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A River Like No Other...

Fantastic!

"Primordial Soup" - Actually a Most Toxic Brew

Evolution's soup was poisonous! Too much tar and hydrogen, an unusuable mix of amino acids, and more. Yuk.

"...without excuse! The Testimony of the Details", by Timothy R. Stout (Abbreviated version)

(This article digest is by Marko Malyj, of the article published in Creation Matters, Volume 15, Number 3, May/June 2010, a publication of the Creation Research Society, to appear early 2011 at http://www.creationresearch.org/creation_matters/pdf/2010/CM15%2003%20low%20res.pdf). {Original version of this blog post with all pictures is available at http://umarko.blogspot.com/. My comments that are not in the original published version are offset in curly braces.}

In this article, we will look briefly at ... Miller's "origin of life" experiment. In 1953, Stanley Miller performed an experiment which is still discussed in almost every introductory biology textbook today. He mixed water vapor, methane, ammonia, and hydrogen in a spark chamber. When a high voltage arc was introduced across the gases in the chamber, he produced a number of complex molecules including several different kinds of amino acids. Evolutionists claim that this experiment demonstrates how natural physical processes could have produced the building-block molecules which in time turned into the first living cells. Therefore, a Creator was no longer needed as the source of life.

Sorry, this is NOT the "Origin of Life"...

At first glance, it can appear that Miller's experiment helps the case for evolution. That is why the textbooks still talk about it. However, the problems are in the details. There are a number of principles from biochemistry that teach against a natural origin of life....

1. Unusable ratio of amino acids. Many kinds of amino acids are possible: living systems primarily use 20. The different kinds have varying chemical properties. The most important is whether a particular kind of amino acid is attracted to water molecule or repelled by them. In life, the ratio between the two needs to be fairly even. The simplest and easiest to make of the amino acids are water repelling.

Miller's experiments gives skewed results: it produces about 100 times as many water-repelling amino acids as water-attracting (Miller, 1959).... Random processes could never do anything useful with such a skewed ratio.

2. Tar. 80% of Miller's product was an inert tar useless for life. Only 2% was amino acids. The amino acids that he did get would have become tar, except he used his skills as a biochemist to design a method to remove them from the spark chamber before they became tar. This is true of all similar experiments. They produce tar or nothing (Shapiro, 1986). The hypothetical "primordial soup" talked about so frequently by evolutionists has never been simulated in a laboratory.

3. Fatal molecules. Many of the compounds produced by the experiment are poisonous to life, including formic acid. They are very aggressive chemically, and readily attach themselves to and would ruin any complex compound molecules that appear. In fact, the experiments produced twice as much formic acid as the combined amount of amino acids (Miller, 1959).

4. Too much hydrogen. No one has been able to get results comparable to Miller's initial experiment. There is a good reason for this. Miller used a high proportion of hydrogen in his mix. Rocks on earth indicate that such high amounts never existed. However, when the amount of hydrogen is reduced to a more realistic value, the results are severely impacted (Anonymous, 2003).....

{5. A 50/50 mix of right- and left-handed amino acids. (Tim Stout did not mention this important issue in his article!) All amino acids in proteins are ‘left-handed’, while all sugars in DNA and RNA, and in the metabolic pathways, are ‘right-handed’. But Miller's primordial soup had a 50/50 mix of right and left handed amino acids. A wrong-handed amino acid disrupts the stabilizing α-helix in proteins. DNA could not be stabilised in a helix if even a single wrong-handed monomer were present, so it could not form long chains. This means it could not store much information, so it could not support life. (Sarfati, 1998).}

Wherever you look, you can find similar examples where the details contradict the claims of evolutions. There is a reason for this. God designed the universe to give testimony of Himself as the Creator. The data of science properly interpreted should lead a person to Him.

References (selected)

Anonymous. (2003, May 14). Primordial recipe: Spark and stir, Astrobiology Magazine. Retrieved June 23, 2010, from http://www.astrobio.net/exclusive/461/primordial-recipe-spark-and-stir.

