To dream the impossible dream: the quest for the 50-bit life form

_{Vincent Torley

July 24, 2011

Darwinism, Intelligent Design}

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Aleksandr Oparin and John von Neumann. Courtesy of Russavia, Beelaj and Wikipedia.

In two separate comments (see here and here) on a recent post of mine, Intelligent Design critic Dave Mullenix posed a question to ID supporters, which often comes up on this blog:

[W]hy do you ID people insist that the first living thing was complex? 500 to 1000 bits of information? Try 50 to 100. Think of a single polymer whose only capability is reproducing itself, and which is possibly imbedded in the kind of droplets that form naturally…

A simple self replicating molecule isn’t much compared to modern life, but if it self-replicates and allows evolution, it’s all the start we need and a small polymer would do it. Don’t worry about proteins, they come later. Don’t worry about metabolism – that’s also for advanced life. For first life, reproduction with the possibility of Darwinian evolution is all we need and a short polymer will do the trick.

Dave Mullenix confesses to not yet having read Dr. Stephen Meyer’s Signature in the Cell, although he has purchased a Kindle version of the book. I realize that he is a very busy man, and I also realize that other Intelligent Design critics have voiced similar objections previously, so I’ve written this post in order to explain why the scenario Dave Mullenix proposes will not work.

What motivates the quest for a 50-bit life form?

Dave Mullenix is surely well aware of the research of Dr. Douglas Axe, which has shown that the vast majority of 150-amino-acid sequences are non-functional, and that the likelihood of a single protein – that is, any working protein, never mind which one – arising by pure chance on the early earth is astronomically low. Nor can necessity account for the origin of DNA, RNA or proteins. All of these molecules are made up of biological building blocks – nucleotides in the case of DNA and RNA, and amino acids in the case of proteins. Just as the properties of stone building blocks do not determine their arrangements in buildings, so too, the properties of biological building blocks do not determine their arrangements in DNA, RNA and proteins.

If neither chance nor necessity can account for the appearance of fully functional RNA, DNA and proteins, then evolutionists have no choice but to assume that these molecules arose from something even simpler, which was capable of evolving into these molecules. This is the logic which underlies Dave Mullenix’s proposal regarding the origin of life.

Why a 50-bit life form wouldn’t work

Actually, a similar proposal was made by origin-of-life researcher Aleksandr Oparin in the late 1960s. In his original model, put forward in the 1920s and 1930s, Oparin had assumed that chance alone could account for the origin of the proteins which make cellular metabolism possible. However, the discovery of the extreme complexity and specificity of protein molecules, coupled with the inability of his model to explain the origin of the information in DNA, forced him to revise his original proposal for the chemical evolution of life on earth. Dr. Stephen Meyer continues the story in Signature in the Cell (HarperOne, New York, 2009), pages 273-277:

As the complexity of DNA and proteins became apparent, Oparin published a revised version of his theory in 1968 that envisioned a role for natural selection earlier in the process of abiogenesis. The new version of his theory claimed that natural selection acted on unspecified polymers as they formed and changed within his coacervate protocells.[5] Instead of natural selection acting on fully functional proteins in order to maximize the effectiveness of primitive metabolic processes at work within the protocells, Oparin proposed that natural selection might work on less than fully functional polypeptides, which would naturally cause them to increase their specificity and function, eventually making metabolism possible. He envisioned natural selection acting on “primitive proteins” rather than on primitive metabolic processes in which fully functional proteins had already arisen….

[Oparin] proposed that natural selection initially would act on unspecified strings of polypeptides of nucleotides and amino acids. But this created another problem for his scenario. Researchers pointed out that any system of molecules for copying information would be subject to a phenomenon known as “error catastrophe” unless these molecules are specified enough to ensure an error-free transmission of information. An error catastrophe occurs when small errors – deviations from functionally necessary sequences – are amplified in successive replications.[14] Since the evidence of molecular biology shows that unspecified polypeptides will not replicate genetic information accurately, Oparin’s proposed system of initially unspecified polymers would have been highly vulnerable to such an error catastrophe.

Thus, the need to explain the origin of specified information created an intractable dilemma for Oparin. If, on the one hand, Oparin invoked natural selection early in the process of chemical evolution (i.e. before functional specificity in amino acids or nucleotides had arisen), accurate replication would have been impossible. But in the absence of such replication, differential reproduction cannot proceed and the concept of natural selection is incoherent.

On the [other] hand, if Oparin introduced natural selection late in his scenario, he would need to rely on chance alone to produce the sequence-specific molecules necessary for accurate self-replication. But even by the late 1960s, many scientists regarded that as implausible given the complexity and specificity of the molecules in question…

The work of John von Neumann, one of the leading mathematicians of the twentieth century, made this dilemma more acute. In 1966, von Neumann showed that any system capable of self-replication would require sub-systems that were functionally equivalent to the information storage, replicating and processing systems found in extant cells.[16] His calculations established an extremely high threshold of minimal biological function, a conclusion that was confirmed by later experimental work.[17] On the basis of the minimal complexity and related considerations, several scientists during the late 1960s (von Neumann, physicist Eugene Wigner, biophysicist Harold Morowitz) made calculations showing that random fluctuations of molecules were extremely unlikely to produce the minimal complexity required for a primitive replication system.[18]…

As a result, by the late 1960s, many scientists had come to regard the hypothesis of prebiotic natural selection as indistinguishable from the pure chance hypothesis, since random molecular interactions were still needed to generate the initial complement of biological information that would make natural selection possible. Prebiotic natural selection could add nothing to the process of information generation until after vast amounts of functionally specified information had first arisen by chance.

References

[5] Oparin, A. Genesis and Evolutionary Development of Life, New York: Academic, 1968, pp. 146-147.

[14] Joyce, Gerald F. and Leslie Orgel, “Prospects for Understanding the Origin of the RNA World.” In The RNA World, edited by Raymond F. Gesteland and John J. Atkins, I-25. Cold Spring Harbor, NY: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 1993. See especially pp. 8-13.

[16] Von Neumann, John. The Theory of Self-Replicating Automata. Completed and edited by A. Burks. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1966.

