That pesky second law continues to bedevil abiogenesis

Thermodynamics of the Origin of Life
Brian Miller

Popular articles on origin-of-life research have often portrayed the field as constantly advancing and quickly converging on a purely materialistic explanation for the first autonomous cell. However, the true state of affairs is far grimmer. The highpoint of optimism was actually in the 1950s when Stanley Miller’s experiment produced several of the building blocks of life. Unfortunately, geologists later recognized that the gases used in that experiment did not match the chemistry of the early Earth. When redone with those actually present, the experiments produced  few building blocks in sufficient quantities to contribute to origin-of-life scenarios. Moreover, close examination of modern attempts to synthesize life’s precursors reveals that the  formation of many of them on the early Earth in significant quantities is virtually impossible. However, the more fundamental challenge of thermodynamics dwarfs even these hurdles.

Common arguments about the origin of life have traditionally focused on the unlikelihood of life forming by chance. Perhaps most famously, physicist Fred Hoyle calculated the probability of a cell coalescing to be roughly 1 part in 10 to the power of 40,000. He compared this probability to the chances of a  tornado plowing through a junkyard and assembling a jet airplane. The concept of probability is closely linked to that of entropy, since probability is proportional to the number of configurations (N) in which some state could occur, and  entropy is proportional to the log of N. As an example, the number of ways water molecules can arrange themselves in the solid state is much smaller than the number ways in the liquid or gas states, so ice is the state with the lowest entropy. Due to this connection, the probability argument is often restated that nature tends to move from states of lower entropy to higher entropy, which simply means that nature moves towards states which are highly probable. This tendency is known as the second law of thermodynamics.

Such arguments sound impressive at first, but they are actually incomplete. Nearly all researchers recognize that the first cell could not have come about by chance. They instead believe that some physical processes helped to beat the odds. As an analogy, one could never role one thousand sixes in a row with fair dice. However, if the dice were loaded, that outcome could be quite likely or even close to guaranteed. Analogously, some systems do, in fact, naturally move from states of higher entropy to those of lower entropy (i.e., seemingly low probability) if the lower-entropy states are highly biased to occur. Such a bias is created by a second driving tendency. Namely, nature tends to move from states of higher energy to those of lower energy. For instance, rocks roll downhill, since lower altitude corresponds to lower gravitational energy. Likewise, molecules of water attract each other, so ice is a lower energy state since the water molecules are on average closer to each other than in the liquid or gas states. At low enough temperatures, this attraction overcomes the tendency to move toward higher entropy resulting in water freezing.

However, even in these cases of locally decreasing entropy, the second law of thermodynamics is not violated, for the changes are always exothermic — heat is released. The heat leaving the local system (e.g.,  a cup of freezing water) and entering the surrounding environment increases the latter’s entropy by an amount greater than the entropy decrease of the local system. Therefore, the total entropy of the universe increases. The problem for all theories of origin of life now becomes quite evident. The simplest functional cell compared to its most basic building blocks has both lower entropy and higher energy. And, natural systems never both decrease in entropy and increase in energy at the same time. Such an event would be like rolling countless sixes in a row when the dice are strongly loaded against rolling even one. Therefore, the origin of life through purely natural processes would seem as implausible as water on a hot summer day spontaneously freezing or a river flowing unaided uphill for thousands of miles.

Physicists and chemists often combine entropy and energy (or enthalpy) together into what is called the  free energy of a system. The change of free energy is always negative for spontaneous changes  (e.g., wood burning or ice melting in summer), and it directly relates to the total increase in entropy of the universe. The challenge for the origin of life is then explaining how billions of atoms could spontaneously come together into a state of significantly higher free energy. The chance of such an event happening through thermal fluctuations was calculated by biophysicist Harold Morowitz to be less than 1 part in 10 to the power of a hundred million This number comes directly from an estimation of the free energy of life, and the free energy is a path-independent function. Therefore, this maximum probability estimate is not meaningfully dependent on the theoretical route that led to life (e.g., protein-first versus RNA world) or on the number of steps involved. The probability is always essentially zero.

At face value this thermodynamic analysis for the origin of life would seem to negate any possible materialistic solution to the problem. However, theorists have long recognized one remaining loophole. Morowitz’s calculations assumed that the system was in a state near equilibrium. For instance, some lightning bolt could have struck a pond of prebiotic chemicals at night causing atoms to come together into different configurations. The pond would then quickly settle back into a calm state where the temperature, concentrations, and other variables would remain fairly uniform. However, many argue that the origin of life took place in a system strongly driven away from equilibrium, such as a pond subjected to intense sunlight or the bottom of the ocean near a hydrothermal vent flooding its surroundings with superheated water and high-energy chemicals. Such settings are commonly referred to as non-equilibrium dissipative systems. Their common characteristic is that classical thermodynamics breaks down, so the previous analyses do not completely hold. Instead, principles of non-equilibrium thermodynamics must be applied, which are far more complex and less well understood. Moreover, the energy from these outside sources is hoped to enable the free-energy barrier to be overcome.

