Chemistry Refutes Chance Origin of Life

By Jon Covey, B.A., CLS(ASCP)
Edited by Anita Millen, M.D., M.P.H., M.A.

During a video taped mini-debate with me, Dr. Ron Kroman of Cal State, Long Beach, suggested that evolution is possible because the development of the genetic code proceeded by small, simple increments which, when added together, caused ever increasing complexity and higher levels of organization over time.

This is the standard evolutionary explanation, which never explains how that code originated or where the information in the code came from. In the human genetic code there are over 3 billion nucleic acid residues that spell out thousands of different proteins, detemine how the embryo will develop, and guide how every great and small body part will function. The complexity involved goes far beyond what time and chance could produce. When the probabilities are calculated, the results clearly show the impossibility of unaided development of life from non-life.

But it's not just the complexity of the code that raises "Mount Improbable," which  Richard Dawkins thinks can be conquered by going up the long, gradual slope of its backside. Mount Improbable has no gentle backside. It's a miles-high crag with steep slopes all around. There is no possibility of incremental development.

Evolutionists give little thought to the instability of RNA or protein chains developing over millions of years in a prebiotic medium that cannot support the long term survival and continued growth of a protein or RNA chain. There are many problems with the RNA world hypothesis and too many ways for such a world to abort long before it could produce a single RNA synthetase that could act as a code and as a self-replicating enzyme simultaneously.

It is true that the genetic code is made up of less complex units, just as our bodies and cells are made up of simpler units. The organelles within cells, such as mitochondria, are simpler than entire cells, but not simple functionally. If evolutionary processes could build a living cell, the component parts would probably have to be synthesized before the entire not-so-simple cell was assembled from the individual parts.

By analogy, the same is true of an engine and engine parts. It is much easier to make the individual parts one at a time and assemble them later. Each engine part is designed to function as a part of the whole. The individual parts of an engine cannot function: all of them must work together. Creationary biologist Gary Parker remarked that a 747 airplane is made up of a many non-flying parts. No single part can work alone. The individual parts of living organisms are designed to work together, although evolutionists might object to this. However, it is clear that individual components of a biological machine cannot be explained on the basis of natural selection preserving useful mutations. Why would natural selection preserve the DNA coding for a part of any biological machine?

The automobile designer anticipated the need for a carburetor, just as the intelligent designer God saw the need for the enzyme hexokinase in glycolysis (sugar splitting). How is it, incidentally, that we acknowledge an intelligent designer and skilled work-man when we find a simple arrowhead amid similarly shaped pebbles, but some of us find it impossible to admit a master architect when we examine complex living creatures? There was a time evolutionists denied that the analogy between designed machinery and biological structures with machine-like functions was invalid. However, this has changed. In The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins admits that such biological structures do seem to have apparent design. He adamantly denies that they were designed, but at least he admits that they look like they were designed.

Michael Behe looks at the eye and biochemical pathways in Darwin's Black Box: the Biochemical Challenge to Evolution and remarks that each biological system is irreducibly complex. If a single part is left out, the remainder will not work. Behe had the misfortune of debating in a PBS special in 1998, in which one of his opponents, Kenneth Miller, showed that a mousetrap could still work even if the hasp was removed from it. Because Behe had used the mousetrap as an example of irreducible complexity, he was caught off guard. Miller had simply cocked the mousetrap, using friction between parts to hold it in place. At that point, Behe should have said Miller's mousetrap was truly irreducibly complex. If he took any other part away from the trap, it would no longer function. He also discusses the rotary motor a bacterium uses to move its flagellum. Electron microscope studies show that the apparatus driving the flagellum look exactly like an electric motor. Details are shown in the drawing. (Please click on the thumbnail to see greater detail.)

The enzyme hexokinase is simpler than the enzyme system of the glycolytic pathway of which it is a part. Hexokinase prepares a molecule of sugar for splitting and harvesting of the sugar’s energy by attaching a high energy phosphate from ATP (adenosine triphosphate) to the sugar molecule. Think of this step as "priming the pump." ATP is the primary energy source for most processes in the cell. ATP energy is expended in this first step to make a net gain of two ATPs later. Before this can happen, another molecule of ATP must be spent at the third step in the process, which again "primes the pump."

