"The RNA World"

The discovery in the 70s that the gasses originally existing in the primitive world atmosphere rendered amino acid synthesis impossible was a big blow to the molecular evolutionary theory. It then was understood that "primitive atmosphere experiments" of evolutionists such as Miller, Fox and Ponnamperuma were invalid. For this reason, in the 80s new evolutionist attempts were put forth. As a result, the scenario of the "RNA World" was advanced, which proposed that it was not the proteins that were formed first, but RNA molecules that contained the information for the proteins.

According to this scenario advanced by Walter Gilbert, a chemist from Harvard in 1986, billions of years ago an RNA molecule that somehow managed to self-replicate, formed by coincidence. Then this RNA molecule started to produce proteins being activated by external effects. Thereafter, it became necessary to store this information in a second molecule, and somehow the DNA molecule emerged.

CONFESSIONS FROM EVOLUTIONISTS Probabilistic calculations make it clear that complex molecules such as proteins and nucleic acids (RNA and DNA) could not ever have been formed by chance independently of each other. Yet evolutionists have to face the even greater problem that all these complex molecules have to coexist simultaneously in order for life to exist at all. Evolutionary theory is utterly confounded by this requirement. This is a point on which some leading evolutionists have been forced to confession. For instance, Stanley Miller's and Francis Crick's close associate from the University of San Diego California, reputable evolutionist Dr. Leslie Orgel says: It is extremely improbable that proteins and nucleic acids, both of which are structurally complex, arose spontaneously in the same place at the same time. Yet it also seems impossible to have one without the other. And so, at first glance, one might have to conclude that life could never, in fact, have originated by chemical means.1 The same fact is also admitted by other scientists: DNA cannot do its work, including forming more DNA, without the help of catalytic proteins, or enzymes. In short, proteins cannot form without DNA, but neither can DNA form without proteins.2 How did the Genetic Code, along with the mechanisms for its translation (ribosomes and RNAmolecules), originate? For the moment, we will have to content ourselves with a sense of wonder and awe, rather than with an answer.3 1 Leslie E. Orgel, "The Origin of Life on Earth", Scientific American, vol. 271, October 1994, p. 78 2 John Horgan, "In the Beginning", Scientific American, vol. 264, February 1991, p. 119 3 Douglas R. Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, New York, Vintage Books, 1980, p. 548

Being made up of a chain of impossibilities in each and every stage, this hardly imaginable scenario only magnified the problem and brought up many inextricable questions rather than providing any explanation for the origin of life:

1. When it is impossible to explain the coincidental formation of even one of the nucleotides making up RNA, how can it be possible for these imaginary nucleotides to form RNA by coming together in a proper sequence? Evolutionist biologist John Horgan admits the impossibility of the chance formation of RNA as follows;

As researchers continue to examine the RNA-world concept closely, more problems emerge. How did RNA arise initially? RNA and its components are difficult to synthesize in a laboratory under the best of conditions, much less under plausible ones.

2. Even if we suppose that it formed by chance, how could this RNA made up of simply a nucleotide chain have "decided" to self-replicate and with what kind of a mechanism could it have carried out this self-replicating process? Where did it find the nucleotides it used while self-replicating? Even evolutionist microbiologists Gerald Joyce and Leslie Orgel express the desperateness of the situation in their book titled "In the RNA World":

This discussion... has, in a sense, focused on a straw man:the myth of a self-replicating RNA molecule that arose de novo from a soup of random polynucleotides. Not only is such a notion unrealistic in light of our current understanding of prebiotic chemistry, but it should strain the credulity of even an optimist's view of RNA's catalytic potential.

3. Even if we suppose that there was a self-replicating RNA in the primordial world, that numerous amino acids of every type ready to be used by RNA were available and that all of these impossibilities somehow took place, the situation still does not lead to the formation of even a single protein. For RNA only includes information concerning the structure of proteins. Amino acids, on the other hand, are raw materials. Nevertheless, no mechanism exists to produce proteins. To consider the existence of RNA sufficient for protein production is as nonsensical as expecting a car to be self-assembled and self-manufactured by simply throwing its design drawn on paper on thousands of its parts piled upon each other. In this case, too, production is out of the question since no factory or workers are involved in the process.

Transfer RNA. It binds to amino acids and move them into place on the ribosome as needed. Each type of tRNA binds only a single one of the 20 different amino acids. Amino acids attach to the appropriate tRNA at one end, which has folded into a three-dimensional L-shape. Such a perfect harmony taking place in an area one billionth of a millimeter is clear evidence for Creation.

A protein is produced in the ribosome factory with the help of many enzymes and as a result of extremely complex processes within the cell. Ribosome is a complex cell organelle made up of proteins. Therefore, this situation also brings up another unreasonable supposition that ribosome, too, should have come into existence by chance at the same time. Even Nobel prize winner Jacques Monod, who is one of the most fanatical defenders of evolution, explains that protein synthesis can by no means be underestimated so as to depend merely on the information in the nucleic acids:

The code is meaningless unless translated. The modern cell's translating machinery consists of at least fifty macromolecular components which are themselves coded in DNA: the code cannot be translated otherwise than by products of translation. It is the modern expression of omne vivum ex ovo (All life [is] from [an] egg). When and how did this circle become closed? It is exceedingly difficult to imagine.

How could an RNA chain in the primordial world take such a decision and what methods could it have employed to realize protein production by undertaking the job of fifty specialized particles only on its own? Evolutionists have no answer to these questions.

Dr. Leslie Orgel

Dr. Leslie Orgel, one of the associates of Stanley Miller and Francis Crick from the University of San Diego California, uses the term "scenario" for the possibility of "the origination of life through the RNA world". Orgel described what kind of features this RNA had to have and how impossible this was in her article titled "The Origin of Life" published in American Scientist in October 1994:

This scenario could have occured, we noted, if prebiotic RNA had two properties not evident today: A capacity to replicate without the help of proteins and an ability to catalyze every step of protein synthesis.

As should be clear, to expect these two complex and extremely essential processes from a molecule like RNA is only possible by an evolutionist's power of imagination and viewpoint. Concrete scientific facts, on the other hand, make it explicit that the thesis of the "RNA World", which is a new model proposed for the chance formation of life, is an equally implausible fable.