However, such appeals to non-equilibrium systems do little to solve the basic thermodynamic problems. First, no system could be maintained far from equilibrium for more than a limited amount of time. The sun is only out during the day, and superheated water at the bottom of the ocean would eventually migrate away from any hydrothermal vents. Any progress made toward forming a cell would be lost as the system reverted toward equilibrium (lower free energy) and thus away from any state approaching life. Second, the input of raw solar, thermal, or other forms of energy actually  increase the entropy of the system, thus moving it in the wrong direction. For instance, the  ultraviolet light from the sun or heat from  hydrothermal vents  would less easily form the complex chemical structures needed for life than break them apart. Finally, in non-equilibrium systems the differences in temperature, concentrations, and other variables act as thermodynamic forces which drive heat transfer, diffusion, and other thermodynamic flows. These flows create  microscopic sources of entropy production, again moving the system away from any reduced-entropy state associated with life. In short, the processes occurring in non-equilibrium systems, as in their near-equilibrium counterparts, generally do the opposite of what is actually needed.

It's still design all the way down.

Life Exponential: Life Exhibits Intelligent Design at Many Levels
Jonathan Wells

A human cell contains two sets of DNA, each consisting of about three billion subunits called “nucleotides.” There are four different nucleotides, and they can be arranged in many different ways, so DNA is quite complex. Most of our DNA, however, must be arranged in a very specific way to provide the information a cell uses to make RNAs and proteins. Mathematician William Dembski has called this “complex specified information.”1

Complexity (such as we see in a pile of autumn leaves) can arise spontaneously from unguided natural processes, but complex specified information cannot. The only known source of complex specified information is an intelligent mind, which can envision a goal and arrange things to actualize that goal — in this case, a living cell. “Because mind or intelligent design is a necessary cause of an information-rich system,” philosopher of science Stephen Meyer wrote in 1998, “the specifically arranged nucleotide sequences — the encoded information — in DNA imply the past action of an intelligent mind, even if such mental agency cannot be directly observed.”2

The Need for Spatial Information

So DNA carries biological information, and that information points to design. But DNA is not the only carrier of information in a living cell. When DNA is transcribed into RNAs, most of those RNAs must be transported to specific locations in the cell before they can function properly. Some RNAs are tagged with sequences called “zipcodes” that specify the “addresses” to which they are to be transported. Like the zipcode on a letter you put in a mailbox, however, an RNA zipcode is meaningless unless it corresponds to a pre-existing address. Like the geographical addresses in a postal system, the cellular destinations of RNAs and proteins must be specified independently of their zipcodes, before they are “mailed.”

Many of those destinations are specified by molecules embedded in cell membranes. Scientists originally thought that proteins could diffuse freely in a membrane, like boats floating on the sea. It is now known, however, that many membrane proteins are arranged in non-random patterns that can be quite stable. Such patterns provide the cell with spatial information that goes beyond the information in DNA.

After fertilization, a frog egg is invisibly divided into regions distinguished by (among other things) spatially localized RNAs just inside the cell membrane in a zone called the “cortex.” In the accompanying drawing, four regions are indicated by different colors. After the nucleus duplicates, the fertilized egg divides into two daughter cells. If the plane of division corresponds to A, each daughter cell inherits not only a nucleus but also portions of all four regions of cortical information. If those two cells are then separated, each can develop into a complete frog. But if the plane of division corresponds to B or C, the daughter cells do not inherit a full set of cortical information, and their development is blocked even if they each contain all the necessary DNA.

Illustration: Regions of spatial information in a fertilized frog egg.

Other Carriers of Spatial Information

Regional differences in cells and embryos can be specified in other ways besides localization of RNAs in the cortex. Two of those ways have been studied in great detail: the “sugar code” and the “bioelectric code.” 

Most proteins in living cells — including those in membranes — are chemically bonded to carbohydrates called “glycans” (from the Greek word for “sweet”). The nucleotides in DNA are linked together end-to-end in a linear molecule, so DNA sequence information is one-dimensional. In living cells, the subunits in proteins (with a few exceptions) are also linked in a linear chain. But glycans can be linked together in complex three-dimensional ways, so their information-carrying capacity exceeds that of DNA and proteins by many orders of magnitude.3 

Illustration: Three subunits linked together in DNA (A), a protein (B) and a glycan (C).

The information carried by glycans has been called the “sugar code.”4 The sugar code is “interpreted” by proteins called lectins, which “recognize” specific three-dimensional structures of glycan molecules. Glycans and lectins play an essential role in communication among cells and help to guide cell movements in a developing embryo. Experiments have shown that membrane patterns of glycans change in the course of embryo development.5

In addition to the sugar code, probably all living cells (not just nerve and muscle cells) generate electric fields across their membranes. They do this by pumping charged ions through channels in their membranes, creating a “bioelectric field.” The pattern of membrane channels determines the form of the bioelectric field, and the form of the field changes during embryo development. 

Illustration: Some of the bioelectric fields (shown by arrows) in a developing frog embryo.

Bioelectric fields are correlated with important developmental events. In frog embryos, for example, large ionic currents start flowing out of the sites where the hind limbs will develop long before the limbs actually appear.