By this step, three different enzymes have been used, and two ATPs of energy have been spent. So far, nothing has happened that will benefit the cell. Three enzymes either had to be created by an intelligent God who knew what ahead, or they had to happen accidentally by time and chance with no idea of where it was all leading. If this much happened by mutation and natural selection, the generations of cells in which this system evolved received no benefit until critical steps in the pathway were complete. There is an electron transport chain, involving NADH, at step six, which is also very complex biochemical pathway, yields two more ATPs.

The development of these intermediate enzymatic steps gives the organism no obvious advantage for natural selection to work on. To say otherwise is purely speculative and speculation cannot be equated with science, regardless how scientifically astute it is. The same is true for the next three steps in the process, which involve three complicated and specific enzymes, which have to be encoded into the organism’s DNA. Yet, the evolutionary doctrine of natural selection requires that these changes must somehow give the host organisms survival advantage, improved ability to compete with other similar organisms, or some benefit that will allow it to reproduce and survive, preferably at the expense of competitors.

One reader remarked that science is derived from, fed by and wholly dependent on speculation at every level. We realize that non-scientists tend to think this way, possibly because they are influenced by scientists who generally regard their speculations concerning evolutionary development as fact. Science is first dependent upon an observation, second upon the development of a reasonable hypothesis based on the observation, and third upon testing the hypothesis through controlled experimentation. The same reader described creation science as "oxymoronic." Like creation science, evolutionary science lacks direct observations, making both "sciences" oxymorons. Supposed evolutionary development occurring in the distant past was not observed. Experiments are impossible because the time line of hypothetical evolution would extend far beyond the lifetime of the experimenter/observer.

Ideally, somewhere along the way the competing organisms must be pushed out (possibly driven to extinction -- the survival of the fittest comes into play), or the evolving organism must be able to survive in a different ecological niche. Hickman explains natural selection this way:

"Out of the struggle for existence results the survival of the fittest. Under natural selection, individuals bearing favorable variations survive and have a chance to breed and transmit their characteristics to their offspring. The less fit die without reproducing. Natural selection is simply the differential survival or reproduction of favored variants. The process continues with succeeding generations, so that organisms gradually become better adapted to their environment. Should the environment change, there must also be a change in the characteristics that have survival value, or the species is eliminated. Reproduction is hat really counts in natural election."[Hickman]

If evolution is true, the organisms that evolved the glycolytic system, did so against incomprehensibly enormous odds, with no apparent benefit until step ten in the glycolytic process. Blind chance seems totally inadequate for the task of creating a series of complicated enzymes, each requiring precisely ordered amino acids and specific spatial arrangement. Also, the order in which these enzymes operate is critical. There would be no benefit to the creature during much of the pathway's development. Remember, too, that these functions must be coordinated with the rest of the cell’s activities.

There is no way for blind chance to know that sugar could be a source of energy if properly tapped. It also would not know what had to be done to take advantage of that energy. How could evolution turn down a pathway and evolve a complicated series of enzymes (without knowledge, wisdom, or understanding of what was needed) that would give no survival advantage for most of that evolutionary process? Further, until the entire set of glycolytic enzymes was developed, the organism evolving the enzyme system would make useless enzymes, which would drain energy and material resources. None of it works until all of it works, not only the glycolytic pathway but in all other enzyme systems found in living cells.

The evolution of the DNA, which codes for the glycolytic pathway, would involve thousands of insertion mutations to the code for each amino acid in the eleven enzymes of the pathway. An insertion mutation is a mutation that inserts a new nucleotide into a DNA chain. This may seem like a simple mutation, but it is very destructive. When an insertion mutation takes place, it produces a frame shift. This will cause every nucleotide after the point of insertion to be shifted over one. This immediately causes major changes in the proteins it produces. Take the familiar sentence,

"The quick brown fox jumped over the fence to greet the lazy poodle."

