Chemistry plus Biology = Abiogenesis:

Discussion in 'Astronomy, Exobiology, & Cosmology' started by paddoboy, Jul 1, 2019.

  1. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    The 101 articles and papers, general mainstream scientific consensus, and the fact that Abiogenesis is still the only scientific answer to how life obviously arose from non life, and there obvious baggage, says you, and they are wrong...........again!
    Pot, kettle, black again.
     
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  3. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    Well religion has not exactly proven that their invisible smart guy authority actually exist

    So given that Mr Stupidity steps in or in the case of the bible numerous Mr Stupidities

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    So not handful of dust / mud / clay (depending on which translation you happen to be looking at)?

    I rather like star stuff. Pity Mr ID didn't make me. I would like to think if he did my skeleton would be gold, suitable strengthened, not common calcium

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    I would not even dare have any mention of Big I

    Mr Physics and Mrs Chemistry is fine, not a brain cell between them

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  5. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    Abiogenesis is overwhelmingly supported. To say otherwise is telling porky pies.
    Out of the number of different pathways, and methodologies, under the Abiogenesis banner, no particular path or paths have yet been determined.
     
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  7. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    I'm enjoying this thread, because I get the opportunity to observe overreach and poor reasoning on both sides of the argument.

    On one side, for example, we have paddoboy essentially claiming that abiogenesis is a solved problem, nothing more to see here. On the other we have Q-reeus saying that because he can't work out how it could have happened naturally then God must have done it, by default. There are other contributors on both sides who are making similar errors.

    The overreach weakens both positions. The people who overreach by claiming that Science has it all worked out, but who are unable to do more that wave their hands in the general direction of chemistry and time make it look like the science is a fraud. And the people who overreach by claiming that there must be an Intelligent Designer (read God), without providing any evidence at all to support such a hypothesis make ID look like religious bunk.
     
  8. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    Ahhh,.. a level playing field...excellent.

    Have not yet seen either Tour or Peltzer lectures so cannot comment one way or the other. I don't understand why you believe I object to their viewpoint. I have read and listened to Behe re. irreducible complexity and the Kitzmiller Trail where the court found against the concept of irreducible complexity as a necessary aspect of life.

    I'll check the links and let you know what I think.
     
  9. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    Q-reeus:

    My atheism has nothing to do with my rejection of the central thesis of ID proponents such as yourself. I reject ID on the basis of lack of convincing evidence for it. Merely pointing to difficult problems for science to explain does nothing to advance the ID position. ID can't "win" this argument by default. If science hasn't solved the problem of abiogenesis yet, that doesn't mean that ID has made any progress towards making its case. All it means is that scientists have more work to do.

    I have a quiet chuckle to myself whenever I hear a Creationist claim that scientists are in it for the money. Support evolution and watch the funding dollars roll in! Then it's rich rich rich for the self-interested biologists! Do these people even understand how grant money is spent? (Hint: it doesn't go towards purchasing a Porsche for the Lead Researcher.)

    I can't really comment on this. I'm neither a chemist nor a molecular biologist. Are you?
     
  10. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    Bear in mind that life took about 600 million years after the Earth was formed to start. An entire planet and a 600 million year time span is a large window in which lots of improbable things could happen. More to the point, there's no evidence that any "miracle" is required.
     
  11. globali Registered Senior Member

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    I see hidden variations of Id on these semantics. I wonder if the scientists whose references were used here agree with being a part of that.
     
  12. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    This is an example of the overreach I referred to above.

    If it is not complicated, as you claim, then why can't you just write down how it happened in a few sentences? I asked paddoboy the same question and he came up with nothing. I don't suppose you can do any better.

    To be fair, though, I agree with this:
     
  13. Q-reeus Banned Valued Senior Member

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    Try again. No-one can offer a credible mechanism. No-one. Instead of distorting my position, play fair actually. Don't pretend to be a neutral unbiased arbiter on this. You have staked your position many times in many threads. Blind chance over time 'did it'. Something so 'inevitable' should have been worked out in some detail by now surely.
    Or can you cite the breakthrough discovery that leaves mere fine details to be explained? No, you can't.

    It annoys that admitting the existence of a higher power is decried as an 'unscientific' taboo heresy, while simultaneously giving lip service to 'their need be no real conflict between science and religion'. It's never spelt out that this platitude could only make coherent sense if religion is in fact nothing more than a godless system of ethics. That is - compatible religion = humanism in fact. I don't subscribe to any religion, but do see the necessity of a higher non-material being or beings.
    That no doubt upsets your banal characterizations. Too bad. And I see no additional value in responding to your #366.
     
  14. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    Do you see it creating life from non-life as we speak? If so, point out where you're seeing that.

    Can you do better than merely claiming that the universe is somehow able to produce life from non-life, as a result of unspecified "physical potentials and dynamic functions"? Aren't you just assuming that living things are the result of a so-far-unknown natural process?

