11. Abiogenesis Made Difficult

 The URL for my book is www.Evo-illusion.com.

The above video is about my book Evo-illusion, now available at Amazon. The page begins below.

The following is a video I made for YouTube regarding abiogenesis. Click on the lower left arrow to not leave this site.

Working and writing about evolution, and the beginning of life causes me to really think: what is life? We can get living entities down to the simplest of units, that of the bacteria. We could, theoretically, in a laboratory, put all of the different parts together to make a cell: the nucleus, cytoplasm, all of the other organelles, the cell wall, plasma membrane, and capsule. No matter how perfectly we performed that task, we could not make a cell live. We could not inject life. Synthesizing a living version of the tiniest unit of life is light years beyond our capabilities. What a strange thought. What is in those tiny cells that make them alive? Is it some sort of magic elixir? We can define life by what it does, how it reproduces itself, how it reacts to stimulus, how it has self-preservation properties. Watching a cell go through mitosis is so astounding; seeing its genetic nuclear material replicate itself, then the copies separate in such a knowing fashion. Each part does just what it is supposed to do. Then the cell wall pinches in, then separates at the exact center, like a clown twists balloons into animal forms, to produce two cells out of one. How does the cell wall know how to “pinch”? What signals do the other cell parts, the organelles, receive, so that they know that it is now time for them to copy themselves, then move apart, separating themselves into opposite halves of the cell? What mechanism and forces cause all of that pinching and moving? After all of the lab tests, after all of the study, after all of the theories, we really simply don’t have any idea what life really is. And this fact is a killer for evo-illusionists.

Evo-biologists who work on the problem of forming life from non-living ingredients typically place perfectly selected ingredients in containers, then change the environmental characteristics in hopes of forming something.  Anything. Please! You see, their jobs and the government grants they get depend on their success. and ANYTHING is considered a success. If they get a few links of RNA, they celebrate like crazy. Science periodicals write “huge news” articles on how they got amazing results, and that we are “almost there” in creating life in the lab. The celebration is astounding. The lab techs MUST come up with success or their jobs and funds are in great jeopardy.  There is a monetary stimulus for success. Of course in the articles they never mention the fact that living cells have tens of thousands of proteins and over five hundred protein enzymes necessary to sustain life. Any engineer knows that when a faced with a difficult project, they must know that the most difficult step is doable. In other words, if we wanted to fly a space vehicle to the nearest star, we would have to know that it is a feasible project. It would be absurd for the government to start assembling a rocket ship, design the doors, living quarters for the crew, windows of the ship before we knew if the trip was possible. And it is not possible. At 35,000 miles per hour, the fastest we have ever flown a probe, the ship would take 35,000 years to get to the closest star. Biologists should take heed, and listen to good engineering procedures. They should first make sure non-living matter can be made living. Take dead cells and make them come to life FIRST. If that cannot be accomplished, it is complete nonsense to celebrate the synthesize of biochemicals, when there is no hope of successfully forming living tissue out of the mix. This science is about grants and jobs. Not science.

It is obvious that abiogenesis occurred.  Evolutionauts and religious creationists would both agree.  At one time in the history of the earth there was no life, then there was.  But, exactly how did life begin? I will label evolution’s current view of abiogenesis “evo-abiogenesis” Neither evo-abiogenesis, or abiogenesis, have ever been observed in nature or displayed in any laboratory experiments. Early on evo-abiogenesis was an integral part of evolution. Ev-illusionists thought that “spontaneous generation” of life would be found to occur everywhere on earth. That was shown to not be the case. Scientists then were bent on creating life in the laboratory, but haven’t been within light years of that goal. Since there has been such frustration by scientists trying to synthesize life, ev-illusionists have distanced themselves from the subject. They now say that evo-abiogenesis is not part of evolution. They let the “evo-abiogeneisis scientists” take care of that department. In reality, evo-abiogenesis has everything to do with evolution. Just as the beginnings of multicellular life, species, complex organ systems, consciousness, and man must be accounted for, so must the beginning of life; it ‘s an integral part of the chain of nature on earth. And the very first protocells had to evolve into far more complex forms in order to wind up with cells that could sustain life.  In reality, the formation of life’s first cells is the most important part of evolution. Ev-illusionists trying to separate the beginning of life from evolution is just another part of the illusion.

