The Making of a Protein

[seer]

Why set the bar so high for abiogenesis when you're so credulous about everything else?

Because man is basically clueless...

 

[chair]

This means to me that we must work ever harder to get the news out that "molecules to man" has been shown to be absurd by the scientific advances of the past 50 years or so.

BTW, this Steven Schimmrich you quoted writes for talk.origins, the atheist website.

Bob,

It doesn't take "molecules to man" to show that the Biblical account of creation and the young earth theoory are wrong. Say, for example, that we have no idea how life started. So what? There is plenty of evidence that evolution (not "molecules to man") took place, and plenty of evidence (observed facts - not theories) that the earth is very old.

I don'y know if thsi is true in your case, but what gets many creationists uptight about the issue is the origin of death. They read the Genesis account of "the fall", and claim that death entered the world only with the eating of that fruit.

They reject tons of evidence in order to support a very particular and peculiar reading of the text, a reading on which they base too much theology. Is thsi wheer you come from?

 

[bob b]

Bob,

It doesn't take "molecules to man" to show that the Biblical account of creation and the young earth theoory are wrong. Say, for example, that we have no idea how life started. So what? There is plenty of evidence that evolution (not "molecules to man") took place, and plenty of evidence (observed facts - not theories) that the earth is very old.

There is zero evidence that molecules to man took place and plenty of evidence that points to the fact that it didn't.

As far as the Earth being old there are only inferences from evidence. Surely you must be aware that evidence does not speak for itself, it must be interpreted.

They reject tons of evidence

We reject no evidence, only some interpretations of the evidence. On the other hand, evolutionists are overwhelmingly "naturalists" who reject any possibility that is not "natural". This is why they cling to an impossibility like abiogenesis and an equally impossible idea falsified by the evidence, macroevolution.

If naturalism is all you've got then it must be believed regardless of its impossibility in certain situations.

Is this where you come from?

As I have said numerous times in the past, when I read about DNA 23 years ago it was painfully obvious that my love affair with evolution was over, regardless of how many other people could not see it for one reason or another.

In the 23 years since then research discoveries have been arriving almost daily that only reinforces in spades the wisdom of my earlier judgment.

How anyone can examine a cell and conclude that it arose naturally is a mystery to me.

But hey, some people still believe in Marx and Freud. So why not throw in that other 19th century theoretical failure, Darwin?

 

[JustinFoldsFive]

How anyone can examine a cell and conclude that it arose naturally is a mystery to me.

Bob, that is because you are still under the Christian-infused spell of Argument from Incredulity.

 

[bob b]

Bob, that is because you are still under the Christian-infused spell of Argument from Incredulity.

You mean the one you use to dismiss anything that suggests an intelligent designer?

I'd rather be incredulous about an impossibility called evolution than a sucker for evolutionary just-so stories.

 

[lucaspa]

And they chide us for believing in miracles????

Yockey didn't make that calculation, Spetner and some other ceationists did.

There are several problems with the analysis. It is a classic example of GIGO -- garbage in, garbage out. Just two of the errors are:

1. First is the assumption that there is only ONE protein that can do the functions of cytochrome c. As this chart shows, there are dozens of variants that do equally well as cytochrome c.
http://members.aol.com/SHinrichs9/descent/denton.jpg But now consider all the proteins that have SOME cytochrome c activity, of any length. We are now into the billions or trillions. There go the odds.

2. The assumption that amino acids are like playing cards and that ANY sequence is possible. Not so. Amino acids have side chains that limit which amino acids can be next to them in the chain. In one experiment where 3 amino acids were formed by thermal polymerization into a tripeptide, there should have been 27 different tripeptides. Instead, there were only 6. Extend this to a protein of size 100 and it cuts down to available number considerably.

So the "odds" quoted are all wrong because they put garbage into the equations and ended with garbage out.

 

[chair]

There is zero evidence that molecules to man took place and plenty of evidence that points to the fact that it didn't.

