Chapter 2: Physical and Chemical Evolution

 

There are now three different groups of evolutionists, or neo-Darwinists: the physical evolutionist and the chemical evolutionist.

·        The physical evolutionist claims: The upward drive toward life is contained already within inorganic matter itself, in the laws of physics. When the universe arose some 12-15 billion years ago in the big bang, this upward drive toward life was contained already within inorganic matter, within its energy, and physical laws.

·        The chemical evolutionist says: Life on earth has arisen by itself in the primordial chemical soup from inorganic matter. And from this first living cell, all life on earth has evolved then: the plants, the animals, the apes, and finally mankind.

·        The physical evolutionist, who starts off with the inner drive toward life within the inorganic matter of the universe, and the chemical evolutionist, with his primordial chemical soup, put together.

 

 

Inner Drive towards Life

 

Some persons do believe now: There is an inner upward drive toward life in the universe. And this inner upward drive toward life is contained already within the atoms of inorganic matter. Is that true? Has that been proved now scientifically? Is life inevitable?

 

The well known British/Australian professor of Theoretical Physics Paul Davies, now in Adelaide, Australia, says in the journal New Scientist, 18 September 1999, on page 27, under the heading "Life force" first asks, "Are we alone in the Universe?" and then answers:

 

"When I was a student in the 1960s I was convinced that the answer was 'no'. This put me at odds with the prevailing scientific view. The orthodox position at that time was summed up by the French biologist Jaques Monod when he wrote of the 'unfeeling immensity of the Universe', and declared that we had emerged from it alone and by pure chance. It was an opinion echoed by many other leading scientists. American palaeontologist George Gaylord Simpson, one of the giants in modern biology, described attempts to search for life elsewhere in the Universe - especially intelligent life - as 'a gamble of the most adverse odds in history.'"

 

"Thirty years on, there has been a remarkable U-turn. Take Christian de Duve who, like Monod, is a Nobel prizewinning biologist. In his book Vital Dust, published in 1995, de Duve suggests that life is 'a cosmic imperative' bound to arise wherever conditions allow. His stance is shared by many at NASA, whose astrobiology programme is dedicated to seeking out alien life forms. Meanwhile, a team of enthusiastic astronomers sponsored by the SETI Institute in California is sweeping the sky with radio telescopes in the hope of stumbling across a message from ET. Journalists, Hollywood producers and schoolchildren likewise assume that the Universe is teeming with life.

 

"This shift in opinion has little to do with advances in understanding. True, we now have concrete evidence of planets in other star systems, but most astronomers believed all along that they were there. Biochemists have inched forward in their attempts to synthesize the building blocks of life, but creating life in a test tube remains a distant dream. We may soon discover evidence for past life on Mars, but if so it will almost certainly have arrived there from the Earth, in rock basted off our planet by large asteroid impacts.

 

"The assumption that life should arise inevitably given Earth-like conditions is known as biological determinism. But it is hard to find any support for it in the known laws of physics, chemistry or biology. If we relied solely on these laws to explain the workings of the Universe, it would be to conclude like Monod that life can only have arisen by sheer good luck - and that it is therefore exceedingly unlikely to be found elsewhere.

 

"The idea of biological determinism received a fillip in 1953, when Harold Urey and Stanley Miller at the University of Chicago tried to recreate in a test tube what they believed to be the conditions of primeval earth. They found that amino acids - the building blocks of proteins - were part of the chemical sludge formed when electricity was discharged through a mixture of gaseous methane, ammonia, water vapour and hydrogen. The Miller-Urey experiment was hailed as the first step towards the creation of life in the laboratory: many chemists envisaged 'destination life' to lie at the end of a long road down which a chemical soup zapped with energy would be inexorably conveyed by the passage of time." Davies, P. (1999:27, 28).

 

Was that scientific? Was that true?

 

Prof. Paul Davies: "But this idea did not stand up to scrutiny. Making the building blocks of life is easy - amino acids have been found in meteorites and even in outer space. But just as bricks alone don't 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. To form proteins, many amino acids must link together in long chains in the right order. In energy terms that is an 'uphill' process.

 

"In itself this is not a problem as there were plentiful energy sources on the early Earth. The problem is that simply throwing energy willy-nilly at amino acids will not create delicate chain molecules with highly specified sequences, but a tarry mess - in the same way that putting a stick of dynamite under a pile of bricks won't make a house. Somehow the energy has to be fed into the system in a contrived and particular manner. In a living organism this step is under the control of the cell's molecular machinery, with its intricate specifications, but in a jumbled prebiotic chemical soup, the amino acids would have to take pot luck. So while amino acids are written into the laws of nature, large and highly specialised molecules such as proteins are certainly not.

