What about Abiogenesis

gluadys · Apr 13, 2008

juvenissun said:
I want to know what are those. So I can ask: why are they not changing?

Well, then, you will have to do some of the research you prefer not to do. To begin with, you would need to learn biological vocabulary well enough to understand the reports from the research team so you can go back to that link and understand what you are reading.

gluadys · Apr 13, 2008

juvenissun said:
IF, I were an evolutionist, I WILL devote my whole effort to prove that evolution does happen. Not only we see "change", but it changes to such an extent that we see speciation (however is it defined). So, with that purpose, I will explicitly say in the proposal that I like to see the E. coli evolves into something else (based on some reasons, of course).

The word evolution in that research title is misleading, or confusing, at least.

No, it is not misleading. We do not know if or when any species will speciate. A species may go extinct without speciating. So speciation is not a necessary consequence of any evolutionary change. A possible consequence, but not a necessary one.

Now if they had set up this particular experiment to induce speciation (as in the fruit fly experiment where the groups were given different foods), then they could include speciation as an expected outcome. But this experiment apparently does not include a deliberate attempt to induce speciation. So speciation is not an intended outcome and may or may not occur.

And, of course, even if speciation occurs, both species will still be E. coli. So a purpose of observing the evolution of E coli until "it evolves into something else" would be unscientific. No one expects E coli to evolve into "something else" even if it does speciate. That would not be evolution.

Do you understand this yet?

IOW the research title is only confusing to you because you have a confused understanding of what evolution is. You think it is supposed to do something that it does not do.

atomweaver · Apr 14, 2008

juvenissun said:
Is it possible to have a cell made of only dozens biochemicals?

I don't know the specific lower limit, but a simple virus is not much more than a core of DNA/RNA, and a protein capsid (shell). If you're conemplating the first self-replicator, it would be somewhat more than a virus, but less than an amoeba...
If the question were instead; is it possible to have a simple self-replicator which uses fewer than thousands of biochemicals? I think the answer is certainly yes, therefore the picture of early life complexity you're trying to paint fopr abiogenesis here isn't accurate on this point.

I guess it is not possible today.

If so, does a single cell also evolve? From dozens elements to thousands elements?

Further, do we see the evolution of a single cell today? I am not sure what does this question mean. But it is a question, isn't it?

You've got a lot of questions, but before we get too far away from it, the original question went unanswered in your reply; upon what basis do you assert that thousands of biochemicals are necessary for life?

juvenissun · Apr 14, 2008

atomweaver said:
I don't know the specific lower limit, but a simple virus is not much more than a core of DNA/RNA, and a protein capsid (shell). If you're conemplating the first self-replicator, it would be somewhat more than a virus, but less than an amoeba...
If the question were instead; is it possible to have a simple self-replicator which uses fewer than thousands of biochemicals? I think the answer is certainly yes, therefore the picture of early life complexity you're trying to paint fopr abiogenesis here isn't accurate on this point.

You've got a lot of questions, but before we get too far away from it, the original question went unanswered in your reply; upon what basis do you assert that thousands of biochemicals are necessary for life?

I don't have any base. I do not know this thing. I am just ask questions.

So you said "fewer than thousands" in respond to my suggestion of "dozens". I remember ICR people held an argument that even to put one thousand (?) elements together is a practically impossible task. What you say?

-----

Besides, virus, it is a good idea. How do we define the "species" of virus? Is H5N1 a different species than H1N5? I think virus mutates. Does that fit the idea of speciation?

Is it possible to find some virus on Mars? They were "put together" at the early history of Mars and just sat there for eons of time and doing nothing. (sounds like the beginning of a science horror)

atomweaver · Apr 14, 2008

juvenissun said:
I don't have any base. I do not know this thing. I am just ask questions.

Oops, sorry Juvenissun, I thought your prior post was a reply from the OP, Jimlarmore. From that perspective, it seemed like a rhetorical response to my original question... Of course you wouldn't know the basis for the assertion, since it wasn't your assertion

So you said "fewer than thousands" in respond to my suggestion of "dozens". I remember ICR people held an argument that even to put one thousand (?) elements together is a practically impossible task. What you say?

Quite simply, they are wrong on two points. 1) that a thousand 'elements*' are necessary for a first self-replicator, and 2) that a thousand 'elements' cannot be put together.
#2 first; I'm a polymer chemist. I put together tens of thousands of monomer units, which will form into polymers in a consistent, reproducible fashion on a daily basis. The keyboard you are typing on is probably made from ABS polymer, the combination of tens of thousands of units of three chemicals; acrylonitrile, butadiene, and styrene, which form into a polymer with the addition of heat. Clearly, systems of thousands of 'elements' can form on their own.

(* I laser-quoted 'elements' since we're not talking here about the 103 natural elements on the periodic chart, but rather I think your source might have been talking about monomers instead; the molecular building blocks from which polymers like polyethylene, RNA and proteins are built... I kept your term there, in case your source meant something else by it...)

For #1,
Here's a simple case study for you; Tobacco mosaic virus. While arguably not a living thing, this virus is a simple structure of a single RNA strand with a single variety of protein as its capsid. If you remove the protein from the RNA, and then re-introduce the separated and purified RNA of this virus to the protein, the capsid will spontaneously reform, and a viable virus is re-made. Now, I know that this is not an example of an fully-independent living thing, but it is a real example which contradicts the assertions of your source. 1) It reproduces, 2) it is made up of one RNA strand, in a shell of one variety of protein.

-----

Besides, virus, it is a good idea. How do we define the "species" of virus? Is H5N1 a different species than H1N5? I think virus mutates. Does that fit the idea of speciation?

