Why Abiogenesis aka Chemical Evolution aka Spontaneous Generation is a myth, not science! Part Three.

“for the most part cells are very robust machines,…robust computational devices, employing redundancy in the same way that enables large computing systems, such as Amazon, to keep operating despite the fact that servers routinely fail.” - Researcher Anthony Gitter, lead author of a research team led by Carnegie Mellon University computational biologist Ziv Bar-Joseph.

This time we'll call another witness to testify in behalf of real science against Darwinism.   A common falsehood is spread by Darwinists stating that Pasteur and other scientists only tested for "complex life" when they concluded life only comes from life.   But in fact all tests at all times from the 17th Century forward have continued to underline the truth of the Law of Biogenesis.   Life cannot possibly have evolved from non-life.  Here are even more reasons why.   

 

New Study Shows Enzymes Couldn't Evolve

by Brian Thomas, M.S. *

According to evolutionary theory, chemicals must have somehow organized themselves into cellular life, presumably long ago. And that means that enzymes must have formed themselves, too.

But enzymes are highly engineered miniaturized machines. Even intelligent human scientists armed with the most sophisticated technology cannot reproduce their design and manufacture—so, logically, neither can unintelligent chemicals or the laws that govern them. The title of a recent scientific report asserted that a particular enzyme evolved. The study results, however, clearly demonstrate that this enzyme was purposefully created.

The investigators compared the three-dimensional structures of similarly shaped enzymes that are found in different species of bacteria. One enzyme splits water and combines the resulting hydrogen atoms with sulfur in a process that captures chemical energy. The researchers compared it with another class of enzymes that also splits individual water molecules, but then combines the hydrogen with a carbon-based molecule.

The enzyme that manipulates sulfur—called a CS₂ (carbon disulfide) hydrolase—is required because its bacteria inhabit sulfurous volcanic waters in Italy. The studies confirmed that the core structure of the CS₂ hydrolase, like that of similar enzymes, is critical. The scientists wrote in Nature, "Any change in this area of the protein [enzyme] adversely affected protein activity."¹

On one hand, evolution's story requires that, at some point in time, something altered what would become the enzyme core again and again, as each structural piece evolved into place over eons. On the other hand, science shows that altering the enzyme core in the slightest is impossible without making the whole structure useless.

The researchers also found that CS₂ hydrolase is distinct from enzymes with an otherwise identical core because it has an additional long, narrow tunnel through which only CS₂ can pass. The tunnel "functions as a specificity filter," ensuring that no similar molecule such as carbon dioxide enters.¹

The researchers found a clue in the DNA that suggested to them an idea of how the enzyme could have evolved. The DNA that codes for the tunnel portion of the CS₂ hydrolase gene is surrounded by unique sequences, indicating that this DNA portion may have been added to the main enzyme's DNA. Perhaps some unknown cellular mechanism "stitched in" this extra bit at just the right place among the bacteria's 1.8 million DNA bases, adding the tunnel portion to a CO₂-converting enzyme through "lateral gene transfer" and thereby forming CS₂ hydrolase.^2,1 If so, could this process properly be called "evolution"?

No—if the gene jumped from another bacterium to this one, it did not evolve because it already existed elsewhere. But in order for a lateral gene transfer to even work, in addition to the enzymes themselves, another mechanism had to already exist that could recognize, accept, and insert the foreign DNA in just the right place. Only then could it retrofit an enzyme in just the right way to enable the bacterium to live on sulfur.

Where's the evidence here for evolutionary innovation? Pre-existing DNA and pre-existing DNA transfer and splicing programs appear to have existed from the beginning.

The authors asserted that CS₂ hydrolase "emerged owing to the evolution of a new quaternary [final protein] structure."¹ But this ignores the facts that no new DNA actually "emerged," and the proper placement of transferred DNA required just the opposite of evolution—purposeful design.

CS₂ hydrolase did not evolve. In fact, experimental science shows that this enzyme functions today only because of its precise and specific arrangement of parts. And like any machine with multiple, interconnected parts, whether biological or man-made, all the correct parts assembled in the correct configuration were needed from the very beginning.³

References

1. Smeulders, M. J. et al. 2011. Evolution of a new enzyme for carbon disulphide conversion by an acidothermophilic archaeon. Nature. 478 (7369): 412- 416.
2. Islas, S. et al. 2004. Comparative Genomics and the Gene Complement of a Minimal Cell. Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres. 34 (1-2): 243-256.
3. For other examples, see Thomas, B. DNA Repair Enzymes: Vital Links in the Chain of Life. ICR News. Posted on icr.org August 27, 2008, accessed November 1, 2011. See also Thomas, B. Algae Molecule Masters Quantum Mechanics. ICR News. Posted on icr.org February 17, 2010, accessed November 1, 2011. 

* Mr. Thomas is Science Writer at the Institute for Creation Research.

Article posted on November 10, 2011.

Disaster Recovery Plan Found in Cells

by Brian Thomas, M.S. *

The Internet search engines Google and Yahoo! have massive server farms that are all interconnected in a network configuration called “cloud computing.” These systems are engineered with fault tolerance features so that if one server breaks down it does not impair the operation of the whole, since another server has all the data ready to go in no time. Although mankind has learned through hard experience to structure networks this way, it turns out that biological systems have been equipped all along with their own disaster recovery backups.