Let each word in the sentence represent one amino acid. In DNA, three nucleotides, which makeup a codon, code for a single amino acid (an amino acid being analogous to a letter in a word). The insertion of a single nucleotide will cause the DNA sequence to be misread in two ways. First, it will sometimes cause the codon (into which it is inserted) to code for a different amino acid, depending on into which codon it is inserted and on which position in the codon it is incorporated. Second, it will always cause a frame shift, so that the words in our sentence look like this:

"Thb equic kbrow nfo xjumpe dove rth efenc et ogree tth elaz ypoodle."

This example of our "insertion mutation" made the entire sentence nonsense, except for the word ‘dove.’ The "sense" of the DNA "sentence" is just as radically changed by an insertion mutation. Another mutation, called a deletion mutation, causes the same kind of disruptive frame shift. Both types of mutations are more numerous and lethal than the simple substitution mutation. In the case of a substitution mutation, a single nucleotide replaces the original. Although this type of mutation is less disruptive, it can be very bad. For example, sickle cell disease is the result of a single substitution.

The enzymes in glycolysis are very complex. For example, the enzyme glyceraldehyde phosphate dehydrogenase has four identical chains of 330 amino acid residues, which would require at least 330 specific addition mutations to code for them. Some evolutionists opt for gene duplication and subsequent modification by natural selection of the "off line" pseudogene. (We have a further discussion of pseudogenes and whether or not natural selection is involved in our series on the molecular clock). New genetic information had to emerge if organisms were going to increase in complexity. New genetic codes for new enzymes also need genetic coding for development of their control mechanisms, because enzyme production must be regulated. This usually happens via feedback mechanisms, which are sometimes very complex and are often interdependent on and integrated with other things happening in the cell.

Enzymes must be compartmentalized. For example, proteolytic enzymes cannot roam free within the cell, because they will break down other proteins, including other enzymes indiscriminately. An intelligent God knows such things and is able to plan and create compatible biological systems. Different organisms, (no blood, cold blooded and warm blooded) have many of the same enzymes, but the analogous enzyme in each kind of creature function better in concert with their own biochemical and ecological environment. We know that all the technological marvels were designed and built by intelligent beings. The idea that superior being designed and built the technological marvels of living machines should be easy to accept. After all, scientists expect to create self-sustaining, self-replicating machines some day. It seems contradictory to dream of the latter and reject the former.

Entropy: the fatal step

Furthermore, all this evolution supposedly happened over boundless eons. The developing proteins and DNA would be subject to the same law of physics that wreaks havoc on all ordered and structured systems: entropy. Entropy is the universal decay principle, which affects both matter and energy, including light. These painstakingly evolved molecules would fall apart over the millions of years between the time of their formation and their actual incorporation and utilization by the first living cell.

Origin of Life: Smart God or Dumb Luck?

When we look back, in evolution time, to when there was no code, no translators, no enzymes or structural proteins, no membranes, no regulators, and no means of replication, we realize that the probability of mutation and natural selection becomes miraculous. Diehard evolutionists would prefer to called it lucky, fortunate, fortuitous, serendipitous, or anything but miraculous. "Miraculous" implies an intelligent creator who has knowledge, makes plans, and has the power and will to act. The multitudinous array of intricate biological processes, machines within the cell, is powerful testimony for superhuman intelligence possessed by the one called the master architect—God. An intelligent creator is sufficient cause for all that we see in the living world, while time and chance are dubious at best. To say this all happened by blind chance seems absurd. These complex interactions could not have developed unless the end was known from the beginning. Plainly, logically, it takes intelligence to devise the amazing biological machinery that runs life.

Evolutionists always refer to the prebiotic development of order leading to life as a series of lucky accidents that produced all the complexity and organization we see around us. Dr. Kroman’s assumption seems logical superficially, but is it really? According to creation theory, everything was created at its ultimate level of complexity and order and has been deteriorating (because of entropy) ever since. Can a universe begin with 90% hydrogen gas and 10% helium and ultimately develop, purely by chance, the human brain and all that it has produced? Evolutionists say that this is exactly what happened, but what is the proof for it?

