Science Disproves Evolution!

Let's examine the building blocks of life for a moment. There are over 2,000 types of amino acids, but only 20 are used in the creation of life. This means that life is very selective, an idea that the theory of evolution does not support. There are two types of amino acids, left-handed and right-handed. They are made of the same components just like our right and left hands. However, also like our hands, these two types of amino acids are mirror images.

(1) Amino acids are compounds that have a backbone composed of a nitrogen atom in an amino group (NH₃) attached to a carbon atom (C) attached to a carboxylic acid group (COOH). The kinds of amino acids are distinguished by whatever chemical moiety comes off the center carbon atom. Therefore, theoretically there could be an infinite number of amino acids.

(2) The primary mechanism concerning the diversification of life is NATURAL SELECTION. So modern evolutionary theory most certainly does support selectivity in life.

(3) Of the 20 amino acids that life uses the particular ones it uses just so happen to be primarily the ones that are most easily produced by abiotic means. Why is that? From a naturalistic origin of life point of view it is because they are the ones that naturalistic mechanisms had to work with. From an Intelligent Design point of view that is just mere coincidence. There you are talking faith, and not evidence.

In your body, there are trillions of amino acids and all of them are the left-handed type.

If one wants to be picky, then glycine which has an R group consisting solely of a hydrogen atom is not chiral at all. So it is not either left-handed or right-handed.

In fact, in all life forms only the left-handed amino acids are represented. Right-handed amino acids are destructive to life forms.

Er no. Right-handed amino acids are not destructive to life forms, they just generally aren't used by them. A naturalistic origin of life explanation for the use of solely left-handed forms of amino acids is that the earliest biochemical pathways to evolve produced the L-form and not the D-form. And since all life share common ancestors that trait has been passed on ever since.

That is a historical contingency. It also predicts that there is no structural reason forcing L-amino acids to work better than D-amino acids, and this prediction has been experimentally confirmed. Artificial proteins made of D-amino acids have been found to be functional. The ID explanation for the fact that all life uses L-amino acids is because for some unexplained reason the Intelligent Designer decided to not use them. There again you are talking faith and not evidence.

In Miller's experiment, half of the amino acids were right-handed. This is not life; this is a poision to life.

(1) Miller's experiment was to produce amino acids abiotically. That means he didn't use enzymes to make them so obviously they were going to be half D- and half L-amino acids.

(2) Er ... no. Again D-amino acids are not "poison to life". Perhaps what you are talking about is that a protein made whose sequence is the same as a naturally occurring protein but is made of half D- and half L- isomers does not work. That would be correct. But no one has ever suggested that in order to get life started that you need to have the proteins that are found in modern day life. Modern origin of life researchers do not believe that. They believe that the first replicators MUST have been very simple entities.

This is not the only case of a mixture of left-handed and right-handed amino acids being produced. In fact, scientists have always produced a mixture of left and right handed amino acids, even in experiments where scientists have begun with only left-handed amino acids.

Life makes only the L- isomers because of the inherent chirality of the enzymes used to make them. Enzymes come from things that already living. The experiments that origin of life researchers do does not involve enzymes. So you would be expected to get a mixture. Chirality would be expected to enter life only after natural selection had come up with pretty sophisticated replicators.

This shows that the natural tendancy is to go away from life rather than to move towards it, also an idea that contradicts evolution.

Er ... no. Natural selection choses features that improve the process of replication. That will ALWAYS be away from randomness that is inherent in most abiotic processes.

Although modern medicine and technology have greatly improved life expectancies, this should not be in any way attributed to natural selection and the process of evolution.

Sure it should. Without natural selection and evolution there wouldn't be us to be scientists and produce the medical technology we have. But if you are asking for a more direct input into the advances of medicine from natural selection then you are right. But no one should be surprised by that. If we had to wait for natural selection to instill into us a pathway to make penicillin then since we do not seem to even have within us the basics of a biochemical pathway to be modified to do so we would be waiting millions of years. I personally think that it is nice that evolution has produced our brains which are capable of coming up with those things a lot faster. Evolution also made things like our immune system that did directly contribute into us having a life span long enough to allow our brains to learn what we needed to know though.

By the way, modern evolutionary theory says that those germs that give us those life threatening diseases evolved because they found a niche (us) they could exploit for their own good. ID says that Intelligent Designer made those germs because ... why? Because somebody ate an apple when they weren't supposed to??

Evolution would say that we should be living longer and finding natural ways for our bodies to fight against diseases and become more advanced.

Er... what? Why would it say that?

The truth is however, that there are more genetic maladies, diseases, and disorders than ever before.

And your evidence for that is?? And if it IS true then where did these new genetic maladies, diseases and disorders come from? The Intelligent Designer?? Boy what an asshole, he is.

If not for technology and modern medicine, I believe that life expectancies would be in many cases shorter.

And with nosocomial infections and potentially lethal drug side effects in many cases it would be longer. I am happy that the overall cost/benefit of modern technology falls squarely on the benefit side. But why would you even think that evolution, a process with no foresight whatsoever would be more effective than our brain-directed technology over the short term?

Evolution goes against the natural processes by stating that the natural tendancy is to move towards life, but how can this theory be true when we know that from the time we are born, we are growing closer and closer to death by the moment.

That makes about as much sense as saying that evolution predicts we should live forever .... HEY! I think that is what you did say now that I read it again.