As far as the Earth being old there are only inferences from evidence. Surely you must be aware that evidence does not speak for itself, it must be interpreted.



We reject no evidence, only some interpretations of the evidence. On the other hand, evolutionists are overwhelmingly "naturalists" who reject any possibility that is not "natural". This is why they cling to an impossibility like abiogenesis and an equally impossible idea falsified by the evidence, macroevolution.

[\QUOTE]

Bob, you didn't respond to my basic point. You reject evoltion of any sort. Evolution does not ride on the origins of life.

As far as the earth being old - there is plenty of evidence, for instance the ratiosn of radioactive isotopes.

There is very little "interpretation" involved in analyzing most of the evidence, beyond what one always does (i.e., observing that things fall when you drop them and iinterpreting this to mean that there is a force that causes them to drop). In fact, I woudl guess there is a great deal more "interpretation" involved in your understandiing of the Bible than there is in much of the evidence of an old earth.

 

[bob b]

Bob, you didn't respond to my basic point. You reject evoltion of any sort. Evolution does not ride on the origins of life.

I guess you better define what you mean by evolution then, because as you know there are multiple definitions. I do agree that organisms change over time: they accumulate more and more deleterious mutations.

As far as the earth being old - there is plenty of evidence, for instance the ratiosn of radioactive isotopes.

These do not necessarily prove the Earth is old. There may be other explanations which explain the evidence equally well.

There is very little "interpretation" involved in analyzing most of the evidence, beyond what one always does (i.e., observing that things fall when you drop them and iinterpreting this to mean that there is a force that causes them to drop). In fact, I woudl guess there is a great deal more "interpretation" involved in your understandiing of the Bible than there is in much of the evidence of an old earth.

You have a very naive understanding of the numerous assumptions which underlie these theories.

 

[lucaspa]

There is zero evidence that molecules to man took place and plenty of evidence that points to the fact that it didn't.

As far as the Earth being old there are only inferences from evidence. Surely you must be aware that evidence does not speak for itself, it must be interpreted.

Usually evidence is "interpreted" in regard to specific hypotheses. Science started out with the hypothesis that the earth was young. The evidence disproved it.

Now, I notice that you say "molecules to man" as synonymous with evolution. It isn't. You have at least 2 different theories there. All theories have boundaries, and evolution as scientists use it has the boundary of the existence of life. Evolution assumes that life exists and explains the diversity of life.

Darwin was very clear about this:

"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved." C. Darwin, On the Origin of Species, pg 450.

We reject no evidence, only some interpretations of the evidence.

Of course you do. You reject all evidence that disproves Flood Geology, for starters.

On the other hand, evolutionists are overwhelmingly "naturalists" who reject any possibility that is not "natural".

This is silly. Darwin originally confided evolution to creationists. Charles Lyell, Joseph Hooker, and Asa Gray were all creationists and were adherents to Special Creation and fixity of species. Darwin convinced all of them by the evidence.

As I have said numerous times in the past, when I read about DNA 23 years ago it was painfully obvious that my love affair with evolution was over, regardless of how many other people could not see it for one reason or another.['quote]

LOL! 23 years ago our knowledge of genes was rudimentary. Since then the studies of DNA, mutations, and relating changes in DNA to morphology have only further supported evolution. For instance, phylogenetic studies comparing base sequences in DNA from many different taxa disproves creationism.

I suggest you revisit the subject and read the book Molecular Evolution. by Li, W-H. Sinauer, Sunderland MA,1997. It is a summary of all knowledge of genetics as applied to evolution.

In the 23 years since then research discoveries have been arriving almost daily that only reinforces in spades the wisdom of my earlier judgment.