    I can imagine natural processes doing the job, same as you can. But that's not the same as saying I know how the universe did the job, or even that I know the universe did do the job using natural processes only. Imagination isn't a substitute for knowledge. The IDers have the same problem. I can imagine a God creating life through a special act of creation. Given a religious education, that's very easy to imagine. But that's very different to knowing that God did it, or providing evidence that God did it (with a sufficient explanation of just how he did it).

    That is a matter of perspective, isn't it? For example, clearly literal biblical Creationism makes perfect sense to a certain group of people. That option makes no sense from a scientific perspective, but that doesn't seem to bother those people.

    I agree, but only because I value evidence over superstition.
     
  15. globali Registered Senior Member

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    Sure many improbable things happen in 600 million years. But as far as we know so far, it didn't happen elsewhere in our solar system, or comets (despite the presence of organics). Some of them are way older that 600 million years. We also haven't found hints of intelligent life beyond our solar system yet.
    This implies that there must be something special about life's chemistry...
    In addition, improbable events are not enough because statistics say that in the long run the most probable events dominate. All you need is to visit a casino and play every day. Its a determinist event. You will lose your money. This is the natural selection of the events. A scenario that involves you winning all the time is simply not sustainable.
     
    Last edited: Jul 8, 2019
  16. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    Listen to yourself. You are comparing some scientist in a laboratory as having an advantage over the universe?

    I have mentioned this several times, but apparently it keeps falling on deaf ears, while the talk is about the impossible odds of nature to provide an ideal fertile environment for complex chemistry and the "necessity" for an intentional motivated designer?

    Natural biology has the ability to evolve matter from fields, to evolve single celled organisms to humans, but natural chemistry is unable to produce organic bio-molecules and single celled organisms from elemental chemicals. Sure.....

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    Who do you think has a better chance of finding the keys to self-assembly, a laboratory assistant who can set up one experiment per day as compared to Earth which has performed "two trillion, quadrillion, quadrillion, quadrillion" (2 x 10^54) chemical reactions (laboratory experiments) during its 4.5 billion year life span. That's just earth. Plus the extraterrestial 100 tons of space dust bombarding the earth every day for millions of years. You may want to expand your horizons.

    And you assert that a scientist in a lab is a more reliable standard by which to judge universal chemistry and by which to judge the creative power power and potentials of 13.7 billion years of a dynamical universe, abundant with emerging fundamental chemical elements.
    Have you given this any serious thought at all?

    Controlled laboratory settings are capable of more and better chemistry than nature?..... are you kidding me?
     
    Last edited: Jul 8, 2019
  17. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    Q-reeus:

    Did I say they could? You can't provide a credible mechanism, either. You don't get to have your God by default.

    Not just blind chance. The laws of chemistry, for example, must surely have played a part, and they don't operate randomly. Similarly, natural selection, once it gets up and running, isn't a process of mere "blind chance", as you are not doubt well aware.

    That's a poor argument.

    Was the invention of heavier-than-air flying machines so inevitable that it should have been worked out in 2000 BC? If not, what does that suggest to you, given the observation that we have such machines today?

    Like I said, I'm neither a chemist not a molecular biologist. I'm not sure what a "breakthrough discovery" would entail. Perhaps you're thinking that the entire problem might be solved in one fell swoop by a single scientific discovery. Who knows? Maybe you're right about that. But it doesn't have to happen that way.

    I agree with you, I think. There can be clear conflict between science and religion in cases where religion starts making falsifiable statements that science can test. If religion says the Sun revolves around the Earth, rather than the other way round, then it will conflict with science, necessarily. Similarly when Dr Peltzer claims there is no descent with modification.

    You and I could have a cordial discussion about just why you think there's a necessity for "higher non-material beings", possibly. I don't think this thread is the best place for it, though, or whether you'd even be interested in having such a discussion with me. I understand that you think the problem of abiogenesis necessitates such supernatural beings, for one thing, but I disagree with you that the problems you see for scientific abiogenesis are insurmountable. It seems to me that's just a statement of faith on your part.
     
  18. globali Registered Senior Member

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    Controlled lab settings is in fact ID. Of course its more efficient
     
  19. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    There are some good reasons why we wouldn't expect life to exist on certain other planets and moons in our solar system, so the fact that (so far) we've only found life on Earth is not unexpected. Mind you, I'm looking forward to when we can drill through into Europa's oceans, and I also wouldn't be at all surprised if we dig up some Martian microbes in the not-too-distant future.

    As for intelligent life elsewhere, that's a whole separate topic for discussion. Suffice it to say here that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

    Maybe. Maybe not.

    Life only had to "win" once (or maybe a handful of times), though. Once life gets going, natural selection does a lot of the heavy lifting from that point onwards.
     