[17] Pennisi, Elizabeth. “Seeking Life’s Bare (Genetic) Necessities”. Science 272(1996): 1098-99.
Mushegian, Arcady, and Eugene Koonin, “A Minimal Gene Set for Cellular Life Derived by Comparison of Complete Bacterial Genomes”. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 93 (1996): 10268-10273.

[18] Wigner, Eugene. “The Probability of the Existence of a Self-Reproducing Unit.” In The Logic of Personal Knowledge: Essays Presented to Michael Polyani, edited by Edward Shils, pp. 231-235. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961. [But see here for a critique by physicist John C. Baez. – VJT]
Morowitz, Harold J. “The Minimum Size of the Cell,”in Energy Flow in Biology: Biological Organization as a Problem in Thermal Physics, New York: Academic, 1968, pp. 10-11.

(Emphases mine – VJT.)

In conclusion: there are good reasons for thinking that a 50-bit life-form would never work. Since it would not be capable of accurate self-replication, it would be unable to evolve into larger molecules such as RNA, DNA and proteins. Intelligent Design critics who attempt to overcome the astronomical odds against these molecules forming naturally by hypothesizing a simpler, 50-bit life-form that generated them are, like the man of La Mancha, dreaming the impossible dream.

Let me finish my essay by quoting the beautiful lyrics of the song, The Impossible Dream. The song was composed by Mitch Leigh, and the lyrics were written by Joe Darion. It was written for the 1965 musical, “Man of La Mancha”:

To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go

To right the unrightable wrong
To love pure and chaste from afar
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star

This is my quest, to follow that star
No matter how hopeless, no matter how far
To fight for the right, without question or pause
To be willing to march into Hell, for a Heavenly cause

And I know if I’ll only be true, to this glorious quest,
That my heart will lie will lie peaceful and calm, when I’m laid to my rest

And the world will be better for this:
That one man, scorned and covered with scars,
Still strove, with his last ounce of courage,
To reach the unreachable star.

