Dolly here is the info on George Howe,
"The chance that useful DNA molecules would develop without a Designer are approximately zero. Then let me conclude by asking which came first the DNA (which is essential for the synthesis of proteins) or the protein enzyme (DNA-polymerase) without which DNA synthesis is nil?
there is virtually no chance that chemical 'letters' would spontaneously produce coherent DNA and protein 'words'." (George Howe, expert in biological sciences and Creation/Evolution issues)
[George Howe, "Addendum to As a Watch Needs a Watchmaker," Creation Research Society Quarterly, Vol. 23, No. 2 (September 1986), p. 65.]
George F. Howe: Botanist and biologist / Creationist / Ph.D. and M.Sc. in Botany from Ohio State University (1959, 1956) / Post-doctoral studies in radiation biology, Cornell University (1965-66) / Post-doctoral studies in botany, Washington State University (1961) / Post-doctoral studies in desert biology, Arizona State University (1963) / Former Assistant Professor of biology and botany at Westmont College, Santa Barbara, California / Charter member and former President of the Creation Research Society / Director of CRS Grand Canyon Experimental Station / Professor and Chairman of the Division of Natural Sciences, The Master's College, Newhall, California / Published papers in scientific journals including: Bulletin of the Southern California Academy of Sciences, Ohio Journal of Science, and Creation Research Society Quarterly / Twice voted Teacher of the Year by students at The Master's College.
Here are a few other things I found in my files;
Walter Bradley and Charles Thaxton (authors of The Mystery of Life's Origins: Reassessing Current Theories) had this to say about probability and the origin of a protein after outlining a number of arguments against an evolutionary origin of the same:
The problem of assembling the amino acid building blocks into functional protein can also be illustrated using probability and statistics. To simplify the problem, one may assume the probability of getting an L-amino acid (versus a D-amino acid) to be 50 percent and the probability of joining two such amino acids with a peptide bond to also be 50 percent. The probability of getting the right amino acid in a particular position may be assumed to be 5 percent, assuming equal concentration of all twenty amino acids in the pre biotic soup. The first two assumptions are realistic, while the third would be too low for some amino acids and to high for others.
Neglecting the problem of reactions with non-amino acid chemical species, the probability of getting everything right in placing one amino acid would be 0.5 x 0.5 x .05 = .0125. The probability of properly assembling N such amino acids would be .0125 x .0125 x ...continued for N terms of .0125. If a functional protein had one hundred active sights, the probability of getting a proper assembly would be .0125 multiplied times itself one hundred times, or 4.9 x 10191. Such improbabilities have led essentially all scientists who work in the field to reject random, accidental assembly or fortuitous good luck as an explanation for how life began.
If we assume that all carbon on earth exists in the form of amino acids and that amino acids are allowed to chemically react at the maximum possible rate of 1012 /s for one billion years (the greatest possible time between the cooling of the earth and the appearance of life), we must still conclude that it is incredibly improbable (~1065) that even one functional protein would be made, as H.P. Yockey has pointed out. (H.P. Yockey, "A Calculation of the Probability of Spontaneous Biogenesis by Information Theory,"Journal of Theoretical Biology 67(1981)
Francis Crick, the man who shared the Nobel Prize in 1962 with James Watson and Maurice Wilkins for their discovery of the molecular structure of DNA had this to say about probability factors and protein synthesis:
" To produce this miracle of molecular construction all the cell need do is to string together the amino acids (which make up the polypeptide chain) in the correct order. This is a complicated biochemical process, a molecular assembly line, using instructions in the form of a nucleic acid tape (the so-called messenger RNA). Here we need only ask, how many possible proteins are there? If a particular amino acid sequence was selected by chance, how rare of an event would that be?
This is an easy exercise in combinatorials. Suppose the chain is about two hundred amino acids long; this is , if anything, rather less than the average length of proteins of all types. Since we have just twenty possibilities at each place, the number of possibilities is twenty multiplied by itself some two hundred times. This is conveniently written 20 200, that is a one followed by 260 zeros!