Evolution scientists jump through hoops trying to convince us that an immense number of astronomically unlikely steps took place to form prebiotic cells. The earliest “cells” were supposedly micelles which are composed of lipid (fat) molecules.  One end of these lipid molecules is hydrophilic, the other hydrophobic. (Attracted to water, and repellent to water.) Due to this fact, lipid molecules can form themselves into spheres with the hydrophilic ends outside, and the hydrophobic ends inside.  Ev-biogenesis scientists think that RNA formed on the early sea floor, then made their way into these micelles for better “protection” so they would then be better able to reproduce themselves.

These cells would have had to form in the late Hadean or early Archean Period, around 3.8 to 3.4 BYA.  “Hadean” was so named because the earth would have resembled hell. The atmosphere would have been like an oven, any seas would have been boiling hot. The conditions would have resembled the internal conditions of medical equipment that we use all over the world today; they are called sterilizers.  The Archean was also not friendly to life.  It was also very hot, the heat left over from the formation of the earth.  The atmosphere was caustic and deadly, radiation was immense.  To further complicate things, the moon was only 25,000 to 50,000 miles away from earth in those days.  The tides produced by a moon that close would have been enormous; hundreds and maybe thousands of feet high.  The swirling currents would have been unimaginably immense.  And we are supposed to believe that an enormous number of self-assembling biochemicals came together and formed pre-biotic cells which then went on to become living bacteria on that early sea floor.

Supposedly nucleotides and amino acids formed in the atmosphere then sank to the sea floor where there was a type of clay called montmorillonite.  Ev-abiogenesis scientists claim that nucleotides and amino acids formed long chains catalyzed by this clay, which then evolved into precursors of RNA,  the message carrier for all living cells today, and later DNA, the blueprint for those cells.   The only problem with this scenario is that phosphoramidate, a very complex enzyme, is required along with the montmorillonite clay to catalyze the formation of these long chains. And phosphoramidate is not a biochemical that could have possibly existed on the early earth sea floor.  For that matter, lipids could not have formed there either, except under incredibly unique conditions.  Further, RNA molecules, which resemble a very long one-sided zipper,  can self-catalyze their own replication.  However, when they replicate, they are then locked together like a closed zipper. Enzymes and life are required to unzip the new copies, and since those enzymes didn’t exist in the prebiotic environment, the RNA copies would have been locked to their progenitor, and further copying would have been impossible.

Further, the formation of RNA is not plausible in an environment where both D and L nucleotides are present.  Ribose, the sugar that makes up the nucleotides, synthesizes equally in right and left-handed isomers, much like hands come in right and left versions.  Only the right-handed version is utilized in RNA.  So, RNA would have had to filter out the L’s, and use only the R’s, which, of course, could not be done randomly.

And still another problem for scientists is the fact there are millions of dead animals, road kill, all over the earth. These bodies form a perfect reservoir of all of the chemicals needed for life, all in one big pile; all together. We wouldn’t have to wait millions of years for  RNA stuffed micelles to form. And these bodies, or reservoirs of all of the chemicals needed for life, if evolution is correct, should somehow form at least some new life. They exist both on land and in water, in a much better environment than existed during the Hadean. They should regroup, and at least some newly living cells should arise out of some of these “reservoirs”. These reservoirs containing all of the requirements for life are millions of times better than any Hadean fat coated RNA.  And evolution wouldn’t have to wait a billion years for a far inferior product. But, sadly for the world of evolution, no new life arises out of road kill.

Another problem for evo-abiogenesis is the fact that as a pre-cell came closer and closer to the ability to sustain life, it would be non-living or dead tissue. Dead tissue constantly deteriorates. The minute an organism of any kind dies, breakdown begins. Cells that are studied by students and pathologists must be “fixed” to prevent that deterioration. Living cells are constantly balancing their chemistry and nutrition with their environment. The intake and outflow (osmosis) of ions (potassium and sodium), nutrition, and fluids maintains the cell wall so that it doesn’t collapse or explode. Cells that die go through necrosis.

