jobob, please go to the thread
http://www.christianforums.com/t155621 Part of the "chirality problem" is addressed there. What AiG doesn't acknowledge is that chirality can come
after the first life is formed with that life using both isomers of amino acids. One indication of the misinformation they give you is that modern life is totally chiral and that proteins don't work if they have
one D amino acid. In fact,
every species has at least one protein with some D amino acids in it! All bacteria, for instance, have D amino acids in their cell walls.
Another indication of AiG's misinformation is the statement quoted by REvolutio:
A huge barrier for those desiring to be intellectually fulfilled atheists1 is finding a naturalistic origin of the first living organisms. Despite some evasion by major evolutionary propagandists, this is a part of the General Theory of Evolution, defined by the evolutionist Kerkut as the theory that all the living forms in the world have arisen from a single source which itself came from an inorganic form.2
These guys aren't discussing evolution. They are arguing the atheism vs theism debate and trying to find a "gap" to insert God into. But notice something. AiG is accepting the basic statement of faith of atheism! That is, they are saying that natural = without God! If there is a natural method to get life from non-life via chemistry, AiG is saying God is absent! Now, why would they do that? Why cannot God create the first life by chemistry?
We can go into more papers showing how chirality can arise after the first proteins or RNA are formed. There are several ways this can happen. Below is just one:
Z Naturforsch [C] 1997 Jan;52(1-2):89-96
Plural origins of molecular homochirality in our biota Part II. The relative
stabilities of homochiral and mixed oligoribotides and peptides.
Soares TA, Lins RD, Longo R, Garratt R, Ferreira R
Departamento de Quimica Fundamental, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco,
Brasil.
By computer simulations--molecular mechanics and molecular dynamics with the
amber force field (Weiner et al, (1986), J. Comp. Chem. 7, 230-252)--we have
determined the stabilities of oligoribotide strands built with D- and
L-riboses, and of peptide chains with D- and L-amino acid residues. In
particular, complementary double-chains of oligoribotides were studied, since
they are an important feature of the growing mechanism of modern nucleic acids.
Peptide chains on the other hand, grow without need of a template. We found
that mixed oligoribotides are less stable than homochiral ones, and that this
chiral effect is less noticeable in peptide chains. The results support the
interpretation that L-riboses act as terminators to the template-assisted
growth of oligo-r-GD (enantiometric cross-inhibition; Joyce et al., (1987),
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 84, 4398-4402). Based on this effect, a chemical
pathway is proposed which could, under assumed prebiotic conditions, bypass the
hindrance of homochiral growth.
