Wow, a whole post of one line replies. Do you always 'discuss' things by simply saying "Others disagree" "It isn't as easy as that" and "You don't know for sure". You know, its really not a discussion when you do that.
Monty Python said:
M: An argument isn't just contradiction.
A: It can be.
M: No it can't. An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition.
A: No it isn't.
M: Yes it is! It's not just contradiction.
A: Look, if I argue with you, I must take up a contrary position.
M: Yes, but that's not just saying 'No it isn't.'
A: Yes it is!
M: No it isn't!
Agreed? can we please discuss the topic now? Can you respond to the point of my words, rather than the specifics which I clearly am not going into?
When I say "My personal hypothesis is that maybe life started as a fluke molecule of RNA found itself able to self replicate" simply replying with "Nu uh" doesn't convince me that I am wrong. Nor does "Others think its harder than that". I don't care that others think its more difficult than that. More difficult answers have been supposed for millenia for problems which were solved with ridiculously easy solutions.
But all of that is irrelevent. Entirely irrelevent. You suggested that it can't happen, I suggested it can. I have no proof. You have no contrary proof, but at least I have an understanding of how it might be possible. And as such, I have a line of research to follow should I so desire. A theist who thinks "God Made Life" has nothing but intellectual laziness.
What makes the laws of the universe mathematical?
So the universe is logic, yes?
I have no idea what makes the laws of the universe, but our observations clearly indicate a mathematical logic behind things.
How can a chemical molecule form readily, and stay stable. It would reach a point of equilibrium and it would stop like I said in another post.
Yes, but that equilibrium is determined by its stability and its rate of formation. If it is incredibly stable, the equilibrium may not be reached for billions of years. Or indeed if its rate of formation is fast, or even increasing (as its constituent parts increase in availability), then the equilibrium point may not be reached for a long time. Equilibriums are only really worth considering if the conditions are stable or the decay is comparable to the formation rate.
How would the laws of 'universal evolution' make life?
What I see going on in our understanding of this universe is simple particles, atoms, molecules, planets etc interacting in law guided manners. Smaller 'things' tend to interact with each other to form 'clusters' which in turn interact with other clusters to form larger cluster clusters, etc. So electrons protons and neutrons interact to form atoms. Different numbers of those create different properties, but nonetheless we have small things interacting to create a new 'thing'. These things (atoms) interact with other atoms to create new 'things': Molecules. Molecules interact to make a huge diversity of things, one of which I guess you could call planets etc.
now the point of this is that each level, each step of the way is just a thing, behaving in a law induced many. Protons do what they do, and thats all. Thansk to that, we have a universe full of hydrogen (the most stable of all of the proton based clusters), and hence the most numerous (Equilibrium point? I dunno, depends on how many protons are still being produced somewhere in the universe, how often Hyrdogen is formed now, and how long hydrogen lasts).
Anyway, hydrogen everywhere, plus lots of other types of atoms. They interact in their manner, and molecules form. This is not hypothesised, its demonstrated and factual. Let atoms interact in different environments, with different stimulie, and they will react. Right? Right. Then you get molecules.
Now of course molecules are INCREDIBLY diverse. Unlike atoms which seem reasonably limited to number of protons and number of neutrons with fluctuations in the number of electrons, molecules have an infinite number of combinations between those atoms and the number of atoms used.
but nonetheless, molecules are formed. What is the most abundant molecule in the universe? I have no idea to be completely honest, but at a guess I'm going to have a few stabs in the dark:
H2O? CH4? SiO2? CO2? NH3?
These molecules are abundant because of the abundance of their substratum (Hydrogen and other low proton atoms), the readiness of their formation (spontaneous reactions maybe?), and the stability of the formation (low energy state). Now I admit, I am a terrible chemist, so try to overlook any details I have screwed up, but the point is that some molecules are far more abundant than others and it is due to those same 3 criteria as determines the abundance of atoms as no doubt determines the abundance of every 'particle' or 'thing' in the universe. The abundance of its components, the ease of formation, and the stability of the end product.
So that is what I think of as "Universal evolution", and that has only a very lose connection to biological evolution, because as I said before, biological evolution is like a phase change in the evolution process. Biological evolution doesn't obey those three rules, it obeys the three rules of replicators, which I have already covered.
Now with the universal evolution, what you end up with the is a diminishing number of molecules as they increase in complexity and they decrease in stability. But thanks to atoms doing their thing throughout all time, we get a consistent turnover of molecules. As old molecules decay we get atoms or smaller molecules back in the mix ready to react again and re-create a new molecule.
