In the process of introducing a new theory on how life began, two notable evolutionary biologists have just dismissed the reigning theory of Darwinian evolution, maintaining it would take many billions of years to accomplish and would extend beyond the very age of the universe, making the current understanding of evolution impossible.
The study of Darwinian evolution, the gradual assemblage of molecules that somehow were constructed and then began replicating themselves out of some imaginary “primordial soup” or “warm pond” as Charles Darwin once described it, has just taken a U-turn.
Today the vast majority of biologists maintain what they call RNA World existed on Earth before modern cells arose. For the past few decades the consensus of molecular biologists is that life originated from RNA — ribonucleic acid, which is a single strand of nucleotides (adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine) unlike DNA which is double-stranded, and is bonded with ribose sugars rather than deoxyribose sugars that comprise DNA.
However RNA is more unstable and prone to degradation than DNA and makes a less plausible platform for the origin of life say two eminent researchers. For the very reason of RNAs inherent instability, two researchers now say RNA couldn’t have endured the time it would have taken for evolutionary life forms to appear.
Scientific U-turn
The scientific U-turn is this. According to astrobiologist and (Honorary) professor Brig Klyce, “Virtually all biologists now agree bacterial cells cannot form from nonliving chemical in one step. If life arises from non-living chemicals, there must be intermediate forms. Among the various theories on the origin of life, biologists have reached consensus on the RNA theory (called RNA WORLD), which serves as a messenger to carry out instructions from DNA and initiate and control the synthesis of proteins. But now evolutionary thinkers say life’s first molecule was protein, not RNA.”
“Only one fact concerning the RNA World hypothesis can be established by direct observation: if it ever existed, it ended without leaving any unambiguous trace of itself,” say Peter R Wills and Charles W Carter Jr., authors of the new theory writing in the BioRxIV Beta journal.
Carter and Wills argue that RNA could not kick-start this process alone because it lacks a property they call “reflexivity.” It cannot enforce the rules by which it is made. RNA needed peptides to form the reflexive feedback loop necessary to eventually lead to life forms.
Implausibly impossible
As a report at Science Daily explains: “Wills has shown that impossible obstacles would have blocked any transition from a pure-RNA world to a protein-RNA world and onward toward life. ‘Such a rise from RNA to cell-based life would have required an out-of-the-blue appearance of protein that worked even better than its adapted RNA counterpart. That extremely unlikely event would have needed to happen not just once but multiple times — once for every amino acid in the existing gene-protein code. It just doesn’t make sense’.” It would be akin to a gene mutation every time a living cell renewed itself (mitosis).
One of the biggest obstacles to surmount in the RNA WORLD theory is that “scientists calculate that it would take much longer than the age of the universe for randomly generated RNA molecules to evolve sufficiently to achieve the modern level of sophistication. Given Earth’s age of 4.5 billion years, living systems run entirely by RNA could not have reproduced and evolved either fast or accurately enough to give rise to the vast biological complexity on Earth today. The RNA world hypothesis is extremely unlikely,” said Carter. “It would take forever.”
Even though there is scientific consensus “there’s no proof that such ribozymes even existed billions of years ago but scientists have used 21st century technology to create ribozymes that serve as catalysts. “But most of those synthetic ribozymes,” Carter said, “bear little resemblance to anything anyone has ever isolated from a living system.”
The reigning theory of evolution has just been trashed.
This is despite the fact RNA WORLD has become what one scientific observer calls “a medium-sized industry.” The pursuit of the origins of life has become a pretty good jobs program, but maybe has accomplished not much more than the “Animal, Mineral, Vegetable” game played on television in the 1950s where expert scientists were quizzed about the identity of objects obtained from British museums.
The search for the origin of life has become a dogma much like a visually diagrammed explanation in a room with full-length double wall mirrors on both sides, creating endless repetitive images about which came first, the chicken or the egg?
At least two noted biologists concede the current theory of evolution is now outmoded. That leaves a lot of prestigious evolutionary biologists stuck in the quicksand of Darwin’s muddy pond.
One wonders if today’s evolutionary biologists have been able to explain the origin of life any better than a panel of three scientists that appeared on 1950’s game show ANIMAL, MINERAL, VEGETABLE? were able to identify objects displayed in various British Museums. The pursuit of science to substantiate Darwin’s theory of evolution has become circuitous. Two steps forward, three steps back.
Newsweek magazine says it this way: “The origins of life on our planet are so nebulous and so resistant to study that even the parts scientists agree on they still don’t really understand. Our best guess about the circumstances under which life began has been that ribonucleic acid (RNA), part of our genetic material, came first and proteins came later.”
