Youwerecreated
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genetics are so predictable ,unless the information gets rearranged or lost that leads to a mutation , a farmer and a breeder knows what the harvest will yield.
Dr Collins, top geneticist, and CHRISTIAN....
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genetics are so predictable ,unless the information gets rearranged or lost that leads to a mutation , a farmer and a breeder knows what the harvest will yield.
Youwerecreated
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I meant to add the element discussion as well ,sorry I have been doing this on my smart outside not easy to see my mistakes and typos . I have so much going through this damaged brain of mine.
Youwerecreated
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My point here is tied to evolution. You don't see it ? I don't try to distract my opponents , I try to reason with them. I don't attack my opponents,I try to give my opinions that have been built over many years. Maybe later trader needs to calm down ,because she really seems to be offended by people of faith. Not realising she is one of us.
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Uh yeah, genetics are predictable, that's how we domesticated and tamed various plants and animals. Evolution is a theory that can lend itself to predictions, not just when breeding roses or cows.
One of the most classic examples of this is the case of an orchid from Madagascar, Argraecum sesquipedale. The orchid in question has an usually long nectaries, longer than most other flowers. In the 1860s, Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace predicted there must be a moth with an equally long tongue to pollinate and gather nectar from it. Darwin would die before they found it, but it was discovered 1903. It's called Xanthopan morgani praedicta, more commonly: a hawk moth.
As a side note, also in Madagascar there's an orchid with even longer nectaries than A. sesquipedale, it's called (appropiately) Angraecum longicalcar. We can safety predict there's probably a similar, longer-tongued mouth somewhere yet to be discovered.
Ah no worries. The point still stands. There are other elements out there in the universe.
So how is tied to evolution? You seem to keep trying to steer it towards abiogenesis, the start of life on Earth, but I don't see what it has to do with evolution.
Youwerecreated
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Well if all life began from a natural process called evolution. Evolution would have had to begin with the big bang. If this natural process began with the big bang why is not all the necessities of life and life itself scattered throughout the universe ? This planet not got all the good stuff,but it came with light by night and day. It cane with plenty of water and other natural resources. It came with a way to cleanse itself and heal itself from man's environmental mistakes. Oxygen and gravity is pretty nice to have as well. Sorry I will get off my soap box. I believe you get my point !
See, there's your problem. Life doesn't start from the process of evolution, it develops from the processes of evolution. The Big Bang theory also does not postulate to have started life on earth (it is, however, the current theory of how the universe came to be).
But this is still not relevant to the theory of evolution. I'm not even sure it's entirely accurate. There's water on Mars in the form of ice caps, surface liquid on Titan, and gravity of varying strengths and day/night cycles on the other planets too. We've found other Earth-like planets outside our own solar system. Earth isn't the only one with these nice conditions, but they are, however, rare.
I knew it all along.
Yeah it's pretty hard. Look:
Never been proven. Ever?
Viewpoints? No studies or evidence? Sorry, what's this then:
Experiments prove nothing I see. Or even observations of nature. You seem to dismiss them at viewpoints. Cute.
So is one of the world's most reputable and foremost museums now a viewpoint? Or not evidence? Because they present the latest evidence of evolution and our ancestry in that link.
Corn is another good example of evolution.
Zea (genus)
Teosintes are critical components of maize evolution, but opinions vary about which taxa were involved. According to the most widely-held evolutionary model, the crop was derived directly from Z. m. parviglumis by selection of key mutations [3]; up to 12% of its genetic material came from Z. m. mexicana through introgression. Another model proposes that a tiny-eared wild maize was domesticated, and after being spread from east-central Mexico, this cultigen hybridized with Z. luxurians or Z. diploperennis resulting in a great explosion of maize genetic diversity, ear and kernel forms, and capacity to adapt to new habitats, as well as increased yields. A third model suggests that the early maize resulted from a cross between Z. diploperennis and a species of Tripsacum; support for this is minimal. A fourth model posits that teosinte resulted from hybridization between an early wild form of Z. m. mays and Tripsacum.[4]
Zea (genus) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yes Allie, it's very difficult to have a conversation when one side is lying. But it's not the side you think it is.
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Youwerecreated
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Sorry, we are in California visiting family I will just quickly try to respond to both of you. For starters I would like you to show mathematically how the mutation rate is even possible that is required for neo darwinism to occur ? ,with there being so many neutral and harmful mutations . Second, I would like you to point out all the beneficial mutations that made a permanent change that is truly a benefit to the organism ? I will be traveling back to Arizona tomorrow and I will look back and see what else was never addressed..
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Youwerecreated
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Yes the building blocks are scattered throughout the universe,but you really can't point to a planet that is setup like our planet can you ? So why didn't this natural process produce life everywhere we look ? Why is there so much water on this planet and there is no water with any significance anywhere else and if there is why is there no life there ?
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You sounds like we've been up and down the entire universe. We've barely been up and down our solar system, let alone our galaxy or universe. The reason life hasn't developed on other planets in our own system is for a variety of reasons: lack of water, too close to the sun, too far away from the sun, no atmosphere, too violent an atmosphere, etc. The reasons are myriad.
By the way, they've discovered earth-like planets before. saying Earth is the only place is quite inaccurate.
Now are we done with this astronomy and abiogenesis tangent, or can we get back to discussing evolution?
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Youwerecreated
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Yes there is ice out there,don't you think it is strange how this planet seems to be perfect for life and no other planet is ?
Abiogenesis, please don't tell me you think life can spontanesouly generate itself ?
