Chemical evolution:

Discussion in 'Biology & Genetics' started by paddoboy, Aug 7, 2020.

  1. Q-reeus Banned Valued Senior Member

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    4,695
    Nitpicking. The two are synonymous fapp and certainly as assumed this thread.
    Are you being serious? Unless one believes in an eternal universe, self-creation is the only other option compatible with atheism. That is just basic logic. Or going the argument from authority route:
    https://www.icr.org/article/hawking-says-universe-created-itself
    Here, a reminder of how it is in the real world:
    https://www.atheistrepublic.com/forums/debate-room/science-inherently-atheistic
    You and the rest of the majority atheist gang here hammer the point that ID (that obviously includes and default presupposes an intelligent God) is 'unscientific'. Yes but only by way of how modern science is narrowly defined.
    See above. In practice it positively excludes any notion of the supernatural. Widely known it's career suicide to ever posit God or anything supernatural as a possible cause or influence.
    For sensible folk, any truly hitting that wall then becomes strong indirect evidence for a God. What third option is there?
    Ha ha. Elevating yourself above the unseemly fray? Nah, just being provocative. You already know my stated position:
    http://www.sciforums.com/posts/3657825/
    And that was not the first time I declared it thus here at SF.
     
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  3. Q-reeus Banned Valued Senior Member

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    Please cease chronically misrepresenting my position. I don't have the time or inclination to endlessly make correctives.
     
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  5. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    Whatever floats your boat.

    What makes you so sure you're aware of all the possibilities?

    It's worse than that. "ID", as formulated and promulgated by your friends over at Answers in Genesis, is not just unscientific; it's pseudoscientific. All that crap about irreducible complexity, etc.? Nonsense, and they know it.

    It's possible that somebody might be able to salvage a more respectable version of "ID" from the ashes of the false-flag creationism that it currently is, but no ID proponent is making much of an effort to distinguish himself from the bald-faced Creationists, to my knowledge.

    I don't know how you propose to redefine science in such a way that it includes your religious beliefs. As far as I can tell, that would reduce it to a poor shadow of itself. It would throw away all its strengths, for no advantage other than to push an unevidenced dogma.

    You're making an argument from ignorance. You're saying "I can't think of any other options, other than my God or 'self-creation'. Therefore, there can be no other options." That's a logical fallacy, by the way. Also a false dichotomy.

    I get that you don't like atheism, due to your faith in a vague, unspecified god. What any of that has to do with chemical evolution is a puzzle.
     
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  7. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Nothing wrong with a little courtesy, in my crowd, but if you don't like it - - - How straight do you want the bad news? Remember: I'm dealing with a poster who talks about molecules starving to death, and thinks the improbability of a long homochiral chain of biomolecules forming by chance is an argument against Darwinian explanation of abiogenesis. You haven't fixed any of that idiocy yet.
    So don't. Your priority should be dealing with your major blunders, as pointed out to you above, anyway.
    And you're absolutely right about time shortage: Just reading up on Darwinian theory, so you don't post any more about "integral cell walls" or "self-replicating" assemblages of molecules "starving to death", will take a few months if I don't miss my guess.
    If you say so. It's irrelevant anyway - take the blindfold off, and you'll find that wall isn't anywhere in sight.
    Nobody's come close to hitting that wall yet - even in mature and deeply researched fields, let alone some brand new arena like abiogenesis. Nature is vast and complex, humans are small and new to the world.
     
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  8. Q-reeus Banned Valued Senior Member

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    4,695
    Try and offer another one yourself. This is just silly. Like saying there could be more than two sides to a flat sheet of paper. No.
    Why do you misrepresent me like that? When have I ever used anything from Answers In Genesis to argue anything? Get your facts straight and stop being so careless. You KNOW I am not a young Earth creationist.
    So you polemicize. If you genuinely want to know how the realpolitik works in Darwinian academia, false claims vs real position of say Michael Behe, make the effort as suggested back here:
    http://www.sciforums.com/posts/3659091/
    If you can't be bothered, take the honest position and just leave it alone.
    Wrong again. I gave three options in total. God. Eternal universe. Self-created universe. According to the thrust of your argument, one should allow for at least a rational fourth option I have 'excluded'.
    So suggest one. Or admit you are just being time-wasting pedantic. And see my first response above. Same deal except you confused here by presenting God and self-created universe as the only options.
    Ha ha. Recall I am responding to YOUR questions and allegations needing correction! Please do stop this pointless exchange and get it back to unguided chemical evolution. I'll happily stay on the sidelines then.
     
  9. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    39,397
    I don't need to. You need to show that you've considered all possibilities, no matter what they might be. Given, that you're not all-knowing, that's impossible. My point makes itself.

    I have not said you are a Young Earth Creationist. You appear to be an ID Creationist. You apparently think that Michael Behe's theories are credible science, rather than being a desperate attempt by him to come up with some pseudoscience that might bolster his pre-existing fundamentalist Christian beliefs.

    There's no need for me to read the pro-Behe books that you use to bolster your own pre-existing religious beliefs. Behe has been thoroughly dedunked by people who are experts in the relevant fields. I am not one of them, and I'm confident you aren't either.

    You're wrong, not me. Of course you should allow for a 4th - or a 5th or a 6th - option, seeing as you haven't ruled out the possibility. It's like when you thought you'd ruled out one option for creating proto-cells, and then jumped to the conclusion that there was no possible other natural way that proto-cells could have come into being, and therefore God Did It. It's shoddy reasoning, all the way.

