Origins: Is There a Plausible Naturalistic Account for the Origin of Life?

Allen HainlineRatio Christi Philippinesomega_sw@yahoo.comwww.OriginsDiscussion.info

Outline

• “After reading Origins of Life … it is clear [chemical] evolution could not have occurred” Nobel Prize winning chemist Richard Smalley

• Background / Main Thesis• 12 reasons I’m skeptical of a naturalistic origin

of life• Why problems not more widely known …

My Thesis: That life can naturalistically arise from non-living matter is merely an assumption with little to no scientific support

“Spontaneous generation was scientifically disproved 120 years ago by Louis Pasteur and others, but that leaves us with only one other possibility . . . that life came as a supernatural act of creation by God, but I can't accept that philosophically because I do not want to believe in God. Therefore I choose to believe in that which I know is scientifically impossible, spontaneous generation leading to evolution.”

George Wald, Harvard Nobel Laureate

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Could Life Originate From Non-Life Apart from a Creator?

Most scientists admit no plausible naturalistic scenario exists– “A scenario describing the genesis of life on earth by chance and natural causes

which can be accepted on the basis of fact and not faith has not been written.“ Hubert Yockey

– “The formation of the first life is viewed as a chance process that occurred in spite of minuscule odds such as 1:10300 and which is accepted only because we are here. “ Christian Schwabe

– “No one has an adequate materialistic explanation for how life arose“ Dawkins• Dawkins accepts Schwabe’s odds if applied to the whole universe

– 1080 atoms, 4x1017 seconds => <1:10200 chance– U. Arizona study predicts less than 1 in a million chance of even one extra-solar rock

• Atheists must appeal to chance to even get evolution started– “Pre-biological natural selection is a contradiction in terms” Dobzhansky– The first evolver cannot itself have evolved

– $1,000,000.00 was offered to anyone who can provide a plausible theory• http://www.us.net/life/

1) Cell Complexity

Simplest organisms much more complex than previously thought– Simplest parasite has about 450 genes

• Theoretical minimum about 200 genes– Each gene needs a sequence of an average of 500+ base pairs (letters)

“To go from a bacterium to people is less of a step than to go from a mixture of amino acids to a bacterium.” Lynn Margulis“Of all the problems with the hypothesis that life started as nude replicating RNA molecules, the one I find most insurmountable is … all living things seem to have a minimal complexity below which it is impossible to go.” Stuart Kauffman

2) So Long tothe Soup!

– We lack evidence of a primordial organic soup• Carbon is less than about 1 part in 1000 in earth’s crust• Nitrogen is only 20 parts per million in earth’s crust• High concentrations of key organic molecules is highly

unlikely– Geological depletion prevents accumulation– Primordial soup "well past its sell-by date“ Science

Feb 2010– Organic compounds tend toward forming tar

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3) Barriers to Building Blocks

What are the Building Blocks of Life?• Proteins, Nucleic acids (DNA, RNA), Polysaccharides, Lipids

– Comprise 90% of dry-weight of a bacterium– These are large molecules (100’s to billions of atoms)– Vast majority of these molecules didn’t exist on early earth except in trace amounts if at all

• Miller-Urey showed some amino acids form naturally• Assumed unrealistic atmosphere

• Experiment fails if oxygen present; without it no ozone to shield from harmful UV rays• "Let us sum up. The experiment performed by Miller yielded tar as its most abundant

product....There are about fifty small organic compounds that are called 'building blocks'.....Only two of these fifty occurred“ Shapiro

“You have to build straw man upon straw man to get to the point where RNA is a viable first biomolecule” Gerald Joyce

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4) Information Impediment

• Its unlikely to have formed proteins on the early earth:– Doug Axe (Cambridge): ratio of functional to non-functional amino

acid sequences was 10-77 for short protein (150 amino acids long)• Finding any protein stable enough for biological function was 10-74

• Number of atoms in Milky Way is about 1065

• What about finding a self-replicating RNA?– Orgel and Joyce: a single-stranded RNA catalyst can replicate itself if

it finds a perfect RNA template match that’s its exact complement• No replicator with sufficient fidelity found to date• Expect length of hundreds of nucleotides

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5) Handedness Hell(Chirality Problem)

Building blocks come equally in 2 forms – right-handed and left-handed• But life can only use one of the forms - you can’t mix them!“All speculation on the origin of life on Earth by chance cannot survive the first criterion of life: proteins are left-handed, sugars in DNA and RNA are right-handed.” Hubert Yockey“I spent 25 years looking for a terrestrial mechanism for homochirality and trying to investigate them and didn't find any supporting evidence. Terrestrial explanations are impotent or nonviable.“ Organic chemist William Bonner

Right and left-handed versions of amino acids – credit NASA

6) Probability Predicament

“For biological evolution … to take off, efficient systems for replication and translation are required, but even barebones cores of these systems appear to be products of extensive selection.” Eugene Koonin

– Argued that 1st living cell was protein-based– Yet to get both in 1st cell is 1 in 101018 chance; he appeals to multiverse

• Other prominent researchers:– Francis Crick appealed to life on earth being seeded by aliens

• This proposed intelligent design seems implausible due to vast travel distances

• U. Arizona study predicts less than 1 in a million chance of even one extra-solar rock

– Hubert Yockey – life so improbable it should be taken as axiomatic• But we know physical life in this universe hasn’t always existed!