In a thread about abiogenesis, we cannot even be sure that 'species' is a viable term to use when talking about a possible protobiont. If you followed gluadys' reply #10, you remember that biologists classify things like e. coli and virii by their behavior and morphology, and that horizontal transfer of genetic material happens. Early on with very small, simple systems, there might have been a lot of this going on, and so recognizing one or another individual within that first population as a distinct 'species' as we know it today might not even be the proper way to contemplate it.

Jimlarmore · Apr 14, 2008

atomweaver said:
Without knowing what the first living cell was , how can you assign any quantity to the number of biochemicals necessary for life? Upon what basis do you assert thousands, rather than dozens?

Proteins and enzymes were probably a late addition to life.

I doubt that very much based on the cell today. What we need to do to determine what it took is to look at what we have now as the bottom line for what constitutes life. There's no reason to think that the first cell was vastly less complex than what we have today. The cell today is a very complex structure but within it exists very few redundancies or excess parts that are unneccesary for it's function as a living unit. Most cytologist will tell you that the cell is the basic structure for life.
Anyway here's some basic defintions to consider:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life
http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_1861696586/life.html

The thing we need to do here is to look at the cell and see just how much we could take away and still have life. To do that all we need to do is go look at the simplest cells i.e. the microbe which doesn't even have a nucleus. Inside a microbe or bacteria there are massive complexities that allow it to survive as a "living" entity in it's environment. I don't see how you could get more basic than the bacteria and still call it life. Certainly virus' are not life neither is prions.

Not true. Introduce your reagents onto a crystalline substrate, such as calcite, or a minteral rich in titanium dioxide such as rutile or anatase, and you get an l-enatiomeric excess, which can be further enriched by natural processes. Its also interesting that depositing formamide onto titanium dioxide and exposing it to UV light can give you all of the RNA and DNA nucleotides SOURCE.

You are describing an intelligently manipulated scenario not a naturally occurring one. Natural occuring end products outside of living systems will produce both levo and dextro. In the few and rare places on earth where we find naturally occuring necleotides we always see both produced.

True, this is not the case. Life did not arise from a typical homogenous mixture of nucleic acids in a glass erlenmeyer flask. It more likely happened on a mineral substrate, and started off with a small level of enantiomeric enrichment, then was further enriched by day-night cycles of reaction and chemical decomposition. Again, the products of a chemical reaction are predictable, not accidental.

I used the term accidental to describe a non-manipulated by an intelligent designer modality. There is absolutely no evidence to suggest life started in a fortuitous way.

What if the first life form simply was an organelle? Your timeline gets too far ahead of itself too quickly... the first organism you envision is vastly more complex than any that an abiogenesis researcher would suggest as a protobiont (first self-replicator)...

Statisticaly analysis alone precludes that life as we know it could have resulted from such beginnings. As a matter of fact just producing a simple protein from randomly occurring molecules would be very hard to do. Think about what you are saying. Look around and see what exists. If life could have arose from natural pools of organic compounds and a lightning strike we would still see it happeing now.

You assume that the first living thing must be as complex as, say, an amoeba. The first life structure might have been as simple as a virus, or mitochondria, so your 'criticism from complexity' don't really withstand scrutiny,

Sure it does, for life to exist it must be able to do three basic things. It must bring in nutrients , metabolize those nutrients, reproduce, communicate within itself and do all that within a functional cell wall or membrane ( that is a whole different problem in and of itself there ).

Your argument falls along the lines of a very intelligent re-telling of the fallacious "tornado making an airplane" argument; "what I see is too complex to have formed by accident". To continue that analogy, abiogenesis isn't looking to make an airplane... maybe a hang glider or a paper airplane, at best

The simplest cell complexity wise makes an airplane look like a rock. For you to have any validity at all you must show using available evidence that a fortuitous origin was possible. No one has done that to date.

BTW, it was the study of the cell that caused me to first question the mainstream's philosophies on how life got started. It's been a lot of years and my books are covered with dust but the deeper I studied the cell the more I knew that an intelligent designer created it.

Also not true. Abiogenesis has, as of yet, nothing firm for anyone to believe in or investigate, one way or another. Its a very early scientific "work in progress". I'd challenge you to find anyone who 'believes in' it at this early stage. "Believes in what?" shoudl be the normal response. Its like critiquing a film before the first cast member has been chosen, by pretending you know just what the final movie will be like from reading the first draft script alone... I hope once it is a fully developed hypothesis, there will be something more than the usual arguments from incredulity postulated against it.

Have a great day!!

Not true my friend. The mainstream paradigm fully accepts abiogenesis as an origin for life.

Here is some articles showing just how much they believe in it.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/

God Bless
Jim Larmore

atomweaver · Apr 14, 2008

Jimlarmore said:
I doubt that very much based on the cell today. What we need to do to determine what it took is to look at what we have now as the bottom line for what constitutes life. There's no reason to think that the first cell was vastly less complex than what we have today.

Upon what basis do you assert this?

The cell today is a very complex structure but within it exists very few redundancies or excess parts that are unneccesary for it's function as a living unit.

Agreed.

Most cytologist will tell you that the cell is the basic structure for life.

I'm sure cytologists would That's the old "Doctor, I have a headache" issue for you... the cause of your headache is directly linked to the nature of the doctor's specialization.

Anyway here's some basic defintions to consider:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life

Thanks. From this link;

"An entity with the above properties is considered to be a living organism, that is an organism that is alive hence can be called a life form. However, not every definition of life considers all of these properties to be essential. For example, the capacity for descent with modification is often taken as the only essential property of life. This definition notably includes viruses, which do not qualify under narrower definitions as they are acellular and do not metabolize."

http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_1861696586/life.html

The thing we need to do here is to look at the cell and see just how much we could take away and still have life.

I disagree. The object of abiogenesis is to conceptualize a process which results in a protobiont, a self-replicator which can originate from natural conditions found on the young Earth. To start with a full-blown cell and work backwards is, well, backwards...

