Evolution/Creation on Trial

[Loudmouth]

I'm trying to be. As this is a forum, anyone who has not made their mind up about the evolution/creation controversy is of course welcome to add their comments.

In a trial, would you be convinced by the defense claiming that "God could have planted the fingerprints at the crime scene"? If not, then why are you convinced by the same argument when it comes to biology?

 

[The Cadet]

So far then, nothing significant to convince the "jury" that evolution is proven beyond all reasonable doubt, but some scientific evidence to indicate that it's not possible (from post #5 above).

Well, as long as we're not talking about the Judge in Kitzmiller v. Dover. Seriously, what you're asking for has been done before. PBS Nova even did an excellent documentary about it, and Ken Miller has done several talks on the subject. Here's an example.

But if we want to talk about strong, convincing evidence, here's a few pieces that anyone can understand: the vast, vast majority of academia is in agreement that the theory of evolution, at least in its broad strokes, is the correct model for how life diversified after it arose. The portion of life scientists who think evolution is not true is akin to the portion of historians who believe the holocaust is false - a tiny fringe group that deserve to be ignored and ridiculed - and their representation in the peer-reviewed literature is incredibly weak. Evolution is taught in almost every single university the world over, and various branches of science depend on it as a model. Evolution even saves lives, as discoveries made thanks to the theory of evolution and an understanding of how organisms evolve has led to major advances in the fight against HIV.

As for ideas presented by creation scientists... Have you watched Kent Hovind's drivel? Finding five things that are wrong there is trivial. Just watch the "Why do people laugh at creationists" series on Youtube.

 

[TLK Valentine]

It can't be proven that "God did it" of course, but in the absence of any evidence for an alternative explanation, it's just as valid as saying that some unknown cause was the reason that we have something rather than nothing.

In the absence of any evidence, all explanations are equally valid. Might as well believe the universe was created by an English Sheepdog named "Bosko."

Christian's put their faith in God being the cause because we believe that the Bible is divine revelation from our maker.

Good for them. But so what?

The atheist has to put his/her faith in something else and that is why those without the Christian faith are floundering trying to find an explanation that will never be found.

And shouldn't whether or not "an explanation" is in fact accurate, as opposed to simply easy to find, be a factor?

 

[crjmurray]

Pretty sure this thread has failed because the OP does not actually understand what beyond a reasonable doubt means. In other threads the OP has stated that they don't ignore facts, just the interpretation of said facts. This is the equivalent of a juror looking at fingerprints of the suspect at the crime scene, dna of the suspect found on the victims body, gunshot residue on the suspects hands, no alibi for the suspect at the time of the murder but they "interpret" that a mythical creature committed the act and left said evidence. Facts are facts and they do not depend on interpretation. It is the entire point of the concept of beyond a reasonable doubt. I have already stated the standard definition of beyond a reasonable doubt and in no way whatsoever does it include "convincing the average layperson".

 

[pshun2404]

I'm afraid I don't understand this argument at all.

First, what does it have to do with evolution? Protein-folding is biochemistry. Is the idea simply that science is wrong?

Second, you're arguing that certain chemicals, under appropriate conditions, (almost) always behave in certain ways, and that chemists don't understand why . . . and therefore God. What you're describing simply sounds like poorly understood chemistry. That's what we mean by natural law: the way the physical world consistently behaves. If you simply invoked miracles every time some physical process wasn't understood, then no science would have been possible.

Third, is di-sulfide bond formation even all that mysterious? It's been pretty thoroughly studied. Incorrect di-sulfide bonds routinely occur during proteins folding, potentially trapping the protein in a local energy minimum. The enzymes you mention greatly enhance exchange of bond partners, making it possible for the molecule to move out of the local minimum and achieve the most stable conformation. It seems pretty straightforward, at least in the abstract.

The standard Darwinian approach to how Proteins came about is by random chemical accident over billions of years time. The point was there is, was, and never shall be anything random about it. In a random scenario the sulphides of one functional Protein type when unfolded and allowed to re-fold would refold differently forming other types of proteins on a much more frequent basis and not ONLY refold into the exact same 4 dimensional shape bonding with the exact same partner molecules. On the rare occasions it does not fold properly (very rare) it either neutralizes the function or causes disease in the organism. Now scientists have speculated as to why this is true but none of these hypotheses are viable.

