Proof against abiogenesis/evolution -- affirmative proof of God

[True_Blue]

Yeah, when faced with information in a field I am unfamiliar with, I usually just assume that my "general impressions" or "gut feelings" are probably more right.

I'm not a nuclear physicist or a stellar evolution expert, but I still don't get why you think the sun changing in luminosity going from dimmer to brighter, is some violation of Thermodynamics Second Law.

So are you saying astronomers and nuclear physicists don't have data?

Well, if one simplifies the sun to an oven I suppose one would expect an exponential decay curve. Thankfully the sun is just about anything but a kitchen stove.

I'm trying to introduce a way of thinking about scientific problems more than I am trying to prove a particular model.

I'm sure the data on solar luminosity is out there somewhere, but I've so far been unsuccessful at dredging it up. For example, I used search "luminosity sun time data" and came up empty-handed. This is an important question for global warming and for our current discussion. If there is any amount of statistically significant exponential decay to solar luminosity, then that would have great implications. I expect that any results gleaned from the last 100 years will not show any statistically significant trend one way or the other.

If you turn the kitchen oven off and open the door, the interior temperature of the oven will decay assymptotically towards the temperature of the room. The energy flux will likewise decay exponentially. The sun is a thermal energy reservoir, so it will decay more slowly than an oven. But we have every reason to believe the relevant curves will look the same.

Complex molecules, like lipids, degrade in the same way. If you extract a DNA strand from a cell and put it in any medium you like, the organization of the strand will decay in a downward-sloping curve. It simply isn't the case that tiny organic compounds will come together to form a DNA strand. That violates the 2nd law. But as I said earlier, I made the magnanimous assumption in my statistical model that those particular 2nd law effects don't apply. Another second law effect is itself illustrated in my probability model, which is that something I call "organizational entropy," or "information entropy," actively works against the formation of an organized system, absent intelligent design.

 

[TheGnome]

I just got home from campus and four pages have past since your response. Someone may have covered it already.

While I don't accept your first paragraph, some Christian philosophers like Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologica make the subtle argument that God could be thought of as infinitely simple. It's called the doctrine of Divine Simplicity. You have to be the judge of whether God is more reasonable or evolution is.

Why would God create something that is lesser than him using more parts than what he is made out of? That's a sign of intelligence? Perhaps because something very simple isn't capable of performing complex behaviors is evidence that a god doesn't exist. Well, there is no evidence of a god, which is why I don't believe in one, but you can't use complexity as evidence of a creator and then make up the properties of the creator so that the rules you've created to show that a creator exists can't then be applied to the creator. The concept of God is a philosophical nightmare that only leads to dead ends.

Your picture comes from the TalkOrigins article, which I've already cited to and rebutted in Post #1 on this thread. I've adjusted for it by adding 15 precursors.

That's interesting, because I thought you mentioned earlier that you weren't interested in biochemistry. Organic chemistry and biochemistry, biochemistry pretty much being a subset of organic, deal with abiogenesis. You've admitted to throwing out a bunch of important factors in your model.

Atoms with set numbers of protons and electrons can only bond with other atoms in a certain discrete number of ways. If we're talking about atoms as the constituents of life, I'm assuming in this particular model that there are only two ways that atoms could bond with each other, one of which is conducive to abiogenesis. You can feel free to research that in more detail and create your own model.

Atoms have several important properties. Carbon is not a very happy element, and is very reactive--always trying to find a perfect mate. Carbons readily bond together to make large chains of carbon strings, usually including, our friend, hydrogen. Hydrocarbons are nonpolar and are not easily dissolved in water. When oxygen is added to the mix, the molecule becomes just a bit more electronegative. How may oxygen be added? All you really need is some extra heat in the reaction to make the hydrocarbon polymer a bit more energetic. The oxygen may grab a hydrogen off the carbon, and the oxygen then may attach itself to the carbon it stole a hydrogen from. Now you've formed an alcohol. That oxygen may lose that hydrogen to a water molecule, and the carbon it is attached to may lose a hydrogen in a series of events. A pi bond may be formed between the oxygen and the carbon, so now you have a double bond. Depending on the location of the oxygen, you may either have a ketone or an aldehyde. How would you calculate the probability of these events? These events happen frequently just due to the nature of Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen, and your halogens put into certain situations.

