New Research Leads To More Proof Of God

The More We Understand The Cell, The More We See The Hand Of God

 

Two recent threads of cellular research have uncovered more proof that God created life on the early earth.  The first one comes from Brian Miller and his essay in by The Mystery of Life’s Origin: The Continuing Controversy.  In his essay, Miller uses the science of heat and energy transfer, called thermodynamics, to prove it was impossible for random chance and natural processes to have created the first cell.  Brian Miller is Research Coordinator for the Center for Science and Culture at Discovery Institute. He holds a B.S. in physics with a minor in engineering from MIT and a Ph.D. in physics from Duke University.

 

Order Versus Chaos – A Simple Primer On Thermodynamics

Before we get into Miller’s evidence, let’s cover some basic concepts in the scientific field of thermodynamics.  And let’s do so imagining some mythical “primordial soup” in the early earth.  In this soup are a bunch of elements and molecules floating around in water so that it looks like an everyday muddy puddle.  Assume for a moment there’s no wind, gravity, temperature extremes or other external influence.  All the elements and molecules are free to float around with nothing directing them one way or another.  In this condition, there are said to be “in equilibrium”.  They are also in a highly chaotic state – there’s no semblance of structure or order to their arrangement within the puddle.  This highly chaotic state is call “high entropy”.

Now let’s look at the opposite extreme.  The puddle is now subject to gravity and is then frozen solid.  In this situation, large, dense, heavy molecules may fall closer to the bottom of the puddle.  During the freezing process, all elements and molecules will be frozen amongst the ice crystals.  In this situation, equilibrium is broken because heavy and light molecules are separated and the precise regularity of the ice crystals have created a sense of order called low entropy.  The cause of this change in entropy was a change in energy.  Changes in entropy are typically caused by changes in energy.  In the case of the puddle, heat energy was withdrawn causing the ice to freeze.

 

Miller’s Insights

In The Mystery of Life’s Origin: The Continuing Controversy, Miller investigated the thermodynamics of what it would take for a local system of molecules to transition into a cell.  Specifically, if we return to the original state of our primordial soup above, Miller argues that the probability of going from an equilibrium state with high entropy (no order) to a more ordered, low entropy state with higher energy levels in a cell is “astronomically small”.

Miller uses two calculations to make this argument:

1. Miller’s use of the Evans-Searles Fluctuation Theorem, devised in the 1990s, combined with a past estimate for the entropy in a bacteria cell  “… yields the probability from the ESFT for a bacteria cell spontaneously forming of less than 1 in 10¹⁰⁹, a clear impossibility even if the first cell were orders of magnitude smaller.” That is, smaller than the bacteria cell.
2. Miller uses the Crooks Theorem to conclude “the probability for a driven system absorbing sufficient heat from the environment to provide the needed increase in free energy for the origin of life … corresponds in the Crooks equation to a probability of occurring on the order of 1 in 10¹⁰¹¹, which is the same as in a system near equilibrium.”

Furthermore, he states:

“The odds do not improve if the process takes place in multiple steps separated by extended periods of time… Any progress could be completely squandered by a few deleterious thermal fluctuations or chemical interactions.  Therefore, all origin of life scenarios appear thermodynamically implausible.”

Today, this thermodynamic implausibility is overcome in the cell “by employing complex molecular machinery and finely tuned chemical networks to convert one form of energy from the environment into high-energy molecules.”

The other recent thread of cellular research to highlight here is one involving how proteins interact with other themselves and other components in the cell.

Why Some Proteins Combinations Exist And Not Others?

If you’ll recall from the previous article, Proof That God Created All Proteins, there are ~10,000 different types of proteins in a cell.  Some combinations create micro machines, some create enzymes and still others combine for other purposes.  In fact, there’s a whole network of interactions in a cell involving proteins, nucleic acids, lipids and other components.  Scientists call this network of interactions an “interactome” but the name isn’t important here.  What’s important is considering how such a network could have been created in the first cells in the early earth.