Why the MillerUrey Research Argues Against Abiogenesis
by Jerry Bergman on
August 1, 2004
Technical
abiogenesis
author-jerry-bergman
journal-of-creation
Featured In
Summary
Abiogenesis is the theory that under the proper conditions life can arise spontaneously from non-living molecules. One of the most widely cited studies used to support this conclusion is the famous MillerUrey experiment. Surveys of textbooks find that the MillerUrey study is the major (or only) research cited to prove abiogenesis. Although widely heralded for decades by the popular press as proving that life originated on the early earth entirely under natural conditions, we now realize the experiment actually provided compelling evidence for the opposite conclusion. It is now recognized that this set of experiments has done more to show that abiogenesis on Earth is not possible than to indicate how it could be possible. This paper reviews some of the many problems with this research, which attempted to demonstrate a feasible method of abiogenesis on the early earth.
Contemporary research has failed to provide a viable explanation as to how abiogenesis could have occurred on Earth. The abiogenesis problem is now so serious that most evolutionists today tend to shun the entire field because they are uneasy about stating in public that the origin of life is a mystery, even though behind closed doors they freely admit that they are baffled because it opens the door to religious fundamentalists and their god-of-the-gaps pseudo-explanations and they worry that a frank admission of ignorance will undermine funding.1
Abiogenesis was once commonly called chemical evolution,2 but evolutionists today try to distance evolutionary theory from the origin of life. This is one reason that most evolutionary propagandists now call it abiogenesis. Chemical evolution is actually part of the General Theory of Evolution, defined by the evolutionist Kerkut as the theory that all the living forms in the world have arisen from a single source which itself came from an inorganic form.3
Another reason exists to exaggerate abiogenesis claimsit is an area that is critical to proving evolutionary naturalism.4 If abiogenesis is impossible, or extremely unlikely, then so is naturalism.58
Darwin recognized how critical the abiogenesis problem was for his theory. He even conceded that all existing terrestrial life must have descended from some primitive life-form that was originally called into life by the Creator.9 But to admit, as Darwin did, the possibility of one or a few creations is to open the door to the possibility of many others! If God made one type of life, He also could have made many thousands of different types. Darwin evidently regretted this concession later and also speculated that life could have originated in some warm little pond on the ancient earth.
The warm soup theory
Although seriously challenged in recent years, the warm soup hypothesis is still the most widely held abiogenesis theory among Darwinists. Developed most extensively by Russian atheist Alexandr Ivanovich Oparin (18941980) in his book, The Origin of Life, a worldwide best seller first published in 1924 (the latest edition was published in 1965).10 Oparin postulated that life may have evolved solely through random processes in what he termed a biochemical soup that he believed once existed in the oceans. The theory held that life evolved when organic molecules that originally rained into the primitive oceans from the atmosphere were energized by forces such as lightning, ultraviolet light, meteorites, deep-sea hydrothermal vents, hot springs, volcanoes, earthquakes, or electric discharges from the sun. If only the correct mix of chemicals and energy were present, life would be produced spontaneously. Almost a half century of research and millions of dollars have been expended to prove this ideaso far with few positive results and much negative evidence.11
What sequence?
Oparin concluded that cells evolved first, then enzymes and, last, genes.12 Today, we recognize that genes require enzymes in order to function, but genes are necessary to produce enzymes. Neither genes nor cells can function without many complex structures such as ribosomes, polymerase, helicase, gyrase, single-strandbinding protein and scores of other proteins. Dyson concluded that Oparins theory was generally accepted by biologists for half a century but that it was popular not because there was any evidence to support it but rather because it seemed to be the only alternative to biblical creationism.13
The MillerUrey research
Haldane,14 Bernal,15 Calvin16 and Urey17 all published research in an attempt to support this modeleach with little, if any, success. Then, in 1953 came what some then felt was a critical breakthrough by Harold Urey (18931981) of the University of Chicago and his 23-year-old graduate student, Stanley Miller (1930). Urey came to believe that the conclusion reached by many origin-of-life researchers that the early atmosphere was oxidizing must have been wrong; he argued instead that it was the opposite, namely a reducing atmosphere with large amounts of methane.18
Their breakthrough resulted in front-page stories across the world that usually made the sensational claim that they had accomplished the first step toward creating life in a test tube.19 Carl Sagan concluded, The MillerUrey experiment is now recognized as the single most significant step in convincing many scientists that life is likely to be abundant in the cosmos.20 The experiment even marked the beginning of a new scientific field called prebiotic chemistry.21 It is now the most commonly cited evidence (and often the only evidence cited) for abiogenesis in science textbooks.22
Millers experiment13
The MillerUrey experiments involved filling a sealed glass apparatus with the gases that Oparin had speculated were necessary to form lifenamely methane, ammonia and hydrogen (to mimic the conditions that they thought were in the early atmosphere) and water vapour (to simulate the ocean). Next, while a heating coil kept the water boiling, they struck the gases in the flask with a high-voltage (60,000 volts) tungsten spark-discharge device to simulate lightning. Below this was a water-cooled condenser that cooled and condensed the mixture, allowing it to fall into a water trap below.23
Within a few days, the water and gas mix produced a pink stain on the sides of the flask trap. As the experiment progressed and the chemical products accumulated, the stain turned deep red, then turbid.24 After a week, the researchers analyzed the substances in the U-shaped water trap used to collect the reaction products.25 The primary substances in the gaseous phase were carbon monoxide (CO) and nitrogen (N2).21 The dominant solid material was an insoluble toxic carcinogenic mixture called tar or resin, a common product in organic reactions, including burning tobacco. This tar was analyzed by the latest available chromatographic techniques, showing that a number of substances had been produced. No amino acids were detected during this first attempt, so Miller modified the experiment and tried again.20,26
In time, trace amounts of several of the simplest biologically useful amino acids were formedmostly glycine and alanine.20 The yield of glycine was a mere 1.05%, of alanine only 0.75% and the next most common amino acid produced amounted to only 0.026% of the totalso small as to be largely insignificant. In Millers words, The total yield was small for the energy expended.27 The side group for glycine is a lone hydrogen and for alanine, a simple methyl (CH3) group. After hundreds of replications and modifications using techniques similar to those employed in the original MillerUrey experiments, scientists were able to produce only small amounts of less than half of the 20 amino acids required for life. The rest require much more complex synthesis conditions.
