Chemistry Refutes Chance Origin of Life: Part I

By Jon Covey, B.A., MT(ASCP)
Edited by Anita Millen, M.D., M.P.H., M.A.

During a video taped mini-debate with me, Dr. Ron Kroman of Cal State, Long Beach, suggested that evolution is possible because the development of the genetic code proceeded by small, simple increments which, when added together, caused ever increasing complexity and higher levels of organization over time. This is the standard evolutionary explanation.

It is true that the genetic code is made up of less complex units, just as our bodies and cells are made up of simpler units. The organelles within cells, such as mitochondria, are simpler than the cells, and if evolutionary processes are to build a living cell, the component parts would probably be synthesized before the entire not-so-simple cell was assembled from the individual parts.

By analogy, the same is true of an engine and engine parts. It is much easier to make the individual parts one at a time and assemble them later. Each engine part is designed to function as a part of the whole. The individual parts of an engine cannot function: all of them must work together. Creationary biologist Gary Parker remarked that a 747 airplane is made up of a many non-flying parts. No single part can work alone. The individual parts of living organisms are designed to work together, although evolutionists might object to this. However, it is clear that individual components of a biological machine cannot be explained on the basis of natural selection preserving useful mutations. Why would natural selection preserve the DNA coding for a part of any biological machine?

The automobile designer anticipated the need for a carburetor, just as the intelligent designer God saw the need for the enzyme hexokinase in glycolysis (sugar splitting). How is it, incidentally, that we acknowledge an intelligent designer and skilled work-man when we find a simple arrowhead amid similarly shaped pebbles, but some of us find it impossible to admit a master architect when we examine complex living creatures? There was a time evolutionists denied that the analogy between designed machinery and biological structures with machine-like functions was invalid. However, this has changed. In The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins admits that such biological structures do seem to have apparent design. He adamantly denies that they were designed, but at least he admits that they look like they were designed.

Michael Behe looks at the eye and biochemical pathways in Darwin's Black Box: the Biochemical Challenge to Evolution and remarks that each biological system is irreducibly complex. If a single part is left out, the remainder will not work. Behe had the misfortune of debating in a PBS special in 1998, in which one of his opponents, Kenneth Miller, showed that a mousetrap could still work even if the hasp was removed from it. Because Behe had used the mousetrap as an example of irreducible complexity, he was caught off guard. Miller had simply cocked the mousetrap, using friction between parts to hold it in place. At that point, Behe should have said Miller's mousetrap was truly irreducibly complex. If he took any other part away from the trap, it would no longer function. He also discusses the rotary motor a bacterium uses to move its flagellum. Electron microscope studies show that the apparatus driving the flagellum look exactly like an electric motor. Details are shown in the drawing. (Please click on the thumbnail to see greater detail.)

The enzyme hexokinase is simpler than the enzyme system of the glycolytic pathway of which it is a part. Hexokinase prepares a molecule of sugar for splitting and harvesting of the sugar’s energy by attaching a high energy phosphate from ATP (adenosine triphosphate) to the sugar molecule. Think of this step as "priming the pump." ATP is the primary energy source for most processes in the cell. ATP energy is expended in this first step to make a net gain of two ATPs later. Before this can happen, another molecule of ATP must be spent at the third step in the process, which again "primes the pump."

By this step, three different enzymes have been used, and two ATPs of energy have been spent. So far, nothing has happened that will benefit the cell. Three enzymes either had to be created by an intelligent God who knew what ahead, or they had to happen accidentally by time and chance with no idea of where it was all leading. If this much happened by mutation and natural selection, the generations of cells in which this system evolved received no benefit until critical steps in the pathway were complete. There is an electron transport chain, involving NADH, at step six, which is also very complex biochemical pathway, yields two more ATPs.

The development of these intermediate enzymatic steps gives the organism no obvious advantage for natural selection to work on. To say otherwise is purely speculative and speculation cannot be equated with science, regardless how scientifically astute it is. The same is true for the next three steps in the process, which involve three complicated and specific enzymes, which have to be encoded into the organism’s DNA. Yet, the evolutionary doctrine of natural selection requires that these changes must somehow give the host organisms survival advantage, improved ability to compete with other similar organisms, or some benefit that will allow it to reproduce and survive, preferably at the expense of competitors.

One reader remarked that science is derived from, fed by and wholly dependent on speculation at every level. We realize that non-scientists tend to think this way, possibly because they are influenced by scientists who generally regard their speculations concerning evolutionary development as fact. Science is first dependent upon an observation, second upon the development of a reasonable hypothesis based on the observation, and third upon testing the hypothesis through controlled experimentation. The same reader described creation science as "oxymoronic." Like creation science, evolutionary science lacks direct observations, making both "sciences" oxymorons. Supposed evolutionary development occurring in the distant past was not observed. Experiments are impossible because the time line of hypothetical evolution would extend far beyond the lifetime of the experimenter/observer.