Comments

>> ‘Organized’ systems are to be carefully distinguished from ‘ordered’ systems. Neither kind of system is ‘random,’ but whereas ordered systems are generated according to simple algorithms [[i.e. “simple” force laws acting on objects starting from arbitrary and common- place initial conditions] and therefore lack complexity, organized systems must be assembled element by element according to an [[originally . . . ] external ‘wiring diagram’ with a high information content . . . Organization, then, is functional complexity and carries information. It is non-random by design or by selection, rather than by the a priori necessity of crystallographic ‘order.’ [[J S Wicken, “The Generation of Complexity in Evolution: A Thermodynamic and Information-Theoretical Discussion,” Journal of Theoretical Biology, 77 (April 1979): p. 353, of pp. 349-65. >>kairosfocus_{July 26, 2011
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Nick Matzke:
Re: error catastophe — dmullenix has the basic correct response here: The only thing I would add is that Nowak’s model explains how you might gradually get above the error catastrophe.
If dmullenix has the basic correct response, what need is there of a model explaining how you might gradually get above the error catastrophe? Basically Dave did a bunch of hand-waving and asserted without factual basis that there is no "error catastrophe" problem. And then you come in and say he's right but he's wrong. Go figure. Dave asserted that the error catastrophe problem is not relevant to simple enough polymers.
This doesn’t affect the simple polymer theory of OOL.
So at what point does it become relevant? Well, according to Dave, it never becomes relevant.
Now we have two, slightly different, polymers reproducing – and Darwinian evolution is off and running. And error catastrophes can’t stop it.
He just hand-waved away the entire issue. You guys are amazing, you really are. At some point the length of the genome must increase, and when it does error threshold does in fact become an issue. There is no magical Darwinian evolution kicks in and error catastrophes can't stop it.Mung_{July 26, 2011
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". . . In brief, living organisms are distinguished by their specified complexity. Crystals are usually taken as the prototypes of simple well-specified structures, because they consist of a very large number of identical molecules packed together in a uniform way. Lumps of granite or random mixtures of polymers are examples of structures that are complex but not specified. The crystals fail to qualify as living because they lack complexity; the mixtures of polymers fail to qualify because they lack specificity." [[Leslie Orgel, The Origins of Life (John Wiley, 1973), p. 189.]kairosfocus_{July 26, 2011
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Can anyone give us an example of a self-replicating molecule?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CrystalMung_{July 26, 2011
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Random responses to various points: Shapiro quote:
And here are Dr. Robert Shapiro’s comments on Matzke’s proposed drying-and-freezing cycle
That's a specific response to one specific 1995 experiment, which has definitely been surpassed by the 2009 RNA syntheses. And Shapiro doesn't deny that freezing, drying, etc. concentration mechanisms would all exist on a prebiotic earth. As long as you have water and ice and volcanoes, concentration mechanisms are a sure thing. Re: error catastophe -- dmullenix has the basic correct response here:
But then Meyer assumes that even if he had been able to get the initial information into the DNA somehow, the reproductive machinery would have been too simple to do high fidelity reproduction and the organisms would have been killed off by ever mounting errors, or the “error catastrophe”. This doesn’t affect the simple polymer theory of OOL. Assume you have a shortish polymer – a molecule that is a string made of smaller molecules – monomers. Polymers are constantly forming and being torn apart with each new one being different from its predecessors. Finally, one is formed that manages to reproduce itself at least once before it’s torn apart. This would be the first molecule of life. Now suppose that before it reproduces itself, it makes several defective copies. Too short, wrong sequence of monomers, folded over on itself, whatever. They don’t reproduce, so they are slowly torn apart like all the other polymers. So long as the original polymer manages to make at least one good copy before it’s destroyed, life goes on. Now suppose that the polymer makes a copy of itself that is almost accurate, but contains one or two errors – and that mutated copy also manages to copy itself before it is destroyed. Now we have two, slightly different, polymers reproducing – and Darwinian evolution is off and running. And error catastrophes can’t stop it.
The only thing I would add is that Nowak's model explains how you might gradually get above the error catastrophe. Monomers keep flowing in from the general environment, concentration forms polymers, which then degrade. This turnover system creates a population of polymers with a distribution of lengths, and the polymers are continually turning over. But if some of the polymers (or, IMHO even more likely, a combination of even shorter polymers) help catalyze the formation of even approximately self-similar polymers, this will change the equilibrium frequency of such polymers in a positive direction. Re: RNA synthesis difficulties -- quoting stuff published before 2009, including quotes from Shapiro and Stephen Meyer, is pretty much pointless, since it turned out that making even the "hardest" RNA nucleobase, cytosine, wasn't so hard. Ironically, what was required was abandonment of the typical chemists' strategy -- first form nucleobases in isolation, then put in phosphate, etc. -- and instead have the various ingredients together from the start. This makes the experimental chemist's life harder when they try to figure out the details of the reactions in the lab, but it is undoubtedly more realistic.
Published online 13 May 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.471 RNA world easier to make Ingenious chemistry shows how nucleotides may have formed in the primordial soup. Richard Van Noorden RNADid life begin with RNA?Wikimedia Commons An elegant experiment has quashed a major objection to the theory that life on Earth originated with molecules of RNA. John Sutherland and his colleagues from the University of Manchester, UK, created a ribonucleotide, a building block of RNA, from simple chemicals under conditions that might have existed on the early Earth. The feat, never performed before, bolsters the 'RNA world' hypothesis, which suggests that life began when RNA, a polymer related to DNA that can duplicate itself and catalyse reactions, emerged from a prebiotic soup of chemicals. "This is extremely strong evidence for the RNA world. We don't know if these chemical steps reflect what actually happened, but before this work there were large doubts that it could happen at all," says Donna Blackmond, a chemist at Imperial College London. Molecular choreography An RNA polymer is a string of ribonucleotides, each made up of three distinct parts: a ribose sugar, a phosphate group and a base -- either cytosine or uracil, known as pyrimidines, or the purines guanine or adenine. Imagining how such a polymer might have formed spontaneously, chemists had thought the subunits would probably assemble themselves first, then join to form a ribonucleotide. But even in the controlled atmosphere of a laboratory, efforts to connect ribose and base together have met with frustrating failure. The Manchester researchers have now managed to synthesise both pyrimidine ribonucleotides. Their remedy is to avoid producing separate ribose-sugar and base subunits. Instead, Sutherland's team makes a molecule whose scaffolding contains a bond that will turn out to be the key ribose-base connection. Further atoms are then added around this skeleton, which unfurls to create the ribonucleotide. "We had a suspicion there was something good out there, but it took us 12 years to find it." The final connection is to add a phosphate group. But that phosphate, although only a reactant in the final stages of the sequence, influences the entire synthesis, Sutherland's team showed. By buffering acidity and acting as a catalyst, it guides small organic molecules into making the right connections. "We