 

"We know that the secret of life lies not with the chemical ingredients as such, but with the logical structure and organisational arrangement of the molecules. So DNA is a genetic databank, and genes are instructions for making customised proteins and, indirectly, other biological molecules. Like a supercomputer, life is an information-processing system, which implies a special sort of organised complexity. It is the information content, or software, of the living cell that is the real mystery, not the hardware components.

 

"Nothing better illustrates the computational prowess of life than the genetic code. All known life is based on a deal struck between nucleic acids and proteins - two classes of molecules that from a chemical point of view are scarcely on nodding terms. The nucleic acids DNA and RNA store instructions, and proteins do most of the work. Together these molecules perform life's many miracles, but on their own they are helpless. To manufacture proteins, nucleic acids employ a clever intermediary to form a coded information channel. It works like this. DNA, the famous double helix, is build like a ladder with four different kinds of rungs The information is stored in the sequences of these rungs, just as an instruction manual records information in sequences of letters. Proteins are built from 20 different amino acids, and the right protein is made only if the amino acids are linked together in the right order.

 

"To translate from the four-letter alphabet used by DNA into the twenty-letter system used by proteins, all Earth life uses the same code. The key question when it comes to the inevitable - or otherwise - of life is how this ingenious system of coding emerged? How did stupid atoms spontaneously write their own software, and where did the very peculiar form of information needed to get the first living cell up and running come from?

 

"Nobody knows, but scientists have traditionally divided into two camps on the issue. In one group are those who believe it all happened by chance - that life is the result of a stupendous chemical fluke. That was Monod's view. It is easy to work out the odds against a random chemical mixture just happening to shuffle the appropriate molecules into the elaborate arrangement needed. The numbers are breathtakingly huge. If life as we know it arose by chance, it will have happened only once in the observable Universe.

 

"By contrast, biological determinists assume that chance is secondary, and that the right sorts of molecules obligingly form as a result of the laws of nature. American biogenesis pioneer Sidney Fox, for example, claimed that chemistry prefers to link up amino acids in precisely the right combinations to make them biologically functional. If so, it is as if there is an in-built bias - even a conspiracy - in nature to create life-encouraging substances. But is it credible that the laws of physics and chemistry contain a blueprint for life? How would the crucial information content of life be encoded in those laws?"

 

"One important observation is that a structure that is rich in information tends to lack patterns. This property is illustrated most clearly by a branch of mathematics known as algorithmic information theory, which seeks to quantify the complexity of information by treating it as the output of a computer program, or algorithm. Consider the binary sequence 10101010101010101010... This can be generated by the simple command 'Print 10 n times.' The input instructions are far shorter than the output sequence, reflecting the fact that the output contains a repetition pattern, which is easy to describe compactly. For this reason, the output has very little information content.

 

"By contrast, an apparent random sequence such as 110101001010010111... cannot be condensed into a simple set of instructions, so it has a high information content. If the job of DNA is to store information efficiently, it had better not contain too many patterns in the sequence of the 'rungs', since patterns represent informational redundancy. Biochemists confirm this expectation. The genomes of organisms that have been sequenced so far mostly look like random jumbles of the four constituent letters.

 

"The higgledy-piggledy nature of genome sequences runs counter to biological determinism. The laws of physics can be used to predict ordered structures, but not random ones. A crystal, for instance, is simply a regular array, like the repeating binary sequence given above, and is thus almost devoid of information. The construction of crystals is built into the laws of physics, as their periodic forms are determined by the mathematical symmetries inherent in those laws. But the random sequences of amino acids in proteins, or the series of 'rungs' in the DNA ladder, cannot be 'in' the laws of physics, any more than houses are.

 

"Nor can it be 'in' the laws of chemistry. A direct illustration of this fact comes from examining the structure of DNA. Each rung of the ladder is made up of two segments, which couple together snugly like a lock and key. Ultimately, chemistry determines the nature of the bonds that hold together the segments, and also the forces that attach them to the sides of the ladder. However, there are no chemical bonds between successive rungs. Chemistry doesn't care about the order of the rungs, and life is free to change them on a whim. Just as the sequence of letters in an instruction manual is independent of the chemistry of the paper and ink, so the 'letters' in DNA - which make up the information - are independent of the chemical properties of nucleic acid. It is this ability of life to free itself from the strictures of chemistry that bestows upon it such power and versatility. Biological determinism would imply a chemical straightjacket that would serve only to inhibit, not enhance, biological creativity.