    But you appear to be drifting way off topic. We are discussing "chemical evolution" here - abiogenesis, if you prefer - not the origin of the universe.

    You decided to have a rant against atheism and science. I have merely pointed out that ID isn't science and that science and atheism are not the same thing.
     
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  10. Q-reeus Banned Valued Senior Member

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    4,695
    Not wasting time rebutting your essentially mind-games, highly opinionated responses point by point again. You have never conceded a single error. And there have been demonstrably quite a few. Got better things to do. Bye.
     
  11. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    39,397
  12. Traverse Registered Member

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    Trained scientists who go in for creationism/ID do so to gain parasitic access to a nice fat source of $$$ from the credulous; for which they're willing to sacrifice their reputations among the broader scientific community. These parasites need points of scientific-sounding argument & catchy terms like "irreducible complexity" in order to fuel the beliefs of their credulous donors, mostly Heaven-hopeful elderly folk, no doubt.
     
  13. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    5,902
    I'm not convinced that was its original intention. And there isn't really anything preventing you or anyone else from writing whatever biochemical posts you want to write and raising whatever technical issues you want to raise. If you want to discuss chemistry in whatever manner that you want to discuss it, start by doing it yourself. See if anyone else joins in. (We don't have a lot of chemists posting here, so you might end up talking to yourself.)

    The interesting question there is why not. Why isn't ID science? And what would it imply if ID indeed isn't science? Does ID not being science (assuming that it isn't) really have any implications about whether or not ID is an open possibility regarding the origin of life?

    Those aren't scientific questions. They are more fundamental than that.

    That was a fiery little rant, wasn't it?
     
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  14. Traverse Registered Member

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    Monsieur, ID/creationism's plainly as scientific a claim as the village idiot's faithful & forceful assertion that the Moon's made of green cheese.

    But you're most assuredly correct that there does indeed seem to be a paucity of chemical education on here sufficient to be sustaining, without being repeatedly badgered by ignoramuses like the Q-nut.
     
  15. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    5,902
    You had earlier written, "It's also possible, I think, that we already have enough information to solve the problem highly satisfactorily."

    So what problem were you talking about solving, if it wasn't the actual origin of the life we see around us here on Earth?
     
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  16. Traverse Registered Member

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    The problem that I'm talking about, mon ami, is to come up with rational scientific ways in which Life could have arisen on the early Earth, rather than how it actually did (i.e., historically) actually originate on the early Earth (i.e., given the apparent non-existence of remnant tell-tale sedimentary rock strata from back then). I thought the distinction would've been obvious, but, on reflection, perhaps not to a non-scientist.
     
    Last edited: Jan 21, 2021
  17. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    20,069
    This may be of interest and pertinent to the conversation.

    Discovery boosts theory that life on Earth arose from RNA-DNA mix
    Newly described chemical reaction could have assembled DNA building blocks before life forms and their enzymes existed. December 23, 2020
    https://www.scripps.edu/news-and-events/press-room/2020/20201223-krishnamurthy-dna.html
     
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  18. Traverse Registered Member

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    RNA & DNA differ by a single Oxygen atom (in their respective sugars), and by one nucleobase (nitrogenous heterocycle; Uracil vs. Thymine); so an intimately close molecular evolutionary relationship between these two classes of genetic oligomer has never been doubted.

    This paper's place in the chemical evolutionary timeline/story is a ways 'downstream' of the long-sought nexus between non-living material (i.e., minerals, prebiotic organic molecules, gases, inorganic ions, etc.) & recognisably-incipient abiogenesis.
     
  19. Q-reeus Banned Valued Senior Member

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    4,695
    How revolting. Another potentially libelous recent post from a recent arrival. Claiming outright, not merely suggesting or hypothesizing, that credentialed ID advocates are nothing but money grubbing scoundrels who 'know better' but choose the path of easy wealth while deluding their aged fundamentalist followers. Michael Behe as one example of an academically qualified IDer, is by any fair assessment none of the above.
     
  20. Traverse Registered Member

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    74
    Nonsense. Michael Behe is a well-debunked fraud. He's just well-funded by happy-clapping credulously-radicalised rapture-endorphin-addicted evangelical nutters.
     
  21. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    20,069
    I am not so sure this is way downstream. We are talking about early polymers which lent themselves to further polymerization and transmutation

    Is RNA too sticky?
    A chimeric workaround
    https://www.scripps.edu/news-and-events/press-room/2020/20201223-krishnamurthy-dna.html

    Apparently they believe these basic assemblies occur very early and subsequent transmutation of RNA and DNA and may have occurred during the same time frame on earth, each contributing to the self-replication process. i.e.
    Step 1 in the abiogenesis of life from chemistry.

    p.s. IMO, at this point another simple but extremely important self-assembling polymer becomes instrumental in the self-replication process, but I am forbidden to mention it because it is one of my favorite subjects and mods have decided my favorite subjects must remain separated from any common denominators in other threads, because they are "new" science.
     
  22. Q-reeus Banned Valued Senior Member

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    4,695
    Libelous rant now not merely potentially so - #877. Foolish it is to condemn without giving the accused a fair hearing.
     
  23. Traverse Registered Member

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    I can immediately think of one very obvious and simple geochemical way around the 'unzipping' problem (i.e., sans enzymes to do it).

    But I'm now very curious about your favourite subject, and would be grateful to hear it here.
     

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