Boiled Creationist with a Side of Hexaglycine;

Sarfati on Imai et al. (1999)
Gary S. Hurd, Ph.D.

This was a piece I wrote 17 years ago for the Australian web journal "No Answers in Genesis."

In an Answers in Genesis web article titled "Hydrothermal origin of life?" Jonathan Sarfati manages to write three pages about a single five page original peer reviewed paper "Elongation of Oligopeptides in a Simulated Submarine Hydrothermal System" published in the magazine Science by Imai et al. (1999), and to make over seventeen errors of fact, emphasis or interpretation. What is sad is that it will take a longer paper than either of the preceding to point out the errors made by Sarfati.  This is why very few scientists would bother to reply. Not bad, even for a fanatical creationist. Sarfati titles his piece, 'Hydrothermal origin of life?' but it barely speaks to this topic at all, since he excludes most of the existing literature. For the convenience of the reader we will follow the same headings as used by Sarfati.

Abstract and Introduction 

Let us start with the first sentence in Sarfati's abstract -

'Some Japanese researchers have claimed to prove that life could have arisen in a submarine hydrothermal vent'.

Two errors and one questionable word use in just one short sentence! First, not all of the research group were from Japan. Second, nowhere in the refereed article Imai et al. (1999) was there the assertion that their paper proved that life originated in hydrothermal environments [one of the research team did make a similar statement in a newspaper interview given to Elaine Lies of Reuters news service, but more on that later]. And one must wonder why Sarfati was so insistent on the presumed ethnicity of the research team, so much so that he overlooked that André Brack is French. I could have overlooked this had Sarfati not reiterated that the researchers were non-westerners in his fourth paragraph which he opens with -

'Five researchers in Nagaoka, Japan, claimed to have simulated such conditions in a flow reactor'.

Again we see that Sarfati presses his concern with ethnicity and continues the pejorative use of the word 'claimed'. I would say to anyone who might seek to defend Sarfati by pointing out that the research was conducted in Japan, why then did Sarfati not say, 'An international team of scientists working in Japan...'? In the same pejorative manner, Sarfati continues to use quotation marks in what can only be a rhetorical effort to detract from the content of the Imai et al. (1999) paper.
The last sentence in Sarfati's abstract is -

'High temperatures would degrade any complex molecules over the alleged geological time.'

While it is possible that Sarfati could be referring to Lazcano and Miller (1996), who estimated that the existence of hydrothermal systems in the early Archean could limit the time available for the origin of life to approximately a ten million year interval, Sarfati is clearly not referring to Imai et al. (1999). There is no sense that 'alleged geological time' is invoked by the refereed paper, but the fact that the Imai et al. (1999) paper is clear evidence that this was not the case and that Lazcano and Miller must also modify their position, should be obvious to even a naive reader. So just for openers we can reject Sarfati as a careful or competent reader. Before we are off the first page, barely beyond his abstract, we see that Sarfati cannot read the list of authors, or their professional affiliations, rhetorically uses pejorative language, and fails to understand the basic facts of the article under his examination. The news release Sarfati later quotes also clearly identified Brack as French, precluding the defence that Sarfati was confused by other sources.
Sarfati offers us an unintended bit of humor in just the second sentence of his article:

' ...such an organism could barely repair DNA damage, could no longer fine-tune the ability of its remaining genes, would lack the ability to digest complex compounds, and would need a comprehensive supply of organic nutrients in its environment.'

What strikes me as amusing is that, apart from the fact that DNA is not considered a likely feature of the first organisms (Nelson et al. 2000, Nesbit and Sleep 2001) and that the phrase 'could no longer fine-tune the ability of its remaining genes' is nonsensical, this is an excellent description of the theoretical first organisms which are proposed to be very simple Chemohetrotrophs (Lazcano and Miller 1996, Dyall and Johnson 2000). I think we can score this as two and a half errors.
In Sarfati's second paragraph he invents a new kind of energy, 'undirected' energy, which he informs us is destructive rather than constructive. One must assume that in whatever Universe Sarfati belongs there is some sort of directed energy that is purely constructive.  Our universe has energy, only energy, and at the molecular level under discussion it is neither directed or otherwise.  In the case of hydrothermal systems energy is expressed as heat and pressure.
Pressure is an important feature of the reaction kinetics of hydrothermal systems, a point that Sarfati omits in either a purposeful or an incompetent manner in the third sentence of the second paragraph -

'The idea is that the heat can help synthesize polymers...'.

Energy in the form of heat in the absence of high pressure will indeed prove to be largely destructive. ^[1]
 
Hydrothermal Vents

The second section of Sarfati's paper is titled, 'Hydrothermal Vents'. I think it is obvious to anyone familiar with the origin of life (OOL) research literature that a single, four page article can hardly contain the 'Hydrothermal origin of life', and can at best add or subtract a tiny feature of the growing theoretical edifice of hydrothermal vents and OOL literature. For those who are familiar with this area of science, it is enough to note that Sarfati fails to refer to any of G. Wachershauser's papers (or those he has co-authored), or those by E. L. Shock and his colleagues, on the hydrothermal system contributions to the origin of life, to realize that Sarfati's title is at least incompetent. ^[2] Sarfati fails to add any conditions to hydrothermal vents that could justify his use of the word 'claimed' as in 'Five researchers in Nagaoka, Japan, "claimed" to have simulated such conditions in a flow reactor.' This is notably the primary reference to Imai et al. (1999). 

What follows is Sarfati's very incomplete three sentence summery of the Imai et al. (1999) experimental procedure and anyone who is interested in the actual experiment or its results will need to read the original paper.

Experimental Results

Sarfati's five sentence presentation of the Imai et al. (1999) results is as ill informed as his understanding of their experimental method. The first sentence merely informs us that Sarfati thinks the 'most spectacular results' were the production of tetraglycine and hexaglycine in the presence of CuCl₂. Sarfati is completely wrong when he states that 'The Cu⁺2 ions catalyzed the formation of tetraglycine... '. The actual scientists note:

'The presence of copper ions seems to have prevented the hydrolysis of tetraglycine. The tetraglycine therefore reentered the reaction region and further reacted with a glycine, producing a diglycine, a triglycine, or a diketopiperazine molecule when the amount of tetraglycine becomes sufficient.'