Oxygen: enemy of chemical evolution
The researchers used an oxygen-free environment mainly because the earths putative primitive atmosphere was then widely believed not to have contained in its early stage significant amounts of oxygen. They believed this because laboratory experiments show that chemical evolution, as accounted for by present models, would be largely inhibited by oxygen.28 Here is one of many examples of where their a priori belief in the fact of chemical evolution is used as proof of one of the premises, an anoxic atmosphere. Of course, estimates of the level of O2 in the earths early atmosphere rely heavily on speculation. The fact is, We still dont know how an oxygen-rich atmosphere arose.29
It was believed that the results were significant because some of the organic compounds produced were the building blocks of much more complex life units called proteinsthe basic structure of all life.30 Although widely heralded by the press as proving that life could have originated on the early earth under natural conditions (i.e. without intelligence), we now realize the experiment actually provided compelling evidence for exactly the opposite conclusion. For example, without all 20 amino acids as a set, most known protein types cannot be produced, and this critical step in abiogenesis could never have occurred.
In addition, equal quantities of both right- and left-handed organic molecules (called a racemic mixture) were consistently produced by the MillerUrey procedure. In life, nearly all amino acids that can be used in proteins must be left-handed, and almost all carbohydrates and polymers must be right-handed. The opposite types are not only useless but can also be toxic (even lethal) to life.31,32
Was there a methaneammonia atmosphere?
According to many researchers today, an even more serious problem is the fact that the atmosphere of the early earth was very different from what Miller assumed. Research has since drawn Millers hypothetical atmosphere into question, causing many scientists to doubt the relevance of his findings.33 The problem was stated as follows:
the accepted picture of the earths early atmosphere has changed: It was probably O2-rich with some nitrogen, a less reactive mixture than Millers, or it might have been composed largely of carbon dioxide, which would greatly deter the development of organic compounds.34
A major source of gases was believed to be volcanoes, and since modern-day volcanoes emit CO, CO2, N2 and water vapour, it was considered likely that these gases were very abundant in the early atmosphere. In contrast, it is now believed that H2, CH4 and NH3 probably were not major components of the early atmosphere. Furthermore, many scientists now believe that the early atmosphere probably did not play a major role in the chemical reactions leading to life.20
Although the composition of the atmosphere of the early earth is now believed to have consisted of large amounts of carbon dioxide, this conclusion still involves much speculation. Most researchers also now believe that some O2 was present on the early earth because it contained much water vapour, and photodissociation of water in the upper layers of the atmosphere produces oxygen.35 Another reason is that large amounts of oxidized materials exist in the Precambrian geological strata.36
Yet another reason to conclude free oxygen existed on the early earth is that it is widely believed that photosynthetic organisms existed very soon after the earth had formed, something that is difficult for chemical evolutionary theories to explain. A 2004 paper argues from uranium geochemistry that there were oxidizing conditions, thus photosynthesis, at 3.7 Ga.37 But according to uniformitarian dating, the earth was being bombarded by meteorites up to 3.8 Ga. So even granting evolutionary presuppositions, this latest research shows that life existed almost as soon as the earth was able to support it, not billions and billions of years later. Even if the oxygen were produced by photodissociation of water vapour rather than photosynthesis, this would still be devastating for Miller-type proposals.
The dilution problem
Urey also speculated that the oceans in the ancient earth must have consisted of about a 10% solution of organic compounds that would be very favourable for lifes origin.38 This level of organic matter would equal a concentration about 100 times higher than a modern American citys sewer water. The total amount of extant organic compounds on the earth today could not produce even a fraction of that needed to achieve a concentration this high in the oceans.
Early hopes not realized
Modern replications of the MillerUrey experiment using a wide variety of recipes, including low levels of O2, yield even lower amounts of organic compound than the original experiment.39 To solve this problem, some researchers have speculated that small, isolated pools of water achieved the required level of concentration. The same problem remains: No feasible method exists to account for this source. Some even speculate that submerged volcanoes and deep-sea ventsgaps in the earths crust where hot water and minerals gush into deep oceansmay have provided the initial chemical resources.40
To duplicate what might have happened in a primordial soup billions of years ago, scientists would need to mix the chemicals currently believed to be commonly found on the early earth, expose them to likely energy sources (usually speculated to be heat or radiation), and see what happens. No-one has performed this experiment, because we now know that it is impossible to obtain relevant biochemical compounds by this means. The MillerUrey experiment held great hopes for the materialists, which have now given way to pessimism:
Soon after the MillerUrey experiment, many scientists entertained the belief that the main obstacles in the problem of the origin of life would be overcome within the foreseeable future. But as the search in this young scientific field went on and diversified, it became more and more evident that the problem of the origin of life is far from trivial. Various fundamental problems facing workers in this search gradually emerged, and new questions came into focus . Despite intensive research, most of these problems have remained unsolved.
Indeed, during the long history of the search into the origin of life, controversy is probably the most characteristic attribute of this interdisciplinary field. There is hardly a model or scenario or fashion in this discipline that is not controversial.41
Some of these major problems will now be reviewed.