Over the next few months, we will carefully examine some origin-of-life experiments and see if they sup-port the idea that life arose from inanimate matter and developed greater and greater levels of complexity and order over long intervals of time. These experiments are always touted as the ultimate evidence for the evolutionary origin of life, but there are many, many problems with these experiments.

Because of the hit-and-miss nature ascribed to the mode of evolution, it is more reasonable to assume an enzyme system started with the fortuitous synthesis of just one enzyme. What are the chances of getting just one simple enzyme only 100 amino acid residues long? There are 20 different amino acids which could be arranged in any combination of ways (some ways would not be favored and less likely to happen). The amino acids in this simple enzyme could be arranged 10¹³⁰different ways—that is 10 with 130 zeros. Most of these arrangements would not make good enzymes. Most of them would work very poorly or not at all. Sir Arthur Eddington, a British astronomer, calculated there are no more than 10⁸⁰ particles in the universe. Astronomers believe 90 to 99% of the universe is made of invisible particles called Dark Matter. This might increase the total number to 10⁸². This includes all the electrons, protons, and neutrons, and many other less familiar subatomic particles. That should give you some idea of how large 10¹³⁰ is.

It would take an very long time to find by chance the right combination of amino acids to make some-thing as efficient as the enzymes in our bodies. If we let everything in the universe combine and recombine to make these protein chains of 100 amino acid residues at the rate of one trillion times per second, it would take more than 30 trillion years before all the combinations would have been tried. After these trials we would have just one protein one hundred amino acids long with limited function and no ability to reproduce, for protein does not code for itself, nor is it able to effect its own replication.

Statistics, however, do not really impress evolutionists, because their faith in evolution runs much deeper than their respect for math. So deep, in fact, that Carl Sagan says things got very lucky and life formed any-way. The odds against the chance formation of life have been calculated by another famous astronomer, Sir Fred Hoyle, to be 1 out of 10^40,000, which he says is equivalent to a tornado sweeping through a junk yard and constructing a 747!

Creationary biologist Gary Parker says,

"There is nothing unique about the substances of living things, e.g., carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, sulfur, "but there is something special about the way that they’re put together. Either the molecules put them-selves together or else they were put together by an outside force. Either time and chance changed the substance of the e into life or it was done with deliberate plan and purpose. In that sense, living things represent either the property of MATTER or the property of MIND." [Parker]

Why can’t anyone remove all the cellular components from bacteria or any cell type, put them in a physiologically balanced solution with proper sources of energy and wait for living cells to compose themselves? I would give evolutionists that much of an edge to begin proving that life came from inanimate matter.

Successfully making a living cell from cellular components would prove that the transition from inanimate to animate matter might be possible. If life cannot arise from a carefully balanced solution and preformed cellular components, why all this effort and expense in origin-of-life research at the bottom level of biochemistry? This bottom level research has acted like a smoke screen.

Abiotic formation of amino acids, and even proteins, is analogous to having a handful of nuts and bolts and claiming to have produced a car. Try driving to San Francisco on the head of a sheet metal screw and a few bolts! So far, the origin-of-life experiments have all been very trivial. Let us see if we can build the organism and turn it on! Then, once we have succeeded with this, let’s peruse the early mechanisms of formation.

Stanley Miller’S Origin-of-Life Experiment

Most biology and biochemistry textbooks present Stanley Miller’s 1953 experimental results as evidence that life arose from the fortuitous organization of atoms. What Miller did is create amino acids by duplicating materials and conditions assumed to be present on the early, abiotic earth. Dr. Miller filled a flask with water, and put some ammonia, methane and hydrogen together in the upper chamber. Electrodes discharged sparks to simulate lightening. Miller let his experiment run for a week, recycling the water and using a trap to keep the newly formed amino acids away from the sparks, so that they wouldn’t be destroyed. Miller’s results were very impressive to an ignorant public and to hopeful evolutionists who were looking for something to bolster their faith.

