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A CDK007 Production. The Origin of Life. (Turn UP your Volume.). Since the dawn of humanity, civilizations have created myths to explain our origins. Grounded not in fact, but in belief, the thousands of different creation myths all share one common thread…. The Supernatural.
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The Origin of Life. (Turn UP your Volume.)
Since the dawn of humanity, civilizations have created myths to explain our origins.
Grounded not in fact, but in belief, the thousands of different creation myths all share one common thread…
No human mind could conceive of a means of life originating through purely natural processes.
Life only appears to come from life, therefore a natural origin was out of the question.
Before we continue let’s get one thing straight.
The origin of life, Abiogenesis, has NOTHING to do with the Theory of Evolution.
Scientific theories are designed to explain a SPECIFIC set of facts.
You would not claim the theory of gravity is wrong because it doesn’t explain germs. (that’s what Germ Theory is for)
Claiming evolution is wrong because it doesn’t explain the origin of life, is like claiming an umbrella doesn’t work because it doesn’t predict the paths of hurricanes.
Abiogenesis explains the origin of life… Evolution explains how life changes once it already exists.
Creationists have made a number of arguments why they think abiogenesis is wrong. Here are the top 4.
Creationist Arguments Against Abiogenesis: Argument 1 Spontaneous generation of complex organisms is impossible.
Spontaneous generation was actually scientifically tested and proven false in 1668 by Francesco Redi…
…and in 1859 by Louis Pasteur… …and has never been claimed by scientists since.…
Creationist Arguments Against Abiogenesis: Argument 2 The probability of a single cell forming by chance is 1 in 1050,000.
Disregarding the fact that these numbers are made up… …all it shows is that early life could not have been as complex as modern cells.
Creationist Arguments Against Abiogenesis: Argument 3 Taken from Ben Stein.
“Life was created by lightning striking a mud puddle” And that’s just silly.
Actually, there is only one book that claims life was formed from dirt.
Creationist Arguments Against Abiogenesis: Argument 4 The 1953 Miller-Urey experiment did not create life.
This is like claiming it’s impossible to fly to the moon simply because the Wright brothers didn’t.
The early earth had orders of magnitude more: Time, Space, Complex Chemistry, & Environmental Conditions
This video is a summary of work by Dr. Szostak Professor at Harvard Medical School
We know from experiments and observations made in the fields of Astronomy, Chemistry, Geology, and Meteorology that…
…the early pre-biotic earth was filled with organic molecules, the building blocks of life.
We also know from the creationist arguments discussed earlier, that early life must have been extremely simple… X
…meaning NO complex protein machinery. X
Modern cells separate themselves from the environment with a lipid bilayer.
The problem with modern phospholipids is they are too good at what they do. They form a nearly impenetrable barrier.
Modern cells must use proteins to move molecules across their surface.
The pre-biotic environment contained many simple fatty acids.
Under a range of pH they SPONTANEOUSLY form stable vesicles.
And they are permeable to small organic molecules… …meaning no complex proteins are required to get stuff in.
When a vesicle encounters free fatty acids in solution, it will incorporate them. Eating and growth are driven purely by thermodynamics.
When a vesicle grows it adopts a tubular branched shape… Surface area grows faster than volume.
…which is easily divided by mechanical forces (waves, currents, rocks…)
During mechanical division, none of the contents of the vesicle are lost.
So far, with naturally occurring simple fatty acids, we have a vesicle that can spontaneously grow and divide.
So what about the genetic material.
Again, modern nucleotides are too stable and require complex protein machinery to replicate.
The pre-biotic environment contained hundreds of types of different nucleotides (not just DNA and RNA). (All it took was 1 to self polymerize.)
Recent experiments have shown that some of these are capable of spontaneous polymerization, such as Phosphoramidate DNA.