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THE MOLECULAR IMPASSE OF EVOLUTION The Evolutionary Fuss About the Origin of Life The question of "how living things first appeared" is such a critical impasse for evolutionists that they usually try not even to touch upon this subject. They try to pass over this question by saying "the first creatures came into existence as a result of some random events in water". They are at a road-block that they can by no means get around. In spite of the paleontological evolution arguments, in this subject they have no fossils available to distort and misinterpret as they wish to support their assertions. Therefore, the theory of evolution is definitely refuted from the very beginning. Above all, there is one important point to take into consideration: If any one step in the evolutionary process is proven to be impossible, this jis sufficient to prove that the whole theory is totally false and invalid. For instance, by proving that the haphazard formation of proteins is impossible, all other claims regarding the subsequent steps of evolution are also refuted. After this, it becomes meaningless to take some human and ape skulls and engage in speculation about them. How living organisms came into existence out of nonliving matter was an issue that evolutionists did not even want to mention for a long time. However, this question, which had constantly been avoided, eventually had to be addressed, and attempts were made to settle it with a series of experiments in the second quarter of the 20th century. The main question was: How could the first living cell have appeared in the primordial atmosphere on the earth? In other words, what kind of explanation could evolutionists offer? The answers to the questions were sought through experiments. Evolutionist scientists and researchers carried out laboratory experiments directed at answering these questions but these did not create much interest. The most generally respected study on the origin of life is the Miller experiment conducted by the American researcher Stanley Miller in 1953. (The experiment is also known as "Urey-Miller experiment" because of the contribution of Miller's instructor at the University of Chicago, Harold Urey.) This experiment is the only "evidence" evolutionists have with which to allegedly prove the "molecular evolution thesis"; they advance it as the first stage of the supposed evolutionary process leading to life. Although nearly half a century has passed, and great technological advances have been made, nobody has made any further progress. In spite of this, Miller's experiment is still taught in textbooks as the evolutionary explanation of the earliest generation of living things. Aware of the fact that such studies do not support, but rather actually refute, their thesis, evolutionist researchers deliberately avoid embarking on such experiments.
Stanley Miller's aim was to demonstrate by means of an experiment that amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, could have come into existence "by chance" on the lifeless earth billions of years ago. In his experiment, Miller used a gas mixture that he assumed to have existed on the primordial earth (but which later proved unrealistic) composed of ammonia, methane, hydrogen, and water vapour. Since these gasses would not react with each other under natural conditions, he added energy to the mixture to start a reaction among them. Supposing that this energy could have come from lightning in the primordial atmosphere, he used an electric current for this purpose. Miller heated this gas mixture at 1000C for a week and added the electrical current. At the end of the week, Miller analysed the chemicals which had formed at the bottom of the jar, and observed that three out of the 20 amino acids, which constitute the basic elements of proteins had been synthesised. This experiment aroused great excitement among evolutionists, and was promoted as an outstanding success. Moreover, in a state of intoxicated euphoria, various publications carried headlines such as "Miller creates life". However, what Miller had managed to synthesise was only a few "inanimate" molecules. Encouraged by this experiment, evolutionists immediately produced new scenarios. Stages following the developoment of amino acids were hurriedly hypothesised. Supposedly, amino acids had later united in the correct sequences by accident to form proteins. Some of these proteins which emerged by chance formed themselves into cell membrane-like structures which "somehow" came into existence and formed a primitive cell. The cells then supposedly came together over time to form multicellular living organisms. However, Miller's experiment was nothing but make-believe and has since proven to be false in many aspects.