 

"If life represents an escape from chemistry, we cannot appeal to chemistry to explain life. ... Life is ultimately about complex information processing, so it makes sense to seek a solution in the realm of information theory and complexity theory. Since biological information is not encoded in the laws of physics and chemistry (at least as currently known), where does it come from? There seems to be agreement that information cannot come into existence spontaneously ... there is no known law of physics able to create information from nothing.... If the error rate gets too high, information leaks away faster than selection can inject it, and evolution grinds to a halt. Far from accumulating information, an error-prone molecule will shed it. ... In quantum mechanics, the state of a system is described by its maximum information content. In thermodynamics, information falls as entropy rises. In biology, a gene is a set of instructions containing the need to execute some task." Davies, P. (1999:28-30).

 

 

Biological information as a spiritual magnitude

 

Siegfried Scherer is Professor of Microbial Ecology at the Technical University of München. And he is also Director of Microbiology at the Technical University at München-Freising, S. Germany. He states in his book, Evolution: A critical Textbook (1998:275), about the information, found in the bacterial cell, about apobetics, pragmatics, semantics, syntax, statistics:

 

"The DNA carries biological information - sign-sequences of base-pairs, which have a certain meaning in the cell. On the level of the syntax, the rules are laid down, according to which the signs of a sign-consequence are joined together. This form of information one calls 'encoding'. Each encoding is based on an agreement (convention). Without this knowledge, information cannot be processed. Codes appear in different forms, like Morse-signs, computer-programs or the tail-wagging-dance of the bees.

 

"The level of the semantics deals with the meaning of a sign-consequence, like that of a sentence or a nucleotide-consequence of the DNA. So, a syntactically correct word-order is possible. But they have no meaning yet... That is, why one must still add there the levels of pragmatics (How is information changed into action?). And then, one must add apobetics (goal-aspect): (What shall be acchieved by this information?), if this information shall be grasped universally."

 

"An especially important characteristic of information is its replacement-function. The information, according to its nature, is not the matter itself or the facts themselves. But the encoded signs do stand for something. This ist at first spatially and temporally independent of them. So, the signs in the newspaper do stand for bygone events. And the technical drawing stands for a machine, which must still be built. Like this it is also with the sequences of the tripletts in the encoded regions of the DNA. They stand for proteins, which must still be synthesized. This characteristic of information clearly shows us: They are bound to a material carrier. But according to their nature, they are non-material." Scherer, S. et al. (1998:275, 276).

 

Tenets of Information

 

Max Himmelheber, a graduated engineer, was scientific assistant at the University in Karlsruhe, Basel, and Frankfurt, in Germany. Then he worked as a professional engineer, holding many patents on recycling methods. In 1970 he founded the journal Scheidewege. In Scheidewege (1988/1989:36-40) he published his findings about information and its origin.

 

What is information? Why has it arisen? Can information arise through chance, through some lucky coincidence? Can apes write a poem, if they hit the keys of their typewriters long enough? Has the doctrine of evolution been proved scientifically? Does every serious scientist believe in evolution?

 

Max Himmelheber: "As the real physical magnitude, only energy, or in another form, matter, does remain in space and time. Above it, a spiritual arrangement is resting, for which one now commonly uses the term 'information'. It expresses itself in the natural laws. Also this order must have been active at the moment, when the physical world arose. For hydrogen atoms and the other elements of the Periodic System are forming seemingly by themselves into the whole inorganic chemistry, through different states of energy and particles.

 

"It is important, to realize this: The term of the states-of-order, which have been active already at the moment of creation, perhaps in the 'big bang', has nothing to do whatsoever, whether they are being perceived by a conscious being. Important is here only, that they have been planned meaningfully, directed toward a goal by a conscious being. ... It is important to realize that a form is found already within the inorganic realm. As far as we know, at least from the time of the hydrogen atom onward, and in a still more concrete form in the crystals.

 

"A measure for the state-of-order of a structure, we do have in the term of information. By 'information' I do understand every meaningful forming or shaping of a thought. Thus, at first, each meaningful thought is information for the thinker himself. In this sense, the term information is valid already for the pre-material world, if we do assume, as this happens in the mythical and religious realm, that later material structures are realizations of creative thoughts. We do not find any further increase of information from the 'big bang' to the Periodic System. The physicists are able to explain to us strongly causally this whole event. Thus, we must assume that the whole information of the inorganic world was present and active already, when it arose.

 

"Thus, within the realm of matter, the term information is valid for each material shaping of thought. This is also true for the shaping of creative wisdom, and also (since man takes part in it), in the shaping of human thoughts. Information, thus, does not mean the informing of a second conscious being by the first one about certain facts, about a question, or a wish. Information means the filling of the world with meaning, plan, purpose, goal.