Two structural biologists, Peter Tompa of Vrije Universiteit in Brussels and George Rose of Johns Hopkins University, have investigated this issue and, in doing so, extended the Levinthal Paradox – the protein folding problem that we saw in Proof That God Created All Proteins – to the network of interactions in a cell.  They describe the problem this way:

“Unlike protein folding, self-assembly of the interactome has not yet prompted such widespread attention, and for understandable reasons. It is a problem of bewildering complexity…Where does one begin? Our goal here is to show that assembly of the interactome in biological real-time is analogous to folding in that the functional state is selected from a staggering number of useless or potentially deleterious alternatives.”

We’ll avoid a mathematical deep dive here like you’ve seen in other articles and jump to the conclusion: Tompa and Rose calculated the total number of possible unique interactome interactions in a single yeast cell containing  ~4,500 proteins to be 10^{7.9 x 1010} or 10^{79,000,000,000}.

This is a ridiculously large number.  The conclusion that Tompa and Rose come to is obvious:

“Of course, there are additional complicating factors such as alternative splicing, post-translational modifications, non-pairwise macromolecular interactions, incorrect complex formation that is adventitiously stable, and so forth. However, even neglecting such complications, the numbers preclude formation of a functional interactome by trial and error complex formation within any meaningful span of time. This numerical exercise…is tantamount to a proof that the cell does not organize by random collisions of its interacting constituents.“

You can see the original publication from Tompa and Rose here.

One could argue that yeast is a somewhat sophisticated, modern cell.  What about a simple cell in the early earth?  Even then, a cell with only 50 components would still have 6 x 10³¹ possible interactions. The implication is that it would be impossible for even such a simple set of interactions to form by chance in the early earth.  This assessment is produced by Evolution News here.

There’s no known physics, chemistry or biology that can explain how elaborate sets of interactions among proteins and other components started in early cells in the early earth. Yet these interactions display clear signs of design; they were created for a specific purpose. We know from other articles, when we see signs of design, we know it was created by an intelligent agent. The only intelligence that can create such a design at a molecular level within every cell within every living organism is God.

Conclusion

• Two recent threads of cellular research have uncovered more proof that God created life on the early earth
• In one, Brian Miller uses thermodynamics to prove it was impossible for random chance and natural processes to have created the first cell.
  • Miller uses the Evans-Searles Fluctuation Theorem to prove the probability of spontaneously forming a bacteria cell is less than 1 in 10¹⁰⁹, a clear impossibility
  • He uses the Crooks Theorem to conclude the probability of a cell absorbing sufficient heat from the environment to provide the needed increase in free energy for the origin of life is 1 in 10¹⁰¹¹, which is the same as in a system near equilibrium.  Again, an impossibility
  • Current cells use complex molecular machinery and finely tuned chemical networks to overcome this thermodynamic challenge today
• The other recent thread of cellular research to highlight here is one involving how proteins interact with other themselves and other components in the cell
  • Two structural biologists, Peter Tompa of Vrije Universiteit in Brussels and George Rose of Johns Hopkins University, extended the Levinthal Paradox to the network of interactions in a cell
  • Tompa and Rose calculated the total number of possible unique interactome interactions in a single yeast cell containing  ~4,500 proteins to be 10^{7.9 x 1010} or 10^{79,000,000,000}
  • “…the numbers preclude formation of a functional interactome by trial and error complex formation within any meaningful span of time. This numerical exercise…is tantamount to a proof that the cell does not organize by random collisions of its interacting constituents.“
  • There’s no known physics, chemistry or biology that can explain how elaborate sets of interactions among proteins and other components started in early cells in the early earth nor how a cell can overcome the thermodynamic constraints of the early earth
  • These cell and its interactions display clear signs of design; they were created for a specific purpose.
  • We know from other articles, when we see signs of design, we know it was created by an intelligent agent.
  • The only intelligence that can create such designs at a molecular level within every cell within every living organism is God.