Miller, S. and H. Urey. 1959. Organic compound synthesis on the primitive Earth. Science 130:245-251.

Sarfati, Jonathan. 1998. Origin of Life: the chirality problem. Creation ex Nihilo Technical Journal 12(3):263-266.

Shapiro, R. 1986. ORIGINS: A Skeptic's Guide to the Creation of Life on the Earth, Summit Books, New York, pp. 113, 208, 302.

The Only Friend of the Groom

Author Erwin McMannus tells the story of a certain UPS driver named Dave whose days were characterized by what might be called "drive-by relationships". His tight delivery schedule meant that he had enough time for little more than pleasantries as he raced in and out of his customers' lives. But then there was Ron. Ron was a gas-station attendant who loved to talk. Whenever Dave's route took him anywhere nearby, Ron would find him and follow him in and out of his truck while he dealt with customers, talking non-stop until Dave would finally have to just drive away. Dave was a believer, but he dreaded the inevitable delays of running into Ron.

Then one day Ron handed him an envelope. It was an invitation. Ron was getting married, and he wanted Dave to attend. For the next three weeks, Dave avoided giving him an answer, until one day in a moment of weakness he told him that he would come. The big day arrived, and Dave was ushered in and seated on the left-hand side of the chapel as a "friend" of the groom. As it turned out, he was the only one. All the other guests took their places on the right side as friends of the bride. Only later did Dave learn that, of the 150 people Ron had invited, Dave was the only one who showed up. When it came time for offering toasts, Ron stepped up to the microphone, looked over at where Dave was seated, and said: "I'd like you all to meet my best friend, Dave."

Not surprisingly, God eventually used that relationship to bring Ron to faith in Jesus.

(from a Christian prayer bulletin, July 2010)

Car accident in Muslim Central Asia - Jesus answers prayer!

In the middle of the night a believer in a Central Asian country recently woke to a loud crash below her apartment. She rushed to the street to find four unresponsive young people in a wrecked car, with gasoline pouring everywhere. Other neighbors came out and stood at a distance wailing Muslim prayers. She shouted to them that it was not the Allah of Islam they should cry to, but Jesus. As they remained far away in fear of an explosion, she dragged the four bodies from the vehicle to a safe location. Although she and the crowd believed all four were dead, she prayed over them in Jesus' name. As she did so, all four suddenly stood to their feet while the crowd looked on in amazement! Before this, neighbors had always avoided the woman because of her Christian faith. Now she has a steady stream of visitors with lots of questions about Jesus. Pray that many of them will choose to become His followers.

(from a Christian prayer bulletin, July 2010)

Evolution is Stopped Cold by the Side Effects of Mutations!

Evolution needs mutations working together for one species to result in the next "just-so" species on the fantastic tree of life. But Pleiotropy bars the way!

Article Review: "The Pleiotropy Problem for Evolution", by Jerry Bergman

Marko's Executive Summary:

"Pleiotropy" is an awful sounding word. But the most awful thing about Pleiotropy is that it stops Evolution cold. If a mutation results in the loss or change in just one function of a living creature, it will probably also result in the loss of many other functions, too. And this will certainly disrupt all those mutations working together to produce a more advanced species.

This is why I'm calling this post "Evolution is Stopped Cold by the Side Effects of Accumulated Mutations!". That's the first item.

A second item is that Pleiotropy makes it extremely difficult for Evolution to explain how creatures like dogs and their wolf cousins supposedly mutated from their pre-wolf forebears. You see, dogs and wolves are a "high plasticity" life-form, as we all know from all the different breeds of dogs. Plastic species have a greater proportion of their traits coded by a single gene. So, how could all those very important single genes evolve perfectly from their ancestors, given the pitfalls of multiple side affects which would certainly bring the entire dog line down to its knees?

Pleiotropy runs counter to Evolution. As Jerry Bergman tells us in his paper titled "The Pleiotropy Problem for Evolution", not only does Pleiotropy "create a major genetic barrier to both micro- and macroevolution, but it also even sets limits on animal and plant breeding because of the biochemical interconnectivity existing in cells, tissues, organs, and organ systems." Evolution requires easy access to mutational avenues, but Pleiotropy is a great barrier.