Please name a few of the discoveries. I can think of these articles that support evolution:
1. Shubin, N. Tabin, C. and Carroll, S. Fossils, genes and the evolution of animal limbs. Nature 388, 14 Aug., 1997, 639-647. Tie-in between fossils and regulatory genes detailing development of limbs in vertebrates, arthropods, and winged insects. Review article with 23 primary references.
7. SJ Gaunt, Chick limbs, fly wings and homology at the fringe. Nature 386: 324-325, 27 March 1997. Some of the same genes are used in the development of both the edges of chick limbs and of fly wings, speaking for a common ancestor.
8. N.H. Komiyama et al. Nature, 373, 244(1995), points out that just a change of *12* amino acids in human hemoglobin would give it the properties of crocodile hemoglobin, and allow humans to stay under water for prolonged periods.

How anyone can examine a cell and conclude that it arose naturally is a mystery to me.

Simple. First, we can see non-living amino acids, thru simple chemical reactions, form living cells: http://www.theharbinger.org/articles/rel_sci/fox.html

Second, we can see the intermediate steps between this simple cell and modern cells:
1. Alberti, S The origin of the genetic code and protein synthesis. J. Mol. Evol. 45: 352-358, 1997.
9. AM Poole, DC Jeffares, D Penney, The path from the RNA world. J. Molecular Evolution 46: 1-17, 1998. Describes Darwinian step-by-step for evolution from RNA molecules to cells with directed protein synthesis. All intermediate steps are useful.
2. Gerhart, J and Kirschner, M. Cells, Embryos, and Evolution. Toward of Cellular and Developmental Understanding of Phenotypic Variationand Evolutionary Adaptability. Blackwell Science, Cambridge MA, 1997.

 

[lucaspa]

I guess you better define what you mean by evolution then, because as you know there are multiple definitions.

"Thus, evolution, in a broad sense is descent with modification, and often with diversification. Many kinds of systems are evolutionary ... In all such systems there are populations, or groups, of entities; there is variation in one or more characteristics among the members of the population; there is HEREDITARY SIMILARITY between parent and offspring entities; and over the course of generations there may be changes in the proportions of individuals with different characteristics within populations. This process consitutes descent with modification. Populations may become subdivided so that several populations are derived from a COMMON ANCESTRAL POPULATION. If different changes in the proportions of variant individuals transpire in te several populations,the populations DIVERGE, OR DIVERSIFY. ... All these properties of an evolutionary process pertain to populations of organisms, in which there is hereditary transmission of characteristics (based on genes, composed of DNA or, in a few cases, RNA), variation owing to mutation, and sorting of variation by several kinds of processes. Chief among these sorting processes are CHANCE (random variation in the survival or reproduction of different variants), and natural selection (consistent, nonrandom differences among variants in their rates of survival or reproduction). It is natural selection that causes adaptation -- improvement in function. Thus biological (or organic) evolution is change in the properties of populations of organisms , or groups of such populations, over the course of generations. ... Biological evolution may be slight or substantial; it embraces everything from slight changes in the proportions of different forms of a gene within a population, such as the alleles that determine the different human blood types, to the alterations that led from the earliest organisms to dinosaurs, bees, snapdragons, and humans." Douglas Futuyma, Evolutionary Biology, (1999) pg 4.

These do not necessarily prove the Earth is old. There may be other explanations which explain the evidence equally well.

then what are they?

You have a very naive understanding of the numerous assumptions which underlie these theories.

Why don't you enlighten us and list some of them?

 

[bob b]

Usually evidence is "interpreted" in regard to specific hypotheses. Science started out with the hypothesis that the earth was young. The evidence disproved it.

Now, I notice that you say "molecules to man" as synonymous with evolution. It isn't. You have at least 2 different theories there. All theories have boundaries, and evolution as scientists use it has the boundary of the existence of life. Evolution assumes that life exists and explains the diversity of life.

Darwin was very clear about this:

"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved." C. Darwin, On the Origin of Species, pg 450.



Of course you do. You reject all evidence that disproves Flood Geology, for starters.