The model you make has to be based on reality. It's impossible to make a realistic model in this scenario because a molecule with three carbons and an oxygen is going to behave different from a molecule with one-hundred carbons and an oxygen. Not to mention all the kind molecules that actually exist in nature, and all the kinds of molecules that existed during the abiogenesis process. Also, how do you also derive the probability of heat being used in the result of a reaction? You're abusing mathematics by doing something with it that is not meant for it to do.

Finally, assuming that we exist because we evolved begs the question.

Nobody's talking about evolution, just abiogenesis. You can imagine one god, or many gods teaming together, or a bunch of aliens placing the first bits of life on the earth, and evolution takes place from there. There's no doubt that evolution happened, it's a fact. If you have doubts of evolution, then I don't know how you can stand for forensics, which pales in comparison to the amount of evidence that exists for evolution. Abiogenesis is chemistry, and you don't use probabilities to determine if chemistry is possible--that's ludicrous.

 

[uberd00b]

I don't have to do any research to justify that statement, and even if such research existed, I won't agree with said research.

Careful now, you're just illustrating the horrendously dishonest nature of creationism here.

You wouldn't find that attitude in science.

 

[True_Blue]

I just got home from campus and four pages have past since your response. Someone may have covered it already.

Why would God create something that is lesser than him using more parts than what he is made out of? That's a sign of intelligence? Perhaps because something very simple isn't capable of performing complex behaviors is evidence that a god doesn't exist. Well, there is no evidence of a god, which is why I don't believe in one, but you can't use complexity as evidence of a creator and then make up the properties of the creator so that the rules you've created to show that a creator exists can't then be applied to the creator. The concept of God is a philosophical nightmare that only leads to dead ends.

That's interesting, because I thought you mentioned earlier that you weren't interested in biochemistry. Organic chemistry and biochemistry, biochemistry pretty much being a subset of organic, deal with abiogenesis. You've admitted to throwing out a bunch of important factors in your model.

Atoms have several important properties. Carbon is not a very happy element, and is very reactive--always trying to find a perfect mate. Carbons readily bond together to make large chains of carbon strings, usually including, our friend, hydrogen. Hydrocarbons are nonpolar and are not easily dissolved in water. When oxygen is added to the mix, the molecule becomes just a bit more electronegative. How may oxygen be added? All you really need is some extra heat in the reaction to make the hydrocarbon polymer a bit more energetic. The oxygen may grab a hydrogen off the carbon, and the oxygen then may attach itself to the carbon it stole a hydrogen from. Now you've formed an alcohol. That oxygen may lose that hydrogen to a water molecule, and the carbon it is attached to may lose a hydrogen in a series of events. A pi bond may be formed between the oxygen and the carbon, so now you have a double bond. Depending on the location of the oxygen, you may either have a ketone or an aldehyde. How would you calculate the probability of these events? These events happen frequently just due to the nature of Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen, and your halogens put into certain situations.

The model you make has to be based on reality. It's impossible to make a realistic model in this scenario because a molecule with three carbons and an oxygen is going to behave different from a molecule with one-hundred carbons and an oxygen. Not to mention all the kind molecules that actually exist in nature, and all the kinds of molecules that existed during the abiogenesis process. Also, how do you also derive the probability of heat being used in the result of a reaction? You're abusing mathematics by doing something with it that is not meant for it to do.

Nobody's talking about evolution, just abiogenesis. You can imagine one god, or many gods teaming together, or a bunch of aliens placing the first bits of life on the earth, and evolution takes place from there. There's no doubt that evolution happened, it's a fact. If you have doubts of evolution, then I don't know how you can stand for forensics, which pales in comparison to the amount of evidence that exists for evolution. Abiogenesis is chemistry, and you don't use probabilities to determine if chemistry is possible--that's ludicrous.

