The answer to life's origin does not reside in the fields of physics and chemistry, or in the soil, but in the mind behind our Universe
(last updated: 11th November 2023)
In 2023 James Tour posed a series of five key questions for atheist leaning scientists to answer within 60 days or stop continuing
to make claims that the origin of life has been solved, or is on the brink of being solved, that there is a naturalistic explanation
for the existence of life.
The challenge: At least one of the five fundamental problems described below, explained in layman's terms,
has to be solved if their claims are to be afforded any credibility:
1) Linking of amino acids into chains (aka [also known as] polypeptides)
DNA, RNA, MRNA are complex sequences (chains) of the 20 different amino acids that form the building blocks of life.
The chains contain all the
information needed to describe how the fundamental chemicals, proteins, molecular machines, enzymes, etc., that sustain life
are to be built and operated within each living cell. There are of the order of 28 trillion cells in an adult human,
and 200 different types of cell.
The four chemical bases used to define the amino acids are adenine (A), uracil (U), guanine (G), and cytosine (C).
Adenine (A), for example has chemical formula: C5H5N5 and can be made in a laboratory. A typical amino acid is encoded by
just three of these bases, called codons. e.g. Alanine, chemical formula: C3H7NO2.
Any of the four codons GCU, GCC, GCA and GCG encode for the amino acid alanine which can only be generated by scientists in the
laboratory using a living organism such as Bacillus licheniformis, a bacterium commonly found in the soil.
The full list of amino acids is: Asparagine, cysteine, glutamine, histidine, serine, threonine, tryptophan, tyrosine, alanine,
glycine, isoleucine, leucine, methionine, phenylalanine, proline, valine, arginine, aspartic acid, glutamic acid, and lysine all
differently defined by 3 of the four bases available.
In simple terms, a typical DNA gene sequence defining a protein would contain 400 or so amino acids embedded in a backbone made of
sugar and phosphate groups and the result folded appropriately in 3 dimensions to create a section of the famous double helix.
There would typically be several hundred gene sequences in a strand of DNA which together forms one of 23 chromosomes in human beings.
Chromosome 2, for example, has about 243 million bases described above, therefore is 81 million amino acids long.
These complex molecular structures can only be produced inside living organisms, hence the question below.
The question posed here is, 'Can any of the group of origin-of-life researchers who claim that the hurdles to life's origin have
been fully addressed provide evidence that any advances have been made in the past seventy years in discovering how to build such
chains in the laboratory.' If they cannot then their claim is without substance!
2) Linking of nucleotides into RNA molecules
A nucleotide is a basic structural unit built around one of the 4 chemical bases described above that helps generate a length
of protein defining RNA by transcription from DNA.
The question posed here is, 'Can any of the group of origin-of-life researchers who claim that the hurdles to life's origin have
been fully addressed provide evidence that any advances have been made in the past seventy years in discovering how to Link
nucleotides to produce molecules for RNA during RNA transcription.' If they cannot then their claim is without substance!
3) Linking of simple sugars (aka monosaccharides) into chains known as polysaccharides
This is of course what all life forms do. We cannot replicate this in the laboratory or understand how it is done.
Four polysaccharides are starch, glycogen, cellulose and chitin. The function of starch and glycogen is to store energy within
cells in living organisms. Cellulose and chitin are designed to protect cells. Polysaccharides are comprised of multiple
monosaccharides. A typical polysaccharide chain is formed of hundreds of individual monosaccharides.
The question posed here is, 'Can any of the group of origin-of-life researchers who claim that the hurdles to life's origin have
been fully addressed provide evidence that any advances have been made in the past seventy years to discover how to Link
simple sugars (aka monosaccharides) into polysaccharide chains'. If they cannot then their claim is without foundation!
4) Origin of biological information
The question posed here is, 'Can any of the group of origin-of-life researchers who claim that the hurdles to life's origin have
been fully addressed provide evidence of any advances that have been made in the past seventy years to discover
where the hugely complex biological information in all living cells came from in the first instance, or to provide any plausible
method by which it could have originated without input from a supreme intellect'. If they cannot then their claim is without substance!
5) Assembly of components into a cell
The question posed here is, 'Can any of the group of origin-of-life researchers who claim that the hurdles to life's origin have
been fully addressed provide evidence of any advances that have been made in the past seventy years to discover
how hugely complex living cells managed to self assemble from basic raw materials (chemicals), or how scientists could go
about constructing any of the biological components, such as the cell wall, with present knowledge'.
If they cannot then their claim is without substance!
We can confirm that none of the scientists who repeatedly make unsustantiated and uninstantiable claims about the origin of life
have risen to the challenge, in other words they don't have a clue as to how life could have originated by chance, because it didn't,
and their views should therefore be cast aside. James Tour and other like minded scientists will continue to conduct
research to provide us with true facts about the origin of life. The human race will never be able to construct living tissue
other than by genetically modifying a pre-existing life form. This does not constitute creation of life as some would like to have
us believe.
A designing intellect far beyond anything humanity has to offer, past, present or future, lies behind the immense
intricacy discovered in recent times within living cells at the molecular level.
Dr. Tour will not be judging. The researchers themselves will. If they fail, by their own lights, then Tour reserves the right
to maintain as he's done that we are "utterly clueless" about how life arose from non-life through unguided, material processes.
We have taken it upon ourselves to try to help settle the contentious issue of how life originated on our planet by providing the latest evidence from research in molecular biology, not because we will benefit as an organisation in any way, on the contrary it has come at considerable cost, but in order to make a clear and unambiguous statement in support of the message from ID to the Church and to people everywhere.
