Evolutionists View Poison as Elixir of Life

Hydrogen cyanide is one of the most reactive and toxic molecules we know, but astrobiologists view it with almost alchemical qualities for the origin of life.

In “Hydrogen cyanide and life’s origin,” NASA’s Astrobiology Magazine explored the ability of HCN as a touchstone for the creation of other molecular “building blocks” of life such as amino acids.

How many different molecules can be created when you release one of the Universe’s most reactive substances, hydrogen cyanide, in the lab? And will the process create some particularly interesting molecules?

That is what scientists call a good question, because hydrogen cyanide seems to have played a role in creating some of life’s building blocks.

Scientists in the lab, though, must treat the chemical with extreme caution.  Just one drop can kill an adult human in 60 seconds.  Wikipedia says “the relationship of these chemical reactions to the origin of life theory remains speculative….”

The astrobiology article asks mostly questions:

Hydrogen cyanide is an organic compound and it is found in large quantities in the universe. It may have helped in producing amino acids and DNA bases, some of life’s basic molecules. If hydrogen cyanide can lead to the formation of amino acids, can it also contribute to the formation of other essential compounds? Can hydrogen cyanide help explain how life originated on Earth? And how it can arise on other planets?

The only way they got HCN to contribute to one amino acid was by intelligent design:

Preliminary studies have shown that hydrogen cyanide can contribute to the formation of amino acids. This discovery required month-long experiments in the laboratory, where scientists painstakingly monitored the reactions and continuously manipulated the experiment to keep it on track.

Nothing in the article suggests that this could have happened without painstaking manipulation.  Even if it did, getting one amino acid is trivial.  There are numerous high hurdles chance would have had to overcome before life began, such as the origin of replication, a membrane, autocatalytic cycles, metabolism, and the genetic code, along with molecular machines able to process and interpret the code for function.  In a world of chance, where natural selection cannot be invoked for help, a building block of a building block has no guidance toward becoming a building block, let alone a building.  Most likely, it would dissipate long before the next hurdle is approached.

Another post on Astrobiology Magazine revised SETI’s old Drake Equation — revised it downward, that is.  Now, Sara Seager would just be happy to find gas that might indicate life, not intelligent life.  “The equation focuses on the search for planets with biosignature gases, gases produced by life that can accumulate in a planet atmosphere to levels that can be detected with remote space telescopes,” she said.  “If we find gases that we might attribute to life we will not know if the gases are produced by intelligent life or simple bacteria. ”

See the 9/07/13 entry to deflate the optimism in NASA’s post.

Welcome to modern alchemy and magic.  Science is the magician’s twin, said C. S. Lewis; only in the case of astrobiology, the twins have swapped places.  Astrobiology, using toxic HCN as an elixir of life, is tantamount to modern-day alchemists trying to create the building blocks of gold, or modern Frankensteins thinking they can create life with poisons and electricity.  Note: Frankenstein was a work of fiction, and alchemy was a pseudoscience.