Current Biology: RNA-Only Life Coming Soon

It Fills “A Gaping Hole”

Here is a trade secret: Evolutionists acknowledge scientific problems only after they find solutions. We have seen this repeatedly. Evolutionists evade the science, and ridicule their critics, only later to confess readily that the problem was real. The difference is they have found what they think is a solution to the problem they once so steadfastly denied. To wit, our latest example comes from Michael Gross’s recent article in Current Biology on the RNA world praising the progress made in developing the on-again / off-again RNA World hypothesis. Gross is sufficiently confident that the hypothesis is “on-again” that he can now agree with critics that the origin of life was once a big problem:

Just how the transition from non-life to life may have happened was indeed a gaping hole in our understanding of evolution in the 20th century, which a few inspired experiments like Stanley Miller’s famous 1952 primordial soup kitchen couldn’t quite bridge.

Indeed a gaping hole? Couldn’t quite bridge?

You would never know this from the evolutionist’s rosy assessments, and ridicule of anyone suggesting the science indicated otherwise. As Carl Zimmer wrote more than 15 years ago, scientists “have found compelling evidence that life could have evolved into a DNA-based microbe in a series of steps.” Perhaps he had read the National Academy of Science’s 1999 claim that

For those who are studying the origin of life, the question is no longer whether life could have originated by chemical processes involving nonbiological components. The question instead has become which of many pathways might have been followed to produce the first cells? [1]

Of course for the Mother of all such absurd, non scientific, statements we can go back to Alexander Oparin’s 1924 prediction that origin of life research would be solved “very, very soon.”

But now, almost a century after Oparin’s slightly premature forecast, the evolutionists feel they have finally arrived. And so now Gross can admit to what we have been inconveniently pointing out all along: There has been “a gaping hole in our understanding of evolution.”

Evolutionists can finally admit to this because they are rather confident that they are on the cusp of a profound break-through: A compelling demonstration of the feasibility of the origin and operation of RNA-based life. That is, the RNA World hypothesis:

it appears conceivable that a working model of RNA-only life could be synthesized soon.

At least Gross did not say “very, very soon.” Nonetheless, we think evolutionists are, yet again, speaking a bit prematurely.

That, however, is neither here nor there. For our purposes what is important about Gross’ article is not his proclamation of imminent success—which until it actually happens carries no more weight than the boatload of other failed evolutionary expectations—but rather the delayed admission of “a gaping hole in our understanding of evolution.”

Now that we have that cleared up, we can apparently all agree that until the RNA World, or some other miracle breakthrough, is demonstrated, evolutionary theory has “a gaping hole.” That’s progress.

1. National Academy of Sciences, Science and Creationism: A View from the National Academy of Sciences, 2d ed. (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1999) 6.