To do that all we need to do is go look at the simplest cells i.e. the microbe which doesn't even have a nucleus. Inside a microbe or bacteria there are massive complexities that allow it to survive as a "living" entity in it's environment. I don't see how you could get more basic than the bacteria and still call it life. Certainly virus' are not life neither is prions.

Agreed. But they are simple self-replicators, albeit ones which are dependant upon other cells for their perpetuation...

You are describing an intelligently manipulated scenario not a naturally occurring one.

No, I'm describing an experiment which replicates a naturally occurring scenario, and a very simple one at that. It requires 1) water 2) light 3) heat 4) rock (anatase), and 5) nucleobases (be they generated by the Miller-Urey conditions, or from the half-dozen other discovered natural means by which you can get to the same end-products).
The fact that a researcher put these ingredients together again doesn't preclude their being commonly present in a primordial Earth... What's more, all work done in abiogenesis is going to be 'manipulated' in the sense that you use the word here, as researchers are an oddly impatient lot, and don't want to wait around a few hundred years for the results of a full-blown 'field test'. Quirky lot, aren't they?

Natural occuring end products outside of living systems will produce both levo and dextro.

Yes. They can be racemic mixtures (1:1 levo to dextro-rotary), or a blend with an enatiomeric enrichment of one or the other.

In the few and rare places on earth where we find naturally occuring necleotides we always see both produced.

True but merely having both present isn't particularly significant, if one or the other chiral species is present in some excess... Yes, both are always produced, but not always in equal quantities. Once an enrichment of one or the other enantiomer occurs, further concentration of that enantiomer is a process that can occur under relatively common conditions. Do you remember from your chemistry days most common lab practice for further enhancing enatiomeric enrichment? Simple recrystalization. In nature, one could envision water over an anatase (or other) substrate, and tidal cycling or some other common cyclic change in the water line causing a successive solvation and drying of the material on the mineral substrate, which in turn would drive enrichment.

I used the term accidental to describe a non-manipulated by an intelligent designer modality.

Oh. OK. Couldn't we rather use 'accident' to describe just, you know, accidents?

There is absolutely no evidence to suggest life started in a fortuitous way.

I agree. Fortune had nothing to do with it, and we have little evidence of how life started in any sense, fortuitous or not...

Statisticaly analysis alone precludes that life as we know it could have resulted from such beginnings.

Again, without positive knowledge about what the first protobiont was, or a researcher's hypothetical version of those events, you have no basis upon which to found a statistical analysis of, well, anything to do with abiogenesis... Regardless, if you have original statistical input to offer, I'd like to read it.

As a matter of fact just producing a simple protein from randomly occurring molecules would be very hard to do.

Again with the 'randomly occurring'... Why must you include this provision? Proteins in living systems form from amino acids upon the instructions provided by genetic coding. What does the liklihood of a particular protein forming in an Erlenmeyer flask from a mixture of amino acids, have to do with abiogenesis, which doesn't contemplate any such scenario?

Think about what you are saying. Look around and see what exists. If life could have arose from natural pools of organic compounds and a lightning strike we would still see it happeing now.

Not in an oxygen-rich atmosphere and a planet teeming with modern biological entities, you wouldn't. Today's Earth is nothing like the earth of 3.5 billion years ago. Would

Sure it does, for life to exist it must be able to do three basic things. It must bring in nutrients , metabolize those nutrients, reproduce, communicate within itself and do all that within a functional cell wall or membrane ( that is a whole different problem in and of itself there ).

Your modern bacterium does a whole lot more than that... or rather, it does that, but with a whole lot more moving parts than are strictly necessary.

The simplest cell complexity wise makes an airplane look like a rock.

I've seen some pretty complex rocks, and some pretty simple flying machines... I found this in one of the links you offered;

What are your thoughts? Are you in your arguments here, trying to make that too-big leap from simple chemcials, to bacteria? If you are going to argue against abiogenesis, shouldn't your statistical analysis treat the right column, rather than the misrepresentation of abiogenesis depicted on the left? It seems clear that you are arguing against what you think abiogenesis is, rather than what it actually is (thus far)...

For you to have any validity at all you must show using available evidence that a fortuitous origin was possible. No one has done that to date.

Because abiogenesis is an imcomplete hypothesis. And again, chemical reactions are not fortuitous. Either the starting ingredients and the conditions for reaction are present, or they are not.

Not true my friend. The mainstream paradigm fully accepts abiogenesis as an origin for life.

Nonsense. Find me a direct quote which says any such thing. At this point, any scientist who asserts anything beyond 'its a work in progress' with respect to abiogenesis is either a loon, or has forgotten some very basic tenets about what comprises a scientific theory...

Here is some articles showing just how much they believe in it.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/

Your link above is a collection of links which refute crationist arguments against abiogenesis (mostly statistical arguments)on their own basis, mostly because creationists make some of the same faulty assumptions that you are making here. Please, find me one quote from any scientist within those links which evidences a positive assertion that abiogenesis is complete and correct. Happy hunting!!

Jimlarmore · Apr 15, 2008

atomweaver said:
You assume that the first living thing must be as complex as, say, an amoeba. The first life structure might have been as simple as a virus, or mitochondria, so your 'criticism from complexity' don't really withstand scrutiny, as it doesn't accurately represent any position within what little investigation is being done in the field of abiogenesis.

Can you show from any valid evidence that life can exist in any less complex form than the cell we have today?