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7) Troublesome Thermodynamics

• Thermodynamics opposes production of life’s molecules– Morowitz: increase in chemical bonding energy

in forming 1 E-Coli is equivalent to having your bath water spontaneously increase to 360oC

• Cannot connect amino acids in the presence of water– Because water is by-product– Le Chatelier’s Principle: reactions slow

considerably in presence of products• “The formation of water in an environment

that is full of it is the chemical equivalent of bringing sand to the Sahara.” Shapiro

• Water breaks up proteins, nucleic acids

8) Chicken-Egg

Conundrum

Numerous inter-dependent systems exist within every cell• DNA provides blueprints for building proteins

– Numerous highly specialized proteins needed for DNA replication

• RNA and proteins required to make proteins• Amino acids required to proteins

– RNA and proteins required to make amino acidsHow does all this randomly form in first cell and within a membrane?

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9) Interrupting Interferents

Forming life’s polymers is disrupted by other molecules that mix-in• Many origin of life experiments start off with unrealistically pure reagents

– An organic soup would have a wide variety of chemicals• Amino acids more likely to bind to other organic molecules such as sugars than

to each other• Other molecules would disrupt the RNA backbone, cause termination, and lead

to side branches (any one of which would likely be fatal to self-replication)– Glutamate, histidine, cerium cause RNA breakdown– Once RNA attaches to mineral surfaces, it’s stuck there

Shapiro compared RNA world origin of life scenario with imagining a golf ball being played below par through an 18-hole course by solely natural forces

• No golfer is necessary because wind, earthquakes, etc. can force a ball into a hole

10) Automated Assembly

A punctured cell will not come back to lifeIt has all the fully assembled chemicals but never revives• Despite extensive restoration

efforts• Humpty-Dumpty cannot be put

back together again

Boeing 747: 5 million parts

1 cell:billions of parts

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11) Tenuous Timeframe

Previously thought to have billion(s) of years until earth’s first life“We are now thinking, in geochemical terms, of instant life.“ Ponnamperuma“Presence of .. stromatolites, microfossils, chemical fossils … in early Precambrian rocks suggests that life originated virtually simultaneously with the formation of the crust of the earth.” Walton– Exacerbated by need for multiple origins

• “probability of survival of life is low unless there are multiple origins” (1 in 10 survive) Raup, Valentine in PNAS

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Late Heavy BombardmentEnded 3.8 billion years ago Life began

Billion(s) of years

Life began 3.8 billion years ago

12) Multiple Miracles?

1) First cell probably didn’t survive to leave ancestors:“the probability of survival of life is low unless there are multiple origins” (1 in 10 survive) Raup, Valentine in PNAS

2) May have been multiple origins that persisted:“The time has come for Biology to go beyond the Doctrine of Common Descent” Carl Woese

“I think we may have thousands of recent common ancestors and they are not necessarily so common.” Venter

If so, the similarity across life forms looks more like common design:“The odds of the same dictionary of arbitrary ‘meanings’ arising twice are almost unimaginably small.” Dawkins

24 January 2009 issue

Reasons for Skepticism of Naturalistic Origin of Life

1. Cell Complexity

2. So Long to the Soup

3. Barriers to Building Blocks

4. Information Impediment

5. Handedness Hell (Chirality Problem)

6. Probability Predicament 1 in 101018

7. Troublesome Thermodynamics

8. Chicken-Egg Conundrum

9. Interrupting Interferents

10. Automated Assembly

11. Tenuous Timeframe

12. Multiple Miracles?

Reasons for Skepticism of Naturalistic Origin of Life

Billion(s) of years

Why aren’t Origin of Life problems widely known?

“Many investigators feel 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. There are two reasons for their unease. First they feel it opens the door to religious fundamentalists… Second, they worry that a frank admission of ignorance will undermine funding…”

Paul Davies, The Fifth Miracle: The Search for the Origin and Meaning of Life

What about the many breakthroughs and discoveries by origin of life researchers?

“Many of the experiments designed to explain one or other step in the origin of life are either of tenuous relevance to any believable prebiotic setting or involve an experimental rig in which the hand of the researcher becomes for all intents and purposes the hand of God.” Simon Conway Morris, Life’s Solution 

Questions

Why we should be skeptical that a plausible naturalistic explanation will ever be found?

“Chance and necessity do not explain the origin of life” Article by Trevors and Abel– “No natural mechanism … can explain the high information content of genomes. This is a mathematical

truism, not a matter subject to overturning by future empirical data.”– “Natural processes have never been observed to write conceptual instructions, to symbolize such

algorithmic meaning, or to translate it using code”– “No physical mechanism has been suggested for the source of abstract genetic instructions themselves.”– “Random walks … will never provide an adequate explanation for the generation of such a highly refined

translative coding system.” (nor does it explain the operating system and information processing programs)– “It is difficult to envision how the laws of physics and chemistry could explain encryption/decryption.”– “Cause-and-effect physicality has no ability to anticipate or devise a conceptual system that employs

symbolic representationalism.”– “The four known forces of physics know nothing of the phenomenon of linguistic translation.”

Eugene Koonin appeals to multiple universes– “Any conceivable scenario of life's evolution necessarily requires combinations of highly unlikely conditions

and events prior to the onset of biological evolution, including the abiogenic synthesis of fairly complex and not particularly stable organic molecules, such as nucleotides, the concentration of these molecules within appropriate compartments, and their polymerization yielding polynucleotides of sufficient size and diversity. Thus, anthropic selection appears to be an inevitable aspect of life's evolution.”

• “The statistical probability that organic structures and the most precisely harmonized reactions that typify living organisms would be generated by accident is zero.” Prigogine