Necrosis is the name given to the death of cells and living tissue. It begins with cell swelling, chromatin digestion, and disruption of the plasma membrane and organelle membranes. Cells that die by necrosis may release harmful chemicals that damage other cells.

Pre-biotic cells that are supposedly evolving into living cells would constantly be fighting the fact that they are necrotic. Could cells that are capable of supporting life fend off necrotic deterioration long enough to accept the injection of life? Since life leaves a single-celled living organism rapidly at death, is it thinkable that it would enter a single-celled living organism slowly? All living organisms, particularly single-celled types, are pretty much either living or dead. Different levels of “dead” only exist in nature in very short segments of time. So too, different levels of “injected life” must also occur in very short segments of time. If one small area of a cell were alive, the area of the cell that was not living would necrotize, and damage or kill off the small living area of the cell. Ev-illusionists say that life was formed over more than a billion years. But it obvious that this could not be the case since non-life to life would have to occur rapidly, just as life to non-life occurs rapidly. And, the idea that a non-living micelle could evolve to the point of being able to accept or support life is ludicrous. Of course, some sort of fission, mitosis, or an unknown type of cell replication, would have to start immediately, or the beginning cell would die off without being able to copy itself, and the spark of new life would die with it.

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Potholer54, a popular evo-contributor on YouTube, put out a series of “Made Easy” videos on why evolution is true and not to be challenged. What a choice for a title of his videos “…..Made Easy” for something so unbelievably complex that he, in reality, has no idea how things came about, even though he thinks he has it down. Potholer54 himself is so hoodwinked by evo-illusionists, that he cannot comprehend the complete illogic of his thinking. I am using Potholer54’s video as an example of modern, up-to-date evolution science. I will show why it is an entirely flawed attempt at explaining the Puzzle.  Amazingly, for such a supposedly knowledgeable guy, Potholer54 doesn’t know what adenine is.  It is one of four bases that make up RNA and DNA; the ladder “rungs”.  It is not a nucleotide, as he describes.  This is his third or fourth re-do on this video, and he still hasn’t made that correction.

The biggest problem with Potholer54’s video, as well as all of evolution’s, is the fact that he knows the target, the destination, in advance, as he himself, and all of life, are part of that destination. Looking at things from this side, the side where we know life exists, and picking a path supposedly taken that got us here is laughable. Reality is that there was absolutely no notion or inkling on earth, or anywhere within at least 30 trillion miles of earth, about what life was. Why should this incredible and blind path described by Potholer54 be taken? Why didn’t the chemicals that mixed around the atmosphere make a pathless, worthless mush of different compounds for the earth’s entire existence? Did the earth want life? Why would thousands of completely unlikely and blind steps that Potholer54 simplistically describes occur when there was absolutely no goal? When the earth was sterile, life was not in any way shape or form imaginable. Potholer54 and all of evolution are the most perfect example of Monday morning quarterbacking conceivable.

Potholer54, in his video “Abiogenesis Made Easy” tells how the earth’s atmosphere 3.7 years ago was full of hydrogen, hydrogen cyanide, methane, and ammonia, “among other” gases. He explains that his Step 1 to the goal of life is the combination of these four gases to form nucleotides.

Current studies show that the early atmosphere contained a different list of molecules that Potholer54 describes. According to recent studies, “the original atmosphere was primarily helium and hydrogen. Heat from the still-molten crust, and the sun, plus a probably enhanced solar wind, dissipated this atmosphere. About 4.4 billion years ago, the surface had cooled enough to form a crust, still heavily populated with volcanoes which released steam, carbon dioxide, and ammonia. This led to the early “second atmosphere”, which was primarily carbon dioxide and water vapor, with some nitrogen but virtually no oxygen. This second atmosphere had approximately 100 times as much gas as the current atmosphere, but as it cooled much of the carbon dioxide was dissolved in the seas and precipitated out as carbonates. The later “second atmosphere” contained largely nitrogen and carbon dioxide. However, simulations run at the University of Waterloo and University of Colorado in 2005 suggest that it may have had up to 40% hydrogen.