So relative to evolution, the folding for function aspect of Proteins is not random, nor were the first proteins formed in nature outside of a living host over millions or billions of years. And of course protein folding is a common and observed occurrance (that's why it is studied in the link I provided), all physical nature of living things depend on it. And yes some do speculate as to the why it happens just as it does but it is all speculation. They do not understand why the Proteins fold exactly the same way every time. Also I do not believe for one minute in Chemical coincidence, the processes within chemistry are guided by laws and principles...information is NOT a function of dead matter.

Proteins are always formed via the encoded messages found in a cells DNA assisted by mRNA and tRna (transcription and translation) mobilized by enzymes (which themselves are proteins) to and in the ribosomes. This never happens outside of a cell. The cell must exist with all its functional inter-dependent subsystems working correctly and in place for this to happen.

Where did the first of each type of cell come from? Not from transcription and translation (since these do not occur outside a loving system) on the forming earth for these cannot happen outside of a cell. The cell, in order to form requires DNA, the DNA is only functional IN a cellular environment,...no cell no DNA, no DNA no cell (in fact there are no free floating Proteins, let alone DNA, anywhere we look in nature)...it all had to become at once, fully formed, in order to exist and replicate.

 

[stevevw]

Indeed! Thanks for saying this. Time (chronological time) IS a function of space and varies from place to place according to speed, gravity, and even personal experiential perception...

Check this article out by MIT physicist and mathematician Gerald Schroeder

http://www.geraldschroeder.com/AgeUniverse.aspx

Paul

This is very interesting thanks for that.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

What on earth has domestication of animals got to do with proving that evolution is true? Please provide some real evidence, like one kind of creature turning into another. This is regularly shown as being a fact on the so-called evolutionary tree of life, but if you remove all the dotted lines, you are left with the creationists' "orchard of life" which they say, matches the real world we see around us.

Post #7 mentions more than just domestication. You ignored it.

 

[Gracchus]

It can't be proven that "God did it" of course, but in the absence of any evidence for an alternative explanation, it's just as valid as saying that some unknown cause was the reason that we have something rather than nothing. Christian's put their faith in God being the cause because we believe that the Bible is divine revelation from our maker. The atheist has to put his/her faith in something else and that is why those without the Christian faith are floundering trying to find an explanation that will never be found.

If you can't explain a phenomenon because of a lack of definitive evidence, you are entitled by logic, reason, and honesty to say, "I don't know." Ignorance does not justify asserting, "Leprechauns did it."

 

[DogmaHunter]

OK, so we hear a lot on this forum that masses of evidence overwhelmingly confirms evolution to the extent that for all intents and purposes it can be regarded as fact. In that case, can someone please present a non-scientist like myself with perhaps half a dozen pieces of evidence that if presented in a court of law, would be sufficient to convince a jury that evolution were true beyond all reasonable doubt.

Sure. I only need one actually: Comparative DNA analysis.

This is sufficient for a jury to prove that child X is your biological child. The same method can be used to see if species A is closely related to species B etc.

DNA is hereditary and because of this and the phenomena of mutation, one can construct family trees based on comparative DNA analysis.

You can literally count it out gene by gene, map it out and a family tree is the result. Because it IS a family tree.

This works with full DNA string, with DNA sequences or single genes. It also works with comparative anatomy etc. And it always produces the same high-level family tree. Because it IS a family tree.

At least one of these should directly relate to the claim that one type of creature (e.g., a reptile) can turn into a bird, with some examples of actual creatures where this has happened or is happening.

If evolution as presently understood is correct, then you will not see such examples.
For 2 reasons:
- it goes waaaaay to slow to observe evolution on such a scale in a single life time. In fact, such developments take longer then homo sapiens has existed...
- one would need to have knowledge of the future...

With the knowledge we have NOW about extant species, we could go back in time and observe creatures that are on the path to becoming birds millions of years later. But that "on the path to" part only makes sense because we, as people from the future, would KNOW what the lineage will eventually look like.

But we can't predict that.
Perhaps eons from now, scientists will look at fossils of hyppo's and conclude it to be transitional to some big whale-type "fish". But we can't know that today, because we don't know the future.

Perhaps the hyppo will go extinct. Perhaps it will evolve to become a pure land-animal. Perhaps it will barely change and stay roughly like it is today. Perhaps it will go deeper into the waters and idd walk the same path as the whale or dolfin.

