INTRODUCTION
I’ve spent my entire life steeped deeply into a strong belief in the Lord, and the belief that he created everything. I’m also a scientist, of sorts. This posed a problem for years. Not just from my friends, and their endless ridicule, but from within my own faith. You see, I knew in my soul (-: that there was a way to resolve scientific evidence, and my belief in creation.
Personally, I know The Lord exists. I have felt his touch. But I can’t prove it. Maybe this is just as The Lord wants it. The whole thing is based on faith. Solid proof would surly spoil that.
Faith….. Such an interesting word. This is a virtue held strongly by all believers, and unbelievers as well. Yes, unbelievers. For they continue to have faith that their beliefs are right. Without scientific proof of this fact. So, in effect, they’re believers as well. And they continue to cram this evolution thing down our throats…..without a spit of scientific PROOF. I’ll show you how they hide their theories up their sleeve. And what the truth really is. With no christian leanings. When I do compare a scientific finding in a religious way, I’ll highlight it and make sure you understand that this is my belief and not a scientific fact. Nothing up my sleeves.
Faith indeed.
I’ll start this essay from the bottom up. First up, will be talk about life at the cellular level, and how it can/can’t [self] replicate without external help. We’ll talk of the two camps approaching this school of thought. The “DNA, Protein world” model, and the “RNA World” model. I’ll explain each one’s particular qualities and problems. This will be a long, but informative chapter. I’ll do my best to espouse each one of these concepts, findings, genealogies and scientific facts, in a way that can be studied by you in an understandable and absorbent manner.
Next, we’ll talk of origins, and space. The hazards and miracles it takes to make this planet habitable. We’ll wind through that cluster of thoughts, through inter galactic seed planting, and ending up in a discussion of String and M theory, which seem to support a creator. I’ll give you a taste here. In string theory, for the big bang to work mathematically, there has to be nothing there first. Now, I’m not talking about a big black empty space that the big bang then filled up with matter. NOTHING. The big bang brought forth everything, including space. So…….. In the beginning there was nothing. Sound familiar? These are deep and complicated subjects, but if you stick with me, I believe you will be better armed to approach these conundrums for yourself.
We’ll also talk of “Ida”, the sensational (and quite exciting) fossil revealed recently. (Though she’s been around for twenty years) The papers are sensationally claiming that this little lady (Monkey, not a Lemur) is a missing link. While she is a huge find, she in no way points towards a missing link. I’ll tell you why. And I’ll expose the weakness in the claim that ANY species became another (such as man from monkeys). Not just man, but any species.
We’ll also talk about religious writings. The problems associated with translations, and chapters left out, as well as man’s effect on these works. Where they are wrong, and where they are right. And I’ll try to help you understand the desperate need for your religious beliefs to be separated from the evils of the church. Which are just the machinations of man, in an effort to control men.
When I’m through, I hope you will understand the real deal when it comes to The Origins Of Man. You see, we just simply don’t know. EITHER WAY. And this is what I hope to leave you with. The purpose of this report is to educate you. Not to convert you. Your choices are your own, and The Lord would have it no other way. I just want you to understand what is scientifically true, and what is being bandied about by the scientific community as proof, but in fact, is not. I’ll prove it to you without any ooga booga. Just the facts.
I leave this introduction with a scientific mantra that seems to have been abandoned, when it comes to this subject—-> Coordination is not Causation.
CHAPTER 1
See folks, nothing up my sleeve..
DNA, RNA, Proteins and card tricks.
See folks, nothing up my sleeve..
DNA, RNA, Proteins and card tricks.
The central theory to the origin of life paradigm is the idea that life originated from non living matter somewhere between 4.5 and 5 billion years ago. That the inanimate world, through physics and chemistry, was able to foster life. And once that life occurred, it continued to evolve. Bringing forth the diversity of life we see on modern earth. This is what scientists call chemical evolution. Where the end product is a living entity.
This entire progression is a chemical process. Through this process scientists are trying to understand how biochemical systems began. Did these systems interact with each other to form a unit that would be recognized as a living entity? From a chemical mixture to the very first cell?
Biochemistry, (contemporary biochemistry) is dominated by two classes of molecules. Proteins and nucleic acids. These molecules lie at the heart of biochemical systems. Proteins are large complex molecules built from amino acids, They carry out virtually every activity within the cell, working in collaboration with other proteins they form virtually every structure. Not only inside the cell, but in the extracellular environment as well. Proteins are necessary for life as we know it. The simplest bacterium has to have over a thousand different types of proteins in order for that life form to even exist.
