The Staggering Complexity of a Single Cell - FAS2622

SPEAKER A Is there such a thing as a simple cell? Evolution claims that all life started from a simple progenote. But when we look under the microscope at a bacteria like E. coli, we don't find simplicity. We find a city. Today we're exploring what makes up the smallest life forms: 70% water, 29% complex biopolymers, and intricate chemical factories. Is this accident or evidence for design? Welcome to Faith and Science. I'm Kaysie Vokurka. Joining me to discuss this topic is Dr. John Ashton. Welcome once again. SPEAKER B Hello, Kaysie. SPEAKER A Dr. John has written a book called The Big Argument: Does God Exist? And in today's program, we'll be looking at some insights from chapter 7 by George Jayver. Now, in that chapter, he describes the cell's chemical composition, which we just mentioned, which was 70% water, 29% complex biopolymers, and of course, other chemical factories. Why is the precise arrangement of these chemicals so critical that vague speculations in textbooks fall short of explaining it? SPEAKER B Yeah, sure. Yes. Okay. Well, of course, the textbooks are very vague in the area of abiogenesis. You know, how did the first life forms come together? They say, well, they did. And they, you know, offer some suggestions of different amino acids somehow synthesizing and being collected together on the surface of a clay particle or, or something like this. And it's largely glossed over because, of course, nobody actually knows. SPEAKER A Yes. SPEAKER B Now, George Javer, in his chapter, actually, Dr. Javer does a really good job. He earned his PhD in the area of studying E. coli at Brown University in the United States. And has certainly been an authority on E. coli for quite a long time. And he raises and makes some very important points in the chapter there. So you read out, for example, that it's 70% moisture, you know, 29% complex biochemicals, and about 1% other sort of mineral sort of things. And I think this is where it gets very interesting in that when we see these scenarios of life forming, right, we have them forming a, you know, some sort of biopolymer. So a biopolymer is going to be where you have these basic molecular structures that scientists are trying to figure out how they could synthesize in nature. But then you've got to put them all together in a really, really long chain. We've got, you know, thousands of units long often to make these biopolymers that make up the structures. And a lot of these reactions only go in the presence of enzymes, which are other specific compounds that enable that particular reaction to go to form those biopolymers. Okay, now we think of that, but hang on, we don't have to produce just one biopolymer. We've got to produce millions of identical polymers of hundreds of different kinds. Now, this is where you— we really run into major problems that people really just don't understand the biochemistry. It's not that you're making one or two of these biopolymers and they somehow come together and form a little cell. You've gotta make millions of identical polymers of all different kinds. Right? So you've got all your different kinds of proteins, you've got your nucleic acids, you've got the fats, all the different types of long-chain sugars, long-chain fats, all these sort of things. They have to have specific structures. And as I said, this is a very important point that people often don't comprehend. They just don't get it. You just don't have to form 1 or 2 or 3 of these things. You've got to form millions of them identical, right? Of then of one kind and then millions of another kind and then millions of another kind all at the same time and put them all together at the same time to make the, to make the structure. And that just isn't gonna happen. SPEAKER A And I guess these are all gonna be very precise, specific molecules, 'cause if you got the wrong ones in the mix, then it's probably not gonna work too well. SPEAKER B That's right, if you've got them in the wrong place at the wrong time, yeah, that's why you just end up with spaghetti and meatballs sort of thing. And people don't understand that we're talking about random, blind chemical reactions. And the thing is that when we look at these reaction says in chemistry there's such a thing as called yield. You can put two things together, right? And if it's a really good process, you know, it's all the conditions just right, you might get a really high yield, close to 99%. But often in organic chemistry, when you're synthesizing some of these complex molecules, your yield might be 2 or 3%, and then you've got massive separation processes that you have to go to. To recover that 1 or 2% yield for the next stage of your next part of your reaction. So what these people have to assume that want to go down this abiogenesis path is that they've got to somehow assume that through— that these random reactions produced millions of these identical chemicals. SPEAKER A Wow. SPEAKER B And they all came together. And we just know from practical synthetic chemistry that— that's not a, that's not a feasible scenario. The other thing is that George also points out very clearly is that most of these reactions actually just won't go from straight reactants in, in a test tube. You need catalysts in there to make them happen. Now, these are, again, specific organic molecules that often provide the sites for the components of the reaction to bind to so that they're in a favorable situation to react. But these are, again, specific compounds that have unique and specific structures. Often they are, you know, from their stereochemistry, they have a particular conformation. So there might be a number of possible structures that they could form with those particular molecules. But it is one particular structure. And when I talk about stereochemistry, we have a right hand and a left hand. Yes. Which are, you know, similar structures, but their stereochemistry is different. One's a left-handed version, one's right-handed. And we get this same complexity in particularly in enzymes and a lot of these biochemicals as well. And what this means is because we look at the number of conformations that some of these structures have to have, the probability of them forming by a random chance reaction, just one forming, is sort of greater than the, you know, the chances of finding a particle out of one specific atom out of all the atoms in the universe sort of thing. But when you've got to replicate that, you know, a million times in the same place, in the same situation, so