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Sub-Monomers Don't "Do" The Super-Special Selected Particular Polymers of Life
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DO MONOMER COMPOUNDS JUST NATURALLY FORM POLYMERS ?

Life is made out of complicatedly-interactive mechanisms all made out of a special type of molecule called bio-polymers. At a lower chemical level are the ordinary polymers, made out of monomers. Monomers are the links, the repeating molecular units (made up of amino acids, carbohydrates, nucleotides, and other compounds) of which the long chain molecules called polymers are comprised. (Monomer means 'single part'; polymer means 'many parts'.)

But how do monomers get into place to co-exist as even a sub-class of polymer (below bio-polymers)? How do the many single monomers get into the many places and relations to the other monomers in which they must be situated in order to comprise a polymer? It turns out that monomers do not have any properties of self-assembly; so monomers do not form into polymers spontaneously.

Even the formation of a single polymer, let alone a single bio-polymer --- which is still a universe away from a single mechanism made out of many bio-polymers specially-placed in relation to each other (and bio-polymers have special features, like the 'exclusive left-handedness' of the special molecules, beyond any that matter left to its' own properties ever produces) --- even the formation of a single polymer requires 'Creative Assembly'. (That is why it takes a GEPolymerland to create plastics.) Monomers do not spontaneously form into even lifeless polymers, even in high concentrations of monomer matter. Haney, in the context of his page 165), writes as follows:

"Amino acids, carbohydrates, nucleotides, and other small molecules function as "monomers", which are the individual segments that link together to form the long chainlike structures called polymers. Proteins, DNA, cellulose, and many other polymers provide the essential structures of living things. Research into prebiotic chemistry hits a serious snag when it comes to transforming monomers into polymers.

Small organic molecules form easily, as Miller-Urey-style experiments have shown time and time again, but they usually do so in extremely low concentrations. ... The large and complex molecules essential to life --- proteins with dozens or hundreds of amino acids, RNA and DNA formed with long chains of nucleotides, or cellulose assembled from countless individual sugar molecules --- do not appear spontaneously, even in carefully devised environments with high concentrations of monomers. Indeed, these macromolecules appear to be quite unstable. Even when two monomers link up or polymerize, they often will just as quickly disintegrate or depolymerize under water-rich conditions."

So sub-monomer matter, the ordinary, non-living matter molecules which serve as monomers (single unit links) in polymers --- once they are rightly linked up --- sub-monomer matter, even a little bit left to itself, does not even sustain those tiny polymers (themselves vastly inadequate for Life) formed when experiments with "carefully devised environments with high concentrations of monomers" are cooked up. Yet sub-monomer matter would have to do an awful lot of polymerizing and arranging of extremely unique and specific polymers to create Life. It doesn't do it.

Duane Gish, Ph.D., Biochemistry, Berkeley, after 18 years in Research at Cornell, the Virus Lab at U-Cal, and the Upjohn Company, and now of ICR (The Institute for Creation Research), has written "Speculations and Experiments Related To Theories On The Origin Of Life: A Critique", a short (40 page) monograph containing a lot of essential material on this. (It is inexpensive, from http://www.icr.org , or others, resellers.) Gish makes many important and related observations, from which I trust the reader will extract the key ideas concerning polymer formation as they emerge, noting as we go how complex a process polymer formation is:

"... proteins are polymers, the repeating units, or monomers, of which, are amino acids ... Bonds are formed by splitting out water during chemical combination of the amino acids with one another ... The average protein contains several hundred amino acid residues. To form such a protein, the above reaction would be repeated many times as the amino acids are added successively to the end of the chain."

"Nucleic acids are polymers made up of subunits or monomers called nucleotides. Each nucleotide is composed of phosphate, a sugar, and a base ... "

"The origin of proteins and nucleic acids as found in the living cell represents two general problems. First, the problem of their chemical formation, that is, the bringing together of the subunits and the formation of the chemical bonds between these sub-units by splitting out water. Secondly, the specific sequences or linear arrangements of the subunits in these polymers which cause them to be biologically active.

