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Repeated Abiogenesis?
- Thread starter The Paul
- Start date
Smidlee
Veteran
One of the atheist thinks that nature can't be designed as it different from man-made items.
You may find this video interesting.
ECG: The Origin of Life
This is basic chemistry that atheist has to refuse to believe. They have to believe in some unknown god... I meant science that will be discovered in the future. Atheist do reject science that goes against their world view.
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I'm getting the impression that developing a framework for how old things are is a bit like solving a crossword.
You could be accused of using the words you've solved to find new words, and they corroborate the words you started with... and when you phrase it that was it seems circular and self-defeating, but in practice you arrive at the correct answer.
You could be accused of using the words you've solved to find new words, and they corroborate the words you started with... and when you phrase it that was it seems circular and self-defeating, but in practice you arrive at the correct answer.
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Chemists, physicists, mathematicians... it seems like its pretty easy to find someone in just about any field to come out on record as saying evolution is impossible... except biologists.
So pretty much anybody who isn't qualified to talk about it.
Not sure if John Walton is wicked or ignorant, but he is one of the two, as he completely avoids addressing that state of science as regards abiogenesis.
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Every period of geologic time (strata), will have fossils, but understand that there are may be many layers withing a geologic strata sequence. Some of those layers may not have any fossils due to the environment they were deposited in. For example, the Vishnu schist layer of strata at the bottom of the Grand Canyon will not have any fossils because schist is metamorphic rock. Metamorphic rocks form under great pressure and heat below the surface; i.e., no critters, no fossils. In most cases fossils can be found in sedimentary rock, but will never be found in igneous or metamorphic rock. However, I guess there could be a disclaimer used for metamorphic rock if the rock metamorphised was originally sedimentary and the metamorphism was not intense.
I'm not sure I answered that in a way that is easy to understand, just know that there can be layers of strata, not entire geological periods, that may contain no fossils for any number of different reasons.
The Mauv layer is of varying thickness and has an average age of around 515 million years. There are not many fossils found in that layer but there are some trilobites. I think I mentioned in an earlier post that you won't find any trilobite fossils above (younger) Permian strata. So the geologist would have a general idea of the age of that formation. Should the geologist recognize an index fossil he could narrow that age somewhat.
Dating by fossils is known as relative dating. That is, there are certain fossils that are found only in specific strata of geologic age and no where else. Recognizing that fossil, what we call an "index" fossil, indicate the relative age of the formation/strata. But understand that the strata is first dated radiometrically. There is no circular reasoning whatsoever.
The Kaibab formation would be above the Mauv formation, seeing that there are no "faults" or folded strata, i.e. undisturbed, common sense would tell him that it is of younger age,
Not to worry, you just have a basic misunderstanding. All geologic strata is radiometrically dated, even sedimentary strata, which contains fossils. Neither the sedimentary rock nor the fossils can be radiometrically dated. Because of the time it takes for stratigraphic layers to collect sediments there are numerous opportunities for volcanic ash and/or debris to imbed in the sediment. The volcanic ash could have even originated a thousand miles from where it was deposited, but that is irrelevant. What is important is that it was deposited and therefore can be dated. So it is that strata that is dated not the fossil. As I mentioned above, there are numerous fossils that are found only in specific layers of strata and no others. By recognizing those specific fossils, one "recognizes" that the age of the strata is of a relative age.
Here's a link that explain this quite a bit better than I.
Foundational Concepts : Introduction to Dating Methods
Hmmm. Let me try explaining it this way.
Let's say that pennies are found only in Cretaceous strata, nickles are found only in Jurassic strata, dimes only in Triassic strata, and quarters only in Permian strata. First the strata is dated radiometrically giving the following ages:
Pennies: (Cretaceous) 65 - 150 million years
Nickles: (Jurassic) 150 - 200 million years
Dimes: (Triassic) 200 - 250 million years
Quarters: (Permian) 250 - 300 million years
Now, our geologist is out walking around and comes across a layer of strata containing nickles. Knowing that nickles are found only in Jurassic strata and that that strata has been dated from 150 - 200 million years of age, our geologist knows that the age of the strata he is look at is between 150 - 200 million years old. That is "relative dating". It's a date range, not a specific date. "Absolute" dating is only done with absolute dating methods such as radiometric, dendrochronology, or ice core chronology. Even at that radiometric dating doesn't generally give a specific date, but rather a specific date +/- a range such as 1 or 2 percent, which is a degree of statistical error.
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John said scientists can't take the past into the lab. I gather John is not familiar with paleoclimatology. Paleoclimatologists take the past into the lab all the time; as well as geologists, paleontologists, and paleobiologists.
Nevertheless, abiogenesis did occur, whether by natural chemical processes or God. Both represent life from non life.
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Yes, but let's be serious here. What's going on is that a lot of people really don't like evolution, but unfortunately for them we've reached the point where it's become scientifically unassailable.