 

"The information can be expressed and be measured in the human realm through signs, for instance, through the letters of the alphabet, or through Morse-signs, or finally through the binary system of numbers. But here, one must not confuse the letters with the meaning of the text. Information can only arise through a conscious being, who creates it. We can only imagine it as being similar to our own one; but as being, when the material world arose, infinitely superior to our own one." Himmelheber, M. (1988/87:36).

 

 

1000 Apes typing

 

Why is there information? How does it arise? - Some evolutionists will say now: If 1000 apes keep on hitting the keys of their typewriters, a poem will finally arise, through pure chance, if they stick with it long enough. - Is that true? Can information arise through chance?

 

Max Himmelheber: "No information will arise, when the often quoted thousand apes are writing on a typewriter, and when thereby, accidentally, a Shakespeare-sonnet arises. Against this statement the neo-Darwinists will protest: They do believe, instead, that this is the only kind of information, which occurs in the world, and which forms it, also the genes and human consciousness. For the neo-Darwinian, this is the only type of information, which exists in the world, and which forms it, also the genes and human consciousness. The unintentionally written poetry does not produce any information at all, even, though, the sonnet, which they have written, might appear to the reader just like the original one does: Important is here only the producer and his intention, not the receiver.

 

"Information means that a conscious being thinks out a meaning, and that, at a further level, causes this meaning to take shape in matter. So, the machine, discovered and built by an engineer, is already information, when he has thought out this discovery. It reaches the material level, when it is built, when it functions. Thereby, no other person is informed about a fact. But the raw material (steel, copper, synthetic material, and so on) is filled with information, when the engineer forms it. The entropy (= disorder) of the synthetic material is reduced. The raw material is reduced from a state of high entropy, namely, greater disorder, by lifting it up onto a lower entropy in the complete functioning work. When disassembling the machine, the information disappears again, or falls down to a lower level. When, for example, scrap material is sorted into different classes of material, when it is recycled." (1988:40).

 

What proves that also inorganic matter has been planned by an intelligent person?

 

Max Himmelheber: "That there is a planning spirit, not only the physics of the cosmos is telling us, namely the larger material shapes, but also, when looking into microphysics. Why do proton and electron attract each other with just the force, measured by us, and not with a larger or smaller force? For then, there would be only neutron stars or a completely different quantum-physics and chemistry.

 

"The big bang hypothesis does not help us at all, to explain physically the arising of new biological information, if we do mean by physics only the states, measured in centimeters, grams, and seconds. All natural laws are manifestations of spiritual information. Biological development, in the sense of progressing toward higher levels of complication, is only possible, when more information is added. Otherwise, the offspring of the amoeba will always remain only an amoeba, and the offspring of the horsetail will always be only horsetails. In order to get from there to the higher flowering plants, still more spiritual information is needed." (1988:49-68).

 

Aimless Mutations

 

Some persons do believe now that life on earth arose though chance, through some lucky coincidence, through aimless mutations. - Is that true? Is that scientific?

 

Max Himmelheber: "Each engineer knows: Technical progress means drafting (outlining, formulating) a fundamentally new idea as a whole. Then it must be realized at many different places as a technical structure, in many different steps. All of them together are directed toward the final goal of a new technical structure. - Do the leaves of trees show us, that they have evolved through aimless mutations? - We would have to expect, then, a nearly endless number of deciduous trees with shapeless, chance-leaf forms, and not the specific forms of leaves, that have been kept up now almost fanatically for many thousands of years. These forms of leaves we call 'shapes'.

 

"If the theory of chance-mutations and natural selection of these survivors were true, the world of plants would have to be, then, a rank, bizarre chaos of stalks, stems, trunks, leaf-rags, and shoots, with the state-of-order of a bulky refuse garbage dump. But instead, there are oak, beech, acorn, ash, elm, cherry tree, larch, and so on. Since I also look at biology as an engineer, I am again and again surprised by the progressive 'discoveries'. One of these great discoveries is the bisexuality, whereby variations can be greatly increased." (1988:65-67).

 

Evolution on wrong Track

 

The hypothesis of evolution is on the wrong track. Why?

 

Max Himmelheber: "Because Darwin has seen in evolution an upward evolution toward a greater and greater usefulness, that is, toward a greater and greater chance for the survival of the fittest, for the individuals and also for the different kinds. Here lies the fundamental error: Already the amoeba and other one-celled organisms have survived in all climatic zones throughout billions of years, without being changed, while those creatures, which have been placed higher up in the rows of evolution, have become more and more vulnerable, susceptible. Thus, they do appear within their biotopes in smaller areas." (1988:79).

 

 

The Producer's Intention

 

Information cannot arise through chance, through some lucky coincidence. Because important is here only the producer and what he wants to do, not the receiver. Hence, also apes cannot produce any information, when writing accidentally a Shakespeare sonnet. For the neo-Darwinian this is the only type of information, which exists in the world. Let us look now briefly at a simple example from daily life, so that we will understand this better.

