Hugo the atheist says . . .

I started to reply to Hugo’s comments to my post “Admit That I Have Faith.” http://thesauros-store.blogspot.com/2010/07/admit-that-i-have-faith.html

In his comments I read:
Hugo: “Life is simply a process. Non-living things are made of exactly the same things as living things.”

Oh, the stupid . . .

I didn’t think there were still people around who were so uneducated that they’d use the term “a simple cell” - and mean it! But then I read:
Hugo: “The first self-replicating lifeform did not have to be complex. Why do you think it had to be?”

Again, so profoundly ignorant in the fullest meaning of the word that I was just going to let it go. But when I got to the comment,
Hugo: “Moreover, the origin of the first complex lifeform is not that important for my understanding of the evolution . . .” I knew that I could not do justice to this kind of, um, thinking, in the comments section. It deserves its own post.

First of all, Hugo,
A living system must do at least three things:
. It must be able to process energy
. It must be able to store information and
. It must be able to replicate.

Living things do this.
Non living things don’t do this.

You do this.
Gasoline does not.

Trees to do this.
Inorganic gases which Hugo and Dawkins say “evolved” do not do this.

Cells in your body do this
Inanimate gases which Hugo and Dawkins say "evolved" do not do this.

Let me go back to one of the earlier Hugoisms, “The first self-replicating lifeform did not have to be complex.”

Straight from the mouth of Richard Dawkins, “Once the vital ingredient is in place the natural process of evolution can take over.”

Well sure, the vital ingredient. Once it’s there, no problem. And the vital ingredient is?

Hugo says, “It’s not important . . .”

Actually, there are many who can speak to Hugo better than I.

“If you scooped into [an enormous heap] of scrabble letters, and you flung a handful of them on the lawn there, and the letters fell into a line which contained the words, “To be or not to be, that is the question,” that is roughly the odds of an RNA molecule, given no natural selection and there would be no natural selection, because the RNA molecule wouldn’t be functional until it attained a certain length and could copy itself.”Shapiro, as quoted in Brockman, ed., “Life: What a Concept!” 90

Hugo says, “It’s not important. . .”

“Without pre biotic natural selection it appears unlikely that a self-replicating ribozyme could arise, but without some form of self-replication there is no way to conduct an evolutionary search for the first primitive self-replicating ribozyme.”
Joyce and Orgel, “Prospects for Understanding the Origin of the RNA World,” 35

Hugo says, “It’s not important. . .”

For a single-stranded RNA catalyst to create an RNA identical to itself so that it can self-replicate, it has to find a satisfactory RNA molecule close by in order to work as a template. That’s because a single-stranded RNA can’t work as both a replicase AND a template. As well, the RNA template would have to be the exact image of the replicase.

Think about the odds of these two meeting up by chance. If you’re an atheist, you’re probably saying at this point, “It doesn’t matter what the odds are. It had to happen that way because here we are.”

You might want to hang on to that thought.

If - IF it actually happened, it would just make things worse. As well as the specificity needed to give the first RNA molecule a self-replicating ability, a second RNA molecule with an extremely specific sequence - one, I might add with the identical specificity as the original - would have to arise as well.

Like any of the atheists who reply here, those placing their FAITH in RNA bypassing the need for DNA, in order to self-replicate do not and cannot explain the origin of the specified complexity in the alleged original RNA molecule NOR in its compliment. It has been calculated by Joyce and Orgel that to have a reasonable chance of finding two complementary RNA molecules of a sufficient length to perform this function would require an “RNA Library” of 10 ^ 48 molecules.
Joyce and Orge, “Progress Toward Understanding the Origin of the RNA World” 33

In case you’re interested, the mass of that many RNA molecules would be greater than the mass of planet earth.

Hugo says, “It’s not important . . .”

It’s not important to Hugo that Natural selection begins only AFTER self-replication has taken place. Replication happens only AFTER specified complexity is in place. Specified complexity, as we know from uniform experience only appears in the presence of or at the direction of Intelligence that has designed that complexity, OR in DNA, RNA, and Proteins.

“An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going.”
Francis Crick, “Life Itself” 88

Hugo says, “It’s not important . . .”

Research efforts have “led to a better perception of the immensity of the problem of the origin of life on earth rather than to its solution. At present, all discussion on principle theories and experiments in the field either end in a stalemate or a confession of ignorance.”
Klaus Dose, “The Origin of Life”

Hugo says, “It’s not important. . .”

Francis Crick has said of his work, "We have to keep reminding ourselves that what we are seeing was not designed."

Hugo and atheists like him say that none of this is important to them. How can it be? Ignoring important information is what allows atheism to exist in the minds of its followers.

Ignoring impotant information allows Hugo to say that he doesn’t believe anything that has “not proven beyond all doubt.”

That's what atheists are like. It's how they think.