Facts Dispel Early Earth Myth

Miller wanted to show that it was possible for amino acids to form spontaneously in conditions comparable to what were supposed to have existed when the earth was young. Many assumptions have been made about the initial conditions of our planet, and new ones will be made as the evidence warrants, but disproved hypotheses have a way of surviving in textbooks long after they are outdated. Even the presumed age of the earth (4.6 billion years) is speculative.

Ernst Haeckel’s biogenetic law (1866), which is summed up in the catchy phrase "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny," supposed that a developing embryo reflects its alleged evolutionary ancestry. Embryologists thoroughly repudiated and rejected this idea in the 1920s, but it is still published in textbooks and taught. Recently, some have tried to revive a remnant of Haeckel’s idea, Stephen Jay Gould being the best known, but there are just too many contrary facts in embryology to give it much credence. Of course, the most flagrant example of perpetuated false assumptions is Darwin’s idea that the fossil record documents descent with modification from a common ancestor through graded series of fossil organisms. There is not one qualified paleontologist who believes that. Darwin had hoped future investigators would prove his case by finding transition forms, which he believed were legion.

Miller was influenced by the famous Russian biochemist A. I. Oparin in guessing what conditions existed on the early earth. He and most evolutionists believe the early earth had no oxygen in the atmosphere, because oxygen has an extremely corrosive effect on the kinds of molecules postulated to have originated life, and oxygen would have destroyed them as they formed. There is evidence, however, in what are considered to be the oldest rocks that oxygen has always been present in the earth’s atmosphere. [Dimjroth]

An important source of oxygen on the early earth would have been water photodissociation. Ultraviolet light would have split atmospheric water into hydrogen and oxygen. Thaxton, Bradley, and Olsen’s book The Mystery of Life’s Origin contains a full discussion of this topic (800-999-3777).

In a way, this presence of oxygen is a relief to some, because if there were no oxygen, there could be no ozone layer, and ozone is needed to shield biochemicals and living things from ultraviolet radiation. A Christian evolutionist friend of mine recently said that the early atmosphere of ammonia and methane would have been opaque to ultraviolet radiation and this would have shielded amino acids formed in the atmosphere. The lack of evidence that there were significant quantities of ammonia or methane in the alleged early atmosphere (see below), is extremely damaging to present prebiotic evolutionary hypotheses.

No Trace Of Methane Products in Rocks

If methane had been part of the early earth atmosphere, as Miller and many other investigators suppose, it would have polymerized (formed chains) and fallen into the ocean and onto the earth’s surface. [Cloud] This would have formed an oil slick from 1 - 10 meters deep over the surface of the earth. [Lasaga] This should be noticeable in the sedimentary rocks, but nothing even vaguely resembling it has been found, putting the correctness of a methane-rich early atmosphere in doubt. Even if methane had been there, the rapid polymerization and subsequent precipitation of methane would have rendered it unavailable to form amino acids.

Rapid Ammonia Loss

Atmospheric ammonia would have been rapidly destroyed in 30,000 years by splitting into hydrogen and nitrogen to a level too low for forming amino acids. [Abelson] Furthermore, ammonia is very soluble in water; about 750 liters will dissolve in one liter of water. The atmospheric ammonia concentration would have quickly decreased as it dissolved in the ocean, leaving too little in the atmosphere to take part in the kinds of reactions postulated by Miller and other researchers. Therefore, the early earth couldn’t have had an ammonia rich atmosphere, and renders void my friend’s suggestion that an opaque ammonia/methane atmosphere would have protected the newly formed amino acids from UV destruction.

Miller’s experiment didn’t have the problem of insufficient ammonia, because he saturated both the water and the atmosphere, assuring that the reactions he wanted would happen. Remember too, the same electrical sparks used to form the amino acids would have rapidly destroyed them if Miller had not created a trap to take them out of the reaction chamber.