In case you're asking the question "Where did dogs and wolves come from?", Bergman's answer is: "The evidence of pleiotropy favors special creation." What he means by "special" is that there was an intelligent designer at work to create dogs and wolves, not to mention all the other creatures as well.  Here is yet another place where the Creator God shows up in Science!

(This review and article digest is by Marko Malyj, of the article published in Creation Research Society Quarterly Journal, Volume 46, Number 4, Spring, 2010, to appear at http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/abstracts/Abstracts46-4.htm). {Original version of this blog post with all pictures is available at http://umarko.blogspot.com. My comments that are not in the original published version are offset in curly braces.}

Abstract

Pleiotropy is the effect resulting from an interconnected genetic system in which a single gene influences many different biological systems in positive or negative ways.... Pleiotropy creates a major problem for evolutionary theory because the accumulation of mutations, even beneficial mutations, often has unintended negative effects.

Introduction

Pleiotropy - from pleio, meaning "many", and tropo, meaning "changes" - is defined as the situation in which a single genetic variant is responsible for a number of distinct and often unrelated phenotypic effects (King and Stansfield, 1997, p. 264). Genes never operate alone.... Even if a mutation is positive for one trait, negative effects frequently result as well, creating what is termed a "fitness cost". In humans the result is obvious when a single mutation causes a disease that produces many unrelated symptoms (Dudley et al., 2005).

The best-known example is ... sickle-cell anemia, a disease that results from a single mutation in the hemoglobin gene. Beside anemia, other physical complications include leg ulcers, bone problems, blood clots, anoxia caused by the abnormal blood cells that lack the ability to flow properly, spleen damage, strokes, and hemolysis.

Pleiotropy, Mutations, and Evolution


The disadvantage for evolution by mutations is: If a particular phenotype is the result of a mutation that produces the loss or alteration of a single function, it may also cause the loss of other functions that are required by disrupting part of a branching pathway.

This impediment to evolutionary progress is called "the cost of complexity" (Orr, 2000, p. 13).

How Common is Pleiotropy?

Much research indicates that most, and possibly all, genes have a pleiotropic effect.

Hodgkin (1998, p. 501) argued that pleiotropy "may well be the rule rather that the exception in higher organisms".... Jaroslav Flegr has proposed that pleiotropy limits the plasticity of a species (Hall, 2009). High plasticity life-forms, such as dogs, are able to produce many morphological variations, and plastic species have a greater proportion of their traits coded by a single gene.

Summary

Pleiotropy not only creates a major genetic barrier to both micro- and macroevolution, but it also even sets limits on animal and plant breeding because of the biochemical interconnectivity existing in cells, tissues, organs, and organ systems.... As Hodgkin (1998, p. 501) admitted, "In complex eukaryotes, pleiotropy may lead to major constraints on possible mutational avenues" that might allow evolution to occur.

The evidence of pleiotropy favors special creation {!!} (Tinkle, 1975)

References (selected)

Dudley, A.M., D.M. Janse, A. Tanay, R. Shamir, and G.M. Church. 2005. A global view of pleiotropy and phenotypically derived gene function in yeast. Molecular Systems Biology doi:10.1038/msb4100004-E1.

Hall, B.K. 2009. Review of Frozen Evolution: Or That's Not the Way It is, Mr. Darwin, edited by Jaroslav Flegr. Evolution & Development 11(1):126-129.

Hodgkin, J. 1998. Seven types of pleiotropy. International Journal of Developmental Biology. 42:501-505.

King, R., and W. Stansfield. 1997. A Dictionary of Genetics. Oxford University Press, New York, NY.

Orr, H.A. 2000. Adaptation and the cost of complexity. International Journal of Organic Evolution. 54:31-20.

Tinkle, William J. 1975. Further research on reduced viability of mutant plants. Creation Research Society Quarterly 12:52.