The myth that Lipids formed in nature and produced the first life
If you pour a little oil in water and shake it up, the oil separates into little round balls called coacervates. Chemists call oils and fats “lipids.” In the days when microscopes were still too crude to give much idea of the complexity of cells, some people thought that these tiny bubbles of fat must have evolved into cells. Here is an example:
“When mixed with water, certain lipids will form a bubble that is called a coacervate (koh AS uhr vayt) which has a double-layered membrane much like the lipid bilayer of the cell membrane.… The early oceans probably contained numerous small lipid coacervates, each one forming and then dispersing. Over millions of years, coacervates that could survive longer by taking in molecules and energy from their surroundings would have become more common than the here-today-gone-tomorrow kind. When a means arose to transfer this ability to “offspring” coacervates, probably through self-replicating RNA, life had begun.” {Holt, Annotated Teacher’s Edition, Biology, Visualizing Life, 1998, p. 194} This simplistic little made up story is contrary to the evidence!
Both lipids and RNA are too complex to form in nature, so the statement that both formed at the same time, and in the same place with the RNA inside a lipid membrane is also false. Here is a quote by Cairns-Smith, one of the most prominent first life researchers which explains that lipids, and the nucleotides which make up RNA are only formed in the miniature factories of already living cells:
"Though a few organic substances - for instance certain simple amino acids - can form fairly easily under prebiotic conditions, other biochemical building blocks such as nucleotides and lipids, require for their synthesis a ‘real factory.’ … The synthesis of these substances involves a series of reactions, each reaction following the previous one in utmost accuracy." {Iris Fry, The Emergence of Life on Earth, 2000, p. 126, 176-177; Quoting Cairns-Smith, Seven Clues to the Origin of Life, 1985, p. 126.}
Notice that lipids are not produced in nature except by already living cells. Therefore, the story that lipid coacervates produced or helped produce the first cell is simply not true. Since this also applies to nucleotides, the building blocks of RNA, the story in Biology, Visualizing Life is false in this point also. But millions read textbooks, and who reads an origin of life researcher like Cairns-Smith? Few if any of the kids and teachers that you know will ever discover the truth unless you give them copies of this booklet.
There was another false statement in the schoolbook quote. Did you catch it?
“Over millions of years, coacervates that could survive longer by taking in molecules and energy from their surroundings would have become more common than the here-today-gone-tomorrow kind.”
Is this true? Does natural selection work on chemicals like lipids? No, it works on living things that can keep track of information, reproduce, and pass the information on to their offspring. { James P. Ferris, “From Building Blocks to the Polymers of Life,” in Life’s Origin, Editor: JW Schopf, 2002, p.136} While lipid coacervates did not exist till living things made them, they have been around for a considerable period of time, and have not evolved as claimed.
Though there was no source of lipids before real cells were present to make them, lipids would still have been vital to a first cell because cell membranes are made of lipids. Whatever cell part an atheist wants to believe came first, if it did not have a functioning membrane surrounding it, the other parts would just have just been so much loose goo dissolving into the ocean. The proposed membrane, however, must do much more than keep the cell’s parts together. If a cell is to live, its membrane must also let in nourishment while keeping out unwanted materials and expelling wastes. Lipids can’t do all this alone, so real cell membranes also contain pumps and channels which are made of proteins. {Bruce Alberts, etc. Essential Cell Biology, An Introduction to the Molecular Biology of the Cell, 1998, p. 347.}


The myth that proteins formed in nature, and produced life
Stanley Miller showed in his famous experiment in 1953 that amino acids could be formed under conditions that might have occurred in nature. Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins which are the main ingredients of living things, so After Miller’s experiment, false but convincing stories were made up about amino acids produced in nature linking to form proteins and combining with DNA to form living things. In nature, proteins are only produced by already living cells, never by amino acids spontaneously linking together. Tied to this story about proteins, Miller’s experiment became the most widely publicized origin of life experiment of all time, even though in nature, proteins are only made by already living cells.
