An atheists world (2)

[TLK Valentine]

The plan was to allow it to happen; not make it happen.

Matthew 26:53 Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?

So why didn't he? because that wasn't the plan, now was it?

 

[TLK Valentine]

Much as I thought. You have no clue.

No, he was just being dishonest.

 

[CarlosTomy]

Well I think you are wrong. Quantum particles for example have been found in plants, doing calculations, telling the cells how much energy it needs to convert from the Sun. I bet such things are happening inside all cells, governing them.

quantum particles are NOT "doing calculations" in the cells.

Let's first deal with chemistry on the atomic and molecular scales. Atoms and molecules do what they do because of basic laws of physics. Bonds form between atoms because of very specific physical laws. Those bonds, once formed, have limited capabilities to do anything outside of the confines of physics.

As for the amount of energy a plant takes in; well, sorry to tell you this but when a photon hits a plant it is absorbed by one of the pigment molecules that, through a series of fluorescence events transfers an electron. The physics that defines what wavelength of photon is absorbed and how it is done is SET not by the plant doing a calculation but rather by the pigments available. In order to cover a broader range of light wavelength absorption the plant utilizes MULTIPLE pigments because of this.

Here's a step-by-step of the process
1. A photon is absorbed by photosystem II (P680)

2. An electron is raised from a low energy state to a high energy state

3. the electron then falls down to the low energy state, releasing its energy.

4. However, this energy is not lost, it is picked up by an adjacent pigment molecule where it is used to raise an electron to a higher energy state, etc. etc., until this energy reaches the photosystem (like a bucket brigade or "the wave" at a football game)

5. At the photosystem, the electron is raised, but instead of falling back down, it is stolen by another, electron defficient molecule in the electron transport chain

6. Meanwhile the photosystem's stolen electron is replenished by photolysis, or the splitting of H2O to form H+and O2 (note: the H+ is kept in side the thylakoid membrane). The O2 resulting is the source of all oxygen in our atmosphere

7.
The electron travels down the electron transport system (ETS). Along the way, more H+ is pumped into the thylakoid compartment.

8. The electron eventually reaches photosystem I (P700), where it waits until the electron is excited by another photon

9. The electron is stolen by another electron acceptor from a second ETS

10. The final fate of the electron is in converting NADP+ to NADPH
The H+ is released to generate ATP
(From this site: website: uic.edu/classes/bios/bios100/lecturesf04am/lect10.htm]Photosynthesis

But the point is that these processes are goverened not by some "agency" doing a calculation any more than a rock falls when dropped indicates that the rock is calculating how to get to the ground.

It's not "simple", but there's little there that is mysterious or even smacks of the "supernatural".

When talking about quantum mechanics it is comforting to some people to think of the "probabilistic" and "weird" nature of the quantum world. As if there is some place for God to hide in there. And I must admit that QM is complex and truly, truly weird. But it is the height of "Gap Theology" to cram God down into the quantum state if only because it is the last frontier where most people get confused.

And that's certainly a far cry from where God started out.

 

[createdtoworship]

The point I'm trying to make is that chemically speaking there is nothing in relation to DNA that is beyond basic chemical reactions. The details of which are very much in line with any number of regular reactions you see every day.

I like crystallography because:

1. It relates to DNA (Surely you have read "The Double Helix")
2. It is one of those things I had the pleasure to study to some greater degree in college

Crystallography represents ORDER and organization. If you think of a glass of water it is disorganized and moving around but if you crystallize it it takes on a stunning repeating well ordered shape. Down on the molecular level.

Why is that?

Because the physical rules that control crystals render the molecules nearly incapable of doing anything else (note, there are defects in crystals, just as there are defects in DNA), but the crystal is DRIVEN not by some "designer" that builds each one but a simple set of rules.

DNA is made up largely of C, P, N, O and H. Now the cool thing about organic molecules is that carbon is a special type of element which can, because of its charge and size and electron configuration, make bonds with itself and forms the basis of a rich and variable chemistry....but still plain chemistry. NOt just life...just chemistry.

When those compounds form they have to take shapes that are rigidly defined by the bonds and the atoms.

This is plain ol' chemistry 101 (maybe 301, Organic), but you hopefully get the idea.

The same reactions that govern these things also govern stuff going on in non-living muck. Biochemistry does not make use of non-chemical concepts.