 

Someone writes a text in English for persons, who read and understand English. This English text contains also the letters H, P, and B. To the English reader these letters mean H, P, and B. But to the Russian reader, who knows only Russian, these three letters H, P, B will mean something different. The H means for him N, the P is an R, and the B is for him a W. - Why? Because the meaning of the letters and words is not contained in the printer's ink or in the paper. Because important is here only the producer's intention, who wrote these three letters in an English text, not in a Russian text. The Russians decided that these letters would mean this in their language. The symbol (letter) and its meaning are based on convention. They always come from a spiritual source, from an intelligent person (or group of persons).

 

The same it is with the different codes (or languages) in the inorganic and organic world: Also already in the first bacterium. The DNA-code, with its four letters, and the protein code, with its 20 letters (amino acids) do show us: Already on the level of the code we can know, that these one-celled creatures have been thought out and made by an intelligent person. Each code in the living cell proves that God has made it. It has not evolved at all.

 

 

Investigator Interference

 

When asked, How has life on earth arisen? Many will say: "Stanley L. Miller in America has proved through is chemical experiments that the first cell has evolved by itself in the primordial chemical soup from inorganic matter. From chemicals, found in the primordial atmosphere, he was able to make amino acids, which one finds now within the living cell!" - Does that prove chemical evolution?

 

Charles B. Thaxton and co-workers state: "If the theory of abiogenic synthesis is to have any support, then the burden to demonstrate such support rests squarely with the prebiotic simulation experiments. And seemingly, reported results from simulation experiments suggest that a wide variety of important precursor chemicals would have existed in substantial concentrations in primitive water basins." (1984:99).

 

Can we believe these results, reported from simulation experiments? How much comes from the natural laws, and how much from the scientific know-how of the investigator? - Here are a few examples:

 

Using Ultraviolet Light. Charles B. Thaxton and co-workers say about simulation experiments using ultraviolet light: "The successful synthesis of amino acids and other organic compounds using ultraviolet light has been reported in laboratory experiments. These experiments used short-wavelength (i.e., < 2000 A) ultraviolet light but excluded the long-wavelength (i.e., > 2000 A) UV which is so effective in destruction. Although this practice is effective, it is dubious as a prebiotic simulation procedure, since the full solar spectrum would have irradiated the primitive earth." (1984:100).

 

Heat. "Experiments using heat, electrical discharge, and shock waves are also subject to criticism. Serious questions must be raised about the geological relevance of the heat experiments. For example, we do not find local high-temperature (> 150°C) regions on earth except for geologically brief periods of time. Volcanoes, fumeroles, steam spouts, etc. have been cited as energy sources, but they are generally too far apart geographically, and do not last over geologically significant times. Scientists who accept heat as a legitimate source have usually argued that protocells at least originated very quickly and so brief geologic periods of energy input are all that are required. A continuous supply of intermediate chemicals was needed, however, until photosynthesis developed. For this reason, it is believed by most scientists that only general sources of energy (e.g., ultraviolet light) could have been effective for the origin of life." (1984:101).

 

Lightning. "Electrical discharge experiments have attempted to simulate lightning on the early earth. The actual lightning leader is much too hot (i.e., 20,000°K) for effective synthesis, however, immediately destroying any products. Milder electrical discharges, the co-called corona discharges from pointed objects, have also been simulated in experiments. The energy density used in these experiments is, however, nine orders of magnitude too great to be called a simulation of natural phenomena.

 

"In more imaginable terms the Miller spark experiment adds so much energy that 'two days of sparking represent an energy input into the system comparable to some 40 million years on the surface of the primitive earth.' Another geologically implausible feature of electrical discharge experiments is the fact that they are closed systems containing as much as 75% hydrogen. While they are begun with more plausible hydrogen concentrations, hydrogen is generated in the reaction and not allowed to escape as it would from an open system." Thaxton, C. B. (1984:102).

 

Traps. How widely has one used traps in biochemical simulation experiments? Does that make sense?

 

Charles B. Thaxton and co-workers: "All prebiotic heat, electrical discharge, and ultraviolet light (including photosensitization) experiments use traps. Traps allow for greater yields of product from equilibrium reactions in which dissolution would otherwise far outweigh synthesis. ... Traps function by continually removing the small fraction of product formed by the reactions. As products are removed from the zone of their formation, additional reaction is continuously required to reestablish equilibrium. In this way, reactions can be productively prolonged until one of the reactants is finally consumed. ... Like the practice of concentrating chemical reactants, this technique is a legitimate means of collapsing time to manageable amounts.