  20. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    And therefore necessarily wrong, because the supernatural is bad. Right?

    What has been shown is that creationism is not in the least scientific, in spite of the Creationists' claims to the contrary. It has also shown that ID, in the form it is most often pushed by its most vocal proponents, is just Creationism in disguise.

    But showing that Creationism is unscientific does nothing to show that "scientific abiogenesis" is a fact. You don't get to have your scientific explanation by default, any more than Q-reeus gets to have his God by default.

    Nobody disagrees about that. If God formed Adam out of dust, that is life emerging from non-life. The argument is about the process.

    That's just an assumption you're making. It's no different from Q-reeus claiming that everything's so difficult that only a god could have made life.

    That's not saying much. Creationists would say that abiogenesis took place via one or more pathways, too.
     
    Last edited: Jul 8, 2019
  21. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    No, it isn't more efficient. Think..... 1 person in a lab vs the combinatory richness of cosmic spaces and time frames. Humans are smaller than bacteria in comparison to the solar system alone, and we are more efficient than nature???

    Is that the kind of disrespect for natural functions that we completely ignore the natural consequences of our wanton waste of energy while repolluting the air with CO2 which was sequestered underground for billions of years. ID?

    Humans are a surface nuisance. The earth will shrug us off like a bad case of fleas.
     
  22. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    No over reach here James....I'm simply saying that the emergence of life from non life can only be explained by Abiogenesis and we have various pathways by which that may occur, but as yet , we can't determine which one. But I suppose it may seeyou perceived as an impartial judge to criticise my mostly mainstream accepted claims as I have shown many times. And again, as a reminder, this did not draw the controversy at another forum, where the exact same debate with near the exact same OP was also discussed. But there of course non mainstream myths and claims are quickly subdued or moved to the alternative/trash sections....yes, yes, I understand that this is no concern of yours, just saying James.
    I won't call you a liar James, but what I claim is just up there and what I have consistently claimed throughout this thread.
    You see the problem started with exchemist, an avid supporter of q-reeus and hatred of myself for questioning so many of his mate's mythical claims over a wide range of subjects, some that you have taken part in. exchemist greatest problem seems to be, that he sees himself as a goody two shoes and much like q-reeus. judge and jury, with seemingly your support. That's OK, I can easily live with that.


    I won't comment on your criticism of q-reeus'mythical claims, they speak for themselves.
     
  23. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    Nor can you. God "did it" is not a recipe. Not by 3000 years of biblical history. A long sentence. Or was it six days?

    I have no disagreement with you, just following up on your suggestion to write the recipe for life in a few concise sentences.

    Can you answer a few of the specific questions to follow. I am willing to learn if enlightenment is available.

    You are asking impossible questions. You want the recipe for life? Suppose we can never come up with the recipe?

    Invoking ID does not solve your problem for a recipe. Is God gonna share the recipe if you pray real hard?

    So having a few hundred scientist spending their lives in laboratories trying to design life is gonna solve the problem? At which point will you give up and admit that nature did what we are unable to do in a lab? Or are you then claim that as proof God did it?

    So denying natural chemical evolutionary processes as being somehow divorced from universal self-assembly, is denying evolution period. Are you denying evolution? If not then you must grant that the stuff which makes up the universe is able evolve into anything that is even remotely mathematically and physically possible, given enough time and space.

    There is no such recipe as a package of chemical for "instant" cooking (just add water) in order to produce life.

    But I would propose that if Life was a result of "favorable conditions", from what I have read it seems that hell would be the perfect extreme dynamical condition for mixing and baking a living cake. Don't need to pre-heat the oven.....

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    Does that mean humans didn't evolve from simpler mammals? Or because the universe could never come up with such "irreducible complexity" it would be impossible to evolve complex patterns by normal universal evolutionary potentials and constants to begin with ?
    Everything is ID? Why do we have science at all?

    Can you explain the formation of the solar system in a few sentences or a single equation? Of course not, because 14.5 billion years of evolutionary processes cannot be summed up in a few sentences. It takes a bunch of books on natural values and functions, not a recipe.

    Natural chemical evolution of the universal potentials is capable of creating biochemicals which are components of organic molecules which are components of living organisms. The whole evolutionary process is popularly referred to as abiogenesis because, regardles of how, life emerged from non-life at some point, most likely with some intermediate steps like viruses, which are technically not living organisms.

    We even have the proof of intermediate steps between purely chemical compounds and biochemical patterns.

    Did God create viruses or did their biochemical patterns emerge naturally?
    What more evidence do you require? Viruses are the biochemical Lucy in the evolution from static inanimate to dynamic animate patterns . They are one obvious link between these two states.

    This is a rambling post but I wanted clarity on some of the questions from Q- Reeus and Globali.
     
    Last edited: Jul 8, 2019

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