Functional proteins can exist only in very narrow conditions
To produce even non-functional amino acids and proteins, researchers must highly control the experiment in various ways because the very conditions hypothesized to create amino acids also rapidly destroy proteins. Examples include thermal denaturing of proteins by breaking apart their hydrogen bonds and disrupting the hydrophobic attraction between non-polar side groups.42 Very few proteins remain biologically active above 50ºC, or below about 30ºC, and most require very narrow conditions. Cooking food is a good example of using heat to denature protein, and refrigeration of using cold to slow down biological activity. As any molecular biologist knows from daily lab work, the pH also must be strictly regulated. Too much acid or base adversely affects the hydrogen bonding between polar R groups and also disrupts the ionic bonds formed by the salt bridges in protein.
Cross-reactions
Miller had to deal with the fact that the common cross-reactions of biochemical reaction products cause destruction or interfere with amino acid production. All compounds that interfere with bonding must be isolated or they will destroy the proteins. Therefore, Miller had to remove many contaminants and impurities to obtain pure compounds that are not normally found in life. Otherwise, his apparatus would have produced many destructive cross-reactions.
This is no small problem. Many organic compounds, such as ethanol and isopropyl alcohol, function as disinfectants by forming their own hydrogen bonds with a protein and, as a result, disrupt the proteins hydrophobic interactions.41 Alcohol swabs are used to clean wounds or to prepare skin for injections because the alcohol passes through cell walls and coagulates the proteins inside bacteria and other cells. Also, heavy metal ions such as Ag+, Pb2+ and Hg2+ must be isolated from proteins because they disrupt the proteins disulfide bonds, causing the protein to denature. As an example, a dilute (1%) AgNO3 solution is placed in the eyes of newborn babies to destroy the bacteria that cause gonorrhea. Many heavy metal ions are very toxic if ingested because they severely disrupt protein structure, especially enzymes.
Another problem is that many of the other compounds necessary for life, such as sugar, also react strongly with amino acids and affect amino acid synthesis. For example, Miller and others had to use a sugar-free environment in their experiments.43 Miller stopped his experiment after just a few days, but if it had been allowed to go on, would the compounds he produced be destroyed or would they produce more complex amino acids? Research on Murchison meteorites found that natural conditions produce compounds much like Millers, and the result is stableindicating that further time would not produce any new products.44
The MillerUrey experiments produced many other compounds aside from amino acids, resulting in a sticky mass that was actually further from the building blocks of life than were the postulated original precursor chemicals. Toxic compounds produced include cyanides, carbon monoxide, and othersactually most of the dark matter in the solution could not be identified by the researchers in 1953.21
Undirected energy is disruptive
A critical question, How much energy was necessary? has been much debated.45 However, all forms of energy can disrupt protein, including all of those forms postulated to be important in abiogenesis, such as UV and lightning.46
Many speculate that ultraviolet light was the source used to create life, but UV is highly toxic to life, and is, in fact, often used to destroy life (thus UV lights are used in hospitals to kill micro-organisms). The intensity of the destructive long wavelengths exceeds that of the constructive short ones, and the quantum efficiency of destruction is much higher than that for construction as well.47 This means that destruction of amino acids is four to five orders of magnitude higher than construction.
In Millers UV experiments, he used a select wavelength to produce amino acids and screened out other wavelengths because they destroy amino acids. Yet both chemical-building and chemical-destroying light exists in sunlight. Amino acids are actually very delicate and readily break down under natural sunlight.
The MillerUrey experiment also had strategically designed traps to remove the products from the radiation before they could be destroyed. On a primitive earth, any amino acids formed in the atmosphere would be destroyed long before they could be removed. Even the ocean would not protect them, because UV penetrates several metres of liquid wateryou can even sunburn under water. This indicates that the conditions on the early earth could never have been favourable for abiogenesis.
Even simple movement can cause major protein damage: whipping cream or beating egg whites is one way of using mechanical agitation to deliberately denature protein (the whipping stretches the polypeptide chains until the bonds break).
Millers research has, for the reasons discussed above, helped us to better understand why life could not have emerged naturally. In a summary of the famous MillerUrey origin-of-life experiment, Horgan concluded that Millers results at first seemed to
provide stunning evidence that life could arise from what the British chemist J.B.S. Haldane had called the primordial soup. Pundits speculated that scientists, like Mary Shelleys Dr. Frankenstein, would shortly conjure up living organisms in their laboratories and thereby demonstrate in detail how genesis unfolded. It hasnt worked out that way. In fact, almost 40 years after his original experiment, Miller told me that solving the riddle of the origin of life had turned out to be more difficult than he or anyone else had envisioned.48
Creating life in a test tube also turned out to be far more difficult than Miller expected. Scientists now know that the complexity of life is far greater than Miller (or anyone else) imagined in 1953, prior to the DNA revolution.49 We now know that Millers
much-touted experiments tell us very little about where real, functional proteins came from. Yet this inconvenient fact is rarely mentioned when headlines blare out the news that scientists have succeeded in creating the building blocks of life.50
Life is far more complex than Miller believed
About the same time as Darwin, T.H. Huxley proposed a simple, two-step method of chemical recombination that he thought could explain the origin of the first living cell. Both Haeckel and Huxley thought that just as salt could be produced spontaneously by mixing powered sodium metal and heated chlorine gas, a living cell could be produced merely by mixing the few chemicals they believed were required. Haeckel taught that the physical basis of life is a substance he called plasm of different types such as colourless and also red, orange, and other kinds of protoplasm that were comparable in complexity and texture to a pot of glue or cold jelly.51
Haeckel also believed that the first single cell owed its existence to spontaneous creation from inorganic compounds, primarily carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen.52 Once the brew was mixed, Huxley concluded eons of time allowed spontaneous chemical reactions to produce the simple protoplasmic substance that scientists once assumed was the essence of life.53 As late as 1928, the cell was still thought to be relatively simple, and few scientists then questioned the belief that life commonly developed from relatively simple to relatively complex forms. They also thought evolution was the formation of new structures and functions by combinations and transformations of the relatively simple structures and functions of the germ cells.54
We now also realize, after a century of research, that the eukaryote protozoa, believed in Darwins day to be as simple as a bowl of gelatin, are actually enormously complex. A living eukaryotic cell contains many hundreds of thousands of different complex parts, including various motor proteins. These parts must be assembled correctly to produce a living cell, the most complex machine in the universefar more complex than a Cray supercomputer. Furthermore, molecular biology has demonstrated that the basic design of the cell is