 

"This removal process also shields the products from subsequent destruction by the energy source which produced them. However, Carl Sagan has aptly commented on this shielding effect in the experiments: 'The problem we are discussing is a very general one. We use energy sources to make organic molecules. It is found that the same energy sources can destroy these organic molecules. The organic chemist has an understandable preference for removing the reaction products from the energy source before they are destroyed. But when we talk of the origin of life, I think we should not neglect the fact that degradation occurs as well as synthesis, and that the course of reaction may be different if the products are not preferentially removed. In reconstructing the origin of life, we have to imagine reasonable scenarios, which somehow avoid this difficulty!'

 

"In spite of these factors it is not at all clear that the ocean would have provided the shielding function of a trap. Laboratory traps are not usually exposed to long-wavelength ultraviolet light, which would be the case of the ocean, where UV light would penetrate some tens of meters beneath the surface. Furthermore, ocean currents periodically surface even the deep water, thus exposing its organic content to destructive ultraviolet light." (1984:103, 104).

 

"Furthermore, on a primitive earth many chemicals would have been present that are usually absent in primitive atmosphere experiments. For example, aldehydes including reducing sugars would have been present, but these are not identified as products in primitive atmosphere simulation experiments. As a result, destructive interactions with amino acids are obviated and amino acids accumulate. The use of selected chemicals in simulation experiments is highly artificial, and creates a certain unrealism in our expectations on the early earth." Thaxton, C. B. et al. (1984:106).

 

"Use of both heat and selected wavelengths of UV light is more implausible still. Not only is there the lack of means for isolating them from other energy sources, but greater doubt arises about their geochemical plausibility. It may be argued that using energy in spark experiments several orders of magnitude greater then could have existed on the early earth merely 'speeds up' the process. No comparable argument applies to heat.

 

"For example, increasing temperature to 1000°C not only accelerates reaction rates, but destroys organic products. In the case of ultraviolet light, there is no natural filter known that would justify use of selected wavelengths (i.e., >2000 A) of light while excluding the longer wavelengths more destructive to some essential organic compounds." Thaxton, B. C. et al. (1984:107, 108).

 

How much he may do

 

The chemical simulation experiments of the S. L. Miller type are said to prove that the first cell on earth was able to evolve by itself from inorganic matter in the primordial chemical soup. They are supposed to prove that life on earth arose by itself, without God, without any Creator. So, what may the investigator do during these simulation experiments, and what not?

 

C. B. Thaxton and co-workers: "Since all experiments are performed by an experimenter, they must involve investigator intervention. Yet experiments must be disqualified as prebiotic simulations when a certain class of investigator influence is crucial to their success. This is seen in analogy to the generally held requirement that no outside or supernatural agency was allowed to enter nature at the time of life's origin, was crucial to it, and then withdrew from history.

 

"We can apply this principle through a careful extension of the analogy. In the preparation of a prebiotic simulation experiment, the investigator creates the setting, supplies the aqueous medium, the energy, the chemicals, and establishes the boundary conditions. This activity produces the general background conditions for the experiment, and while it is crucial to the success of the experiment, it is quite legitimate because it simulates plausible early earth conditions. The inference of the investigator becomes crucial in an illegitimate sense, however, wherever laboratory conditions are not warranted by analogy to reliable plausible features of the early earth itself.

 

"Thus the illegitimate intervention of the investigator is directly proportional to the geochemical implausibility of the condition arising from experimental design and/or the investigator's procedure, the illegitimate interference being the greatest when such plausibility is missing altogether.

 

"With this in mind, it seems reasonable to suggest that permissible interference by the investigator would include developing plausible design features of the experiment, adjusting the initial reaction mixture, beginning the input of free energy to drive the reaction at the outset, and performing whatever minimal disturbance to the system is necessary to withdraw portions of the reaction product at various stages for analysis.

 

"Usually, in laboratory experiments, an experimenter employs a host of manipulative interventions in an effort to guide natural processes down specific nonrandom chemical pathways. In other words it is the character of the constraint that determines the result. In some chemical syntheses, for example, it may be necessary to combine reactants in a particular order, or vary the rates of addition in order to control the temperature, to adjust pH at a crucial color change, to remove products of reactions after ten minutes instead of twenty minutes, etc., etc. Such manipulations are the hallmark of intelligent, exogenous interference and should not be employed in any prebiotic experiment.

 

"The arrangement of experimental techniques (conditions) in fig. 6-1 (in their book) represents a scale or continuum of investigator interference. At some point on the scale, a degree of implausibility is reached when the experiment can no longer be considered acceptable. Beyond that point, there is no analogy between the techniques and reliable plausible prebiotic conditions."

