This is getting a little nuts.\u00a0 I only have a kindle copy, so I don’t have page numbers.\u00a0 But I’m on location 107 of 12,555 (according to Minvera that’s 0% of the book)… yet I’ve already written 4 blog posts correcting errors with probably 4 times as many words as Meyer has written to the point.\u00a0 And here we go again.<\/p>\n
Here, Meyer says that “natural selection does not help explain the origin of first life” and that’s true enough.\u00a0 Then he makes a category error.<\/p>\n
Natural selection assumes the existence of living organisms with a capacity to reproduce.\u00a0 Yet self-replication in all extant cells depends upon information-ric proteins and nucleic acids (DNA and RNA), and the origin of such inforamtion-rich molecules is precisely what origin-of-life research needs to explain.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO.<\/p>\n
He’s wrong.\u00a0 He is fundamentally wrong.\u00a0 Heck, he’s not even wrong.\u00a0 He’s purposefully misleading.<\/p>\n
Then he quotes Theodosius Dobzhansky as saying “Pre-biological natural selection is a contradiction in terms.” Apparently, this was in the discussion of another paper, which does not appear in the bibliography, so I have no idea what the context was.<\/p>\n
What’s very interesting, is that if you turn up the google-fu and start looking for this quote<\/a>.\u00a0 You find dozens of creationist references to this quote.\u00a0 The first page of goole results are 6 creationist books including Meyer’s Signature in the Cell<\/em> and others by Dembski, and Wells, and the rest.\u00a0 There are two links to creationist and ID websites that use the reference.\u00a0 Page two of the google results is more books and websites and papers by creationists.\u00a0 Page 3 is more creationist works, but then they start getting into unrelated hits.<\/p>\n
So, I dug through a couple of these books and papers to see if I could find the original.\u00a0 According to one book (Dembski’s) and one website, this is the original reference:<\/p>\n
Dobzhansky, Theodosius G., Discussion of Synthesis of Nucleosides and Polynucleotides with Metaphoric Esters, by George Schramm, in Fox, S.W., ed., The Origins of Prebiological Systems and of Their Molecular Matrices, Proceedings of a Conference Conducted at Wakulla Springs, Florida, pp. 309\u2013310, 27\u201330 October 1963, Academic Press, NY, 1965<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
When that goes into google, we get a bunch of creationist sites and unrelated material.\u00a0 I found out that the book itself does exist.\u00a0 There aren’t any ebooks available and none of my local libraries has it.\u00a0 So, there’s absolutely no way to verify what Dobzhansky said.<\/p>\n
But you know what?\u00a0 It doesn’t matter.\u00a0 Dobzshansky said this in 1965.\u00a0 He died in 1975.\u00a0 There’s been a boat-load of research on OOL since then. The vast majority of OOL research has occurred in the last 20 years.\u00a0 I’m assuming that Meyer couldn’t reach Dobzhansky for a current comment.<\/p>\n
But that’s what Meyer thinks is a telling argument.\u00a0 A quote from a guy who died almost 40 years ago and the quote was 10 years before then.\u00a0 This is roughly like asking Custer why he didn’t have helicopter support at The Little Bighorn.<\/p>\n
On to what Meyer is really doing here.<\/p>\n
Here, we see, once again, that Meyer is assuming that life is only modern life.\u00a0 That there is nothing between raw chemical compounds and modern cells.\u00a0 Which is stupid when you think about it.\u00a0 He’ saying (roughly) that first humans couldn’t fly, but now they can because we have stealth jet fighters.\u00a0 Ignoring the gliding and propellers, and hot air balloons in between.<\/p>\n
No OOL biologist that I’m aware of (and I’ve talked to a number of them and read more of them) suggest that the most primitive reproducing life was like ours.<\/p>\n
Again, I’ve already shown that there are much, much simpler ways of reproducing.\u00a0 There’s a ton of research on the subject.\u00a0 Gerald Joyce and Tracy Lincoln<\/a> have shown how an RNA can make infinite copies of itself, given enough subunits.\u00a0 That’s just one example.\u00a0 Their research even used evolutionary pressure to evolve the best replicator.\u00a0 And it’s only using RNA.\u00a0 No metabolism, no DNA, no cell.<\/p>\n
\nSo, says Lincoln, “What we have is non-living, but we’ve been able to show that it has some life-like properties, and that was extremely interesting.”Read more at: http:\/\/phys.org\/news150739469.html#jCp<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
So, no non-life can be self-replicating.\u00a0 And please don’t insert the “it happened in a lab, therefore it was designed” ID mantra. The RNA wasn’t designed, it was evolved.<\/p>\n
And, by definition, the point of labwork is design it so that you can study one particular aspect, in this case, evolution.<\/p>\n
Here’s a paper<\/a> on the generation of long-chain RNA in nothing more than warm water.
\nHere’s a paper<\/a> on the prebiotic synthesis of RNA.<\/p>\n