All this is not important though. We can't tell the future, but we CAN uncover the past and study the processes that life is subjected to - and infer conclusions from there.

Let’s flip the coin now. Can someone also present a similar amount of ideas presented by creation scientists that can be shown to be false, again using the above court room scenario.

Sure.

Human DNA does not show any signs at all of a genetic bottleneck in the past 10.000 years. This means that the following stories are definatly false:
- adam and eve
- the flood

Geology excludes any and all possibilities of any global flood. It simply never happened. There is no "global flood" layer anywhere to be found in the geological column.

There's more, but this should be enough to rise to your "challenge".

Finally, could someone answer the question about how the first life could have got started all on its own without any divine intervention.

The origins of life are not part of evolution theory.
And science is still working on that. So my answer here is "no, I don't know, nobody knows". Beware of the argument of ignorance here...

fyi: the "...without any divine intervention" doesn't add anything of any meaning to your question. You might as well say "...without any fairy dust" or "...without magical unicorns".

Since you would be presenting these ideas to non-scientists, could you for each piece of evidence you present, indicate what the specialism of any scientist working in that field would need to have.

For the evolution part of this post: evolutionary biology / molecular biology / genetics
For the flood part: geology
For the origins of life part: (I guess) molecular biology / genetics / bio-chemistry

 

[The Cadet]

It can't be proven that "God did it" of course, but in the absence of any evidence for an alternative explanation, it's just as valid as saying that some unknown cause was the reason that we have something rather than nothing. Christian's put their faith in God being the cause because we believe that the Bible is divine revelation from our maker. The atheist has to put his/her faith in something else and that is why those without the Christian faith are floundering trying to find an explanation that will never be found.

But we don't put our "faith" in anything. If we don't know the answer, we answer honestly, "We don't know". Hey quick, ask me what happens to our consciousness after our bodies stop working. Or whether there is intelligent, advanced life in the universe other than us. Or heck, even what the Medulla Oblongata does in our brain (this isn't really a "we don't know" so much as an "I don't know" ). I'll gladly and openly tell you that I don't know the answer.

However, just because I don't have a valid explanation does not mean that your explanation gets to somehow "win by default". If you're able to propose an as-of-yet unconfirmed supernatural being as the cause, then why don't I get to do the same? You think God did it? Well I think a different God did it. Or I think that magical pixies from another dimension did it. None of these explanations have a shred of evidence or offer any testable, useful predictions to help us further understand the world. They're on equal footing. And there is a potentially infinite number of such explanations, all competing with each other and with naturalistic explanations (which are the only ones that are actually useful). And none of them are as honest or useful as "I don't know" - at least "I don't know" opens the path to further investigation. "God did it" says, "we have the answer, stop looking".

Plus, when it comes to explaining the homology of ERVs, we do have a functional and useful naturalistic model for explaining how it happened. Evolution. Common descent.

 

[stevevw]

No matter what the evidences are for and against it seems that for all that is involved in making life there is to much involved to say it happened by a random and chance naturalistic process. Whether as a believer in God you think that creation happened by the bible account of by a theistic evolution some sort of intelligent agent had to be involved. There is not enough time or even ability for a natural process to do this.

Evolution hasn't even began to explain how this happens. When people talk about the DNA evidence what they forget is the complexity of our DNA would rule out any naturalistic process creating this in the first place. Its just impossible. Yet people believe by adding the magic ingredient of time the impossible can happen. If anything there is evidence to show how complicated and impossible it is for evolution to happen at the genetic level.

 

[Shemjaza]

No matter what the evidences are for and against it seems that for all that is involved in making life there is to much involved to say it happened by a random and chance naturalistic process. Whether as a believer in God you think that creation happened by the bible account of by a theistic evolution some sort of intelligent agent had to be involved. There is not enough time or even ability for a natural process to do this.

Evolution hasn't even began to explain how this happens. When people talk about the DNA evidence what they forget is the complexity of our DNA would rule out any naturalistic process creating this in the first place. Its just impossible. Yet people believe by adding the magic ingredient of time the impossible can happen. If anything there is evidence to show how complicated and impossible it is for evolution to happen at the genetic level.

You keep saying impossible, care to demonstrate that?

Mutations are tiny changes to DNA in very observable and understandable ways... only over a population scale and along period all we have to rely on is a statistical improvement and species will change.