A research team led by Carnegie Mellon University computational biologist Ziv Bar-Joseph found evidence for these built-in fault tolerance features in cells. The research showed that essential regulatory DNA sequences, like the ones that tell the cell which genes need to become active at what time and for how long, are backed up “to a degree we hadn’t appreciated.”¹

Certain experimental observations had previously befuddled cell biologists, who thought that the informational redundancy in DNA served no practical purpose, except perhaps as fodder for further evolutionary changes. However, when master genes were purposefully wrecked one by one, all different kinds of cells continued living, as though the genes were still there. Bar-Joseph found the answer to the puzzle—there are backup copies of these key, or “master,” genetic sequences.

Researchers then removed both primary and backup copies of master genes to test their hypothesis. They found very noticeable effects as sets of genes under regulatory control failed to activate. These backup copies were part of a dynamic fault tolerance plan that focused on the disaster recovery of key regulatory gene sequences.

Anthony Gitter, lead author of the study, said that “for the most part cells are very robust machines,…robust computational devices, employing redundancy in the same way that enables large computing systems, such as Amazon, to keep operating despite the fact that servers routinely fail.”¹

Interestingly, however, the research report avoided asking where these amazing biological plans came from. Since Google and Yahoo! server systems were purposefully engineered to include various levels of fault tolerance, it makes sense that similar features in cells also required purposeful engineering. The natural, random processes observed in the world are not capable of engineering such “robust” cellular machines.

However, a Creator as wise, powerful, and benevolent as the One described in the Bible could—and did.
Reference

1. Spice, B. Cells Are Like Robust Computational Systems, Carnegie Mellon-Led Team Reports. Carnegie Mellon University press release, June 16, 2009, reporting research published in Gitter, A. et al. 2009. Backup in gene regulatory networks explains differences between binding and knockout results. Molecular Systems Biology. 5 Article number: 276.

* Mr. Thomas is Science Writer at the Institute for Creation Research.
Article posted on August 4, 2009.

~~~~~~~~~

Isn't it funny how, since we have ceased believing that a cell consists of "protoplasm" we keep finding that cells and life in general are remarkably designed “to a degree we hadn’t appreciated?”

So bring it home with an application to fossils and dating, Brian, if you please:

'Dinosaur Plant' Evolution Stories Conflict

by Brian Thomas, M.S. *

Cycads, also called "sago palms," are cone-bearing plants with long leathery shoots that often adorn dinosaur dioramas. Though there are about 11 living cycad genera, which further divide into about 300 species, many more once existed but are now known only from fossils.¹

The oldest rock layers that contain cycads are supposedly about 250 million years old. However, in a study published in Science, a group of scientists compared the similarities between cycad DNA sequences and did not find the many DNA differences that should have resulted from a quarter-billion years' worth of mutations and evolution.²

Even after applying evolutionary assumptions to make their molecular clock work, most likely including a very slow mutation rate, the researchers' results showed that almost all of today's cycads "only began diversifying 10 million years ago," the study's lead author, Nathalie Nagalingum, told LiveScience.³

So, did cycads emerge suddenly 250 million years ago, according to the evolutionary age assignment given to their first appearance as fossils, or did they suddenly diversify only 10 million years ago, according to the evolutionary age assignment given to their DNA differences? Is either story even close?

Surely this vast age discrepancy cannot be the fault of fossils or DNA, because they were the same in both studies. Instead, the assumption of vast age produces the confusion.

However, the creation model's young age explains these data with no conflicts. Rocks with dinosaur fossils also contain many fossils of animals and plants—including cycads and Wollemi pines—that are essentially the same as their living counterparts.⁴ They look so similar to living creatures because they were only deposited thousands of years ago after being swept up in one of a number of catastrophic watery surges associated with the year of Noah's Flood.

According to Scripture, which provides eyewitness accounts that go back to the very beginning, there is no such thing as a dinosaur age—at least, not one without people, cycads, birds, marsupials, and other "modern" creatures.⁵

The molecular clock-based 10-million-year-old cycad divergence described in Science may actually reflect the rapid diversification into many species of those few genera of cycads that survived the Flood and pioneered the post-Flood world only four thousand or so years ago.

Cycads are living reminders that dinosaurs and modern plants and creatures recently shared living space. And the recent cycad dating mismatch is a reminder that evolutionary dates are all based on broken clocks.⁶

References

1. This pattern of greatly reduced species diversity over time is common to most living things, yet it is the opposite of evolutionary dogma, which asserts that all of today's living varieties emerged from a single kind.
2. Nagalingum, N. S. et al. 2011. Recent Synchronous Radiation of a Living Fossil. Science. 334 (6057): 796-799.
3. Choi, C. Q. Endangered Plants Not 'Living Fossils' After All. Live Science. Posted on livescience.com October 26, 2011, accessed October 31, 2011. 
4. 1995. Sensational Australian tree … like 'finding a live dinosaur.' Creation. 17 (2): 13. 
5. See Thomas, B. More Proof that Dinosaur Lived with 'Later' Creatures. ICR News. Posted on icr.org June 8, 2011, accessed November 1, 2011. 
6. Morris, J. 2007. The Young Earth. Green Forest, AR: Master Books.

* Mr. Thomas is Science Writer at the Institute for Creation Research.
Article posted on November 14, 2011.

  

We will eventually tie in the dating methods to this mess.   These guys have no idea if they are talking ten million or one thousand and their faulty dating methods that attribute millions of years to recent lava flows tell us this.   Darwinist just want it all - long ages so bad they just cannot help themselves.

I can just hear Roger Daltrey singing, "You can't have it!"

Life coming from non-life? Another Darwinist myth bites the dust!

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