OOL Cells Are DOA

NASA throws money at origin-of-life (OOL) studies that are doomed to failure, and at education programs to tell students that futility is good science.

NASA Funds Rutgers Scientists’ Pursuit of the Origins of Life (Astrobiology Magazine). Protein nanomachines are anything but simple. They were essential for the first living cells, but so was DNA. A cell could not survive without both, but NASA is giving money to Rutgers in a vain quest to find out if chance could construct proteins from the ground up. It’s an ENIGMA—the name of the project and an apt description of the quest.

What are the origins of life on Earth and possibly elsewhere? Did “protein nanomachines” evolve here before life began to catalyze and support the development of living things? Could the same thing have happened on Mars, the moons of Jupiter and Neptune, and elsewhere in the universe?

A Rutgers University-led team of scientists called ENIGMA, for “Evolution of Nanomachines in Geospheres and Microbial Ancestors,” will try to answer those questions over the next five years, thanks to an approximately $6 million NASA grant and membership in the NASA Astrobiology Institute.

New cartoon by Brett Miller for CEH, published here for the first time with appreciation.

It’s bad enough that these evolutionists are going to spend taxpayer money for five years to accomplish nothing, but they also want to indoctrinate the next generation of students into the cult of astrobiology (or, as we call it, bio-astrology).

We want to develop an education and outreach program at Rutgers that leads to an astrobiology minor for undergraduate students and helps inform K-12 schoolchildren about the origins of life on Earth and what we know and don’t know about the potential for life on other planets. We also want to help make Rutgers a center of excellence in this field so future undergraduate and graduate students and faculty will gravitate towards this university to try to understand the evolution and origin of the molecules that derive energy for life.

It may sound nice for them to teach “what we don’t know” about the origin of life. What this means in practice, though, is that instructors will tantalize them with visions of the “potential” for life, with the goal of attracting them to join the cult of bio-astrology. Initiates into the cult will then be tempted to go to the secular universities for further indoctrination. Learning facts about organic chemistry will be included, but that is only window dressing. It cannot address the core issue: can life arise by chance? Initiates will be carefully shielded from honest critiques of the bio-astrology cult, and will be led to believe that the Stuff Happens Law is scientific.

Study reveals simple chemical process that may have led to the origin of life on Earth (Astrobiology Magazine). This article celebrates work in Tokyo that is also doomed to failure. Even if they get alpha-hydroxy acids to link up, chance would have neither the desire nor the power to make a wholesale change over to the amino acids which make up life, which degrade in water.

While environments of early Earth might have had monomers that could give rise to life, it would have been difficult for polymers to arise from these without the help of enzymes. In this case, the team showed these polymers could have formed with alpha-hydroxy acids before the existence of enzymes on early Earth.

This multi-national team showed that hydroxy acids polymerize more easily than amino acids, and that they could have provided the necessary toolkit to kick-start the formation of more complex molecules for the origin of life on Earth.

Toolkits are used by toolmakers and builders who use intelligent design. Enzymes and proteins simply will not arise by chance; the sequence space is far too fast compared to the functional space, and further, nature has no way to select one-handed amino acids required for proteins. Biblical miracles require far less faith than thinking that proteins will arise by chance (see “The Amoeba’s Journey” from the Illustra film, Origin). The perhapsimaybecouldness index of this article is nearly as astronomical.

We’ve got to stop the storytellers before they indoctrinate another generation into their cult. And how do you stop a cult? YOU TELL STUDENTS THE TRUTH.

Cultist storytellers don’t want students to hear the truth. They want to corner the market and forbid alternatives. We are not the ones trying to silence academic freedom. We want academic freedom! The totalitarian dogmatists are the bio-astrologists and Darwinians. Their cult can only succeed if they are the only ones at the microphone. Their faith CANNOT STAND UP to the truth. Will you let another generation be sold this hopelessly anti-scientific, anti-rational bill of goods? The cult leaders will win by default, and you will have another generation rise up believing that Stuff Happens, and that is how we got here. Get angry enough to do something, or else the flag of science will continue to look like this new cartoon by Brett Miller (below).