[_ Old Earth _] How simple can life be?

[freeway]

In Darwin’s day, many people swallowed the theory of spontaneous generationâ€â€that life arose from non-living matter. It was somewhat easier to believe because the cell’s structure was almost unknown. Ernst Haeckel, Darwin’s popularizer in Germany, claimed that a cell was a ‘simple lump of albuminous combination of carbon.’1 (Haeckel was also a notorious fraudâ€â€he forged embryonic diagrams to bolster the erroneous idea that the embryo’s development recapitulated (re-traced) its alleged evolutionary ancestry)2

But modern science has discovered vast quantities of complex, specific information in even the simplest self-reproducing organism. Mycoplasma genitalium has the smallest known genome of any free-living organism, containing 482 genes comprising 580,000 bases.3 Of course, these genes are only functional with pre-existing translational and replicating machinery, a cell membrane, etc. But Mycoplasma can only survive by parasitizing more complex organisms, which provide many of the nutrients it cannot manufacture for itself. So evolutionists must posit a more complex first living organism with even more genes.

More recently, Eugene Koonin and others tried to calculate the bare minimum required for a living cell, and came up with a result of 256 genes. But they were doubtful whether such a hypothetical bug could survive, because such an organism could barely repair DNA damage, could no longer fine-tune the ability of its remaining genes, would lack the ability to digest complex compounds, and would need a comprehensive supply of organic nutrients in its environment.4

Yet even this ‘simple’ organism has far too much information to be expected from time and chance, without natural selection. The information theorist Hubert Yockey calculated that given a pool of pure, activated biological amino acids, the total amount of information which could be produced, even allowing 109 years as evolutionists posit, would be only a single small polypeptide 49 amino acid residues long.5 This is about 1/8 the size (therefore information content) of a typical protein, yet the hypothetical simple cell above needs at least 256 proteins. And Yockey’s estimate generously presupposes that the many chemical hurdles can be overcome, which is a huge assumption, as shown by many creationist writers.6

NB: natural selection cannot help, as this requires self-replicating entitiesâ€â€therefore it cannot explain their origin.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/196.asp

I was going to stick this over in the ID post by Geth, but though it would be a good start for another thread... looking at this information and what it take for a cell to live, and yet we are to believe that this happens millions and billions of times in the past to evolve into all the diversity of life we now see.. does a cell simply start piecing itself together and after millions of trials and error finally get it done.. no, this is where the creator comes into play... not evolution, if we where waiting on evolution the earth would still be void of any life... 8-) 8-)

 

[Barbarian]

So it boils down to "is there any evidence for the idea that life was brought forth by the earth and waters?"

Turns out, there is. We now know that amino acids and even peptides (short proteins) can form by abiotic processes. So that's one half of the problem.

What about the other half? That would require self-catalyzing nucleic acids. Seems like a insuperable barrier, right?

Well, there is now known self-catalyzing RNA. But there's another problem:

This would be important in a world without proteins to help keep strands from getting tangled during replication. Unfortunately, scientists have not yet discovered how the six-member ring would have been synthesized on early Earth.

The second alternative to RNA is a molecule that completely forgoes having a sugar at all. Instead of a sugar-phosphate backbone, peptide nucleic acid (PNA) relies on a protein-like backbone coupled with nucleic acid bases for side chains. Just as RNA and pRNA, peptide nucleic acids can engage in complementary base pairing. PNA was designed using computer-assisted model building; therefore it is still unclear exactly whether or not a PNA polymer could be formed. If successfully accomplished within the lab setting, PNA might become the new focus for origins of life researchers.

However, recently...

Miller, S. L., and Robertson, M. P. "An Efficient Prebiotic Synthesis of Cytosine and Uracil," Nature, 375, 772 (1995).

Lots of work remains. Science may never know for sure. But increasingly, it looks like God was right when He says that the earth brought forth living things.

He should know.