So, the early atmosphere isn’t quite what Potholer54 describes, but since this is not an exact science, let’s give him the benefit of the doubt, and say the atmosphere is what he says it was. The first problem with his Step 1 is the fact that there are other gases circulating throughout the early atmosphere, not just the four needed to make nucleotides. The idea that the four gases he has listed migrated together and formed nucleotides, when there are thousands of other different, larger, and more complex molecules that could form from these four and the other gases present is, of course, preposterous. The early atmosphere was full of gases, reactants, and reagents, most of which would have nothing to do with life.

Potholer54, as proof of his Step 1, cites how, in a lab experiment in 1961, adenine, one of the four “nucleotides” (really bases) that make up the rungs of the “ladder” in DNA, formed from a flask filled with hydrogen cyanide and ammonia. Obviously, what happens in a flask under ideal lab conditions overseen by intelligent technicians cannot in any way mimic what happened randomly in the atmosphere of the early earth. Potholer54 says the reagents were “left to stew alone”, which is a situation that wouldn’t occur in the early atmosphere. Of course, adenine is only one of the thousands of carbon-based chemicals that are required for life to exist. Getting adenine to form in a lab is light years away from figuring out how all of the biochemicals required for life formed.

Potholer54’s Step 2 on his blind pathway to life is nucleotides combining and forming into polynucleotides, long chains of nucleotides. He states that montmorillonite clay has been found to be a good catalyst for nucleotides forming into long chains. So now we must have ammonia, hydrogen, hydrogen cyanide, and methane all pushed together, forming nucleotides. Then these nucleotides must travel to the sea floor and find montmorillonite clay grains so they can form long chains called polynucleotides.  He says that montmorillonite clay has been found plentiful on the sea floor and under pools of water.  Actually, it would have had to be the entire sea floor for this scenario.   The question arises: how did we go from the atmosphere and nucleotide formation to the sea floor? Did the nucleotides dissolve in water, and sink?

Potholer54’s Step 3 on the blind path to life is the combination of polynucleotides with four nucleobases (adenine, guanine, cytosine, and uracil) that had to somehow form and make it to the seafloor.  The combination of nucleotides and bases formed into ultra-long and self-replicating ribonucleic acid (RNA). According to Potholer54, some of the RNA molecules will be strong, some weak. The weak ones will go by the wayside, the strong ones will replicate, and pass on their traits! Molecules have traits? Is this survival of the fittest, chemical version?

Potholer54’s Step 4 is the combination of RNA molecules into deoxyribonucleic acid molecules or DNA. DNA carries the genetic code and blueprint for all of life. DNA is organized into genetic units called chromosomes. The evolution of RNA into DNA and DNA’s organization into chromosome units, of course, happened over a billion years so we cannot test the hypothesis. But it doesn’t take much logic and common sense to see how ridiculous this whole scenario really is. Each DNA molecule in a chromosome is shaped like a helical ladder and can have up to several million “rungs”, each composed of the four bases in an exact coded order. Just imagine the complexity of copying the millions of rungs required to make an undirected duplicate of a DNA molecule; of organizing the millions of nucleotides and bases into just the right positions. Can we use the word “impossilbe” here?

At left, a DNA molecule segment. Each chromosome is made up of millions of the horizontal rungs.