essentially the same in all living systems on earth from bacteria to mammals. In terms of their basic biochemical design no living system can be thought of as being primitive or ancestral with respect to any other system, nor is there the slightest empirical hint of an evolutionary sequence among all the incredibly diverse cells on earth.55
This finding poses major difficulties for abiogenesis because life at the cellular level generally does not reveal a gradual increase in complexity as it allegedly ascends the evolutionary ladder from protozoa to humans. The reason why the molecular machinery and biochemistry of modern organisms is basically similar is that the basic biochemical requirements and constraints are the same for all life.56
The polymerization problem
The MillerUrey experiment left many critical questions unanswered, even such basic ones as, How did the chemicals combine to form the first molecules of living organisms?34 Chemicals do not produce life; only complex structures such as DNA and enzymes produce life. Also, even if the source of the amino acids and the many other compounds needed could be explained, how these many diverse elements became aggregated in the same area and then properly assembled themselves must still be dealt with. This problem is a major stumbling block to all abiogenesis theories because
no one has ever satisfactorily explained how the widely distributed ingredients linked up into proteins. Presumed conditions of primordial earth would have driven the amino acids toward lonely isolation. Thats one of the strongest reasons that Wächtershäuser, Morowitz, and other hydrothermal vent theorists want to move the kitchen [that cooked life] to the ocean floor. If the process starts down deep at discrete vents, they say, it can build amino acidsand link them upright there.33
The amino acid assembly problem is complicated by the fact that amino acids are able to bond in many locations by many kinds of chemical bonds. To form polypeptide chains requires restricting the links to only peptide bonds, and only in the correct locations. All other bonds must be prevented from being formed, no easy task. In living cells, a complex control system involving enzymes exists to ensure that inappropriate bonds do not normally occur; without this system, these inappropriate bonds would destroy the proteins produced.
To form a protein, amino acids must link together to form a peptide bond, eliminating a water molecule. But there is a far greater tendency for the reverse to happen. This would be even more of a problem in water.
Another problem is that the strong thermodynamic tendency is for the peptide bonds to break down in water, not to form.57 Without high-energy compounds such as ATP and enzymes, amino acids do not form the many polypeptides needed for life. Even dipeptides are difficult to form under natural conditions, yet the average protein is composed of around 400 amino acids.
Several recent discoveries have led some scientists to conclude that life may have arisen in submarine vents, where temperatures approach 350ºC. Unfortunately for both warm-pond and hydrothermal-vent theorists, the extreme heat has proven to be a major downfall of their theories. This is because high temperatures would accelerate the breakdown of amino acids, just as cooking meat breaks down the bonds, causing meat to become more tender.57
Another theory is that abiogenesis may have been a consequence of the self-ordering properties of biochemicals.58 Just as electrostatic forces produce highly ordered crystals of salt from Na+ and Cl ions, so too, some Darwinists reasoned, in the same way, life may likewise self-assemble. This approach also has failed. For example, all nucleotide base pairs have an equal affinity to the sugar phosphate backbones on each side of the DNA molecule, and consequently, their order is not a result of bonding affinity differences but is due to information-directed assembly. In other words, the information does not derive from the DNA chemistry, but is instead external to it (see next section).
Miller himself has recognized that Kauffmans research is not viable and, consequently, he was
unimpressed with any of the current proposals on the origin of life, referring to them as nonsense or paper chemistry. He was so contemptuous of some hypotheses that, when I asked his opinion of them, he merely shook his head, sighed deeply, and snickeredas if overcome by the folly of humanity. Stuart Kauffmans theory of autocatalysis fell into this category. Running equations through a computer does not constitute an experiment, Miller sniffed. Miller acknowledged that scientists may never know precisely where and when life emerged. Were trying to discuss a historical event, which is very different from the usual kind of science, and so criteria and methods are very different, he remarked.59
Information content
Another major reason the MillerUrey experiments failed to support abiogenesis was that, although amino acids are the building blocks of life, a critical key to life is the information code stored in DNA (or, as in the case of retroviruses, RNA), depending on the sequence of nucleotides. This in turn provides the instructions for the amino acid sequences for the proteins, the machinery of life.60,61 Michael Polanyi (18911976), former chairman of physical chemistry at the University of Manchester (UK) who turned to philosophy, affirmed a very important pointthe information was something above the chemical properties of the building blocks:
As the arrangement of a printed page is extraneous to the chemistry of the printed page, so is the base sequence in a DNA molecule extraneous to the chemical forces at work in the DNA molecule. It is this physical indeterminacy of the sequence that produces the improbability of any particular sequence and thereby enables it to have a meaninga meaning that has a mathematically determinate information content.62
Paul Davies reinforced the point that obtaining the building blocks would not explain their arrangement:
just as bricks alone dont make a house, so it takes more than a random collection of amino acids to make life. Like house bricks, the building blocks of life have to be assembled in a very specific and exceedingly elaborate way before they have the desired function.63
An analogy is written language. Natural objects in forms resembling the English alphabet (circles, straight lines, etc.) abound in nature, but this fact does not help to understand the origin of information (such as that in Shakespeares plays). The reason is that this task requires intelligence both to create the information (the play) and then to design and build the machinery required to translate that information into symbols (the written text). What must be explained is the source of the information in the text (the words and ideas), not the existence of circles and straight lines. Likewise, it is not enough to explain the origin of the amino acids, which correspond to the letters. Rather, even if they were produced readily, the source of the information that directs the assembly of the amino acids contained in the genome must be explained.34
Another huge problem is that information is useless unless it can be read. But the decoding machinery is itself encoded on the DNA. The leading philosopher of science, Karl Popper (19021994), expressed the huge problem:
What makes the origin of life and of the genetic code a disturbing riddle is this: the genetic code is without any biological function unless it is translated; that is, unless it leads to the synthesis of the proteins whose structure is laid down by the code. But the machinery by which the cell (at least the non-primitive cell, which is the only one we know) translates the code consists of at least fifty macromolecular components which are themselves coded in the DNA. Thus the code can not be translated except by using certain products of its translation. This constitutes a baffling circle; a really vicious circle, it seems, for any attempt to form a model or theory of the genesis of the genetic code.
