How the Smallest Cells Give Big Evidence for a Creator

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Subduction Zone

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And who made them? Actually the early universe was incompatable with life anywhere so ET would have had to develop and then plant life here. Not enuf time. The source of life has to be extrinsic. That being if ever nonlife then always nonlife. If life then always life. Life is infinite, the universe is finite. Infinite would rationally be the source of the finite. There are logic truths autonomous of science. An infinite living source defines God.

Gen.1:1 presupposes God extrinsic of the universe and life here.

You don't appear to have any evidence at all for this claim. Mere assertion will get you nowhere.
 
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dmmesdale

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If we're talking about the origin of life, isn't a "living first cause" a paradox?
All it has to do is beat its alternative and is no more paradoxical then your mother and father being the source of you. If you have two incompatible possibilities for a given effect, then one has to be eliminated. Nonlife only is eliminated in favor of the intervention of a living source. If you hold to the nonliving only then the burden is on you.
 
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Subduction Zone

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All it has to do is beat its alternative and is no more paradoxical then your mother and father being the source of you. If you have two incompatible possibilities for a given effect, then one has to be eliminated. Nonlife only is eliminated in favor of the intervention of a living source. If you hold to the nonliving only then the burden is on you.


What else is "living"? Your God is not living in a biological sense so relying on that puts just as much of a burden of proof upon you as it does upon anyone else.

By the way, many of the problems of abiogenesis have been solved. But not all of them.
 
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dmmesdale

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No, life is life.
Now who does not know what evidence is?
I will clearly discuss the nature of evidence with you.
You don't know what evidence is. If it is an effect, it is evidence of a cause. You post is an effect and evidence of you.
And the "first cause" of life is more than likely the laws of chemistry.
Blind faith. The laws of chemistry did not create you absent living beings. Name one documented example of the laws of chemistry creating life anywhere absent a living source?
You seem to be proposing an argument from ignorance "You don't know how life started, therefore God".
You can google inference to the best explanation based on what we do know about life. Not what we do not know. You simply will not follow the evidence.
You do not seem to realize that according to the biological definition of life your God is not "alive".
The source of life here would not have to fit Earth-centric definitions of life. Why would you think it would? If SETI received coded signals from deep space containing building instructions for a star ship would you conclude they are nonliving because they did not fit your biological definitions of life? NASA - Life's Working Definition: Does It Work?
Interview with Carol Cleland
24832main_carol_cleland.jpg

"I am interested in formulating a strategy for searching for extraterrestrial life that allows one to push the boundaries of our Earth-centric concepts of life." -Carol Cleland
Q: What is your opinion of attempts to define of "life?"

In a recent paper in Origins of Life and Evolution of the Biosphere, Christopher Chyba and I argue that it is a mistake to try to define 'life'. Such efforts reflect fundamental misunderstandings about the nature and power of definitions.

Definitions tell us about the meanings of words in our language, as opposed to telling us about the nature of the world. In the case of life, scientists are interested in the nature of life; they are not interested in what the word "life" happens to mean in our language. What we really need to focus on is coming up with an adequately general theory of living systems, as opposed to a definition of "life."

But in order to formulate a general theory of living systems, one needs more than a single example of life. As revealed by its remarkable biochemical and microbiological similarities, life on Earth has a common origin. Despite its amazing morphological diversity, terrestrial life represents only a single case. The key to formulating a general theory of living systems is to explore alternative possibilities for life. I am interested in formulating a strategy for searching for extraterrestrial life that allows one to push the boundaries of our Earth-centric concepts of life.



By trying to claim that you do not believe in life from non-life you are making an equivocation error.
How so? Another useless indictment? I asked you a straight out question and you tapped danced. It is you who is reducing life to biological definitions and assuming it has to fit in all places everywhere. That is an alien standard in science. If it cannot apply to SETI then it does not have to apply to an extrinsic life source for bio life here.

1) Where is your scientific evidence for life from nonlife?

2) If the effect is bio life here then what is the most reasonable first cause given the only two options and based on all we do know about life? A) Nonliving or B) the intervention of a living source?

We have to eliminate one.
 
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Subduction Zone

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Now who does not know what evidence is?

You.

