Spontaneous Life Generation in Lab is Impossible

[mzungu]

No, 2% means that under ideal conditions it's possible to manipulate amino acids to create a protein 2% of the time with a 98% failure rate. Then the proteins must all be left handed; a minimum of 200 to create even the simplest of life forms. This must be done in an oxygen free environment which has never existed on this planet. Beyond that, even then the POSSIBILITY of creating life doesn't become the PROBABILITY of abiogenesis actually happening. Moreover, it cannot prove that it did happen.

Did you know that the odds you had as a sperm to reach the egg was 1 to 300 million? According to you then your existence was impossible. Interesting eh?

 

[mzungu]

Your freezer analogy means nothing: it is futile in respect to evidence of how life biochemically and environmentally came about.

You don't know what an analogy is

Why have the best biochemists and geneticists have not been able to create life from precursor compounds and elements under fixed and controllable environmental conditions, mate? Give me a reason. Why can they not form catalytic enzymes and then orchrastrate from additional compounds DNA? What gives?

Not long ago the best minds could not do things we have today. It is called progress and progress requires time and the acquiring of knowledge. Give it time!

Get real and show the complexity, mate. The "freezer" analogy does not cut it. Not even close.

What! Yanks are using British slang now Pull the other one mate; its got bells on!

 

[ChetSinger]

Did you know that the odds you had as a sperm to reach the egg was 1 to 300 million? According to you then your existence was impossible. Interesting eh?

That's akin to the license plate analogy. In the case of abiogenesis such arguments aren't relevant, because any individual sperm or license plate would've sufficed. In abiogenesis, only functional chemicals that actually create life suffice.

 

[ChetSinger]

Maybe it does happen, it is just hard to detect or ate up by bacteria.

While responding to this I decided instead to open up a new thread. I see you've found it.

 

[PsychoSarah]

While responding to this I decided instead to open up a new thread. I see you've found it.

I have functioning eyes, now don't I

 

[Loudmouth]

If you've ever built a machine from scratch, you know it's no walk in the park. Now remove half your brain and do it again. Now remove another half and do it again. You may enlist the entire population of the globe in this experiment. But leave one person who will conclude that "stupid" can't do squat. Thanks, and good luck.


I worked in a place with suspected mutagens. Can anyone explain why we avoid them?

Why don't you turn on your brain and try another post.

 

[Loudmouth]

.

Why do you correlate matters and think it projects to a past chemical/environmental event of DNA fabrication and replication events for origin of life? Are you thinking your mathematics, genetics, or evolutionary principles in modern time have any bearing of proving origin or life?

You do not see grand Design when you look at it.
.

Can you not provide evidence for a grand Design?

 

[Loudmouth]

Yep. We're surrounded by naturally freezing water, but not abiogenesis. So something's amiss in that comparison.

You still don't understand the analogy.

Some are arguing that if humans create conditions where non-living chemicals give rise to life, then this only proves that abiogenesis requires an intelligence.

The counter-example is that humans also create conditions where water can freeze. Does this mean that water always requires an intelligent designer in order for it to freeze? No.

It just shows how the argument against abiogenesis is wrong.

 

[Loudmouth]

Of course people do put various elements together in flasks and beakers that don't include any bacteria. You have to admit that you're basically making excuses for a comparison that really doesn't fly.

He's definitely right about the fact that we all see plenty of examples of nature producing frozen water, whereas we don't have a lot of examples of various elements assembling themselves into spontaneously generated lifeforms.

I'm personally open to the concept of Abiogenesis of course, but the oversimplifications on this issue are a little hard to swallow at times, even for me.

People are arguing that artificial lab conditions are not a valid model for nature. The ice example shows why this is wrong.

 

[loveofourlord]

By all means, I agree that we should go where the evidence leads.


Please don't misrepresent what I said. I never said that abiogenesis requires modern bacteria, but that the story of Godless abiogenesis must result in a functioning cell, because that's the smallest thing we consider "alive".

Assuming you're a Christian as your moniker indicates, please keep your eye on the big picture: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth". Please remember that what we see around us is a creation, and is the result of our God's will.

yes it requires a functioning cell, but as I mentioned before it is most likly there was something cell like there long before it became life. Now you could argue that the previous steps might be too complicated to work, but least know what the argument is about.

If abiogenesis is true, then it isn't going to require any of the steps you think it does to work. THats the problem. I'm not aruging that this proves abiogenesis or anything, just that your requiring things that the hypothesis doesn't in any way require, nor would ever require.

And what does believing in god have anything to with this? Are you trying to argue despite forum rules that not accepting your idea of how things is created is some how not christian? Arguing strawman and attacking science in ways that just don't make any sense to anyone who knows a fraction of the information about evolution abiogenesis and other such things won't help christianity. I will stick with my belief in Jesus, and stick with the evidence.

I'm not sure even what you hope to acomplish, I've watched the creationism/evolution and such debate for years now, it only took me about a 5 minute google search years ago to figure out creationists had nothing except attacking things that don't even make sense.