This is significant because Sarfati continues his misrepresentation of the experiment's results by noting that -

'...the product with the highest yield was the cyclic dimer, diketopiperazine, which peaked at about 1% yield, then dropped.'

What really happened was that about five minutes into the experiment which produced hexaglycine, diketopipazine peaked at about 1% and was about to begin to be consumed by the production of hexaglycine. From about five to nine minutes into the experiment, sharp drops in the amounts of diketopipazine and diglycine are observed at the same time as hexaglycine is first detectable. The amount of reactants naturally continues to decline as they are consumed in the production of the larger molecules, particularly hexaglycine.  At the end of the data collection period reported, thirty minutes, there is so little remaining glycine that the reaction is effectively halted. Had the researchers continuously supplied additional glycine, I'm certain that, based on the chemistry involved, there would have been continued production of the observed oligopeptides. 

This is far, far different from the results as misrepresented by Sarfati. In fact nowhere does Sarfati even mention the experimental results under the nonacidified conditions. I score this as four errors of fact or interpretation.

Sarfati's Assessment

Koichiro Matsuno gave an interview to Elaine Lies of the Reuters News Service on the occasion of the publication of the Science article. In that article, Matsuno gives the quote reproduced by Sarfati:

'Man has been asking "what is life" for thousands of years. But the real question is where did life begin,' Matsuno told reporters. 'For 10 years, underwater hydrothermal vents have been thought to be the place where life began and we were able to prove it.'

The entire Reuters article is available here.

Sarfati asked if this statement was justified by the results reported in Imai et al. (1999) and his answer was, 'No!'

Our answer as well is no, for reasons that I will return to later, but without the exclamation mark. This might surprise some readers, but no, Matsuno has not proven where life originated. Now, it will come as no surprise that this is virtually the only point of agreement I have with Sarfati's diatribe.  For example, Sarfati thinks that Matsuno is speaking -

' ...based on evolutionary faith... '

which is merely an attempt by Sarfati to falsely portray science as a 'religion'.’ A simple explanation for Matsuno's enthusiasm, based on my personal experiences with scientists, is that lab bench scientists and theoreticians typically exaggerate the significance of their work in the popular press as it facilitates (they imagine) their future funding prospects. Another contributing factor is that one really can't get away with that kind of grandstanding in the scientific literature, as scientific reviewers, unlike news reporters, are selected for their relevant expertise in a given area. And so, the opportunity to wildly expand the scope and significance of one's research under the questioning and encouragement of a reporter can be overwhelming.   Finally, Matsuno, a physicist, may truly feel that his statement is correct in the light of his research. The exact boundary between complex chemistry and the origin of life is after all more philosophical than physical. 

Sarfati offers the reasons that he rejects Matsuno's grand claim of discovery under four bullet points. These are a predictable mishmash of misunderstood science and selective quotes.

1)  Sarfati thinks he knows what the concentration of glycine was on the prebiotic Earth, and eventually offers an out of date (1984, re-issued in 1992) reference to a creationist work in his support. The cited reference, and Sarfati, are oblivious to different mechanisms of abiogenic amino acid synthesis and concentration that have been demonstrated since 1984. These mechanisms are mentioned in Imai et al. (1999). A fairly extensive reference list is given in their footnote #5, and so were available to Sarfati. Additionally, Sarfati's use of the obsolete estimate of glycine concentration is directly contradicted by Amend and Shock (1998) also referenced by Imai et al. (1999).  As a further observation, we note that the reaction mechanism demonstrated by Imai et al. (1999), is based on the recycling of reactants in the hydrothermal system. Under these conditions the absolute concentration of reactants is less critical than the number of cycles. By increasing the concentrations of the reactant glycine, Imai et al. (1999) merely minimized the amount of time needed to produce the resulting oligomers. As seen in their results shown in Figures 1and 2, the major reactions took place in less than 30 minutes by which time the amount of monomer glycine dropped too low within their closed system to rapidly generate additional product. Nor does Sarfati calculate (or seem aware of) the abiogenic production of glycine produced within the hydrothermal system by mechanisms following from Horita and Berndt (1999). 

Sarfati follows with another complete non sequitur -

'Also, any glycine produced would be subject to oxidative degradation in an oxygenic atmosphere.'

First, there is no issue with the generation of glycine; the abiogenic production of amino acids has been established back to the first spark chamber experiments of Miller (1953) and Miller/Urey (1959), and many additional reaction mechanisms since then as referenced above. Second, there is strong data that the early Earth had a reducing, or minimally, an anoxic atmosphere so that 'oxidative degradation' could not occur (Hunten 1993, Kasting 1993, Kump et al. 2001 among others. For a contrasting opinion see Ohmoto 1997, and for a direct counter argument to Ohmoto see Holland 1999. For a biochemical study see Des Marais 2000, and for some further theoretical considerations see Dismukes, et al. 2001, Lasaga, and Ohmoto 2002). Further, even had there been a merely anoxic atmosphere, and ocean for that matter, reductive reservoirs would be at least as common as they are today in hydrothermal systems. Why, imagine that!  Even today with an Earth oxidised by billions of years of photosynthesis, hydrothermal systems are strongly reducing to neutral. Sarfati suggests in a footnote that the -

'The "strongest evidence" for an anoxic ancient earth atmosphere is that we know chemical evolution took place, and this would have been impossible with oxygen present!'

And he gives two references from the 1970s (one which he did not even read in the original) which use this line of argument, (for a more recent exploration of this reasoning see Hill, 1998).  Oddly, Sarfati calls this a use of circular logic.  There are two points to be made here; first there is ample direct evidence for a reducing to anoxic Hadean and Early Archean which Sarfati must be aware of (the reader need only consult the references offered above) and second, this is not an example of circular logic.  Finally, there is no such thing as an 'oxygenic atmosphere' although one could read Noll et al. 1997 for a discussion of the UV production of ozone on extra-terrestrial ices.  Indeed, this ozone leads us to Sarfati's next blunder. 