However, that theory has problems and two scientists now propose a solution: the peptide-RNA hypothesis, that two evolutionary steps coincided to produce replicable life. But “even this theory fails to account for exactly how these humble nucleic acids made that kind of leap.”
But wait, we’re that much closer
Wills and Carter, in a recent 2017 edition of Biosystems journal, say: “Many relevant details of the basic steps of code evolution cannot yet be outlined, but we are nonetheless approaching the point where studies of phylogenetics can suggest at least partial answers.”
OK, these investigators say the prevailing theory of the origin of life is implausible and that the best explanation they have been able to assemble is (my re-phrasing) like fitting 3 or 4 pieces of a large billion-piece jigsaw puzzle together. I hope high school and college students see that this new hypothesis is highly theoretical at this stage.
The (un)certainty of Darwinian evolution
Wills and Carter have been talking about their theory for some time now, so it is not new, just re-reported. Just how theory morphs into fact is seen at DailyGalaxy.com.
DailyGalaxy.com: “The widely accepted RNA-world theory posits that RNA – the molecule that today plays roles in coding, regulating, and expressing genes – elevated itself from the primordial soup of amino acids and cosmic chemicals, eventually to give rise first to short proteins.” Pray that 13-year olds can discern fact from fiction here.
DailyGalaxy.com: “Before there was life on Earth, there were simple chemicals. Somehow, they produced both amino acids and nucleotides that eventually became the proteins and nucleic acids necessary to create single cells. And the single cells became plants and animals. Research this century has revealed how the primordial chemical soup created the building blocks of life.” (Really? The well-known Miller-Urey experiment to spark life from a chemical broth was an abject failure.) There is also widespread scientific consensus on the historical path by which cells evolved into plants and animals.” (Really? The fossil record doesn’t reveal a gradual progressive record consistent with evolution.)
It has been said: “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” [The American Biology Teacher 1973] By that statement biologists imply the theory of Darwinian evolution has gaping holes in it but it’s all we’ve got.
Is evolutionary biology ready to change its RNA WORLD story that is arrogantly smothered in school textbooks and across the internet?
Will the textbooks change?
When Darwin visited the Galapagos Islands he drew eloquent sketches of bird beaks that changed shape in just a short period of time in order to adapt to the seasonal changes in the size of seeds the birds ate. In other words, Darwin couldn’t have observed changes that take millions of years.
However, modern followers of Darwin who also observe rapid changes in bird beaks nonsensically explain these changes are due to inter-generational breeding. But Darwin observed these changes with his own eyes within a 2-month period of time when he visited the Galapagos, not over many generations.
A problem is what kids are being taught about the origins of life in public school is archaic and is originally based upon simplistic observations by Charles Darwin a century ago.
Darwin was a naturalist who had a bone to pick with the Biblical account of creation. Darwin’s idea of evolution was not based on any scientific experiments, just his drawings of bird beaks, with new species later (1953, with the discovery of DNA) mistakenly attributed to gene mutations, when we now know that epigenetic gene imprinting and Mendelian genetics explain biological inheritance via relatively rapid adaptation and variation.
So far, no mechanism for new species, whether gradual over millions of years (Darwinian evolution) or rapidly appearing sporadic new species, has been presented.
Hacking evolution
Oh, there is CRISPR technology, which is the intentional replacement of unwanted genes with those more to our liking, which can now be used to overcome single-gene mutation-induced diseases like Huntington’s disease and Down’s syndrome. Some biologists now ask why evolution needs to be understood when it can now be humanly controlled. Biologists now say they can hijack evolution. Biologists say, while gene mutations produce diseases, CRISPR can produce favorable mutations. In other words, man can now direct evolution (play God).
Missing: the “guiding hand”
Which begs this question: did a “guiding hand” insert different genes like CRISP does to produce different species?
Evolutionary biologists warn of this kind of thinking since they believe adaptation and design are not driven by an “invisible power of life.”
But even in the Darwinian model of evolution, something is directing the progressive development of life over millions of years.
So far, modern biology has explained horizontal changes in living organisms – different varieties and adaptations. Vertical evolution (new species) goes unexplained.
There is no evidence for vertical evolution from an ape-like common ancestor to a human being, despite this being depicted in many cartoon-like drawings in biology textbooks.
Evolutionists are backed up to their own 1-yard line. They now have to alter the classical RNA WORLD first-step of evolution.
We don’t know
Why can’t scientists just say “we don’t know” rather than ridiculing creationists who at least have an explanation for the origin of man (Adam & Eve). Creation cannot be examined in a lab dish because it, by definition, requires the hand of God who breathed life into a human being. Unless some biologist can summon God into the laboratory, that experiment cannot be repeated.