You don't know what evidence is. If it is an effect, it is evidence of a cause. You post is an effect and evidence of you.

Wrong. And to be specific scientific evidence has to support or oppose a scientific concept. "Life" supports evolution too. To be "evidence" it can only support one side. Life is not evidence as you used it.

Blind faith. The laws of chemistry did not create you absent living beings. Name one documented example of the laws of chemistry creating life anywhere absent a living source?

No, blind faith is your problem. And you do not know how to test an idea.

[You can google inference to the best explanation based on what we do know about life. Not what we do not know. You simply will not follow the evidence. [/quote]

Please, no false stories about others. You are the one that so far has shown a lack of understanding of what is and what is not evidence.

The source of life here would not have to fit Earth-centric definitions of life. Why would you think it would. If SETI received coded signals from deep space containing building instructions for a star ship would you conclude they are nonliving because they did not fit your biological definitions of life? How so? Another useless indictment? I asked you a straight out question and you tapped danced.

1) Where is your scientific evidence for life from nonlife?

2) If the effect is bio life here then what is the most reasonable first cause given the only two options and based on all we do know about life? A) Nonliving or B) the intervention of a living source?

We have to eliminate one.

What good would a signal do? Your analogy fails.

1) We can see the effects of life when it first appeared about 3.8 billion years ago. There is no know life in "empty space" so when the Earth was first formed it had no life. The fact that we can see life later is evidence for "life from non-life" even if you are a creationist. And for current evidence you can find more than enough here:

Szostak Lab: Home

2) Since the answer "a god did it" has been shown to be false soooooo many times it appears that a natural cause is the best answer. There is evidence for abiogenesis. I have yet to see any for creationist claims.

Perhaps you should learn what evidence is.
 
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pitabread

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And who made them?

It's not "who", it's "how". IOW, if we did want to argue that life originated off-planet we'd need to get an understanding of the conditions under which it arose elsewhere.

Anyway, that post you are quoting wasn't to argue for off-planet origins, it was merely to point out that arguing life couldn't have arisen naturally on Earth does not immediately point to a divine source.

An infinite living source defines God.

Okay, now all you have to do is prove the existence of such a being and you're set. Although given that philosophers have been trying to do just that for a few millennia now, I don't envy you to the task.

Good luck.
 
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dmmesdale

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It's not "who", it's "how". IOW, if we did want to argue that life originated off-planet we'd need to get an understanding of the conditions under which it arose elsewhere.
That was eliminated in the part you ignored. Since the universe was incompatible with life everywhere and in-universe inference is ruled out since that source would haved needed time to develop to the point where they had capability to seed our planet.
Anyway, that post you are quoting wasn't to argue for off-planet origins, it was mere to point out that arguing life couldn't have arisen naturally on Earth does not immediately point to a divine source.
Then what does it point to? What difference does it make? Am i to understand you don't necessarily have a problem with ET as the source of life here but you do have a problem with a divine source? Not coming across as rational. More prejudicial in nature. You outright reject a divine source in spite of the evidence.
Okay, now all you have to do is prove the existence of such a being and you're set.
All I reasonably have to do is eliminate a nonliving source for all bio-life here. And the living source advances. If you can show me how your demands are part of scientific investigation or standards and not something you simply made up then you may have something. As it is your standard cannot be applied in a consistent manner and is therefore alien to working science. It is unscientific since it cannot be used consistently.



You do know we live in a world of reasonable possibilities as opposed to your impossible demands. Also selectively used. Since you exempt your paradigm from your impositions. That is why your atheism is unreasonable.
 
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Haipule

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I’m excited about an article that came out last year in Science Magazine. The article is about a team of really smart scientists who have produced a new type of bacteria. The special thing about this bacteria is how tiny it is. It has close to the smallest possible number of base pairs (bp) in its DNA molecules which are needed to produce a free living, reproducing organism.

Why would I be excited about something so weird and at first glance so irrelevant to our lives?

I like to learn about how science provides evidence which points to God. This evidence is all around us, from atoms to galaxies. Perhaps the clearest and strongest evidence is found in the amazing complexity, beauty, and wonder of living things.