Sarfati tries to cover the fact that his 'oxygen the destroyer' story fits science fiction better than science fact with the argument that if the presence of oxygen didn't destroy nascent life on Earth, then the absence of oxygen, in the form of ozone, would. It would seem to be impossible to lose an argument like that wouldn't it? A real 'heads I win, tails you lose' sort of deal. Unfortunately for Sarfati, reality intrudes again. In Noll et al. (1997) for instance it is learned that an atmosphere with less than 10% of the Earth's current oxygen level could have as much as 25% of the Earth's current ozone. Further, without any free oxygen, or ozone, there are several additional means available that could have protected early macromolecules, and life itself. For example, Cleaves and Miller (1998) observe that the prebiotic organic compounds in the oceans would easily absorb the UV radiation flux during the Archean (when the Sun produced less heat [IR radiation] and more UV than today). Earlier, Sagan and Chyba (1997) had shown that methane photolysis could have provided an effective ultraviolet radiation shield for the Earth and prevented, or minimized global glaciation. However, a third model exists, the occasional impact melting of frozen oceans on the early Earth (early to middle Archean approximately 3.9 Ga to 3.5, 1Ga=1 billion years before present) which provides oceanic organic chemical concentration, and an impact heat sink in addition to UV protection of prebiotic chemicals by ice (Bada et al. 1994).   Indeed there is strong evidence that these processes could have begun during the Hadean as early as 4.4 Ga (Sleep and Neuhoff 2001, Wilde et al. 2001).

Still clinging to a feeble argument that low glycine abundance could somehow interfere with oliogomerization, Sarfati introduces ' ...adsorption by clays, precipitation or complexation [sic] by metal ions, or reactions with other organic molecules... ' as available mechanisms that could draw down the available stocks of glycine. This is rather funny. Just what does Sarfati think the products of these steps might be? For instance, the absorption of abiogenic organic molecules on K-feldspars (Parsons et al. 1998), or calcite, which also addresses one feature of the pointless homochirality argument Sarfati will soon turn to (Hazen et al. 2001) have been proposed mechanisms for the abiogenic production of polypeptides leading to the origin of life.  Maybe Sarfati would prefer (Ni,Fe)S complexes which takes us right back into the original hydrothermal literature (Huber and Wachterhauser 1998, etc.). There is a massive literature on the clay montmorillonite and its probable contribution to the origin of life (eg. Ferris and Ertem 1993, Ferris et al. 1996). And the most ludicrous is Sarfati's complaint that glycine would form peptides, or even polymers with 'other organic molecules', when his fourth objection to the Imai et al. (1999) results is that they have only examined the production of oligomers.   I repeat, 'just what does Sarfati think the products of these steps might be?' Sarfati, in trying to deny adequate stocks of glycine to Imai et al. (1999), which we have already seen is irrelevant, has retreated into advocating the proposed origin of life chemical reactions of many other researchers he has attempted to refute elsewhere.  Is this why he has failed to provide these references for this part of his failed attempt to refute Imai et al. (1999)?

2)  Sarfati's next issue with the newspaper statement by Matsuno separates into three parts. Sarfati in his first sentence of this section claims that hydrothermal dynamics would be harmful to 'other vital components of life', even while admitting that the experiment adequately represented the hydrothermal chemistry of glycine. This is complicated. The original authors, Imai, Honda, Hatori, Brack and Matsuno do not go so far, as they explicitly point out some of the ways that their experiment does not reflect realistic Hadean or Archean hydrothermal conditions. Also, Sarfati has changed the field of the discussion by abandoning Imai et al. (1999) to move on to a discussion of RNA and high temperatures. This is an interesting problem which could warrant an extended discussion. But this is not germane to the results of Imai et al. (1999) and would ridiculously extend this already long paper. Second, as if the stability of RNA was not distancing enough, Sarfati also makes a technically irrelevant reference to chirality which makes one erroneous statement and seems to merely provide Sarfati the opportunity to reference himself again. An idle entertainment at a conference is to see who is able to identify the well known cell membrane protein gramicidin A by its structure of alternating L- and D-amino acids (an activity preferably conducted in the conference hotel's bar). Finally, Sarfati wishes us to ignore the results of Imai et al. (1999) because they have not done the experiment that Sarfati judges is 'incomprehensible' to have not been executed. Actually, Sarfati should take this issue up with the funding sources rather than the experimenters. It is worth noting that Imai et al. (1999) reference Amend and Scheck (1998), who's thermodynamic analysis indicates that at least half of the twenty essential amino acids, also the most common, should react similarly to cytosine under the conditions used by Imai et al. (1999).

3)  Sarfati begins this bullet point with an odd sentence, 'The longest polymer (or rather, oligomer) formed was hexaglycine'.  Imai et al. (1999) never refer to any product of their experiment as a polymer. So who is Sarfati correcting? It would seem that Sarfati is correcting Sarfati. Could there be any other reason than appearing erudite that might explain Sarfati creating an error, 'polymer', so that he can correct it '(or rather, oligomer)'? Next, Sarfati compared hexaglycine with the structure of enzymes. Imai et al. (1999) nowhere claim to have produced enzymes, nor do they compare their products to enzymes. Sarfati needs to decide if he is criticizing a newspaper interview, which hardly needs the folderol of a 'research' article, or is he trying to make some response to a peer-reviewed paper in Science? As a response to the paper published in Science, Sarfati's effort is far short of adequate.

4)  By point four, Sarfati is largely repeating himself. Unfortunately he is repeating his own errors. The first sentence allows us to watch Sarfati misapply the term 'homo-oligomer'. The word 'oligomer' means a polymer of up to five units of the same monomer, with the root 'oligo' meaning scant, and by definition monomers are restricted to simple molecules which are the repeating units of a polymer. A 'homo-oligomer' is found where two to many copies of a complex macromolecule polymerize. A web search on 'homo-oligomer' contrasted by a similar search on 'oligomer' will easily return sufficient examples to clarify this to the interested reader, or one can consult a good dictionary. Next, Sarfati incorrectly asserts, 'But life requires many polymers in precise sequences of 20 different types of amino acids'.  Indeed it is the very fact that there is considerable imprecision allowed in living systems that makes evolution possible, and neither is it true that all 20+ amino acids are involved in all polymers associated with life. And next, 'Thus Matsuno's experiments offer not the slightest explanation for the complex, high-information polymers of living organisms'.   Well of course it does, by empirically demonstrating an effective set of reactions which lead to the abiogenic formation of a complex molecule.