This number is quite beyond our everyday comprehension. For comparison, consider the number of fundamental particles (atoms, speaking loosely) in the entire visible universe, not just in our own galaxy with its 1011 stars, but in all the billions of galaxies, out to the limits of observable space. This number, which is estimated to be 1080, is quite paltry by comparison to 10260. Moreover, we have only considered a polypeptide chain of a rather modest length. Had we considered longer ones as well, the figure would have been even more immense.(Life Itself, its origin and nature, Francis Crick, 1981, pp 51-52)
Molecular formation: Theories concerning molecular evolution generally assume molecules naturally coalescence into macromolecules during times when their concentration and atmospheric conditions favored such contact. In 1924, Alexander I. Oparin determined which chemicals must be in the earth's atmosphere for amino acids to form (e.g. methane, hydrogen, ammonia) and which chemicals would prohibit the formation of amino acids (e.g.
Oxygen).
In the 1950s, Stanley L. Miller, performed the first experiment attempting to reproduce these conditions. Methane, ammonia, hydrogen and water were placed in a flask that was subject to an electrical discharge. After several days, the experiment yielded several organic compounds including amino acids. Other researchers repeated these experiments using different energy sources such as UV, and other presumed primitive atmospheres. When hydrogen cyanide was used, even nitrogenous bases were obtained, which are a components of the building blocks for DNA.
However, in all of these experiments that attempted to produce life's building blocks, molecular oxygen was absent. The earth possesses an oxygen rich atmosphere,
and even the oldest rocks contain oxides which is evidence they were formed in the presence of oxygen.
In fact, oxides have been found in rocks supposedly 300 million years older than the first living cells. Oxygen is produces by all photosynthetic organisms, and is required for metabolism by all life forms except a few microorganisms.
A hydrogen-rich reducing atmosphere was only reproduced in these experiments because amino acids and nitrogenous bases simply will not spontaneously form in an oxidizing environment.
The Question of Time,
Time only increases the chance of things coming about that can come about. But None of the major parts of cells (proteins, DNA, RNA, Lipids) can do that. As time passes, all decompose. No part will work unless it works with other parts.
This is evidence.
Later evolutionists decided that the huge amounts of time had never really existed. Why? Fossils of ancient bacteria were found which, according to evolutionary dates, lived 3.55 billion years ago, only a half billion years after evolutionists believe the earth had cooled down enough to support life. These fossils, "
look identical to bacteria still on Earth today." Today's evolutionists say that this left very little time for a first primitive life to form and then evolve enough to look identical to modern bacteria.
De Duve, a Nobel scientist wrote of these fossils:
"Advanced forms of life existed on earth at least 3.55 billion years ago.
It is now generally agreed that if life arose spontaneously by natural processes
it must have arisen fairly quickly, more in a matter of millennia or centuries, perhaps even less, than in millions of years."
Even those like De Duve who believe in an old earth realize there was not enough time. There was no time for chance to form proteins. No time for RNA to form. No time for natural selection to perfect RNA. No time for RNA to make proteins. No time for information to accumulate gradually had information not required a mind. No billions of years. No millions of years. No time!
The odds are so overwhelmingly against each step in the spontaneous generation of life that in the past, even atheists freely admitted that life could not have formed without huge amounts of time. Today most of them admit that the billions of years never existed. Now they simply state, "Life must have formed rapidly."
If it did, it should be easy to duplicate in the lab. The fact that no one can is evidence.
Irreducible complexity
Fry also responds to the very influential book, Darwin's Black Box, written by Michael Behe, a professor of biochemistry. Behe makes the point that even the most simple cell could not function without a certain number of essential parts. He uses the common mouse trap, with a base and a wire that snaps down, as an illustration. If even one part of the trap is eliminated it will not catch mice. Behe calls this "irreducible complexity." Whether it is a mouse trap or a cell, things that are irreducibly complex could not have gradually built up one part at a time. They must have been designed because they will not work at all until a number of parts have been constructed and assembled to work together.
In order to live, a cell must at least have parts that will let it:
Separate itself from the water around it,
Take in food, and expel wastes,
Use food to make the energy the cell needs to do its work,
Contain the information that directs all this,
Reproduce.