This is silly. Darwin originally confided evolution to creationists. Charles Lyell, Joseph Hooker, and Asa Gray were all creationists and were adherents to Special Creation and fixity of species. Darwin convinced all of them by the evidence.

As I have said numerous times in the past, when I read about DNA 23 years ago it was painfully obvious that my love affair with evolution was over, regardless of how many other people could not see it for one reason or another.['quote]

LOL! 23 years ago our knowledge of genes was rudimentary. Since then the studies of DNA, mutations, and relating changes in DNA to morphology have only further supported evolution. For instance, phylogenetic studies comparing base sequences in DNA from many different taxa disproves creationism.

I suggest you revisit the subject and read the book Molecular Evolution. by Li, W-H. Sinauer, Sunderland MA,1997. It is a summary of all knowledge of genetics as applied to evolution.



Please name a few of the discoveries. I can think of these articles that support evolution:
1. Shubin, N. Tabin, C. and Carroll, S. Fossils, genes and the evolution of animal limbs. Nature 388, 14 Aug., 1997, 639-647. Tie-in between fossils and regulatory genes detailing development of limbs in vertebrates, arthropods, and winged insects. Review article with 23 primary references.
7. SJ Gaunt, Chick limbs, fly wings and homology at the fringe. Nature 386: 324-325, 27 March 1997. Some of the same genes are used in the development of both the edges of chick limbs and of fly wings, speaking for a common ancestor.
8. N.H. Komiyama et al. Nature, 373, 244(1995), points out that just a change of *12* amino acids in human hemoglobin would give it the properties of crocodile hemoglobin, and allow humans to stay under water for prolonged periods.



Simple. First, we can see non-living amino acids, thru simple chemical reactions, form living cells: http://www.theharbinger.org/articles/rel_sci/fox.html

Second, we can see the intermediate steps between this simple cell and modern cells:
1. Alberti, S The origin of the genetic code and protein synthesis. J. Mol. Evol. 45: 352-358, 1997.
9. AM Poole, DC Jeffares, D Penney, The path from the RNA world. J. Molecular Evolution 46: 1-17, 1998. Describes Darwinian step-by-step for evolution from RNA molecules to cells with directed protein synthesis. All intermediate steps are useful.
2. Gerhart, J and Kirschner, M. Cells, Embryos, and Evolution. Toward of Cellular and Developmental Understanding of Phenotypic Variationand Evolutionary Adaptability. Blackwell Science, Cambridge MA, 1997.

You are showing your famility tree origin in talk.origins by posting articles without first demonstrating that the article would support any thought that you have on the subject. I chased too many rabbits down false trails in my experiences on talk.origins forums to fall for that game again.

If you have a point state it.

My cellular evidence is posted on the thread "cell trends too", http://www.theologyonline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=32951

My point is that as time goes on more and more molecular machines are shown to be involved in even the simplist of cells. Thus the credibility of a natural arising of a cell has been going down and down because no corresponding detailed explanation of how they could have arisen naturally has been forthcoming (just handwaving).

 

[bob b]

"Thus, evolution, in a broad sense is descent with modification, and often with diversification.

Fine.

Except that evolutionists extrapolate back too far. They should have stopped with the kinds which God originally created. Or even with the pairs, etc. which Noah preserved on the Ark at the time that all airbreathing creatures perished in the waters of the Flood.

then what are they?[explanations for radiometric dating]

I'm still working on this, but I suspect that it had a lot to do with the rapid expansion of the universe which obviously occurred on day 1 when God created the heavens and the Earth.

I will keep everyone here posted on my progress.

Why don't you enlighten us and list some of them?

All in good time.

I've already pointed to the solution to starlight travel time. Chew on that one for awhile.

The motto of my group when I was actively working was "The difficult we do immediately, the impossible takes a bit longer".

 

[chair]

I guess you better define what you mean by evolution then, because as you know there are multiple definitions. I do agree that organisms change over time: they accumulate more and more deleterious mutations.