Conclusion

Sarfati concludes with an irrelevant quotation which I will ignore. I will conclude with a short explication as to why, in spite of my complete disdain for Sarfati's incompetent treatment of this topic, I agree that Matsuno's newspaper interview statement that, 'For 10 years, underwater hydrothermal vents have been thought to be the place where life began and we were able to prove it', is incorrect, and is not supported by the results in Imai et al. (1999). There is a considerable amount of work on the contribution of marine hydrothermal vent systems to the origin of life, some of which has been referenced in this short paper. Hopefully an interested reader may follow these references to the current thinking in this issue.

But, no one should expect to find a definitive answer to the question, 'Where did life begin?'. For, even if a bench chemist should derive (perhaps I should say create) a set of self replicating molecules which assemble into a cell, they will not have demonstrated how life originated on the planet Earth some three to four billion years ago. Not even should their created cell have characteristics closely similar to some extant Archaea will this demonstrate how life originated or where this event occurred. Such a demonstration, if possible, will lay in the field of paleo-geochemistry. The laboratory studies are of critical importance as they lead us to search for particular chemical and isotopic signals from the past which unless alerted to we might miss. Still, in the final analysis, it is in the rocks that an OOL hypothesis will stand or fall, just as it was geology and paleontology which first provided the scope and physical evidence to sustain evolutionary theory.

[1] This omission of high pressure effects on macromolecule stability is also found in Levy and Miller (1998) which Sarfati uses in support of his attack on Imai et al. (1999). Miller and his colleagues also make the same omission in Lazcano and Miller (1996), and Miller and Lazcano (1995) on theoretical grounds. Miller and his colleagues all wrote prior to Imai et al. (1999) and based their conclusions on either computational methods or limited experimental data. For a properly considered opinion of the relative contributions of pressure and heat to macromolecular stability consult the references in Note #2, particularly Shock (1990). This only increases the significance of empirical studies such as Imai et al. (1999) as theory generally must give way to data. 

[2] Below are some citations for the reader truly interested in research on the geothermal/ hydrothermal origins of life:

Amend, J. P. , E. L. Shock 1998, Blochl et al. 1992, Huber and Wachtershauser 1997, 1998, Shock 1990, Wachtershauser 2000, Zolotov and Shock 1998.  

Bibliography
Amend, J. P. , E. L. Shock 1998, Energetics of Amino Acid Synthesis in Hydrothermal Ecosystems, Volume 281, number 5383, Issue of 11 Sep , pp. 1659-1662.

Bada, Jeffrey. L., C. Bigham, Stanley L. Miller 1994, Impact melting of frozen oceans on the early Earth: Implications for the origin of life, PNAS-USA v.91: 1248-1250.

Blochl, Elisabeth, Martin Keller, Gunter Wachtershauser, Karl Otto Stetter 1992, Reactions depending on iron sulfide and linking geochemistry with biochemistry, PNAS-USA v.89: 8117-8120.

Cleaves, H. James, Stanley L. Miller 1998, Oceanic protection of prebiotic organic compounds from UV radiation, PNAS-USA v. 95, issue 13: 7260-7263.

Des Marais, David J. 2000, When Did Photosynthesis Emerge on Earth?, Science 289 (5485): 1703.

Dismukes, G. C., V. V. Klimov, S. V. Baranov, Yu. N. Kozlov, J. DasGupta, A. Tyryshkin 2001, The Origin of Atmospheric Oxygen on Earth: The Innovation of Oxygenic Photosynthesis, PNAS-USA vl 98 no. 5: 2170-2175.

Ferris, J.P., A.R. Hill, Jr., R. Liu, and L.E. Orgel 1996, Synthesis of long prebiotic oligomers on mineral surfaces, Nature 381: 59-61.

Ferris, J.P., and G. Ertem 1993. Montmorillonite catalysis of RNA oligomer formation in aqueous solution, A model for the prebiotic formation of RNA, J Am Chem Soc 115: 12270-12275.

Hazen, R.M., T.R. Filley, and G.A. Goodfriend 2001, Selective adsorption of L- and D-amino acids on calcite: Implications for biochemical homochirality, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 98 (May 8):5487.

Hill, L.C. Jr., 1998, The 'Urey Hypothesis' Revisited: Molecular Genetics and Contemporary Chronologies. Early Chronology and Planetary Precesses, July 1998 (Abs.)
Holland, Heinrich D. 1999, When did the Earth's atmosphere become oxic? A Reply, The Geochemical News #100: 20-22.

Horita, Juske, Michael E. Berndt 1999, Abiogenic Methane Formation and Isotropic Fractionization Under Hydrothermal Conditions, Science 285 (5430): 1055.

Hunten, Donald M. 1993, Atmospheric Evolution of the Terrestrial Plants, Science 259:915-920.

Huber, Claudia, Gunter Wachtershauser 1997, Activated Acetic Acid by Carbon Fixation on (Fe,Ni)S Under Primordial Conditions, Science v. 276: 245-247.

Huber, Claudia, Gunter Wachtershauser 1998, Peptides by Activation of Amino Acids with CO on (Ni,Fe)S Surfaces: Implications for the Origin of Life, Science v.281: 670-672.
Imai, E., Honda, H., Hatori, K., Brack, A. and Matsuno, K. 1999, Elongation of oligopeptides in a simulated submarine hydrothermal system, Science 283(5403): 831–833.

Kasting, J.F. 1993, Earth's early atmosphere, Science 259: 920-926.

Kump, Lee R., James F. Kasting, Mark E. Barley 2001, Rise of atmospheric oxygen and the 'upside-down' Archean mantle, Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems vol. 2 paper# 2000GC000114. 

Lasaga, A.C. and Ohmoto, H. 2002, The oxygen geochemical cycle: dynamics and stability, Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta vol 66, #3 361-381.