A first cell could not have lived to produce a second cell if it lacked the parts needed to make possible even one of these abilities! This is irreducible complexity, and it is evidence of design. Many dead cells, however, have the necessary parts. To be a living cell, it also needs life.
Where Did the Information in Cells Come from?
The DNA of a bacterium contains as much information as a 1000 page book! What is information? The principle dictionary definition is, "knowledge communicated or received
."
Speaking of the information in DNA, Philip Johnson explains,
"By information, I mean a message that conveys meaning, such as a book of instructions.
Information is not matter, though it is imprinted on matter.
Instructions in the fertilized egg control embryonic development from the beginning, and direct it to a specific outcome."
Professor Werner Gitt, who works in the field of information science writes:
"There is no known natural law through which matter can give rise to information, neither is there any physical process or material phenomenon known that can do this."
The information in DNA is real information. It has been copied onto computers in the Human Genome Project, and printed out on paper. It is the same information no matter what it is written on. Many atheists understand, but purposely side-step the really difficult question, "Where does the information come from?" They substitute made up stories about where the material that carries the information might have come from. It is like thinking of a way paper could form in nature and claiming to have explained an encyclopedia.
All available evidence indicates that it takes intelligence to devise letters or code, and arrange them into instructions. Many evolutionists ignore the evidence and claim that life arose from an "organic soup," but how could the imagined soup know the precise order of each of the amino acids of even one protein, let alone the hundreds of proteins necessary for the survival of a "primitive" cell?
Others claim that RNA came first, perhaps formed by contact with a clay template, then went on to produce the first cell. This implies that the clay passed on the basic information which natural selection later perfected. Neither soup nor clay has this or any other information, but if clay had information, what are the chances that it had the right information to form the first RNA? Why not something simpler, like the directions for repairing an airplane engine or making more clay?
If clay or organic soup had passed on the directions for making RNA, how did the RNA know to make proteins? And out of millions of possible proteins, why would it have made exactly the proteins a cell would need? Could it have folded, addressed, and regulated all those proteins and enclosed them in a membrane?
Clay that could produce a simple RNA, capable of making copies of itself, would have been more intelligent than all of today's origin of life scientists put together. They can't produce any RNA at all,6 let alone one with these special abilities.
Dr. Charles Thaxton hits the nail on the head when he tells us that if it is wrong to infer that the information found in DNA comes from an intelligent source, it is equally wrong to think that intelligent messages from space would come from an intelligent source. He continues,
"More important, our knowledge of past civilizations provided by archeologists would be in jeopardy.
The supposed "artifacts" might be, after all, the result of unknown natural causes. Cave paintings, for example
may not be the result of early humans
Indeed, excavated ancient libraries could not be trusted to contain the works of intelligent men and women."
I thought this was pretty funny in a scientific sort of way:
Idicative proofs against evolution:
There are cases like the Bombardier Beetle. The Bombardier Beetle has two glands which produce a liquid which is stored in two storage chambers. When this beetle wishes some of the liquid is transferred to two combustion chambers. When this beetle feels threatened he produces an audible explosion which ejects a noxious foul-smelling fluid at the temperature of boiling water. It aims this discharge with remarkable accuracy and quickly. He is able to do this twenty times or more before exhausting his supply which can then be replenished within twenty-four hours.
This liquid in the Bombardier Beetle contains 10% hydroquinones and 23% hydrogen peroxide. When these two liquids are combined in a laboratory there is an immediate explosion. How does this beetle keep from exploding before discharging this liquid? Through an inhibitor present in the liquid. When he is ready to discharge the liquid for protection, he immediately releases an anti-inhibitor as it leaves the body and the explosion occurs warning off its enemies. How complicated is this process. Modern science is not able to duplicate either the inhibitor or the anti-inhibitor.
What is the problem with this scenario? Like so many things in nature, this beetle could not exist as it does unless all these components were in place all at once at the same time. If these different traits had evolved, the beetle would have blown himself up to extinction before random mutations produced the inhibitor. The process of the Bombardier Beetle cannot be explained through mutational evolution or any other kind of evolution.
So are yours.