Potholer54 talks about how DNA is a “self-replicating molecule”. Well, that is not exactly true. DNA doesn’t simply self-replicate on its own. DNA actually requires a living cell for support in order to copy itself. Within cells, DNA is organized into structures called chromosomes. These chromosomes are duplicated and paired before cells divide, in a process called “DNA replication”. Within the chromosomes, chromatin proteins compact and organize DNA. These compact structures guide the interactions between DNA and other proteins, helping control which parts of the DNA are transcribed. Here, the two strands are separated and then each strand’s complementary DNA sequence is recreated by an enzyme called DNA polymerase. This enzyme makes the complementary strand by finding the correct base through complementary base pairing and bonding it onto the original strand. Amazingly, the side strands of DNA are anti-parallel.  That is, the order of the molecules in one strand is the exact opposite of the opposing strand, a design that would obviously take an enormous amount of organization, and intelligence? As DNA polymerases can only extend a DNA strand in a 5′ to 3′ direction, different mechanisms are used to copy the antiparallel strands of the double helix. In this way, the base on the old strand dictates which base appears on the new strand, and the cell ends up with a perfect copy of its DNA. How and when did the DNA polymerase and chromatin proteins form? Did DNA make them because it “knew” that it required these to replicate? I would like to see Potholer54’s explanation.

Potholer describes how the supporting skeleton (sides) of the DNA strand is made from alternating phosphate and sugar molecules. Were these sugars and phosphates just floating around the early atmosphere or sea floor, and used as needed in DNA formation? Were they clicking together in just the right order to form genetic material? How these molecules would be supplied, and how they would find their place on a multi-million rung helical ladder when the earth was still sterile is not addressed. In nature, a living cell produces these molecules and stimulates cell replication. Things are immensely more complex than Potholer54 describes. Does he not know this? Is he hiding information to protect his belief system, which is, of course, atheism?

And what about the unbelievably complex code that DNA uses to translate the blueprint for all of life? How did this code form? This “minor” part is simply skipped by Potholer54, and all of evo-illusionists. Because there is simply no answer to how the code originated, any explanation would make Potholer54 and ev-illusionists look bad. So the origination of the code is just ignored.

According to Potholer54, amazingly, montmorillonite clay is not only a catalyst for making polynucleotide chains, complex organic compounds, but it also happens to be a catalyst for forming lipid (fat) molecules into spherical structures called micelles. According to Potholer54, in Step 5, the RNA is attracted to the lipid spheres and nestles into them for protection. Of course, the snuggling of RNA would have to occur just as the sphere is closing. Too early, the RNA would float away. Too late, the RNA could not enter and be encapsulated. Now we have thinking chemicals! The RNA in the lipid spheres survive better than those that are floating free. This is the first example of survival of the fittest! At first, evo-illusionists told us that survival is a desire of live animal species. But now Potholer54 lets us know that survival is also a desire of chemicals!

Continuing with Potholer54’s problems is the fact that lipids and fatty acids are manufactured by live organisms. No live organisms, no lipids, and no pre-biotic cell wall. So those lakes, ponds, and seas whose floors are covered with lipids that Potholer54 talks about are imaginary. Fats, oils, waxes, and steroids are all lipids. They function as energy storage molecules, as insulation and protection for internal organs, as lubricants, and as hormones. One group, the phospholipids are the major structural elements of membranes. In humans, fatty acids are predominantly formed in the liver and adipose tissue, and mammary glands during lactation. Synthesis of fatty acids takes place in live cell cytoplasm, not in non-living pseudo cells. Within a critical concentration range, certain lipids will self-organize in water to form a “micelle”. The key word here is critical concentration, which is unlikely in a random early earth scenario.

Asked the question on Pothololer54’s site, “Where did the lipids come from to make the micelles?”

The response was:
“Facile reactions of pyruvic acid under hydrothermal conditions produce a complex mixture of larger organic molecules, some of which are amphiphiles that readily self-assemble into cell-sized vesicular structures. Chemical characterization of major components of this mixture reveals similarities to the suite of organic compounds present in the Murchison carbonaceous chondrite” – Pyruvic itself is abundant under prebiotic conditions.

So we have self-assembling lipids forming self-assembling vesicles which take in self-assembling DNA/RNA which self-replicates? WOW. That’s heavy.

