| 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 9. No Pre-life Mechanism to Copy Useful Enzymes. A single enzyme is not useful for much of anything, even inside a single cell. Instead, multiple copies of enzymes are needed in order to accomplish anything of significance. So, even if a useful enzyme happened to show up through random processes in an origin-of-life scenario, then how would it be recognized as useful and then copied? In one sense this is actually two separate roadblocks, since it represents two unrelated issues. Recognition of a useful enzyme sequence is not trivial. In real life, enzymes typically work as part of a team of enzymes. It is not enough to get a useful amino acid sequence and produce a single useful enzyme. That enzyme must also appear in the right time and right place to do some kind of a needed function. Otherwise, even if it is useful and maybe even necessary for some critically required function, the fact that it has not appeared in the right place or the right time for that function makes it essentially worthless. If a university were to send out a single basketball player onto a football field to represent the school in a football game, it would be embarrassing for the school and possibly dangerous for the player. There would be absolutely no way to evaluate how good the basketball player might actually be. He was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Indeed,, the same player might lead the school to a national championship when he represented them in basketball and was surrounded by proper players. Living systems are extremely complicated. It is not enough simply to get required component parts. They need to show up at the right time and in the right situation or they are useless. So, how does an emerging cell recognize that a randomly formed sequence of amino acids actually has value? If it did recognize this, how does it protect it from being further modified and its usefulness destroyed? Beyond this there is the issue of how to make copies of an enzyme if it is indeed useful. In real life, copies of enzymes are made using information was has been placed in RNA or DNA. This information is stored in a specific code. The cell uses approximately 100 or so enzymes and ribozymes in order 1. to extract the information from the DNA, 2. build the required enzymes according to the amino acid sequence coded in the DNA, and 3. to control when the enzyme is built and where it is used. All of the components of an enzyme copier need to be in place or the system does not work:
2. There needs to be the proper information contained in the RNA. 3. There needs to be a means to copy the RNA for use by future generations. 4. There needs to be a means to convert the stored information into the intended product enzyme. 5. There needs to be a means to control properly the timing of when the enzyme gets built and where it is used. 6. There needs to be a source of controlled energy to drive the whole process. Missing any part of this process will render the other parts useless. There is a concept being discussed today called “irreducible complexity.” It is considered by many to represent evidence of Intelligent design. A very clear example of irreducible complexity is the mechanism that a living cell uses in order to extract and use the information contained in the genetic code. Evolutionists in general acknowledge the seriousness of this problem. Their proposed solution features what is called a self-replicating molecule, a molecule that can make copies of itself. The underlying concept is that after a self-replicating molecule accidentally appears that it can gradually evolve into more and more complex forms. Eventually, cooperating self-replicating molecules would work together. This would lead to complex systems formed by association with other self-replicating molecules, with a gradual development of cooperative specialization. Eventually, these complex systems somehow developed into an actual living cell. It is important to realize that all of the discussion on self-replicating molecules is nothing more than a fantasy. There is zero physical evidence that it ever existed. It is a fantasy proposed by the evolutionist out of necessity. Why? Because no other mechanism has been thought of in order to get from the products of an experiment such as Miller’s to an actual fully-developed, living cell. We will talk about the difficulties of a self-replicating molecule in the discussion for Fatal Roadblock Number 14. Just be assured for now that no origin-of-life experiment has ever produced anything close to a self-replicating molecule and that there is a long list of principles from biochemistry which would lead a rational person to reject the possibility of them ever forming by random chance in a pre-life environment. This inability to copy anything useful that might show up in the earliest stages of cell development is a fatal roadblock to a natural origin of life. |