Origin of Life

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Quite apart from the problems with RNA world hypothesis, the functional coherence of even a sled is such that it is fantastically improbable that such a thing would have originated by chance during the age of the universe, let alone the A4.

It was an analogy about comparison of sophistication, not about spontaneous construction.

The idea that even the most basic example of a life (which display far more functional coherence than any piece of machinery thus far designed and built by mankind) might have originated in this way defines and deepens the concept of the absurd to a very great degree indeed, one might suggest to the point of lunacy.

Most people probably wouldn't call the first replicators 'life' (perhaps 'proto-life' would be preferable); nevertheless, the fact is that the more the various abiogenesis hypotheses are investigated, the more surprising and encouraging discoveries are made - e.g. self-assembly of RNA chains at clay surfaces, spontaneous appearance of basic metabolic cycles used by living cells, etc.; these were thought to be quite implausible due to being complex and energetically unfavourable - until suitable environments were discovered.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

That it in anyway demonstrates the formation of biological origins without the involvement of intelligent agents (as is most commonly waved around) has been well discredited.
The chemical precursors were incorrect, the compounds formed were in not representative, and the experiment was designed and guided by intelligent agents.

Research has come a long way since Muller-Urey - see How Life Began for an overview.

 

[Chesterton]

Some do.

"Lots of animals are able to self-fertilize..."

Yes. Wanna try and reduce that? I can't.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

ok. so here is a paper that check it at the single protein level:

Construction of a minimum-size functional flagellin of Escherichia coli.

How is that relevant to the genome not being a biological system? It's a complete non-sequitur.

We need a big part of the protein to perform its minimal function. so it cant evolve stepwise.

I'm sure this has already been explained in these forums - it doesn't logically follow. A plausible evolutionary path for the flagellum has been described.

In evolutionary development, components are adapted to new functions rather than being evolved from scratch for a single function because the process of evolution is not goal-directed.

Also, the intuition that if removing parts of a functional system render it non-functional then it cannot evolve stepwise is misleading. You may remember Michael Behe using the analogy of a traditional mousetrap - remove any component and it ceases to function; nevertheless, several stepwise evolutionary sequences were suggested that showed his intuition was mistaken, for example: A Reducibly Complex Mousetrap.

 

[Halbhh]

It was an analogy about comparison of sophistication, not about spontaneous construction.


Most people probably wouldn't call the first replicators 'life' (perhaps 'proto-life' would be preferable); nevertheless, the fact is that the more the various abiogenesis hypotheses are investigated, the more surprising and encouraging discoveries are made - e.g. self-assembly of RNA chains at clay surfaces, spontaneous appearance of basic metabolic cycles used by living cells, etc.; these were thought to be quite implausible due to being complex and energetically unfavourable - until suitable environments were discovered.

It's only logical that if God created all that is, then logically He created physics and chemistry that are amenable, favorable, supportive, even inducing, to life.

Nothing else would even seem plausible to me. Like, it would seem fantastical and hugely unlikely to me the idea that God would make our physics unsupportive of life. I suppose one could imagine that, but it's....more convoluted than I expect things to be. Without even already learning physics, I would expect if I had only the idea that God is the creator of all things, then even just merely from that I would guess then that it would be that God would make Nature (which is physics in action of course, and nothing else) pleasant/useful/supportive to life.

It's only what one might guess to start with, even without learning physics yet.

Even if a person were somehow magically limited to only knowing just Genesis chapter 1, and no other knowledge, already one would end up reading:

"...31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good....."

Since "good" doesn't mean something like 'incompatible' or 'unsupportive', but instead their exact opposites -- supportive -- then we can surmise even merely just from Genesis chapter 1, already, that Nature is "good".

Just from this, we could hypothesize abiogenesis as a real possibility, though of course such a hypothesis would not prove that God would not intervene (help things along at times). I think most believers think God made Nature (i.e. physics, even if they don't know it) to work well. So therefore also the hypothesis of abiogenesis fits fine to Genesis chapter 1 read symbolically, as if it were a vision (this often means using symbolic representations), which it has the wording style of, like a vision with narration perhaps. God creating by design, no less.

The point of all of this is simply there isn't even a pause to understand for many the idea that God used evolution. It's so natural seeming. Fits the text so well, without any stretch.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Yes I understand the difference in complexity between a sled and an Audi. Neither of these could conceivably spontaneously appear in nature. The sled for example has metal and wooden elements. Even if we could believe that igneous processes could somehow form the metal and then mould it to form the required struts etc at high temperature any wood that needed to be precisely fitted to the top of the sled would be burnt up by those same processes. Even I if I add in some improbable chance occurrences like the metal sled is formed inside a volcano and then thrown by a volcanic eruption into a wood. The wood is fitted onto the metal by monkeys in the trees and carried by a giant bird back to the volcano where multiple red hot metal screws needed to fasten the wood to the metal frame are screwed on by freak convection currents hurling the preformed metal screws in a whirlwind pattern to screw them on!!!! Having being thus fitted the sled is ejected by one final volcanic blast which leaves no burn marks!!!!. So even the simplest form of transport in your illustration seems completely unlikely by purely natural processes to the precision that we see in the picture above. Given that the biological cell is all the more complex the specificity of function, arrangement and information that is required to make it work seems a completely unlikely result of undirected natural processes.

I'm sorry, I should have explained more clearly - the analogy was a comparison of levels of sophistication, I wasn't suggesting that a sled or an Audi could evolve or spontaneously assemble.

The point was that drawing conclusions about the origins of life by looking at a modern cell is analogous to drawing conclusions about the difficulty of making a sled by looking at an Audi A4.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

It's only logical that if God created all that is, then logically He created physics and chemistry that are amenable, favorable, supportive, even inducing, to life.