It's just another type of chemistry.

balancing my pool ph is chemistry, but it has nothing to do with the abiogenesis of DNA. Right?

nor ice crystals

 

[createdtoworship]

It's not a full sentence, it's barely half of what he said.

actually all he said was this...

"It is virtually impossible to imagine how a cell’s machines, which
a re mostly protein-based catalysts called enzymes , could have formed
spontaneously as life first arose from nonliving matter around 3.7
billion years ago."

I tried putting the whole thing in my signature but wouldn't fit so I reduced it down

thanks for the heads up.

UPDATE:
I can see why they used elipses.

I just put more in

 

[createdtoworship]

Hmmm, here's a link to a scanned copy of the original journal article and I don't see any elipses.
http://geotest.tamu.edu/userfiles/GEOL106/OriginOfLifeSciAm2009.pdf

"It is virtually impossible to imagine how a cell’s machines, which are mostly protein-based catalysts called enzymes, could have formed spontaneously as life first arose from nonliving matter around 3.7 billion years ago."​

Heck, that Creationist quote mine even used elipses dishonestly. It should have looked like this:

"It is virtually impossible to imagine how a cell's machines...could have formed spontaneously...from nonliving matter..."​

Creationists can't even lie with any integrity.

thanks for the heads up.

wasn't a lie, I made the same mistake just now.

 

[lasthero]

It's still out of context, especially if you read what it came from. But please, don't let a little thing like intellectual honesty stop you.

 

[createdtoworship]

It's still out of context, especially if you read what it came from. But please, don't let a little thing like intellectual honesty stop you.

it's a sentence with elipses, if it's out of context... Perhaps it was a mistake and needs retraction? Ever cross the mind? Just saying. I have a whole list of these quotes. Most of the time the author just slips up and the truth peaks it's head out.

 

[nuttypiglet]

quantum particles are NOT "doing calculations" in the cells.

Let's first deal with chemistry on the atomic and molecular scales. Atoms and molecules do what they do because of basic laws of physics. Bonds form between atoms because of very specific physical laws. Those bonds, once formed, have limited capabilities to do anything outside of the confines of physics.

As for the amount of energy a plant takes in; well, sorry to tell you this but when a photon hits a plant it is absorbed by one of the pigment molecules that, through a series of fluorescence events transfers an electron. The physics that defines what wavelength of photon is absorbed and how it is done is SET not by the plant doing a calculation but rather by the pigments available. In order to cover a broader range of light wavelength absorption the plant utilizes MULTIPLE pigments because of this.

Here's a step-by-step of the process
1. A photon is absorbed by photosystem II (P680)

2. An electron is raised from a low energy state to a high energy state

3. the electron then falls down to the low energy state, releasing its energy.

4. However, this energy is not lost, it is picked up by an adjacent pigment molecule where it is used to raise an electron to a higher energy state, etc. etc., until this energy reaches the photosystem (like a bucket brigade or "the wave" at a football game)

5. At the photosystem, the electron is raised, but instead of falling back down, it is stolen by another, electron defficient molecule in the electron transport chain

6. Meanwhile the photosystem's stolen electron is replenished by photolysis, or the splitting of H2O to form H+and O2 (note: the H+ is kept in side the thylakoid membrane). The O2 resulting is the source of all oxygen in our atmosphere

7.
The electron travels down the electron transport system (ETS). Along the way, more H+ is pumped into the thylakoid compartment.

8. The electron eventually reaches photosystem I (P700), where it waits until the electron is excited by another photon

9. The electron is stolen by another electron acceptor from a second ETS

10. The final fate of the electron is in converting NADP+ to NADPH
The H+ is released to generate ATP
(From this site: website: uic.edu/classes/bios/bios100/lecturesf04am/lect10.htm]Photosynthesis

But the point is that these processes are goverened not by some "agency" doing a calculation any more than a rock falls when dropped indicates that the rock is calculating how to get to the ground.

It's not "simple", but there's little there that is mysterious or even smacks of the "supernatural".

When talking about quantum mechanics it is comforting to some people to think of the "probabilistic" and "weird" nature of the quantum world. As if there is some place for God to hide in there. And I must admit that QM is complex and truly, truly weird. But it is the height of "Gap Theology" to cram God down into the quantum state if only because it is the last frontier where most people get confused.