Your argument falls along the lines of a very intelligent re-telling of the fallacious "tornado making an airplane" argument; "what I see is too complex to have formed by accident". To continue that analogy, abiogenesis isn't looking to make an airplane... maybe a hang glider or a paper airplane, at best

Compared to a very simple bacterium complexity wise an airplane is about like a rock. There are very few redundancies in life. You argue from a faith that something "Could" have existed way back then that was far less complex but have no idea what that could have been. Reverse engineering and the study of cytology tells us that the bottom line for life is the cell. To survive it has to take in nutrients, metabolize those nutrients, expell waste and reproduce. There are too many irreducible complex factors in life for it to have taken extremely slow evolving steps to occurr.

God Bless
Jim Larmore

gluadys · Apr 15, 2008

Jimlarmore said:
Reverse engineering and the study of cytology tells us that the bottom line for life is the cell. To survive it has to take in nutrients, metabolize those nutrients, expell waste and reproduce.

Isn't that in part a matter of definition? We define "life" as that which takes in nutrients, metabolizes them, expels waste and reproduces.

If we defined "life" as that which reproduces via DNA or RNA replication without adding in the qualification of metabolisis, we would have defined viruses as "life".

I am not suggesting we change the definition of "life", but we should recognize that the classification of things as living or non-living requires a definition and what we choose to acknowledge as living is described by the definition.

I don't think anyone is asserting that protobionts are/were alive in the sense of being living cells. But that doesn't discount their place in a plausible process of abiogenesis.

atomweaver · Apr 16, 2008

Jimlarmore said:
Can you show from any valid evidence that life can exist in any less complex form than the cell we have today?

Yes, virii.

Again, the goal of abiogenesis is to describe a process that results in a protobiont, a precursor to the first living thing. We see in nature today that there are reproducing things, virii, which show some of the aspects of life (genetic material, descent with modification) and lack some things which most life definitions require (lacks autonomy, doesn't metabolize).
Virii show some interesting properties; as I mentioned above, when a strand of isolated genetic material from the tobbaco mosaic virus is introduced into a solution of its associated protein, its capsid spontaneously reforms, apparently because that is the low energy state for that system.
If virii exist, why cannot other examples of systems with a mixture of living and non-living properties be posited to have existed?

Compared to a very simple bacterium complexity wise an airplane is about like a rock. There are very few redundancies in life. You argue from a faith that something "Could" have existed way back then that was far less complex but have no idea what that could have been.

Aye. Which is why plenty of experimentation happens without anyone positing a full abiogenesis hypothesis. When you have little evidence to go on, sometimes a lot of trial and error is required, and it takes a while to establish even the beginnings of a testable hypothesis.

Reverse engineering and the study of cytology tells us that the bottom line for life is the cell.

Again with the cytology... Cytology is the study of cells. Of course a study of modern cells is going to consider modern cells the bottom line for modern life. What does this have to do with a process which contemplates the state of things before life existed? Cytology in no way accounts for the conditions of a prebiotic Earth.
Here, you fall victim to utilizing a scientific concept beyond its scope, in much the same way as creationists mistake the theory of evolution for a theory of life origins, you instead are trying to use the principles of cytology as a basis for a critique of the work done in abiogenesis, a field almost entirely separate...

As for reverse engineering, again; abiogenesis, you're doing it backwards.

To survive it has to take in nutrients, metabolize those nutrients, expell waste and reproduce. There are too many irreducible complex factors in life for it to have taken extremely slow evolving steps to occurr.

'Irreducible complexity'; refuted multiple times in multiple ways. Do you have anything recent (from the last two years) on the topic that makes it worth considering again? The bacterial flagellum, the eye, and the mousetrap examples have all been thoroughly refuted...

Jimlarmore · Apr 16, 2008

atomweaver said:
Yes, virii.

Again, the goal of abiogenesis is to describe a process that results in a protobiont, a precursor to the first living thing. We see in nature today that there are reproducing things, virii, which show some of the aspects of life (genetic material, descent with modification) and lack some things which most life definitions require (lacks autonomy, doesn't metabolize).
Virii show some interesting properties; as I mentioned above, when a strand of isolated genetic material from the tobbaco mosaic virus is introduced into a solution of its associated protein, its capsid spontaneously reforms, apparently because that is the low energy state for that system.
If virii exist, why cannot other examples of systems with a mixture of living and non-living properties be posited to have existed?

Primarily because you can't show that one could produce the other based on the bottom line of life today the cell. Virus' take a cell and it's functional capabilities to reproduce. It's bascially a package of DNA and thats it.

Again with the cytology... Cytology is the study of cells. Of course a study of modern cells is going to consider modern cells the bottom line for modern life. What does this have to do with a process which contemplates the state of things before life existed? Cytology in no way accounts for the conditions of a prebiotic Earth.
Here, you fall victim to utilizing a scientific concept beyond its scope, in much the same way as creationists mistake the theory of evolution for a theory of life origins, you instead are trying to use the principles of cytology as a basis for a critique of the work done in abiogenesis, a field almost entirely separate...

The study of cytology in no way makes this discussion conceptually beyond the scope of abiogenesis. As engineers we can figure out how something is made by analyzing it's components and functions. If you look at something like a car engine it doesn't take too long to figure out what it took to create it piece by piece. The supposed conditions of prebiotic earth are not confirmed by doing trace analysis of the gases in certain rocks. So they again make assumptions that are not sustained by the evidence. Look here:
http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/articles/41/41_1/Q 6-04 Helium diffus.htm

As for reverse engineering, again; abiogenesis, you're doing it backwards.

How so?

'Irreducible complexity'; refuted multiple times in multiple ways. Do you have anything recent (from the last two years) on the topic that makes it worth considering again? The bacterial flagellum, the eye, and the mousetrap examples have all been thoroughly refuted...

Yes, lets take a look at Mitosis or Meosis. BTW, I disagree that they were refuted especially the flagellum or the eye.

God Bless
Jim Larmore

atomweaver · Apr 16, 2008

Jimlarmore said:
Primarily because you can't show that one could produce the other based on the bottom line of life today the cell.