Sadly, many people have been blinded, or at least partly blinded, to the glory of God as revealed in creation. They have been blinded by the false narrative which claims that all living things were created by unguided natural processes using only the laws of nature and random chance. This article about a tiny new bacteria provides strong evidence that natural processes alone could not have created the first life on earth.

There are many aspects of life which are difficult to explain by evolution. For example, the eye’s ability to “see” along with a brain able to process complex visual information is incredible. The same is true of the ability of birds to fly and the ability of people to learn and speak languages.

Creation%2BImages%2Beye%252C%2Bbird%252C%2Blanguage.jpg



As amazing as vision, flight, and language are, the most difficult problem for evolution is probably accounting for the appearance of the very first living cell.

The theory of evolution was only designed to explain small, gradual changes in life. After the discovery of DNA and how it works, modern evolutionary theory attempted to explain all of life by proposing that random mutations in DNA occasionally produced lucky improvements which could be passed on to future generations. But for evolution to work at all, you have to have a biological system capable of storing and passing on biological information to future generations. The ONLY system which can do this is the cell. (Viruses can do this only by using the reproductive machinery of the cells they infect.) All life consists of living cells. Scientists speculate about other ways the information needed for life might be stored and passed on without living cells, but so far no one has actually found such a thing in nature or created such a thing in a lab.

Many scientists have theorized and written about the possibility of a “RNA world” before the first cells. In this hypothetical world, RNA molecules in a theoretical biotic soup stored and passed on biological information. No such thing has been found or produced, and there are strong reasons to believe it can’t work. But, even if something like that did exist, you eventually have to create the first cell since ALL known life today consists of living cells.

As a result, the more complex cells are, the harder it is for scientists to explain how unguided evolution could have produced the first one. If you imagine that the smallest cells are very simple (after all, they are very tiny), you might not have a hard time imagining such a thing popping into existence by luck in a pond or next to a hot spring or somewhere else on the ancient earth. In fact, during Darwin’s lifetime many scientists thought that the tiniest forms of life were exceedingly simple. Based on this assumption, the theory of spontaneous generation, widely held for centuries, was still being debated and tested when Darwin wrote about evolution. The theory of spontaneous generation postulated that simple life forms like mold spontaneously come into existence from non-living matter. Of course this theory, and the idea that tiny life forms are simple, proved to be wildly wrong. Even the very simplest cell is amazingly complex.

Creation%2BImages%2Ba%2Bsmall%2Bcells.jpg



How the Science Article Helps

Over the last few decades, scientific knowledge about cells has increased dramatically. This is due in part to greatly improved methods for identifying the sequence of base pairs in DNA molecules. Why is that important? Well, it turns out that the base pairs in DNA molecules work almost exactly like binary code on your computer hard drive. The base pairs form a code language which controls a lot of what goes on in each cell. You can’t just put a random collection of 1s and 0s into a computer operating system and expect it to work. Neither could a random sequence of base pairs produce a functioning cell. The order of the pairs is essential.

Computer code is made by intelligent minds. If there was not an Intelligent Designer providing information for the first cell, where did the needed information come from? The usual answer from evolution is that the information in DNA came from a combination of random changes and natural selection operating over time. It is much easier to imagine random changes producing a short functional code than a long one. The shortest code in an actual free living cell from nature belongs to a little guy named mycoplasma genatilium. (I say “free living” because there are weird bacteria that can only live inside or attached to other bacteria or cells because they depend on those cells for key functions, like having a cell wall). So how long is the DNA code of little mycoplasma genatilium?

Answer: 1,079,000 bp (base pairs)

That’s huge. It is extremely difficult (to put it mildly) for evolutionists to explain how such a long code could be randomly produced. Many scientists have speculated that perhaps cells could have existed in the past with shorter, simpler DNA codes. While speculating is fun, doing the hard work to find a minimal genome size is something else. Thankfully, a big team of hardworking scientists have worked for quite a few years to do more than speculate. They have actually created a cell with a smaller genome. And not just any smaller genome. There are multiple lines of evidence which indicate that they have created a cell which has approximately the smallest genome possible which can support a free living, reproducing cell. They started with little mycoplasma genatilium and, based on both cell theory and practical experimentation, they eliminated nearly all the code that can be eliminated. Their work is impressive and may be very valuable for future cell research. So, how big is this “smallest possible” genome?