Ideally, somewhere along the way the competing organisms must be pushed out (possibly driven to extinction -- the survival of the fittest comes into play), or the evolving organism must be able to survive in a different ecological niche. Hickman explains natural selection this way:

"Out of the struggle for existence results the survival of the fittest. Under natural selection, individuals bearing favorable variations survive and have a chance to breed and transmit their characteristics to their offspring. The less fit die without reproducing. Natural selection is simply the differential survival or reproduction of favored variants. The process continues with succeeding generations, so that organisms gradually become better adapted to their environment. Should the environment change, there must also be a change in the characteristics that have survival value, or the species is eliminated. Reproduction is hat really counts in natural election."[1]

If evolution is true, the organisms that evolved the glycolytic system, did so against incomprehensibly enormous odds, with no apparent benefit until step ten in the glycolytic process. Blind chance seems totally inadequate for the task of creating a series of complicated enzymes, each requiring precisely ordered amino acids and specific spatial arrangement. Also, the order in which these enzymes operate is critical. There would be no benefit to the creature during much of the pathway's development. Remember, too, that these functions must be coordinated with the rest of the cell’s activities.

There is no way for blind chance to know that sugar could be a source of energy if properly tapped. It also would not know what had to be done to take advantage of that energy. How could evolution turn down a pathway and evolve a complicated series of enzymes (without knowledge, wisdom, or understanding of what was needed) that would give no survival advantage for most of that evolutionary process? Further, until the entire set of glycolytic enzymes was developed, the organism evolving the enzyme system would make useless enzymes, which would drain energy and material resources. None of it works until all of it works, not only the glycolytic pathway but in all other enzyme systems found in living cells.

The evolution of the DNA, which codes for the glycolytic pathway, would involve thousands of insertion mutations to the code for each amino acid in the eleven enzymes of the pathway. An insertion mutation is a mutation that inserts a new nucleotide into a DNA chain. This may seem like a simple mutation, but it is very destructive. When an insertion mutation takes place, it produces a frame shift. This will cause every nucleotide after the point of insertion to be shifted over one. This immediately causes major changes in the proteins it produces. Take the familiar sentence,

"The quick brown fox jumped over the fence to greet the lazy poodle."

Let each word in the sentence represent one amino acid. In DNA, three nucleotides, which makeup a codon, code for a single amino acid (an amino acid being analogous to a letter in a word). The insertion of a single nucleotide will cause the DNA sequence to be misread in two ways. First, it will sometimes cause the codon (into which it is inserted) to code for a different amino acid, depending on into which codon it is inserted and on which position in the codon it is incorporated. Second, it will always cause a frame shift, so that the words in our sentence look like this:

"Thb equic kbrow nfo xjumpe dove rth efenc et ogree tth elaz ypoodle."

This example of our "insertion mutation" made the entire sentence nonsense, except for the word ‘dove.’ The "sense" of the DNA "sentence" is just as radically changed by an insertion mutation. Another mutation, called a deletion mutation, causes the same kind of disruptive frame shift. Both types of mutations are more numerous and lethal than the simple substitution mutation. In the case of a substitution mutation, a single nucleotide replaces the original. Although this type of mutation is less disruptive, it can be very bad. For example, sickle cell disease is the result of a single substitution.

The enzymes in glycolysis are very complex. For example, the enzyme glyceraldehyde phosphate dehydrogenase has four identical chains of 330 amino acid residues, which would require at least 330 specific addition mutations to code for them. Some evolutionists opt for gene duplication and subsequent modification by natural selection of the "off line" pseudogene. (We have a further discussion of pseudogenes and whether or not natural selection is involved in our series on the molecular clock). New genetic information had to emerge if organisms were going to increase in complexity. New genetic codes for new enzymes also need genetic coding for development of their control mechanisms, because enzyme production must be regulated. This usually happens via feedback mechanisms, which are sometimes very complex and are often interdependent on and integrated with other things happening in the cell.

Enzymes must be compartmentalized. For example, proteolytic enzymes cannot roam free within the cell, because they will break down other proteins, including other enzymes indiscriminately. An intelligent God knows such things and is able to plan and create compatible biological systems. Different organisms, (no blood, cold blooded and warm blooded) have many of the same enzymes, but the analogous enzyme in each kind of creature function better in concert with their own biochemical and ecological environment. We know that all the technological marvels were designed and built by intelligent beings. The idea that superior being designed and built the technological marvels of living machines should be easy to accept. After all, scientists expect to create self-sustaining, self-replicating machines some day. It seems contradictory to dream of the latter and reject the former.