Before Miller, Oparin had worked with “proteinoids,” which also received a lot of hype, but the amino acids in proteins are hooked together one behind the next, like cars in a train, or pearls on a string, while Oparin’s proteinoids were small spheres which will not work in living things
Leslie Orgel is one of the foremost origin of life scientists today. He contributed a chapter, “The Origin of Biological Information” to the book, Life’s Origin. His chapter explains nothing about what one would expect after reading the title, but what he says about the materials needed to produce cells is very revealing. Orgel says organic chemists should have invented the computer scientist’s motto, “Garbage in, garbage out,” because if they have garbage rather than a pure compound going into an experiment, garbage is what will come out. While school text books used Miller’s famous experiment to convince students that chemicals built up and became life, Orgel uses the same experiment to show that what Miller got was garbage: “For example, Miller’s classic experiment (discussed in chapter 3) produces tar along with a percent or two of a complex mixture of racemic amino acids … .” {Leslie E. Orgel, “The Origin of Biological Information,” from the book Life’s Origin, edited by J. William Shopf, 2002, p. 140.}
In this short explanation, Orgel says three things:
• Miller’s experiment, the most famous of all origin of life experiments, produced all garbage except for a percent or two of the desired amino acids which are the building blocks of proteins, the main ingredients of cells.
• The amino acids that made up that percent or two were “Racemic,” which means mixed right and left handed. Proteins will not work in cells unless all their amino acids are left handed, but amino acids made in nature or in experiments that simulate nature are half left, and half right-handed, and will not work in proteins. Even if there had been a way to produce all left-handed amino acids, they gradually break down to half and half. {See my book How Life Began, p. 15-16 for explanation and documentation.} Half and half won’t work, but neither will 90% left handed amino acids, or 99%. Since only pure left-handed amino acids will work in living things, {Life’s Origin, p. 73, 151} the percent or two of amino acids that were also produced were nicer garbage, but still garbage that would not work in living cells.
Orgel points these things out to help us understand that unless there is a way that nature can produce a pure enough form of the building blocks of protein to be useful, it is hard to see how any proteins produced could be used in a cell. He illustrates with amino acids to spotlight the problem of producing functional RNA which is almost infinitely more difficult. He asks: “How could chemistry on the primitive Earth proceed in such a messy way, producing information rich living cells, those exquisitely designed chemical factories, from such unpromising starting materials? This is the central and as yet largely unanswered question facing investigators on the origin of life.” {Editor: JW Schopf, Life’s Origin, Leslie E. Orgel, 2002, p. 140.} Orgel goes on to look at attempts that have been made to solve the problem of getting anything that could possibly serve to form cells, but concludes the chapter lamenting the very large gap that separates the huge molecules of RNA from the small molecules of non living things.{Life’s Origin, Leslie E. Orgel, “The Origin of Biological Information” 2002, p. 154.}
Another problem is that without the little factory of the living cell, amino acids will not link together one after another to form proteins. Even when scientists buy all left-handed amino acids at a chemical supply house and make a perfect organic broth, no proteins are produced. Even some school books now admit:
"Scientists have not been able to cause amino acids dissolved in water to join together to form proteins. The energy-requiring chemical reactions that join amino acids are reversible and do not occur spontaneously in water. However, most scientists no longer argue that the first proteins assembled spontaneously. Instead, they now tell us that the initial macromolecules were composed of RNA, and that RNA later catalyzed the formation of proteins."{George B. Johnson, Peter H. Raven, Biology, Principles & Explorations, Holt, Rinhehart and Winston, 1996 p. 235}


The myth that the first living cell was started by RNA.
Andrew Knoll, a professor at Harvard explains an obstacle to the claim that RNA was the material from which life was formed: No RNA or its building blocks were available:
“Worst of all, even if we could produce the right components, combining them to form nucleotides, the building blocks of nucleic acids, is daunting. To date, no one has figured out how to do it.”
Knoll is admitting here that no one can yet make the nucleotides which are the building blocks of RNA and DNA. Even if a scientist had all the right parts to start out with he could not put them together to make even the nucleotide building blocks of RNA, let alone RNA itself.
Knoll’s quote continues: “There is still another difficulty. Nucleotides are chiral molecules, which is to say that they come in two forms which are mirror images of each other—like your hands. RNA can be built from right-handed or left-handed molecules, but mixed chains won’t grow. How then could RNA—which in cells consists exclusively of right handed nucleotides—have emerged from a fifty-fifty mixture of left- and right-handed building blocks? Again, no one knows.