A bacterial cell contains at least 1500-2000 different enzymes, perhaps many more. All of these enzymes are proteins, or polymers of amino acids, yet the activity of each is highly specific. There are thousands of chemical reactions that must be catalyzed very efficiently and in a specific way, and the bacterial cell has an enzyme for each task. In each case this specific activity is due to the order or arrangement of the amino acids in the protein chain. The sequence or arrangement of the amino acids is different for each enzyme or protein, and this unique arrangement confers upon each protein its specific activity. If this highly ordered arrangement is changed, even in a very small way, all biological activity may be lost. These biologically active proteins may be compared to the machines in a factory."

I should not have to observe that the absence of one integral machine in a factory, due to one missing or defective part, obviously means that the factory does not operate. The unformed cell cannot call a repairman.

Gish continues, treating the critical operational specificity of the nucleic acid polymers:

"Nucleic acids likewise have highly specific structures, due the unique order of the nucleotides in each. Each gene, which is a DNA molecule, may be composed of a thousand or more subunits, or nucleotides. The order in which these nucleotides are arranged along the chain determines the function of each gene. The alteration of a single one of the thousands of these nucleotides in a gene may cause loss of function of the gene and prove to be crippling or fatal to the plant or animal."

But, we are asking, where does all this come from? That is the clincher concerning the source of monomers and polymers. Summarizing well-established science, Gish writes:

"Monomers never spontaneously combine to form polymers unless they have first been activated or energy is supplied. Polymers, on the other hand, have a tendency to break down and revert to the monomers. Of course, polymers can be formed in the laboratory and in the factory, since there are chemists there to supply the required energy in the proper way. The living cell accomplishes this task also, utilizing its unique apparatus and energy sources. ... "

In any hypothetical natural, non-living matter environment, of course, neither chemists nor living cells are around.

Gish continues:

"... How then is it supposed that the above reaction was caused to go in the direction opposite to that which it spontaneously would go? The evolutionist must imagine a set of conditions and a hypothetical energy source so directed that polymers, such as proteins and nucleic acids, could have arisen in large amounts."

Such polymers, of course, would not only have to be produced in large numbers, but also would have to be arranged in orders of vast specificity and complexity. But on the problem of polymers even coming into existence, Gish writes:

"Evolutionists are aware of this difficulty. Thus Wald has stated, 'In the vast majority of the processes in which we are interested the point of equilibrium lies far over toward the side of dissolution. That is to say, spontaneous dissolution is much more probable, and hence proceeds much more rapidly, than spontaneous synthesis.'

There it is. In non-living matter, the rate of dissolution of polymers proceeds much more rapidly than spontaneous synthesis, and that does not even speak of their requisite, incredibly specific arrangement in a Living Being.

A NOTE ON MILLER-UREY TYPE EXPERIMENTS

Concerning Miller-Urey-type experiments, Gish tells us something important concerning the efforts of the experimenters which most people are not aware of:

"One very important consideration often overlooked or ignored in origin of life speculations is the ready destruction of organic compounds by the very energy sources used to form them. In fact, one of the features of all origin of life experiments is the immediate removal of the products of the reaction, once formed, from the energy source in order to prevent their destruction. For instance, the apparatus (see Figure 3) used by Miller in his classic experiment for the formation of some of the amino acids and other simple organic compounds by a silent electric discharge in a mixture of methane, ammonia, hydrogen, and water, included a cold trap to isolate the products of the reaction immediately after their formation.

Examination of the apparatus used by other investigators in their origin of life experiments reveals that such a trap is a common feature. The tendency of organic chemists to remove the products of their reactions from the energy sources used for their synthesis before significant destruction of these products can take place is understandable. There would have been no organic chemists present, however, on the primitive earth to accomplish this, and products once formed would have been subjected to the destructive forces of electric discharges, heat, or ultraviolet light responsible for their synthesis."