Many experiments conducted since the 1980s have confirmed that disrupting bioelectric fields causes disruptions in development. For example, frog embryos normally generate an electric field in the head-to-tail direction. If an artificial field of the same magnitude is applied in the opposite direction, or if ion channels that generate the field are blocked, the result is abnormal head and eye development. The spots where eyes normally form are more highly charged than the surrounding tissue; if the charge is neutralized, the eyes that develop are small or deformed. Sometimes, eyes develop elsewhere on the tadpole’s body, including its tail.5

How do electric fields influence development? In the 1980s, biologists exposed embryonic cells to artificial electric fields of the same strength as ones the cells generate naturally. Some types of cells migrated toward the positive pole, while other types migrated to the negative pole, suggesting that one way bioelectric fields affect embryo development is by directing cell movements.

In 1995, biologists Riyi Shi and Richards Borgens concluded that bioelectric fields “may provide a three dimensional coordinate system” that helps to specify form in embryos.6 In 2013, biologists AiSun Tseng and Michael Levin wrote that such fields may provide “templates of shape,” and that a full understanding of embryo development will probably require cracking the “bioelectric code.”7

The Membrane Code

So localized RNAs in the cortex, glycan patterns on the membrane, and bioelectric fields generated by ion channels in the membrane all carry spatial information. Although individual molecules may be specified by DNA, their three-dimensional patterns are not. Taken together, these patterns constitute a “membrane code” that is independent of DNA sequences.

In 1983, biologist Robert Poyton suggested that biological membranes carry “spatial memory,” the units of which are spatially localized proteins. Poyton wrote: “Realizing that genetic memory is one-dimensional, along a DNA molecule, whereas spatial memory is likely to be two-dimensional, along membrane surfaces, and three-dimensional within the cellular interior, it is probable that spatial memory is more complicated and diverse than genetic memory.”8

In 2004, biologist Thomas Cavalier-Smith wrote that the idea that DNA contains all the information needed to make an organism “is simply false.” According to Cavalier-Smith, membranes provide “chemically specific two-dimensional surfaces with mutually conserved topological relationships in the three spatial dimensions” that play “a key role in the mechanisms that convert the linear information of DNA into the three-dimensional shapes of single cells and multicellular organisms. Animal development creates a complex three-dimensional multicellular organism not by starting from the linear information in DNA… but always starting from an already highly complex three-dimensional unicellular organism, the fertilized egg.”9

So the membrane code carries essential biological information that is independent of DNA sequence information. Yet we often hear that embryo development is directed by a program in DNA. Why?

Beyond DNA

James Watson and Francis Crick’s Nobel Prize-winning discovery of the molecular structure of DNA in 1953 seemed to provide a molecular basis not only for heredity but also for embryo development. Cells replicate their DNA before they divide and (usually) pass on a complete set of their DNA sequences to each of their descendants. Cells then use DNA sequences as templates for the transcription of RNAs, some of which are then translated into proteins.

In the mid 20th century, biology was dominated by neo-Darwinism, a system of thought that combined evolution and genetics and attributed new variations to genetic mutations. An underlying assumption of neo-Darwinism is that evolution and development are due entirely to unguided material processes. After 1953, this materialistic assumption led to the view that “DNA makes RNA makes protein makes us,” which has been called the Central Dogma of molecular biology.

In 1970, molecular biologist (and materialist) Jacques Monod said that with the Central Dogma, “and the understanding of the random physical basis of mutation that molecular biology has also provided, the mechanism of Darwinism is at last securely founded. And man has to understand that he is a mere accident.”9

But the existence of the membrane code shows that the Central Dogma is false. And the materialistic idea that evolution is unguided cannot account for the complex specified information in DNA, much less for the extensive complex specified information in the membrane code. Just as the information in DNA points to design, so does the information beyond DNA. 

Notes:

1. William A. Dembski, “Intelligent design as a theory of information,” February 20, 1997.
2. Stephen C. Meyer, “DNA by design,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 1 (1998): 519-556.
3. Roger A. Laine, “A calculation of all possible oligosaccharide isomers both branched and linear yields 1.05 x 1012 structures for a reducing hexasaccharide,” Glycobiology 4 (1994): 759-767.
4. Hans-Joachim Gabius, “Biological information transfer beyond the genetic code: The sugar code,” Naturwissenschaften 87 (2000): 108-121.
5. Jonathan Wells, “Membrane patterns carry ontogenetic information that is specified independently of DNA,” Bio-Complexity 2014 (2): 1-28.
6. Riyi Shi and Richard B. Borgens, “Three-dimensional gradients of voltage during development of the nervous system as invisible coordinates for the establishment of embryonic pattern,” Developmental Dynamics 202 (1995): 101-114.
7. AiSun Tseng and Michael Levin, “Cracking the bioelectric code: Probing endogenous ionic controls of pattern formation,” Communicative and Integrative Biology 6 (2013): e22595
8. Robert O. Poyton, “Memory and membranes: The expression of genetic and spatial memory during the assembly of organelle macrocompartments,” Modern Cell Biology 2 (1983): 15-72.
9. Thomas Cavalier-Smith, “The membranome and membrane heredity in development and evolution,” pp. 335-351 in Robert P. Hirt and David S. Horner (editors), Organelles, Genomes and Eukaryote Phylogeny (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2004), 348.
10. Jacques Monod, quoted in Horace Freeland Judson, The Eighth Day of Creation: The Makers of the Revolution in Biology (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979), 217.

Editor’s note: Dr. Wells’s latest book is Zombie Science: More Icons of Evolution. This article first appeared in Salvo 38. It is published here with the permission of Jonathan Wells.