Thus we may be faced with the possibility that the origin of life (like the origin of physics) becomes an impenetrable barrier to science, and a residue to all attempts to reduce biology to chemistry and physics.64
That is, the genetic information and the required reading machinery form an irreducibly complex system. So far, it has eluded materialistic explanations.65
The chirality problem
The two enantiomers of a generalized amino acid, where R is any functional group (except H)
What Sarfati66 calls a major hurdle is the origin of homochirality, the fact that all amino acid biomolecules with rare exceptions (such as some used in bacterial cell walls) are all left-handed; and with rare exceptions, all sugars, including those in nucleic acids, are right-handed. Those produced in a laboratory are a half left-handed and half right-handed mixture called a racemate. Even in the laboratory, chemists use pre-existing homochirality from a biological source in order to synthesize homochiral compounds.60 Chiral molecules are dissymmetricthey exist as mirror images of each other, just as the right hand is a mirror image of the left hand (the word chiral comes from the Greek word for hand). The problem is left-handed sugars and right-handed amino acids can be toxic and prevent abiogenesis. Furthermore, most all enzymes are designed to work only with right-handed sugars and left-handed amino acids. All attempts to solve the chirality problem, including magnetochiral dichroism, have failed.67
The legacy of the Miller experiment
A major unresolved question that involves psychology and history more than chemistry is, Why has the MillerUrey experiment had such a strong impact on the origin-of-life field?68 Shapiro concludes a major reason is that the experiment seems to imply that we are on the verge of understanding how life was created without intelligence or design. In the public mind (and in the minds of many scientists) this experiment psychologically supports abiogenesis. But the MillerUrey results, and the many similar experiments completed since then, actually show the opposite of what the MillerUrey experiment purported to demonstrate. Few textbooks actually analyze the results, and most uncritically accept this experiment as proof of how the building blocks of life were produced and then imply that the only task left was to determine how they were assembled.
My review of college textbooks found that most discussed the MillerUrey experiments, some extensively, but few texts mentioned any of the problems. Most implied that the research has conclusively shown how the building blocks of life spontaneously generated. In part, due to the common claims in textbooks and museum exhibits, many people assume that a good, if not excellent, case exists for the MillerUrey thesis. Davies noted that when he set out to write a book on the origin of life, he was convinced that science was close to wrapping up the mystery of lifes origins, but after spending a year or two researching the field, he is
now of the opinion that there remains a huge gulf in our understanding . This gulf in understanding is not merely ignorance about certain technical details, it is a major conceptual lacuna.69
The MillerUrey experiment is now an icon of evolution, presented in most all biology, zoology and evolution textbooks as clear evidence of abiogenesis, when it actually illustrates the many difficulties of chemical evolution.22
The current status of the MillerUrey line of research
In an interview with Stanley Miller, now considered one of the most diligent and respected origin-of-life researchers in the world, after he completed his 1953 experiment, he dedicated himself to the search for the secret of life but was also quick to criticize what he feels is shoddy work in an effort to overcome the fact that the origin-of-life field has a reputation as a fringe discipline, not worthy of serious pursuit.59 Miller vowed that one day
scientists would discover the self-replicating molecule that had triggered the great saga of evolution . [and] the discovery of the first genetic material [will] legitimize Millers field. It would take off like a rocket, Miller muttered through clenched teeth. Would such a discovery be immediately self-apparent? Miller nodded. It will be in the nature of something that will make you say, How could you have overlooked this for so long? And everybody will be totally convinced.59
This hope has become less realistic as our knowledge has advanced. What we have learned, especially during the past few years, makes it less likely than ever that abiogenesis was ever possible.36,70,71 Yet the MillerUrey experiment is now the classic, best-known origin-of-life experiment, cited in texts from high school to graduate school, in areas ranging from biology to geology and philosophy to religion.20,22 Phillip Johnson summed up the whole MillerUrey research problem as follows:
Because post-Darwinian biology has been dominated by materialist dogma, the biologists have had to pretend that organisms are a lot simpler than they are. Life itself must be merely chemistry. Assemble the right chemicals, and life emerges. DNA must likewise be a product of chemistry alone. As an exhibit in the New Mexico Museum of Natural History puts it, volcanic gases plus lightning equal DNA equals LIFE! When queried about this fable, the museum spokesman acknowledged that it was simplified but said it was basically true.72
Conclusion
It is now recognized that the MillerUrey line of research is simply a revival of the antique notion of spontaneous generation because it
suggests that given the primordial soup, with the right combination of amino acids and nucleic acids, and perchance a lightning bolt or two, life might in fact have begun spontaneously. The major difference is that according to what biologists customarily called spontaneous generation, life supposedly began this way all of the time. According to the soup suggestion, by contrast, it began this way only once in the immeasurably distant past.73
We must conclude, as Ridley did, that the early forms of life, and how natural selection could shape them, are so obscure at the primordial stage that we can only guess why complexity might have increased.
