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Criticism of Stuart Kauffman’s autocatalytic theory to the origin of life has been well documented—

one example from evo stuff here:
http://www.ascentofhumanity.com/chapter6-8.php

“Critics of Stuart Kauffman point to the failure in the laboratory to create anything like the expanding, evolving autocatalytic sets he describes; invariably, instead, we end up with uninteresting tarry gunk sitting on the bottom of the flask at chemical equilibrium. Computer simulations of evolution, where various mutating organisms compete for memory or some other resource, similarly fail to generate genuinely new genes.”

Abiogenesis is extremely improbable:

a) Calculations of Sir Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe for random generation of a simple enzyme and calculations for a single celled bacterium.

Although he is an evolutionist, and an atheist, Hoyle sees the mathematical statistical difficulty in producing a single bacterium like E. coli. In his calculations of the probability of life emerging from chance interactions with chemicals, Hoyle assumed that the first living cell was much simpler than today’s bacteria. However, his calculation for the likelihood of even one very simple enzyme arising at the right time in the right place was only chance in 10^(20). Because there are thousands of different enzymes with different functions, to produce the simplest living cell, Hoyle calculated that about 2,000 enzymes were needed with each one performing a specific task to form a single bacterium lie E coli.

No matter how large the environment one considers, life cannot have a random beginning….there are about two thousand enzymes, and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in (10^20)^2000 = 10^40,000, an outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup. If one is not prejudiced either by social beliefs or by a scientific training into the conviction that life originated on the Earth, this simple calculation wipes the idea entirely out of court….the enormous information content of even the simplest living systems….cannot in out view be generated by what are often called “natural” processes, …For life to have originated on the Earth it would be necessary that quite explicit instruction should have been provided for its assembly…There is no way in which we can expect to avoid the need for information, no way in which we can simply get by with a bigger and better organic soup, as we ourselves hoped might be possible a year or two ago.
-Hoyle & Wickramasinghe, Evolution from Space (London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1981).

Chandra Wickramasinghe adds:
“The chances that life just occurred are about as unlikely as a typhoon blowing through a junkyard and constructing a Boeing 747.”

b) Calculations of Hubert Yockey for random generation of a single molecule of iso-1-cytochrome c protein.

He assigned the responsibility of amino acid selection and their polymerizing to form proteins to three Fates, acting as dei ex machina in a Greek drama. Lachesis was the caster of 110 icosahedral dice; Clotho, the spinner of the thread of life, polymerized them; and Atropos cut the thread when Lachesis assigned an amino acid to a non functionality equivalent site. Yockey asked the question: what is the probability that Lachesis and Clotho will build a chain of 110 amino acids of the iso-1-cytochrome c without Atropos cutting it?

Yockey calculated the probability was 2 x 10-44. Yockey then noted that the realistic odds are much worse what would have to form in the prebiotic soup…..

“In so far as chance plays a central role, the probability that even a very short protein, not withstanding a genome, could emerge from the primeval soup, if it ever existed, even with the help of a deus ex machina for 109 years is so small that the faith of Job is required to believe it….”
Yockey, Information Theory and Molecular Biology, p 279
“Let us remind ourselves that we have calculated the probability if the generation of only a single molecule of iso-1 cytochrome c. Of course, very many copies of each molecule must be generated to form the protobiont…I am using probability as a measure of degree of belief. It is clear that the belief that a molecule of iso-1-cytochrome c or any other protein could appear by chance is based on faith. And so we see that even if we believe that the “building blocks” are available, they do not spontaneously make proteins, at least not by chance. The origin of life by chance in a primeval soup is impossible in probability in the same way that a perpetual motion machine is impossible in probability.”
Yockey, Information Theory and Molecular Biology, p 257

c) Calculations of Bradley and Thaxton for random production of a single protein.

Walter L. Bradley and Charles B. Thaxton calculated the probability of a random formation of amino acids into a protein to be 4.9 x 10-191. They began with the assumption that the probability of starting with an L-amino acid was .5, and the probability of starting with an L-amino acid was .5, and the probability of two L-amino acids joining with a peptide bond was also .5. They assumed that the twenty necessary amino acids existed in equal concentration in the prebiotic soup so that the probability of the right amino acid in the required position was .05.
Bradley and Thaxton were also generous towards the proponents of random processes when they also assumed that all of the chemical reactions would be with amino acids, ignoring the high probability of reactions with non-amino acid chemicals. They calculated the probability of the necessary placement of one amino acid to be .5 x .5 x .05 or .125. This, of coarse, meant that the probability of assembling N such amino acids would be .0125 x .0125 for N terms. Assuming a protein with 100 amino acids (.0125 x .0125 for 100 terms ), the mathematically impossible probability would be 4.9 x 10-191.
Bradley and Thaxton noted their agreement with Hubert P. Yockey and concluded that even assuming that all the carbon on earth existed in the form of amino acids and reacted at the greatest possible rate of 1012/s for one billion years (when actually only 130 million years were available), the mathematically impossible probability for the formation of one functional protein would be 10^-65.