Answer: 531, 000 bp

An Analogy: Writing a Book with Detailed Instructions for a Robot to Build a Car

To get a feel for how amazing 531,000 bp of information is, let’s imagine a book written with detailed instructions telling a robot how to build a car. This imaginary robot can do anything a good mechanic with a set of tools can do except the robot cannot think on its own (neither can a cell!). The robot will blindly follow your instructions. Instructions like that would most likely be written in computer code, but since it’s hard for most of us to relate to that, let’s imagine that this robot reads plain English and so you write the instructions in English. To simplify things we’ll ignore capital letters, blank spaces, and punctuation.

In order to compare the instructions for our imaginary robot to the instructions stored in the DNA of the simplest cell, we need to answer a question: How many pages of instructions would be equivalent to the amount of information stored in the cell with a minimal genome?

The DNA “alphabet” has only four chemical letters, represented by the letters A,G,T, and C. Because English uses 26 letters and there are only four chemical letters, comparing the information stored by a certain number of letters is a bit tricky. If you do the math, it turns out that the equivalent amount of information stored in 531,000 bp of DNA would take 226,000 English letters (If you’re geeky and want to verify this, you can see that 26^226,000≈4^531,000 by using the hypercalc online calculator which handles ridiculously huge numbers). How many pages is that? Of course it depends on the page size, font size, and spacing. I’m writing the first draft of this blog post in MS Word on normal 8.5x11 paper, font size 11, single spacing, with a space added between paragraphs. It comes out to a little less than 3,000 letters per page. That means that the super tiny, simplest possible cell contains the equivalent of about 75 pages of instructions written in English.

At first glance, 75 pages of instructions might not sound too difficult to produce. But, here’s the catch. According to evolutionary theory, these instructions cannot be produced by any intelligent being. And since there is no known organism simpler than this tiny cell which could have reproduced itself, all the instructions have to appear at once. The only mechanism for doing this is arranging the letters by chance. Could that work?

Let’s say that one of the many lines of instruction for your imaginary robot building a car was:

Mount each tire on its lug bolts, then place the lug nut on each lug bolt and tighten each nut.

That sentence contains 75 letters, not including spaces. If 75 letters were just randomly typed, what would be the probability of producing that exact sentence?

26^75 ≈ 1.3 x 10^106

The chances of producing that one line of instruction by typing 75 random letters is 1 in 1.3x10^106. That’s slightly more than 1 followed by 106 zeros. This is far more than the number of atoms in the entire earth, which is estimated to be 1 x 10^50. Now, if you are a bit rusty at math you might make the mistake of thinking that 1 x10^100 is twice as big as 1x10^50. That is really, really wrong. It is 1x10^50 times as big. In other words, if you had as many planet earths as there are atoms in the earth, and for every atom in all those planets combined you got one chance to randomly type 75 letters, your chances of producing the line of instruction up above would be about 1 in a million (divide 1.3x10^106 by 1x10^100 and you get 1.3 million).

But hold on! We don’t need that exact sentence. Any sentence with the same meaning could work. Here are some examples:

Put each tire on the lug bolts, then put the lug nut on each lug bolt and tighten each lug nut.

Mount the four tires on the lug bolts, then put the lug nut on each lug bolt and tighten each lug nut.

Mount each tire on the lug bolts, then place the lug nut on each lug bolt and tighten each lug nut.

Mount each tire on the lug bolts, then put the lug nut on each lug bolt, tighten each lug nut.

Perhaps we could come up with several thousand, or even tens of thousands, of sentences that your robot could use successfully. In the same way, there is more than one sequence of DNA letters which can produce a protein capable of performing a given function. Imagine there were as many as a million different sentences your robot could use as instructions to place the tires on the car. Would that help? Sure, but not enough. The chances of producing any one of those one million sentences by randomly typing the characters would still be something like 1 in 1.3x10100. (This number would change a little with the shorter sentences.)