Darwin thought about the question inconclusively. He once wrote to the geologist Charles Lyell about a question which is very difficult to answer, viz. how at first start of life, when there were only simplest organisms, how did any complication of organisms profit them? I can only answer that we have not facts enough to guide any speculation on the subject. We have more facts now, but they are still inadequate, and Darwins answer still holds.74
When confronted with this evidence, supporters of abiogenesis argue that science must be naturalistic, and we have no choice but to tell the best story we have, even if it is not a complete or even accurate story.4 Although widely heralded by the popular press for decades as proof that life originated on the early earth entirely by natural conditions, the MillerUrey experiments have actually provided compelling evidence for exactly the opposite conclusion. This set of experimentsmore than almost any other carried out by modern sciencehas done much more to show that abiogenesis is not possible on Earth than to indicate how it could be possible.
Acknowledgments
I want to thank Tim Wallace, Bert Thompson, Wayne Frair, Clifford Lillo and John Woodmorappe for their comments on an earlier draft of this article.
Why the Miller
Youwerecreated
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Yeah it's pretty hard. Look:
Never been proven. Ever?
Viewpoints? No studies or evidence? Sorry, what's this then:
Experiments prove nothing I see. Or even observations of nature. You seem to dismiss them at viewpoints. Cute.
So is one of the world's most reputable and foremost museums now a viewpoint? Or not evidence? Because they present the latest evidence of evolution and our ancestry in that link.
Corn is another good example of evolution.
Zea (genus)
Teosintes are critical components of maize evolution, but opinions vary about which taxa were involved. According to the most widely-held evolutionary model, the crop was derived directly from Z. m. parviglumis by selection of key mutations [3]; up to 12% of its genetic material came from Z. m. mexicana through introgression. Another model proposes that a tiny-eared wild maize was domesticated, and after being spread from east-central Mexico, this cultigen hybridized with Z. luxurians or Z. diploperennis resulting in a great explosion of maize genetic diversity, ear and kernel forms, and capacity to adapt to new habitats, as well as increased yields. A third model suggests that the early maize resulted from a cross between Z. diploperennis and a species of Tripsacum; support for this is minimal. A fourth model posits that teosinte resulted from hybridization between an early wild form of Z. m. mays and Tripsacum.[4]
Zea (genus) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yes Allie, it's very difficult to have a conversation when one side is lying. But it's not the side you think it is.
How does altering the genes in plants and animals prove macro-evolution ?You're gonna have to explain this one.
Have you not heard altering genes it pushes the organisms to the limits weakening them ?
We are not even sure what the long term effects will be on people that eat geneticly altered food.
Uh oh ,you have to watch what j posts up for evidence. Corn has been altered as well.Fact is that corn is a man made food it did not happen naturally it was native Americans that brought forth corn. And why do you continue insisting to show micro-adaptations evidence and calling it macro-evolution. I can even accept the term micro-evolution but not macro-evolution because it has never been observed. Reputable scientist agree that macro-evolution has never been observed.
Macroevolution has never been observed (Talk.Origins)
Talk origins Just comes out and admits that Macro-evolution has never been observed. Talk origins is a neo darwinism site. Speciation has been observed but it is not macro-evolution it is micro-evolution or micro-adaptations. This is what i have been saying to you both.
(Redirected from (Talk.Origins) Macroevolution has never been observed)
Response Article
This article (Macroevolution has never been observed (Talk.Origins)) is a response to a rebuttal of a creationist claim published by Talk.Origins Archive under the title Index to Creationist Claims.
Index
Claim: CB901
No case of macroevolution has ever been documented.
Source: Morris, Henry M., 2000 (Jan.). Strong Delusion. Back to Genesis 133: a.
Brown, Walt, 1995. In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood. Phoenix, AZ: Center for Scientific Creation, p. 6. Response:
Creation Wiki response: (Talk Origins quotes in blue.)
Talk Origins
1." We would not expect to observe large changes directly. Evolution consists mainly of the accumulation of small changes over large periods of time. If we saw something like a fish turning into a frog in just a couple generations, we would have good evidence against evolution."
It's remarkable that evolutionists do not see the faith that their worldview requires. They claim they have evidence in Speciation, which is not evidence for universal common descent in any shape or form. Then when asked for observational evidence for the theory of evolution (i.e. change beyond the kind barrier) they claim that would disprove Darwinian Evolution! It has been demonstrated, as far as the evidence goes, that minor change sometimes referred to as micro-evolution does not lead to evolution on a large scale.
Talk Origins
2. "The evidence for evolution does not depend, even a little, on observing macroevolution directly. There is a very great deal of other evidence (Theobald 2004; see also evolution proof)."
The evidences presented in that essay are things such as vestigial structures and developmental biology which are not evidence for evolution. See True Origin for a thorough rebuttal of this essay written by Ashby Camp. Furthermore, there are some major problems with macro-evolution:
Evidence for such an occurrence is lacking in the fossil record.
Common structures can support a common designer thesis just as well as one of common ancestry.
Macroevolution is implausible, proteins evolving in small increments fits the evidence, crossing the large gaps is not realistic.(Plaisted 2005)
Talk Origins
3. "As biologists use the term, macroevolution means evolution at or above the species level. Speciation has been observed and documented".
Very true, but it proves nothing close to universal common descent. Creationists would agree that speciation has been observed, but that is not what the debate is about. Walter Remine comments:
In creation-evolution debates, evolution isnt mere change in gene frequencies. Unless context indicates otherwise, it refers, ultimately, to naturalistic molecules-to-man transformation anything less involves creation. Macroevolution makes the large-scale transformation fully explicit.
Please see Five major evolutionist misconceptions for more information.