Walter L. Bradley and Charles B. Thaxton, “Information and the Origin of Life” in The Creation Hypothesis, ed. J. P. Moreland (Downers Grove, Il : InterVarsity Press, 1994), p. 190

d) Calculations of Harold Morowitz for single celled bacterium developing from accidental or chance processes.

The difficulties in producing a protein from the mythical prebiotic soup are very large, but more difficult still is the probability of random processes producing the simplest living cell which represents an overwhelming in crease in complexity. Harold Morowitz calculated the probability of broken chemical bonds in a single celled bacterium reassembling under ideal chemical conditions. He assumed that only constructive chemical processes were acting ( under natural conditions 50 percent of chemical processes are destructive ) and that all of the amino acids were bioactive ( in the natural environment 75 percent of amino acids are not bioactive ). Morowitz computed the odds against the cell reassembling eot be one in 10100,000,000,000. He summarized his computation:

“…no amount of ordinary manipulation or arguing about the age of the universe or the size of the system can suffice to make it plausible that such a fluctuation would have occurred in an equilibrium system. It is always possible to argue that any unique event would have occurred. This is outside the range of probabilistic considerations, and really, outside of science. We may sum up stating that on energy considerations alone, the possibility of a living cell occurring in an equilibrium ensemble is vanishingly small. It is important to reiterate this point as a number of authors on the origin of life have missed the significance of vanishingly small probabilities. They have assumed that the final possibility will be reasonably large by virtue of the size and age of the system. The previous paragragh shows that is not so: calculate clause of the probability of spontaneous origin are so low that the final probabilities are still vanishingly small.”

-Harold J. Morowitz, Energy Flow in Biology (Woodbridge, Conn.: Ox Bow Press, 1979), p. 12.

Morowitz also calculated the increase in chemical bonding energy required in forming an E coli bacterium and the probability of such a bacterium forming spontaneously anywhere in the entire universe over a period of five billion years under equilibrium conditions. In computing the odds to be one in 1010(110), Morowitz wrote:

“What is very clear … is that if equilibrium processes alone were at work, the largest possible fluctuation in the history of the universe id likely to have been no larger than a small peptide. Again, we stress in a very firm quantitative way, the impossibility of life originating as a fluctuation in an equilibrium ensemble.”
-Morowitz, Energy Flow in Biology, p. 68.

e) Calculations of Bernd-Olaf Kuppers for the random generation of the sequence of a bacterium.

Proceeding from the realistic assumption that all sequence alternatives of a nucleic-acid molecule are physically equivalent, Bernd-Olaf Kuppers concluded that the unguided, random formation of a predefined sequence ( such as the specific sequence of the nucleotides in the DNA molecule ) is reciprocally proportional to the number of all possible combinations of possible sequences. Kuppers noted that Michael Polanyi correctly emphasized that if the reverse assumption were true and the sequence of a nucleic-acid acid molecule would not have the capability to store information necessary to replicate living matter.

In calculating the expectation probability for the nucleotide sequence of a bacterium, Kuppers demonstrated the reason mathematicians have severe problems in accepting the assumptions of random origins:

“The human genome consists of about 109 nucleotides, and the number of combinatorially possible sequences attains the unimaginable size of 4^(1000 million) = 10^(600 million). Even in the simple case of a bacterium, the genome consists of some 4.106 nucleotides, and the number of combinatorially possible sequences is 4^(4million) = 10^(2.4 million). The expectation probability for the nucleotide sequence of a bacterium is thus so slight that not even the entire space of the universe would be enough to make the random synthesis of a bacterial genome probable. For example, the entire mass of the universe, expressed as a multiple of the mass of the hydrogen atom, amounts to about 10^80 units. Even if all the matter in space consisted of DNA molecules of the structural complexity of the bacterial genome, with random sequence, then the chances of finding among them a bacterial genome or something resembling one would still be completely negligible.”
Brand-Olaf Kuppers, Information and the Origin of Life ( Cambridge, Mass:: The MIT Press, 1990 ), pp 59-60.

There are well documented unnatural assumptions and with the Oparin-Halane hypothesis. The Miller-Urey experiments uncovered even more difficulties in life arising from non-life.

The following assumptions were adapted from material presented in Of Pandas and People: The Central Question of Biological Origins, 2nd ed. by Percival Davis & Dean H. Kenyon (Dallas: Haughton Publishing, 1993)

a) Assumption 1: Reducing Atmosphere.
The earth’s early atmosphere contained little or no oxygen. It was composed of methane (CH4), ethane (C2H6), ammonia (NH3), hydrogen, (H2) and water vapor (H2O), but no oxygen.

If oxygen had been present in the earth’s early atmosphere (even 1% by volume compared to 21% today), it would have been impossible for organic compounds to have accumulated the way they did in Miller’s experiments. Such compounds would not have formed at all or would have been quickly destroyed by observation.

