Evolutionary Theory: Just Add Water

They left quite a few details out: First the peptides used were synthetically produced by a chemist in a lab: One convention is that those peptide chains that are short enough to be made synthetically from the constituent amino acids are called peptides rather than proteins. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peptide Second they reference the Miller-Urey Experiment and fail to mention: Miller-Urey Experiment Excerpt: While successful in trapping some amino acids, this is now recognized as not being analogous to the real natural world - there are no known or even hypothesized protective traps observed in nature. What they made was 85% tar, 13% carboxylic add, (both toxic to life) and only 2% amino acids. Problem: mostly only 2 of the 20 different amino acids life needed were produced, and they are much more likely to bond with the tar or acid than they are with each other. Half of the amino acids were right-handed and half were left-handed. This is a problem because all proteins are left-handed and even the smallest proteins have 70-100 amino acids all in the precise order. http://www.soulharvest.info/FAQ/Evolution/Commonlies/MillerUrey.html Dr. Charles Garner on the problem of Chirality in nature and Origin of Life Research - audio http://intelligentdesign.podomatic.com/player/web/2010-04-12T17_21_16-07_00 Homochirality and Darwin - Robert Sheldon - April 2010 Excerpt: there is no abiotic path from a racemic solution to a stereo-active solution of amino acid(s) that doesn't involve a biotic chiral agent, be it chiral beads or Louis Pasteur himself. Like many critiques of ID, the problem with these "Darwinist" solutions is that they always smuggle in some information, in this case, chiral agents. http://procrustes.blogtownhall.com/2010/04/27/homochirality_and_darwin.thtml Second the "just add water" reference is absurd. Water is considered a 'universal solvent' which is a very thermodynamic obeying and thus origin of life defying fact. Abiogenic Origin of Life: A Theory in Crisis - Arthur V. Chadwick, Ph.D. Excerpt: The synthesis of proteins and nucleic acids from small molecule precursors represents one of the most difficult challenges to the model of prebiological evolution. There are many different problems confronted by any proposal. Polymerization is a reaction in which water is a product. Thus it will only be favored in the absence of water. The presence of precursors in an ocean of water favors depolymerization of any molecules that might be formed. Careful experiments done in an aqueous solution with very high concentrations of amino acids demonstrate the impossibility of significant polymerization in this environment. A thermodynamic analysis of a mixture of protein and amino acids in an ocean containing a 1 molar solution of each amino acid (100,000,000 times higher concentration than we inferred to be present in the prebiological ocean) indicates the concentration of a protein containing just 100 peptide bonds (101 amino acids) at equilibrium would be 10^-338 molar. Just to make this number meaningful, our universe may have a volume somewhere in the neighborhood of 10^85 liters. At 10^-338 molar, we would need an ocean with a volume equal to 10^229 universes (100, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000) just to find a single molecule of any protein with 100 peptide bonds. So we must look elsewhere for a mechanism to produce polymers. It will not happen in the ocean. http://origins.swau.edu/papers/life/chadwick/default.html Professor Arthur E. Wilder-Smith "Any amounts of polypeptide which might be formed will be broken down into their initial components (amino acids) by the excess of water. The ocean is thus practically the last place on this or any other planet where the proteins of life could be formed spontaneously from amino acids. Yet nearly all text-books of biology teach this nonsense to support evolutionary theory and spontaneous biogenesis ... Has materialistic Neo-Darwinian philosophy overwhelmed us to such an extent that we forget or overlook the well-known facts of science and of chemistry in order to support this philosophy? ... Without exception all Miller's amino acids are completely unsuitable for any type of spontaneous biogenesis. And the same applies to all and any randomly formed substances and amino acids which form racemates. This statement is categorical and absolute and cannot be affected by special conditions." http://theevolutioncrisis.org.uk/testimony3.php Sea Salt only adds to this thermodynamic problem. ...even at concentrations seven times weaker than in today’s oceans. The ingredients of sea salt are very effective at dismembering membranes and preventing RNA units (monomers) from forming polymers any longer than two links (dimers). Creation Evolution News - Sept. 2002 The primordial soup reference of theirs is bogus as well: There are no chemical signatures in the geologic record indicating a ocean of this pre-biotic soup ever existed. The Primordial Soup Myth: Excerpt: "Accordingly, Abelson(1966), Hull(1960), Sillen(1965), and many others have criticized the hypothesis that the primitive ocean, unlike the contemporary ocean, was a "thick soup" containing all of the micromolecules required for the next stage of molecular evolution. The concept of a primitive "thick soup" or "primordial broth" is one of the most persistent ideas at the same time that is most strongly contraindicated by thermodynamic reasoning and by lack of experimental support." - Sidney Fox, Klaus Dose on page 37 in Molecular Evolution and the Origin of Life. http://theory-of-evolution.net/chap11/primordial-soup-myth.php New Research Rejects 80-Year Theory of 'Primordial Soup' as the Origin of Life - Feb. 2010 "Despite bioenergetic and thermodynamic failings the 80-year-old concept of primordial soup remains central to mainstream thinking on the origin of life, But soup has no capacity for producing the energy vital for life." William Martin, an evolutionary biologist http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100202101245.htm bornagain77