Theoretical origin of life;strong objection to natural start (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, June 17, 2020, 19:47 (1620 days ago) @ David Turell

The problems are overwhelming:

https://evolutionnews.org/2020/06/origin-stories-rna-dna-and-a-dose-of-imagination/

"one of the challenges facing this RNA/DNA World scenario is that it would have required the abiotic synthesis of building blocks of both DNA and RNA in close proximity and, preferably, under the same geochemical scenario. It is in this area that the researchers seek to make a contribution, demonstrating that certain building blocks of both RNA and DNA can be synthesized with “prebiotically plausible reactions and substrates.”

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"we might get the impression that in fact “there was a mixed genetic system with RNA and DNA building blocks” under early Earth conditions.

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"First, there was no “mixed genetic system.” In fact, there wasn’t any kind of functional system, just molecules interacting under the normal tug-and-pull of physics and chemistry. Furthermore, a genetic system requires a special kind of functional capability. It requires not just DNA and RNA, but the information content that ebbs and flows between them. Meaning, a symbolic code, pursuant to which a string of nucleotides in the primordial DNA would be interpreted and translated into another state — the symbolic and the immaterial being coaxed into the concrete and the material. Such a system necessarily involves information processing, with not just bare DNA storage at hand, but also retrieval and translation mechanisms. Such a system arising through unguided natural processes has never been observed, and we have theoretical and practical reasons to conclude it never will be.

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"Yet from an information-theoretic standpoint, having building blocks for a potential alphabet is unremarkable. I can build an information storage system out of sticks and stones.
There are multiple elephants in this room: What is the functional context of that system? Where does the information come from? How it is retrieved? How is it interpreted and acted upon? What is the overall meaning and purpose of that information? How does it become directed toward a comprehensive, integrated, cohesive end — producing a living organism? The mere existence of molecules that could hypothetically serve as physical carriers of hypothetical symbols as part of a hypothetical primordial alphabet tells us nothing in response to these questions.

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"Sutherland mentions that the group’s research fulfills a “key precondition for the spontaneous emergence of life on Earth.” What was fulfilled? His point is that many people believe life had to start with both DNA and RNA together, not the traditional RNA World scenario that slowly gave rise to DNA.

"He is right. There are good reasons for thinking life started with both DNA and RNA. That’s both because (as noted above) no one has been able to propose a plausible scenario that would produce DNA from RNA under real-world conditions, and also because the genetic systems we are familiar with in biology indeed include both DNA and RNA.

"Yet the recent research did not demonstrate that such a genetic system can realistically arise by itself. Nor did it bring us closer to demonstrating “the spontaneous emergence of life on Earth.”

"After all, beyond a genetic system, to keep life going on the early Earth another capability is required: self-replication. Many origin-of-life researchers view self-replication as the key goal, relying on the Darwinian process of mutation and natural selection to build the rest of the systems for the first organism. (See, for example, here and here.) Yet as I demonstrate in my engineering analysis in Evolution and Intelligent Design in a Nutshell, self-replication is not the starting point for the origin of life. Instead, it “lies at the end of an extremely complicated, sophisticated, and specified engineering process.”

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"This impressive work was performed by some of the most capable researchers in this field. The authors deserve recognition for it. Origin-of-life research doesn’t get any better.

"Yet for anyone tempted to think we are on our way to explaining the origin of life in naturalistic terms, what do we really have? Well, we now have building blocks on the early Earth that, potentially, could be used in some later process as part of the production of DNA and RNA. Alternatively, as the authors suggest, perhaps the building blocks could have served as the initial information carrier and then later turned into modern RNA and DNA.

"Either way, these would then need to be carefully strung together into information-rich molecules, based on a symbolic code. That in turn would require multiple machines and interrelated systems to access, interpret, and utilize the information, which would further require a suite of hundreds of genes, components, and systems to survive in a prebiotic environment and self-replicate. None of these steps is plausible by purely natural means. All of them speak to the need for intelligent input.

Comment: this is an answer to a hopeful article like all the ones I present. The so-called positive results are zilch over 70 years. Clearly the research has not established any sort of natural mechanism. Unless one is found, a designer has to be accepted.