Miller's experiment sought to prove that amino acids could form on their own in primordial earth-like conditions, but it contains inconsistencies in a number of areas: 1. By using a mechanism called a "cold trap", Miller isolated the amino acids from the environment as soon as they were formed. Had he not done so, the conditions in the environment in which the amino acids were formed would immediately have destroyed these molecules. Doubtless, this kind of a conscious mechanism of isolation did not exist on the primordial earth. Without such a mechanism, even if one amino acid were obtained, it would immediately have been destroyed. The chemist Richard Bliss expresses this contradiction by observing that "Actually, without this trap, the chemical products would have been destroyed by the energy source"114 And, sure enough, in his previous experiments, Miller had been unable to make even one single amino acid using the same materials without the cold trap mechanism. 2. The primordial atmospheric environment that Miller attempted to simulate in his experiment was not realistic. In the 1980s, scientists agreed that nitrogen and carbon dioxide should have been used in this artificial environment instead of methane and ammonia. After a long period of silence, Miller himself also confessed that the atmospheric environment he used in his experiment was not realistic.115 So why did Miller insist on these gasses? The answer is simple: without ammonia, it was impossible to synthesise any amino acid. Kevin Mc Kean talks about this in an article published in Discover magazine: Miller and Urey imitated the ancient atmosphere on the Earth with a mixture of methane and ammonia. According to them, the Earth was a true homogeneous mixture of metal, rock and ice. However in the latest studies, it has been understood that the Earth was very hot at those times, and that it was composed of melted nickel and iron. Therefore, the chemical atmosphere of that time should have been formed mostly of nitrogen (N2), carbon dioxide (CO2) and water vapour (H2O). However these are not as appropriate as methane and ammonia for the production of organic molecules.116 The American scientists J.P. Ferris and C.T. Chen repeated Miller's experiment with an atmospheric environment that contained carbon dioxide, hydrogen, nitrogen, and water vapour, and were unable to obtain even a single amino acid molecule.117 3. Another important point that invalidates Miller's experiment is that there was enough oxygen to destroy all the amino acids in the atmosphere at the time when they were thought to have been formed. This fact, overlooked by Miller, is revealed by the traces of oxidised iron and uranium found in rocks that are estimated to be 3.5 billion years old.118 There are other findings showing that the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere at that time was much higher than originally claimed by evolutionists. Studies also show that at that time, the amount of ultraviolet radiation to which the earth was then exposed was 10,000 times more than evolutionists' estimates. This intense radiation would unavoidably have freed oxygen by decomposing the water vapour and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
This situation completely negates Miller's experiment, in which oxygen was completely neglected. If oxygen had been used in the experiment, methane would have decomposed into carbon dioxide and water, and ammonia into nitrogen and water. On the other hand, in an environment where there was no oxygen, there would be no ozone layer either; therefore, the amino acids would have immediately been destroyed, since they would have been exposed to the most intense ultraviolet rays without the protection of the ozone layer. In other words, with or without oxygen in the primordial world, the result would have been a deadly environment for the amino acids. 4. At the end of Miller's experiment, many organic acids had been formed with characteristics detrimental to the structure and function of living things. If the amino acids had not been isolated, and had been left in the same environment with these chemicals, their destruction or transformation into different compounds through chemical reactions would have been unavoidable. Moreover, a large number of right-handed amino acids were formed at the end of the experiment.119 The existence of these amino acids refuted the theory even within its own terms because right-handed amino acids cannot function in the composition of living organisms. To conclude, the circumstances in which amino acids were formed in Miller's experiment were not suitable for life. In truth, this medium took the form of an acidic mixture destroying and oxidising the useful molecules obtained. All these facts point to one firm truth: Miller's experiment cannot claim to have proved that living things formed by chance under primordial earth-like conditions. The whole experiment is nothing more than a deliberate and controlled laboratory experiment to synthesise amino acids. The amount and types of the gases used in the experiment were ideally determined to allow amino acids to originate. The amount of energy supplied to the system was neither too much nor too little, but arranged precisely to enable the necessary reactions to occur. The experimental apparatus was isolated, so that it would not allow the leaking of any harmful, destructive, or any other kind of elements to hinder the formation of amino acids. No elements, minerals or compounds that were likely to have been present on the primordial earth, but which would have changed the course of the reactions, were included in the experiment. Oxygen, which would have prevented the formation of amino acids because of oxidation, is only one of these destructive elements. Even under such ideal laboratory conditions, it was impossible for the amino acids produced to survive and avoid destruction without the "cold trap" mechanism. In fact, by his experiment, Miller destroyed evolution's claim that "life emerged as the result of unconscious coincidences". That is because, if the experiment proves anything, it is that amino acids can only be produced in a controlled laboratory environment where all the conditions are specifically designed by conscious intervention. That is, the power that brings about life cannot be by unconscious chance but rather by conscious creation. The reason evolutionists do not accept this evident reality is their blind adherence to prejudices that are totally unscientific. Interestingly enough, Harold Urey, who organised the Miller experiment with his student Stanley Miller, made the following confession on the subject: All of us who study the origin of life find that the more we look into it, the more we feel it is too complex to have evolved anywhere. We all believe as an article of faith that life evolved from dead matter on this planet. It is just that its complexity is so great, it is hard for us to imagine that it did.120
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Richard B. Bliss & Gary E. Parker, Origin of Life, California:
1979, p. 14. |
