DNAunion,
I've wondered about the exact same thing you brought up here in this post (#25) for a long time. I'm sure it has been mentioned on this site before, but I haven't read it. I've been reading this thread with interest. I don't understand everything I read, but I'm learning. Anyway, here is what I'm referring to:
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DNAunion writes:
One thing that has to kept in mind is that 10^48 40-mers existing at one time would have a mass comparable to the Earth's. Let's not focus on the "weight" right now (or the amount of resources that would go into making such a library) but rather on the distribution of so many molecules - or even a fraction of them. For one 40-mer to replicate the other, the molecules can't arise one in "the Pacific Ocean" and the other in "the Indian Ocean": they'd never meet. Even if both arose on opposite shores of "the Indian Ocean" they'd never encounter one another. In fact, even if they sprung up just a mile apart the probability that they would meet is close to 0. And although it gets harder to "calculate", even if two partners arose just 10 yards away from each other it seems very unlikely that one would happen to come into contact with the other. Further, let's not forget that polymers tend to hydrolyze in water (we could get more technical, but that's the general idea). So there is a time limit on how long they have to wonder about looking for their partner. One's arising at time X and the other's arising at time X + 10,000 years (even if in the exact same spot where the other "host" would be) is going to do no good at all. So not only would a pair of RNA replicases have to arise in almost the same exact microscopic volume, but they would also have to arise at almost exactly the same time."
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It is absolutely amazing to me that OOL scientists and others, in spite of the seemingly insurmountable odds and lack of evidence, can have so much faith in chance. The fact that these DNA replicases must be formed at EXACTLY THE SAME TIME AND THE SAME PLACE is something that we don't hear very much. DNAunion explained it very well and no one responded to it. From a layman's perspective, this is too much to actually expect people to honestly believe. Yet, scientists would have us believe that the fact that life has arisen by chance is all but certain. The only thing that is not yet known is exactly how that happened. And the problem of chirality is only one of a number of very difficult problems for OOL scientists. Of course scientists can say that it is only a matter of time until we understand everything. That is simply a statement of faith without any empirical evidence at all. Perhaps they will find that the problems only get worse for OOL scientists the more they learn. It certainly seems that so far as we look back on history, that this has been the case. Scientists of Darwin's era didn't need much faith to believe in spontaneous generation, but problems like chirality have greatly increased the odds against spontaneous generation.
That one of these RNA replicases could even be produced at all is questionable, but even if it could have arisen by chance or been produced by some means, what would preserve it or keep it from continuing to react and change into another form that would make it unusable?
The fact that new theories limit the area of the supposed "organic soup" to small areas around thermal vents, etc. makes the formation of these RNA replicases an even more fantastically improbable event. I'm sorry, but if scientists really want me to swallow their "scientific" theories, they have to do better than that. It's too much for my little brain to actually believe.
Anyway, I'm learning a lot from this thread. Thanks.
Tokyojim
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