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| Chapter 3. Sixteen Fatal Roadblocks against a Purely Natural Formation of Life. Fatal Roadblock Number 13. The Fantasy of Self-Replication. There is a natural inability for a single molecule to do all of the steps necessary to copy itself. There is a serious problem facing the evolutionist. In discussing the earlier roadblocks, we have seen how difficult it would be to get a single enzyme to appear spontaneously out of a pre-life soup. Yet, getting a single molecule means nothing. There also needs to be a mechanism to copy the enzyme if it did form. Yet, enzyme-copying mechanisms are elaborate and most evolutionists will acknowledge the unreasonableness of getting an elaborate copying mechanism to appear in a single-step. However, if a molecule could accidentally form that could make copies of itself, using the raw materials available to it, then this seems more reasonable. Such a molecule is called a “self- replicating molecule.” Self-replicating molecules of various kinds can be created by a biochemist in a laboratory. The goal is to find one that could reasonably have formed out of the raw materials of a pre-life soup in an origin-of-life scenario. Enzymes do not have the ability to store information. Storage is a task more compatible with the characteristics of RNA and DNA. However, RNA strings can both act as enzymes and store information. Therefore, it seems that if there were a string of RNA that could copy itself, it would solve the problem. Both enzymatic and information storage tasks would be accomplished in a single molecule. Therefore, the appearance of an RNA-based self-replicating molecule at an early stage in the development of the first cell seems to be an essential step towards a natural origin of life. To those who accept evolution by faith, it becomes so critical for life to have gone through the self- replicating molecule stage of development that the issue is not if it happened, but rather the particular manner in which it happened. We should not forget, though, that the notion of an RNA nucleotide-rich soup contradicts the things we have learned from observation. As we discussed in Roadblock 6, Contradictory Processes, there is no known means for viable natural processes to form a soup containing a high concentration of RNA nucleotides. Without appropriate raw materials as a feed stock, the target RNA self-replicator could not form. I was participating in an Internet discussion group on some of these issues once. One of the participants in the group was taking issue with my arguments and position. He said that tremendous strides had taken place in the laboratory concerning self-replicating molecules, showing how simple it would have been for them to have formed on an ancient, pre-life earth. Oh, how I wished he would have read the journals instead of just listened to and believed the empty rhetoric from an evolutionary salesman. Just how far have we actually progressed in the laboratory concerning self-replicating molecule experiments? In 2002, the National Academy of Sciences featured an article on a self-replicating molecule. 16 This article is only six years old and was published by a prestigious organization. Hence, it may be considered representative of fairly recent state-of-the-art in self-replication theory and experimentation. This article reported on an experiment. A solution containing RNA strings composed of a specific 48-nucleotide sequence was purchased from a biochemical supply house. A second solution composed of RNA strings of a different, 13-nucleotide sequence was purchased from a different supplier. The goal of the experiment was for these two kinds of strings to join together on a template to produce a third string comprised of 61 RNA nucleotides. This third string would be chemically identical to the template and could serve as a template for future repetitions of the process. When the solutions from the suppliers were mixed together along with some template seeds for starting the process, it was found that new instances of the third, template string appeared in the solution. The conclusion was that the template was self-replicating, that it was able to make copies of itself using the raw materials of the solution. It was amazing to me to see that this experiment was considered noteworthy. The problems with it should be self-evident. 1. In a pre-life situation there would be no supply houses to serve as a source for these extremely long, very complicated molecules. This experiment has nothing to do with real life. 2. There were no potential cross linkers or spurious side chain formers in the solution. It would have been much more interesting to hear about the results if lots of formic acid, vinegar, sugars, alcohols, ammonia, and other active chemicals had been in the solution, and in a realistic proportionality to what one would rationally expect to find in real life. The situation was kind of like a football game with only one team on the field. During workouts, a coach may drill a team in the plays he wants it to learn and he might not have any defensive players on the field while the plays are being practiced. Scores made under these conditions bear no relationship to a team’s ability to score in a true game situation. The same applies to origin of life experiments done without potential terminators and spurious cross linkers in the solution. The typical response of an evolutionist to this kind of criticism is to claim that adding these “contaminants” would greatly increase the amount of time required to get the target reaction. Realistically, the contaminants would be more likely to turn everything to tar and to stop progress altogether. More time would only mean more tar. This is certainly what happens during modern origin-of-life experiments, as we have already discussed. 3. I was surprised that the goal of the experiment was merely to join together two extremely long, already sequenced strings of RNA. It would be much more interesting to put an RNA template into a soup of RNA nucleotides, amino acids, various terminators, and various active ammonia compounds along with some kind of uncontrolled energy source and then observe what happens. This would at least be a more realistic modeling of the real world, not just a laboratory curiosity. 4. Even at this the experiment did not work as planned. In order to get good results, some seeds of the template were mixed with only one of the RNA strings; the other needed to be absent. Then, when the second string was added, the reaction proceeded. However, if the two strings were added to each other without a template, they quickly joined to each other in a non-useful random manner and only slowly came apart to fasten to a template. Again, if real life contaminants had been in the solution, they probably would also have combined with the randomly joined RNA strings and the whole mess would have headed straight to the goo. In one sense as a creationist I like this experiment. It shows just how remote a possibility it would be to actually get a self-replicating molecule in pre-life conditions. There is no known viable mechanism to get an RNA nucleotide soup, and the experimenters started with a 48-nucleotide base RNA string. The gap between the experiment and pre-life conditions is overwhelming. The accomplished results are not. It amazes me that the National Academy of Sciences thought this experiment significant enough to publish the results. It appeared more effective in documenting the sorry state of self-replication art than to confirm its reasonableness. Now, if one could start with raw materials such as Stanley Miller used in his experiment, form a soup from them, and then form a self-replicating molecule from the unmodified contents of the soup, that might have some validity. This would not prove that it was the way the things happened historically, but at least it would demonstrate such a possibility. However, to do this would go against so many fundamental processes of science that no one expects it to happen. No self-replicating experiments start at the level of Miller’s experiment or its equivalent. It is known and understood that if this were done, tar and not self-replicating molecules would be the result. I wish evolutionists would talk about these kinds of things, instead of presenting their fairy-tales as scientific fact. The laws of science teach against the practical possibility of a self-replicating molecule forming in a pre-life environment. |