Wonderful, this is a very intelligent and thoughtful post, and it's one of the discussions I was hoping to engage in. Would you be willing to share with the group the set of simple molecules that would account for perhaps 95-99% of the bonds formed when C, H, and O are combined? We know they like to form CO2 and H2O. Can you envision an environment where complex molecules arise from alcohol? Can you imagine any hythetical environment on Earth where if you poor a million gallons of alcohol into a container, a complex molecule would arise? Is it not true that if a simple sugar were somehow to form from a chemical reaction, that the next reactive molecule to come along would destroy the sugar? (This destructiveness is also assumed away in my probability model) Do chemical reactions form organelles? I presume that intelligent humans lack the capacity to use chemistry to synthesize organelles. How is an unthinking and malevelant force of chance supposed to synthese something like an organelle or a simple DNA strand?

I'm asking questions because I want you to apply your knowledge of biochemistry to build a model so that you can see where it leads. I'm inviting your independent thought, and I want you to take those thoughts to the conclusion.

 

[TheManeki]

I'm trying to introduce a way of thinking about scientific problems more than I am trying to prove a particular model.

You mean a way of thinking like this?

1. Learn nothing about a particular field (like chemistry/biochemistry)
2. Have a particular outcome in mind (like God must have miraculously done it following a literal interpretation of Genesis)
3. Use (1) and (2) to generate a set of fundamental assumptions that are not grounded in reality (like "chemistry is totally probabilistic")
4. Use (3) to reach a conclusion that matches (2) (like calculating probabilities and concluding abiogenesis is too improbable to be possible)
5. Dismiss all criticism of (3) and (4) (like calling it "quibbling over minutiae")

Something tells me this new method won't replace the current way of thinking about scientific issues.

 

[TheGnome]

Wonderful, this is a very intelligent and thoughtful post, and it's one of the discussions I was hoping to engage in. Would you be willing to share with the group the set of simple molecules that would account for perhaps 95-99% of the bonds formed when C, H, and O are combined? We know they like to form CO2 and H2O. Can you envision an environment where complex molecules arise from alcohol? Can you imagine any hythetical environment on Earth where if you poor a million gallons of alcohol into a container, a complex molecule would arise? Is it not true that if a simple sugar were somehow to form from a chemical reaction, that the next reactive molecule to come along would destroy the sugar? (This destructiveness is also assumed away in my probability model) Do chemical reactions form organelles? I presume that intelligent humans lack the capacity to use chemistry to synthesize organelles. How is an unthinking and malevelant force of chance supposed to synthese something like an organelle or a simple DNA strand?

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id...miller-evolution-experiment-repeated&SID=mail

I don't know if anyone linked to that article, but I've actually come across it on this board awhile ago. It fixed the Miller-Urey experimental problems. The thing I've learned from organic chemistry is that carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, the halogens, hydrogen and various metals really love to react. Not only that, but many times all it takes is a little heat to drive the reaction. Sometimes that leads to a cascade of events, and the heat from transitional reactions leads to a molecule that would have never formed if it wasn't for a series of intermediates. Chemistry happens. Matter bump into each other and naturally form reactions, and then form even more complex reactions due to the constant input of heat and light, exciting electrons.

I'm asking questions because I want you to apply your knowledge of biochemistry to build a model so that you can see where it leads. I'm inviting your independent thought, and I want you to take those thoughts to the conclusion.

I'm currently taking biochemistry as we speak. I'm not going to become a biochemist, I'm actually planning on going to grad school in population genetics. I've never heard of a probability model for anything in chemistry. Maybe they exist, but it seems like chemists use their knowledge of how chemicals typically form in order to construct possible events, then put it to the test. The problem is the inability to go back in time, because instead of knowing the exact event, you'll have a number of probable events. It seems the issue here is the difficulty of thinking of life as merely a series of chemical reactions. They're complex reactions, but there's nothing magical about them.

 

[ChordatesLegacy]

True Blue wrote:

Ok. I can only think of three possible origins of life: God, aliens, and chance. If the odds of aliens and chance being the answer is 1/(1*10^7500), then the odds of God is 1 - 1/(1*10^7500), which essentially equals 100%. I like those odds, CL.

OK; let’s look at your three possibilities.

God; magical mysticism, there are all sorts of creationist stories from around the world, before we even look at your brand of magical mysticism you will have to convince me that your creationist story has more merit than all the others.

