Science and Faith 3: Origin of Life - Clover...

Science and Faith 3: Origin of Life

Bob Prud’homme Bob Kaita

Science and Faith 3: Origin of Life 1

Outline and goals 1. Abiogenesis: origin of life from non-life,

the materialists view 2. Some objections to what you have been

taught 3. Other consequences of the materialist

world view


Why this is interesting. • You can do mathematics and calculate probabilities. •There can be no “evolution” before there is replication and natural selection of fittest. Purely random chance.

“the cosmos is all there is, or was, or ever will be”

scientist Carl Sagan, Prof. of Astronomy, Cornell University, in PBS show “Cosmos”

All about strings of beads


Alphabet of Life: DNA and RNA


A little more chemistry detail


Ribose sugars

The protein alphabet


Amino Acids

Peptide bond

Protein structure


The complex alphabet of peptides lets them form complex (and important) secondary structures: muscle, tendons, hemoglobin, albumin, gelatin, antibodies, hair, our immune systems, and enzymes to make cheese.

Stanley Miller, 1953

Chemistry graduate student at University of Chicago

Abiotic Synthesis of Amino Acids in “Early Earth Atmosphere”, Miller and Urey experiments

Adapted from “A Production of Amino Acids under Possible Primitive Earth Conditions,” Stanley L. Miller, Science, Vol. 117, (May 15, 1953), pp. 528-529.

• done in a “reducing” atmosphere with no oxygen

• Thought to be state of early earth atmosphere


February 1953

Crick and Watson discover DNA double helix and gene coding

“The products of this early chemistry, dissolved in the oceans, forming a kind of organic “soup” of gradually increasing complexity, until, one day, quite by accident, a molecule arose which was able to make crude copies of itself, using as building blocks the other molecules in the soup. This was the ancestor of DNA, the master molecule of life on earth….

Carl Sagan, in “Cosmos,” PBS series, 1980

The Abiotic Origin of Life Looks Straightforward

Miller/Urey experiment showing synthesis of amino acids from model early earth atmosphere

Trouble in Paradise


Everything you know is wrong Black is white, up is down and short is long And everything you used to think was so important Doesn't really matter anymore Because the simple fact remains that Everything you know is wrong Just forget the words and sing along All you need to understand is Everything you know is wrong Everything you know is wrong

“ Everything you Know is Wrong” Weird Al Yankovic

Trouble in Paradise 1. Chemistry: The earth’s atmosphere


•The earth’s atmosphere is not as “reducing” as required, it has oxygen, so synthesis and proteins will not work, and they oxidize. •Oxygen comes from UV reaction with water vapor, creating ozone. Ozone would block high energy photons which are thought to be needed for synthesis (since sparks are not realistic).

The Mystery of Life’s Origin, Charles Thaxton, Walter Bradley, Roger Olsen

Trouble in Paradise Probability of random protein synthesis Average protein is 150 amino acids (beads)


1. Probability that all bonds are peptide bonds

2. Probability that all bonds are left handed (L vs D bonds)

3. Probability that structure will fold and be a functional protein*:

(1/2)150 = 1:1045

(1/2)150 = 1:1045

1045 = 1 followed by 45 zeros (scientific notation)

1:1074

Douglas Axe,J. Mol Biiol, 301, 585-95 (2000); Proc Nat Acad Sci, 93, 5590-94 (1996)

Trouble in Paradise Probability of random protein synthesis Average protein is 150 amino acids (beads)


Probability of making that protein randomly

How big is that?

1:1045 x 1045 x 1074 1: 10164

1045 = 1 followed by 45 zeros (scientific notation)

•Number of atoms in galaxy is 1065

• Number of atoms in universe is 1080

Sig in Cell p. 208

Making a Minimal Set of Proteins Simplest free-living (non-parasitic) bacteria

have around 1500 proteins. Even parasitic bacteria need around 250 proteins to carry out minimal functions of life:

P = 1 out of (10)65*250 = 1 out 1016250

“The notion that not only the biopolymer but the operating program of a living cell could be arrived at by chance in a primordial organic soup here on the Earth is evidently nonsense of a high order.”