Non sequitur, that is not the goal of the research. Virii merely verify that intermediates between life and non life exist today, and so others might have existed at other times, under other conditions. Remember, you asked for evidence that something simpler than a cell which could be living, but that isn't the goal of abiogenesis, where most intermediates (other than possible the protobiont) would certainly be non-living things.

The study of cytology in no way makes this discussion conceptually beyond the scope of abiogenesis. As engineers we can figure out how something is made by analyzing it's components and functions.

Analyzing life as a collection of engineered components is your intellectual pitfall. Like the cytologist-cell example you offer, you cannot conceive of anything simpler than the systems with which you are personally familiar... Its no wonder that the modernized 'Paley's watchmaker' argument is so appealing to you.

If you look at something like a car engine it doesn't take too long to figure out what it took to create it piece by piece. The supposed conditions of prebiotic earth are not confirmed by doing trace analysis of the gases in certain rocks.

Gentry picked as poor a location for helium analysis as he could possibly find.

So they again make assumptions that are not sustained by the evidence. Look here:
http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/articles/41/41_1/Q%206-04%20Helium%20diffus.htm

Is there anything more recent? I've read the 2004 paper...

Have their helium analyses of 2004 been re-confirmed in any location absent the ridiculously complex thermal history of the Fenton Hill site?

Has another research group confirmed the three valid samples (out of six) with high helium content?

Humphries says his rock samples were hot granite, but site surveys record gneiss at the depths that he sampled (750 and 1490 meters)... has the identity of the source rock been resolved/confirmed?

Has he revised to include all relevant measurement errors and variabilities?

Even if Humphries is right, and a billion years of radioactive decay happened in a week, where did all of the heat from that event go to, and why is there an Earth around after such an event?

Underground helium deposits are mined in New Mexico because of their abundance. Has anyone confirmed whether or not the surrounding area is yet another helium-rich location, which would more or less confound any quantiative helium analysis in the area?

Ask an exploration geologist (preferably, a Christian one) what he thinks of helium analysis of that site...

How so?

Abiogenesis is the investigation of possible processes which progress from non-living chemicals to living systems, through a series of stages. If you are going to attempt to argue against abiogenesis, it makes little sense to start with the last step (a living cell), leap from there all the way back to simple chemicals, and just state that you cannot conceive of how it happened. If you are going to argue against abiogenesis, argue against abiogenesis... follow the process (basic chemicals -> polymers -> self replicating polymers -> hypercycle -> protobiont -> living cell) and not your guess as to what it might look like, when run in reverse.

Yes, lets take a look at Mitosis or Meosis. BTW, I disagree that they were refuted especially the flagellum or the eye.

Each time Behe and Denton claim that this or that flagellum is irreducibly complex, somethign comes along to refute them. Denton's blunder with the 9+2 tubulin cilia comes to mind. Take a bacterial flagellum, and remove the P and L rings, and its still a functioning bacterial flagellum. Is there anything you've got on the topic which is something new, say from 2007 or 2008? As far as I know ,they haven't come up with anything new (since the last update to Matzke's essay; http://www.talkdesign.org/faqs/flagellum.html) Otherwise, the ball remains in Behe and Denton's court to pony up the next example to refute... I think that I've seen enough instances of the failure of irreducible complexity in its first decade as a concept, to be comfortable rejecting the idea as having merit.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10704296?dopt=Abstract

Thornhill is a good reference for understanding why IC systems are not actually irreducible, and can be evolved from simpler precursors in almost any circumstance...

[edit - I see you have a thread dedicated to IC. If it makes things easier for you, cut and paste the IC segment above there, and we can keep a discussion going on that topic in a more appropriate thread... No sense in you duplicating your efforts on a topic in two threads.]

Jimlarmore · Apr 17, 2008

atomweaver said:
Non sequitur, that is not the goal of the research. Virii merely verify that intermediates between life and non life exist today, and so others might have existed at other times, under other conditions. Remember, you asked for evidence that something simpler than a cell which could be living, but that isn't the goal of abiogenesis, where most intermediates (other than possible the protobiont) would certainly be non-living things.

What I asked for and what you gave are not congruous or provide the challenge of showing intermediacy for life.
Virus are not alive, nor will they ever be.

Analyzing life as a collection of engineered components is your intellectual pitfall. Like the cytologist-cell example you offer, you cannot conceive of anything simpler than the systems with which you are personally familiar... Its no wonder that the modernized 'Paley's watchmaker' argument is so appealing to you.

I don't remember saying anything about "Paley's" watchmaker's argument. Where did that come from? Analyzing living systems as a collection of engineering components is not necessarily a down fall for me but shows teleological appropriatness because there is an obvious "design" in place for such complexity to function.

Gentry picked as poor a location for helium analysis as he could possibly find.

There's other studies that show the same thing in other places.

Is there anything more recent? I've read the 2004 paper...

Have their helium analyses of 2004 been re-confirmed in any location absent the ridiculously complex thermal history of the Fenton Hill site?

Has another research group confirmed the three valid samples (out of six) with high helium content?

Humphries says his rock samples were hot granite, but site surveys record gneiss at the depths that he sampled (750 and 1490 meters)... has the identity of the source rock been resolved/confirmed?

Has he revised to include all relevant measurement errors and variabilities?

Even if Humphries is right, and a billion years of radioactive decay happened in a week, where did all of the heat from that event go to, and why is there an Earth around after such an event?

I don't buy into that amount of decay in a week. Nor do I buy into the speed of light exponentially being faster either. Things would get to screwy physics wise for that.

Underground helium deposits are mined in New Mexico because of their abundance. Has anyone confirmed whether or not the surrounding area is yet another helium-rich location, which would more or less confound any quantiative helium analysis in the area?

