Page 24 - The Errors the American National Academy of Sciences

The Errors of the American National Academy of Sciences

of conditions, much less under really plausible ones. 5
2 – Even if we assume that it did come into existence by chance,
with what consciousness did this RNA molecule consisting solely of a

string of nucleotides decide to replicate itself, and by what mecha-
nism did it succeed in doing so? Where did it find the nucleotides it
would use while replicating itself? The evolutionist microbiologists
Gerald Joyce and Leslie Orgel express the hopelessness of the posi-
tion in these terms:
This discussion… has, in a sense, focused on a straw man: the myth
of a self-replicating RNAmolecule that arose de novo from a soup of
random polynucleotides. Not only is such a notion unrealistic in
light of our current understanding of prebiotic chemistry, but it
would strain the credulity of even an optimist's view of RNA's cat-
alytic potential. 6

3 – Even if we go so far as to accept that RNA capable of replicat-
ing itself did emerge in the primeval Earth's atmosphere and that
every kind of amino acid the RNA would use was present in unlim-
ited quantities and that all these impossibilities in some way hap-
pened, that still is not sufficient for the emergence of a single protein
molecule. That is because RNA is nothing but information insofar as
protein structure is concerned. Amino acids are the raw material. Yet

there is no "mechanism" here that might produce the protein.
Considering the existence of RNA as sufficient for the production of
protein is just as meaningless as expecting the thousands of parts that
would go to make up a car to congregate on the blueprint of that car
and for the vehicle to assemble itself.
Aprotein is produced at the end of exceedingly complicated
processes within the cell inside an organelle known as the ribosome, to-
gether with the help of a large number of enzymes. The ribosome is a
complicated cell structure consisting of RNA and proteins. For that rea-

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