 

[The Cadet]

No matter what the evidences are for and against it seems that for all that is involved in making life there is to much involved to say it happened by a random and chance naturalistic process.

But natural selection is not random. Mutations are effectively random, but mutations that do not further the survival of the individual tend to get selected against; the gazelle with one leg shorter than the others or the shark with blunt teeth probably won't make it to breeding age and pass on its genes. In fact, there's an excellent video or two by cdk007 explaining this concept. In this one, for example, he shows how by using simple selection pressure, you can very quickly come to a very unlikely result ("mating" randomized images to produce a South Park character).

Whether as a believer in God you think that creation happened by the bible account of by a theistic evolution some sort of intelligent agent had to be involved. There is not enough time or even ability for a natural process to do this.

Why would you assume that? We've had billions of years.

Evolution hasn't even began to explain how this happens. When people talk about the DNA evidence what they forget is the complexity of our DNA would rule out any naturalistic process creating this in the first place. Its just impossible.

Cite, please? Why would this be impossible?

 

[DogmaHunter]

No matter what the evidences are for and against it seems that for all that is involved in making life there is to much involved to say it happened by a random and chance naturalistic process.

I love how you start this post by admitting that evidence doesn't matter to you.
Awesome.

Whether as a believer in God you think that creation happened by the bible account of by a theistic evolution some sort of intelligent agent had to be involved. There is not enough time or even ability for a natural process to do this.

And you have concluded this how, exactly?
Ow right, you didn't conclude it... since evidence doesn't matter. Right?

Evolution hasn't even began to explain how this happens.

More then that even, it doesn't even attempt to!
Because evolution explains what happen(s)(ed) to life, once it existed.

When people talk about the DNA evidence what they forget is the complexity of our DNA would rule out any naturalistic process creating this in the first place. Its just impossible.

Why is that exactly? Ow right, you have no real reason... you just decided this and evidence doesn't matter.

Yet people believe by adding the magic ingredient of time the impossible can happen

Time is not magical. Time is very real.
And when you have an accumulation of changes between generations, then the more generations you have, the more accumulation of changes you have.
It takes some time for a generation to produce a new generation.
So, to conclude the painfully obvious: more time = more generations = more accumulation of changes.

What exactly is so "magical" about this?
If that is "magical", then it's also "magical" that I'll eventually run a marathon if I run for hours instead of minutes.

If anything there is evidence to show how complicated and impossible it is for evolution to happen at the genetic level.

Now, suddenly evidence does matter? What's that about?

And what evidence would that be?

 

[Dave RP]

OK, so we hear a lot on this forum that masses of evidence overwhelmingly confirms evolution to the extent that for all intents and purposes it can be regarded as fact. In that case, can someone please present a non-scientist like myself with perhaps half a dozen pieces of evidence that if presented in a court of law, would be sufficient to convince a jury that evolution were true beyond all reasonable doubt. At least one of these should directly relate to the claim that one type of creature (e.g., a reptile) can turn into a bird, with some examples of actual creatures where this has happened or is happening.

Let’s flip the coin now. Can someone also present a similar amount of ideas presented by creation scientists that can be shown to be false, again using the above court room scenario.

Finally, could someone answer the question about how the first life could have got started all on its own without any divine intervention. In particular, where all the information came from to start life and build the first self-reproducing cell and how the problem of chirality could have been overcome in such a process.

Since you would be presenting these ideas to non-scientists, could you for each piece of evidence you present, indicate what the specialism of any scientist working in that field would need to have.

I am not a scientist so cannot answer your questions, but I have visited natural history museums and seen examples of long dead animals that sometimes look nothing like modern animals and sometimes look so similar that I could believe they were related in history. I've seen examples of primitive eyes, of dinosaurs with feathers.

I've been to the Dorset coast and seen fossilised ferns in rocks significantly above current see levels and as part of my education I received a basic grounding in the theory of evolution put forward by Darwin and entirely separately and independently by Wallace. I can understand that minute changes over millions of years can create new species, I struggle to conceptualise million year periods because it is so alien to us,but the science seems to support the facts.

What I really can never ever understand is the ultimate question - where did god come from? If everything has to have a logical start and a predecessor, where did god come from - who made god?