Ask an exploration geologist (preferably, a Christian one) what he thinks of helium analysis of that site...

I already have and he agrees with the author of the article.

Abiogenesis is the investigation of possible processes which progress from non-living chemicals to living systems, through a series of stages. If you are going to attempt to argue against abiogenesis, it makes little sense to start with the last step (a living cell), leap from there all the way back to simple chemicals, and just state that you cannot conceive of how it happened. If you are going to argue against abiogenesis, argue against abiogenesis... follow the process (basic chemicals -> polymers -> self replicating polymers -> hypercycle -> protobiont -> living cell) and not your guess as to what it might look like, when run in reverse.

I can do that statistically and show the near impossible chance of amino acids or proteins forming from random modalities but you would dismiss that as well. No, my friend, I can look at the end product and tell it didn't just happen by fortuitous random means. Even a small child could see that.

Each time Behe and Denton claim that this or that flagellum is irreducibly complex, somethign comes along to refute them. Denton's blunder with the 9+2 tubulin cilia comes to mind. Take a bacterial flagellum, and remove the P and L rings, and its still a functioning bacterial flagellum. Is there anything you've got on the topic which is something new, say from 2007 or 2008? As far as I know ,they haven't come up with anything new (since the last update to Matzke's essay; http://www.talkdesign.org/faqs/flagellum.html) Otherwise, the ball remains in Behe and Denton's court to pony up the next example to refute... I think that I've seen enough instances of the failure of irreducible complexity in its first decade as a concept, to be comfortable rejecting the idea as having merit.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10704296?dopt=Abstract

Thornhill is a good reference for understanding why IC systems are not actually irreducible, and can be evolved from simpler precursors in almost any circumstance...

[edit - I see you have a thread dedicated to IC. If it makes things easier for you, cut and paste the IC segment above there, and we can keep a discussion going on that topic in a more appropriate thread... No sense in you duplicating your efforts on a topic in two threads.]

I'll look and see what I can find.

God Bless
Jim Larmore

atomweaver · Apr 17, 2008

Jimlarmore said:
What I asked for and what you gave are not congruous or provide the challenge of showing intermediacy for life.
Virus are not alive, nor will they ever be.

Would any intermediate between life and non-life be considered living? No, of course it wouldn't, by definition.

I don't remember saying anything about "Paley's" watchmaker's argument. Where did that come from?

Well, from what I've seen, you mix in some arguments from design, which was Paley's mainstay, you just put it in modern clothes... Its still as fallible a position as when Paley first posited it, and for all the same reasons.

Analyzing living systems as a collection of engineering components is not necessarily a down fall for me but shows teleological appropriatness because there is an obvious "design" in place for such complexity to function.

Is the appearance of design the same as actual design? No. What's more, if you're arguing from the perspective of Christian creation, it would seem you are arguing for a god who only creates by improbable routes, and not the probable ones. Here's an example of what I mean (taken from a creationist, no less)

Say an avalance occurs, making a large pile of rubble. Sometime afterwards, rain washes away all of the little stones and the mud and dirt, leaving behind a framework of large stones perched one atop the other in an intricate, interdependent framework. Pull away any one large stone, and the structure would collapse. It looks as if each rock were deliberately placed such that all the gaps and crevices were deliberate, and it is a complex, balanced, interdependent system, but no design was originally conceived. Its an elegant analogy to the current living system framework;

Source: http://www.asa3.org/evolution/irred_compl.html

See the section near the bottom "origin of a connected metabolism".

In other words, if the hypercycle which generated the protobiont was itself efficient enough to outcompete all previous polymer catalytic processes in competition for resources, the hypercycle would collapse shortly after generating the protobiont, and leave no evidence of its passing (any raw materials that it was using would be taken up by the protobiont, which uses them for replication). You, looking at current life systems with another few billion years of evolution thrown into the mix, cannot envision the original hypercycle because of the complexity of the structures life currently has...

There's other studies that show the same thing in other places.

Got sources?

I don't buy into that amount of decay in a week. Nor do I buy into the speed of light exponentially being faster either. Things would get to screwy physics wise for that.

Then please tell me why there isn't a radioactive hole in the ground where Fenton Hill, NM is found. If all of that helium was made by radioactive decay in a few thousand year time frame as the authors assert, it generated heat while it occurred, enough to melt the surrounding landscape. And yet, no one in Los Alamos seems to have noticed...

I already have and he agrees with the author of the article.

Maybe he can tell us why Fenton Hill isn't a scorched ruin, then..?

I can do that statistically and show the near impossible chance of amino acids or proteins forming from random modalities but you would dismiss that as well.

Sure, because 'random modalities' don't replicate a prebiotic Earth. Other modalities which do, create life precursors. Tell me, what happens when you freeze a mixture of ammonia and cyanide for 25 years?

No, my friend, I can look at the end product and tell it didn't just happen by fortuitous random means. Even a small child could see that.

Heh. That comment reminds me of the joke about how to get kicked out of jury duty. Just tell the judge or lawyer "Your honor I'd make the perfect juror... I can tell if a person is guilty in a second, just by looking at 'em!!!!"