Russia's reversion to the dark ages continues apace.

Another One of Jehovah’s Witnesses on Trial in Russia on Charges of Extremist Activity

Arkadya Akopyan, a 70-year-old retired tailor and one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, has been on trial for a year on charges of extremist activity. If convicted, he faces a heavy fine or a prison sentence of up to four years.

The prosecution alleges that Mr. Akopyan is guilty of “inciting religious hatred” based on a religious sermon he gave at a local Kingdom Hall where he has regularly attended for many years. In court, the prosecutor relied heavily on the false testimony of six individuals who are not Jehovah’s Witnesses. They claim that Mr. Akopyan made defamatory statements during his sermon and that he gave them “extremist” literature to distribute to others.

Mr. Akopyan and others who know him deny both claims. His lawyer presented evidence in court that the six individuals who made the allegations were nowhere near the building in which they claim Mr. Akopyan made his statements. Further, Jehovah’s Witnesses do not indiscriminately give religious literature to non-Witnesses for them to distribute. Mr. Akopyan’s wife, Sonya, who is not one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, informed the court during her cross-examination that she has been happily married for 40 years and that her husband has never forced any of their relatives to become Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Judge Oleg Golovashko ordered an expert study to examine the statements made by Mr. Akopyan during his sermon in order to determine whether he had ‘incited religious hatred.’ At Mr. Akopyan’s most recent hearing, on May 15, 2018, the judge indicated that the expert study should be completed during the month of September 2018 but that he would continue the trial in the meantime. The next hearing is scheduled for June 5, when Mr. Akopyan will be cross-examined. Although he is not in pretrial detention, Mr. Akopyan has been restricted from traveling since his trial began in May 2017 in the Prokhladny District Court.

Gregory Allen, Associate General Counsel for Jehovah’s Witnesses, stated: “Mr. Akopyan is just one more victim of Russia’s gross misapplication of its extremism legislation against Jehovah’s Witnesses. He is an innocent, law-abiding citizen who merely wants to worship God in peace. The government’s misguided targeting of Jehovah’s Witnesses puts every Witness under duress and erodes the diverse social fabric of the country.”

Mr. Akopyan is the second Witness in Russia who is being unjustly prosecuted for “extremist activity.” The criminal trial of Dennis Christensen, a Witness in Oryol, began in February 2018. He has been in pretrial detention for a year and could face up to ten years in prison if convicted. * Another seven Witnesses are in pretrial detention in various regions of Russia but have not been formally indicted.

Bloodless surgery:Still the gold standard.

University of Padua Hosts Landmark Conference to Discuss Advances in Transfusion-Free Medical Care

ROME—On Friday, November 24, 2017, medical, bioethics, and legal professionals convened at the University of Padua, the second-oldest university in Italy, for the conference entitled “The Refusal of Blood Transfusion by Adult Patients: What Are the Treatment Options?—Blood Save 2017.” The conference was sponsored by more than 25 Italian scientific societies and associations as well as Italy’s Ministry of Health.


Dr. Luca P. Weltert

Traditionally, blood transfusions are considered harmless and the only life-saving medical treatment option for patients undergoing complex medical or surgical procedures. This assumption was challenged by many of the conference speakers. One of the visiting experts, Dr. Luca P. Weltert, a cardiothoracic surgeon at the European Hospital, Rome, explained: “We saw today that transfusions can be detrimental and in many cases are not needed.”

Dr. Weltert and other clinicians on the program reached this conclusion based on their clinical experience as well as evidence from scientific studies that establish a correlation between blood transfusions and increased mortality, morbidity, length of hospital stay, and other serious health risks for transfusion recipients. *

“We saw today that transfusions can be detrimental and in many cases are not needed.”—Dr. Luca Weltert, cardiothoracic surgeon, European Hospital, Rome

Such scientific evidence, along with the high cost of blood transfusions, moved the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2010 to identify the need for patient blood management (PBM)—a multidisciplinary and multimodal approach that focuses on health and patient safety, improves clinical outcomes, and significantly reduces the use of blood transfusions. The WHO issued a resolution that urged all 193 member states of the United Nations to implement PBM strategies.


Professor Stefania Vaglio

Professor Stefania Vaglio, chief of transfusion medicine at the Sant’Andrea University Hospital, Rome, discussed at length the new culture of PBM, stating that formerly, medical care was dependent on handling and administering donor blood, but now “the focus has been completely switched from donor blood to a patient’s own blood.” One of the objectives of PBM is “to minimize blood loss by putting the patient at the center of the process, . . . focusing attention and doing all that is necessary in order to preserve the patient’s blood.” Professor Vaglio also clarified that medical techniques to conserve a patient’s own blood “actually mean better quality treatment.”

Dr. Tommaso Campagnaro, a general surgeon at the Verona University Hospital, confirmed the benefits of using strategies to avoid blood transfusions. After completing an analysis of data going back as far as the late 1990s involving patients undergoing the most complex abdominal surgical procedure, he concluded: “The patients who did not receive transfusions had less complications and a lower mortality rate compared to transfused patients.”