Lazcano, Antonio, Stanley L. Miller 1996, The Origin and Early Evolution of Life: Prebiotic Chemistry, the Pre-RNA World,and Time, Cell vol 85:793-798.

Levy, M and Miller, S.L., 1998, The stability of the RNA bases: Implications for the origin of life, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 95(14):7933–38.

Miller, Stanley L. 1953, A Production of Amino Acids Under Possible Primitive Earth Conditions, Science vol. 117:528-529.

Miller, Stanley, Harold C. Urey 1959, Organic Compound Synthesis on the Primitive Earth, Science vol 139 Num 3370: 254-251.

Miller, S. L., Lazcano, Antonio 1995, The origin of life- did it occur at high temperatures?, J. Mol. Evol. 41:689-682.

Noll KS, Roush TL, Cruikshank DP, Johnson RE, Pendleton YJ. 1997, Detection of ozone on Saturn's satellites Rhea and Dione, Nature, July 3; 388(6637): 45-7.

Ohmoto, H. 1997, When Did the Earth's Atmosphere Become Oxic?, The Geochemical News, 93:
12-13, 26-27.

Parsons, Ian, Martin R. Lee, and Joseph V. Smith 1998, Biochemical Evolution II: Origin of Life in Tubular Microstructures on Weathered Feldspar Surfaces, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 95 (26): 15173.

Sleep, N. H., K. Zahnle, P. S. Neuhoff 2001, Initiation of clement surface conditions on the earliest Earth, PNAS-USA v.98 No. 7: 3666-3672.

Wachtershauser, Gunter 2000, Perspective, Science v.289 : 1308.
Wilde, Simon A., John W. Valley, William H. Peck, Collin M. Graham 2001, Evidence from detrital zircons for the existence of continental crust and oceans on Earth 4.4 Gyr ago, Nature (letters) Vol 409:175-181.

Zolotov, M. Yu., E. L. Shock 1998, Volcanic Gases: Synthesis of Organic Compounds on the Present and Early Earth, Abstract, 1998 Origin of the Earth and Moon, Dec. Monterey CA.

Andrew Snelling, and Steve Austin: Incompetent Geologists, or Creationist Frauds?

A new book written largely by Christians who are professional geologists, “The Grand Canyon Monument to an Ancient Earth,” has confirmed and reinforced this article. ->


There is a book very popular with young earth "flood" creationists, "Grand Canyon: Monument to Catastrophe," edited by Dr. Steve Austin (1994, Institute for Creation Research, San Diego). This book claimed that all the strata of the Grand Canyon were deposited, and then carved out during the "Flood."

This theme is repeated up by creationist Dr. Andrew A. Snelling, "Rock Layers Folded, Not Fractured: Flood Evidence Number Six" Answers in Genesis, March 15, 2009
https://answersingenesis.org/geology/rock-layers/rock-layers-folded-not-fractured/

These and dozens of other creationist "evidences" use the following image from Coal Canyon, a side canyon to the Grand Canyon:

Some sample captions from different articles by Snelling, or Austin plus a random creationist website follow;

Figure 3 and 4. It is possible to see these folded sedimentary layers in several side canyons. All these layers had to be soft and pliable at the same time in order for these layers to be folded without fracturing. The folded Tapeats Sandstone can be seen in Carbon Canyon (top) and the folded Mauv and Redwall Limestone layers can be seen along Kwagunt Creek (bottom).

“In the walls of the Grand Canyon, we can see that the whole horizontal sedimentary strata sequence was folded without fracturing, supposedly 440 million years after the Tapeats Sandstone and Muav Limestone were deposited, and 200 million years after the Kaibab Limestone was deposited. The only way to explain how these sandstone and limestone beds could be folded, as though still pliable, is to conclude they were deposited during the Genesis Flood, just months before they were folded.”

"#2 Bent Rock Layers: 10 Best Evidences From Science That Confirm a Young Earth" by Dr. Andrew A. Snelling on October 1, 2012.

Photo 1: The whole sequence of sedimentary layers through which Grand Canyon cuts has been bent and folded without fracturing. This includes the Tapeats Sandstone, located at the bottom of the sequence. (A 90° fold in the eastern Grand Canyon is pictured here.)

Look at the photos of some of these layers at the edge of the plateau, just east of the Grand Canyon. The whole sequence of these hardened sedimentary rock layers has been bent and folded, but without fracturing (Figure 1.3) At the bottom of this sequence is the Tapeats Sandstone, which is 100–325 feet (30–100 meters) thick. It is bent and folded 90° (Photo 1).

It is obvious the 90-degree folding of the layers was done when they were still soft and pliable because there is no evidence whatsoever of breaking or shattering.

It is these false assertions, that "these hardened sedimentary rock layers has(sic) been bent and folded, but without fracturing" repeated over and over that are a major fraud of "Flood Geology."

I am particularly impressed by two features of this claim. The first is that it is a bald-faced lie. The second is actually two points related to the photograph. What is offered is a very poorly taken photo from a considerable distance with very bad lighting. Creationists use it to support their gross falsehoods. The second is that the "geology students" from the Institute for Creation Research posed in the photo are placed directly in front of the very fracturing that Snelling and Austin falsely claim is absent.

I have done a simple mark-up of just a sample of the obvious stress fractures from a much better USGS photo of the same geological feature. This original photo was taken with a good resolution, at a time of day that provided good lighting and contrast. I was particularly interested in showing the multiple strata cross-cutting stress fractures at the very locations that Snelling and Austin have lied about.

Why would Steve Austin use students to hide the obvious fractures he and Snelling claim are missing?

These frauds should not be allowed to pretend they are honest scientists who merely come "to different opinions" as some particularly weak-minded philosophers have asserted. When these liars and frauds are allowed to act like a real geologists, they use it as license to lie even more. They claim the sanction of organizations like the Geological Society of America to impress their victims. See; "Christian Geologists Influential at GSA Meeting" by Steven A. Austin, Ph.D. in "Evidence for Creation."