Based on the above, Miller’s experiment was clearly not realistic, but it is still always mentioned whenever the origin of life is discussed. I think if evolutionists want to prove their point, they should work backwards from living cells, to whole cell components, see if life will develop. If it does, then work backward to the next less complex level, breaking down the organelles and cell structures into their basic units and see if they will reform. Why should we ever assume life could form spontaneously over vast ages from simple amino acids if it will not do so from the higher levels of cellular organization?

Earlier, we saw that Stanley Miller, A.I. Oparin and other origin-of-life investigators have unrealistic ideas about the composition of the atmosphere on their imaginary early earth. These ideas stem from the false assumption that life arose by purely accidental, mechanistic, naturalistic means over a long time. Their premise is false, therefore their conclusions are false. Ken Ham asks, "Was anyone there to see it happen?" After all, science is based on observation, not speculation! "Yes, Dr. Ham, there was one eyewitness. God." Why do men chose to believe the speculations of men who were not there rather than the testimony of God who was there?

They believe that polymerization of amino acids into proteins must have been one of the first steps leading to the origin of life. This aging belief is being tentatively discarded in favor of the new RNA World concept, which states that RNA, not a protein,that was first synthesized in the prebiotic soup (a soup which left no record in the rocks and should have). RNA can act as both a template for its own replication and as an enzyme. The "discovery" [Pace] that ribosomal RNA (rRNA) and certain other RNAs can act as enzymes for the synthesis of proteins in the cell has seemingly supplied a partial solution to the question asked by Richard E. Dickerson: "Which came first, a functioning metabolism, protected by some kind of membrane against dilution and destruction by its surroundings, or a large molecule that survived by making copies of itself from materials in its surroundings?"[Dickerson] Thomas Cech won a noble prize in 1989 for his contribution to the development of the RNA World concept. RNA is less stable than proteins.

Dickerson further said, "The step from aldehydes and amino acids nonbiologically formed to a living cell is a giant one. It is one thing to propose scenarios for the origin of life; it is another thing entirely to demonstrate that such scenarios are either possible or probable." [Dickerson] Dickerson admits that it is a major step from amino acids to a living cell. What an understatement! This giant step is comparable to the difference between the alphabet and the contents of the UCLA libraries.

According to Sidney Fox, Stanley Miller, A.I. Oparin, Leslie Orgel, Dean Kenyon [Kenyon] and many other scientists involved in this interesting field, the key to protein development on the abiotic earth was the serendipitous synthesis of amino acids from huge quantities of atmospheric ammonia reacting with large amounts of methane, hydrogen and water vapor (producing hydrogen cyanide—an excellent subject for further discussion—serious, serious trouble for chemical evolution. It would get permanently tied up in many cross reactions, unavailable for forming amino acids). The amino acids would have fallen into the ocean and maybe washed into a pool in a cave separated from the ocean, shielded from harmful ultraviolet radiation, and concentrated by evaporation, because the postulated concentrations of amino acids in the prebiotic soup wouldn’t have been sufficient to polymerize into proteins.

In order for us to understand why amino acids will not spontaneously form functional proteins if given enough time, we need to know something about the laws of mass action, equilibrium, stereochemistry, and entropy.

The Great Debate: Huxley vs. Wilburforce

Thomas Huxley, Darwin’s bulldog, debated with Bishop Samuel Wilburforce at the Oxford meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1860 and won the debate for evolution using the time and chance argument. There were some serious flaws in Huxley’s argument and neither he nor Wilburforce seemed to know much about chemistry. Huxley postulated that six immortal monkeys tapping on typewriters with a limitless supply of time, paper, and ribbons must eventually type the Twenty-third Psalm, the Bible, the works of Shakespeare, or even the entire Library of Congress.

The first error in this logic is that we don’t have infinite time or chance operating. Secondly, when something is typed on paper, the letter stays where it was typed. It does not move away or exchange places with other letters, but chemicals do not act like letters on a page. For instance, solutions of amino acids do not spontaneously join hands (polymerize) to form proteins. Polymerization of amino acids into proteins is governed by equilibrium, the law of mass action, thermodynamics and good old chance. A proper source of controlled and directed energy is also needed to drive the reactions. The simple addition of heat, uv light or electrical sparks will not do, for they are often too destructive, especially to some intermediate reactions.