So we have a steady constant background of CH4, NH3, CO2, H2O etc on Earth plus probably a reasonably steady supply of larger molecules which combine those molecules in certain ways. Then far larger molecules which combine many of them in amny different ways, but as those molecules form and then decay there is a constant coming and going of different forms. Eventually...one day... if it ever happens (for it is no doubt incredibly unlikely), one of those molecules happens to replicate itself. Pow. We exit universal evolution, and enter biological evolution.
And thats all it is.
Simple? No. I don't pretend it is simple, but I can't really write a book on the subject here can I? Nor do I have the actual knowledge to spell it all out. In my head it is only conceptual, but at least it works. Chemically it makes sense, and chemically there is nothing stopping a molecule from doing this. All we know is that life seems to have come from non-life, and we want to figure out how. Looking at life we can see that there is nothing in it which isn't simply a chemical interaction, so it is safe to assume that the answer to the origin can be found in similar solution based chemical reactions.
I think the biggest trap is to stop assuming that the first replicator needs to be as sophisticated as the simplest replicator around today. I'd bet my life that the first replicator was not 100th of the sophistication of the simplest biological replicator available today. Any biological entity around today is at the end of 3.6 billion years of evolution...It is just as advanced (even in its simplicity) as we humans are.
Just for me!! You do realize that this gap is being researched by hundreds if not thousands of scientists as we speak?
That was exactly my point.
Chemical reactions are not life or living.
Aren't they? Maybe some aren't, but life is only a definition prescribed by humans. Where we draw the line is up to us, usually in a communal nature. So while not all chemical reactions are life, all life is chemical reactions. Just how we define the difference, is up to us. Personally, I think it is 'replication of self', but many others think it is "Self-replication of a sufficiently complex entity".
This is not just a problem with me kidding myself. Francis Crick the Scientist that discovered DNA feels that the time for life to come into being is too short.
"...The real fossil record suggests that our present form of protein based life was already in existence 3.6 billion years ago.... This leaves an astonishingly short time to get life started"
Francis Crick,[SIZE=-1] "Split genes and RNA Splicing," p 264-271 v 204, Science, 20 April 1979.
Fine, he thinks its too short. Partly editorial flair, partly a statement of disbelief that we should be so lucky. I too could say something like that and still not contradict what I am saying here. 1. A billion years is a whole heap of time, 2. the chances of a replicator forming are so unlikely, that maybe it only happens once every 10 billion years. Therefore 1 billion years is too short...but that doesn't mean it can't happen. It just means it happened sooner rather than later.
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I think that maybe you should do some research yourself.
Thanks. So does that mean you aren't going to bother reading up on PCR and RNA?
Regardless, it is this simple pre-life molecule that is so important and nothing at this point explains it.
Chance.
Pure, simple, Chance. Randomness. Luck. Coincidence.
Ask any creationist about evolution and the first thing they will mention is random chance, but evolution is not about chance. Evolution is very specific. Abiogenesis on the otherhand is ALL ABOUT random chance, and yet not one creationist seems to accept that.
One chance creation, once which sparked a bushfire to end all bushfires which has spread over the entirety of the earth. It only needed to happen once, it had a whole lot of time to do it (if it didn't happen in the first billion years, it probably would have happened in one of the next few billion), and once it happened, there was no going back.
How can pre-life use anything?
How do you think 'life' uses things? Chemical reactions. We eat because our DNA molecules need free electrons stolen from the carbon chain molecules to replicate. Well, guess what, H2 'uses' O2 to make H2O. Its all the same thing, just different degree of sophistication.
Why would it happen again? If we allow the first event hypothetically, what would cause the second event?
I think you are confused here. The 'second event' would be 'caused' by the same randomness that caused it the first time... if the second creation of a replicating molecule ever happened. If it did, it seems it was rather quickly destroyed by the first event, or lost due to some other cause. Once life starts to evolve, it is rewarded by 'eating' everything it can to replicate itself. Especially other replicating molecules.
The reason we conclude there was only one origin of life? All life on earth is identical at the molecular levels. DNA. RNA. Proteins. All same chirality. virtually all of them even have the same tRNA (and that is an interesting topic to look into!) and therefore translate DNA into proteins identically.
If there were two seperate origins, we should see some differences...anything.
That really doesn't make sense. You are special pleading here.
You can shake and jumble non-life all you want but at one point it has to create life which as far as we know, has no lingering evidence of just how that occurred.
I am sure you have heard of the anthropic principle. Life must have come from non-life, and if it didn't, we wouldn't be here to marvel at it. The chance of it not happening is irrelevent so long as there is some chance. There is no special pleading involved, it is simple parsimony. We're here. Evolution explains the complexity, unlikelihood or not, chance explains the beginning.
Life is made up of nonlife components. Non-life starting life is not a ridiculous idea. Evidence from the beginning seems unlikely, but chemical evidence of the theory will come with time.