Let me put this in plain English. It is absolutely impossible to produce even one relatively simple line of instruction by randomly typing letters. Impossible. Much more complex calculations and analysis taking into account a lot of detail about chemistry have shown that it is also practically impossible to produce a string of DNA letters which would produce a functionally useful protein by randomly arranging those DNA letters.

Here’s the kicker. The SIMPLEST reproducing cell does not need just one line of instructions. It needs the equivalent of roughly 75 pages of line by line instructions. And some of those “lines” will be longer than 75 characters. This is because the average protein length in bacteria is about 267 amino acids! It’s even longer in more complex forms of life.

It Gets Worse (for the evolutionist)

Even if you had a usable 75 pages of instructions, you could not build your car without a robot who can follow those instructions. The equivalent of the robot in the living cell is a collection of very complex molecular machines made from proteins. These machines “read” the DNA code and use it to manufacture proteins. (My previous post includes links to two short animated videos showing some molecular machines.) But where did these complex machines come from? They were built by the instructions contained in DNA. But if the DNA needs the machines to be useful, and if the machines are built by the DNA, how did the whole thing get started? It’s a super massive chicken and egg problem!

And It Keeps Getting Worse

While scientists were able to construct a real live, reproducing cell with “only” 531,000bp, this cell is not the best model for what would be needed for the first hypothetical cell to survive and multiply on earth. Why? This experimental cell grows only in a rich growth medium in a lab. The article in Science explains:

The work described here has been conducted in medium that supplies virtually all the small molecules required for life. A minimal genome determined under such permissive conditions should reveal a core set of environment-independent functions that are necessary and sufficient for life. Under less permissive conditions, we expect that additional genes will be required.​

This admission takes nothing away from the accomplishment of these scientists. They were not trying to create the most likely candidate for the first living cell, but rather the living cell with the smallest possible genome. But for our purposes, this means that in real life the first cell would probably have needed a much larger genome to survive and multiply.

Going back to our analogy, what the scientists did would be roughly the equivalent of providing your robot with a lot of car parts already largely assembled. The robot does not have to build an alternator or a battery or a crankshaft, it just has to install them. But the first cell would have had to build most of its parts nearly from “scratch”. In fact, even among naturally occurring cells, like the tiny mycoplasma genatilium, the cells with the smallest genomes get a lot of help by using “preassembled parts”. That’s why you find mycoplasma genatilium living in the gut of mammals where the host organism provides a lot of the needed molecules. A more complex form of bacteria like e. coli can assemble its own parts. How big is e. coli’s genome? 4.6 million base pairs!

What about the Cells in Your Body?

Up to now, we have been talking about the very simplest cells. How many base pairs does your DNA have? Over 3 billion. Those three billion chemical letters of code are found in every one of the approximately 37 trillion cells in your body! Based on our analogy, that means each cell in your body contains roughly the equivalent of 423,000 pages of information.

At some point it’s time to drop down on our knees and worship our amazing God who created all this. God said to Job,

26 "Does the hawk take flight by your wisdom and spread its wings toward the south?

27 Does the eagle soar at your command and build its nest on high?

(Job 39:26-27 NIV)

Perhaps if Job had been a 21st century molecular biologist, God would have added,

Did you write the DNA code for the first living cell?

Did you create its amazing molecular machines?

Can you design 37 trillion cells into a body that can grow and think and see and sing and dance and believe and kneel and . . . worship?


How great is our God!


This post is a lightly modified version of a post on my blog.
"How great is our God indeed!"

I read recently that plant stem cells are immortal. The bible says Adam was made from the dust of the earth! How many immortal plant stem cells are in dust?

I once read about the pluripotent stem cells contained in the human rib. And that rib bones grow back if the surgeon leaves the sheath housing it intact.

And mitochondrial DNA cannot precede the first mother.

Paul said that we know God by what He has made. That's why I love science!
 
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Subduction Zone

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That was eliminated in the part you ignored. Since the universe was incompatible with life everywhere and in-universe inference is ruled out since that source would haved needed time to develop to the point where they had capability to seed our planet.
Right, somewhere life had to have arisen either naturally or magically. I will go with naturally. But you do realize that now you have fully moved the goalposts. Moving the goalposts is only done when one has lost the argument at hand. Do you want to discuss evolution or abiogenesis?