And that's certainly a far cry from where God started out.

Oh for goodness sake, quantum involvement with plants has been going on for 6 years now with astonishing results. Look at the work of Niek van Hulst in Spain for example, or the Berkeley Lab.
Here is a paper but more has been discovered since then
Research News: Quantum Secrets of Photosynthesis Revealed
Latest reports say Quantum is involved in telling the cell how much energy to convert.

 

[nuttypiglet]

The point I'm trying to make is that chemically speaking there is nothing in relation to DNA that is beyond basic chemical reactions. The details of which are very much in line with any number of regular reactions you see every day.

I like crystallography because:

1. It relates to DNA (Surely you have read "The Double Helix")
2. It is one of those things I had the pleasure to study to some greater degree in college

Crystallography represents ORDER and organization. If you think of a glass of water it is disorganized and moving around but if you crystallize it it takes on a stunning repeating well ordered shape. Down on the molecular level.

Why is that?

Because the physical rules that control crystals render the molecules nearly incapable of doing anything else (note, there are defects in crystals, just as there are defects in DNA), but the crystal is DRIVEN not by some "designer" that builds each one but a simple set of rules.

DNA is made up largely of C, P, N, O and H. Now the cool thing about organic molecules is that carbon is a special type of element which can, because of its charge and size and electron configuration, make bonds with itself and forms the basis of a rich and variable chemistry....but still plain chemistry. NOt just life...just chemistry.

When those compounds form they have to take shapes that are rigidly defined by the bonds and the atoms.

This is plain ol' chemistry 101 (maybe 301, Organic), but you hopefully get the idea.

The same reactions that govern these things also govern stuff going on in non-living muck. Biochemistry does not make use of non-chemical concepts.

It's just another type of chemistry.

All we have to do then is keep freezing soup until life pops out. Let's hope the climate isn't too warm though.

 

[lasthero]

it's a sentence with elipses, if it's out of context... Perhaps it was a mistake and needs retraction? Ever cross the mind? Just saying. I have a whole list of these quotes. Most of the time the author just slips up and the truth peaks it's head out.

You have a list of lies. You can't just a sentence in isolation and ignore the broader context in which it was said. I could make The Psalmist sound like he enjoys baby killing if I did that - but I wouldn't, because I have some semblance of integrity.

It's wrong and you know it's wrong.

 

[createdtoworship]

You have a list of lies. You can't just a sentence in isolation and ignore the broader context in which it was said. I could make The Psalmist sound like he enjoys baby killing if I did that - but I wouldn't, because I have some semblance of integrity.

It's wrong and you know it's wrong.

here is another one, is this one wrong too?
Hoyle, Sir Fred, and Chandra Wickramasinghe, "Where Microbes Boldy Went," New Scientist, vol. 91 (AUgust 13, 1991), pp. 412-415

"Precious little in the way of biochemical evolution could have happened on the Earth. It is easy to show that the two thousand or so enzymes that span the whole of life could not have evolved on the Earth. If one counts the number of trial assemblies of amino acids that are needed to give rise to the enzymes, the probability of their discovery by random shufflings turns out to be less than 1 in 10 to the 40,000th power."


or this one:

Hoyle, Sir Fred, and Chandra Wickramasinghe, Evolution from Space (New York: Simon & Schuster 1984), 176pp.

"No Matter how large the environment one considers, life cannot have had a random beginning. Troops of monkeys thundering away at random on typewriters could not produce the works of Shakespeare, for the practical reason that the whole observable universe is not large enough to contain the necessary monkey hordes, the necessary typewriters, and certainly not the waste paper baskets required for the deposition of wrong attempt. The same is true for living material."

or this one:

"The likelihood of spontaneous formation of life from inanimate matter is one to a number with 40,000 noughts after it....it is big enough to bury Darwin and the whole theory of evolution. there was no primeval soup, neither on this planet nor on any other, and if the beginnings of life were not random, they must therefore have been the product of purposeful intelligence."

ibid.

 

[lasthero]

And all the sudden we're on a a different quote, when you still haven't owned up to the dishonesty of the first one you used.

 

[createdtoworship]

And all the sudden we're on a a different quote, when you still haven't owned up to the dishonesty of the first one you used.

I added more to it. I just want you to know that people can actually quote against evolution....check them out if you dont' believe it.