Aliens; I suppose in principle space travellers could seed life on other empty worlds, but this does not address the problem of abiogenesis, it just moves it to another time and place, i.e. where did life start that lead to intelligent aliens start.

Chance; chance is not a option, you could say what are the chaces of a super entity creating life, or, what are the chances of aliens seeding life.

Chemistry would be another option, and we know that the building blocks of life are formed naturally, we observe this.

I didn't quite say it earlier, but I don't believe mankind will EVER be able to create life out of a test tube from parts synthesized by people.

Why not, we would only be replicating what happened naturally.

Perhaps they will be able to cut living cells apart and put them back together

I think we are doing this already (biologists please confirm).


, but never design,

We are defiantly designing life forms, but not yet from scratch, but its only a matter of time.

I think scientists that pursue such a goal will develop a renewed appreciation for the marvelous complexity and wonder of life in all forms as we know them.

No problem with that, just the magical mysticism you introduce into the equation

 

[True_Blue]

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id...miller-evolution-experiment-repeated&SID=mail

I don't know if anyone linked to that article, but I've actually come across it on this board awhile ago. It fixed the Miller-Urey experimental problems. The thing I've learned from organic chemistry is that carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, the halogens, hydrogen and various metals really love to react. Not only that, but many times all it takes is a little heat to drive the reaction. Sometimes that leads to a cascade of events, and the heat from transitional reactions leads to a molecule that would have never formed if it wasn't for a series of intermediates. Chemistry happens. Matter bump into each other and naturally form reactions, and then form even more complex reactions due to the constant input of heat and light, exciting electrons.

I'm currently taking biochemistry as we speak. I'm not going to become a biochemist, I'm actually planning on going to grad school in population genetics. I've never heard of a probability model for anything in chemistry. Maybe they exist, but it seems like chemists use their knowledge of how chemicals typically form in order to construct possible events, then put it to the test. The problem is the inability to go back in time, because instead of knowing the exact event, you'll have a number of probable events. It seems the issue here is the difficulty of thinking of life as merely a series of chemical reactions. They're complex reactions, but there's nothing magical about them.

This is a good article you provided, and I recommend the rest of you guys read it. It does a nice job illustrating the problem. Here are the list of assumptions they make, along with a few made in the course of this thread:

1. The early atmosphere contained substantially no oxygen.
2. The reactions took place in a broth such that iron and carbonate buffers kept the pH pegged such that any molecules would not be destroyed once created.
3. The broth was located deep underground or under the ocean, away from damaging solar radiation, and in a location neither too hot nor too cold.
4. If under the ocean, it was in a pocket where no currents would sweep the broth away.
5. Some sort of a spark provided energy to power the reaction, but the energy was neither to weak, nor too powerful, as with lightning.
6. Once the amino acids are created, they are automatically removed from the source of the energy, but not too far away so that the products could somehow combine into more complex molecules.
7. The broth was maintained at optimal conditions to continually produce substantial numbers of amino acids long enough to form larger compounds.
8. The broth was maintained in optimal conditions for an extremely long period of time.
9. Damaging molecules and free radicals were somehow neutralized during the painstaking process of stitching together the long organic compounds in the direction of life.

I could keep adding assumptions, and perhaps I will tomorrow when I have more time on my hands, but my point is that when you account for these and other assumptions, you're basically assuming the entire laboratory in which Stanley's and follow-on experiments took place, which has little or no basis in actual physical reality. The only thing missing from your long list of assumptions is the Scientist, the Designer. I really do want to reach you guys and help you come to know Jesus. That's why I'm here every day.

 

[Baggins]

A lot of what you posted are not assumptions but based on evidence.

 

[ChordatesLegacy]

True blue; not a bad read, however research into abiogenesis is on going; this is a small quote from an article which suggests clay particle may have played an important catalyst role in the formation of the first cells and RNA.

Researchers at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Massachusetts General Hospital showed that the presence of clay aids naturally occurring reactions that result in the formation of fatty sacks called vesicles, similar to what scientists expect the first living cells to have looked like.
Further, the clay helps RNA form. The RNA can stick to the clay and move with it into the vesicles. This provides a method for RNA's critical genetic information to move inside a primitive cell.

