| Creation Truth Outreach, Inc. Pamphlet |
| © 2007 Creation Truth Outreach, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This pamphlet may be freely copied provided it is copied in its entirety, its contents are not altered in any manner, and additional or tighter copyright restrictions than these are not imposed on it. Revised May 5, 2008 |
| Chapter 3. Sixteen Fatal Roadblocks against a Purely Natural Formation of Life. Fatal Roadblock Number 12. Information is Useless Without A Decoder. This is the counterpart to the previous fatal roadblock. An already living cell uses an extremely complicated decoding system to extract information from RNA, as we discussed in the previous roadblock. Just a partial accounting of the essential functions of a decoding system is implemented in life by over 100 enzymes. If it is this difficult to read information, how could initial information ever get read in an origin-of-life scenario? Evolutionists may speculate that an earlier system would not have required this degree of complexity. Well, what would the minimum complexity be? We need enough kinds of amino acids to make both enzyme sheets and coils and loops. Six is not enough. Yet, even such an inadequate system would still require the simultaneous appearance of six species of transfer RNA molecules, one for each amino acid, plus six transfer RNA promoters (enzymes which fasten a particular amino acid to its associated transfer RNA molecule), and something to serve as a ribosome. Suppose we allot ten enzymes to the ribosome function, which, considering the complexity of a ribosome, is rationally unreasonably low. Then we are still looking at at least 22 enzymes that need to show up simultaneously with the appearance of sufficient information in the DNA to build them. In reality, a system such as this is not complex enough to make the sheets, coils, and loops of the enzymes to make an information decoder. Yet, without the simultaneous appearance of an adequate information decoder and the information to specify its construction, physical life cannot exist. Mutation and natural selection cannot be used to generate this initial quantity of information. Notice, evolutionists talk about self-replicating molecules as being the first step towards getting a living cell. We will discuss self-replicating molecules in the next roadblock. However, it is worth pointing out that even if a self-replicating molecule could be formed under origin-of-life conditions, which it can’t, the gap between it and a true information based copying system is essentially infinite. Evolutionists gloss over the size of this gap and simply state as fact that once self- replication got underway, everything else would be automatic. That is the equivalent of believing a fairy tale. We have already talked about how the genetic code, an extensive body of information based on it, and many, many specialized components need to come about in a single step. It represents an irreducibly complex system. None of the components have any value without the presence of all of the others. Furthermore, arbitrary selection, not natural selection, needs to be used to make many of the design choices. Thus, the detailed observations we learn from science teach us that natural selection and slow gradual processes do not provide adequate means to jump the gap from a self-replicating molecule to an information-based system. Being unable to use any information that might accidentally form before a decoder exists to interpret the information is a fatal roadblock to a natural formation of life. |