Origin of Life Smackdown

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Origin-of-life research got a boost with the recent publication of a massive new computer program that was designed to model early chemical evolution. At least, that’s what the headlines say. Dr C explains that things are only getting worse for the evolutionary story of how life arose and how these problems tie into the study of genetics.

Location: Pickett’s Mill Battlefield State Historic Site, Dallas, GA.

Links:

• Tan, C. and Stadler, R., 2020. The Stairway to Life: an origin-of-life reality check, available on Creation.com. Remember to add “I love Biblical Genetics” to the comment section on your order!
• Evolution’s Achilles’ Heels (book and documentary), available on Creation.com. Ditto about the comment!
• The main paper being discussed: Wolos A, et al. 2020. Synthetic connectivity, emergence, and self-regeneration in the network of prebiotic chemistry, Nature 369(6511):eaaw1955.
• Popular-level summary from MSN.com: Starr, M. 2020. A New Chemical ‘Tree of The Origins of Life’ Reveals Our Possible Molecular Evolution.
• Video: New “Allchemy” Software Helps Chart Chemical Origins of Life
• Uracil synthesis link: DeGraw, J. 1990. Synthesis and antifolate properties of 10-alkyl-5,10-dideaza analogs of methotrexate and tetrahydrofolic acid, J Med Chem 33:673–677.
• Grigg, R. 2012. Did Darwin become a Christian before he died? on Creation.com. There is also an audio version of this article available.
• Jacob’s Livestock Breeding Experiment, Biblical Genetics (episode 22) July 1, 2020.
• You can copy and paste these quotes into any search engine to find the proper reference or the larger context:
  • Letter from Darwin to Joseph Hooker in 1863: “But I have long regretted that I truckled to public opinion & used Pentateuchal term of creation, by which I really meant ‘appeared’ by some wholly unknown process.—It is mere rubbish thinking, at present, of origin of life; one might as well think of origin of matter.”
  • Darwin’s Origin of Species last page: “Authors of the highest eminence seem to be fully satisfied with the view that each species has been independently created. To my mind it accords better with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator, that the production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants of the world should have been due to secondary causes, like those determining the birth and death of the individual.”
  • Darwin’s Origin of Species last sentence: “There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
  • Darwin’s ‘warm little pond’ quote in another letter to Joseph Hooker, 1871: “But if (and oh what a big if) we could conceive in some warm little pond with all sort of ammonia and phosphoric salts,—light, heat, electricity present, that a protein compound was chemically formed, ready to undergo still more complex changes, at the present such matter would be instantly devoured, or absorbed, which would not have been the case before living creatures were formed”