These do not necessarily prove the Earth is old. There may be other explanations which explain the evidence equally well.

You have a very naive understanding of the numerous assumptions which underlie these theories.

By Evolution I mean the development of species over time, lot's of time.

Naive is not what I am. Bob, our understanding of radioactivity is solidly based in modern physics, the same physics that not only explain the world around us, but also provide the basis for much of modern technology.

The fossil record, despite your denial and yes, the occassional problem, shows that evolution took place.

What si naive is your adherence to a literal readiing of Genesis, or, shal I say a partially literal reading of Genesis. SIx days of creation are literal, the flood was literally a world wide flood. But - let me guess - the snake in the Garden wasn't a literal snake - it was Satan ( a character who doesn't appear in the Old Testament, at leastiin the Christian sense).

So you reject what science has to tell us in favor of your own peculiar interpretation of the Bible.

 

[lee_merrill]

Bob, that is because you are still under the Christian-infused spell of Argument from Incredulity.

"The universe is about 15 billion years old. This means that less than one trillionth of the time has passed that would be needed to make even one of the 250-350 gene products necessary for minimal life, or one of the 1500 gene products necessary for independent life." (Fazale Rana, after describing some results from Hubert Yockey)

"And they chide us for believing in miracles????" (Seer)

Michael Behe has a term for this, he calls it the "Argument From Credulity"! Despite inordinate improbabilities, it must have happened...

Blessings,
Lee

 

[bob b]

"The universe is about 15 billion years old. This means that less than one trillionth of the time has passed that would be needed to make even one of the 250-350 gene products necessary for minimal life, or one of the 1500 gene products necessary for independent life." (Fazale Rana, after describing some results from Hubert Yockey)

"And they chide us for believing in miracles????" (Seer)

Michael Behe has a term for this, he calls it the "Argument From Credulity"! Despite inordinate improbabilities, it must have happened...

Blessings,
Lee

You are mistaken about the universe being 15 billion years old.

The farthest away stars are 13.5 billion light years away. A light year is the distance that light travels in a year currently.

The inflationary period of the Big Bang is said by cosmologists to have expanded the universe 10²⁶ times in 10^-33 seconds. At that point the universe had reached the size of a grapefruit or perhaps a pumpkin.

During that time any light wave would have also expanded, but because of the rapid expansion of the coordinates of space the light would have been effectively expanding at millions of times its normal speed.

At the initial rapid inflationary expansion rate, one additional interval of rapid expansion would have taken that pumpkin sized universe to its present size in only 10^-33 more seconds.

God stated in scripture that He expanded the universe : instantaneously as Augustine thought.

Augustine was pretty close: twice 10^-33 seconds. That's close enough to instantaneous for me.

 

[bob b]

By Evolution I mean the development of species over time, lot's of time.

But there's the rub: there wasn't lots of time.

 

[lucaspa]

Fine.

Except that evolutionists extrapolate back too far. They should have stopped with the kinds which God originally created. Or even with the pairs, etc. which Noah preserved on the Ark at the time that all airbreathing creatures perished in the waters of the Flood.

1. There was no Ark and no worldwide Flood.
2. This is not "extrapolation". Rather, it was logical to hypothesize that, instead of several ancestors, there was only one. The data strongly supports that hypothesis.

I'm still working on this, but I suspect that it had a lot to do with the rapid expansion of the universe which obviously occurred on day 1 when God created the heavens and the Earth.

So you don't have an alternative theory. How do you get from scripture that there was "rapid expansion"?

I've already pointed to the solution to starlight travel time. Chew on that one for awhile.

and what is that "solution"? If you have light travel much faster in the past, remember E=mc^2 and consider what happens if you invoke your ad hoc hypothesis.

The motto of my group when I was actively working was "The difficult we do immediately, the impossible takes a bit longer".