had a suspicion there was something good out there, but it took us 12 years to find it," Sutherland says. "What we have ended up with is molecular choreography, where the molecules are unwitting choreographers." Next, he says, he expects to make purine ribonucleotides using a similar approach. The start of something special? Although Sutherland has shown that it is possible to build one part of RNA from small molecules, objectors to the RNA-world theory say the RNA molecule as a whole is too complex to be created using early-Earth geochemistry. "The flaw with this kind of research is not in the chemistry. The flaw is in the logic -- that this experimental control by researchers in a modern laboratory could have been available on the early Earth," says Robert Shapiro, a chemist at New York University. Sutherland points out that the sequence of steps he uses is consistent with early-Earth scenarios -- those involving methods such as heating molecules in water, evaporating them and irradiating them with ultraviolet light. And breaking RNA's synthesis down into small, laboratory-controlled steps is merely a pragmatic starting point, he says, adding that his team also has results showing that they can string nucleotides together, once they have formed. "My ultimate goal is to get a living system (RNA) emerging from a one-pot experiment. We can pull this off. We just need to know what the constraints on the conditions are first." Shapiro sides with supporters of another theory of life's origins - that because RNA is too complex to emerge from small molecules, simpler metabolic processes, which eventually catalysed the formation of RNA and DNA, were the first stirrings of life on Earth. "They're perfectly entitled to disagree with us. But having got experimental results, we are on the high ground," says Sutherland. "Ultimately, the challenge of prebiotic chemistry is that there is no way of validating historical hypotheses, however convincing an individual experiment," points out Steven Benner, who studies origin-of-life chemistry at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution, a non-profit research centre in Gainesville, Florida. Sutherland, though, hopes that ingenious organic chemistry might provide an RNA synthesis so convincing that it effectively serves as proof. "We might come up with something so coincidental that one would have to believe it," he says. "That is the goal of my career." References Powner, M. W., Gerland, B. & Sutherland, J. D. Nature 459, 239-242 2009
What was Stephen Meyer's main response to this work? Well, said he, it doesn't explain the origin of information and specified , just the origin of the monomer building blocks. But explaining the origin of the information-bearing polymers, given those monomers, is what Nowak's work is about. VJTorley complained that Nowak's paper didn't include any chemistry. Meyer complained that Sutherland's work didn't explain information. But...shocker, I know...**different papers address different aspects of the issue**!! Not every paper can address every aspect of a huge and complex topic at once. It is decidedly un-scholarly to declare that there is some gaping unsolvable hole in OOL research because one paper doesn't address every difficulty with the OOL that you can think up over breakfast, when other papers, very well-known in the field if not among armchair critics sitting on blogs, address those issues explicitly. To sum up: Do we understand everything about the OOL? Obviously not. There are all kinds of puzzles. But are we making progress? Obviously we are. Key difficulties, both conceptual and chemical -- including the specific difficulties ID proponents like to raise -- are gradually being understood and overcome. If the best difficulties they can think of turn out to evaporate once sufficient knowledge is gained, then we have even less reason to think that the OOL is "impossible" and therefore requires supernatural intervention than we had before. What is not convincing at all is to object to the OOL on the basis of either (a) not knowing of obviously relevant work, (b) citing old quotes that have been rendered irrelevant by new work, and (c) failing to consider the obvious point that each paper focuses on a specific question and does not address every issue you might think up while pondering the issue over your cheerios at breakfast.NickMatzke_UD_{July 26, 2011
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Can anyone give us an example of a self-replicating molecule?Eric Anderson_{July 26, 2011
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dmullenix @44: Steve Meyer didn't "admit" anything. You make it sound like he finally was backed into a corner and had to admit something he didn't want to, which is a complete misreading of his position and the record. He, as do many ID proponents, accepts the general view of the age of the earth (currently thought to be around 4.6BY). That the questioner was a complete jerk and that Dr. Meyer had hoped to participate in a fair hearing is clear from the transcript you linked to, but don't characterize it as some "admission." Your apology is noted, but your characterization of why you were wrong seems a bit off. It wasn't that Meyer admitted something that you didn't know he had admitted, but rather that you just didn't know his position in the first place. Sorry to be a bit blunt. Maybe it was just the way you worded the quick comment . . .Eric Anderson_{July 26, 2011
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dmullenix:
Remember, “life” is when the first molecule reproduces itself before it is degraded and that takes into account any failed attempts.
Translation: Life is what I say it is regardless of any evidence to the contrary. Is "life" with quote marks different from life without quote marks?Mung_{July 26, 2011
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as well, plate tectonics is found to be a finely-tuned 'coincidence'; New Definition Could Further Limit Habitable Zones Around Distant Suns: - June 2009 ... liquid water is essential for life, but a planet also must have plate tectonics to pull excess carbon from its atmosphere and confine it in rocks to prevent runaway greenhouse warming. Tectonics, or the movement of the plates that make up a planet's surface, typically is driven by radioactive decay in the planet's core, but a star's gravity can cause tides in the planet, which creates more energy to drive plate tectonics.... Barnes added, "The bottom line is that tidal forcing is an important factor that we are going to have to consider when looking for habitable planets." http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090610124831.htm The Life and Death of Oxygen - 2008 Excerpt: “The balance between burial of organic matter and its oxidation appears to have been tightly controlled over the past 500 million years.” “The presence of O2 in the atmosphere requires an imbalance between oxygenic photosynthesis and aerobic respiration on time scales of millions of years hence, to generate an oxidized atmosphere, more organic matter must be buried (by tectonic activity) than respired.” - Paul Falkowski http://www.creationsafaris.com/crev200810.htm#20081024abornagain77_{July 26, 2011
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as to: 'Energy-driven networks of small molecules afford better odds as the initiators of life.” Refutation Of Hyperthermophile Origin Of Life scenario Excerpt: While life, if appropriately designed, can survive under extreme physical and chemical conditions, it cannot originate under those conditions. High temperatures are especially catastrophic for evolutionary models. The higher the temperature climbs, the shorter the half-life for all the crucial building block molecules, http://www.reasons.org/LateHeavyBombardmentIntensityandtheOriginofLife The origin of life--did it occur at high temperatures? Excerpt: Prebiotic chemistry points to a low-temperature origin because most biochemicals decompose rather rapidly at temperatures of 100 degrees C (e.g., half-lives are 73 min for ribose, 21 days for cytosine, and 204 days for adenine). http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11539558 Chance and necessity do not explain the origin of life: Trevors JT, Abel DL. Excerpt: Minimal metabolism would be needed for cells to be capable of growth and division. All known metabolism is cybernetic--that is, it is programmatically and algorithmically organized and controlled. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15563395 etc.. etc.. as to; 'That’s a lot (on early earth) like a lab except that this natural lab is literally the size of all the continents on ancient earth, down to a depth of several kilometers.' Your right the early earth was a lab set up by God to a place hospitable for advanced life; ,,,in conjunction with photosynthetic, and sulfate reducing, bacteria, geological processes helped detoxify the earth of dangerous levels of metal for as far back in time as we can tell: The Concentration of Metals for Humanity's Benefit: Excerpt: They demonstrated that hydrothermal fluid flow could enrich the concentration of metals like zinc, lead, and copper by at least a factor of a thousand. They also showed that ore deposits formed by hydrothermal fluid flows at or above these concentration levels exist throughout Earth's crust. The necessary just-right precipitation conditions needed to yield such high concentrations demand extraordinary fine-tuning. That such ore deposits are common in Earth's crust strongly suggests supernatural design. http://www.reasons.org/TheConcentrationofMetalsforHumanitysBenefit And on top of the fact that poisonous heavy metals on the primordial earth were brought into 'life-enabling' balance by complex biogeochemical processes, there was also an explosion of minerals on earth which were a result of that first life, as well as being a result of each subsequent 'Big Bang of life' there afterwards. The Creation of Minerals: Excerpt: Thanks to the way life was introduced on Earth, the early 250 mineral species have exploded to the present 4,300 known mineral species. And because of this abundance, humans possessed all the necessary mineral resources to easily launch and sustain global, high-technology civilization. http://www.reasons.org/The-Creation-of-Minerals "Today there are about 4,400 known minerals - more than two-thirds of which came into being only because of the way life changed the planet. Some of them were created exclusively by living organisms" - Bob Hazen - Smithsonian - Oct. 2010, pg. 54 To put it mildly, this minimization of poisonous elements, and 'explosion' of useful minerals, is strong evidence for Intelligently Designed terra-forming of the earth that 'just so happens' to be of great benefit to modern man. Clearly many, if not all, of these metal ores and minerals laid down by these sulfate-reducing bacteria, as well as laid down by the biogeochemistry of more complex life, as well as laid down by finely-tuned geological conditions throughout the early history of the earth, have many unique properties which are crucial for technologically advanced life, and are thus indispensable to man’s rise above the stone age to the advanced 'space-age' technology of modern civilization. Metallurgy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallurgy Minerals and Their Uses http://www.scienceviews.com/geology/minerals.html ================== Anthropic Principle: A Precise Plan for Humanity By Hugh Ross Excerpt: Brandon Carter, the British mathematician who coined the term “anthropic principle” (1974), noted the strange inequity of a universe that spends about 15 billion years “preparing” for the existence of a creature that has the potential to survive no more than 10 million years (optimistically).,, Carter and (later) astrophysicists John Barrow and Frank Tipler demonstrated that the inequality exists for virtually any conceivable intelligent species under any conceivable life-support conditions. Roughly 15 billion years represents a minimum preparation time for advanced life: 11 billion toward formation of a stable planetary system, one with the right chemical and physical conditions for primitive life, and four billion more years toward preparation of a planet within that system, one richly layered with the biodeposits necessary for civilized intelligent life. Even this long time and convergence of “just right” conditions reflect miraculous efficiency. Moreover the physical and biological conditions necessary to support an intelligent civilized species do not last indefinitely. They are subject to continuous change: the Sun continues to brighten, Earth’s rotation period lengthens, Earth’s plate tectonic activity declines, and Earth’s atmospheric composition varies. In just 10 million years or less, Earth will lose its ability to sustain human life. In fact, this estimate of the human habitability time window may be grossly optimistic. In all likelihood, a nearby supernova eruption, a climatic perturbation, a social or environmental upheaval, or the genetic accumulation of negative mutations will doom the species to extinction sometime sooner than twenty thousand years from now. http://christiangodblog.blogspot.com/2006_12_01_archive.html One scientist is far more pessimistic about the 'natural' future lifespan of the human race than 20,000 years: Humans will be extinct in 100 years says eminent scientist - June 2010 http://www.physorg.com/news196489543.htmlbornagain77_{July 26, 2011
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vjtorley at 34 “Hi kairosfocus, Thanks for the scientific papers you dug up. They were invaluable.” KF at 33: “Unfortunately, neither chemists nor laboratories were present on the early Earth to produce RNA . . . . Of course, plate tectonics were at work even then, dragging millions of tons of sea water under the earth where it then percolated up through geologically active rock formations under conditions of high temperatures and pressure, which greatly speed up all chemical reactions. The rocks the water was percolating through provided thousands of different chemicals for the hot water to dissolve and they also provided millions or billions of square kilometers of submicroscopic nooks and crannies to act as catalysts as the hot, chemically laden water flowed by. Temperatures also rose and fell sharply as the water percolated past lava channels and then through cooler rocks. That’s a lot like a lab except that this natural lab is literally the size of all the continents on ancient earth, down to a depth of several kilometers. The total volume of the microscopic water channels and molecular sized potential catalysts are measured in millions or billions of square kilometers. And this lab was in operation for hundreds of millions of years. Note also the third sentence in Shapiro’s title: “Energy-driven networks of small molecules afford better odds as the initiators of life.” I recommend that everybody read the article, especially pages 5-8 where Dr. Shapiro starts out with: “Life With Small Molecules 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. Inanimate nature provides us with a variety of mixtures of small molecules, whose behavior is governed by scientific laws, rather than by human intervention.” I join vjtorley in thanking you for that citation.dmullenix_{July 26, 2011
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vjtorley at 33 “My answer: That depends on the percentage of errors.” If it manages to reproduce itself at least once before it is destroyed, then the percentage of errors was low enough. (And by implication, it’s duplicate has the same ability.) If one of it’s attempts at reproducing generates an offspring molecule that can’t reproduce, then that molecule is out of the picture. It slowly degrades to become raw materials while the original molecule tries again. Remember, “life” is when the first molecule reproduces itself before it is degraded and that takes into account any failed attempts. “The other main problem I have with your scenario is that it fails to account for the origin of specified complexity in the first place.” Whoa! Let’s stop and look at that for a moment. What is the specification here? The ability to reproduce itself at least once before it is destroyed. If it reproduces itself, it by definition meets the specification. The exact pattern isn’t important, so long as it meets the specification of reproducing itself before it’s destroyed. Google says that Eisenach is the childhood home of Martin Luther and he translated the German Bible while he was hiding in Wartburg Castle in that city. (Some Christians were trying to Expel! him from the earth.) Maybe your pattern is the first letters of a Bible passage in German? Except there are only seven different letters. Wiki also says that Eisenach is the birthplace of Johann Sebastian Bach. Musical notes come in 7 flavors – A through G - so I’m guessing they’re the notes to a musical passage. Jesu joy of men’s desiring? Just a guess. No idea why you switched the initial D to a G.dmullenix_{July 26, 2011