Nothing else would even seem plausible to me. Like, it would seem fantastical and hugely unlikely to me the idea that God would make our physics unsupportive of life. I suppose one could imagine that, but it's....more convoluted than I expect things to be. Without even already learning physics, I would expect if I had only the idea that God is the creator of all things, then even just merely from that I would guess then that it would be that God would make Nature (which is physics in action of course, and nothing else) pleasant/useful/supportive to life.

I don't have a problem with that; the origin of the fundamentals of physics are unknown (and may always be unknown), and there are no testable hypotheses for them, so all are purely speculative.

Inexplicable creator entity hypotheses raise a whole lot more questions than they answer, so I don't rate them as explanations, and they typically require special pleading to avoid falling foul of the questions they're supposed to answer, so I rate them below "that's just the way the universe is", but to each his own - that's just the way I am...

 

[Halbhh]

I don't have a problem with that; the origin of the fundamentals of physics are unknown (and may always be unknown), and there are no testable hypotheses for them, so all are purely speculative.

Inexplicable creator entity hypotheses raise a whole lot more questions than they answer, so I don't rate them as explanations, and they typically require special pleading to avoid falling foul of the questions they're supposed to answer, so I rate them below "that's just the way the universe is", but to each his own - that's just the way I am...

The elegant question, regardless of whether or not one might think it is answerable or unanswerable, or dare to try to answer or seek an answer, or not, the question of that kind I most like --

Why does anything exist at all?

(notice we are asking more here than merely why does this Universe exist, but instead are asking why does any Universe exist.)

 

[Belk]

The elegant question, regardless of whether or not one might think it is answerable or unanswerable, or dare to try to answer or seek an answer, or not, the question of that kind I most like --

Why does anything exist at all?

(notice we are asking more here than merely why does this Universe exist, but instead are asking why does any Universe exist.)

No idea. Why is this an elegant question?

 

[Halbhh]

No idea. Why is this an elegant question?

I mean it gets to an interesting (for me and many people) question using few words.

 

[DavidFirth]

It's like Satan. He tells all the things he wants you to think and leaves out the truth that he is a liar telling you "intelligent" lies.

 

[Belk]

I mean it gets to an interesting (for me and many people) question using few words.

It is an interesting question. I wonder if it is a valid question.

 

[Halbhh]

It is an interesting question. I wonder if it is a valid question.

Why is this an invalid question?

 

[Belk]

Why is this an invalid question?

I'm do not know that it is invalid. I was simply recognizing that I poses so little information that I can't know if it is or is not valid. I do not know if it is a possibility for there to be nothing here instead of something. Likely more a question for the now defunct philosophy section.

 

[Halbhh]

I'm do not know that it is invalid. I was simply recognizing that I poses so little information that I can't know if it is or is not valid. I do not know if it is a possibility for there to be nothing here instead of something. Likely more a question for the now defunct philosophy section.

Here's another form too: Why is there something, instead of nothing?

I wonder if every answer will necessarily have to have an article of faith. It seems so at the moment. Even if one says something like: "I don't know", they are making a kind of internal choice, using some kind of article of faith even I think possibly. ;=)

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

The elegant question, regardless of whether or not one might think it is answerable or unanswerable, or dare to try to answer or seek an answer, or not, the question of that kind I most like --

Why does anything exist at all?

(notice we are asking more here than merely why does this Universe exist, but instead are asking why does any Universe exist.)

I have my doubts whether the question is even coherent or logical - if there wasn't anything, the question couldn't arise; but apparently there is something.

As for creator entities, they would also be something rather than nothing, so the same question would apply to them (pace special pleading).

 

[Halbhh]

I have my doubts whether the question is even coherent or logical - if there wasn't anything, the question couldn't arise; but apparently there is something.

As for creator entities, they would also be something rather than nothing, so the same question applies to them.

heh heh.

Right, it seems possibly any position of any kind may in fact contain an article of faith of some sort, even if the article of faith is something like "things don't have to have any origination" or "it just is". I think even "I don't know" would simply have an article of faith behind it, perhaps something like "no one knows" (an putative omniscience about what others know).

 

[Belk]

Here's another form too: Why is there something, instead of nothing?

I wonder if every answer will necessarily have to have an article of faith. It seems so at the moment. Even if one says something like: "I don't know", they are making a kind of internal choice, using some kind of article of faith even I think possibly. ;=)

At it's base I would say yes. We know little more then "Cogito ergo sum". Still, best to sally on as if the Red light at the crosswalk was real.

 

[Waggles]

However the probability of the complex specificity of function and sequence, organisation and appearance of intelligence, that we can observe in the cell, emerging by chance is so low as to render these attempts completely preposterous

Darwinists have many many problems of credibility; which they conveniently ignore in
their numerous books on evolution.

A fundamental truth of our living world is that life begets life.
And yet Darwinists preach faith in the organic coming from the inorganic.
from no life to organic molecules (anybody observe this?) to the complexities and
marvels of single cell life and then away we go to us.

Fairytales!
And Darwinists hypocritically accuse creationists of faith over "science."

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

A fundamental truth of our living world is that life begets life.

A fundamental feature of the living world we observe today is that life is beget by members of the same species.

What we observe today obviously wasn't always the case - for example, there was a time when the Earth was inhospitable to life.

And yet Darwinists preach faith in the organic coming from the inorganic.

from no life to organic molecules (anybody observe this?)

Organic molecules are just carbon compounds, especially hydrocarbons; they occur everywhere we can see in the universe, from interstellar dust clouds to planets and moons (Titan has lakes and rain of organic molecules). Life relies on them, but they are not exclusive to life.