Potholer54 notes that at this point we have the first primitive cells. Of course, Potholer54 tells us, these first cells look nothing like the complex cells of today, but that is because cells had a billion years to evolve. There is just one problem that Potholer54 fails to mention. The DNA combined with the micelle is dead. D-E-A-D dead. There is not one living crumb in this unlikely combination. Potholer54 could spend the next billion years sticking DNA into fat globules, and I guarantee you that he would not get life. Not in any way shape or form. Never. Nada. He can even throw in all of the organelles he wanted. None of the micelles would come to life. And the more organic material he encapsulated into the micelles, the more the non-living group would deteriorate. So, here again, Potholer54 skips over this most important part of the beginnings of life. Where did the life come from? Potholer54 has absolutely no answer other than billions of years. And, he doesn’t even mention this immense and unsolvable problem for evolution in his video. The evolution of life is discussed above. Long periods of time will not make life. And, of course, how did all of the organelles that are encapsulated inside of all cells get there? Again, Potholer54’s answer is millions of years. Because that is always the answer when there is no answer.

Potholer54 lists the events that he says brought life, and he asks you to prove that they didn’t happen. And if you can’t prove that each step is impossible, then that’s the way it happened! Simple as that! Potholer54, I have a theory that the earth is going to blow up tomorrow. Prove that that’s impossible. Potholer54, you better get your affairs in order. If the earth doesn’t blow up tomorrow, sign up for a good class on logic. You and your fellow evo-illusionists will find it very fascinating and informative. And you just may find out how to promote your favorite science in a more logical and orderly fashion. In fact, you might even change your mind about the science that you so love and adore.

And lastly, the fact that we cannot intelligently put together all of the parts of a cell and create life should give us a pretty good idea of what complete and utter randomness in nature might be able to do, or not do. And of course, the bull in the China shop here is the fact that once unicellular species were born, how did they become multi-cellular species? There are a plethora of fossils showing single-celled species. There is also a plethora of fossils showing large multi-cellular species that appeared during the Cambrian explosion. There are absolutely no fossils that show single-celled species evolving into bi-celled species, eight-celled species, 64 celled species, or any type of ultra-simple species that lead to the incredibly complex species that inhabited the earth 530 MYA.

The following is my YouTube response to PotHoler54, and a second video showing the odds of potholer54′ fantasy.  Click on the lower left arrow to view.

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Follow-up:

To update myself on the current state of synthetic life experiments, and abiogenesis, I read a book titled: What Is Life?: Investigating the Nature of Life in the Age of Synthetic Biology

by Ed Regis (Author)

In it, the writer describes several consortiums that have been put together to try to synthesize a living cell. I think anyone with a minimum amount of common sense could figure out that this is a waste of time and money. One group had donations of over $14,000,000 from wishful thinkers and government agencies. The obvious conclusion is that living cells cannot, and never will be, synthesized. And that we are not even remotely close to being able to synthesize life. In the end, the writer answers the question posed by the cover. If one insists on a scientific answer, Regis suggests the following: “Defining life as embodied metabolism . . . seems to be the most defensible theory we have at the present.” Regis’ real conclusion is that we really don’t know what life is. He finishes with, “And that’s life.” Reading this book gave me no more insight as to what life really is, which was as expected. No one really knows. And if we don’t know what life is, can it ever be synthesized?

The following is an article by scientists trying to figure out how early cells formed:

Experimental Models of Primitive Cellular Compartments: Encapsulation, Growth, and Division

Martin M. Hanczyc,^* Shelly M. Fujikawa,^* Jack W. Szostak

The clay montmorillonite is known to catalyze the polymerization of RNA from activated ribonucleotides. Here we report that montmorillonite accelerates the spontaneous conversion of fatty acid micelles into vesicles. Clay particles often become encapsulated in these vesicles, thus providing a pathway for the prebiotic encapsulation of catalytically active surfaces within membrane vesicles. In addition, RNA adsorbed to clay can be encapsulated within vesicles. Once formed, such vesicles can grow by incorporating fatty acid supplied as micelles and can divide without dilution of their contents by extrusion through small pores. These processes mediate vesicle replication through cycles of growth and division. The formation, growth, and division of the earliest cells may have occurred in response to similar interactions with mineral particles and inputs of material and energy.

Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Department of Molecular Biology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA 02114, USA

Actually, proving ev-abiogenesis should be easy. All evo-abiogenologists need to do is take a sterile aquarium, fill it with water, throw in some DNA, RNA, lipid cells, clay grains of their choice, and see if they can come up with DNA/RNA wrapped in the lipid. If they don’t, they will, of course, say that is because it took millions of years. But the fat bubbles and DNA wouldn’t last more than a few years at most. DNA deteriorates. Every policeman knows that.

Another problem for evo-abiogenesis: Researchers have pointed out difficulties for the abiogenic synthesis of nucleotides from cytosine and uracil. Cytosine has a half-life of 19 days at 100 °C and 17,000 years in freezing water. Larralde et al, say that “the generally accepted prebiotic synthesis of ribose, the formose reaction, yields numerous sugars without any selectivity.” and they conclude that their “results suggest that the backbone of the first genetic material could not have contained ribose or other sugars because of their instability.” The ester linkage of ribose and phosphoric acid in RNA is known to be prone to hydrolysis.

A couple thoughts from renown evolutionists: Thaxton, Bradley, and Olsen wrote on this subject:

“As ice forms, energy (80 calories/gm) is liberated to the surroundings… The entropy change is negative because the thermal configuration entropy (or disorder) of water is greater than that of ice, which is a highly ordered crystal… It has often been argued by analogy to water crystallizing to ice that simple monomers may polymerize into complex molecules such as protein and DNA. The analogy is clearly inappropriate, however… The atomic bonding forces draw water molecules into an orderly crystalline array when the thermal agitation (or entropy driving force) is made sufficiently small by lowering the temperature. Organic monomers such as amino acids resist combining at all at any temperature, however, much less in some orderly arrangement“
[C.B. Thaxton, W.L. Bradley, and R.L. Olsen, The Mystery of Life’s Origin: Reassessing Current Theories, Philosophical Library, New York, 1984, pp. 119-120. (emphasis added)]

Further, Nobel Prize-winning Belgian scientist Ilya Prigogine wrote:

“The point is that in a non-isolated system there exists a possibility for formation of ordered, low-entropy structures at sufficiently low temperatures. This ordering principle is responsible for the appearance of ordered structures such as crystals as well as for the phenomena of phase transitions.”Unfortunately this principle cannot explain the formation of biological structures. The probability that at ordinary temperatures a macroscopic number of molecules is assembled to give rise to the highly ordered structures and to the coordinated functions characterizing living organisms is vanishingly small.“
[Ilya Prigogine, Gregoire Nicolis and Agnes Babloyants, Physics Today 25(11):23 (1972) (emphasis added)]

Craig Venter and his team  forms a synthetic cell:

Craig Venter is an American biologist and entrepreneur.  He is most well known for his role in being one of the first to sequence the human genome and for his role in creating the first cell with a synthetic genome in 2010. Venter founded Celera Genomics, The Institute for Genomic Research and the J. Craig Venter Institute.  Craig is now working  to create synthetic biological organisms and to document genetic diversity in the world’s oceans. He was listed on Time magazine’s 2007 and 2008 Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world. In 2010, the British magazine New Statesman listed Craig Venter at 14th in the list of “The World’s 50 Most Influential Figures 2010”

Below is a video of a speech Craig Venter gave at the TED convention (www.ted.com) discussing  his laboratory’s new research in which Venter announces that he and his team made the first synthetic cell: “We are here today to announce the first synthetic cell”.   Of course this isn’t even close to the truth.  What he actually DID do was make synthetic DNA and inject it into the DNA of a living non-synthetic bacteria.  The bacteria then took up the new DNA.  The result was a new species.  The big concern here with some scientists is that Venter could inadvertently put together a very dangerous new bacteria for which there would be no anti-microbials.  But, that hasn’t been the case so far.  In reality, making a synthetic cell would entail synthesizing all of the parts: organelles, proteins, enzymes, RNA, and DNA of the cell that is synthetic.  Venter’s work is fascinating, no doubt.  If he was really able to do what he says that he did in this speech , it is truly fascinating work.  It would be very fascinating to actually see how he made the synthetic DNA, coded it, then injected it into a living bacteria without killing said bacteria.  It seems that what he did is nothing short of miraculous.  The question arises: Why did he do this?  What does it accomplish? Is there value in this research?  While Venter’s work is fascinating what is its value?  When asked what is the significance of his experiment, he said that was up to others to decide. It’s astounding that he is doing such an experiment without the vaguest idea of what the value of the outcome would be with his success; what the purpose of the work is.  It must be an incredibly expensive task.  Is the money being well spent? Why would he spend so much effort doing an experiment for which there is no known purpose?  At least to Venter?  It is entirely possible that Venter’s astounding work will someday allow for the formation of new types of life forms that will be useful in treating illnesses, and fighting off other types of illness-producing bacteria. Let’s  hope that is the case.  But assigning this work as solving a huge part of the Puzzle of ev-abiogenesis is simply absurd.