 

[[serious]]

The standard Darwinian approach to how Proteins came about is by random chemical accident over billions of years time. The point was there is, was, and never shall be anything random about it. In a random scenario the sulphides of one functional Protein type when unfolded and allowed to re-fold would refold differently forming other types of proteins on a much more frequent basis and not ONLY refold into the exact same 4 dimensional shape bonding with the exact same partner molecules. On the rare occasions it does not fold properly (very rare) it either neutralizes the function or causes disease in the organism. Now scientists have speculated as to why this is true but none of these hypotheses are viable.

So relative to evolution, the folding for function aspect of Proteins is not random, nor were the first proteins formed in nature outside of a living host over millions or billions of years. And of course protein folding is a common and observed occurrance (that's why it is studied in the link I provided), all physical nature of living things depend on it. And yes some do speculate as to the why it happens just as it does but it is all speculation. They do not understand why the Proteins fold exactly the same way every time. Also I do not believe for one minute in Chemical coincidence, the processes within chemistry are guided by laws and principles...information is NOT a function of dead matter.

Proteins are always formed via the encoded messages found in a cells DNA assisted by mRNA and tRna (transcription and translation) mobilized by enzymes (which themselves are proteins) to and in the ribosomes. This never happens outside of a cell. The cell must exist with all its functional inter-dependent subsystems working correctly and in place for this to happen.

Where did the first of each type of cell come from? Not from transcription and translation (since these do not occur outside a loving system) on the forming earth for these cannot happen outside of a cell. The cell, in order to form requires DNA, the DNA is only functional IN a cellular environment,...no cell no DNA, no DNA no cell (in fact there are no free floating Proteins, let alone DNA, anywhere we look in nature)...it all had to become at once, fully formed, in order to exist and replicate.

A few errors there which I'll get into below. But first, evolution deals with how life changes, not how life first came to be. God could have dropped a fully formed cell off to get things going and it wouldn't matter to the theory of evolution at all.

There is also the issue of the assumption that if we don't understand how something happened, God must have done it. Unexplained does not mean miraculous. Now, there are actually several theories about how life could have gotten started, but I'll give my current favorite. It just so happens that it relates to some of the stuff you got wrong.

1. free floating DNA (and proteins) are common in nature. Any number of things can lyse a cell. when this happens, the dna ends up outside the cell. free floating if you will. Furthermore, natural abiotic processes can create simple nucleotides and amino acids in an environment like that we believe existed in the prebiotic world.
2. Outside the cell, that DNA isnt just dead. It can, for example, be taken up by a different cell in a process called transformation. Simple lipid bilayers are also somewhat permeable to individual nucleotides. These simple lipids can be formed abiotically as well and under a range of pH will spontaneously form vesicles.
3. as far as function without transcription, the mere presence of nucleotide sequences in a lipid bilayer can help stabilize the system and increase the rate at which it absorbs other lipids and grows. Chains of nucleotides can't escape the vesicle as easily. Nucleotides can spontaneously polymerize into random chains. So now we've got sequence independent function of DNA and RNA in a lipid bilayer. As soon as one of those random chains is a little bit better at self catalyzing a similar chain, you've got sequence selectable function. From there, you have the start of evolution.

 

[Loudmouth]

No matter what the evidences are for and against it seems that for all that is involved in making life there is to much involved to say it happened by a random and chance naturalistic process.

This thread is about evolution, not abiogenesis.

If you think that the life we see now does not come about through natural processes, then you should take a sex ed class. If you think that evolution is random chance, then you need to take a biology course.

There is not enough time or even ability for a natural process to do this.

Let's take a look at a comparison of the chimp and human genomes. There are 40 million mutations that separate us. Let's say half occurred in each lineage, so 20 million mutations per lineage. We have a 20 year generation time, a mutation rate of 50 mutations per individual per generation, a steady population of 100,000, and 5 million years since our lineages split.

For one generation in a population of 100,000 we get 5 million mutations. In 5 million years and a generation time of 20 years that is 250,000 generations. That makes for 1.25 x 10^12 mutations, or 1.25E12 in shorthand. That's a low ball estimate of the mutations that have occurred in the human lineage, and we only needed to keep 2E7 mutations to get where we are at. We only needed natural selection to keep 0.00002% of the mutations that did occur. Now please tell me, how is there not enough time?

Evolution hasn't even began to explain how this happens.