“The patients who did not receive transfusions had less complications and a lower mortality rate compared to transfused patients.”—Dr. Tommaso Campagnaro, general surgeon, Verona University Hospital


Associate Professor Anna Aprile

Dr. Campagnaro, along with several other conference speakers, publicly thanked Jehovah’s Witnesses for helping to prompt doctors to develop alternatives to blood transfusions. Anna Aprile, associate professor of medical law at the University of Padua, stated: “We thank Jehovah’s Witnesses, who have raised the issue of the right to refuse transfusions, helping everyone to reflect on this issue and to meet the challenge of using less blood.”

“We thank Jehovah’s Witnesses, who have raised the issue of the right to refuse transfusions . . .”—Anna Aprile, associate professor of medical law, University of Padua

The conference speakers represented diverse medical specialties, such as anesthesiology, cardiology, gynecology, hematology, oncology, and orthopedics. However, the overwhelming message was the same: the medical establishment, lawmakers, and the general public should all be open to PBM strategies in light of the growing body of published data and experiences from experts in the field.


Attendees at the Morgagni lecture hall at the University of Padua listen to one of the presentations.

Dr. Weltert adds: “Aortic dissection repair in contemporary surgical therapy represents the biggest surgery that you can do on a human body. . . . If [this] can be carried out without blood, then really anything can be done.”

Highlights From the Conference


Dr. Tommaso Campagnaro

General surgeon, Verona University Hospital

“Patients who receive blood transfusions are sure to face more complications and problems, as the scientific literature and the statistics indicate. A higher number of blood transfusions correlates with more complications and deaths. So, the association between transfusion and mortality is a reality.”

“In reality, the experience with Witness patients has influenced the treatment methods for all our patients. It has allowed us to make great improvements, and we thank them for that, because as you’ve seen, we’ve been able to reduce significantly the use of blood for all our patients.”


Professor Pia Di Benedetto

Chief of Anesthesiology, Sant’Andrea University Hospital, Rome

“My anesthesiology colleague, Professor Paolo Grossi—who is present today—and I have shared the same view of bloodless surgery for the past 25 years. We both have cooperated with orthopedic surgeons, who were probably the first to agree on our approach to bloodless surgery. . . . So, having worked with them for many years, bloodless surgery has become a reality, a reality that we finally see is beginning to be accepted by everyone.”

Professor Alfredo Guglielmi

Professor of General Surgery, Verona University Hospital

“We have been treating Jehovah’s Witness patients for about 30 years. It has been a very important incentive for us to solve the problems associated with blood transfusions, and not only in relation to Jehovah’s Witnesses.”

Dr. Samuel Mancuso

Conference chairman; cardiac surgeon, University of Turin, Maria Pia Hospital

“The number of patients that refuse blood transfusions for clinical and medical reasons is increasing. Why? It is not only out of concern for transfusion risks but because of the notion that bloodless medicine is better medicine. If I, as a patient, refuse a blood transfusion, I will receive better care, caregivers will prepare me well in advance, everything will be done in a meticulous way, and I will bleed less. If I lose a lot of blood during surgery, doctors will give my blood back to me, and I am guaranteed that they will follow a very strict protocol. Therefore, it is not only Jehovah’s Witness patients who are requesting this kind of [transfusion-free] procedure.”

Dr. Sergio Fucci

Magistrate; former Counselor, Milan Appellate Court; Honorary Chairman, Court of Cassation, Milan

“Medicine should first of all be oriented toward respect for the person and his dignity. . . . I think one of the worst violations of someone’s dignity is not listening to what the person says. It is like denying one the status of being a human.”

Media Contacts:

International: David A. Semonian, Office of Public Information, +1-845-524-3000


Italy: Christian Di Blasio, +39-06-872941

The OOL continues to troll design deniers.

More on Alien Octopi: New Paper Admits Failure of Evolution to Explain Life
Cornelius Hunter

There are many fundamental problems with evolutionary theory. Origin-of-life studies have dramatically failed. Incredibly complex biological designs, both morphological and molecular, arose abruptly with far too little time to have evolved. The concept of punctuated equilibrium is descriptive, not explanatory. The Cambrian explosion is not explained by evolution and, in general, evolutionary mechanisms are inadequate to explain the emergence of new traits, body plans, and new physiologies. Even a single gene is beyond the reach of evolutionary mechanisms.

In fact, the complexity and sophistication of life cannot originate from non-biological matter under any scenario, over any expanse of space and time, however vast. On the other hand, the archenemy of evolutionary theory, Lamarckian inheritance, in its variety of forms, is well established.

As noted here already  (“With New Theory of the Cambrian Explosion, Scientists Reach (Literally) for the Stars”), these scientific observations are laid out in a new peer-reviewed, scientific paper arguing for panspermia.

Origin of Life

Regarding origin-of-life studies, which try to explain how living cells could somehow have arisen in an ancient, inorganic, Earth, the paper explains that this idea should have long since been rejected, but instead it has fueled “sophisticated conjectures with little or no evidential support.”

…the dominant biological paradigm — abiogenesis in a primordial soup. The latter idea was developed at a time when the earliest living cells were considered to be exceedingly simple structures that could subsequently evolve in a Darwinian way. These ideas should of course have been critically examined and rejected after the discovery of the exceedingly complex molecular structures involved in proteins and in DNA. But this did not happen. Modern ideas of abiogenesis in hydrothermal vents or elsewhere on the primitive Earth have developed into sophisticated conjectures with little or no evidential support. 

