VIABILITY OF THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION (TTOE)

A theory is only as good as its ability to account for the facts within its domain. Therefore, TTOE has to be able to explain how life came about naturalistically, without intelligence.

At the outset, it encounters serious problems. It seems that the simplest forms of life are highly complex, and require many functioning systems before their life can be possible. In “Heretic,” biochemist Matti Leisola uses the example of the simplest form of life to illustrate this problem:

• When the so-called archaebacteria were discovered, some scientists speculated that these organisms could offer a nice model for the first systems that chemical evolution had produced. But studies of these organisms have revealed fascinating metabolic systems that are far from simple. Archaebacteria are actually metabolic masters.

Leisola argues that the evolution of just the cellular materials is mathematically unthinkable:

• The simplest self-reproducing organism is so insanely complex that the amount of time needed for luck to have a fighting chance vastly exceeds the age of the whole universe.

The math presents a knock-down punch to TTOE. The problem of accounting for the simplest life forms is so monumental that Leisola points out that many scientists have despaired and have passed the buck to extraterrestrials:

• Swedish Nobel-Prize winning chemist Svante Arrhenius suggested that life’s seeds were originated somewhere else in the universe and then somehow made their way to Earth. Francis Crick is probably the best-known supporter of this idea. After realizing the enormous problems of chemical evolution, he tried to find an escape in this direction.

However, extraterrestrials offer no solution whatsoever. Instead, this “solution” is just a matter of passing the same problem on to a different location.

Leisola’s assessment of the unlikelihood of finding a naturalistic explanation is shared by others. James Tour was listed in “The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds” by Thomson Reuters in 2014, and named “Scientist of the Year” by R& D Magazine. Yet, he claims that science has no idea how life emerged from non-life:

• We have no idea how the molecules that compose living systems could have been devised such that they would work in concert to fulfill biology’s functions. We have no idea how the basic set of molecules, carbohydrates, nucleic acids, lipids and proteins were made and how they could have coupled in proper sequences, and then transformed into the ordered assemblies until there was the construction of a complex biological system, and eventually to that first cell. Nobody has any idea on how this was done when using our commonly understood mechanisms of chemical science. Those that say that they understand are generally wholly uninformed regarding chemical synthesis. Those that say, “Oh this is well worked out,” they know nothing—nothing—about chemical synthesis—nothing. … From a synthetic chemical perspective, neither I nor any of my colleagues can fathom a prebiotic molecular route to construction of a complex system. We cannot even figure out the prebiotic routes to the basic building blocks of life: carbohydrates, nucleic acids, lipids, and proteins. Chemists are collectively bewildered. Hence I say that no chemist understands prebiotic synthesis of the requisite building blocks, let alone assembly into a complex system. That’s how clueless we are. I have asked all of my colleagues—National Academy members, Nobel Prize winners—I sit with them in offices. Nobody understands this. So if your professors say it’s all worked out, if your teachers say it’s all worked out, they don’t know what they’re talking about. (James Tour, “The Origin of Life: An Inside Story—2016 Lectures,” The Pascal Lectures on Christianity and the University, accessed Oct. 18, 2017, https:// youtu.be/_zQXgJ-dXM4? t = 3m6s)

TTOE seems to have reached a dead end. Why then does it survive in the face of many such dead ends? Leisola offers his analysis:

• There seems to be only one explanation for this stubborn refusal to register all of the contrary evidence. We are dealing with a conviction deeply rooted in a worldview. This explains how a physics professor in a major Finnish newspaper can say the following with a straight face: “The question of the origin of life from the viewpoint of nanotechnology is almost without content. There is no qualitative difference between life and non-life.”

Hmm? Life does so many things that non-life cannot do like reproduction, respiration, digestion, repair, locomotion, waste removal, defense, and receiving and acting upon sensory data. To deny these very obvious differences is a matter of flagrant denial.