Law of Mass Action

The law of mass action is easy to understand. [Lehninger] Chemicals in low concentration act something like very shy dance partners. The concentration of amino acids in the primeval ocean would have been dilute unless they were concentrated in some evaporation pool, isolated from the ocean. We couldn’t expect the total number of amino acids which fell into the ocean to become concentrated in an evaporating pool. The number of amino acids in a greatly concentrated pool would be far less than the total number of amino acids in the ocean. This means far fewer amino acids would be involved in the synthesis of the first protein, which then means there would be a decrease in the chances per unit of time by several orders of magnitude. The time needed for the synthesis increases by the same amount.

You might remember how it was at those stark junior high dances in the gym. Fifty kids stood on each side of the gym. The music was playing and the dance host was telling everyone to get out there and dance, but almost no one did. Kids might overcome their shyness and begin shuffling across the floor, but chemicals just bounce around in solution. One way to get kids dancing or chemicals reacting is to somehow increase the concentration. If you put ten kids in a closet (which increases the number of kids per square foot), with eyes bulging because they’re so close, they have no choice but to—gulp!--touch.

Mass action is something like that, but it comes down to this: if you want two chemicals (the reactants) to interact with each other, you must have enough of the two reactants in solution for them to "find" each other. If their orientation and energy is right when they find each other, they’ll react and form the product you want. If your solution of reactants is too dilute, you won’t get much of the product you want. The reactants won’t bump into each other very often, and even fewer times in the proper orientation. The concentration of the reactants has to be increased to make more product.

Chemical Equilibrium

Even when everything is just right and your reactants form product, another nasty fact of life affects these reluctantly crowded chemicals. It’s called equilibrium. Almost all biochemical reactions, including the polymerization of amino acids into protein chains, are governed by equilibrium. What this means is that every reaction is reversible. When the fickle reactants are forced to "dance" together in their crowded social hall, they are still reluctant partners. They are very stupid, so they don’t know what to talk about and are embarrassed about being so close—bonding with someone else they don’t even know—gee willikers! Given the opportunity to slip away from their partner and into the anonymity of the dancing crowd, they will do it gladly, and with great relief. Whew!

In the primitive environment in which amino acids were supposed to have formed protein chains, there would have been nothing to prevent the protein chains from dissociating back into their component amino acids. The protein chains would simply break up under the influence of chemical equilibrium and the law of mass action. This is why the formation of functional proteins from amino acids (the characters of the biological alphabet) is unlike the random typing of letters onto a page. The letters stay where they are put, the amino acids do not, and this fact refutes the idea that the chance formation of a functional protein is inevitable given enough time. It has not been observed to happen experimentally, but to the evolutionist’s mind time and chance become as precise and creative as a knowledgeable Creator. An analogous situation might be, "A man cannot jump over the moon, for none ever has and human strength is insufficient to escape earth’s gravitational field," to which someone would reply, "If you give us enough time, one of us will."

No Protein Formation in Prebiotic Soup

It is also misleading to say that protein chains would form spontaneously in a solution of amino acids. They won’t. This fact is one reason chemists are assured their jobs. Consider what Roberts and Caserio say in their organic chemistry textbook. "How did these small prebiotic organic molecules grow into large polymeric substances such as peptides, RNA, and so on? It is important to recognize that by whatever reactions polymerization occurred, they had to be reactions that would occur in an essentially aqueous environment. This presents difficulties because condensation of amino acids to form peptides, or of nucleotides to form RNA or DNA, is not thermodynamically favorable in aqueous solution." [Roberts]

The explanation for this is partly that the concentration of amino acids decreases as amino acids form pairs (called dipeptides) in a solution. This decreased concentration causes the velocity of the peptide synthesis reaction to slow down, and some dipeptides begin breaking up, again becoming single amino acids. The solution reaches equilibrium when just as many dipeptides dissociate as associate. A very tiny fraction of the dipeptides add another amino acid to form a tripeptide. How many tripeptides and dipeptides form depends upon the equilibrium constant for each set of reactions. Oligopeptides (Oligo=few) and polypeptides (poly=many) will form only very rarely. Tripeptides dissociate faster than dipeptides in the same solution.