In fact, abiogenesis has “no empirical support.”

…independent abiogenesis on the cosmologically diminutive scale of oceans, lakes or hydrothermal vents remains a hypothesis with no empirical support…

One problem, of many, is that the early Earth would not have supported such monumental evolution:

The conditions that would most likely to have prevailed near the impact-riddled Earth’s surface 4.1–4.23 billion years ago were too hot even for simple organic molecules to survive let alone evolve into living complexity

In fact, the whole idea strains credibility “beyond the limit.”

The requirement now, on the basis of orthodox abiogenic thinking, is that an essentially instantaneous transformation of non-living organic matter to bacterial life occurs, an assumption we consider strains credibility of Earth-bound abiogenesis beyond the limit.

All laboratory experiments have ended in “dismal failure.” The information hurdle is of “superastronomical proportions” and simply could not have been overcome without a miracle.

The transformation of an ensemble of appropriately chosen biological monomers (e.g. amino acids, nucleotides) into a primitive living cell capable of further evolution appears to require overcoming an information hurdle of superastronomical proportions, an event that could not have happened within the time frame of the Earth except, we believe, as a miracle. All laboratory experiments attempting to simulate such an event have so far led to dismal failure.

Diversity of Life

But the origin of life is just the beginning of evolution’s problems. For science now suggests evolution is incapable of creating the diversity of life and all of its designs:

Before the extensive sequencing of DNA became available it would have been reasonable to speculate that random copying errors in a gene sequence could, over time, lead to the emergence of new traits, body plans and new physiologies that could explain the whole of evolution. However the data we have reviewed here challenge this point of view. It suggests that the Cambrian Explosion of multicellular life that occurred 0.54 billion years ago led to a sudden emergence of essentially all the genes that subsequently came to be rearranged into an exceedingly wide range of multi-celled life forms — Tardigrades, the Squid, Octopus, fruit flies, humans — to name but a few.

As one of the authors writes, “the complexity and sophistication of life cannot originate (from non-biological) matter under any scenario, over any expanse of space and time, however vast.” As an example, consider the octopus.

Octopus

First, the octopus is an example of novel, complex features, rapidly appearing and a vast array of genes without an apparent ancestry:

Its large brain and sophisticated nervous system, camera-like eyes, flexible bodies, instantaneous camouflage via the ability to switch colour and shape are just a few of the striking features that appear suddenly on the evolutionary scene. The transformative genes leading from the consensus ancestral Nautilus (e.g., Nautilus pompilius) to the common Cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis) to Squid (Loligo vulgaris) to the common Octopus (Octopus vulgaris) are not easily to be found in any pre-existing life form.

But it gets worse. As I have explained, the cephalopods demonstrate a unique level of adenosine to inosine mRNA editing. It is yet another striking example of lineage-specific design that utterly contradicts macroevolution:

These data demonstrate extensive evolutionary conserved adenosine to inosine (A-to-I) mRNA editing sites in almost every single protein-coding gene in the behaviorally complex coleoid Cephalopods (Octopus in particular), but not in nautilus. This enormous qualitative difference in Cephalopod protein recoding A-to-I mRNA editing compared to nautilus and other invertebrate and vertebrate animals is striking. Thus in transcriptome-wide screens only 1–3% of Drosophila and human protein coding mRNAs harbour an A-to-I recoding site; and there only about 25 human mRNA messages which contain a conserved A-to-I recoding site across mammals. In Drosophila lineages there are about 65 conserved A-sites in protein coding genes and only a few identified in C. elegans which support the hypothesis that A-to-I RNA editing recoding is mostly either neutral, detrimental, or rarely adaptive. Yet in Squid and particularly Octopus it is the norm, with almost every protein coding gene having an evolutionary conserved A-to-I mRNA editing site isoform, resulting in a nonsynonymous amino acid change. This is a virtual qualitative jump in molecular genetic strategy in a supposed smooth and incremental evolutionary lineage — a type of sudden “great leap forward”. Unless all the new genes expressed in the squid/octopus lineages arose from simple mutations of existing genes in either the squid or in other organisms sharing the same habitat, there is surely no way by which this large qualitative transition in A-to-I mRNA editing can be explained by conventional neo-Darwinian processes, even if horizontal gene transfer is allowed.

Lamarck

In the 20th century, Lamarckian inheritance was anathema for evolutionists. Careers were ruined and every evolutionist knew the inheritance of acquired characteristics sat right alongside the flat earth and geocentrism in the history of ideas. The damning of Lamarck, however, was driven by dogma rather than data, and today the evidence has finally overcome evolutionary theory.

Indeed there is much contemporary discussion, observations and critical analysis consistent with this position led by Corrado Spadafora, Yongsheng Liu, Denis Noble, John Mattick and others, that developments such as Lamarckian Inheritance processes (both direct DNA modifications and indirect, viz. epigenetic, transmissions) in evolutionary biology and adjacent fields now necessitate a complete revision of the standard neo-Darwinian theory of evolution or “New Synthesis ” that emerged from the 1930s and 1940s.

Indeed, we now know of a “plethora of adaptive Lamarckian-like inheritance mechanisms.”

There is, of course, nothing new in this paper. We have discussed these, and many, many other refutations of evolutionary theory. Yet the paper is significant because it appears in a peer-reviewed journal. Science is, if anything, conservative. It doesn’t exactly “follow the data,” at least until it becomes OK to do so. There are careers and reputations at stake.