The other class of molecules, nucleic acids, are containers which hold all the information needed to do stuff. DNA, a type of nucleic acid, contains information that the cell needs to build proteins. And another group of molecules called RNA, which are structurally very similar to DNA, mediate the interaction between DNA and proteins. When instructions in DNA are needed by the cell to make a particular protein it will read the DNA, and form a molecule called a messenger RNA. Which is a copy of that information. The messenger RNA will migrate to a structure called a ribosome, a complex made of proteins and RNA molecules. At the same time other transfer RNA molecules bring amino acids to the ribosome so that the proteins may be assembled.
This, in essence, is the crux of modern biochemistry.
DNA, which contains the information needed to make protein, can also undergo replication. Which allows it to generate two daughter molecules that are identical in structure to the mother DNA molecule. As a result of this, through the process of cell division, allows that information to be passed on to the next generation. This gives the structure the ability to store information, as well as pass it on from generation to generation through DNA molecules.
What must be understood at this point is that DNA replication can not proceed separate from proteins. Proteins are the molecules which replicate the DNA. So…. DNA contains the instructions to make the proteins that in turn will replicate the DNA molecule. And DNA is also the source of the instructions needed to make proteins, which carry out pretty much all the activities within the cell. So there is a mutual interdependence that DNA and proteins have with one another. Can’t have one without the other. Or, more to the point, each of them is useless without the other.
Where this plays in the origin of life paradigm, is that this interdependence creates a “chicken, or egg paradox.” You can’t have DNA emerging first, and then proteins second. Or the other way around. Because DNA contains the information needed to make proteins and proteins are the molecules that make DNA. This interdependence means that they must appear simultaneously. And physically together so they may interact.
So, scientists PRETTY MUCH believe that life could not have begun within a biochemistry built around DNA and proteins. Which they refer to as the “DNA protein world” model.
So they reasoned that there must have been another biochemistry which proceeded our contemporary biochemistry. Maybe RNA was the original biochemical system, because in this hypothesis the RNA could not only store the information needed, but can physically express that information. Both functions in one.
The reasoning for this is that RNA already has an intermediary role in contemporary biochemistry. It’s the messenger RNA that copies information from the DNA and takes it to the ribosomes to make proteins. The ribosome contains RNA molecules. The molecule that catalyzes amino acids is an RNA molecule. Add this to a discovery made some 25 years ago, of RNA molecules which behaved as functioning molecules called ribosomes. Which led to the belief that there had to be an RNA world. AND….. seemed to rescue the origin of life paradigm from the chicken, or egg paradox. Origin of lifers were convinced this was the jackpot. Thus began the RNA world model.
Since then, for some 25 years, it’s been met with plethora problems in attempting to explain where those RNA molecules could have come from.
This part is gonna be highly simplified because anything deeper into the structure of an RNA molecule would take up three more paragraphs. And isn’t needed for this chapter.
RNA is long chain like molecule. It’s subunits consist of four different Ribonucleotides. It’s backbone is an alternating sugar-phosphate chain. The side groups consist of four nucleobases. Urocil, cytosine, guanine and adenine. The sequencing of these A, G, C and U’s defines an RNA chain.
The way science has been approaching the assembly of RNA molecules within a pre biotic earth has traditionally revolved around attempts at defining separate chemical paths which can build the nucleobases, the sugars, ribose and the phosphates. And once they have that, there’s a need to define the paths used which would enable these components to interact with each other to form a nucleotide. After all this the nucleotide has to become activated. (ready and able to perform a rapid and easy reaction)
What this boils down to is three basic questions which must be answered to make the RNA world model feasible on the pre biotic earth.
1. How can the initial existence of the individual components on the pre biotic earth be defined?
2. How did these components come together to form a nucleotide?
3. How did those nucleotides become activated? A requirement so that it can react with other activated nucleotides to build an RNA chain?
There are now routes that we know of to make these chemicals. Science has defined, so far, how to build the nucleobases. Using very small molecules that are derivatives of things such as hydrogen cyanide and ammonia to name two which are likely to have been present on the pre biotic earth. Reactions have been found which can produce cytosine, uracil and other reactions can form adenine and guanine. All using the building blocks of the very small chemicals (consisting mostly of hydrogen, oxygen and carbon chains) known to be present on the early earth.