 

"Brooks and Shaw have commented on this after a review of abiotic experiments: 'These experiments ... claim abiotic synthesis for what has in fact been produced and designed by highly intelligent and very much biotic man.'" Thaxton, C. B.(1984:108-110).

 

 

Chemical Evolution: Fact or Fiction?

 

Has the hypothesis of chemical evolution now been proved scientifically? What have some of the world's leading experts found out about this?

 

Miller Experiments: synthesis of amino acids. Could the needed and the correct amino acids have arisen by themselves in the primordial chemical soup? Have they arisen in the Miller-Experiments?

 

Siegfried Scherer is Professor of Microbial Ecology at the Technical University of Munich. And he is also Director of the Institute of Microbiology at the Technical University of Munich-Freising. He reports about the Miller-experiments, and the synthesis of amino acids:

 

"One has found out during the different experiments, under different experimental conditions (composition of gases, reaction time etc): Of the 20 proteinogene amino acids, only a few are synthesized. When optimistically interpretating the previous results, one can synthesize after Miller (1986) in one single experiment up to 13 proteins, which build up the proteins. Amino acids with basic qualities, lysin, arginin and histidin, have not been found yet in prebiotic simulation experiments. One presupposes during these experiments: Favorable outer physical conditions, like matching pressure and temperature, which must stay within narrow limits, so that the reaction products will remain stable. In the 'primordial soup model' one must therefore postulate. The different parts, which have arisen at different places, have been washed together later on. This scenario becomes more and more implausible.

 

"Especially significant in the results of Miller-experiments is: Most of the molecules are mono - and polyfunctional molecules in the produced mixture. That are compounds, which are able, to combine themselves with one or with many reaction partners. These substances have long-range consequences for the following steps in the concept of the prebiotic chemistry." (1998:140).

 

"The presence of monofunctional components (for example of carbonic acids) namely always prevents the forming of longer chains. Because the surplus monofunctional molecules will block then the ends of the few short chain fragments. The chains cannot grow then any longer. The ratio of monofuntional compounds to the bifunctional ones determines then, how long the chain will be, according to what one can expect there statistically.

 

"The Miller-experiments could be viewed as a first step in the direction of vital molecules. But this step leads into a dead end. Because during these experiments, many other materials do also arise, together with the amino acids, at the same time. They will prevent the next necessary steps. All these experiments do start, therefore, with the needed pure mixtures of amino acids. But they have not been produced abiotically. That is, the problems of isolating and cleaning them, one just presupposes without discussion. One just assumes that they have been solved." (1998:141).

 

Formation of nucleic acids. Have also nucleic acids arisen in the Miller-Experiments? And could they have evolved by themselves in the primordial chemical soup? How long are they able to live?

 

Prof. Siegfried Scherer: "Original compounds are produced in multi-stage syntheses. Then, one must also use water-free solvents. Until now, a selective synthesis is therefore missing for ribose under primordial soup conditions.

 

"Beside the open questions, regarding the prebiotic synthesis of the sugars, also their low chemical stability causes difficulties. The half-life for ribose (time, during which half of the material is changed), is at pH 7 and 0°C 44 years. Under more alkaline or sour conditions or with higher temperature, this time will be then still shorter. The lifespan of this compound is very short within the long geological times. That is, it will then not be available anymore under prebiotic conditions after synthesis and isolation for further chemical reactions. In this situation, postulated long times are contraproduktive. Larralde et al. 1995, conclude from this: 'The results show: Stability investigations do show us: One cannot use ribose and other sugars as prebiotic reagents, except under very special conditions. It follows that ribose and other sugars cannot have been a part of the first genetic material.'" (1998:143)

 

Nitrogen Bases. Could the needed nitrogen bases have arisen by themselves in the primordial chemical soup? How long could they have lived in there?

 

Prof. S. Scherer: "Theories about the formation of the RNA-bases adenin, guanin, cytosin, uracil also cause considerable difficulties, when studying them closer. Adenin ist the base, which under prebiotic conditions can be most easily made. Namely, by adding 5 HCN molecules to it. But under the most suitable conditions, it will exist only hundred years. This is far too short, so that it could be available for a longer time for continuing reactions.

 

"The difficulties with the prebiotic synthesis and the low chemical stability of the compounds, with their relatively short half-lives, caused Shapiro (1996) to conclude: 'The results, that are available presently, do not confirm the idea that RNA or an other system of replication, which used RNA-bases, was involved at the start of life.'" (1998:143).

 

From the single-components to the RNA and DNA . "It has been shown above: RNA and DNA molecules are made from the needed nucleotides. But one has not been able, to prove this yet experimentally under primordial soup conditions. In experiments one has tried to cause nucleotides to come together (to form chains), to form nucleic acids. But then one must only use components, that have not arisen under prebiotic conditions. They have been synthesized under controlled laboratory conditions." Scherer, S. et al. (1998:144).

