Defender's Guide to Science and Creationism

Assertion: There are too many different combinations of amino acids and nucleic acids for a given enzyme or DNA sequence to come into existence by chance.

Analysis

(i) This is true, but irrelevant to origin-of-life research, since no origin-of-life researcher supposes that modern enzymes and DNA strands came into existence all at once by pure chance. As Iris Fry explains, "origin-of-life theories rely on various organizing principles, including selection mechanisms and catalysis, that are supposed to have limited and constrained the wide scope of prebiotic chemical possibilities, thus constructing the scaffolding out of which the living arch eventually emerged" (Fry 2000:196).

(ii) It is also worth pointing out, of course, that enzymes with many different configurations can have identical or similar effects, meaning that no one particular enzyme must necessarily be generated in order to carry out a specific function.

References

Fry I. 2000. The Emergence of Life on Earth: A Historical and Scientific Overview. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

Defender's Guide to Science and Creationism
Copyright © 1997 - 2010, Mark I. Vuletic. All rights reserved.

Please take a minute to help me improve this site by e-mailing me your feedback. If you have a factual dispute, please assist my research by pointing me to references supporting your claim. I regret that I usually will be unable to reply in a timely fashion, but I will read everything sent to me, and will alter or add to the content of my site as needed. My appreciation for polite feedback may safely be assumed.