The RNA World Scenario
In the book Science and Creationism, the RNA World hypothesis is suggested as one of the alternative (and reasonable) explanations of the origin of life. However, the RNA World hypothesis is at a loss to account for the origin of life just like all the explanations put forth by evolutionists.
The discovery in the 1970s that the gases originally existing in the primeval Earth's atmosphere would have rendered amino-acid synthesis impossible was a serious blow to the theory of molecular evolution. Evolutionists then had to face the fact that the "primitive atmosphere experiments" by Stanley Miller, Sydney Fox, Cyril Ponnamperuma, and others were invalid. For this reason, in the 1980s the evolutionists tried again. As a result, the RNAWorld hypothesis was advanced. This scenario proposed that, not proteins, but rather the RNA molecules that contained the information for proteins, were formed first.
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Like the evolutionists' other scenarios, the RNA World hypothesis is a long way from bringing an evolutionary explanation to bear on the origin of life. Unable to explain how DNA could have come into being on its own, evolutionists face the same question with regard to RNA.
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According to this scenario, advanced by Harvard chemist Walter Gilbert in 1986, inspired by the discovery of "ribozymes" by Thomas Cech, billions of years ago an RNA molecule somehow capable of replicating itself happened to come into existence. Under the influence of the environmental conditions surrounding it, this RNA molecule suddenly began to produce proteins. Later still, the need arose to store their information in a second molecule, and the DNA molecule somehow came into being.
This scenario, which is hard even to imagine and which consists of a chain of impossible events, enlarged the dimension of the problem instead of explaining the origin of life, and gave rise to a number of unanswerable questions. Some of these questions are:
1 - Whilst it is impossible to account for the emergence of even a single one of the nucleotides which comprise RNA, how did fictitious nucleotides manage to come together in an appropriate sequence to form RNA? The evolutionist biologist John Horgan admits the impossibility of RNA's having come into existence by chance:
As researchers continue to examine the RNA-World concept closely, more problems emerge. How did RNA initially arise? RNA and its components are difficult to synthesize in a laboratory under the best of conditions, much less under really plausible ones.
2 - Even if we assume that it did come into existence by chance, with what consciousness did this RNA molecule consisting solely of a string of nucleotides decide to replicate itself, and by what mechanism did it succeed in doing so? Where did it find the nucleotides it would use while replicating itself? The evolutionist microbiologists Gerald Joyce and Leslie Orgel express the hopelessness of the position in these terms:
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 would strain the credulity of even an optimist's view of RNA's catalytic potential.
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According to the RNA World hypothesis, ribosomes need to form at the same time as RNA, because RNA requires ribosomes, a protein-manufacturing mechanism. However, ribosomes are exceedingly complex organelles consisting of complex proteins. It is impossible to account for the origin of ribosomes in terms of chemical reactions.
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3 - Even if we go so far as to accept that RNA capable of replicating itself did emerge in the primeval Earth's atmosphere and that every kind of amino acid the RNA would use was present in unlimited quantities and that all these impossibilities in some way happened, that still is not sufficient for the emergence of a single protein molecule. That is because RNA is nothing but information insofar as protein structure is concerned. Amino acids are the raw material. Yet there is no "mechanism" here that might produce the protein. Considering the existence of RNA as sufficient for the production of protein is just as meaningless as expecting the thousands of parts that would go to make up a car to congregate on the blueprint of that car and for the vehicle to assemble itself.
A protein is produced at the end of exceedingly complicated processes within the cell inside an organelle known as the ribosome, together with the help of a large number of enzymes. The ribosome is a complicated cell structure consisting of RNA and proteins. For that reason, this situation involves a series of impossible assumptions, such as the ribosome's coincidentally coming into existence at the same time. Even the Nobel prize-winning Jacques Monod, one of the best-known proponents of the theory of evolution, explained that protein synthesis can by no means be considered 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 50 macromolecular components, which are themselves coded in DNA: the code cannot be translated otherwise than by products of translation themselves. It is the modern expression of omne vivum ex ovo. When and how did this circle become closed? It is exceedingly difficult to imagine.
By what means could an RNA chain in the primitive atmosphere have taken such a decision, and what methods could it have employed to carry out protein production and perform the functions of 50 special components? Evolutionists have no answer to this question. One article in the well-known scientific journal Nature stated that the concept of "self-replicating RNA" was a totally imaginary one, and that no such RNA had ever been produced under experimental conditions:
DNA replication is so error-prone that it needs the prior existence of protein enzymes to improve the copying fidelity of a gene-size piece of DNA. "Catch-22" say Maynard Smith and Szathmary. So, wheel on RNA with its now recognized properties of carrying both informational and enzymatic activity, leading the authors to state: "In essence, the first RNA molecules did not need a protein polymerase to replicate them; they replicated themselves." Is this a fact or a hope? I would have thought it relevant to point out for 'biologists in general' that not one self-replicating RNA has emerged to date from quadrillions (1024) of artificially synthesized, random RNA sequences.
Taken from the writings of Harun Yahya
Two minute Presentation
http://harunyahya.com/presentation/dont_be_duped/INDEX.htm
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