First off, a link that might explain some things about the nomenclature in science:
http://www.wilstar.com/theories.htm
I will just address some points in this guy's essay.
Talon1977 wrote:
EVOLUTION HOPES YOU DON'T KNOW CHEMISTRY: THE PROBLEM OF CONTROL
by Dr. Charles McCombs*
In the chemical literature, there is not a single example of life resulting from a chemical reaction.
This is the key mistake in this guy's thinking and in creationist thinking in general. Just because something has not been shown yet, does not mean that it does not exist. The absence of evidence does not equal counter- evidence. Maybe in court, but not in science.
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These chemicals are necessary for life to exist, but they do not "create" life by their presence; they only "maintain" the life that is already present.
A very misleading statement. An organism that can be called a body is far far more complex than what primordial life started out as. The cells are specialized and can survive only through cooperation. After the key organs die, the rest of the cells cannot survive - not because of lack of life or chemicals, but because of lack of cooperation. In fact, the DNA is rigged so that it only allows a predetermined number of cell splitting and therefore a finite lifetime. The chemical itself thus controls when life is taken away. Many single celled organisms however do not have a limit to their lifetime. Ugh, I digress.
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Scientists can only look at life as it exists today, and try to determine how life originated in the past. They look at the end result and try to determine the process by which it was formed. Imagine looking at a photograph and trying to determine the brand of camera that was used to take the picture. Could you do it?
Nobody said it was an easy job. That's why it's so easy for armchair scientists to find points of contention.
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The sequence of the human DNA chain is so complicated, that even with the sophisticated scientific equipment available today, we still do not know the complete sequence.
This must have been written before the genome project. What a putz. Besides, it would be pretty logical that the first DNA was much less complicated, as the DNA of single celled organisms is much shorter than DNA of a human. I think the DNA molecule of a single celled is happy with having around 2000 base pairs, while human DNA has more than a billion, if I am not mistaken. Therefore comparing anything related to the origins of life to human DNA is all smoke and mirrors.
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Proteins and DNA contain a unique order of the individual components. The order of the individual components is not a repeating pattern such as ABABAB or AABBAABB, but it is not a random order either. The order in these natural polymers is very precise, and it is this highly ordered sequence that allows these polymers to perform their intended purpose in the human body. If the sequence is changed even slightly, the altered polymer is no longer capable of performing the same function as the natural protein or DNA.
More smoke and mirrors. Some sites can be changed while others can't. Depends on where in the sequence.
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Chemical Stability
Chemical stability is a question of whether the components can even react at all. By definition, all components in a hypothetical primordial soup would be stable, because if they were not, they would have already reacted. Amino acids are relatively stable in water and do not react to form proteins in water, and nucleotides do not react to form DNA.
He fails to mention, that
thermodynamically the formation of a peptide bond is favorable. All compounds are thermodynamically in a local minimum, the absolute minimum seems to be water and carbon dioxide - products of combustion. This statement is akin to saying that everything on Earth should spontaneously combust.
He also fails to mention that only thermodynamics tells us whether a process is feasible or not, while kinetics olny tells us how fast a certain process is. It seems like he is discussing kinetic stability here. Well, amino acids do not react in water if you just put them there and look at them. But under some conditions, beleived to exist on the primordial Eart and given enough time, these processes are possible.
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In order to make amino acids and nucleotides react to form a polymer, they must be chemically activated to react with other chemicals.
Simply wrong, that is just an organic chemist's view, because that is what an organic chemist does - purposefully modifies molecules by activating, deactivating, protecting and deportecting the functional groups. Welll, time to think outside the box, mister. Time to bring oout the knowledge on heterogeneous catalysis, zeolites, photochemistry, microwave activation and other "non-standard" ways of activating molecules. A lot of these ways are perfectly feasible under the harsh conditions on primordial Earth.
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But this chemical activation must be done in the absence of water because the activated compounds will react with water and break down. How could proteins and DNA be formed in a hypothetical primordial watery soup if the activated compounds required to form them cannot exist in water? This is the problem of Chemical Stability.