Yet another own goal?

Alleged Refutation of the Cambrian Explosion Confirms Abruptness, Vindicates Meyer
Günter Bechly

The top-down pattern of appearance of animal phyla during the Cambrian explosion represents major conflicting evidence for Darwinian evolution. Since this is so, there have been numerous attempts in the past to explain away the inconvenient truth and fudge the facts to fit the theory, rather than try to find the best explanation for the pattern of evidence in nature.

Such futile attempts include the claim that the Cambrian explosion was a much longer event, that the sudden appearance is just an artifact of Linnaean classification while cladistic classification makes the problem disappear, that Ediacaran organisms such as Kimberella and Spriggina or Ediacaran trace fossils and small shelly fossils represent putative ancestors of the Cambrian phyla. And of course there is the usual appeal to the incompleteness of the fossil record (aka the artifact hypothesis). All these dubious claims, including those made by staunch ID-critics like Nick Matzke, P.Z. Myers, and Donald Prothero, rather than by actual specialists on Cambrian fossils, have all been addressed and refuted before (e.g., see Meyer 2013, Klinghoffer 2015, and Bechly 2018 ).

New Paper from Allison C. Daley

Now, a new paper by Daley et al. (2018), with an accompanying press release from the University of Oxford (2018), is said to challenge the abruptness of the Cambrian explosion. The paper allegedly settles the case in favor of a more gradual pattern of appearance as predicted by Darwin’s theory. That would be big news indeed, if it were true. Darwinists bloggers are thrilled 

To judge from the hype, you might expect that the authors of the new paper have discovered a well-dated temporal transitional series of fossils, documenting a gradual evolution stretched out over a long period of time, rather than an explosive event. Well, far from that. Actually, the article presents no new fossil evidence, no new phylogenetic studies, nor any new scientific results at all. Instead, it is just a review of other recent work. This is why it was published in the “Perspectives” section of the journal PNAS.

The press release announces, “[N]ew research from the University of Oxford in collaboration with the University of Lausanne suggests that for most animals this ‘explosion’ was in fact a more gradual process.” This is already a highly misleading statement, as the paper only deals with euarthropods and not any other group of animals. At most it could prove a more gradual origin of euarthropods, thus of a single lineage within a single one of the 28 animal phyla. But does it even achieve this limited goal? They continue with the claim, “A team based at Oxford University Museum of Natural History and the University of Lausanne carried out the most comprehensive analysis ever made of early fossil euarthropods from every different possible type of fossil preservation.” This is factually incorrect. What the new study achieves is nothing new at all: based on other cladistic studies, they ordered the fossils according to their inferred sequence of branching from the euarthropod stem line, irrespective of their temporal ordering, and thereby identify a supposed order of character acquisition. 

This has been done before multiple times by other studies on early arthropod phylogeny by eminent paleontologists like Graham Budd, Gregory Edgecombe, and David Legg. The alleged new result is not evidence at all, but rather high level interpretation of evidence based on several unquestioned background assumptions such as universal common ancestry and the principle of parsimony. It is by no means the “most comprehensive analysis” of its kind (e.g., compared to  Legg et al. 2013, who studied 309 panarthropod taxa and 753 morphological characters). The authors also fail to discuss any incongruent evidence, such as the strange fact that lobopodians like Hallucigenia, which are believed to be more basal stem arthropods, do have legs, while radiodonts like Anomalocaris, which are believed to be more advanced stem arthropods, lack any postcephalic legs.

A Welcome Confirmation

Claims from the Darwinist peanut gallery notwithstanding, nothing genuinely new is to be found in the paper. Nevertheless, this publication is still very interesting for other reasons.

Instead of refuting the abruptness of the Cambrian explosion, Daley et al. (2018) confirm that the fossil record of euarthropods is even more abrupt than often believed. How so? Because the oldest body fossils from crown group arthropods like trilobites indeed predate (!) their alleged ancestors by about three million years. The authors recognize that this is a problem. They admit, “It may seem counter-intuitive that crown group euarthropods appear at 521 Ma, while the first appearance of stem lineage euarthropods is not until 518 Ma.” To solve this temporal paradox the authors have to postulate a ghost lineage of stem euarthropods that predate the oldest fossil trilobites but left no record of body fossils. Such hypothetical ghost lineages are required by the unquestioned assumption of universal common descent. Surprisingly, they also appeal to the artifact hypothesis (“… stem lineage euarthropods lack biomineralized exoskeletons and require preservation of soft tissues …”) even though they themselves show in their work that the Burgess-Shale-type (BST) conditions for soft tissue preservation existed all the way down to the Ediacaran period. 

Trying to evaluate the length of the ghost lineage, the authors write: “However, stem lineage euarthropods would have evolved before trilobites, even if they are not preserved, so the real question is how much earlier than 521 Ma did they appear? The answer comes from the trace fossil record.” The problem is that according to the writers, the oldest unequivocal arthropod trace fossils are again made by euarthropod trilobites (537-million-year-old Rusophycus traces) and thus not by stem euarthropods. They admit, “In contrast, Rusophycus … provides definitive evidence of crown group Euarthropoda … This makes Rusophycus the oldest euarthropod trace globally … During the Ediacaran period, euarthropod trace fossils are ‘strikingly absent.’” Consequently, the trace fossil record documents an even earlier presence of euarthropods, long before the morphologically more primitive lobopodian and radiodont fossils, implying even longer ghost lineages for stem euarthropods that conflict with the actual fossil record.