Jimlarmore · Apr 18, 2008

atomweaver said:
Is the appearance of design the same as actual design? No. What's more, if you're arguing from the perspective of Christian creation, it would seem you are arguing for a god who only creates by improbable routes, and not the probable ones. Here's an example of what I mean (taken from a creationist, no less)

Say an avalance occurs, making a large pile of rubble. Sometime afterwards, rain washes away all of the little stones and the mud and dirt, leaving behind a framework of large stones perched one atop the other in an intricate, interdependent framework. Pull away any one large stone, and the structure would collapse. It looks as if each rock were deliberately placed such that all the gaps and crevices were deliberate, and it is a complex, balanced, interdependent system, but no design was originally conceived. Its an elegant analogy to the current living system framework;

It's always funny to me to debate this. Giving examples of randomly piled rocks eroded away to compare with what may have happened for unassisted abiogenesis to be valid is like comparing the crystalline structure of the silica in a computer chip to the computer itself. Talk about ludicrous!!!! ID is very detectable to anyone with a modicum of intelligence themselves. All you have to do is look at the complexity of the systems or the biochemistry in the cell to see it could never have just happened by fortuitous means. Look at this little article and explain how a chaperone or chaperonin molecule could just happen.

http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/D/DenaturingProtein.html

In other words, if the hypercycle which generated the protobiont was itself efficient enough to outcompete all previous polymer catalytic processes in competition for resources, the hypercycle would collapse shortly after generating the protobiont, and leave no evidence of its passing (any raw materials that it was using would be taken up by the protobiont, which uses them for replication). You, looking at current life systems with another few billion years of evolution thrown into the mix, cannot envision the original hypercycle because of the complexity of the structures life currently has...

This is nothing more than pure speculation. If your premise is valid then we should still be able to find hypercycles in the sub-oceanic hot vents where they say life began. IOW, we should still see life emerging from these speculative mechanisms.

Got sources?

Here's an article on this that shows it's not just that particlur place in New Mexico that shows Helium retention.
http://www.minsocam.org/ammin/AM26/AM26_403.pdf

Then please tell me why there isn't a radioactive hole in the ground where Fenton Hill, NM is found. If all of that helium was made by radioactive decay in a few thousand year time frame as the authors assert, it generated heat while it occurred, enough to melt the surrounding landscape. And yet, no one in Los Alamos seems to have noticed...

The main issue to me in radiometric dating is that so many assumptions have to be made to be able to come up with the proper ratios. In situ analysis is always made being subject to enviromental influences like water or near by radioactive sources that may be different. The heat of radioactive decay can be calculated. I'll check and see what is predicted.

God Bless
Jim Larmore

atomweaver · Apr 18, 2008

Jimlarmore said:
It's always funny to me to debate this. Giving examples of randomly piled rocks eroded away to compare with what may have happened for unassisted abiogenesis to be valid is like comparing the crystalline structure of the silica in a computer chip to the computer itself.

In drawing this parallel, its clear to me that you entirely missed the point of the analogy. The salient point was that the apparently intentional interconnectedness of the rock structure observed after the fact is a result of our looking at the final structure whilst not being aware of the avalanche and subsequent erosion.

Talk about ludicrous!!!! ID is very detectable to anyone with a modicum of intelligence themselves.

And thus you imply that anyone who doesn't see ID lacks any modicum of intelliigence. Nice, but not Nicene... Consider please, reviewing the forum guidelines.

All you have to do is look at the complexity of the systems or the biochemistry in the cell to see it could never have just happened by fortuitous means.

Look at this little article and explain how a chaperone or chaperonin molecule could just happen.

http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/D/DenaturingProtein.html

Just FYI, this is not a question pertaining to abiogenesis; modern protein systems are at least 3 billion years removed from the topic... I've already stated that I think its more likely that proteins appeared later in the development of life. Chaperone proteins woud therefore be a likely consequence of convetional evolution. A cell with a more efficient protein folding method would gain a reproductive advanatge.

This is nothing more than pure speculation. If your premise is valid then we should still be able to find hypercycles in the sub-oceanic hot vents where they say life began.

Correction, where they say life might have began. Here again, you treat abiogenesis as if it were "settled law", when that is hardly the case. To continue the law anaolgy, the first draft of the abiogenesis 'bill' hasn't even been completed yet, much less scheduled for debate on the House floor... (Sorry, you met me on an election year. ;-)

IOW, we should still see life emerging from these speculative mechanisms.

So you say, and yet here on Earth things are so vastly different from the prebiotic Earth. If life instead originated in a shallow coastal area, then the climatic differences are myriad...

And if there were chemcial events going on at a thermal vent in the ocean, you think its reasonable to expect that we'd know about it? Do you have any idea how poorly funded oceanography is..?

And, what if life itself is the biotic factor which precludes modern abiogenesis events? Life is pretty good at making efficient use of resources such as nucleobases, much better than simpler polymeric processes. Maybe the abiotic condition that is most important to abiogenesis is having a sterile (bacteria-free, life-free) environment... Good luck finding one of those on Earth, unless you set up a lab to reproduce it. Life is an inseparable part of just about everything/everywhere on the planet.

Here's an article on this that shows it's not just that particlur place in New Mexico that shows Helium retention.
http://www.minsocam.org/ammin/AM26/AM26_403.pdf

Hmm. From the summary, it says that Keevil measured helium content of aover a hudnred different samples of 15 different kinds of rocks, and found variation in helium retention. Your source doesn't say what the variation was, nor where the rocks came from. Keevil did most of his work in the 1940's, so his primary literature isn't available online. If you can cite me the original source book of these images, I'll pull it from my local uni library and read up. I don't know if Keevil was even aware of the impact of local thermal history on helium generation, though. Is this source even relevant? Keevil might take your other source to task for not answering the question of the true identity of the source rock (hot granite or gneiss?)

http://www.minsocam.org/ammin/AM35/AM35_816.pdf

From the first two pages of that link, it seems that Keevil understood that anomalous helium results should be followed up with additional sampling of other rock types for cross correlation. Humphries would do well to follow his advice...

The main issue to me in radiometric dating is that so many assumptions have to be made to be able to come up with the proper ratios.

If you are referring to early assumptions of continuous decay, they are no longer assumptions at all. They have been confirmed as sound by the last 65 years of terrestrial radiometric decay measurement, and confirmed again as constant in deep time, based upon astronomical observations.