The problems are so difficult that many researchers have given up on the idea that RNA was the primordial molecule of life.” {Andrew H. Knoll, Life on a Young Earth, 2003, p. 79.}
Others, instead of joining those who have given up on RNA, and searching for a simpler molecule on which life might have been built, claim that RNA may have formed on some clay which served as a template on which RNA was built. They cite experiments which have shown that when fresh building blocks of RNA (nucleotides) are placed on clay daily, some will connect together to form short strings. {Editor: JW Schopf, Life’s Origin, James P. Ferris, “From Building Blocks to the Polymers of Life,” 2002, p. 123.} Finding a scientist who would have been able to place fresh nucleotides on the clay daily before there were any living cells to produce the nucleotides may have been a bit of a problem on the primordial earth, because:
• Scientists can’t make nucleotides in the laboratory.
• In nature nucleotides are never produced except by living cells.
• If they did occur, they would not work because they would be mixed, right and left-handed. {Editor JW Schopf: Life’s Origin, Stanley L. Miller, and Antonio Lazcano, “Formation of the Building Blocks of Life,” 2002, p.98-100.}
Many biology books strip out these facts, leaving the impression that RNA forms in nature.
Some wander far from the truth and claim that experiments like that of Stanley Miller produced nucleotides along with the amino acids. {For example see: Holt, Annotated Teacher’s Edition, Biology, Visualizing Life, 1998, p. 192} One textbook I was reading recently told the innocent students a much worse whopper: “… RNA molecules can form spontaneously in water…” {George B. Johnson, Peter H. Raven, Biology, Principles & Explorations, Holt, Rinhehart and Winston, 1998 p. 230} Many highly intelligent origin of life researchers have dedicated much of their lives to vain attempts to make RNA. They must hate it when people like me compare their inability to make RNA to the far fetched claims in the textbooks that water, soup or clay can make make it.
Why do these textbooks use false statements to convince students that life started without a Creator? I don’t believe for a minute that the authors would falsify evidence if they had real evidence they could use instead. I believe they feel so compelled to convince students that that life began without the Creator that when they can’t do it with truth, they turn to other means. It makes me sad to see atheists use my tax dollars to spread their religion in public school books. It disturbs me even more when they deceive innocent kids with false statements like these. It makes me sadder still that our government permits them to establish atheism as the religion of the public schools. Students and their teachers have no idea that there is no evidence at all to back up the atheistic statements about the origin of life. They trust their textbooks and have no easy way to check up on them — unless you give them a copy of this booklet! It may be the only way you and I have to break the stranglehold of atheism on our schools.
To be fair I must admit that some authors did not know the statements they were writing were false. They were so convinced by other public school textbooks that RNA had formed in nature that they deduced a logical way in which it must have happened: The nucleotide building blocks formed in nature first, and then the RNA. After the idea had found its way into older biology books, {For example, Cecie Starr, Ralph Taggart, Biology, the Unity and Diversity of Life, 1989 p. 572-573} it was copied into newer books.{Holt, Annotated Teacher’s Edition, Biology, Visualizing Life, 1998, p. 192.}
Science textbooks should present evidence; not what may seem logical, or what some older schoolbook said. Fry, a philosopher and historian of science, instead of starting from a premise followed by logic, studied the work of all the most important first life researchers who have been trying to find a naturalistic method by which life could have started. She shows the result of their research:
"… other biochemical building blocks such as nucleotides and lipids, require for their synthesis a ‘real factory.’ … The synthesis of these substances involves a series of reactions, each reaction following the previous one in utmost accuracy." {Iris Fry, The Emergence of Life on Earth, 2000, p. 126, 176-177.}
Lipids and the nucleotide building blocks of RNA are only made by the real factories found in cells.
The authors of Rare Earth engage in a bit of atheistic speculation about life in space, but they tell the truth about RNA production:
“The abiotic synthesis of RNA remains the most enigmatic step in the evolution of the first life, for no one has yet succeeded in creating RNA” {Peter D. Ward, Donald Brownlee, Rare Earth, Why complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe, 2000, p. 65, see also 62-66}
“Some of the steps leading to the synthesis of DNA and RNA can be duplicated in the laboratory, others cannot. … The problem is that complex molecules such as DNA (and RNA) cannot simply be assembled in a glass jar by combining various chemicals. Such organic molecules also tend to break down when heated ….” {Rare Earth, p. 63, see also The RNA World, second edition, 1999, p. 68, 159, } I have looked in vain for such admissions in high school biology books which tend to skip all such evidence to the contrary, and claim or imply that RNA formed from chemicals in ways that first life researchers have found over and over again do not work.