Sir Fred Hoyle

Making a Minimal Set of Proteins If one proceeds directly and

straightforwardly in this matter, without being deflected by a fear of incurring the wrath of scientific opinion, one arrives at the conclusion that biomaterials with their amazing measure or order must be the outcome of intelligent design. No other possibility I have been able to think of.”

Sir Fred Hoyle

The RNA World This article is about the chemical. For the rock band, see

Ribozyme (band). A ribozyme (from ribonucleic acid enzyme, .. is an

RNA molecule that catalyzes a chemical reaction. Investigators studying the origin of life have produced ribozymes in the laboratory that are capable of catalyzing their own synthesis under very specific conditions,… "B6.61" is able to add up to 20 nucleotide bases to a primer template in 24 hours, until it decomposes by hydrolysis of its phosphodiester bonds.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribozyme

Trouble in Paradise DNA, RNA making sugar (ribose) and bases ?


Trouble in Paradise Chemistry: How about synthesizing

DNA, RNA? “Shapiro concurred. He showed that it would have

been especially difficult to synthesis adenine and cytosine at high temperatures and cytosine even at low temperatures. Thus he concluded that the presumption that “the bases adenine, cytosine, guanine and uracil were readily available on the early earth” is “not supported by existing knowledge of the basic chemistry of these substances.” (Sig of Cell p.302)


Trouble in Paradise DNA, RNA making sugar (ribose) and bases ?

“DNA as Dean Kenyon explains, ‘The chemical conditions proposed for the prebiotic synthesis of purines and pyrimidines (the bases) are sharply incompatible with those proposed for the synthesis of ribose. Or as Shapiro concludes: ‘The evidence that is currently available does not support the availability of ribose on the prebiotic earth, except perhaps for brief periods of time, in low concentration as part of a complex mixture, and under conditions unsuitable for nucleoside synthesis.” Sig of Cell p.303)


Do we need proteins, DNA or RNA?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jml8CFBWcDs

Ada Yonath, Weitzman Institute Nobel Prize in Chemistry,

2009, for understanding ribosomes


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jml8CFBWcDs�

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jml8CFBWcDs�

Protein, mRNA synthesis


Signature of the Cell, Stephen Meyer

The problem of complexity •RNA needed for reactions and mRNA transfer •Proteins needed for translation, ribosome, and attaching ATP to tRNA

ribosome


Ada Yonath, Weitzman Institute Nobel Prize in Chemisitry, 2009, for understanding ribosomes,

Can’t have both RNA and proteins

“Either the prebiotic environment contained amino acids, which would have prevented sugars (and thus DNA and RNA) from forming, or the prebiotic soup contained no amino acids, making protein synthesis impossible.” Signature in the Cell p.303


Probability of finding RNA complements

Orgel and Joyce have calculated that to have a reasonable chance of finding two such complementary RNA molecules of a length sufficient to perform catalytic functions would require an RNA library of some 1045 RNA molecules. The mass of such a library vastly exceeds the mass of the earth, suggestion the extreme implausibility of the chance origin of a primitive replicator system.” Sig in the Cell p.315.


Trouble in Paradise 2. Complexity of reactions

Prebiotic chemistry could produce a wealth of biomolecules from nonliving precursors. But the wealth soon became overwhelming, with the “prebiotic soups” having the chemical complexity of asphalt (useful, perhaps, for paving roads but not particularly promising as a wellspring for life.)

Steven Benner, Science, March 26, 1999

Francis Crick

“An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going.” (Sig of Cell p. 321


Stanley Miller:

the chemical origin of life is a lot more difficult than we first imaged

Father of 'Origin of Life’ Chemistry Dies May 21, 2007

National Geographic 1998

Science in a Materialist Framework

Science and Faith 1: Bible and Science

32

While quintessence may not turn out to provide the correct explanation for the cosmological constant problem, it demonstrates, if nothing else, that science is always hard at work trying to solve its puzzles within a materialistic framework. The assertion that God can be seen by virtue of his acts of cosmological fine-tuning, like intelligent design and earlier versions of the argument from design, is nothing more than another variation on the disreputable God-of-the-gaps argument. These rely on the faint hope that scientists will never be able to find a natural explanation for one or more of the puzzles that currently have them scratching their heads and therefore will have to insert God as the explanation. As long as science can provide plausible scenarios for a fully material universe, even if those scenarios cannot be currently tested they are sufficient to refute the God of the gaps.