Then what does it point to? What difference does it make? Am i to understand you don't necessarily have a problem with ET as the source of life here but you do have a problem with a divine source? Not coming across as rational. More prejudicial in nature. You outright reject a divine source in spite of the evidence.

No, the point was that we know that regardless of the source of life that it evolved once it got here. You are in effect conceding the evolution argument. Evolution and abiogenesis are two separate but related topics.


All I reasonably have to do is eliminate a nonliving source for all bio-life here. And the living source advances. If you can show me how your demands are part of scientific investigation or standards and not something you simply made up then you may have something. As it is your standard cannot be applied in a consistent manner and is therefore alien to working science. It is unscientific since it cannot be used consistently.

But you have not even come close to doing that. How do you think that you have eliminated a non-living source? But we can show that time after time when people have claimed "god" or "the gods" that has not been the case.

By the way, I did give you a link to a site that goes over the work of a Nobel Prize winner. Did you even investigate it at all?


You do know we live in a world of reasonable possibilities as opposed to your impossible demands. Also selectively used. Since you exempt your paradigm from your impositions. That is why your atheism is unreasonable.

How was his demand "impossible"? And we don't exempt our paradigm from the same standards that are placed upon you. Where did you get that idea from?

By the way do you know what the "Null Hypothesis" is?
 
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Subduction Zone

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"How great is our God indeed!"

I read recently that plant stem cells are immortal. The bible says Adam was made from the dust of the earth! How many immortal plant stem cells are in dust?

I once read about the pluripotent stem cells contained in the human rib. And that rib bones grow back if the surgeon leaves the sheath housing it intact.

And mitochondrial DNA cannot precede the first mother.

Paul said that we know God by what He has made. That's why I love science!


You are misunderstanding quite a bit of science. The ultimate source of mitochondrial DNA is understood and it existed long before a "mother" did.

You mentioned quite a few points. The only proper way to discuss them is one at a time. Which would you like to discuss first?
 
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Haipule

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You are misunderstanding quite a bit of science. The ultimate source of mitochondrial DNA is understood and it existed long before a "mother" did.

You mentioned quite a few points. The only proper way to discuss them is one at a time. Which would you like to discuss first?
Obviously, I am not a scientist. I am a stupid surfer from Huntington Beach, CA. But, I like to read nonfiction. However, reading that plant stem cells are immortal was interesting! What you say? I'm not offering an opinion: just being an ear.
 
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Subduction Zone

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Obviously, I am not a scientist. I
am a stupid surfer from Huntington Beach, CA. But, I like to read nonfiction. However, reading that plant stem cells are immortal was interesting! What you say? I'm not offering an opinion: just being an ear.

Do you have a source? When making claims it is always a good idea to link a source.

And nothing wrong with being "dumb". One can always learn. Even a surfer.
 
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dmmesdale

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But you have not even come close to doing that. How do you think that you have eliminated a non-living source?
An exclusive nonliving source as the first cause of all bio-life here? It has no science basis or precedent. Whereas life from life is empirically demonstrated all the time. Millions and millions of times.

But we can show that time after time when people have claimed "god" or "the gods" that has not been the case.

By the way, I did give you a link to a site that goes over the work of a Nobel Prize winner. Did you even investigate it at all?
I already know about Szostak. He has not demonstrated anything. Not even close. He provides overstated reports, probably for funding purposes.

They can do things in state of the art labs. Anything they create in state of the art labs is both intelligently designed and controlled environment. That does not mean it can be done in nature. Anymore than constructing cars in factories means nature or the laws of physics and chemistry can make cars. Even if they could build a DNA molecule from scratch, it would rot at room temperature. Do you even know how complicated the simplest bacteria is? Think of an F-15 fighter jet with the capacity to replicate, and you may be in the ballpark. Instead of one jet, it splits into two jets.

Anytime they try to break bacteria down, it dies. You don't get a simpler life; you get death. There are no identified ancestors to bacteria. All proposed are imaginary. Like LUCA. All fictional, no more valid than the three bears.

If you want to address the origin of life, you have to get to bacteria first. And it is far easier to go from bacteria to an elephant then it is to go from chemicals (prebio goo) to bacteria.
 