And to this Gish adds:

Hull, in a very important contribution, demonstrated that when all thermodynamic aspects of the problem are considered, the possibility of accumulating useful concentrations of organic compounds over eons of time is clearly precluded. Hull considers not only the rate of formation of organic compounds, but also the rate of their decomposition, pointing out that energy sources invoked for their synthesis are much more effective in decomposing them. ...

Hull goes on to point out that these considerations become of overwhelmingly greater magnitude when organic compounds other than the very simplest are considered. ... Hull relates, as we have already alluded to, that the success of Miller and others in synthesizing organic compounds with electric discharges and ultraviolet light has been due to the fact that they have utilized the well-known principle of increasing the yield of a reaction by selectively removing the product from the reacting mixture."

It is obvious that non-living matter, absent the presence of a Creator, has no way to do that or any of the other essentials of Creating Life, whether that inanimate matter is here on earth or elsewhere in space.

Of course, no one knows, and is right about everything. But I think we can hardly keep in mind too much the following observation by one of the foremost mathematical-astronomers of our time. If this man was driven to the extremity of proposing that maybe Life was produced from outside the earth (in another sense right, though not as he framed it, which only pushed the question back to inanimate matter in space), it was only because of what he knew about the chemical nature of matter, on earth. He wrote in New Scientist 92 (Nov. 19, 1981): 526 :

"I don’t know how long it is going to be before astronomers generally recognize that the combinatorial arrangement of not even one among the many thousands of biopolymers on which life depends could have been arrived at by natural processes here on the earth.

Astronomers will have a little difficulty understanding this because they will be assured by biologists that it is not so, the biologists having been assured in their turn by others that it is not so. The "others" are a group of persons who believe, quite openly, in mathematical miracles. They advocate the belief that tucked away in nature, outside of normal physics, there is a law which performs miracles (provided the miracles are in the aid of biology). This curious situation sits oddly on a profession that for long has been dedicated to coming up with logical explanations of biblical miracles ... It is quite otherwise, however, with the modern mathematical miracle workers, who are always to be found living in the twilight fringes of thermodynamics." --- Sir Fred Hoyle

I could also have gone into the fact that polymers do not self-replicate, apart from the comprehensive assembly of a Living Thing. But why pile failure of the materialists system upon failure of the materialists system? If someone is willing to respond to the truth, one failure of the system is enough, each one representing total breakdown.

I could have weaved elaborate quotes together from Kauffman's "At Home In The Universe", which admits that no way Life could have started from matter has been found (and if he would face facts, none can be), but for those who willfully choose to believe in imaginings falsified by the very behavior of the inanimate matter they have chosen to believe in, determined to persist in failure to understand, out of a plain and simple, determined unwillingness to recognize the Creator, no amount of information will alter their prejudices.

Kauffman admits that:

"Nude DNA does not self-replicate" (page 38, paperback), and that

"the efforts to get RNA strands to copy themselves in a test tube have failed." (page 39, paperback).

He reported that of the case where stranded-sequences of nucleotides were specifically concentrated together in a beaker: i.e., offered to each other on a silver platter.

Kauffman reports that:

"The way it fails are very instructive. First, each of the four nucleotides has its own chemical personality, which tends to make the experiment fail. Thus single-stranded polyG has a tendency to curl back on itself in a hairpin so that two G nucleotides bond to each other. The result is a tangled mess ... " (page 40, the paperback)

That is reminiscent of what Gary Parker pointed out in his "Creation: Facts of Life", and in the book "What Is Creation Science?", by Parker and Morris (Parker has authored 5 genetics texts):

"The proteins in living cells are made of just certain kinds of amino acids, those that are "alpha" (short) and "left-handed". Miller's 'primordial soup' contained many long (beta, gamma, delta) amino acids and equal numbers of both right-and-left-handed forms. Problem: just one long or right-handed amino acid inserted into a chain of short, left-handed amino acids would prevent the coiling and folding necessary for proper protein function. What Miller actually produced was a seething brew of potent poisons that would absolutely destroy any hope for the chemical evolution of life."