Have a read

LINK

 

[Psudopod]

Is it not true that if a simple sugar were somehow to form from a chemical reaction, that the next reactive molecule to come along would destroy the sugar?

Do you have a sugar bowl? If so, do you keep it vacuum sealed until you need it?

 

[Naraoia]

I very much appreciate your good-faith post, Naraoia. I use atoms because abiogenesis assumes chemical reactions to build a life form.

However, the earth didn't just consist of atoms to begin with.

We could expand the base "particle" to be simple sugars or larger molecules.

The complexity of the base particle changes with every step, as well as its chemical properties. That's kind of the point of abiogenesis.

The probability analysis holds even up to the protein level.

I didn't realise your probability analysis held at any level

However, I'm rather convinced that even a simple sugar could not form under naturalistic condictions, and for that reason, I use atoms.

Is an interstellar cloud a naturalistic enough place? Note this bit in the article:

Glycolaldehyde, an 8-atom molecule composed of carbon, oxygen and hydrogen, can combine with other molecules to form the more-complex sugars Ribose and Glucose.

(The Answers.com article on molecular evolution has this on ribose (emphasis mine):

More challenging to those studying the origins of life has been determining how ribose may have been formed and to explore how it may have reacted with the bases (especially cytosine and uracil) and acquired the phosphate to form RNA. Formaldehyde (the same chemical used to preserve specimens) is a likely prebiotic molecule that reacts with itself to give a very complex mixture of products that includes traces of ribose. A more effective route, however, starts with formaldehyde and a derivative known as glycolaldehyde phosphate: these react under alkaline conditions to give mainly a ribose compound with two phosphates attached, and the reaction is promoted by certain minerals.

Glycolaldehyde phosphate. What a coincidence. And finding this out took me about five minutes.

Evolutionists really don't want selective pressure to apply to abiogenesis.

Why wouldn't we? Selective pressure applies to anything that replicates, mutates and competes for finite resources.

Selective pressure in the context of higher life forms eliminates life forms with unfavorable genes.

You can put it that way. I like to look at it from the sunny side: it preserves and amplifies favourable variations.

Selective pressure in the context of abiogenesis prevents simple compounds from forming sugars and other far more exceedingly complex organic molecules.

Sorry, that comes from a late descendant of your blastopore. Selective pressure does the exact same thing to any population of replicators - and doesn't apply to any other kind of system. That includes your "simple compounds".

To restate my point, chemical natural selection disfavors complex molecules in favor of non-reactive rock, non-reactive gas, and non-reactive liquid.

To restate your point despite the fact that it's been refuted about six pages ago? Besides, what on earth is "chemical natural selection"? Something's either natural selection or not. Sticking an adjective in front of it doesn't make it apply to hydrogen cyanide or formaldehyde.

In my view, selective pressure is perfectly synonymous with the 2nd Law.

Then you probably understand neither.

The 2nd Law is not random--it's almost a destructive, malevolent force with respect to life,

Destructive and malevolent? Except the "2nd Law" you are probably thinking of (closed systems tending to increased entropy) doesn't apply to life (life ain't a closed system by any standard).

so of course selective pressure is not random either.

Eh, I'd argue with that - as far as I can tell, natural selection is a probabilistic process - but FAPP we can say it's non-random. Nevertheless, I can't see what this has to do with your point.

In Post #1, I eliminate this selective pressure as a favor to evolutionists.

What where how what what? *confused*


In summary, you appreciate my "good-faith post" and continue to ignore most of it. I'm disappointed.

 

[Naraoia]

I put a great deal of thought into my probability equation. Take a look at the structures in this link, and ask yourself honestly whether the functionality of a flagellum, for example, relies on the order and structure of each of the individual atoms that comprise it.

Oh, yes it does. In about the same way as a crystal's regular structure relies on the order and structure of the individual protons, electrons, up quarks, virtual photons (...blah blah) that comprise it. It seems you are the ultimate reductionist

Also, ask yourself to what degree a life form could survive if genes were missing or out of order.