But abiogenesis is much murkier, and so you can still seem somewhat scientific while attacking that. So you can call the science of abiogenesis into question, and if you can convince people they're rejecting abiogeneis on a rational basis then they get to feel good about rejecting evolution.
What we've got here is a chemist (and not a biologist) coming out against evolution. I don't care what kind of hat he wears while he does it.
Leaving aside for a moment the fact that defeating abiogenesis would leave you in a rather bizarre situation because you haven't actually said a thing against evolution, my favorite part of the video was the very end. His final point is that it's time to give intelligent design a fair try.
It implies all that persecution nonsense. The mainstream scientific community is suppressing all the "real" science due to their biases. Like if he were gonna do some experiments into intelligent design the mainstream scientists would sneak in at night and bust up his lab or something.
And it's important to sell that idea. Otherwise no matter how much trash he talks about abiogenesis, the fact that intelligent design has nothing at all to say for itself comes to light.
...
My second favorite part is when he was playing shell games with early Earth's atmospheric oxygen levels and he accidentally claimed the oxygen to hydrogen ratio of the hydrosphere has been steadily increasing for the entire history of the Earth.
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Smidlee
Veteran
People don't like the idea of a creator or ID either. That doesn't change anything.
There is no science evidence of abiogenesis. All the known science (chemistry) goes against abiogenesis. Even some OOL researchers admit today's science doesn't support it but hope some unknown future science will.
Biologist studies living cells which are not around for abiogenesis. abiogenesis comes down to chemistry.
If he promoted Zeus doesn't invalid the problems he address. Atheist are left with no choice but ignore the science (chemistry) this guy presents.
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Sure some people don't, but do I need to find that comical pie chart for you?
Well that's not true, but I'll grant John Walton does a good job of making it look that way.
He presents a lot of data and carefully arranges it in such a way as to get you to draw the wrong lines between dots... but most of the data is itself valid, so unlike most creationist shills you don't have to be totally scientifically illiterate to give him credence, but if we're going to actually look at it...
He engages in the common tactic of presenting modern cells, the products of 4+ billion years of evolution, and mischaracterizing abiogenesis as the idea one of these things just popped out of nowhere.
Perhaps you'll defend him on this point because he never says this explicitly. As I said, he lays out correct information in such a way as to encourage his audience to draw incorrect conclusions, and I don't give a liar any bonus points for being a particularly crafty one.
Then he gets into some math... again he draws on real chemistry to get his numbers before he starts multiplying, and it makes him look legitimate. Proteins really are as long has he says, and sure there's 20-22 amino acids (depending on how you count), and an audience with a passing familiarity with science will know this. So it seems reasonable to start doing things like 20^<protein length>. And you get these impossibly huge numbers.
Most of his audience doesn't know that an abiotic chemical environment capable of generating all 20 amino acids isn't considered very likely, or that you don't actually need 20 amino acids to make a functional enzyme. That pares down his numbers by a couple of tens of orders of magnitude right there.
And that's without getting into the fact that a majority of point sequence changes have no effect or that many radically different sequences can be functionally identical. Since we don't actually know how many ways there are to construct different proteins with the same functions we can't do the math on this, but we're talking about multiple orders of magnitude.
Also, if we're going to seriously consider abiogenesis in the sense of probability and whether or not it can happen at least once, we're not actually talking about a couple hundred million years on just the planet earth. We're actually talking about 5-10 billion years on every earth-like planet in the universe.
The truth is that we don't know exactly what the minimum complexity is or how many trials are involved, but Walton's figures for odds against any particular configuration are drastically inflated, and the number of trials he proposes while pretending to be generous to his opponents are somewhere between accurate and conservative.
And there's other fun little bits. His claim that chemical reproductive behavior outside a cell has never been observed is simply false, it's been false for decades, and I find it difficult to imagine someone with his qualifications could have been ignorant of that.
He talks about finding some needle-in-a-haystack RNA molecule that is autocatalytic. Like it's some impossible holy grail, but virtually any RNA (or DNA) sequence will exert some pressure favoring itself over other random configurations. In fact, DNA sequencing technology is dependent on the fact that DNA sequences select for themselves outside of cells.
Watch his bit about oxygen very carefully. I don't know enough about geology to know exactly where he's getting things wrong, but he doesn't demonstrate a high-oxygen primordial earth. He just sets out some data that seems like it must indicate that and lets the audience draw their conclusions.
Given that his general tactic up to that point is to lay out good data in a way that leads to incorrect conclusions, but to avoid actually saying the factually incorrect parts himself, it's pretty clear what's going on.
Plus, in the middle of all that, while trying to dazzle the audience with all the myriad factors arranged against a low-oxygen early earth, he mentions that the sun increases the oxygen to hydrogen ratio in the earths atmosphere and it probably always has.
...it probably always has.
...the Earths atmosphere has been growing steadily more oxidizing for 4 billion years.
I'm surprised he included that bit. Try and work backwards. If the Earth's atmosphere has been growing steadily more oxidizing for 4 billion years, what does that indicate about the atmosphere of 4 billion years ago?