So they are Super-Specially-Selected Particular Polymers, these Polymers Used in the Composition of Living Things. And Kauffman has cited Shapiro:

"But how, without supervision, did all the building blocks come together at high enough concentrations in one place and at one time to get a metabolism going? Too many scene changes in this theater, argues Shapiro, with no stage manager."

But Kauffman does not get the point. His answer? An even less stage-managed cacophony (his so-called 'catalysis', the idea that a big enough jumble will jump into miraculous order, in defiance of all historical experience with jumble, never seen to jump to order). All the wrong notes, in the wrong orders, are supposed to produce a Symphony. Denying the real Miracle Worker, he substitutes his own miracle of his own cacophonic invention. But cacophony does not make Symphony. And inanimate matter did not make Life. It could not and it did not. God Alone did. God was the Stage Manager, and the Miracle Worker, and the Composer/Conductor of the Symphony.

God has those who wish to deny Him in confusion, as they persist in wasting our resources here on earth and in space. He laughs at them, but allows them to proceed, so there is little we taxpayers can do except refuse to support their costly programs.

It is a self-reinforcing religion, this materialism. The Religious Materialists have confused many, most of all themselves, and they are happy getting paid to work in one division or another of the confusion, wasting taxpayers money. It’s a case of "all the king’s horses, and all the king’s men", all playing at putting Humpty-Dumpty together, again, in all the wrong ways, while lying to each other, claiming they know (which they don't) what they are talking about.

I hope the point is not lost on any who read this, that you realize which way the logic flows: toward recognition that a Creator must exist, or Life, made of such intricate arrangements of special polymers which matter does not even "create and sustain", or gather, or arrange, could not have been made or be existing; toward the recognition of the utter lost falsehood of man's silly, ignorant claims to the contrary (that Life could ever have come from compounds); toward the recognition that the fossils in the sedimentary banks of the earth's crust cannot therefore have come from any production of Life as a consequence of any property of matter, but must have come from the Creator's hand (as a product of the Creator's Intervening Arrangement of matter, when He made them in Kinds, as Genesis One says, repeatedly --- made them "each according to its Kind, with seed in them, each according to its Kind" ); and toward the conclusion that the same Book which has told us from the beginning matter could never make us (all man's books always said otherwise), also accurately told us how we were made, and of whom we were descended (our ancestry), and of the Great Geo-Oceanic Volcanic Cataclysm which reshaped the earth, shifting and contorting its oceans and crust in one rapid process.

That Book, the Historically and Scientifically Accurate Bible, the same Book that told us that all the Kinds of Living Things could not have come from the properties of matter, must also be accurate (and upon investigation, is found to be accurate) in telling us that by a Cataclysm described in Genesis 5-12 Billions of Living Things now represented by fossilized bodies got immersed and captured in deep banks of sediment rolling in over the continents as those continents sank beneath the sediment-laden waters of the oceans with eruption of the sea floors through that 11-month event --- see Genesis Chapters 5-12).

Why should anyone prefer to be occupied with and deceived by any empty, vain, fruitless alternative concept, lacking evidence to support it, to the contrary, and waste that one's Life in so doing? The truth is much more rewarding, and interesting than the foolish farce of falsehood, though every man be a liar. Pay attention to, and open up to the Lord, and learn to explain these things to others. These are the true facts of Life. Would you rather be blind, or see ?

You could have dug all the material I have brought out here and more out of the references I provided, but I could tell that you were wondering where to look, and would not have the scientific resources readily at hand. So maybe there was some advantage in my pulling the material together for everybody. So I decided to draw such material as I could quickly together (there is much more to be dug out, and much more than could be brought to bear). I hope that some meditation upon the relative significance, roles, and functions of mixtures, compounds, monomers, and polymers will lead you to the realization that even general polymers (and even less special-natured, specifically-arranged bio-polymers), do not spontaneously occur, much less get arranged, into Living Beings, by sub-monomer matter, left to itself.

I hope that you will be able to see that the idea you have been led to believe in, namely, the idea that the basic elements of matter just readily combine into the composition of a Living Thing (or even that sub-monomers will readily combine into polymers, or into anything specific beyond inanimate matter), is completely false; and not only false, but a devastatingly misleading lie, as respects your understanding of how Life, and your Life, got here.