Don't come with irreducible complexity. Does a mammal need the wall that separates the two halves of its heart? Yes. Does a fish need one? No. Does a vertebrate need a skeleton? Yes. Does a flatworm need one? No. Does a bacterium need any number of complexities we have? No. Simple ancestors of modern living things would've needed a fraction of our components to get along.

I've concluded that a truly precise probability equation will be ever so slighly additive and almost completely multiplicative. If you want to calculate the odds of a bacteria DNA strand forming from C, H, and O atoms,

We don't because for all we know it didn't form directly from such simple precursors.

part of the exercise requires determining how many sequences would result in a viable self-replicating strand. Even absurdly high numbers of possibilities don't help those who've put their faith in abiogenesis.

Support that claim. Or read up on the estimates in the TalkOrigins essay and tell us why they aren't reasonable.

You'll see that if you run the numbers.

But you can only really "run the numbers" if you know enough to feed reasonable parameters in the model. Otherwise it isn't any better than asking a random number generator. (In fact, even worse in that you are less likely to believe a random number has anything to do with reality...)

 

[thaumaturgy]

I've never heard of a probability model for anything in chemistry.

Actually a lot of stochastic processes are utilized in chemistry, especially in entropy and statistical thermodynamics. However, the gross oversimplifications that True-Blue is talking about here bear very little resemblance to chemistry since he's conventiently left the "chemistry" part out.

And that's the whole point of the exercise here. True-Blue keeps making comments about how simple molecules don't make complex molecules, but that simply isn't true. It happens all the time, every day in plants. Unless plants = God, then we have a system by which unintelligent purely chemical forces are acting to turn simple compounds (CO2) into sugars and larger molecules. In addition we find simple sugars and sugar-related compounds in meteorites (LINK). Sugars are not "miracles", they are chemicals.

But further there are a number of reactions where "simple" molecules react to form "more complex" molecules. Often times this involves the addition of heat or some avialable energy. The Miller-Urey experiments showed that such can happen. The key now is to see if those conditions were dominant at the time it is hypothesized to have happened, and that is looking pretty clearly to be the case.

If True-Blue wants to obsess now over "organelles" he should think about micelles. These are possibly the simplest analogue to a proto-cell wall. Micelles are rather interesting structures made up of the spontaneous organization of simple surfactant molecules into sheets and 'envelopes'. Every time True-blue washes his hands he makes these things. Is he God?

Now granted real cell walls are actually more like "double layers" of these in which an open space is introduced in the middle. But the development of lipid bilayers is not unheard of. So now you have the "skin" for the early living cell. A protective outer coating. No supernatural event necessarily needed.

What I don't understand about True_Blue's whole thesis here is that he seems to think every single reaction is some drive from complex to simplistic in one single inexorable step. I don't know where he gets that idea. He seems to ignore all of chemistry.

As chemists we walk into the lab every day and run reactions that, with a bit of energy, or in some cases removing the energy, we drive reactions of simpler compounds to more complex compounds. UNIVERSALLY everything is driving toward greater entropy, "decay" after a fashion, if you will. But locally many reactions occur in which order is generated out of disorder. My freezer does it every single minute of every day. If I didn't have an auto-defrost on the thing I'd have to face this grim reality every so often as we all used to have to do.

Last I checked there's no one worshiping my fridge as "god" (except for my dog, Aleister Growly).

I think True-Blue is simply trying to oversimplify the system because he doesn't have any chemistry fundamentals to rely on. He wishes to pull it over to a purely statistical system without any "constraints" which make it a chemical system and not just a bunch of coin flips.

 

[atomweaver]

I think True-Blue is simply trying to oversimplify the system because he doesn't have any chemistry fundamentals to rely on. He wishes to pull it over to a purely statistical system without any "constraints" which make it a chemical system and not just a bunch of coin flips.

Aye. In particular, the biggest problem I see with the sequential coin-flipping model for chemistry is that simple molecules do not typically "wait their turn" before condensing into marcomolecules in a step-wise fashion. When you have a solution of monomers (made up of, say, 6.022 e23 molecules per liter), and you start polymerization, reactions initiate everywhere. A polymer chain doesn't form from the addition of one monomer unit at a time, but rather the monomers begin condensing everywhere.