It is only religion that says you are going to live forever. But they say that all your life is going to be after you are dead.

I do not mean this to be a morbid thought but instead one that should inspire us to live every moment to the fullest and understand that life is very short in the scope of eternity. Now back to science....

Actually, if you think about it, if your religion is true ... once you become a believer then you should do things like climb mountains during harsh conditions that will likely get you killed. That way you will be assured of eternity in heaven. What difference does 60 or 80 years more on this earth mean to ETERNITY in heaven. I mean, you MAY become convinced in those remaining years that God doesn't exist in which case you would lose eternity. ... Nope, logic says that if you are right concerning your religion the best possible solution is to die once you become a commited believer.

It is atheism that says that this is the only life that you will ever get, so you best make the best out of it. ... now back to science.

When a living organism dies, the 100% of the left-handed amino acids that make up life begin to revert back to a combination of left-handed and right-handed amino acids.

Er ... no, not exactly. While amino acids will racemize (convert from L- to D-) they generally decompose into simpler compounds before they do that.

The Miller experiment is a known and produced failure because in trying to create life, he created the ingredients present in all dead organisms.

The Miller-urey experiment was an astounding success. The goal was not to produce life. The goal was to produce some of the most important building blocks that life uses and to do so in a means that is plausible for the way conditions were on early earth. That they did.

There have been criticisms of the experiment on the grounds that the atmosphere they used was likely not the atmosphere that was on early earth. However, the pendulum seems to be swinging back toward them. Now we think that they were likely to have been right with their mixture.

In his book Origins of Life, Freeman Dyson states, "Since Miller's beguiling picture of a pond full of dissolved amino acids under a reducing atmosphere has been discredited, a new beguiling picture has come to take its place. The new picture has life originating in a hot, deep, dark little hole on the ocean floor." I don't know folks; it sounds a bit too much like science fiction for me.

That is probably because you do not know the evidence behind his statement. After all, you haven't read his book, have you? You are spouting this off because you have read it on a creationist website. How do you know a creationist is lying ... He quotes an evolutionist.

Fortunately I HAVE read Dyson's book. First of all Dyson is a particle physicist. He is a brilliant man, but he is talking out of his field here. Furthermore, the book was written before newer findings have come in. We no longer think that the idea that the early earth had a reducing atmosphere (a key ingredient in the Miller experiments) is discredited. Harold Urey, a Nobelist and an expert on extraterrestrial atmospheres extrapolated from the atmospheres of planets and moons of the solar system that the earth's early atmosphere must have had high levels of Hydrogen and Methane in it. When Stanley Miller, his graduate student at the time did his experiments he produced high levels of amino acids.

Later on geologists found some chemical formations in early sedimentary rocks that they thought could not have been produced in an reducing atmosphere. From this came the notion that Miller's experiments could not have been right. Without the reducing atmosphere no amino acids would have been produced.

This prompted other studies. The atmosphere is not the only place that amino acids could have been produced. Another is deep sea vents. There great amounts of sulfur containing compounds get pumped into the region. These are reducing compounds. Many studies have shown that the very same amino acids can be produced in large quantities in that environment. Other studies show that there are bacterial life in those areas. So if bacteria can survive there then perhaps life could have started there.

Most recently we have failed to discover any mechanism other than life by which factors necessary to produce those compounds that scientists thought discredited the Miller studies could enter the atmosphere. We have also found signs of life at much earlier age than we thought before. So perhaps life could have started relatively rapidly after the earth's surface cooled sufficiently to allow liquid water. If that is so then there is no longer any reason to discredit the Miller-Urey studies. That means that there are a number of environments in which amino acids could have been produced by abiotic means. I will discuss another here shortly.

William Bonner is an organic chemist from Stanford University who is the world's leading homochiral researcher. A homochiral researcher is someone who understands that life origins are only composed of left-handed amino acids. Here is what he had to say about the origin of life. "Terrestrial explanations are impotent and nonviable." This organic chemist from Stanford believes that we came from outer space because as the world's leading homochiral researcher, this is his only explanation. Now that certainly sounds like science fiction, which requires a huge element of faith!

How can you tell that a creationist is lying ... he quotes an evolutionist. I follow the literature on origin of life research fairly well. I have never heard of William Bonner. Yet here you have him as the "world's leading homochiral researcher". Homochiral refers to amino acids coming in a only the L- isomers (except glycine as mentioned above). While that is an important question, without a more detailed theory on the origin of life that question is premature. We cannot answer it without undue speculation. So I doubt if there are a whole lot of people actively engaged in that research.

But no matter. I feel pretty sure that I know what Bonner was talking about. We know that amino acids are made in space. We know that from two sources. One source is spectral lines from supernova remnants. They show absorption in frequencies that are absorbed by certain amino acids. The other source that tells us that amino acids are made in space is meteorites. Not too long ago a small meteorite struct near the town of Murchison, Australia. Scientists cut the meteorite open and on the inside surface they were able to isolate amino acids. Interestingly they were the same amino acids that Miller isolated in his experiments. Furthermore, in a result that I cannot explain they found that the L- form was slightly enriched.

So you see, there is evidence. Evidence means you don't need faith. You need faith to believe that just because something is not fully explained at the moment then a sky-gremlim must have caused it.

Cheers,

Darwin's Beagle

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If a million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing. - Anatole France