I hope you will be able to realize that (1) just as in making a car, where the intermediate sub-assemblies must be composed, so in making a living body, the elements of matter in their sub-monomer, or single unit, form, must be assembled into a linked, chained, monomer parts of super-specially selected particular polymer (multiple unit) forms --- and that those particular polymer forms must also be assembled into incredibly specific, higher intermediate product forms, namely, the many sub-assemblies of the comprehensive machinery of any Living body, however big or small (and perhaps the small is the more miraculous, as an exercise in miniaturization) --- and simultaneously all those must be assembled together into a simultaneously cooperating machinery of metabolism, and a superstructure, an Empire State building of Empire State Buildings, must be fit in, to provide reproductive capability, in order to create any reproductive Living Being.

I hope you will realize that non-living, inactive, dust, water, and gas just does not have any power to do any of what needs to be done to create Life, and that such realizations will lead you to a reconsideration of the conclusions which flow therefrom, just previously mentioned, and already elaborated in my other postings.

I think you should be able to find in all that enough on what science tells us about sub-monomer matter to realize that sub-monomer compounds, those not even yet linked together as monomers in polymers, i.e., sub-monomer matter, not even yet monomer (linked) matter, i.e., the kind of matter which does not even simultaneously "form .and. sustain" even significant polymers, much less (.and./or) gather, (.and./or) arrange them, can never, never, ever, even possibly, produce Life (a Super Special Selected Particular Polymer Construct Specifically Complex Beyond Our Imagining).

"The secret things belong unto the Lord our God; but the things which are revealed belong to us and to our children for ever, that we may do all of the words of this Law." --- Moses, Deuteronomy 29:29

If the Bible were not specific about anything else, Our Creator has revealed, specifically, in Genesis One, that until He acted to create the Kinds of Living Things, "with seed in them, each according to its Kind" (see the many verses where this is emphasized ten times), matter, given no ability to do anything, did nothing, which is entirely consistent with all we know about matter. And here on earth, where God did create all the Diverse Kinds of Living Creatures, without transitionals (see Duane Gish's great book Evolution: the Fossils Still Say No! and his circa 300 college campus debates about that), Our Creator also created for us, the green plants, for food, and an atmosphere, and an environment, for shelter, which we have progressively brought to near nothing. (Again, see Genesis for details.)

God created no such home on Mars (and matter was not going to do so), from all the evidence we have, so Mars offers no encouragement for the view that He ever created anything there (but those who push Mars are not supposing anything about creation at all). When I think about the conditions on Mars, and about current conditions on earth, and what we know about matter, I realize that if matter ever could have become Life on earth as a consequence of its own properties (which, as we have seen, it could not), it would have had a far better chance of it in Eden, with the full verdancy of the Genesis earth, and all the giant Dino-creatures, around (i.e., with the much greater abundance of Living Things around, all testified to by the fossils of the sedimentary bank earth crust record of the Great Geo-Oceanic Volcanic-Cataclysm so-oft misinterpreted by the evolutionary myth), than it would ever have had on what remains of the earth today (which does not appear to have much time left in it), or on any place like Mars.

If mankind cannot follow God's guidance sufficiently enough to figure out how to live together in peace, making sufficient provision for each other, on the earth, what chance can anyone possibly imagine mankind would ever have in a forbidding, hostile place like Mars, given we can barely ever get a machine there, or get it to function for more than about a month? It is obvious that we have no need to go to Mars, nor any profit to be had by trying to do so, and when we think about what zero-gravity does to the human body, and realize there is no way to have the benefits of gravity without staying down here on earth in gravity, we realize that there is no way we are ever going to Mars and coming back alive, anyway, to add to the fact that we have no need, nor any profit to be gained, by fighting what the Lord has designed to attempt to do so.

"The heavens are the Lord's, but the earth has He given to the children of men." --- Psalm 116:15

Richard Plumer (for President's Fact)

80511 PolMon11

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