Utilizing TB's 50,000 'part' example, his model calls for each element to be added in sequence one after another. His probability is based on only one possible outcome resulting in life. In reality, if you had a solution of 50,000 molecules, and started to polymerize them, a better way to model would be something like the following; in the first instant each molecule would react with its neighbor, resulting in ~25,000 dimers, then each dimer would react with its neighbor, resulting in 12,500 quadramers, then each quadramer would react with its neighbor, yielding 6250 octamers, repeated iteratively;

step zero 50,000
step 1 25,000
step 2 12,500
step 3 6250
step 4 3124
step 5 ~1563
step 6 ~781
step 7 ~391
step 8 ~195
step 9 ~98
step 10 ~49
step 11 ~24
step 12 ~12
step 13 ~6
step 14 ~3
step 15 ~2
step 16 ~1

So you see, the more likely scenario is not that a 50,000 molecule process takes 50,000 steps, but rather, it takes 16 steps, (which are the iterative application of a single, simple reaction, in the case of amino acids condensing into a series of peptide bonds). And again, there is not a 50% liklihood of success at each step, if reaction conditions match those needed to yield a macromolecule, then reaction is 100% certain... only the actual yield is negotiable.

And yet again, again, we have no idea about how many, among the multitude of possible conclusions, would result in a viable life precursor. TB chooses 1, but that choice is arbitrary (like nearly all of the other assumptions of his statistical analysis).

What's more, the example considers only a single reaction scenario, that you have to go through every step without a single step backwards, so to speak, which is highly implausible. Yes, degradation processes will occur, but its not as if those bring you all the way back to step one in an instant. If you only reach, say, step 8 with 195 macromers, and slip back to step 4 before starting the process up again, you're starting from a more advanced state of polymerization than you were from time=0. So, the next time your reaction conditions are present, you progress from step 4 to step 12, slip back to step 9, and then finish off the cycle on the last go.
In fact, including some amount of a degradative processes will favor the formation of a more stable system at the end, as those bonds/conformations within your polymer which are most susceptible to breakage will invariably break first, and stronger bonds/conformations will be preserved. By the time you are done, the most robust polymer is what is left behind...

 

[Naraoia]

I have a lot of posts to respond to, so I can't give all of your ideas the attention they deserve.

Fair enough.

I would point out the idea that the young sun being weaker than today's violates the 2nd Law (maybe that's not what you're saying, and if so, please clarify).

IIRC the idea is that the sun was still in the process of collapsing into a star, so the "engine" was still warming up as pressure inside increased and fusion started. But I'd appreciate a comment from one of our physics people because I'm not sure that's the (full) explanation Again, one of those things I've read in popular science and kind of understand but not deeply enough to be sure.

I don't have to do any research to justify that statement,

Really. (You should see my eyebrows shooting up) I think you do. For a starter, though, I'd be satisfied with a brief explanation of how the above idea violates the second law. It might also be a good idea for you to post the second law in your own words, so we can tell if there are any misconceptions.

and even if such research existed, I won't agree with said research.

Translation: "even if it turns out I'm wrong I'm right".

Do you consider yourself an honest person, True Blue?

 

[True_Blue]

Do you have a sugar bowl? If so, do you keep it vacuum sealed until you need it?

Do you add sulfuric acid to a bowl of sugar? Do you add burnt matches or electricity to i?. Do you think that by adding alcohol and a variety of other simple compounds to the mix, and periodically zapping it with electricity, any kind of a life form would result, even over a trillion trillion years?

 

[Naraoia]

The order of genes is completely and totally meaningless. The order of them has no influence in whether or not a protein is synthesized or how it's synthesized.

An aside: is this also true of operons? And genes which show collinear expression (Hox genes are the obvious example)?

Just wondering. I don't really know if spatial arrangement has anything to do with Hox gene regulation.





(I'm sitting in a developmental biologist's office )

My supervisor says that at least in mouse Hox genes, switching the order of the genes or changing the distance between them seriously messes things up. In many other cases, precise order doesn't matter so long as the gene is in the right domain of the genome.