these can all come together to form the structure, that provides the protective environment, that provides the chemical soup within the actual membrane that is shielding the organism from forces around it that are all acting on it to destroy it. You know, ultraviolet light, acids, all those sort of things, just physical abrasion, all those things that are occurring out in nature. And so when we look at this, we can see very clearly It's absolutely impossible. But people obviously don't realize how many molecules, how many atoms actually have to be involved in a living cell. SPEAKER A Now you're mentioning about catalysts, and you also mentioned earlier about enzymes, and of course sometimes these are the same things. But in the chapter, Javer mentioned that oftentimes we need the enzymes to make the products and catalyze the products and make these biopolymers. But the way the cell works, it's those products that actually end up being used to make the enzymes. So which came first? Like, this is what is going on, you know. How does this challenge the idea of this gradual formation, spontaneous formation of biogenesis? SPEAKER B Yes, that's right. And one of the other things that we need to remember too, that these compounds are all interdependent. Yes, one is involved, that we have a whole lot of chain reactions that are involved in these things to produce them. At the same time too, if the organism's got to replicate, then we've got to have some DNA form as well. So this is the other thing that is strikingly impossible. And I think a lot of people just don't get it, but What you've gotta happen is, okay, somehow you've formed this structure, right? It's gotta reproduce itself or otherwise you've just made the structure and it dies. Yeah, I'd say you gotta reproduce itself. And we know the mechanism, we know that the way the cell does this is through the DNA code and a ribosome, which reads the DNA code. So not only have you got, you've formed this structure, but by some, process, you then have to write a chemical code that represents that structure. Now, how's that gonna happen? You know, you've got your structure, you've formed all your different proteins, fats, and sugars together, you've made all your molecular machinery, right? Right? It's somehow formed together. You now have to make a code to make that. Now, some of the people say, well, hang on, the code formed right, by random chance to make the thing a viable process. But these codes, if we look at an E. coli, for example, I think it's about 4.5 million at least letters in its code. You know, that's pretty big when you consider the book that you picked up there is about— well, it's about 120,000 words, so it'd probably be you know, a million letters. So all the, you know, probably half a million letters in— that's an entire book, right? Which is put together to make sense. We've got to have a code, you know, in the order of millions to make something that's viable. I know that there have been codes reported of particular type of organism. I just can't quite remember the name. That is a replicating organism, but it requires another organism, a larger organism, to be available for it as well in order to survive. So when we look at the simplest organisms and the simplest code to arrive by chance to make a meaningful structure, right? And then all those materials have to be available, already formed to come together. We have to have a ribosome where you've got over 300,000 atoms, all gotta form by chance. These codes, they're so complex. When we do look at the reactions to make them, a number of things occur. Firstly, the chemical reactions required to synthesize the code don't occur in nature anyway, so you've gotta have a pre-existing living organism. So it's very hard for them to go down that pathway. Also, to form the ribosome by chance, the chemical reactions involved to link those structures together just don't occur in nature by themselves, right? They have to already be in a living organism. So not only do the reactions not go, but on top of that, the probability of once reactions going, forming those particular structures, when we do the calculations, are absolutely impossible. The probability of them occurring by chance is so large that we can't even get our minds around how big the figures are. And this is what people just don't understand. These reactions just don't go. They just don't happen. The probability of forming those complex structures randomly is absolutely impossible. We don't even get random chemical reactions forming very, very simple structures. So, the evidence is overwhelming that life, a living organism, can't form by itself. It must have had a supernatural, something outside nature creator. The evidence is all there. It's very strong from biochemistry. Most senior, you know, experienced biochemists recognize this, but they just don't wanna go there because they don't want to surrender to the concept that there is a creator God. They're desperate, they're clinging to the hope that someday we'll discover that mechanism. But on the basis of what we know now, it's absolutely impossible. SPEAKER A So do you think what you just said then about not wanting to acknowledge the possibility of some creative entity, do you think that would be behind the fact that, you know, even though a biogenesisist taught that it's never actually been demonstrated in the lab, and yet it's taught as fact in schools. That probably would be the premise behind that. They don't want to entertain any other option really than this option, so that's why it's still presented. SPEAKER B Yep. Yeah, it's gotta be. And even leading atheists point out, hang on, we can't, we have no scientific explanation. Nagel, I've just forgotten his first name now, at New York University, a top philosopher there, Thomas Nagel. His book, he wrote, put out a book, Mind and the Cosmos. And he's an atheist. He says, yeah, but there's got to be a mind behind this. There's got to be some entity. He doesn't want to say God, but in a sense, in my view, he's more or less describing the Almighty God. Yeah. Yeah. So That's the basis, but it's not getting through to the young people. It's not in our education system. And this is so, so sad. SPEAKER A Mm-hmm. Thank you for going through all of those details explaining about what it takes to form a cell. Have you ever struggled with doubts about God's existence or known someone who has? What helped you through it? Share your thoughts and stories in the comments. Your journey could inspire someone else who's searching for answers.