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pitabread

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Since the universe was incompatible with life everywhere

Huh? We don't know if the universe is incompatible with life everywhere. Even in our own solar system, NASA has been probing for life on other planets (Mars) and moons (Europa).

Then what does it point to? What difference does it make? Am i to understand you don't necessarily have a problem with ET as the source of life here but you do have a problem with a divine source? Not coming across as rational. More prejudicial in nature. You outright reject a divine source in spite of the evidence.

You're getting ahead of me. Again, I'm not explicitly trying to argue for the existence of extraterrestrial life. All I'm saying is that if you eliminate naturally caused origins for life here on Earth, all you've done is just that: eliminate naturally caused origins for life here on Earth. It does not immediately rule in a supernatural source.

I consider it much bigger leap to go from an off-planet natural source to a supernatural, divine being. Particularly one that conforms to a specific religion that just happens to be predominant in today's Western culture.

All I reasonably have to do is eliminate a nonliving source for all bio-life here.

I don't even think that's possible. After all, you're not dealing with a singular method or hypothesis, but multiple methods and hypotheses for the origin of life from non-living matter. In order to truly eliminate all of those, you'd need to exhaustively eliminate every possibility. But given we don't even know what every possibility is, I can't see how you could eliminate them.

That's why trying to prove something via a negative argument doesn't really work when you have an unknown number of possibilities on the positive side. It only really works where you can confine yourself to a limited number of known outcomes.

You're better off trying to prove the positive on the other side of the argument. IOW, if you believe a god or divine being created life on Earth, then demonstrate their existence. Maybe show me their methodology for creating life.

If you can show me how your demands are part of scientific investigation or standards and not something you simply made up then you may have something.

It's simply an understanding of a null hypothesis. If I say, "I think life arose via a specific series of biochemical events", then the null hypothesis is "life didn't arise via that specific series of biochemical events". That's it. It doesn't mean I automatically invoke some other methodology as an alternative.
 
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Subduction Zone

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An exclusive nonliving source as the first cause of all bio-life here? It has no science basis or precedent. Whereas life from life is empirically demonstrated all the time. Millions and millions of times.

Wrong, it has a scientific basis. You are in denial about that. And abiogenesis would be a once in planets life experience, so there would be only one case opposed to the billions upon billions of time life arose from life since.

I already know about Szostak. He has not demonstrated anything. Not even close. He provides overstated reports, probably for funding purposes.

If you are going to be totally unreasonable there will be no discussion and you lose when you act that way.

They can do things in state of the art labs. Anything they create in state of the art labs is both intelligently designed and controlled environment. That does not mean it can be done in nature. Anymore than constructing cars in factories means nature or the laws of physics and chemistry can make cars. Even if they could build a DNA molecule from scratch, it would rot at room temperature. Do you even know how complicated the simplest bacteria is? Think of an F-15 fighter jet with the capacity to replicate, and you may be in the ballpark. Instead of one jet, it splits into two jets.

Wrong again. In the lab they attempt to mimic early Earth conditions. That is the only way that abiogenesis can be observed again. And you are making the error of comparing modern day life, that has had over 3 BILLION years of evolution behind it, to the first life. The first life would have been extremely simple compared to today's life.

Anytime they try to break bacteria down, it dies. You don't get a simpler life; you get death. There are no identified ancestors to bacteria. All proposed are imaginary. Like LUCA. All fictional, no more valid than the three bears.

That is merely because you are taking a bogus approach. And no, LUCA is well evidenced. You keep making the mistake of forgetting that there is no evidence for creationism at all.

If you want to address the origin of life, you have to get to bacteria first. And it is far easier to go from bacteria to an elephant then it is to go from chemicals (prebio goo) to bacteria.

The first life would not even qualify as "bacteria". But we will see what we will see.

Do you know what problems Szostak has solved yet?
 