(I'm liking this summer project more and more )

 

[True_Blue]

However, the earth didn't just consist of atoms to begin with. The complexity of the base particle changes with every step, as well as its chemical properties. That's kind of the point of abiogenesis. I didn't realise your probability analysis held at any level Is an interstellar cloud a naturalistic enough place? Note this bit in the article:

(The Answers.com article on molecular evolution has this on ribose (emphasis mine):
Glycolaldehyde phosphate. What a coincidence. And finding this out took me about five minutes.
Why wouldn't we? Selective pressure applies to anything that replicates, mutates and competes for finite resources. You can put it that way. I like to look at it from the sunny side: it preserves and amplifies favourable variations. Sorry, that comes from a late descendant of your blastopore. Selective pressure does the exact same thing to any population of replicators - and doesn't apply to any other kind of system. That includes your "simple compounds". To restate your point despite the fact that it's been refuted about six pages ago? Besides, what on earth is "chemical natural selection"? Something's either natural selection or not. Sticking an adjective in front of it doesn't make it apply to hydrogen cyanide or formaldehyde. Then you probably understand neither. Destructive and malevolent? Except the "2nd Law" you are probably thinking of (closed systems tending to increased entropy) doesn't apply to life (life ain't a closed system by any standard). Eh, I'd argue with that - as far as I can tell, natural selection is a probabilistic process - but FAPP we can say it's non-random. Nevertheless, I can't see what this has to do with your point. What where how what what? *confused*

In summary, you appreciate my "good-faith post" and continue to ignore most of it. I'm disappointed.

Interesting that the title of the article itself is misleading: Glycolaldehyde does not equal glucose, fructose, etc. There's a big gap between an 8-atom molecule and a 24-atom molecule. There's an even bigger gap between a 24-atom molecule and a 300 million-atom molecule capable of replicating itself. It's possible that they've discovered 8-atom molecules in the cloud. However, my skeptical antenna starts to perk up a bit when consider what known frame of reference they used to calibrate their measurements across 26,000 light-years. In any case, as with my comments on atmospheres, I made an aggressive facial attack on abiogenesis by supposing that even the simple 24-atom molecules would not form naturalistically. I am willing to concede that it is conceivable such a compound could arise naturalistically, though as yet unproven and not actually observed yet to my knowledge.

I'm not sure the 2nd Law has really sunk into your bones yet. If it had, you'd know what I'm referring to. The larger and more complex the molecule, the faster the forces of entropy will break it down. Everything in chemistry works against complex molecules, which is why one of the other posts point out that plants make such complex molecules. It takes an exceedingly complex system (a plant, for example) to make a somewhat less complex compound, like a protein. It doesn't happen the other way around. Either you will understand this or you won't. The 2nd Law is wholly and completely incompatible with every aspect of evolution (save the microevolution reductionist kind). Natural selection only selects from among existing life forms those individuals best suited for the particular environment. It cannot generate new forms. As such, natural selection is a 2nd law process. One can't understand the 2nd Law while still grasping macroevolution and abiogenesis as the explanation of your existence.

 

[True_Blue]

Oh, yes it does. In about the same way as a crystal's regular structure relies on the order and structure of the individual protons, electrons, up quarks, virtual photons (...blah blah) that comprise it. It seems you are the ultimate reductionist Don't come with irreducible complexity. Does a mammal need the wall that separates the two halves of its heart? Yes. Does a fish need one? No. Does a vertebrate need a skeleton? Yes. Does a flatworm need one? No. Does a bacterium need any number of complexities we have? No. Simple ancestors of modern living things would've needed a fraction of our components to get along. We don't because for all we know it didn't form directly from such simple precursors. Support that claim. Or read up on the estimates in the TalkOrigins essay and tell us why they aren't reasonable. But you can only really "run the numbers" if you know enough to feed reasonable parameters in the model. Otherwise it isn't any better than asking a random number generator. (In fact, even worse in that you are less likely to believe a random number has anything to do with reality...)

If you take a DNA strand and chop to bits, the DNA stand will no longer function. You can take a crystal and break it into a thousand pieces. Each piece will still be a crystal. Not so with DNA. That's why I say that multiplicative probabilities are appropriate. In some cases, it might be possible to break DNA into 2 or 4 pieces and retain functionality. In that case, a tiny amount of additive probability may be appropriate.