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This is a response to PPSimmons’ video ‘The Devastation of Evolution - Chirality (Evolution
is a "Catastrophic Failure").’ In it you read, essentially verbatim, from
an article by a PhD creationist chemist. I’ll get on to your source later, but since you
seem to have accepted his claims at face value and with no effort to confirm them in any
way, you’ve essentially taken ownership of them. So, for the purpose of this video,
I’ll be addressing you directly and showing you why you shouldn’t always unquestioningly
believe everything that you read. “The evolutionary community became very
excited because they viewed the work of Stanley Miller and Harold Urey as scientific proof
that life could have been formed from chemicals. At the end of the experiment the products
were found to contain a few amino acids. Since amino acids are the individual links of long-chain
polymers called proteins, and proteins are important in our bodies, newspapers quickly
reported there was laboratory evidence that now proved that life came from chemicals.”
Firstly, it makes no difference what the newspapers said about the results of this experiment
any more than what sneaky, dishonest and dishonorable creationists did. Since newspapers are in
the business of sensationalism while creationists are in the business of lying, wouldn’t it
have made more sense to look into what scientists, who are in the business of doing science,
had to say on the matter? If you had, then you might have found out
that the only thing that the experiment proved was that it is possible to generate more complex
organic molecules from simpler precursors using natural processes and without invoking
magic or invisible pixies. “But there is a major problem. Life was
never formed in that experiment. The product was amino acids, which are the normal everyday
chemicals that do not live. Even unto this day there is no process that has ever converted
amino acids into a life form. But this fact does not stop evolutionists from claiming
that this experiment is proof that life came from chemicals.”
Once again you repeat your downright lie that rationalists claim that the Miller-Urey experiment
is proof that life arose via chemical processes. No scientist claims that this experiment proves
this – it merely demonstrates that one of the many steps required for the process of
abiogenesis is possible. Similarly, the fact that you seem to think
that the fact that a primitive slime didn’t ooze out of that flask, or any other, is any
kind of argument that abiogenesis is impossible demonstrates that you are either amazingly
ignorant or willing to say anything to defend your ludicrous assertions, no matter how stupid
it is. “Evolutionists know that amino acids do
not live, but they call this proof anyway because they claim that amino acids are the
building blocks of life.” You repeat you filthy lie for a third time.
I’d be really interested in seeing the exception clause for your seventh commandment, because
I’m not aware that there is one. Is it OK to deceive if it is in the name of your baby
Jesus? If not, then I’d be getting myself a pair of asbestos underpants if I were you.
In addition, “the building blocks of life” is a layman’s term used to describe the
biochemical organization of living systems to schoolchildren, and for you to use it to
play this banal little word game in the hope that it will pass for an argument is another
testament to your monumental dishonesty. Can you hear your baby Jesus crying yet?
“Just as there had to be an assembler to make a moving vehicle from those auto parts,
there had to be an assembler of those amino acids to make the proteins so that life could
exist in our bodies.” The fact that car parts cannot diffuse through
solution to find each other and cannot react with each other to form higher levels of order,
while amino acids and peptides can seems to have escaped your notice.
And so does the fact that we’ve seen cars being designed and built and therefore know
that they are designed and built, but have never seen an all-powerful Djinn stitching
together amino acids into proteins. Just because you reworded the tired old watchmaker
argument doesn’t mean that your analogy is as flawed as Kent Hovind’s understanding
of the US tax code. “When two molecules appear identical and
their structures differ only by being mirror images of each other, these molecules are
said to have chirality. In our body every single amino acid of every protein is found
with the same left-handed chirality. Although Miller and Urey formed amino acids in their
experiments, all the amino acids that formed lacked chirality. It is a scientifically verifiable
fact that a random chance process which forms a chiral product can only be a 50:50 mixture
of the two optical isomers. There are no exceptions. The fact that chirality was missing in those
amino acids is not just a problem to be debated, it points to a catastrophic failure that life
cannot come from chemicals by natural processes.” The only failure in this clip was your inability
or unwillingness to understand basic chemistry. Before I explain why, though, I’d like to
point something out. When you said “all the amino acids that
formed lacked chirality” I wasn’t sure whether you were using your mouth or your
*** sphincter. By the definition of the word and its use by chemists everywhere, all the
amino acids (except glycine) were chiral molecules because they potentially could exist as more
than one stereochemical isoform. What you meant to say was that there was no
bias towards any given isomer and that the amino acids formed a raecemic mixture where
all enantiomers were present at equal concentration. Now, this might seem pedantic, but I mention
it for a good reason. If your chemist is such an expert, then why
is he so sloppy with his language? You may reply, “Well, he was merely simplifying
his terms for a lay audience,” in which case I would ask why you are wasting your
time and embarrassing yourself in making this pathetic video based on a single article aimed
at non-scientists instead of doing some proper research and finding out the real facts for
yourself. If you had done that, you may have found out
that while random reaction indeed cannot form specific optical isomers, no scientist claims
that the enantiomeric specificity of life occurred by a random process. Here is an excellent
review that describes several possible mechanisms for the development of enantiomeric excesses,
including experimental data to support them. To be unaware of this kind of work strongly
suggests that your chemist is either woefully stupid or just another disingenuous, mendacious
creationist prick. “Chirality is not just a major problem for
evolution - it is a dilemma. A conundrum. According to evolution natural process must
explain everything over long periods of time. However the process that forms chirality cannot
be explained by natural science in any amount of time.”