Entropy: the fatal step

Furthermore, all this evolution supposedly happened over boundless eons. The developing proteins and DNA would be subject to the same law of physics that wreaks havoc on all ordered and structured systems: entropy. Entropy is the universal decay principle, which affects both matter and energy, including light. These painstakingly evolved molecules would fall apart over the millions of years between the time of their formation and their actual incorporation and utilization by the first living cell.

Origin of Life: Smart God or Dumb Luck?

When we look back, in evolution time, to when there was no code, no translators, no enzymes or structural proteins, no membranes, no regulators, and no means of replication, we realize that the probability of mutation and natural selection becomes miraculous. Diehard evolutionists would prefer to called it lucky, fortunate, fortuitous, serendipitous, or anything but miraculous. "Miraculous" implies an intelligent creator who has knowledge, makes plans, and has the power and will to act. The multitudinous array of intricate biological processes, machines within the cell, is powerful testimony for superhuman intelligence possessed by the one called the master architect—God. An intelligent creator is sufficient cause for all that we see in the living world, while time and chance are dubious at best. To say this all happened by blind chance seems absurd. These complex interactions could not have developed unless the end was known from the beginning. Plainly, logically, it takes intelligence to devise the amazing biological machinery that runs life.

Evolutionists always refer to the prebiotic development of order leading to life as a series of lucky accidents that produced all the complexity and organization we see around us. Dr. Kroman’s assumption seems logical superficially, but is it really? According to creation theory, everything was created at its ultimate level of complexity and order and has been deteriorating (because of entropy) ever since. Can a universe begin with 90% hydrogen gas and 10% helium and ultimately develop, purely by chance, the human brain and all that it has produced? Evolutionists say that this is exactly what happened, but what is the proof for it?

Over the next few months, we will carefully examine some origin-of-life experiments and see if they sup-port the idea that life arose from inanimate matter and developed greater and greater levels of complexity and order over long intervals of time. These experiments are always touted as the ultimate evidence for the evolutionary origin of life, but there are many, many problems with these experiments.

Because of the hit-and-miss nature ascribed to the mode of evolution, it is more reasonable to assume an enzyme system started with the fortuitous synthesis of just one enzyme. What are the chances of getting just one simple enzyme only 100 amino acid residues long? There are 20 different amino acids which could be arranged in any combination of ways (some ways would not be favored and less likely to happen). The amino acids in this simple enzyme could be arranged 10¹³⁰different ways—that is 10 with 130 zeros. Most of these arrangements would not make good enzymes. Most of them would work very poorly or not at all. Sir Arthur Eddington, a British astronomer, calculated there are no more than 10⁸⁰ particles in the universe. Astronomers believe 90 to 99% of the universe is made of invisible particles called Dark Matter. This might increase the total number to 10⁸². This includes all the electrons, protons, and neutrons, and many other less familiar subatomic particles. That should give you some idea of how large 10¹³⁰is.

It would take an very long time to find by chance the right combination of amino acids to make some-thing as efficient as the enzymes in our bodies. If we let everything in the universe combine and recombine to make these protein chains of 100 amino acid residues at the rate of one trillion times per second, it would take more than 30 trillion years before all the combinations would have been tried. After these trials we would have just one protein one hundred amino acids long with limited function and no ability to reproduce, for protein does not code for itself, nor is it able to effect its own replication.

Statistics, however, do not really impress evolutionists, because their faith in evolution runs much deeper than their respect for math. So deep, in fact, that Carl Sagan says things got very lucky and life formed any-way. The odds against the chance formation of life have been calculated by another famous astronomer, Sir Fred Hoyle, to be 1 out of 10^40,000, which he says is equivalent to a tornado sweeping through a junk yard and constructing a 747!

Creationary biologist Gary Parker says,

"There is nothing unique about the substances of living things, e.g., carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, sulfur, "but there is something special about the way that they’re put together. Either the molecules put them-selves together or else they were put together by an outside force. Either time and chance changed the substance of the e into life or it was done with deliberate plan and purpose. In that sense, living things represent either the property of MATTER or the property of MIND." [2]

What do you think?

Continued in Part II

References

1. Hickman, Jr., Cleveland P., Larry S. Roberts, Frances M. Hickman, Integrated Principles of Zoology, 8^th ed., Times Mirror, p. 853, 1988.
2. Parker, Gary, "Genesis In Your Genes," cassette tape, Institute for Creation Research, Master Books, 1-619-448-0900 (Visa and Master Card accepted).