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dmmesdale

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Since the universe was incompatible with life everywhere

Huh? We don't know if the universe is incompatible with life everywhere. Even in our own solar system, NASA has been probing for life on other planets (Mars) and moons (Europa).
The operative word was which is past tense.
I don't even think that's possible. After all, you're not dealing with a singular method or hypothesis, but multiple methods and hypotheses for the origin of life from non-living matter.
Does not matter. None of them do anything regarding living things. You need a life source and ideal conditions.
In order to truly eliminate all of those, you'd need to exhaustively eliminate every possibility.
None of them are possible in the first place.
But given we don't even know what every possibility is, I can't see how you could eliminate them.
We live in a world of reasonable and not infinite possibilities. That is why when they find an ancient coin at a dig site they deduce a human cause in spite of somebody like you who would assert we would have to eliminate a Martian cause or a natural cause or a big foot cause because there are infinite possibilities.
That's why trying to prove something via a negative argument doesn't really work when you have an unknown number of possibilities on the positive side. It only really works where you can confine yourself to a limited number of known outcomes.
It seems you cannot even grasp the concept of the argument. If life here is the effect then it requires a first cause. The options are nonliving or the intervention of a living cause. Which is most reasonable given all we know about life?
There is no positive side to life from nonlife nor is there positive evidence.
You're better off trying to prove the positive on the other side of the argument. IOW, if you believe a god or divine being created life on Earth, then demonstrate their existence. Maybe show me their methodology for creating life.
Again, not a standard in investigation. Life demonstrates the existence of prior life and you demonstrate the existence of your parents, not a rock absent your parents. You reason from observed effect to unobserved cause. The effect is evidence of the cause. If the effect is life then the cause is a living source.
 
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Haipule

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Do you have a source? When making claims it is always a good idea to link a source.

And nothing wrong with being "dumb". One can always learn. Even a surfer.
Wikipedia, I'll post a couple of paragraphs:

Plant stem cell vs. callus[edit]
Despite that callus exhibits a number of stem cell-like properties for a temporary period and that it has been cultured for useful plant compounds as an alternative source of plant stem cell, callus and plant stem cell are fundamentally different from each other. Callus is similar to plant stem cell in its ability to differentiate, but the two are different in their origin. While plant stem cell exists in the meristematic tissues of plant, callus is obtained as a temporary response to cure wounds in somatic cell.

Moreover, callus undergoes dedifferentiation as differentiated cells acquire ability to differentiate; but genetic variation is inevitable in the process because the cells consist of somatic undifferentiated cells from an adult subject plant. Unlike true stem cells, callus is heterogeneous. Due to this reason, continuous and stable cell division of callus is difficult. Hence plant stem cell originated from cambium is an immortal cell while callus is a temporary dediffertiated cell obtained from stimulating the somatic cell.

Furthermore, the ability to differentiate and proliferate is different that differences between plant stem cell and callus are prevalent in culture and research. Only plant stem cells embedded in meristems can divide and give rise to cells that differentiate while giving rise to new stem cells. These immortal cells divide infinitely.
 
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tyke

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@Haipule
Can you put that in simpler language? I'm not a scientist and didn't understand a great deal of the piece you quoted. In particular, can you clear up for me what is meant by an "immortal cell"? I'd be surprised if it means what you think it means. Cheers!
 
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None of them are possible in the first place.

Except you have no basis for that claim. Again, you'd have to define every single possible biochemical pathway for non-life to life and then rule them all out. But since we can't even define every single biochemical pathway for non-life to life, then you have no way to demonstrate what you claim. It's just a base assertion. And not a particularly compelling one.

We live in a world of reasonable and not infinite possibilities.

I never said infinite. But when we're talking about biochemical origins for life, there are multiple pathways that we have to explore. And we have yet to exhaust all of them or even define all them to begin with.

It seems you cannot even grasp the concept of the argument. If life here is the effect then it requires a first cause. The options are nonliving or the intervention of a living cause. Which is most reasonable given all we know about life?

But again, it's not A or B.

When we're talking about the possibilities for non-life to arise via biochemical origins, we are dealing with multiple hypothesis and possible methods. So it's hypothesis A versus B versus C versus D versus E... etc...

You're trying to boil this down to an overly simple dichotomy and that's where the mistake lies.

If the effect is life then the cause is a living source.

Assertion is not evidence.

Again, if you want to prove the existence of a divine, supernatural being as the origin of life on Earth, then you've got your work cut out for you. Go get your evidence, then come back when you're ready. I'll wait.
 
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