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Chemical Reactivity
Chemical reactivity deals with how fast the components react in a given reaction. If life began in a primordial soup by natural chemical reactions, then the laws of chemistry should be able to predict the sequence of these chains. But when amino acids react chemically, they react according to their reactivity, and not in some specified order necessary for life. As the protein or DNA chain is increasing in size through chemical reaction, we should see the most reactive amino acid adding to the chain first, followed by the next most reactive amino acid, and so on.
Let's assume that we begin with the sequence R-T-X, and will add two amino acids "B" and "A" to it. If amino acid "B" is the most reactive amino acid, the sequence would be R-T-X-B-A. However, if "A" is the most reactive amino acid, then the sequence would be R-T-X-A-B. In a random chemical reaction, the sequence of amino acids would be determined by the relative reactivity of the different amino acids. The polymer chain found in natural proteins and DNA has a very precise sequence that does not correlate with the individual components' reaction rates. Since all of the amino acids have relatively similar structures, they all have similar reaction rates; they will all react at about the same rate making the precise sequence by random chemical reactions unthinkably unlikely. This is the problem of Chemical Reactivity.
I suppose this guy never heard of self-catalysed reactions?
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Chemical Selectivity
Chemical selectivity is a problem of where the components react. Since the chain has two ends, the amino acids can add to either end of the chain. Even if by some magical process, a single amino acid "B" would react first as desired for the pre-determined life supporting sequence followed by a single amino acid "A," the product would be a mixture of at least four isomers because there are two ends to the chain. If there is an equal chance of amino acid "B" reacting in two different locations, then half will react at one end, half at the other end. The result of adding "B" will form two different products. When the addition of amino acid "A" occurs, it will react at both ends of the chain of both the products already present. As in the previous example, the major products would be R-T-X-B-A and A-R-T-X-B as well as A-B-R-T-X and B-R-T-X-A and others. The result is a mixture of several isomers of which the desired sequence seldom results, and this is the problem with only two amino acids reacting. As the third amino acid is added, it can react at both ends of four products, and so on, insuring randomness, not a precise sequence.
Since proteins may contain hundreds or thousands of amino acids in a sequence, imagine the huge number of undesired isomers that would be present if these large proteins were formed in a random process. Evolutionists might argue that all proteins were formed in this manner, and nature simply selected the ones that worked. However, this is only an ad hoc assumption and it ignores the fact that we do not have billions of "extra" proteins in our body. Furthermore, nature is not intelligent. There is nothing in nature to do the selecting all-the-while splicing together non-functioning (therefore non-selectable) amino acids toward a working whole. Evolutionists say that nature is blind, has no goal, and no purpose, and yet precise selection at each step is necessary. This is the problem of Chemical Selectivity.
Wrong on too many levels to touch upon them all here. This guy does not understand the principle of evolution. Only the compunds that are active for self-replication would survive and all his random isomers would simply "die" out.
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The chemical control needed for the formation of a specific sequence in a polymer chain is just not possible in a random process. The synthesis of proteins and DNA in the laboratory requires the chemist to control the reaction conditions, to thoroughly understand the reactivity and selectivity of each component, and to carefully control the order of addition of the components as the chain is building in size. The successful formation of proteins and DNA in some primordial soup would require the same control of the reactivity and selectivity, and that would require the existence of a chemical controller. But chemicals cannot think, plan, or organize themselves to do anything. How can chemicals know what it is they're making?
See above. Again, example of thinking within the box of a synthetic organic chemist. Yeah, sure you need control to produce these chemicals syntheticallly. We have managed to synthesize a plethora of these molecules within 200 years of existance of true science of chemistry. 200 years! The molecules fof life had billions of years to evolve.
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How can a chemical reaction make a protein or DNA, put it in an eye, heart, or brain, and do it without a controlling mechanism that knows what the end product is supposed to look like? This sounds much more like the work of an Omniscient Creator. Evolutionists have always been quick to claim that life came from chemicals, but their theory does not hold up to scientific scrutiny. Evolution claims that random chance natural processes formed life as we know it, but they fail to mention that their theory is anything but random or natural! This is the false logic of evolution. Evolutionists just hope you don't know chemistry!
Bah. I am getting a bit too worked up over this. I apologize to everyone that finds it boring to revisit such ol threads. I had some of this response on the table so I figured I'd post it. But sorry, Talon, I won't be able to spend as much time on this anymore. All I can say is, good luck on learning about this.