Life's mysterious origin

Since I'm on this jag about science and politics, I'll throw in a thought about the much-ballyhooed opening of the Creationist Museum. Of course, it's ridiculous, particular in its strange insistence that dinosaurs and humans co-existed in pre-history. (Of course, Biblical literalists don't really believe in a pre-history, since the Bible covers everything that happened from the origin of the universe through the early Roman Empire.) What's even more ridiculous is how this narrow-minded faction misses the opportunities to lodge more powerful complaints about current scientific theories concerning the origins of life on Earth.

Take, for example, the problem of the first self-replicating molecule. At some point, according to modern science, inorganic matter had to turn into something capable of reproducing itself and evolving. DNA is too complex to consider as the first such self-replicating molecule. Worse, DNA can't replicate without the assistance of other molecules. That second problem poses a nasty chicken-and-egg dilemma: how could DNA exist without these "helper" molecules? And why would these "helpers" exist in abundance, since they don't seem to have much of a function other than to be the handmaidens to DNA replication?

Obviously, DNA had to have an ancestor. Scientists are now divided into two camps, "RNA first" and "metabolism first." Perhaps RNA, which is simpler than DNA and equally capable of re-creating itself, was the first step. Or, instead, maybe the process of metabolism existed, originally using molecules other than RNA and DNA as the raw material for life. (In this theory, metabolic processes eventually produced RNA and DNA, which proved to be the most effective way for replication and evolution to continue.)

No one has a definitive answer to this question yet. It's a more serious gap in scientific knowledge about the origin of all life, and therefore the eventual creation of the human species, than the creationists' constant complaints about gaps in the fossil record between apes and humans. (Many gaps claimed by creationists don't exist. In any case, a totally continuous series of evolutionary snapshots is not needed to make human evolution a tenable theory.)

The first replicating molecule is also a more serious scientific problem than, say, the evolution of complexity later in the history of life. Creationists will ask, "Why would as complex as an eye evolve, if there was nothing useful between a blind organism and a fully-developed eye?" The answers to this question are far more solid than the explanations about how an empty, sterile Earth became home to a superabundant ecosphere.

However, for creationists, finding a more convincing challenge to evolutionary theory is far less important than making the challenge. You can't find the weaker points in evolutionary theory without becoming a scientist yourself. However, if your goal is simply to see how much you can intimidate high school science teachers, or manufacture collective outrage within a congregation, you don't need better scientific challenges at all. The same, boneheaded complaints, already answered countless times, will suffice.

Comments

[Christopher Bitner Hayes]

I'm just happy to see the Flintstones acknowledged.

[Antiquated Tory]

Of course, the question of how life originated is not actually a subject of evolutionary biology, since no biological mechanisms existed at the time. Aside from that small quibble (useful sometimes to raise up when creationists start going on about the inadequacy of evolution to explain the origin of life. Er, thanks, mate, we've noticed.), you're quite right that it's an interesting question.