The problem is that creationism has had 500 years to do this. It failed. There is data out there that can't be there if YEC were correct. That's why scientists (all of whom were Christians and many were ministers) disproved YEC by 1831. The data that disproved YEC is still there, and now there is considerably more disproving data.

 

[lucaspa]

You are mistaken about the universe being 15 billion years old.

The farthest away stars are 13.5 billion light years away. A light year is the distance that light travels in a year currently.

The inflationary period of the Big Bang is said by cosmologists to have expanded the universe 10²⁶ times in 10^-33 seconds. At that point the universe had reached the size of a grapefruit or perhaps a pumpkin.

During that time any light wave would have also expanded, but because of the rapid expansion of the coordinates of space the light would have been effectively expanding at millions of times its normal speed.

No. The speed of light would have remained the same. Remember, it is spacetime that expanded, and light moves thru space. So the photon/wave would not have "expanded". It would have stayed the same and space would have moved away from it.

At the initial rapid inflationary expansion rate, one additional interval of rapid expansion would have taken that pumpkin sized universe to its present size in only 10^-33 more seconds.

But the cosmic microwave background radiation says that didn't happen.

God stated in scripture that He expanded the universe : instantaneously as Augustine thought.

Where? What verse?

 

[bob b]

No. The speed of light would have remained the same. Remember, it is spacetime that expanded, and light moves thru space. So the photon/wave would not have "expanded". It would have stayed the same and space would have moved away from it.

Of course the wave expands. That is what causes the Red Shift.

But the cosmic microwave background radiation says that didn't happen.

Nope. The CMB is a measure of the amount of expansion, not the rate at which the expansion occurred.

Where? What verse?

Search on "stretched out the heavens".

BTW, your link had nothing to do with protein folding. When will I learn that you guys like to sucker us creationists with links that have nothing to do with the arguments under discussion.

 

[lucaspa]

posting articles without first demonstrating that the article would support any thought that you have on the subject.

And you are ignoring all the points and trying to distract. I gave summaries of several of the papers that show the relevance to the point I was making. READ what I posted.

If you have a point state it.

I did. Here it is again:
1. You are conflating abiogenesis with evolution. This shows that you aren't talking about evolution, but instead using god-of-the-gaps theology to try to argue atheism vs theism -- mistakenly thinking evolution = atheism.
2. The articles I posted support evolution. The summaries show that.
3. Life has formed from non-life by simple chemical reactions. This is a website to start but you won't even go there:
http://www.theharbinger.org/articles/rel_sci/fox.html

You want demonstration?
"One thing that will make tonight so exciting is a video tape ... in which you will see the phenomenon of living cells forming before your eyes."

Thus the credibility of a natural arising of a cell has been going down and down because no corresponding detailed explanation of how they could have arisen naturally has been forthcoming .

Since when is a videotape "handwaving"?

Chemistry gives you a primitive cell. The other papers start looking at how the processes in the modern cell have evolved. Here is another one:
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/97/14/7704

"The origin of intermediary metabolism "
"The chart of metabolic pathways (1) is an expression of the universality of intermediary metabolism. The reaction networks of all extant species of organisms map onto a single chart, the great unity within diversity of the living world. There are a number of possible explanations.

(i) The chart is the reaction network of the universal ancestor, which has survived in all branches of the evolutionary radiation. It is thus a virtual fossil that has persisted because changes deep within the system tend to be lethal, owing to the high degree of connectivity.

(ii) The chart has emerged from a facile interspecific sharing of genes by horizontal transfer across the taxa.

(iii) The chart represents an optimally successful solution to designing biochemical networks.

(iv) Some combination of the above explanations. ...

apply this selection to the primary database of organic molecules, Beilstein (12). What emerges is a set of 153 molecules that include the 11 members of the reductive citric acid cycle, as well as some other molecules from the metabolic chart. We argue that there is an enormous simplification as well as indication that the chemistry at the core of the metabolic chart is necessary and deterministic and would likely characterize any aqueous carbon-based life anywhere it is found in this universe."