Edit, May 2, 2017
I mentioned above that the excellent book "Grand Canyon Monument to an Ancient Earth" covered this (and much more). Here is their accompanying illustration;

Some other links:

"Creationism in the Grand Canyon, Part 1," by Steven Newton
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steven-newton/creationism-in-the-grand-canyon_b_7898010.html

Why Americans will become more ignorant

Why Americans will become more ignorant

This was in today’s Times and Democrat (Orangeburg, South Carolina);

Seminary plans creation lecture at Summer Institute (Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Taylors”

Dr. Jonathan D. Sarfati will speak on "Design, Deluge, and Dilemma."

The institute will include lectures titled "Real Science Supports the Bible," "Creation and Bioethics," "Exegetical Defense of Creationism," "Incredible Design in Nature," "Are Miracles Scientific?" and more.

Oard's Moonbeam

I wrote this a few years ago, and published it on John Stear's Australian website, No Answers in Genesis. John created the site specifically to refute the gross falsehoods published by "Answers in Genesis." John is very ill, and we don't know what might happen to his famous website. I'll be moving my early papers from his site to Stones and Bones over the next few days (weeks?).

An Answers in Genesis article by Michael J. Oard, "Problems for 'giant impact' origin of moon (2000), is sadly typical of their standard fare: there is never absolute certainty in science, and not every question is resolved in complete detail therefore science is bunk and God created everything just a few thousands of years ago. If that were not enough, AiG contributors rarely bother, or perhaps lack the ability to even get the scientific questions properly framed and presented.

Oard, a retired meteorologist, seems to have largely based his article on two scientific sources, one published in Nature, Lissauer (1997), and one from Science, Halliday & Drake (1999). As we shall see in a moment, he really took his paper from fellow creationist Jonathan Sarfati (1998). Oard gets it wrong in his first sentence, "Evolutionary astronomers have great trouble accounting for the origin of the moon." Evolution, or "evilution" in creationese, and astronomy are obviously quite separate sciences, although there are obvious interdisciplinary studies. Secondly, Oard has greatly exaggerated the magnitude of the conceptual and theoretical problems associated with the "accounting" he demands. Two errors of fact and reasoning per opening sentence are about par for AiG. For example see my "Dino Blood Redux" or "Boiled Creationist with a Side of Hexaglycine: Sarfati on Imai et al. (1999)".

Oard didn't do much better in his second sentence either, "There have generally been three competing hypotheses, but they all have serious physical problems: ..."

The critical error there is his use of the word "generally". Writing in 2000 CE no one informed on the then current astronomical understanding could have suggested that the hypotheses listed; the fission hypothesis (eg. proposed in 1879), the coaccretion hypothesis (called the Condensation, or co-creation theory by Oard), and the capture hypothesis, were anything other than historically rejected ideas. They had indeed been rejected in the early 1970s because, like all rejected scientific hypotheses, they had not succeeded in matching with independently observed phenomena, in particular the chemical compositions of the Earth and Moon (O.Neil, 1991), and the improved computational results for the physical dynamics of the Earth/Moon system. It was based on these observations that the Giant Impact Hypothesis was first proposed in the mid 1970s. This is of course Oard's next error of fact, because he claimed in his paper that the impactor hypothesis was only developed in the 1990s. These factual errors are not trivial, because they are all the result of Oard misrepresenting referenced scientific sources he supposedly used. This degree of error could not be by accident.

To explore how Oard abused science generally and Lissauer specifically, consider the following quotes:

Oard,

"He even cited an only half-joking statement in a university astronomy class about 20 years ago by Irwin Shapiro: since there were no good (naturalistic) explanations, the best explanation is that the moon is an illusion! This counts as strong evidence for the moon's special creation".

Lissauer,

"All in all, developing a theory of lunar origins that could make sense of data obtained from the Apollo lunar landing programme proved very difficult. So much so, in fact, that when I took a class on our planetary system from Irwin Shapiro two decades ago, he joked that the best explanation was observational error — the Moon does not exist".

The differences in intent and meaning (and humor) between Lissauer's own words and Oard's gross misrepresentation should be clear to the most naive observer. Plus, without explanation or any justification, Oard claims a remembered joke from the 1970s as, "... strong evidence for the moon's special creation". Could anyone other than a creationist make such a bizarre claim? (Well, yes there are crystal gazers, palm readers and astrologists, but other than people of that ilk)?

Oard also commits a form of academic slight-of-hand by mentioning that Lissauer is commenting on Shigeru Ida et al., which gives him another scientific reference, but one he never actually addressed. What did Ida et al. have to say about the origin of the Moon? From their abstract, "Theoretical simulations show that a single large moon can be produced from such a disk [circumterrestrial disk of debris generated by a giant impact on the Earth] in less than a year, and establish a direct relationship between the size of the accreted moon and the initial configuration of the debris disk".

Next Oard cites a paper by the universally acclaimed expert about everything, Herr Doktor Professor Anonymous. Written for Discover magazine in 1997, the anonymous article referred to some computational models which resulted in impact scenarios that failed, or as Oard wrote, "...the results have strained the hypothesis to the breaking point". The fundamental error Oard makes here is common to creationists - the testing of scientific hypotheses is always to the breaking point. In scientific work the goal is never to selectively pick bits and pieces of reality that can shore-up failed superstition, but to rigorously test every notion with every bit of available information. The history of science is littered with "beautiful theory destroyed by ugly fact".

Oard moves on to a paper by Halliday & Drake (1998) that appeared in Science magazine. This was a review of some papers presented to the "Origin of the Earth and Moon Conference", Monterey, December 1998. Halliday & Drake early in their paper said of the Giant Impact Hypothesis, "A recent conference in Monterey, California, showed that, although a general picture may be emerging, many issues remain hotly debated". Most of those issues raised have, in the intervening seven years, been resolved. See the review by Herbert Palme (2004), and atmospheric models by Genda & Abe (2003). In their review Halliday & Drake noted that, "In spite of a growing consensus, some workers still dislike the entire Giant Impact Theory, on both dynamical and geochemical grounds". None the less, they correctly concluded, "We have recently come a long way in obtaining hard constraints on the origin of Earth and the moon. The issues have changed from discussion of whether or not there was a giant moon-forming impact to debates about the accretion rates of the Earth and the chemical, isotopic, and physical effects of such catastrophic accretionary scenarios".

