Norm Weatherby at Quantum Thought has been fixated on disproving evolution for some time. His latest attempt is a wonderful example of "not even wrong".
The thrust of his argument appears to be that life is formed mostly from four basic elements. Atoms of these elements combine to form specific molecules and systems that make up life.
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At the atomic level every living cell depends on a physical combination of the elements C,N,O, H in building molecules and assemblies of molecules to carry out the tasks that define life from non-life. Another given biological fact.
Well, at this point I would be inclined to mention a few things. Simple molecules, like amino acides and nucleotide bases, will form spontaneously under the right conditions, and these conditions were readily available in nature four billion years ago. Complex molecules, which don't just fall out of the beaker after a few seconds, occur in nature in a multitude of forms. We don't know how many different ways there are to carry out any given task, even if we can pin down what we mean by "system".
But that's not where Norm is going...
Life at the cell level is irreducibly complex because one cannot remove any of the subsystems/elements C,N,O,H where a subsystem is the entire collection of atoms of a particular type and still have a functioning cell capable of meeting the life process of self replication. Biological fact.
Huh?
Are you saying what I think you're saying?
In any extant life form from abiogenesis plus one genetic change to life at present there is no substitute atom which can be used instead of any of the four listed and have replication proceed, stay alive whether the C, the N, the O or the H cell component sets comprising a sub-sysytem.
The cell is then irreducibly complex because none of the four may be removed and the cell remain alive and capable of replication.
This has got to be a parody.
The same argument can be used to "prove", much more effectively, that water is intelligently designed.
Water incorporates only two elements, hydrogen and oxygen. They combine in a precise 2:1 ratio. If you removed either element from the system, water would lose all of its unique properties (high heat capacity, wide gap between melting point and boiling point at one atmosphere, high dielectric constant, high surface tension, hydrogen bonding, etc.) Therefore, water must be intelligently designed.
Michael Medved once argued Darwinian evolution was falsified because you couldn't have one molecule change to another in tiny, incremental steps. In other words, he seemed to be saying Darwin was wrong because a point mutation that changes a thymine base to a guanine base doesn't proceed through a series of intermediates that are one atom different from each other.
Here, Norm seems to be claiming that because all four elements seem to be needed to form the building blocks of life, that Darwin has been proved wrong.
Well, first of all, Darwin never addressed the origin of life from non-living components. His theory addressed only what happens once a living system exists.
Second, for purposes of abiogenesis research, we can take the existence of the elements, and the laws of chemistry, as given.
Yes, carbon chemistry won't take place without carbon, but we don't dismiss the field of organic chemistry because it refuses to explore "what if" carbon didn't exist. We don't dismiss all of chemistry because it never bothers with "what if" oxygen were a noble gas. We don't fire engineers because they don't allow for the possibility that the gravitational constant might abruptly change during the life of a building.
The other major point, having to do with information, is also misguided.
A living cell is a conjunction of these four elements at the atomic level in many special physical arrangements which make life possible with the addition of properly directed energy and information based codes and sequences. From whence comes these billions of codes and instructions all in sequence at the atomic level?
The information is present at the quantum level. It's found in the aggregate quantum state of all the atoms in any given system. It's the same information that causes oxygen to combine with hydrogen to make water, and it's the same information that causes water to have its singular properties.
No one has shown any need for any other information source.
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