levels17; there are intricate
feedback loops. Stretches of DNA can be inactivated by
attaching methyl groups. Tiny embryos need to grow according to a
body plan organized in steps that have to happen at the right time in the right
sequence. Their cells use timers and spatial signals to guide their
growth. For example, a signal chemical is made at one end of an embryo
and spreads out. Cells act according to how much signal chemical reaches
them. Signal chemicals spreading from opposite ends of an embryo can interact
to coordinate construction.13
In small genomes, such as yeast, the parts of DNA
that regulate a gene are next to the gene. In more complex genomes, such
as human and mouse, they can be far apart. Cells have ways, still
unknown, of moving sections of chromosomes next to each other to get the right
parts together to control gene expression.5
This happens constantly.
To respond to a rapidly changing environment, a
creature's genes have to be turned on and off in a highly coordinated way.
The genetic network must be stable under a broad range of conditions, but
flexible enough to recognize and respond to important signals when things
around it change. This operating at the brink of order and chaos is well
known to systems scientists. They call such systems critical.
This property has now been recognized in plants, animals, and microbes.
It allows them to quickly detect and respond to external stimuli, small
or large.3
Zombie science
"Although the classical ideal is that scientific theories are evaluated by
a careful teasing-out of their internal logic and external implications, and
checking whether these deductions and predictions are in-line-with old and new
observations; the fact that so many vague, dumb or incoherent scientific
theories are apparently believed by so many scientists for so many years is
suggestive that this ideal does not necessarily reflect real world practice.
In the real world it looks more like most scientists are quite willing to
pursue wrong ideas for so long as they are rewarded with a better chance of
achieving more grants, publications and status."
To say "that the theory is phoney, and always
was phoney, and this is why it so singularly fails to predict reality is
regarded as simplistic, crass, merely a sign of lack of sophistication.
And anyway, there are... the reputations of numerous scientists who are
now successful and powerful on the back of the phoney theory, and who by now
control the peer review process (including allocation of grants, publications
and jobs) so there is a powerful disincentive against upsetting the apple
cart."
"Zombie science is science that is dead but
will not lie down." "Zombie science is supported because it is
useful propaganda. Zombie science is deployed in arenas such as
political rhetoric, public administration, management, public relations,
marketing and the mass media generally. It persuades, it constructs
taboos, it buttresses some kind of rhetorical attempt
to shape mass opinion. Indeed, zombie science often comes across in the
mass media as being more plausible than real science."
Charlton, Bruce G. 2008. Zombie science: A sinister consequence of evaluating
scientific theories purely on the basis of enlightened self-interest. Medical
Hypotheses, Vol. 71, pp. 327-329.
--- David Coppedge
Speaking of Science, Creation Matters, May/June 2003
1. Alberts, Bruce,
Alexander Johnson, Julian Lewis, Martin Raff, Keith Roberts, Peter Walter.
2008. Molecular Biology of The Cell, 5th
edition.
2. Anderson, G. M. 1996. Thermodynamics
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3. Balleza,
Enrique, Elena R. Alvarez-Buylla, Alvaro Chaos,
Stuart Kauffman, Ilya Shmulevich,
Maximino Aldana. June 2008.
Critical Dynamics in Genetic Regulatory Networks: Examples from Four Kingdoms. PLoS ONE, Vol. 3, No. 6, pp. 1-10.
4.
Carninci,
Piero, Jun Yasuda, Yoshihide
Hayashizaki. 2008. Multifaceted mammalian transcriptome. Current opinion in Cell
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5. Cemic, Ladislav. 2005. Thermodynamics in Mineral Sciences. Springer,
6. Dekker,
Job.
7. Doolittle, W. Ford.
8.
Fåhraeus,
Robin, Marc Blondel. 2008. Editorial: RNA-assisted
protein folding. Biotechnology Journal, Vol. 3, pp. 967-969.
9. Gillooly,
James F., Andrew P. Allen, Geoffrey B. West, James H. Brown.
10.
Gish,
Duane T., PhD. Biochemistry. January 2007. A Few Reasons an Evolutionary Origin
of Life Is Impossible. Impact #403, Acts and Facts, Institute
for Creation Research.
11.
Glass, John I., Nacyra Assad-Garcia, Nina Alperovich, Shibu Yooseph, Matthew R. Lewis, Mahir Maruf, Clyde A. Hutchison III, Hamilton O. Smith, J. Craig
Venter.
12.
13.
Lewis Julian.
14. Lowe,
Craig B., Gill Bejerano, David Haussler.
15.
Lunyak,
Victoria V., Gratien G. Prefontaine,
Esperanza Núñez, Thorsten
Cramer, Bong-Gun Ju, Kenneth A. Ohgi,
Kasey Hutt, Rosa Roy, Angel
García-Díaz, Xiaoyan Zhu, Yun Yung, Lluís Montoliu, Christopher K. Glass, Michael G. Rosenfeld.
16.
Makalowski,
Wojciech.
17.
Makeyev,
Eugene V., Tom Maniatis.
18. Pace, John K. II, Clément
Gilbert, Marlena S. Clark, Cédric
Feschotte.
19. Prigogine, Ilya, Gregoire Nicolis, Agnes Babloyants. 1972.
Thermodynamics of Evolution. Physics Today, Vol. 25, No. 11, pp. 23-44.
20.
Richardson, Michael K., James Hanken, Mayoni L. Gooneratne, Claude Pieau, Albert Raynaud, Lynne Selwood, Glenda M.
Wright. July 1997. There is no highly conserved embryonic stage in the
vertebrates: implications for current theories of evolution and development.
Anatomy and Embryology, Vol. 196, No. 2, pp. 91-106.
21.
Széll,
Márta, Zsuzsanna Bata-Csörgö, Lajos Kemény.
2008. The enigmatic world of mRNA-like ncRNAs: Their
role in human evolution and in human diseases. Seminars in Cancer Biology, Vol.
18, pp. 141-148.
22.
Weaver, Robert F. 2008. Molecular
Biology, Fourth Edition.
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Wood, Richard D., Michael
Mitchell, John Sgouros, Tomas Lindahl.
John Michael Fischer, 2006-2008
www.newgeology.us