Many older people who were first convinced by textbook claims that life started from lipid coacervates, were later convinced that life came from proteins. Now they are even more convinced that it came from RNA. At each stage, they had faith that whatever they had been led to believe was true science. Their faith, however, was never based on scientific evidence, but on the false claims of one made up story after another. Solid evidence that God created life is hard to come by because it is consistently censored out of the textbooks.
After textbooks spin the story that a primitive RNA had formed, they tell what it must have been like. Since it did not yet have the help of a cell, they deduce that it had to be able to do some things modern RNA does not do, and claim that it self replicated, catalyzed the formation of proteins, and later formed DNA.
Catalysts make chemical reactions happen that otherwise would not happen or would be millions of times slower. The catalytic ability of modern RNA, is very limited, and it certainly can’t make proteins, {The RNA World, second edition, 1999, p. 166-171 } but if it could, how could it know to make all the specific proteins needed for the first cell? Why make the hard ones? Why would it not just keep catalyzing more copies of one easy protein? Are we to believe that RNA could plan ahead?
A greater problem is, if RNA were successful at making a working first cell, and then was perfected at what it did by natural selection, why would natural selection throw out a system that was working to install another system even if that system had the potential to eventually become even better? Khomenko offers an analogy: If a man stands on top of a hill and wants to get any higher, he has first to come down into a valley and then climb a higher hill. {TJ 189(1) 2002, p. 79-80} Natural selection can not select valleys just because there are higher hills on the other side of them. In this case, unless one pretends that natural selection has Godlike abilities, it would have no idea which all left handed proteins would be needed or how to make them.
In addition, each protein will connect and function in only one place in its cell, and will not work unless it receives the exact information that will send it to that place. Dr. Guenter Blobel received a nobel prize for discovering the address tags which send each protein to the one place in the cell where it will work. {5 Tom A. Rapoport of Harvard Medical School, Science News, 10/16/99, Vol. 156 Issue 16, p 246. See also Britannica Biography Collection, Guenter Blobel.}
While a protein is on the way to the only spot where it will fit and connect with the proteins around it, it must fold to fit perfectly with the other proteins which will be its neighbors. Unless each protein is properly addressed and folded, it is not only useless, but it will usually cause a genetic disease. IBM is building the world’s most powerful super computer so scientists can understand how cells fold each protein into the unique shape which will let them fit with the surrounding proteins.
IBM writes: “The scientific community considers protein folding one of the most significant ‘grand challenges’ — a fundamental problem in science or engineering that has broad economic and scientific impact and whose solution can be advanced only by applying high-performance computing technologies.
Proteins control all cellular processes in the human body. Comprising strings of amino acids that are joined like links of a chain, a protein folds into a highly complex, three-dimensional shape that determines its function. Any change in shape dramatically alters the function of a protein, and even the slightest change in the folding process can turn a desirable protein into a disease.” {http://www.research.ibm.com/bluegene/press_release.html}
The fact that each protein receives information which sends it to the only spot where it can connect and that on the way it folds to fit that spot is evidence: not evidence for a series of lucky accidents, but that the system was set up by an intelligent Creator.
The plot thickens: For a cell to live, it is not enough for its proteins to be sent to the right places and folded correctly on the way, the cell must also maintain the right amount of each protein. This requires an elaborate control system that turns on and off every activity of the cell at the right time. {Susan Aldridge, The Thread of Life, The story of genes and genetic engineering, Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 47-53.} If RNA produced proteins and did not stop making even one of them at the proper moment, it would jam the cell so full, that it would kill the cell. No cell could live after it started protein production without a control system to turn the production of each and every protein on and off at the right times. If a cell could produce proteins with no control systems in place, we could expect:
• Proteins with mixed right and left handed amino acids.
• Mostly the proteins which were easiest to make.
• Proteins which would not fold properly.
• Proteins without the proper address tags.
• Any proteins at all whose production the cell was not yet programmed to turn off.
• Proteins (and other chemicals) not useful to that cell.