 

[loveofourlord]

Maybe it does happen, it is just hard to detect or ate up by bacteria.

I've often made this point, new abiogenesis would look alot like dinner to bacteria and such, maybe it happens all the time, but since already life here it have to be in some super remote area, which given bacteria exist everywhere from miles under the earth to places that we wouldn't have thought possible even 10-20 years ago, it's doubtful that there is any such new life forming that survives long enough.

 

[loveofourlord]

That's akin to the license plate analogy. In the case of abiogenesis such arguments aren't relevant, because any individual sperm or license plate would've sufficed. In abiogenesis, only functional chemicals that actually create life suffice.

except that we don't know how many different ways that life can form.

Lets look at it this way, if the right conditions were on earth, life form from chemical reactions that be inevitable with those right conditions. Chemical reactions are very fast and can happen many times a second in a very very small area. So you have possibly thousands of reactions every second in a foot square of the planet, now even if the entire surface area of the planet that can support life creation is only a square mile, the amount of reactions in that given area over billions of years could rather easily allow for life to form.

We already know that space contains many of the things that can lead to life, and were not even factoring the chance of life forming here. Were talking about life forming any where in the universe, with billions of planets, in billions of galaxies, the sheer number or events that could lead to life be so astronomicly large that life would form on one planet or another.

 

[DogmaHunter]

If dogs and cats exist via common descent, then there had to be a dog/cat ancestor. What was it? What did it look like? What other species were interwound in its genome? Where can we find the fossil?

We don't need any fossil nore do we need an example of that species nore do we need a fully detailed bloodline from one to the other to determine that they share a common ancestor.

All we need is a DNA sample from both a cat and a dog.

Just like all we need to determine that your sister is your biological sister, is a DNA sample from the both of you.

Because DNA is hierarchical in nature.

 

[DogmaHunter]

Please don't misrepresent what I said. I never said that abiogenesis requires modern bacteria, but that the story of Godless abiogenesis must result in a functioning cell, because that's the smallest thing we consider "alive".

A cell IS modern life.
What we look for in abiogenesis is a self-replicating molecule subject to darwinian mechanisms. That's it.

 

[DogmaHunter]

Yet amazingly this site is full of such "authorities."

I don't care how people represent themselves on websites such as this. I said that "there are no authorities in science".

That's a good reason to distrust astronomers, isn't it?

No. It's a good reason to distrust anyone who says something is "impossible" without being able to demonstrate it.

Anyone who ever shot an arrow knew that thrust can overcome gravity and that feathers (or wings) made the flight more stable.
Flight is made possible by increasing the speed in which air flows over the top of the wing so that lift is created. It was the advent of the internal combustion engine that made that possible.

Aero-dynamics wasn't known at that time. Which is why the Wright brothers failed plenty of times before succeeding. Your argument is irrelevant. You can't use knowledge we have today to make a point about a time when that knowledge wasn't known.

Abiogenesis has never resulted in any life in any form at any time.

You don't know that. You just believe that.

No, 2% means that under ideal conditions it's possible to manipulate amino acids to create a protein 2% of the time with a 98% failure rate.

Which means it succeeds 2% of the time.

Then the proteins must all be left handed; a minimum of 200 to create even the simplest of life forms.

You're again talking about the simplest life forms today. These "simplest" life forms are the result of 3.6 billion years of evolution.
I've already told you that this is a strawman and not what abiogenesis researchers are looking for. Why do you continue to misrepresent a scientific field after it's been pointed out to you that you are misrepresenting it?

Arguing against a misrepresentation of something is not an argument against that something.

This must be done in an oxygen free environment which has never existed on this planet.

Errr... it did. Early earth did not have oxygen (O2).

Beyond that, even then the POSSIBILITY of creating life doesn't become the PROBABILITY of abiogenesis actually happening. Moreover, it cannot prove that it did happen.

More misrepresenting.... What abiogenesis researchers are looking for is only plausible ways in which it CAN happen. They are the first to admit that we probably will never know if that is the way it happened on this planet or if it even happened on our planet in the first place. There's a real possibility it happened elsewhere in the solar system and was then seeded on earth through space rocks.

That's a fallacy of logic; that insanely improbable combinations will occur naturally just given the right amount of time.

lol, what the hell? You really don't understand probabilities, do you?

Here's a thought experiment...
On a hypothetical hill, lighting has a chance of striking once per year.
If I would challenge you to go stand on that spot for 10 seconds, you probably wouldn't mind much..
However, if I would challenge you to stand there for 10 years, you'ld call me crazy. Because you'ld get hit no less then 10 times.

Clearly, you have no idea how probabilities work. You should learn about it before using it in an argument.

You're talking about a 50/50 chance 10 times. That's 1/2 ^10 or 1,024 to 1. It's still not probable with only 1,000 flips. For 20 in a row you'd need 1/2^20 or 1048576 to one.

Meaning, if you try 1048576 times, you'll nail it once. That's the entire point, Einstein.