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vjtorley at 37 I checked and you’re right, I was wrong. Dr. Meyer has admitted that he believes the earth is 4.6 billion years old. I apologize to him. I found his admission at http://www.antievolution.org/cs/idc_advocates_tell_the_age_of_the_earth. Again, I was wrong and I apologize.dmullenix_{July 26, 2011
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I retract lousy encryption.material.infantacy_{July 26, 2011
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An 10x10 pixel black and white image. A 5x5 pixel 4 color image. 12 ascii characters. ~25 morse code characters. Lousy encryption.material.infantacy_{July 26, 2011
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[W]hy do you ID people insist that the first living thing was complex?
You've never heard of a God complex?
500 to 1000 bits of information? Try 50 to 100.
Would someone care to demonstrate some things that might be got with only 50-100 bits of information? Some examples?Mung_{July 25, 2011
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Bornagain77, Thanks very much for the link. I loved the comment at the end:
If Big Science would do its job, the creationists and intelligent design community would not have to be cast in the role of spoil sports, showing why these ideas won’t work. They won’t work anyway, but other insiders, not just the expelled, should be saying so. After all, much of the work was paid for with taxpayer dollars. Where are the watchdogs?
Where, indeed.vjtorley_{July 25, 2011
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Wow, sorry I missed this thread earlier. A 50-bit life form? What a hoot! "A simple self replicating molecule . . ." Gotta love that. The other day I again ran across Dawkins' faith-based quote about a self-replicating molecule "somehow" coming into existence. I actually laughed out loud when I read it again. Newsflash folks: there is no such thing as a simple self-replicating molecule. On a related note, Matzke, like usual, loves to drop literature bomb references, with papers that are either irrelevant, or, in most cases, simply do not support the assertions he makes.Eric Anderson_{July 25, 2011
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Torley is in a class about which Matzke is unaware. Torley thinks, questions, and reasons. Matzke is a hate-filled ideological robot. His purpose is not science; it's the destruction of his enemies: people who believe that there is more to life than chemistry and chance. I am probably the only contributor at UD who understands Matzke, because I was once he, rescued by the Grace of God and equally by a commitment to legitimate scientific rigor, which demands that one follow the evidence wherever it leads.GilDodgen_{July 25, 2011
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Dr. Torley; this may be of interest as to the extreme effort it took to get a 'tiny' RNA: Origin of Life: Claiming Something for Almost Nothing (RNA) Excerpt: Yarus admitted, “the tiny replicator has not been found, and that its existence will be decided by experiments not yet done, perhaps not yet imagined.” But does this (laboratory) work support a naturalistic origin of life? A key question is whether the (tiny RNA) molecule could form under plausible prebiotic conditions. Here’s how the paper described their work in the lab to get this molecule:,, RNA was synthesized by Dharmacon. GUGGC = 5’-GUGGC-30 ; GCCU – 5’P-GCCU-3’ ; 5’OH-GCCU = 5’-GCCU-3’ ; GCCU20dU = 5’-GCC-2’-dU; GCC = 5’-GCC-3’ ; dGdCdCrU = 5’-dGdCdCU-3’ . RNA GCC3’dU was prepared by first synthesizing 5’-O-(4,4’- Dimethoxytrityl)3’-deoxyuridine as follows: 3’-deoxyuridine (MP Biomedicals; 991 mg, 0.434 mmol) was dissolved in 5 mL anhydrous pyridine and pyridine was then removed under vacuum while stirring. Solid was then redissolved in 2 mL pyridine. Dimethoxytrityl chloride (170 mg, 0.499 mmol) was dissolved in 12 mL pyridine and slowly added to 3’-deoxyuridine solution. Solution was stirred at room temperature for 4 h. All solutions were sequestered from exposure to air throughout. Reaction was then quenched by addition of 5 mL methanol, and solvent was removed by rotary evaporation. Remaining solvent evaporated overnight in a vacuum chamber. Product was then dissolved in 1 mL acetonitrile and purified through a silica column (acetonitrile elution). Final product fractions (confirmed through TLC, 1.1 hexane:acetonitrile) were pooled and rotary evaporated. Yield was 71%. Dimethoxytrityl-protected 30dU was then sent to Dharmacon for immobilization of 30-dU on glass and synthesis of 5’-GCC-3’-dU. PheAMP, PheUMP, and MetAMP were synthesized by the method of Berg (25) with modifications and purification as described in ref. 6. Yield was as follows: PheAMP 85%, PheUMP 67%, and MetAMP 36%. Even more purification and isolation steps under controlled conditions, using multiple solvents at various temperatures, were needed to prevent cross-reactions. (and the understatement of the year) It is doubtful such complex lab procedures have analogues in nature. http://www.creationsafaris.com/crev201003.htm#20100302abornagain77_{July 25, 2011
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Barry Arrington: Dr. Torley, you are a treasure to the ID movement. The élan with which you called Matzke’s literature bluff was beautiful to behold.
Amen to thatmike1962_{July 25, 2011
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Here's Dr. Nick Matzke's proposed scenario for the origin of life:
Surely any vaguely capable summary of this issue would have to include the possibility of a chemical system in which monomers flow in from the general environment, drying or freezing or some such increases the concentration of monomers leading to polymerization, followed by polymers degrading at a certain rate. Make this system cyclical (day/night or seasonal cycles) and continue for a few million years.
And here are Dr. Robert Shapiro's comments on Matzke's proposed drying-and-freezing cycle ("A Simpler Origin for Life", in Scientific American, February 12, 2007) - see here: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-simpler-origin-for-life&page=3
I will cite one example of prebiotic synthesis, published in 1995 by Nature and featured in the New York Times. The RNA base cytosine was prepared in high yield by heating two purified chemicals in a sealed glass tube at 100 degrees Celsius for about a day. One of the reagents, cyanoacetaldehyde, is a reactive substance capable of combining with a number of common chemicals that may have been present on the early Earth. These competitors were excluded. An extremely high concentration was needed to coax the other participant, urea, to react at a sufficient rate for the reaction to succeed. The product, cytosine, can self-destruct by simple reaction with water. When the urea concentration was lowered, or the reaction allowed to continue too long, any cytosine that was produced was subsequently destroyed. This destructive reaction had been discovered in my laboratory, as part of my continuing research on environmental damage to DNA. Our own cells deal with it by maintaining a suite of enzymes that specialize in DNA repair. The exceptionally high urea concentration was rationalized in the Nature paper by invoking a vision of drying lagoons on the early Earth. In a published rebuttal, I calculated that a large lagoon would have to be evaporated to the size of a puddle, without loss of its contents, to achieve that concentration. No such feature exists on Earth today. The drying lagoon claim is not unique. In a similar spirit, other prebiotic chemists have invoked freezing glacial lakes, mountainside freshwater ponds, flowing streams, beaches, dry deserts, volcanic aquifers and the entire global ocean (frozen or warm as needed) to support their requirement that the "nucleotide soup" necessary for RNA synthesis would somehow have come into existence on the early Earth.
On a different topic: some readers have queried Dr. Stephen Meyer's concerns about "error catastrophe" which I highlighted in my opening post, but Shapiro evidently takes them seriously too:
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. The simplest flawed unit would be a terminator, a component that had only one "arm" available for connection, rather than the two needed to support further growth of the chain. There is no reason to presume than an indifferent nature would not combine units at random, producing an immense variety of hybrid short, terminated chains, rather than the much longer one of uniform backbone geometry needed to support replicator and catalytic functions. 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.