Victor Stenger From an essay entitled “Is the universe fine-tuned for us?” http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/vstenger/Cosmo/FineTune.pdf#search=%22Fine%20tuned%20universe%22

God of the Gaps “Because I (science) can’t explain it, it must because God did it.” Example of development of fetus (Ps 139) vs. fertilization video.

Logical error: “Premise: Cause X cannot produce or explain evidence E. Conclusion: Therefore, cause Y produced or explains E.”


Logical statement: “Premise One: Causes A-X do not produce evidence E. Premise Two: Cause Y can and does produce E. Conclusions: Therefore, Y explains E better than A through

X.




world view


Two World Views

1.Materialism Matter + time + chance

• Where did “stuff” come from?

• Love, Values ?

2. Christianity “In the beginning, God created…”

Francis Schaeffer religious philosopher 1912-1984

Matter + Time + Chance

Love

Escape from Reason, The God Who is There

Francis Shaeffer

LOVE

REASON

LOVE REASON

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” Mark 12

“God is love.” I John 4

Materialism Christian World View

“ethics is an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes to get us to cooperate”

Michael Ruse, Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy, Florida State University

Bertrand Russell, “A Free Man’s Worship” Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays (New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1918), 46. That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins... Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built.

Woody Allen Sydney Morning Herald 21 March 2012

"When I go for a walk in Central Park on a beautiful day I have to set myself mental tasks, prepare a speech, think about casting. Otherwise I know I will want to run up to people and shake them and say, "Why are you bothering to sunbathe? What is the point of your pregnant belly? Why are you walking your dog? Toward what end? We're all going to die one day. Am I the only one who sees it? Am I the only person in the concentration camp who knows what is going on behind that big hedge?" "Our seemingly busy, busy lives ultimately mean nothing in this cruel and hostile universe."

Francis Collins and Richard Dawkins debate Time Life Magazine

COLLINS: For you to argue that our noblest acts are a misfiring of Darwinian behavior does not do justice to the sense we all have about the absolutes that are involved here of good and evil. Evolution may explain some features of the moral law, but it can't explain why it should have any real significance. If it is solely an evolutionary convenience, there is really no such thing as good or evil. But for me, it is much more than that. The moral law is a reason to think of God as plausible--not just a God who sets the universe in motion but a God who cares about human beings, because we seem uniquely amongst creatures on the planet to have this far-developed sense of morality. What you've said implies that outside of the human mind, tuned by evolutionary processes, good and evil have no meaning. Do you agree with that?


http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1555132-1,00.html

Francis Collins and Richard Dawkins debate (contin.)

DAWKINS: Even the question you're asking has no meaning to me. Good and evil--I don't believe that there is hanging out there, anywhere, something called good and something called evil. I think that there are good things that happen and bad things that happen.

COLLINS: I think that is a fundamental difference between us. I'm glad we identified it.


Faith is not Forced “Willing to appear openly to those who seek Him with all their heart, and to be hidden from those who flee from him with all their heart, God so regulates the knowledge of Himself that He has given indications of himself which are visible to those who seek him and not to those who do not seek him. There is enough light for those to see who only desire to see, and enough obscurity for those who have a contrary disposition.”

Blaise Pascal, 1623-1662




world view 1. Ethics 2. Purpose 3. Moral values 4. Love


SUMMARY

The End


References


• Francis Collins, The Language of God • Charles Thaxton, Walter Bradley,

Roger Olsen, The Mystery of Life’s Origin

• Stephen Meyer, Signature in the Cell • http://www.godandscience.org/evolut

ion/rnamodel.html, Rich Deem, Origin of life: latest

http://www.godandscience.org/evolution/rnamodel.html�

http://www.godandscience.org/evolution/rnamodel.html�

Antony Flew, a British philosophy professor and leading champion of atheism for more than half a century, changed his mind and became a deist at the age of 81.

• He said it was a result of “my growing empathy with the insight of Einstein and other noted scientists”

• In an interview with ABC News Flew indicated that a "super-intelligence is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature."

The world looks more complex to a scientist. The world looks more beautiful to a scientist. Science teaches humility. This comes from an understanding of what we do not know.

Belief in a Creator has energized the greatest scientists.

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