After awhile I bet people start feeling dishonest about the whole primeval soup idea, I mean to the lay person a lightening strike is all that is needed in a mud puddle to form life. But to the knowing person, this simply doesn't happen. Sir Fred hoyle started figuring this out, and rightly so.

 

[lasthero]

Did you ever bother looking up the article it came from? You don't think full context is even a little important?

 

[lasthero]

And please, name a scientist, an actual scientist, who ever suggested life started from lightning striking a mud puddle.

 

[lasthero]

I added more to it. I just want you to know that people can actually quote against evolution....check them out if you dont' believe it.

Let's really look at what you're doing here.

“"It is virtually impossible to imagine how a cell's machines...could have formed spontaneously...as life first arose from nonliving matter around 3.7
billion years ago.”

That's what you're using.

It is virtually impossible to imagine how a cell's machines, which are mostly protein-based catalysts called enzymes, could have formed spontaneously as life first arose from nonliving matter around 3.1 billion years ago.

That is what was actually said. Why is the protein part important? Because only a few paragraphs later, he says this.

On the other hand, the paradox would disappear if the first organisms did not require proteins at all. Recent experiments suggest it would have been possible for genetic molecules similar to DNA or to its close relative RNA to form spontaneously. And because these molecules can curl up in different shapes and act as rudimentary catalysts, they may have become able to copy themselves-to reproduce-with out the need for proteins. The earliest forms of life could have been simple membranes made. of fatty acids-also structures known to form spontaneously-that enveloped water and these self-replicating genetic molecules.

M04-OrigLife

Yeah, he's really speaking out against evolution, here.

But you go ahead and enjoy your little lie - all it does is showcase the waning strength of your position. Because if you have lie and misrepresent and twist people's words to support your stance, it couldn't have been that strong in the first place.

 

[nuttypiglet]

here is another one, is this one wrong too?
Hoyle, Sir Fred, and Chandra Wickramasinghe, "Where Microbes Boldy Went," New Scientist, vol. 91 (AUgust 13, 1991), pp. 412-415

"Precious little in the way of biochemical evolution could have happened on the Earth. It is easy to show that the two thousand or so enzymes that span the whole of life could not have evolved on the Earth. If one counts the number of trial assemblies of amino acids that are needed to give rise to the enzymes, the probability of their discovery by random shufflings turns out to be less than 1 in 10 to the 40,000th power."


or this one:

Hoyle, Sir Fred, and Chandra Wickramasinghe, Evolution from Space (New York: Simon & Schuster 1984), 176pp.

"No Matter how large the environment one considers, life cannot have had a random beginning. Troops of monkeys thundering away at random on typewriters could not produce the works of Shakespeare, for the practical reason that the whole observable universe is not large enough to contain the necessary monkey hordes, the necessary typewriters, and certainly not the waste paper baskets required for the deposition of wrong attempt. The same is true for living material."

or this one:

"The likelihood of spontaneous formation of life from inanimate matter is one to a number with 40,000 noughts after it....it is big enough to bury Darwin and the whole theory of evolution. there was no primeval soup, neither on this planet nor on any other, and if the beginnings of life were not random, they must therefore have been the product of purposeful intelligence."

ibid.

and mathematically with those odds, you should be classed as insane to believe such a thing is possible.

 

[lasthero]

You guys are quoting from a book where a man argues that the flu, polio and mad cow diseases come from space.

Fred Hoyle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hoyle did a lot of great work, but a lot of his ideas were panned by the scientific community. Evolution From Space is part of that work.

http://home.comcast.net/~earlwajenberg/onlinestorage/e-HoylePanspermia.html



Try again.

 

[StormanNorman]

Let's really look at what you're doing here.



That's what you're using.




That is what was actually said. Why is the protein part important? Because only a few paragraphs later, he says this.




M04-OrigLife

Yeah, he's really speaking out against evolution, here.

But you go ahead and enjoy your little lie - all it does is showcase the waning strength of your position. Because if you have lie and misrepresent and twist people's words to support your stance, it couldn't have been that strong in the first place.

I have absolutely no problem with those who claim the earth is 6,000 years old, Noah's flood, etc. because that is what their faith tells them ... and they leave it at that. It's when they attempt to dabble in the science and start to pull crap like this .... is when I get a little miffed .... especially at the clear hypocrisy of it all.