From: wolverine01@charter.net   
      
   On 11/21/2024 1:54 PM, sticks wrote:   
   >   
   > So these are some of the cosmological and physics problems the   
   > naturalist encounters.  If anyone is interested, I'd move on to some   
   > more easily and hands on evidence in the realm of chemistry and biology   
   > that bring us further into our present timeline.   
      
   The issue of understanding time I referenced earlier becomes relevant in   
   the next phase of the timeline, but for now I want to skip over it and   
   move to things a little easier to grasp.  I'll move from the origin of   
   the universe to the origin of life.  I’ll start at the building block of   
   everything: the cell.  A cell is the smallest component that can be   
   considered a living entity. Cells are made of proteins, which in turn   
   are made of amino acids.  Sounds simple enough right?  Not so fast.  We   
   can look at what scientists in Darwin’s day understood about cellular   
   structure, look at what we know now, and see if they got things right or   
   not.  If you're unaware, it should be noted that Darwin’s theory of   
   evolution does not specifically address how the first forms of life   
   originated, but only how he suspected they evolved ultimately ending in   
   something like us.  Once his work was published, a thought process known   
   as “Darwinian logic” took hold and gave the naturalist tools to push   
   their design free creation paradigm.  It is curious that the scientific   
   world holds so much value in a theory that explains how species evolve,   
   yet completely ignores the processes required for life to begin in the   
   first place.  To this day, Darwinian disciples try and avoid the   
   problems this line of science has to get past.  To them, somehow it just   
   happened.   
      
   Darwin in his day actually could see individual cells with microscopes   
   available to him at the time.  Not as good as today, but they were good   
   enough for him to understand cells were complex in some ways.  He felt   
   the cell somehow contained hereditary information that allowed it to   
   reproduce and called it a Gemmule.   
      
   He had to do this because if that first cell could not replicate itself,   
   life would have been over as soon as it had begun.  This in fact is an   
   obvious truth.  We now know there was no such thing as a Gemmule, but at   
   least we know he must have understood the cell was more complicated than   
   the view of his contemporaries and proponents who called it “a   
   microscopic lump of jelly-like substance.”  I think he understood he   
   would have to leave the origin of the first life form to real scientists   
   and just stick to his speculation on species and their evolution.   
      
   So what exactly do naturalists now think a cell is, and specifically how   
   is a cell created?  Currently, the argument is the atmosphere of Earth   
   around 4 billion years ago, with little or no oxygen and high in   
   methane, in the presence of water, and with either sunlight or an   
   electrical discharge like lightning, lead to the spontaneous formation   
   of organic molecules.  The molecules they speak of were amino acids.   
   Amino Acids are what make proteins, which are essentially long chains of   
   amino acids.  The smallest known protein is glutathione with 3 amino   
   acids, and the largest know is titin, which has 34,350 amino acids!  The   
   average size for humans is 480.   Every protein has its sequence of   
   amino acids, and the sequence is what makes the protein take different   
   shapes which allows them to perform different functions in the body.  So   
   all you need is a little primordial atmosphere, water, and a little   
   sunlight or lightning and you get life!  Now you must remember that   
   amino acids and proteins are considered organic molecules, but in no way   
   can be considered to be either “alive”, or “life” on their own.  Amino   
   acids are even found in the void of space!  It takes an incredibly   
   difficult process of joining the amino acids into proteins, and then   
   folding the proteins in specific ways to get even one cell!   
      
   Steve Laufman is a systems Engineer who teamed up with physician Howard   
   Glicksman to write "Your Designed Body."  This pairing of authors is   
   special because their work investigates from a medical standpoint of   
   just what the different parts of the body do, but combines it with an   
   engineering analysis of just what is required to actually build these   
   systems and the problems and solutions the body somehow has achieved.   
   It is an incredibly eye opening read!   
      
   They go on to explain that when the specific order of a string of amino   
   acids is just right, it enables the protein to fold, though sometimes it   
   needs help to do so from another protein called a chaperone.  The   
   special folds and shape determine the functions the particular protein   
   can perform.  However, they write that Douglas Axe finds that “It’s been   
   shown experimentally that functional protein shapes are extremely rare   
   among the set of all possible amino acid sequences. The overwhelming   
   majority of possible sequences will not fold into a stable protein   
   shape, and therefore are unlikely to provide a useful function.  And, of   
   all the sequences that do fold into a stable shape, only a very few will   
   perform a task that’s useful to a given organism.”   
      
   For how truly mind blowing his words on exactly how rare this is, Axe’s   
   experiments showed that, for every DNA sequence that generates a   
   relatively short (150 amino acid) functional protein fold, there are   
   about 10^77 combinations of the same length that will not yield a   
   stable, useful protein. This means that it would take more than the   
   probabilistic resources of the universe to randomly find even a single   
   useful protein of moderate length. Douglas Axe, “Estimating the   
   Prevalence of Protein Sequences Adopting Functional Enzyme Folds,”   
   Journal of Molecular Biology 341 (2004): 1295–1315. For perspective,   
   there are an estimated 10^78 atoms in the entire universe, spread across   
   hundreds of billions of galaxies. Several other studies have   
   corroborated Axe’s numbers using different methods. See, for example,   
   Sean V. Taylor et al., “Searching Sequence Space for Protein Catalysts,”   
   PNAS USA 98 (2001): 10596–10601.”   
      
   Joseph Mastropaolo, PH.D. in his article Evolution is Biologically   
   Impossible, also gets right to the difficulty of assembling amino acids   
   and proteins, essentially proclaiming it an impossibility.  “The trail   
   of the first cell therefore leads us to the microbiological geometry of   
   amino acids and a search for the probability of creating a protein by   
   mindless chance as specified by evolution. Hubert Yockey published a   
   monograph on the microbiology, information theory, and mathematics   
      
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   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)