Most other conditions which alter radiometric measurements are known (and its known in the case of Fenton Hill that using helium ratios to date rocks is a non-starter). Its a complicated field, for sure, but not impossible to navigate...

In situ analysis is always made being subject to enviromental influences like water or near by radioactive sources that may be different.

I understand that isochron dating is less variable when such factors are a concern, althoughI only have a layman's understanding of the method.

Jimlarmore · Apr 18, 2008

atomweaver,
Do you believe life started from unassisted abiogenesis, or are you just positioned on the opposite side of me for the debating sake of it all?

God bless
Jim Larmore

Melethiel · Apr 18, 2008

Discuss the issues without taking potshots please.

atomweaver · Apr 18, 2008

Jimlarmore said:
atomweaver,
Do you believe life started from unassisted abiogenesis,

Jim, no one knows yet whether abiogenesis is even worth considering... Why on Earth would I have an opinion on it, either way? That's been the point of my participation in this thread, you've reached your conclusion about it, before you (or anyone else for that matter, scientist or layperson) even know what it is...

There is some small evidence that makes it compelling to investigate further, and so I keep an open mind. Most interesting of all is how easy it is to make nucleobases and enantiomerically enriched prepolymers from all manner of different, and very plausible, prebiotic scenarios...

or are you just positioned on the opposite side of me for the debating sake of it all?

I'll try again to state succinctly what bothers me most about your position on this;
You have rejected a scientific theory, before that theory has even been conceived.

That's a silly position to put onesself in, in and of itself. So I argue here, to present to you the possibilities and evidences that you have yet to consider.

busterdog · Apr 19, 2008

Jimlarmore said:
I don't buy into that amount of decay in a week. Nor do I buy into the speed of light exponentially being faster either. Things would get to screwy physics wise for that.

EXAMINING THE DATA
The data obtained over the last 320 years at least imply a decay in 'c' [56]. Over this period, all 163 measurements of light-speed by 16 methods reveal a non-linear decay trend. Evidence for this decay trend exists within each measurement technique as well as overall. Furthermore, an initial analysis of the behaviour of a number of other atomic constants was made in 1981 to see how they related to 'c' decay. On the basis of the measured value of these 'constants', it became apparent that energy was being conserved throughout the process of 'c' variation. In all, confirmatory trends appear in 475 measurements of 11 other atomic quantities by 25 methods. Analysis of the most accurate atomic data reveals that the trend has a consistent magnitude in all the other atomic quantities that vary synchronously with light-speed [56].
All these measurements have been made during a period when there have been no quantum increases in the energy of atomic orbits. These observations reinforce the conclusion that, between any proposed quantum jumps, energy is conserved in all relevant atomic processes, as no extra energy is accessible to the atom from the ZPF. Because energy is conserved, the c-associated atomic constants vary synchronously with c, and the existing order in the cosmos is not disrupted or intruded upon. Historically, it was this very behaviour of the various constants, indicating that energy was being conserved, which was a key factor in the development of the 1987 Norman-Setterfield report, The Atomic Constants, Light And Time [56].
The mass of data supporting these conclusions comprises some 638 values measured by 43 methods. Montgomery and Dolphin did a further extensive statistical analysis on the data in 1993 and concluded that the results supported the 'c' decay proposition if energy was conserved [60]. The analysis was developed further and formally presented in August 1994 by Montgomery [61]. These papers answered questions related to the statistics involved and have not yet been refuted.
ATOMIC QUANTITIES AND ENERGY CONSERVATION
Planck's constant and mass are two of the quantities which vary synchronously with 'c'. Over the period when 'c' has been measured as declining, Planck's constant 'h' has been measured as increasing as documented in the 1987 Report. The most stringent data from astronomy reveal 'hc' must be a true constant [62 - 65]. Consequently, 'h' must be proportional to '1/c' exactly. This is explicable in terms of the SED approach since, as mentioned above, 'h' is essentially a measure of the strength of the zero-point fields (ZPF). If the ZPE is increasing, so, in direct proportion, must 'h'. As noted above, an increasing ZPE also means 'c' must drop. In other words, as the energy density of the ZPF increases, 'c' decreases in such a way that 'hc' is invariant. A similar analysis could be made for other time-varying 'constants' that change synchronously with 'c'.
This analysis reveals some important consequences resulting from Einstein's famous equation [E = mc[SIZE=-1]2[/SIZE]], where 'E' is energy, and 'm' is mass. Data listed in the Norman/Setterfield Report confirm the analysis that 'm' is proportional to 1/c[SIZE=-1]2[/SIZE] within a quantum interval, so that energy (E) is unaffected as 'c' varies. Haisch, Rueda and Puthoff independently verify that when the energy density of the ZPF decreases, mass also decreases. They confirm that 'E' in Einstein's equation remains unaffected by these synchronous changes involving 'c' [16].
If we continue this analysis, the behaviour of mass 'm' is found to be very closely related to the behaviour of the Gravitational constant 'G' and gravitational phenomena. In fact 'G' can be shown to vary in such a way that 'Gm' remains invariant at all times. This relationship between 'G' and 'm' is similar to the relationship between Planck's constant and the speed of light that leaves the quantity 'hc' unchanged. The quantity 'Gm' always occurs as a united entity in the relevant gravitational or orbital equations [66]. Therefore, gravitational and orbital phenomena will be unchanged by varying light speed as will planetary periods and distances [67]. In other words, acceleration due to gravity, weight, and planetary orbital years, remain independent of any variation of 'c'. As a result, astronomical orbital periods of the earth, moon, and planets form an independent time-piece, a dynamical clock, with which it is possible to compare atomic processes.

Mass and energy are conserved in this changes in c. There are phsyical constants, such as the relationship of h to c. Mass and energy are conserved at the atomic level. The laws of physics require it. Astoundingly, consensus physics doesnt do the math.

What about Abiogenesis

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