Shapiro goes on to speak highly of Gunter Wachterhauser's proposed scenario for the origin of life. Shapiro is honest enough to state that Wachterhauser and his colleagues "have not yet demonstrated the operation of a complete cycle or its ability to sustain itself and undergo further evolution." However, I would like to say that Wachterhauser has clearly done his homework on the conditions that would need to be satisfied in order for life to originate on Earth, and I greatly respect his detailed, methodical, experiment-oriented approach to the problem.vjtorley_{July 25, 2011
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Hi kairosfocus, Thanks for the scientific papers you dug up. They were invaluable.vjtorley_{July 25, 2011
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Dave Mullenix (#24), I'd now like to address your scientific comments. I notice that unlike Dr. Robert Shapiro and unlike Dr. Nick Matzke, you favor a replication-first scenario: you hold that organisms acquired the ability to reproduce themselves before they acquired the ability to metabolize anything. That's fine; but I'd just like to know why you disagree with Shapiro and Matzke on this point. You write:
Assume you have a shortish polymer... that manages to reproduce itself at least once before it's torn apart. This would be the first molecule of life. Now suppose that before it reproduces itself, it makes several defective copies... So long as the original polymer manages to make at least one good copy before it's destroyed, life goes on. Now suppose that the polymer makes a copy of itself that is almost accurate, but contains one or two errors – and that mutated copy also manages to copy itself before it is destroyed. Now we have two, slightly different, polymers reproducing – and Darwinian evolution is off and running. And error catastrophes can't stop it.
My answer: That depends on the percentage of errors. If a biopolymer mutates too many times when it replicates, its descendants may lose some of the biological features which have evolved to their advantage, including their ability to reproduce at all. You say that error catastrophes can't stop Darwinian evolution. Obviously they can, if they prevent an organism from reproducing. Dr. Meyer has argued that the risk of error catastrophe is real, and he claims that the evidence of molecular biology shows that unspecified polypeptides will not replicate genetic information accurately, as these molecules are not specified enough to ensure an error-free (or almost error-free) transmission of information. If I were trying to refute Dr. Meyer, I would be doing some experiments in the lab, with the aim of showing that in fact, polypeptides are capable of reproducing information sufficiently accurately to allow the creation of much larger molecules, without loss of specified complexity. The other main problem I have with your scenario is that it fails to account for the origin of specified complexity in the first place. To illustrate this point, imagine a simplified world with 7 amino acids, A, B, C, D, E F and G. How would your polymerization-with-a-few-errors process account for a pattern like the following one? GCDEFGCCAFGABCCCFGFEDEFEDCBCDECEDGCDEFGCCAFGABCCCFGFEDEFEDCDEDCBC As you can see, while there's some repetition here, there's also a lot of interesting novelty too, and as you'll realize when you recognize where the pattern comes from, it's highly specific: most changes in the pattern would ruin it, and relatively few would enhance it. Instead, what I'd expect to see with your scenario is a pattern exhibiting a high degree of repetition with a few mistakes, more like this: ABCDEFGACCDEFGABCGEFGAFCDEFGCDCDEFGABCFEFGABCDEFAABCDECGABCDFFG Incidentally, can you guess where I got the first sequence from? I'll give you a hint: Eisenach. I'll give you another hint: the sequence would normally start with D. Why did I change it to G?vjtorley_{July 25, 2011
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H'mm: Let's put into the listings the recent -- c. 2006 -- overall summary views of two leading OOL researchers, that I believe on fair comment can be described as mutually destructive and as highly relevant to the state of the case today: _________________ Shapiro, Sci Am: >> RNA's building blocks, nucleotides, are complex substances as organic molecules go. They each contain a sugar, a phosphate and one of four nitrogen-containing bases as sub-subunits. Thus, each RNA nucleotide contains 9 or 10 carbon atoms, numerous nitrogen and oxygen atoms and the phosphate group, all connected in a precise three-dimensional pattern. Many alternative ways exist for making those connections, yielding thousands of plausible nucleotides that could readily join in place of the standard ones but that are not represented in RNA. That number is itself dwarfed by the hundreds of thousands to millions of stable organic molecules of similar size that are not nucleotides . . . . The RNA nucleotides are familiar to chemists because of their abundance in life and their resulting commercial availability. In a form of molecular vitalism, some scientists have presumed that nature has an innate tendency to produce life's building blocks preferentially, rather than the hordes of other molecules that can also be derived from the rules of organic chemistry. This idea drew inspiration from . . . 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. ["My" NB: Subsequent research has sharply undercut this idea, a point that is unfortunately not accurately reflected in Sci Am's caption on a picture of the Miller-Urey apparatus, which in part misleadingly reads, over six years after Jonathan Wells' Icons of Evolution was published: The famous Miller-Urey experiment showed how inanimate nature could have produced amino acids in Earth's primordial atmosphere . . .] 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 . . . more than 80 different amino acids . . . have been identified as components of the Murchison meteorite, which fell in Australia in 1969 . . . By extrapolation of these results, some writers have presumed that all of life's building 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 shows no partiality in favor of creating the building blocks of our kind of life . . . I have observed a similar pattern in the results of many spark discharge experiments . . . . no nucleotides of any kind have been reported as products of spark discharge experiments or in studies of meteorites, nor have the smaller units (nucleosides) that contain a sugar and base but lack the phosphate. 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, normally carried out in water at temperatures observed on Earth . . . . 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. No physical law need be broken for spontaneous RNA formation to happen, but the chances against it are so immense, that the suggestion implies that the non-living world had an innate desire to generate RNA. The majority of origin-of-life scientists who still support the RNA-first theory either accept this concept (implicitly, if not explicitly) or feel that the immensely unfavorable odds were simply overcome by good luck. >> Orgel (posthumous, 2008, PLOS) >> If complex cycles analogous to metabolic cycles could have operated on the primitive Earth, before the appearance of enzymes or other informational polymers, many of the obstacles to the construction of a plausible scenario for the origin of life would disappear . . . Could a nonenzymatic “metabolic cycle” have made such compounds available in sufficient purity to facilitate the appearance of a replicating informational polymer? It must be recognized that assessment of the feasibility of any particular proposed prebiotic cycle must depend on arguments about chemical plausibility, rather than on a decision about logical possibility . . . few would believe that any assembly of minerals on the primitive Earth is likely to have promoted these syntheses in significant yield. Each proposed metabolic cycle, therefore, must be evaluated in terms of the efficiencies and specificities that would be required of its hypothetical catalysts in order for the cycle to persist. Then arguments based on experimental evidence or chemical plausibility can be used to assess the likelihood that a family of catalysts that is adequate for maintaining the cycle could have existed on the primitive Earth . . . . Why should one believe that an ensemble of minerals that are capable of catalyzing each of the many steps of [for instance] the reverse citric acid cycle was present anywhere on the primitive Earth [8], or that the cycle mysteriously organized itself topographically on a metal sulfide surface [6]? 