As an example of that conclusion, one paper presented at that important conference was, "Is There An Alternative For The Huge Impact-Generated Atmosphere?" Gerasimov et al. (1998). Their short answer = No, except ...! They also pointed out that significant contributions were apparently made to the Earth's composition from later, smaller impacts (for example see Chyba et al. 1990, Bada et al. 1994, Blank et al. 2001). Equally obvious are the later contributions of weathering and most importantly life itself, (Canfield et al. 2000, Catling et al. 2001, and for a strong background paper see Holland 1999).

Oard next mentioned briefly a paper by Ruzicka et al. (1998) and quoted from their conclusion that, "... there is no strong geochemical support for either the Giant Impact or Impact-triggered Fission hypotheses". Oard has presented this in a misleading manner leaving an average reader the impression that Ruzicka et al. reject both hypotheses. We need to read this with some care. First, Ruzicka et al. (1998) are arguing that the data available over seven years ago could not select between the "Giant Impact" and the "Impact-triggered Fission" hypotheses. The Impact-triggered Fission Hypothesis was a hybrid of the impact and 1879 fission hypotheses. As described by O'Neill in 1991, it proposed that a giant impact resulted in a Moon largely comprised of crustal Earth - a hypothesis that was later highly modified (see Wänke, 1999). Ruzicka et al. (1998) further argued that the amount of lunar material that derived from the protoEarth was extremely low (O'Neill had proposed up to 80%). A later paper by Ruzicka et al. (2001) goes even further and argues that a giant impact could have produced the Moon with negligible material derived from the protoEarth, overturning both O'Neill and Wänke as well as others. The geochemical questions regarding the origin of the Earth/Moon system are indeed complex. But this is how science works best - by more sensitive and accurate studies acquiring new data. The critical insights of the last decade are reviewed by Palme (2004) which will be discussed below.

Sarfati gets Plagiarized

The capping irony is that Michael Oard's "paper" is merely a trivial reworking of AiG creationist Jonathan Sarfati's 1998 bloviation, "The moon: the light that rules the night". I was a college professor for many years and I regretfully flunked more than one student for plagiarism less blatant than that of Oard. For example, both of these AiG hacks take issue with the "... the unsolved problem of losing the excess angular momentum". (Yes, Oard used that identical phrase and many more directly from Sarfati, he even took the distorted reference to Irwin Shapiro's humorous remark from Sarfati). Sarfati presented this "excess angular momentum" as a "proof" that the radiometric dating of the Moon's formation could not be correct, and that this for some reason disproved the theory of evolution. Oard seems happy just that it is a "problem" for them "evilusionists". But like all creation science, their "proofs" and "problems" are more apparent then real. As pointed out by Palme (2004):

An off-center collision of a Mars-sized projectile with Earth would produce the present high angular momentum of the Earth-Moon system and would eject enough material into Earth orbit so that the dust could accumulate to form the Moon.

Sarfati has his own problems with reality beyond those parroted by Oard. For example, Sarfati claims that there are special purposes behind the Divine creation of the Moon. The first of these is "... for the moon is to show the seasons which will allow the invention of calendars by man... so people could plant their crops at the best time of the year". The event of seasons is of course the combined result of the elliptic orbit of the Earth around the Sun, and the Earth's canted spin axis. The physical reality is that the Moon does not show the seasons, and as a simple point of archaeological and historical fact, agriculturalists employ solar calendrics. The contrasting use of Lunar and Solar calendars between nomads who can't employ solar observation, and sedentary agriculturists who do is even thought to be reflected in the biblical story of Samson and Delilah.

Current State of the Art

In his review "The Giant Impact Formation of the Moon", Science, Herbert Palme (2004) examined computational simulations of the proto-Earth/giant impactor collisions demonstrating that both bodies were differentiated into core/crust systems and that the bulk of the lunar mass is from the crust of the impactor.

It is important to read the opening paragraph of his paper which previews the main results of decades of scientific progress in lunar studies which he later discusses:

During the past 30 years, a scenario in which a giant object collided with Earth has emerged as the leading theory for Moon formation. An off-center collision of a Mars-sized projectile with Earth would produce the present high angular momentum of the Earth-Moon system and would eject enough material into Earth orbit so that the dust could accumulate to form the Moon. The first numerical simulations of this hypothesis nearly 20 years ago used about 3000 particles whose trajectories were followed through the entire collision. In a new set of simulations published in Icarus, Canup used up to 120,000 particles and a new equation of state that describes the behavior of material at extreme pressures and temperatures. Although the results are not very different from the earlier calculations of similar impacts, they include the most detailed predictions to date of the provenance of the material that makes up the Moon. This is crucial for geochemical arguments relating Earth mantle and Moon. [Original references deleted]

Several of Sarfati and Oard's key arguments are found to be rejected; 1) the Giant Impact Hypothesis is not a sudden phenomena of the 1990s, 2) the "angular momentum problem" is not a problem, 3) the "equations of state" that Oard claimed rendered the simulations unrealistic were vindicated (..."the results are not very different from the earlier calculations of similar impacts, ..."), 4) the impactor need not be larger than Mars (as opposed to 2X- Sarfati, or 3X- Oard), and as we see in the following material, 5) geochemical questions, largely about trace element isotope ratios, are resolved:

"The material that ends up in orbit around Earth and from which the Moon is made comes predominantly from the leading, outer regions of the projectile. These regions do not collide directly with Earth, and after the initial impact they expand to distances of several Earth radii where they are placed into stable Earth orbits by gravitational torque. The impactor core loses energy by its more direct collision with Earth, is thus more strongly decelerated, and (after distortion by gravitational forces) largely collides again with Earth." Palme (2004).

Origin of Moon material. Mapping of results of a giant impact simulation onto the original configuration of Earth and impactor; x and y axes are in units of 1000 km. (A) The red particles escape the system, the yellow-green particles end up in the orbiting disk from which the Moon is made, and the blue particles accrete to Earth. (B) The highest temperatures are reached for material at the location of the first collision. CREDIT: R. CANUP/SOUTHWEST RESEARCH INSTITUTE. GIF image called from Science 2004.