O2 + 2H2 = 2H2O (explosion) It is almost humorous when one reads analysis of the Miller-Urey experiments…if oxygen had been present, the spark would have caused an explosion.

Photodissociation of Water Vapor creates O2

2H2O + ultraviolet light energy = 2H2 + O2

“Support for large amounts of O2 is found in data from Apollo 16—data which suggest that a large amount of free oxygen does result from upper atmosphere photodissociation of water vapor. …if a small amount of O2 were present, important precursor molecules would have been destroyed (oxidized) or their formation prevented in the first place.”

Charles B Thaxton, Walter Bradley, Roger L. Olsen. The Mystery of Life’s Origin Reassessing Current Theories (New York: Philosophical Library, 1984) p. 80, 81

Oxidation of Geological Rock is circumstantial evidence that no reducing atmosphere ever existed.

Even if oxygen was not present in the early earth’s atmosphere, the absence of oxygen would present obstacles to the formation of life. Oxygen is required for the ozone layer, which protects the surface of the earth from deadly ultraviolet radiation. Without oxygen this radiation would break down organic compound as soon as they formed. This lethal ultraviolet flux is part of the Catch-22 against abiogenesis.

Michael Denton notes:
“What we have is a sort of catch-22 situation. If we don’t have oxygen we have no organic compounds, but if we don’t have oxygen we have none either. There is another twist to the problem of the ultraviolet flux. Nucleic acid molecules, which form the genetic material of all modern organisms, happen to be stron absorbers of ultraviolet light and are consequently particularly sensitive to ultraviolet-induced radiation damage and mutation. As Sagan points out, typical contemporary organisms subjected to the same intense ultraviolet flux which would have reached the Earth’s surface in an oxygen-free atmosphere acquire a mean lethal dose of radiation in 0.3 seconds…The level of ultraviolet radiation penetrating a primeval oxygen-free atmosphere would quite likely have been lethal to any proto-organism possessing a genetic apparatus remotely resembling that of modern organisms.”

-Denton, Michael. Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, (Bethesda, MD: Adler and Adler, 1986), p. 262.

b) Assumption 2: Organic Compound Preservation
Simple organic compounds formed in the soup were somehow preserved, so that the energy that caused them to form did not also destroy them

Problem: Energy is like a two-edged sword which cuts both ways. On one hand, it builds up complex molecules out of simpler parts; however, that same energy breaks up developing molecules
The Miller-Urey didn’t match “prebiotic conditions”
In the Miller-Urey experiment amino acids and other simple compounds accumulated in a trap, where they were preserved from the destructive effects of electrical discharges. If the amino acids and other products had been continuously exposed to the early earth, they would have been destroyed as they were being formed and Miller could not have detected them.

c) Assumption 3: Reservation
Enough biological compounds were reserved for combination with the “right” molecules (rather than being tied up by reacting with useless molecules) to form the large molecules useful to life. ( obvious problem )

d) Assumption 4: Uniform Orientation
Inefficacy of random distribution of left and right handed molecules as building blocks for life.
Only “left-handed” or L-amino acids combined to produce the proteins of life, and only the “right-handed” or D-sugars reacted to produce polysaccharides, or nucleotides.

Problem: Miller and Urey’s experiment produced a random distribution of left and right handed molecules. Amino acids are in one of two forms: L-amino acids (left-handed molecules) or D-amino acids ( right-handed molecules), each a mirror image of the other. Only left-handed amino acids (L-amino acids) are contained in biologically functional proteins. None of the acids produced in the experiment combined with each other in any way. For protein functions amino acids must combine in a sophisticated sequence. This sequence is not easy to obtain by random processes, because L-amino acids and D-amino acids bond without distinction, and D-amino acids and L-amino acids are equally present in the physical world. Forming a sequence of only L-amino acids is necessary for the formation of a protein with enzymatic functions necessary for life.

e) Assumption 5: Simultaneous Origins
The genetic machinery that tells the cell how to produce protein and the protein required to build that genetic machinery both originated gradually and were present and functioning in the first reproducing protocells.

Note: In living cells, both DNA and protein depend on each other for existence.
f) Dilution in the “prebiotic soup” and the prevention of formation of polypeptides

Even if polypeptides had formed in the primordial soup, hydrolysis would have broken them up and destroyed most amino acids. Organic compounds such as amino acids, tend to break down when dissolved in water. The higher the temperature, the faster this breakdown occurs. Michael J. Behe (Darwin’s Black Box) comments on the effect of hydrolysis in presenting the formation of polypeptides:

…joining many amino acids together to form a protein with a useful biological activity is a much more difficult problem than forming amino acids in the first place. The major problem in hooking amino acids together is that, chemically, it involves the removal of a molecule of water for each amino acid joined to the growing protein chain. Conversely, the presence of water strongly inhibits amino acids from forming proteins…..

Despite overwelling mathematical improbability evolutionists still cling to the belief in spontaneous generation arising from prebiotic soup (the oooooooze according to Carl Sagan) because it fits their presupposition that “Evolution is a fact, not a theory.”.