Nooooo – the process that forms chirality cannot be explained by your idiot chemist
in any amount of time. As I already showed you, real scientists have no problem in developing
multiple possible and plausible explanations and producing real evidence to support them.
Also, why do you suddenly claim that this is an issue for evolution? You must know from
the countless times this particular piece of misinformation has been refuted that the
subject of your video is abiogenesis and that evolution only explains the mechanisms for
the diversification of pre-existing life forms. They are not the same thing.
I can only assume that creationists think that they can undermine the credibility of
one of the most successful and powerful theories in the whole of science by conflating it with
a field of study that is still in its relative infancy.
That is just downright dishonest and you should be ashamed at yourself.
“When we show evolutionists that the laws of natural science cannot explain the existence
of chirality, they will say that the process happened a long time ago by some unknown method
that they cannot explain. Really? Now who’s relying on a supernatural explanation? Although
they would never call it divine intervention, they certainly are relying on faith and not
on scientific facts.” I’ve already shown you that scientists have
multiple explanations for the development of stereospecificity, so this is just another
blatant lie. Now, I admit that we don’t, and maybe never will know exactly which of
these processes contributed to the development of life here on earth, but that’s not the
point. The point is that the mere fact that we’ve
discovered them means that there is no need to invoke your deity, or anyone else’s for
this aspect of origin of life. Rationalists don’t rely on supernatural explanations
because we have no reason to believe that anything supernatural exists, or that if it
does that it has any influence in the real world. Instead, we replace the dark nooks
and crannies in our knowledge that you fill with your god with the words “I don’t
know” and then work towards illuminating them with concrete and measurable facts and
explanations rooted in reality. And with each new insight, with each new explanation
of the previously unknown, those recesses grow a just a little dimmer and slowly fade
away, until one day there’ll be nowhere left for gods to hide and they’ll slowly
just, disappear. “DNA is not a stable chemical molecule,
and without a repair mechanism it would easily deteriorate via chemical oxidation and other
processes. There is no mechanism to explain how DNA could exist for millions of years
while the repair mechanism evolved.” I’m not sure what this has to do with chirality,
so I’m assuming that your chemist has the same attention span as NephilimFree. He also
seems to have the same level of understanding when it comes to abiogenesis.
Early replicating polymers that could not duplicate themselves rapidly enough before
being destroyed would have been selected out of the pool of competing molecules while the
more rapid dividers survived. Concurrently, slow dividers bearing structural motifs that
enhanced their chemical and physical stability to the point where their replication rate
was not a rate limiting step to survival would also be selected for survival.
These molecules were under very different selection pressures in the absence of repair
mechanisms, but this doesn’t mean that they couldn’t have survived without them. The
much later appearance of repair mechanisms would merely have served to lift some of the
selective constraints on these systems, allowing to develop in new directions, but would not
necessarily been essential to their survival. Comparing modern DNA, which is no longer adapted
to survival in harsh environments, to these early molecules does nothing other than highlight
your colossal ignorance. “Evolution can give you a theory that might
on the surface seem possible. But when true science gets involved and scientists start
asking questions, the problems and false logic of the theory become apparent. This is why
evolution hopes that you don’t know real chemistry.”
This statement only works when the “true scientists” both know what they are talking
about and are interested only in uncovering the true nature of reality instead of desperately
trying to affirm their primitive beliefs regardless of the cost.
With that, let’s take a closer look at the article you’ve been reading and at your
alleged “expert.” “Now I wish that I could say that the preceding
narrative was mine, but it wasn’t. Every single word came from a published article
on chirality. Who was its author? Dr. Charles McCombs, a PhD organic chemist, an expert
in the methods of scientific investigation, and a PhD scientist who has twenty chemical
patents. He knows his stuff about chemicals. If you don’t like this video, argue with
the PhD chemist.” Firstly, let’s take a look at this “published
article”, shall we. Which scientific journal, did it appear in? Was it Nature, or maybe
Science. No? Something a little more modest, perhaps. Maybe the Journal of Biological Chemistry?
Actually no. Following your link leads us straight to that the webshite of the Institute
of Creation Research. Funny that, but I suppose I should have expected nothing less.
So PP. You don’t mind if I call you PP, do you? Why do you think, that your friend
didn’t publish this in a real, peer-reviewed scientific journal? Could it be because it
would have had to have been reviewed by real scientists? Could it be that once they read
this putrid piece of filthy dishonesty they would have rejected it as soon as they stopped
laughing? And as for your “scientist”, your claim
that he is an expert in the methods of scientific investigation are blown out of the water by
the mere fact that he has either not read any of the literature in the area he is writing
about or is simply dishonestly ignoring it to make the point he wants to make regardless
of the evidence that stands against it. Since he seems to have spent his entire career
at the Eastman Chemical Company, it seems highly unlikely that he is an expert on the
origins of life., and while this doesn’t at all disqualify him from writing on the
subject, he should have felt it even more incumbent upon him to do some background reading
before spilling his *** across the page. It doesn’t matter if you have 20 years of
experience or twenty thousand: if you’re going to write about science, you have a duty
to critically read, assess and cite the relevant work and not just ignore it as though it doesn’t
exist. These aren’t the actions of an expert scientist, but of a despicable charlatan.
So I suppose that it really shouldn’t come as a surprise that you liked his article.
Should it? �