The problem with all this is? The processes are not likely to have occurred on the early earth.
Take cytosine. Science has defined two possible ways so far to construct this compound. But it isn’t representative of the early earth. Using the concentrations of the differing compounds required for this reaction to take place in the laboratory makes it irrelevant. As these concentrations could not have been present on the early earth.
Also, if other chemicals known to be present on the early earth are introduced, it destroys the specimen. Thus frustrating the science even further.
If the formose reaction is left too long it creates a huge amount of side products. Such as sugars, lots of sugars. which frustrate the science even further. Leaving the lowly ribose molecule a find it’s way in a bewildering array of sugar molecules. Now we have a selectivity problem.
The PH can’t be left to it’s own accord. It must be carefully controlled in the laboratory.
You must have a catalyst.
The conditions which are needed to produce the much needed sugars, ends up destroying them right after they form.
These problems are so severe that the late Dr. Leslie Orgel (the father of the RNA world model) has said in print. “It would be a miracle if a strand of RNA appeared on the primitive earth.” He knew what the chemistry is, his point was that he was convinced that it just couldn’t operate on the early earth.
So, up till recently, a huge rift developed between what could be done in the lab, and what could actually have happened spontaneously on the early earth.
Then, a paper was published in the June 14th, 2009 issue of The Journal of Nature, by a team of scientists from the University of Manchester in the UK. They have discovered a pre biotic rout to generating some of these building blocks. What’s new about this study isn’t the product. Rather the thinking. The beauty of this process is that they abandoned the attempts at creating the individual components. But rather attempted to combine certain components sequentially together, and let the stuff meld. Allowing a natural process to take place in an effort to produce a Ribonucleotide. Back to the primordial goo. Right?
As they progressed along this path, they found that they needed a catalyst to buffer the reaction because the product kept getting consumed at the end, They needed a way to control the PH. They discovered that if they used phosphate as a buffer they ended up with almost a pure product. This was very exciting as they would need to use phosphate at the end of the reaction to activate the Ribonucleotides as well. A double benefit. One of the components needed at the end of the reaction can influence the early stages of the reaction as well.
They also discovered that if they hit the end product with UV radiation (likely to be present on the early earth) it reduced the number of side products. It seems that the activated Ribonucleotides are more resistant to UV radiation than the side products. This provides an additional clean up step utilizing another component that was likely to be available on the early earth.
This type of thinking, and the breakthrough type of study this represents, will influence science profoundly. It is groundbreaking, elegant and worthy of much praise.
Never the less, there are specific problems when put to the test of the origin of life paradigm.
1. They were only able to make two of the Ribonucleotides needed.
2. They ignored side reactions which the phosphate didn’t clean up.
3. When they had added compounds that also would have been present on the early earth, they couldn’t get the same results. It frustrates the chemistry.
Dr. Robert Shapiro, a chemist and origin of life researcher at The City University of NY. (and purportedly an atheist) criticized this research in Nature magazine for this very reason. Saying that “they have stacked the deck.”
4. The end product of this process is an activated Ribonucleotide. Which is good. If it’s not activated, it can’t react with other Ribonucleotides to form chains. But it’s bad because it will react with other compounds as well. Thus consuming your product before it can react properly with another Ribonucleotide.
5. The biggest problem with this whole thing is it’s dependence on phosphate. The amount needed almost certainly would not have existed on the early earth. Much too concentrated. Basically canceling it’s relevance as a path towards the development of life on the early earth. And at these levels, the salts which will form from the phosphates, in the presence of oxygen, will further consume the product.
6. They can’t figure out how the phosphates could have been available in the form needed because they become insoluble in the presence of calcium and magnesium. Insoluble phosphate won’t do a thing at the cellular level. They can’t identify any source of soluble phosphates on the early earth. And without that. it won’t work.
7. They haven’t been able show any geochemical relevance.
In an article in Nature News titled “RNA world easier to make” by Richard Van Norden, Dr. Robert Shapiro was quoted as saying… “The flaw with this kind of research is not in the chemistry, but rather in the logic. That is, this extent of experimental control in a modern laboratory could not have been available on the early earth.”
In a nutshell, that's pretty much the cutting edge research in this field. Everything that's relevant. Not too hard to figure out. It's failing. And it doesn't seem to be able to work without some sort of intelligent design/supervision. In the laboratory, it's man. Outside the laboratory??????
Coordination is not causation.
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