If more amino acids are added to the solution or if water evaporates from the solution, the equilibrium will be shifted in the direction favoring the formation of more dipeptides, according to the law of mass action. This is another reason chemists keep their jobs. They know how to manipulate aspects of reactions—energy sources, concentrations of reactants, removal of products as they form, etc., to push the reactions in the desired direction and minimize dissociation of the product.

Stereochemistry

All biological amino acids have a left-handed spatial configuration. The amino acids created in the origin-of-life experiments had left- and right-handed configuration. In Miller’s experiment, [Miller] only two biological amino acids were formed in any significant quantity: glycine and alanine, and these were in a left- and right-handed racemic (50/50) mixture. I am not aware of any naturally occurring means by which left-handed amino acids can be separated from right-handed amino acids, therefore this exclusive left-handed preference could not have been arisen spontaneously. (My Christian evolutionist friend says there is, but he has not given me any references to observations.) If that first protein had some right-handed amino acids in it, its biological activity would have been seriously impaired or made non-functional.

Entropy Causes Deterioration

Time is the enemy of chance formation, allowing equilibrium to reverse any polymerization that might have taken place, and allowing entropy to destroy any order that might have occurred randomly (what an oxymoron—order/random). The longer a polymer survives the likelier it is that entropy will break it down. It is postulated that the random building process of the first living cell took many millions of years. Proteins simply are not stable enough to survive for millions of years in water. They will fall apart or become denatured. My favorite physician asks, "Think about our bodies. With time we all age, sicken and die. Why?"

References and Footnotes

Abelson, P.H., Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. U.S., 55:1365, (1966).

Cloud, Preston E., Science 160:729, (1968).

Dickerson, Richard E., "Chemical Evolution and the Origin of Life," Scientific American, p. 73, September 1978

Dimjroth, E. and M.M. Kimberley, "Pre-Cambrian Atmospheric Oxygen: Evidence in the Sedimentary Distribution of Carbon, Sulfur, Uranium and Iron," Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, 13:1161-85, (1976).

Hickman, Jr., Cleveland P., Larry S. Roberts, Frances M. Hickman, Integrated Principles of Zoology, 8^th ed., Times Mirror, p. 853, 1988.

Kenyon, Dean, professor of biology and evolution at San Francisco State University, coauthored Biochemical Predestination (1969), rejected evolution after careful analysis and accepted creation as true. He recent book Of Pandas and People is an excellent supplementary text for biology textbooks. His book is available at our meetings or by calling the Foundation for Thought and Ethics (214) 669-3400 or write them at P.O. Box 830721, Richardson, TX 75083.

Lasaga, A.C., H.D. Holland, and M.J. Dwyer, Science 174:53, (1971).

Lehninger, Albert L., Principles of Biochemistry, Worth Publishers, Inc., p. 73, 1982 gives the following definition:

A + B == C + D

"The law of mass action states that a chemical reaction will proceed to the right if we increase the concentration of either A or B or both. Conversely, the reaction proceeds to the left to a new equilibrium point on an increase in the concentration of C and/or D."

Miller, Stanley, Origins of Life, 5:139, 1974.

Pace, Norman R., "New Horizons for RNA Catalysis," Science 256:1402, 1992

Parker, Gary, "Genesis In Your Genes," cassette tape, Institute for Creation Research, Master Books, 1-619-448-0900 (Visa and Master Card accepted).

Roberts, John D., Marjorie C. Caserio, Basic Principles of Organic Chemistry, 2^nd ed., W.A. Benjamin, Inc., Menlo Park, p. 1284, 1977.