Yes, it does. The explanation is the observed mechanisms of natural selection, speciation, neutral drift, and random mutation, among others.

When people talk about the DNA evidence what they forget is the complexity of our DNA would rule out any naturalistic process creating this in the first place. Its just impossible.

Evidence, please. We need more than your incredulity.

 

[Loudmouth]

The standard Darwinian approach to how Proteins came about is by random chemical accident over billions of years time.

False. Evolution says that proteins came about through natural selection. Selection is the opposite of random.

Until you fix this mistake, the rest of your argument falls apart.

The point was there is, was, and never shall be anything random about it. In a random scenario the sulphides of one functional Protein type when unfolded and allowed to re-fold would refold differently forming other types of proteins on a much more frequent basis and not ONLY refold into the exact same 4 dimensional shape bonding with the exact same partner molecules.

Proteins fold according to the laws of chemistry, not randomly. Again, until you fix this mistake, the rest of your argument falls apart. Do you really think that God is in every cell making sure every protein folds correctly?

They do not understand why the Proteins fold exactly the same way every time.

Yes, they do.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_folding

In fact, you can predict secondary structures such as beta sheets and alpha helices from the amino acid sequence.

http://www.compbio.dundee.ac.uk/jpred/

Also I do not believe for one minute in Chemical coincidence, the processes within chemistry are guided by laws and principles...information is NOT a function of dead matter.

All matter has information.

"In physics, physical information refers generally to the information that is contained in a physical system. Its usage in quantum mechanics (i.e. quantum information) is important, for example in the concept of quantum entanglement to describe effectively direct or causal relationships between apparently distinct or spatially separated particles."
https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Physical_information

Proteins are always formed via the encoded messages found in a cells DNA assisted by mRNA and tRna (transcription and translation) mobilized by enzymes (which themselves are proteins) to and in the ribosomes. This never happens outside of a cell. The cell must exist with all its functional inter-dependent subsystems working correctly and in place for this to happen.

This is false. Proteins can form abiotically.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0273117707000889

Also, RNA can act as catalysts and fill the role of proteins. In fact, randomly assembled RNA molecules can have DNA ligase activity.

"Seven families of RNA ligases, previously isolated from random RNA sequences, fall into three classes on the basis of secondary structure and regiospecificity of ligation."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7618102

However, all of this deals with abiogenesis, not evolution. If you think there is not a natural process that produces humans, then you need to take a sex ed class.

The cell, in order to form requires DNA, the DNA is only functional IN a cellular environment,...no cell no DNA, no DNA no cell (in fact there are no free floating Proteins, let alone DNA, anywhere we look in nature)...it all had to become at once, fully formed, in order to exist and replicate.

You haven't shown that DNA is required.

 

[Not_By_Chance]

Why do you think they are just as plausible?

Why don't you think they are just as plausible?

 

[Not_By_Chance]

False. Evolution says that proteins came about through natural selection. Selection is the opposite of random.

Until you fix this mistake, the rest of your argument falls apart.



Proteins fold according to the laws of chemistry, not randomly. Again, until you fix this mistake, the rest of your argument falls apart. Do you really think that God is in every cell making sure every protein folds correctly?



Yes, they do.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_folding

In fact, you can predict secondary structures such as beta sheets and alpha helices from the amino acid sequence.

http://www.compbio.dundee.ac.uk/jpred/



All matter has information.

"In physics, physical information refers generally to the information that is contained in a physical system. Its usage in quantum mechanics (i.e. quantum information) is important, for example in the concept of quantum entanglement to describe effectively direct or causal relationships between apparently distinct or spatially separated particles."
https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Physical_information



This is false. Proteins can form abiotically.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0273117707000889

Also, RNA can act as catalysts and fill the role of proteins. In fact, randomly assembled RNA molecules can have DNA ligase activity.

"Seven families of RNA ligases, previously isolated from random RNA sequences, fall into three classes on the basis of secondary structure and regiospecificity of ligation."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7618102

However, all of this deals with abiogenesis, not evolution. If you think there is not a natural process that produces humans, then you need to take a sex ed class.



You haven't shown that DNA is required.

How can natural selection create proteins? Natural selection just selects what has been created surely, so if something hasn't been created, how can it select it? You answer doesn't make any sense. And how do you get over the massive problems of even getting a protein in the first place (Chirality, to name just one)? Nah.