Triple Vindication for Meyer

There is more. Even though Daley et al. (2018) do not bother to mention Darwin’s Doubt,they vindicate three main theses of Stephen Meyer’s book.

First, the authors confirm Stephen Meyer’s refutation of the artifact hypothesis and my own argument from the absence of animals in recently discovered Burgess-Shale-type fossil localities from the Ediacaran period (Bechly 2018). As they clearly affirm in the Abstract

A deep Precambrian root to the euarthropod evolutionary lineage is disproven by a comparison of Ediacaran and Cambrian lagerstätten. BSTs from the latest Ediacaran Period (e.g., Miaohe biota, 550 Ma) are abundantly fossiliferous with algae but completely lack animals, which are also missing from other Ediacaran windows, such as phosphate deposits (e.g., Doushantuo, 560 Ma).

In the article they elaborate: 

Modes of Fossil Preservation Are Comparable in the Cambrian and Precambrian … Hypotheses that regard Precambrian preservation as insufficient to preserve euarthropods can no longer be sustained, given the abundant lagerstätten from the Ediacaran Period. Similarly, claims that euarthropods evolved as a tiny and soft-bodied meiofauna that escaped preservation cannot be substantiated because of how commonly the phosphate window is found in the Ediacaran and lower Cambrian, with microscopic euarthropods not appearing until 514 Ma.

The news item from the University of Oxford makes the point even more clearly: 

“The idea that arthropods are missing from the Precambrian fossil record because of biases in how fossils are preserved can now be rejected,” says Dr. Greg Edgecombe FRS from the Natural History Museum, London, who was not involved in the study. “The authors make a very compelling case that the late Precambrian and Cambrian are in fact very similar in terms of how fossils preserve. There is really just one plausible explanation — arthropods hadn’t yet evolved.”

Second, the authors mention that “Spriggina, for example, does not possess bilateral symmetry, but instead has a marked offset along the midline, and this alone is sufficient to reject a euarthropod affinity … No euarthropod claim from the Ediacaran biota can therefore be substantiated.” Thus, Daley et al. clearly reject any arthropod affinity of Ediacaran organisms such as Spriggina, also because of their non-bilaterian glide symmetry. Guess who made exactly this point before? Yes, it was Stephen Meyer (2013) in Darwin’s Doubt.

A Very Acute Waiting Time Problem

Finally, the paper by Daley et al. confirms that the Cambrian explosion implies a very acute waiting time problem, again as elaborated by Meyer (2013). Based on their postulated ghost lineages and on molecular clock data, the authors suggest that euarthropods originated about 541 million years ago. They conclude, “Rather than being a sudden event, this diversification unfolded gradually over the ∼40 million years of the lower to middle Cambrian, with no evidence of a deep Precambrian history.” However, this conclusion is totally speculative and an artifact of their methodological assumptions. It is not based on actual fossil evidence (see above). The latter indeed suggests that the euarthropod body plan appeared with trilobites in the Lower Cambrian, as if out of thin air without any known precursors and without any fossil evidence for a gradual step-wise generation of this body plan. 

Far from being a refutation of the abruptness of the Cambrian explosion, this study actually confirms it and makes the abruptness of the event even more acute. Here is why: since the authors refute the existence of stem group arthropods in the Ediacaran period before 550 million years, and euarthropods are documented already for the Lower Cambrian at 537 million years, there remains a window of time of only 13 million years to evolve the stem arthropod body plan from unknown ecdysozoan worm-like ancestors and to make the transition from lobododian pro-arthropods to the fully developed euarthropod body plan, with exoskeleton, articulated legs, compound eyes, etc. Since the average longevity of a single marine invertebrate species is about 5-10 million years (Levinton 2001: 384, table 7.2), this available window of time equals only about two successive species. Considering the implied enormous re-engineering involved, this time is much too short to accommodate the waiting times for the necessary genetic changes to occur and spread according to the laws of population genetics.

Literature:

• Bechly G 2018. “A Paleontologist on Why the ‘Cambrian Explosion’ Label Persists.” ID the Future April 23, 2018.
• Daley AC, Antcliffe JB, Drage HB, Pates S 2018. “Early fossil record of Euarthropoda and the Cambrian Explosion.” PNAS, 9 pp.
• Klinghoffer D 2015. Debating Darwin’s Doubt: A Scientific Controversy That Can No Longer Be Denied. Discovery Institute Press, 350 pp.
• Legg DA, Sutton MD, Edgecombe GD 2013. “Arthropod fossil data increase congruence of morphological and molecular phylogenies.” Nature Communications 4, 2485.
• Levinton JS 2001. Genetics, Paleontology, and Macroevolution. Cambridge University Press, 617 pp. (Google Books).
• Meyer SC 2013. Darwin’s Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design. HarperOne, 512 pp.
• University of Oxford 2018. “Major fossil study sheds new light on emergence of early animal life 540 million years ago.” EurekAlert! 21-May-2018; Phys.org May 21, 2018.