A Testable Model for the Origin of Life
One of the big objections that creationists like to raise against evolutionary biology is that the theory doesn't have an explanation for the origin of all life from non-living elements. Leaving aside the fact that it's not supposed to (it explains the origins of diversity, not of life itself), I'm sure that the "rising tide" of creationist research scientists will get right on testing this:
Scientists Propose The Kind Of Chemistry That Led To Life
A pair of UCSF scientists has developed a model explaining how simple chemical and physical processes may have laid the foundation for life. Like all useful models, theirs can be tested, and they describe how this can be done. Their model is based on simple, well-known chemical and physical laws. The work appears online this week in “The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences."
The basic idea is that simple principles of chemical interactions allow for a kind of natural selection on a micro scale: enzymes can cooperate and compete with each other in simple ways, leading to arrangements that can become stable, or “locked in..."
They also compare the chemical steps to Darwin’s principles of evolution: random selection of traits in different organisms, selection of the most adaptive traits, and then the inheritance of the traits best suited to the environment (and presumably the disappearance of those with less adaptive traits)...
The model focuses on enzymes that function as catalysts... Many researchers believe the first primitive catalysts on earth were nothing more complicated than the surfaces of clays or other minerals.
In its simplest form, the model shows how two catalysts in a solution, A and B, each acting to catalyze a different reaction, could end up forming what the scientists call a complex, AB. The deciding factor is the relative concentration of their desired partners. The process could go like this: Catalyst A produces a chemical that catalyst B uses. Now, since B normally seeks out this chemical, sometimes B will be attracted to A -- if its desired chemical is not otherwise available nearby. As a result, A and B will come into proximity, forming a complex.
The word “complex” is key because it shows how simple chemical interactions, with few players, and following basic chemical laws, can lead to a novel combination of molecules of greater complexity. The emergence of complexity – whether in neuronal systems, social systems, or the evolution of life, or of the entire universe -- has long been a major puzzle, particularly in efforts to determine how life emerged...
“A major question about life’s origins is how chemicals, which have no self-interest, became ‘biological’ -- driven to evolve by natural selection,” he says. “This simple model shows a plausible route to this type of complexity.” Dill is also a professor of biophysics and associate dean of research in the UCSF School of Pharmacy. He is a faculty affiliate at QB3, the California Institute for Quantitative Biomedical Research, headquartered at UCSF...
There now exists a highly plausible, falsifiable, relatively simple model bases on well-known, consistently repeatable physical laws. It works as a computer model, and the authors of this paper even give suggestions as to how the model can be tested in the laboratory. Despite William Dembski's assertion that intelligent design creationism is not responsible for the "pathetic level of detail" that mainstream scientific rigor demands, one would think that they're alleged researchers would want to get right on testing this new and detailed hypothesis. Any takers out there in Woo-land? Or will it be left entirely up to conspiratorial "Darwinists" and "atheist scientists" to once again do all the work?
My prediction: not one test tube will be soiled by one creationist in running the postulate to ground. Instead, if it turns out that the Bradford-Dill model actually works empirically, the Woos will simply shift the goalposts yet again and go from whining that "Darwinism" doesn't offer an explanation of the origin of life to complaining that it doesn't tell us how catalysts were invented. The latter objection makes every bit as much sense in terms of the domain of evolutionary biology as the former, after all. That's the most wonderful thing about all of this intelligent design nonsense, after all. Being entirely devoid of any scientific rigor, or even disciplinary boundaries, it is truly written in jello. When one argument is debunked, they can always make up a new one that the true believers will accept uncritically.