 

Chirality. "Many molecules, that occur in creatures, show two energetically equivalent forms. They do correspond to each other like the mirror-inverted right and left hand. Each one of the two possible chiral molecule forms is called an enantiomer. The 'handedness' of the molecules is known by the term chirality. In creatures, we often find only one of the two forms. For example, d- and not l-ribose in der RNA, l-amino acids in proteins. Proteins and nucleic acids will only function, if they have enantiomer-pure compounds.

 

"The proteins do have a three-dimensional structure (secondary -, tertiary - and quaternary-structure). If one adds mirror-inverted parts (d- instead of l- amino acids), their three-dimensional structure, and with it also their mobility (dynamics) will be disturbed. Then it will also not be able to move around as an enzyme, which is very important. The same applies also to the disturbance of superstructures (for example der geometry of double helix structures) in nucleic acids, when inserting sugars, which are enantiomerly mixed. The biological function depends upon specific, chirally unambiguous structures. Without it, it cannot function.

 

"During the chemical synthesis of such compounds, the two forms do arise in the ratio of 1:1. One calls this mixture a racemate. This applies also to prebiotic conditions. Only if there is chiral information, will the selectively desired form be able to arise. For example, in the form of a chiral catalyst, an enzyme or by using starting compounds, which do contain only one of the two possible forms.

 

"Pure enantiomers outside of living cells tend to the racemize. That is, this mixture will again have a ratio of 1:1. Thus, the amino acids from proteins in products of elimination, and organisms, which have died, will racemize. The formation of enantiomer-pure compounds is a main-problem in prebiotic chemistry. And up to now it is still unsolved, theoretically as well also experimentally." Scherer , S. et al. (1998:144, 145).

 

RNA-world. Prof. Siegfried Scherer et al.: "The proteins are indispensable, because of their enzymatic function in metabolism. The nucleic acid molecules are needed, to store genetic information. When synthesising the nucleic acids, one needs in the simplest cells, which one now knows, more than hundred enzymes. When making proteins, the cell needs, beside the genetic information, the DNA, a complex apparatus of proteins. Which one of the two molecule-types are supposed to have arisen first? Both are needed at the same time. This problem is for the prebiotic chemistry especially important. ... How has the first unit of replication arisen, that is, a molecular constellation of a protein and an RNA, that is able, to double itself?

 

"The prebiotic synthesis of nucleic acids, including the RNA, however, is unsolved. A RNA-world has therefore now no basis in prebiotic chemistry. ... About the RNA-world, as a possible station for the arising-of-life, more and more disillusion comes up. Orgel already summarizes this in 1989 with the following short words: 'At the moment there is now no convincing theory, which would be able to explain, how the replicating RNA has arisen.'" (1998:145, 146

 

Result

 

·        The protein of the living cell needs 100% pure amino acids, with exactly two sticking spots. Accident and lightning do always produce only a mixture of amino acids with one, two and more sticking spots. Most of the amino acids in this mixture do have only one sticking spot. These monoamines block the end of the amino-acid chain. It cannot make then a protein. Such a mixture is absolutely useless for the making of protein.

·        The protein of the cell needs 100% left-winding amino acids. Accident and lightning do always produce only a mixture of 50% left-winding and 50% right-winding amino acids. Such a racemate is absolutely useless for the synthesis of a living cell.

·        The DNA-chain of the cell needs 100% right-winding nucleic acids. Accident and lightning do always produce only a mixture of 50% left-winding and 50% right-winding nucleic acids. Such a racemate is for the making of a living cell absolutely worthless.

·        The living cell contains information and highest mathematics. It is an information processing machine. And it is a fully automated chemical factory. It contains a 4-letter nucleic acid code (alphabet). In this code the genetic information of the cell is written, like the text in a book. It contains a 20-letter amino acid code. In this code the proteins of the cell are written, like the text in a book. The meaning of the sign (symbol, letter) is always non-material, spiritual. Already on the level of the code one can know that it was thought out and made by an intelligent person. Information and mathematics do exist independently of mankind. Man has only found them. Information and mathematics always have their source in a non-material, spiritual world. They always come from an intelligent person, from the Creator.

 

This has been proved now in hundreds of biochemical experiments and by observation. This has clearly been proved scientifically. There is no way around this. These findings alone would be enough already, to overthrow the hypothesis of evolution (neo-Darwinism) once for all times. The hypothesis of evolution (neo-Darwinism) is not science, only science fiction. It is only a pious creation myth. And in this myth, "Evolution" plays the role of the Creator.