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 . . . . 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. Simplification of product mixtures through the self-organization of organic reaction sequences, whether cyclic or not, would help enormously, as would the discovery of very simple replicating polymers. However, solutions offered by supporters of geneticist or metabolist scenarios that are dependent on “if pigs could fly” hypothetical chemistry are unlikely to help. >> ___________________ It is fair comment to say that OOL studies are in at least as much trouble today as they were a few years ago. So, pardon my doubts on failure -- since the 1920's -- to credibly identify how a metabolising automaton with the additional feature of a von Neumann self replicator implemented using molecular nanotech, could have plausibly [with our question begging imposition of a priori Lewontinian materialism] arisen by forces of undirected chance and mechanical necessity on the gamut of our observed cosmos across its lifespan to date on the usual cosmological timeline, 13.7 BY. GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{July 25, 2011
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Neil Rickert:
Research into origins seems to be divided roughly into metabolism first and replicator first hypotheses. Your post mostly seems to apply to replicator first hypotheses. Both Nick Matze and I, in the first two comments, were suggesting that metabolism first is an alternative to be considered.
So let me explain what is going on here. You (Neil) and Nick were approaching the origin of life as a problem that needs to be solved. dmullenix on the other hand had a different problem he was trying to solve. So he thinks a simple self-replicator is all that is needed to solve his problem and is satisfied that if he can image one then his problem has in fact been solved. So why is it that some people imagine that all they need is a simple self-replicator, and others say whoa there, it's not that simple? I don't understand why Darwinists [Dave] don't just say, well, that's an origin of life issue and leave it at that. Instead they feel compelled to assert that ID'ists have failed to consider that all it takes to get to a complex cell with DNA, RNA, proteins, metabolism and cell division (among numerous other things) is a simple first self-replicator and all else follows by some imaginary unspecified unknown and probably unknowable pathways. IOW, pure fantasy.Mung_{July 25, 2011
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Thanks Barry. I'm glad you enjoyed reading it.vjtorley_{July 25, 2011
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No doubt your claims were made in all sincerity...
No doubt he doesn't care whether his claim was true or not and a sincere lie (if there can even be such a thing) is still a lie. Why do we coddle these people? Call what they have said a lie and sit back and watch the moral indignation.Mung_{July 25, 2011
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Dr. Torley, you are a treasure to the ID movement. The élan with which you called Matzke’s literature bluff was beautiful to behold.Barry Arrington_{July 25, 2011
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Dave Mullenix (#24), I have to say I was rather disappointed by the tone of your last post. You are welcome to disagree vigorously with the claims of Intelligent Design proponents, but misrepresenting them is another matter entirely. You have seriously misrepresented the views of Dr. Stephen Meyer. No doubt your claims were made in all sincerity, but you are badly misinformed. You accused Dr. Stephen Meyer of being a young earth creationist (YEC). You wrote:
I mean really, a Bible believing young man graduates from a conservative religiously affiliated college with a degree in earth science and gets a job as a geologist for an oil company and never thinks it's worth mentioning that he’s a YEC? I’ve heard that there are YECs working as oil company geologists and I would have been very interested to see how he balanced his belief in a young earth with modern geology, but apparently he's utterly incurious about how the two mix. At least that's the impression he tries to give in the book. (Emphases mine - VJT.)
Where did you get this nonsense? A casual search of Meyer's own papers utterly refutes your claim. Have a look at The Cambrian Explosion: Biology's Big Bang (2001 version) and also the 2003 version here: http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=download&id=639 . Allow me to quote a couple of excerpts:
In this essay, we will test the claims of neo-Darwinism and two other materialistic models of evolutionary theory: punctuated equilibrium and self-organization. We will do so by assessing how well these theories explain the main features of the Cambrian explosion—a term that refers to the geologically sudden appearance of numerous new animal forms (and their distinctive body plans) 530 million years ago... The fossils of the Cambrian explosion exhibit several distinctive features. First, as the name implies, the fossils of the Cambrian explosion appear suddenly or abruptly within a very brief period of geologic time. (See Figure 1). As recently as 1992, paleontologists thought the Cambrian period began 570 million years ago (mya) and ended 510 mya, with the Cambrian explosion itself occurring within a 20 to 40 million year window during the lower Cambrian period. In 1993, radiometric dating of zircon crystals from formations just above and just below Cambrian strata in Siberia allowed for a precise recalibration of the age of Cambrian strata. Radiometric analyses of these crystals fixed the start of the Cambrian period at 543 mya and the beginning of the first appearance of the animal phyla (i.e., the Cambrian explosion itself) at 530 mya. (Emphases mine - VJT.)
Figure 2 in the 2003 version of the article lists the earth's age as 4600 mya (million years ago). Enough said? I'd also like you to have a look at the following article in Discover magazine by Chris Mooney, entitled, Time to refute Stephen Meyer? Scroll down to comment number 3 by Intelligent Design advocate Casey Luskin, here: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2009/11/17/time-to-refute-stephen-meyer/#comment-36257 . Luskin writes:
As an ID proponent myself, I feel it would be great to see some serious critiques of Meyer. I’ll give critics three tips on how not to critique Meyer: First, don’t call Meyer a young earth creationist, because he isn’t. (Jerry Coyne tried that tack and had to retract the claim.) Second, don’t try to cast Meyer's argument as a mere negative argument against material causes, as Mooney claims that Meyer "throws up his hands, and says, it's so improbable, God must have done it." Meyer arguments for design is unmistakably a positive one, and is not merely a negative argument against evolution... Third, don't attack Meyer’s book before you read it. Anyone who claims or insinuates that Meyer’s argument for design is merely a negative critique of evolutionary mechanisms has clearly skipped a lot of chapters.
Where, you ask, did Professor Jerry Coyne accuse Dr. Stephen Meyer of being a young earth creationist? The claim (and Professor Coyne's retraction) can be found in his blog entry for 15 July 2009, entitled, Pro-intelligent-design editorial in Boston Globe. I shall quote a brief extract:
Stephen Meyer, young-earth creationist and Discovery Institute macher, has published a pro-intelligent-design piece, Jefferson’s Support for Intelligent Design , in today’s Boston Globe. It's largely an argument from authority, noting that Jefferson imputed the structure of the Universe to design... Note: I stand corrected–Stephen Meyer is not a young earth creationist. I was thinking of his Discovery Institute colleague Paul Nelson, whom I debated a while back. My apologies to Mr. Meyer for attributing to him a lunatic idea of his colleague.
Not a very polite apology, but an apology all the same. Let's give credit where credit's due. I hope you will be kind enough to retract your assertion that Dr. Stephen Meyer is a young earth creationist. I shall address your other comments in your last post (#24) shortly.vjtorley_{July 25, 2011
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