From an article written by Lawrence M. Krauss in Scientific American about Venter’s exploits:| February 16, 2010:

“I have seen the future, and it is now.  Those words came to mind again as I recently listened to Craig Venter, one of those leading the new areas of synthetic genomics and synthetic biology. Every time I hear a talk on this subject, it seems a new threshold in the artificial manipulation and, ultimately, creation of life has been passed……..Instructions embedded in synthetic gene sequences can now be implanted in foreign cells and thereby cause those cells to express proteins; those proteins, in turn, build new functioning copies of the life-forms whose instruction manual is in the embedded sequences. Venter calls this cycle “software that creates its own hardware.” I expect to hear news soon of the successful creation of the first completely artificial life-form, built from scratch and not alive until the scientists assembled it.”

This is supposedly a scientific and objective article written in just about the most respected scientific journal in existence.  Does this writer not know how far (1) injecting DNA into a bacterium and (2) actually forming living synthetic cells, really is?  We are talking thousands of light years apart here.  The notion that we are close to actually forming a synthetic living cell doesn’t qualify as scientifically absurd.  This scientific journal, Scientific American, and this writer peak the interest and beef up the belief of well indoctrinated evolutionauts who think the laboratory formation of a synthetic living cell is right around the corner; that we are almost there.  A living synthetic cell will never be made by any man.  We humans simply don’t have the talent, and we never will.  Again, taking a fully packed but dead natural cell and bringing it back to life should be the start of this project; not the end step.  The most difficult step needs to be successfully passed or all of the other steps, while they may be useful someday in other venues, are meaningless as far as evo-abiogenesis is concerned.  Bringing non-living tissues to life is skirted around and ignored constantly by evo-scientists.  Even if scientists could form the ingredients needed for a living cell, those ingredients would deteriorate rapidly while the cell was being assembled; just as the ingredients in living cells begin deteriorating  the moment they die.  And of course the notion of constructing a cell wall for that synthetic cell alone is an insurmountably step; at least for humans with our current capabilities.  If bringing non-living natural cells to life cannot be accomplished, a synthetic cell certainly never will be successfully constructed. This is just another example of how a tiny step, or a tiny piece of evidence, is blown out of all rational proportion which increases the fooling of masses of evo-believers into thinking that “we have the evidence, the lab experiments,….we are almost there.”  When we are not remotely close.

The way Venter describes his work….inferring that he actually made a synthetic cell,  just begs evolutionauts to exaggerate what was done.  So many of them now argue that “Venter has made the first synthetic cell from scratch!”  “Haven’t you seen Venter’s work?”  They are immediately sucked in as is usually the case with incredibly weak and doubtful evidence and lab work.  Evolutionauts grab on like it’s the last lifeboat on the Titanic. Why?   They are so lacking in evidence for their science.  Anyone who really knows what cells contain, and how synthetic life is completely out of the grasp of humanity will know that Venter’s work is fascinating, possibly useful in other venues like medicine, but useless as evidence for evo-abiogenesis.  It doesn’t help along evo-abiogenesis or evolution a bit.  If you have insomnia, watch the vid.

Here is an excellent video on evo-abiogenesis from YouTube.  It tells the plain facts of the matter so well. The only scientific conclusion that should be drawn is “We just don’t know”.