For abiogenesis the best case scenario is something like (.02)1/2^200.

This is a nonsense claim, because not enough information is known yet to make such a calculation.

Sir Fred Hoyle, a renowned British astronomer and mathematician, once calculated the odds of abiogenesis at 1 in 10 to the 40,000 power.

Funny. Do you realise that you are citing an atheist? It's hilarious actually... Hoyle considered it improbable that abiogenesis occured on earth, that's true. Do you know what he did believe? That abiogenesis occured in space and that through panspermia, that life arrived on earth through space rocks.

You should put in a little more effort into your fallacious arguments from authority. At least quote someone that agrees with your bronze-age views... Instead of a person that was a known atheist and even anti-theist.

His calculations are probably way better than mine.

His calculations are nonsense, because there isn't nearly enough known about this process to be able to account for all the specific variables. We haven't even figured out how the process works yet, how on earth could we ever calculate the probability of an event of which the parameters and variables are NOT KNOWN?

Beyond that, though, the odds never improve over time. Each flip of the coin never gets better than 50/50.

But flipping tails 10 times in a row doesn't have a 50/50 chance. Obviously the example went way over your head...

Here's the summary:

A chance of X in Y means that if you get Y trials, you'll succeed X times.
Generally, more time equals more trials.

 

[DogmaHunter]

Your freezer analogy means nothing: it is futile in respect to evidence of how life biochemically and environmentally came about.

Again, read the discussion history.

The freezer is not an analogy to biochemical processes.
It's an analogy to any scientific experiment and controlled environments.

If you're not going to bother to read attentively, I'm not gonna bother explaining it a 5th time.

Why have the best biochemists and geneticists have not been able to create life from precursor compounds and elements under fixed and controllable environmental conditions, mate?

Turn back time to 30 minutes before the Wright brothers had their successfull test flight and then rephrase that question to:

"why have the best engineers not been able to create a machine that flies through the air, mate?"

Or turn back time to 30 minutes before they built the first successfull atomic bomb and rephrase that question to:

"why have the best engineers and physicists not been able to create a nuclear weapon, mate?"

Do you expect scientists to solve all problems in under 5 minutes?

Give me a reason.

They are still working on it. What do you want me to say?
Your question is very stupid, sorry to say.

It's a hard problem, clearly. Do you know how many years Einstein worked on relativity? Just because you give up on problems after 5 minutes of trying doesn't mean everyone should.

And you expect this "event" to "have happened billions of years ago" like there was nothing to it.

I never once said this. I'm fine saying I don't know until someone comes up with an actual answer. For now, all I can say is that abiogenesis hypothesis are our best shot at solving this.

Get real and show the complexity, mate. The "freezer" analogy does not cut it. Not even close.

That's not the point of the analogy. Had you read my posts about that with some attention, you would know it.

But you didn't read attentively. Instead, you're just jumping at a perceived chance to knock on the scientific process and probably already preparing your next move to start preaching your faith-based religion.

 

[DogmaHunter]

.

Why do you correlate matters and think it projects to a past chemical/environmental event of DNA fabrication and replication events for origin of life? Are you thinking your mathematics, genetics, or evolutionary principles in modern time have any bearing of proving origin or life?

You do not see grand Design when you look at it.
.

Evolution is about the origins of species and the processes that make it work are irrelevant to the origins of life. Abiogenesis does not work through darwinian mechanics.

I'm positive that this has been pointed out to you more times then you can count.

Yet, you continue to pretend as if it wasn't.

This makes you intellectually dishonest.

Because of this, I can't take you seriously.

 

[KWCrazy]

Did you know that the odds you had as a sperm to reach the egg was 1 to 300 million? According to you then your existence was impossible. Interesting eh?

You are talking about an individual sperm cell in a mass of 40 million to 600 million. If that is introduced during the 12-48 hours when the female egg is viable, then the likelihood of a resulting pregnancy is high. Since reproduction is a normal part of life and abiogenesis has only been achieved in science fiction movies, your post makes little sense.

 

[mzungu]

You are talking about an individual sperm cell in a mass of 40 million to 600 million. If that is introduced during the 12-48 hours when the female egg is viable, then the likelihood of a resulting pregnancy is high. Since reproduction is a normal part of life and abiogenesis has only been achieved in science fiction movies, your post makes little sense.

You have it wrong. I am referring to the probability of each sperm reaching and fertilising the egg. The odds are approximately 1:300,000,000. That's pretty slim if you ask me. As for abiogenesis being science fiction then I can remind you that most things we take for granted today were science fiction at one time.

Science takes time, and we have all the time in the world.

 

[KWCrazy]

I am referring to the probability of each sperm reaching and fertilising the egg.

Fortunately, there are millions capable of completing the mission. If the odds of pregnancy were anywhere near that high we would probably not exist any longer. As for which sperm was me, the answer is "all of them." Each of them carried the building blocks for my existence. I didn't develop a consciousness until much later.