Posted on 01/17/2009 3:04:35 PM PST by GodGunsGuts
Lab-'evolved' Molecules Support Creation
by Brian Thomas, M.S.
Scientists attempting to demonstrate random evolution in the laboratory have found something entirely different: evidence supporting creation.
Gerald Joyce of the Scripps Research Institute coaxed an RNA-like long chain molecule, called R3C, to copy itself. The journal New Scientist stated that Joyce’s “laboratory-born ribonucleic acid (RNA) strand evolves in a test tube.” But it “evolved” only after “Joyce's team created” it. “After further lab tinkering,” Joyce’s colleague Tracy Lincoln “redesigned the molecule” so that it would replicate more effectively.1
What Joyce and his team actually discovered was how difficult it is and how much outside intervention is needed to get even these simple RNA-like molecules to form chains (which only happened when they were provided with a supply of pre-manufactured chemical “links”). The creation model—not a religious argument from ignorance, but a scientific inference from the data—is a viable historical model that would predict that the chemicals and processes of life are exactly as Joyce and other origin of life researchers find them: complex and specified.
The evolution model continues to meet a dead end with “life in a test tube” research. Even after selecting from 288 mutant molecules the ones that replicate the fastest, the scientists knew of no natural mechanism that can add new functions to those selected. “To mimic biology, a molecule must gain new functions on the fly, without laboratory tinkering. Joyce says he has no idea how to clear this hurdle with his team’s RNA molecule.”1 The potential for change for these molecules, like any machine, is limited to its maximum design potential unless retooled by an outsider.
The insistence that this laboratory work shows any kind of blind evolutionary process contradicts the fact that these research efforts were not “blind,” but directed and purposeful. Joyce even admitted that his molecules do not “have open-ended capacity for Darwinian evolution.”1 His molecules have limited potential because all molecules have limited potential. Indeed, certain ribonucleotides that are linked together to make RNA cannot form naturally in solutions. Not only the molecules themselves, but their environment limits the potential for any evolutionary progression. Even after they are carefully formed, they are very fragile. Just add water, oxygen, or light, and all the “evolutionary progress” of these molecules is destroyed. Surely, life cannot come from a purely natural cause.
Michael Robertson of the University of California, Santa Cruz, told New Scientist, “The origin of life on Earth is an historical problem that we’re never going to be able to witness and verify.”1 The question of origins cannot be investigated by direct experiment, but it can be explored by making valid inferences from an array of evidence.2
Thus, both the facts of science regarding the extreme difficulty of fashioning molecules that merely imitate select functions of life, as well as the biblical account that records the beginning of all things, unite as evidence for creation.
References
1. Callaway, E. Artificial molecule evolves in the lab. New Scientist. Posted on newscientist.com January 8, 2009, accessed January 9, 2009.
2. Thomas, B. Protocell Research: On the Verge of…a Dead End. ICR News. Posted on icr.org September 16, 2008, accessed January 14, 2009.
Details, details....
Please answer the question in post 74.
It’s not nice to clue the clueless...
Comparing a solution in a beaker to the complexity of the human body does fall into the clueless category.
==Brian Thomas, M.S., has outdone himself this time: a lie in the first part of his first sentence. “Scientists attempting to demonstrate random evolution in the laboratory...
What are you talking about? Joyce’s “origin of life” research is an attempt to demonstrate how life could have arisen from non-life.
“What we’ve found could be relevant to how life begins, at that key moment when Darwinian evolution starts.”
—Gerald Joyce, 2009
Unfortunately for Joyce et al, all they succeeded in doing was to strengthen the argument for intelligent design.
Thanks for the ping!
I wouldn't say "demonstrate," I'd say "examine," but that's not really the point. Joyce does not pretend to be demonstrating "random evolution," whatever that is. There's no claim that this was random, or that it exactly represents prebiotic chemistry. Thomas sets the story up as though Joyce was trying to show something and failed, and that's not what happened at all.
Hypotheses of how life began involve multiple processes. One of them is that RNA copied itself. Joyce was investigating if RNA--any RNA, not something he claimed was the original RNA--could do that. If it couldn't, that would have been a step toward falsifying that hypothesis. But that's not what happened.
Ever seen Mythbusters? They break problems down in the same way. They figure out what individual parts of the myth would have to work for the whole thing to be true, and they test each part. What Joyce managed to do was declare RNA duplication "plausible."
Also note in his quote that he refers to the beginning of life as "that key moment when Darwinian evolution starts." See, no life = no evolution. Abiogenesis not part of evolution. Evolution covers back to the beginning of life, not before. Can we stop claiming otherwise now?
The Origin and Evolution of Life
That book was cited by top evolutionary scientists. You'll need WinDjvu to read it. Well worth going through at least the first third.
And science has proved that we are indeed living beings in the womb. As we become more intelligent, the pieces start falling into place. The stubborn still will not care...they want us as slaves and organized religion is a threat to power.
Apologize for your personal attacks and I will do so.
You have proof of that yes?
Can this field be detected with our instruments? How far above and below sea level does it extend?
"I have seen zero evidence that this ever happened, and what few theories that have been put forth are shamefully flimsy coming from such learned scientists and academics. "
GodGunsGuts:"Which makes them, by their own definition, “anti-science.”
Two points:
First of all, the theory of evolution is NOT a theory of origins. Darwin had no theory of origins, he merely speculated that something important may have happened in a mud puddle somewhere long ago.
And I'm not certain if even today there is an actual scientific "theory of origins." I suspect there are a number of hypotheses (aka: SWAGs) being worked on, but none that have yet "graduated" to the level of scientific theory. By the way, these more recent hypotheses have more-or-less abandoned Darwin's mud puddle for more exotic locations, such as deep sea volcanic vents. Really interesting work, imho.
Second of all, these researchers are all real scientists doing real scientific work, trying to develop real scientific theories -- some of which may or may not pan out long term.
By contrast you guys are only doing your d*mndest to convince people that real science is just another religion, and then impose your own strictly religious beliefs on science. Imho, you ought to be ashamed of yourselves!
Who needs television when you have entertainment like this?
First detected in the 1930s by Royal Rife, and also by Fritz A Pop. - These days you can buy instruments that can not only detect them, but trace paths through the body, for $300 or less. A common digital multimeter from Radio Shack with a freq count function, and a small coil of wire, can measure the frequency for about $75
But if you were interested in facts, you would be spending all your time reading, since you are so far behind the pace.
Sounds like you’re about due for your next enema.
You’re the FReeper expert on coffee enemas, so you must be right.
Because really, where better to get insight into current scientific thinking than a book written in 1916? Of course one might wonder why, if origins is part of evolution, Osborn felt the need to separate them in his title, and to write in his Preface, "Some day a constellation of genius will unite in one laboratory on the life problem. This [is not] possible at present..." But that might just confuse things.
You’re beyond coffee
Sorry but I can generate any frequency that those devices can pick up with a handful of electrical components.
“specific electromagnetic field that results from the life that God created, within a living cell; no place else”
If I can create such a field doesn’t that make your statement wrong?
You obviously lack the intelligence to carry on any conversation on this subject. If man could create life, you would not be so frightened, would you!
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