Conclusion

What is the short form of the current hypothesis regarding the lunar origin? Simply, around 4.5 billion years ago, the proto-Earth was struck an off-center blow by a planetesimal about the size of Mars. Both objects had differentiated structures separated into cores and weathered complex mantels (for example, see Zolensky et al. (1999), and Whitby et al. (2000) for weathering products observed in meteorite). The majority of the lunar mass is formed from the mantel of the impactor, the core and the majority of the impactor's atmosphere became entrained as part of the Earth. Actually, the scientific argument is over - all that is left is the mopping up of the details.

Oard copied his "ideas" and much of his text from fellow AiG creationist Jonathan Sarfati. There is so much overlap that any debunking of Oard is also applicable to Sarfati. Sarfati acknowledged that much of his paper derived from a book by John C. Whitcomb and Donald B. DeYoung, The Moon: Its Creation, Form and Significance published in 1978. Today we find some of their arguments still recycled in the new creationism, Intelligent Design, as in the book The Privileged Planet (2004). This is notable because the ID creationists claim to be totally distinguished from the discredited "scientific creationism".

Oard's biggest, and most revolting lie was that the Giant Impact Hypothesis was proposed after the historical hypotheses of the Moon's origin were rejected because "They (we evilutionists) must have a naturalistic hypothesis for all origins, including the moon's, so will believe almost any hypothesis to fill the void". If scientists were at all inclined to "believe almost any hypothesis" there would never have been any disputes or the scientific rejection of the ideas that failed to fit with observed phenomena. This is the same striving for truth, and questioning of even minor details by scientists that feeds Oard with papers to distort. The willing rejection of reality exhibited by Oard is the hallmark of young Earth creationists and other fantasists.

References

Anonymous, Recipe for a moon, Discover 18(11):25–26, 1997.

Bada, Jeffrey. L., C. Bigham, Stanley L. Miller 1994 "Impact melting of frozen oceans on the early Earth: Implications for the origin of life", PNAS-USA v.91: 1248-1250

Canfield, Donald E. , Kirsten S. Habicht, and Bo Thamdrup 2000 "The Archean Sulfur Cycle and the Early History of Atmospheric Oxygen Science", April 28; 288: 658-661. (in Reports)

Catling, David C., Kevin J. Zahnle, Christopher P. McKay 2001 "Biogenic Methane, Hydrogen Escape, and the Irreversible Oxidation of Early Earth", Science 293 (5531): 839

Chyba, Christopher F., Paul J. Thomas, Leigh Brookshaw, Carl Sagan 1990 "Cometary Delivery of Organic Molecules to the Early Earth", Science Vol. 249:366-373

Blank, J.G., Gregory H. Miller, Michael J. Ahrens, Randall E. Winans 2001 "Experimental shock chemistry of aqueous amino acid solutions and the cometary delivery of prebiotic compounds", Origins of Life and Evolution of the Biosphere 31(1-2):
15-51, Feb-Apr

Genda, Hidenori & Abe, Yutaka 2003 "Survival of a proto-atmosphere through the stage of giant impacts: the mechanical aspects", Icarus 164, 149-162 (2003).

Gerasimov, M. V., Yu. P. Dikov, F. Wlotzka 1998 "Is There An Alternative For The Huge Impact-Generated Atmosphere?", abstract from Origin of the Earth and Moon Conference, Monterey, Dec.

Gonzalez, Guillermo, Jay Richards 2004 The Privileged Planet : How Our Place in the Cosmos is Designed for Discovery, Regnery Publishing, Inc., Washington, D.C.

Halliday, A.N. and Drake, M.J., 1999 "Colliding theories", Science 283:1861–1863, .

Holland, Heinrich D. 1999 "When did the Earth's atmosphere become oxic? A Reply", The Geochemical News #100: 20-22

Ida, Shigeru, Robin M. Canup, & Glen R. Stewart 1997 "Lunar accretion from an impact generated disk", Nature 389(6649):353–357.

Lissauer, J.J., 1997 "It's not easy to make the moon", correct reference: Nature 389, 327 - 328 (25 September 1997); AiG's page numbers in Oard (2000) refer to Shigeru Ida et al. (1997).

Oard, Michael 2000 "Problems for 'giant impact' origin of moon", Technical Journal 14(1):6–7 April
http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v14/i1/moon.asp

O'Neill, H. St. C. 1991 "The origin of the moon and the early history of the earth - A chemical model. I - The moon", Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta (ISSN 0016-7037), vol. 55, April 1991, p. 1135-1157.

Palme, Herbert 2004 "The Giant Impact Formation of the Moon", Science Vol. 304 977-978
Institut für Geologie und Mineralogie, Universität zu Köln, 50674 Köln, Germany. E-mail: palme@gwp-min.min.uni-koeln.de

Pepin, R. O. 1997 "Evolution of Earth's Noble Gases: Consequences of Assuming Hydrodynamic Loss Driven by Giant Impact", Icarus 126, 148-156 (1997).

Ruzicka, A., Snyder, G.A. and Taylor, L.A., 1998 "Giant Impact and Fission Hypotheses for the origin of the moon: a critical review of some geochemical evidence", International Geology Review 40:851–864

Ruzicka, Alex, Gregory A. Snydera and Lawrence A. Taylora 2001 "Comparative geochemistry of basalts from the moon, earth, HED asteroid, and Mars: implications for the origin of the moon", Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta Volume 65, Issue 6 , 15 March , Pages 979-997

Sarfati, Jonathan 1998 "The moon: the light that rules the night", Creation 20(4):36–39 September.

H. Wänke 1999 "Geochemical Evidence For A Close Genetic Relationship Of Earth And Moon", Earth, Moon, and Planets Volume 85-86, Number 0, January

Whitby, J., R. Burgess, G. Turner, J. Gilmore, J. Bridges 2000 "Extinct I-291 in Halite from a Primitive Meteorite: Evidence for Evaporite Formation in the Early Solar System", Science 288: 1819-1821

Whitcomb, John C., Donald B. DeYoung, 1978 The Moon: Its Creation, Form and Significance, Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Zolensky, M. et al 1999 "Astroidal Water Within Fluid Inclusion-bearing Halite in an H5 Chondrite, Monahaus (1998)", Science 285: 1377-1379.