Talk Origins
4. "Microevolution has been observed and is taken for granted even by creationists. And because there is no known barrier to large change and because we can expect small changes to accumulate into large changes, microevolution implies macroevolution. Small changes to developmental genes or their regulation can cause relatively large changes in the adult organism (Shapiro et al. 2004)."
Micro-evolution is observed, but there are limits to the variation.
1.) An observational limit which we see all the time, dogs always produce dogs, cows always produce cows, etc.
2.) Original amount of information available: From the original starting point information is only lost and not added. Mutations occur which scramble the existing DNA and over the years certain traits are selected and passed down. As this process occurs information is lost until there can be no more variation because there is nothing to select from. This creates a natural barrier that prevents evolutionary change on a large scale.
Macroevolution has never been observed (Talk.Origins) - CreationWiki, the encyclopedia of creation science
Youwerecreated
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I am positive until they can prove they have everything earth does there is nothing supporting your view. Your view is based on either faith or speculation. There is no life out there that we know of correct ?
Youwerecreated
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One more thing to consider.
You're side tells us that life began about 3.8 billion years ago on this planet. They also say the universe is 20 billion years old. With all the building blocks out there,why is there no life that we can see with 20 billion years for it to spontaneously generate itself as earth did in 3.8 billion years ?
You're side tells us that life began about 3.8 billion years ago on this planet. They also say the universe is 20 billion years old. With all the building blocks out there,why is there no life that we can see with 20 billion years for it to spontaneously generate itself as earth did in 3.8 billion years ?
Yeah it's pretty hard. Look:
Never been proven. Ever?
Viewpoints? No studies or evidence? Sorry, what's this then:
Experiments prove nothing I see. Or even observations of nature. You seem to dismiss them at viewpoints. Cute.
So is one of the world's most reputable and foremost museums now a viewpoint? Or not evidence? Because they present the latest evidence of evolution and our ancestry in that link.
Corn is another good example of evolution.
Zea (genus)
Teosintes are critical components of maize evolution, but opinions vary about which taxa were involved. According to the most widely-held evolutionary model, the crop was derived directly from Z. m. parviglumis by selection of key mutations [3]; up to 12% of its genetic material came from Z. m. mexicana through introgression. Another model proposes that a tiny-eared wild maize was domesticated, and after being spread from east-central Mexico, this cultigen hybridized with Z. luxurians or Z. diploperennis resulting in a great explosion of maize genetic diversity, ear and kernel forms, and capacity to adapt to new habitats, as well as increased yields. A third model suggests that the early maize resulted from a cross between Z. diploperennis and a species of Tripsacum; support for this is minimal. A fourth model posits that teosinte resulted from hybridization between an early wild form of Z. m. mays and Tripsacum.[4]
Zea (genus) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yes Allie, it's very difficult to have a conversation when one side is lying. But it's not the side you think it is.
How does altering the genes in plants and animals prove macro-evolution ?You're gonna have to explain this one.
Uh there was more than just the domestication of corn in that post. You cut out my quote including the experiments with guppies of John Endler, and Richard Lenski's extensive experiment concerning E. coli. Lenski's experiments involve tens of thousands of generations of e. coli. over a period of twenty or so years. There's a case where one of the specimens evolves to eat another ingredient in the 'broth' they swim in that's not the food they originally ate. There's also a case of lizards that were introduced on the Mediterranean island of Pod Mcaru in the 70s diverging from their brethren on another island. As well as the example of Darwin's finches.
If you want more proof of the existence of macro-evolution, you can look at the fossil record and ancestry of various animals. All animals also have vestigial parts left over from ancestor species. Whales are a particularly fascinating example. We're all familiar with how life started in the ocean and evolved onto land. The ancestors of whales (and dolphins, and porpoises) were originally land-inhabiting mammals that actually returned to the sea. So essentially, their ancestors went from living in the sea, to land, to sea again. There's several remarkable pieces of evidence for this. The fin bones resemble that of the limbs of land mammals, their need to breathe air from the surface, and the vertical movement of their tales. The tail movements of a fish are usually horizontal.
You can see traces of genetic ancestors in evolved animals everywhere. This is the cause of the numerous inefficiencies in the bodies of organisms. There is no starting clean with evolution, evolution is all about constantly building and evolving on what is present.
Another example is the giraffe. Giraffe's have very well-developed larynx, yet it can't talk or make noises above lows bleats or moans. Why is this? Well, mammals originally evolved from fish. As the neck lengthened as they evolved more and more from fish, the nice and neat ways the interior of our fish cousins got distorted. This shows well in giraffes, where the laryngeal nerves become extremely exaggerated. It literally goes down through the neck to loop around the heart and go towards the head again. In humans, and even fish like sharks, this nerve is only a few centimeters or inches long.
And by altering you mean? And by limits you mean? And by weakening them you mean? And this has to do with disproving evolution... how?
And this is evidence... how?
How can you claim to accept micro-evolution but not macro? All macro-evolution is many instances of micro-evolution that make an animal different than it's ancestors, to the point where it evolves into a new animal that can no longer breed with its predecessors. How do you think the diversity in nature we have today came about if macro-evolution is impossible, but micro-evolution is?
How does one accept that speciation, things evolving into new species has been observed, but not macro-evolution, which is evolution on the level of species and higher?You don't really like using your own words to explain your ideas do you? You seem to have an over-reliance on creationist articles to do your arguing for you. This article has several problems.
The article has the same problem you do. I'm baffled by how they accept speciation, but not macro-evolution. It kind of just glosses it over and ignores it entirely when the matter comes up. They are very similar concepts, you realize that right? It also make the incorrect claim of "not new information can be added to the gene." Richard Lenski's experiment with E. coli actually prove that entirely wrong.
Youwerecreated
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So you're betting on maybe again ?
Youwerecreated
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Can't say they do exist either.
Youwerecreated
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We would probably find something to disagree on.
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