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Naraoia
Apprentice Biologist
Too bad I came too late to this - sorry if I repeat someone else. 33 pages is far too many to read in one sitting. Anyway...
It's not even impossible that several independent lineages did survive/combine to create the life forms we see today. For example, archaea are much like eukaryotes in terms of their genome handling machinery - related RNA polymerases and use of histones for DNA packaging come to mind -, but their cell membranes are unique among the three domains. If you consider how easily modern prokaryotes can mix and match genes, it's not hard to imagine that their ancestors were mix-and-match creatures themselves.
However, on that same premise we could probably imagine many similarly good genetic codes, since the probability of fitness-decreasing errors mostly depends on the structure of the code (i.e. the relationships between codons for the same/similar/different amino acids), not which specific codon means which amino acid.
Then again, I'm 99% certain that I read something about how the nucleotides in various codon positions (I seem to recall 1st and 2nd, but I may be making this up) correlate with particular chemical properties of the encoded amino acid. Maybe the assignment of the first codons was governed by some sort of chemical preference. In that case our code may be more likely than the equally error-resistant alternatives, and therefore not as strong an indicator of common descent as we thought.
However, I'm not sure trying to go down from modern cells with a full genetic code is a good proxy for pre-code life forms starting from scratch. Plus don't forget that there's an astronomical number of possible genetic codes even if you use only the same 20 amino acids.
I don't think abiogenesis researchers would insist on this. While it's generally believed that all extant life forms share a common ancestor, that doesn't necessarily mean there weren't other origins of life that did not leave living descendants.
Good question. I think there might be ways to know, but I'm not at all certain.
It's not even impossible that several independent lineages did survive/combine to create the life forms we see today. For example, archaea are much like eukaryotes in terms of their genome handling machinery - related RNA polymerases and use of histones for DNA packaging come to mind -, but their cell membranes are unique among the three domains. If you consider how easily modern prokaryotes can mix and match genes, it's not hard to imagine that their ancestors were mix-and-match creatures themselves.
The genetic code is clearly the outcome of selection. It's uncannily good at minimising errors, for one thing. (Though obviously slanted towards the ID-is-bunk angle, cdk007's genetic code video discusses that and has its sources in the description.)
However, on that same premise we could probably imagine many similarly good genetic codes, since the probability of fitness-decreasing errors mostly depends on the structure of the code (i.e. the relationships between codons for the same/similar/different amino acids), not which specific codon means which amino acid.
Then again, I'm 99% certain that I read something about how the nucleotides in various codon positions (I seem to recall 1st and 2nd, but I may be making this up) correlate with particular chemical properties of the encoded amino acid. Maybe the assignment of the first codons was governed by some sort of chemical preference. In that case our code may be more likely than the equally error-resistant alternatives, and therefore not as strong an indicator of common descent as we thought.
If you can find where you read about that, I would be intrigued!
However, I'm not sure trying to go down from modern cells with a full genetic code is a good proxy for pre-code life forms starting from scratch. Plus don't forget that there's an astronomical number of possible genetic codes even if you use only the same 20 amino acids.
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Smidlee
Veteran
Evidence shows even from evolutionist that living cells appear very early so you don't have billions of years. That's the reason he used the minimum DNA required (530,000) for cell reproduction known for today.
I do remember he mention about some simple chemical reproduction but far short of coming anywhere close to producing life.(metabolism-first scenarios) He did focus more on the genetic-first theory.
He's main point from my understanding was not the oxygen were as high as they are today but the fact oxygen should have been present in the past. He give example of places in our solar system where we do detect oxygen. There is also another catch-22 problem with salt that he didn't mention. (sea vs fresh water)
http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-salt-free-primordial-soup.html
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No, that's why he should have used those limits for the time allowed, rather than arbitrarily increasing the complexity by several orders of magnitude. It would be like trying to figure out how long it would take mankind to build a Porche, given that they be forbidden from making any of its components for testing purposes until they have built the complete and perfectly functioning Porche, and they must build it exactly the same (no better and no worse) without knowing what their target is.
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It took quite a while for oxygen to make its way into the oceans and atmosphere to the point where life could explode and diversify in the oceans and subsequently move on land. Here's a few papers giving some insight into this:
http://www.csun.edu/~hmc60533/CSUN_311/article_references/Sc_Feb93_EarthEarlyAtmos.pdf
http://atmo.tamu.edu/class/geos489/lecture3/science298_2341.pdf
http://www3.geosc.psu.edu/~jfk4/PersonalPage/Pdf/J._Geophys_Res._00.pdf
http://www.geosc.psu.edu/~jfk4/PersonalPage/Pdf/Science_86.pdf
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Things like the Great Oxidation Event or Cambrian Explosion are often misrepresented as if they occurred suddenly. Quite the contrary, we are talking about many millions of years involving photosynthesis, weathering of silicates and oxidation reduction.
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