Chemistry plus Biology = Abiogenesis:

There are extant examples of simple chemical cycles that spontaneously produce more of themselves, repeating the cycle - yet are not life.

The Citric Acid Cycle or Krebs Cycle is one.

It produces products that are used in the starting phase of the next cycle. It also produces waste products, not used in the next cycle.

"Overall, one turn of the citric acid cycle releases two carbon dioxide molecules and produces three NADH, one FADH2, and one ATP. The citric acid cycle goes around twice for each molecule of glucose that enters cellular respiration..."

If this process were contained in a primitively-walled environment and surrounded with resources, it could keep churning out copies of itself endlessly.

 

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Not really. Hundreds of millions of years on an entire planet - at least - were involved. Entire oceans and bedrock aquifers (bigger than some oceans) filled with chemical soup of a density and complexity and variety never seen since (it gets eaten, these days, before it can assemble what it could then).
Notice that the early forms of quasi-life had no competition. Once launched, nothing was in the way.

 

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W4U said, "purpose" implies a consciously motivated intent.

W4U said, causal motivation

No, in a deterministic universe cause is the motivating factor for physical change.
W4U said, greatest satisfaction (the swimming pool

Yes, "coming to rest" = "satisfaction". Same thing.
W4U said, no conscious intent involved

There is change but without conscious intent. That keeps it scientific, no?
W4U said, It is a mathematical imperative that water subject to gravity must run downhill.

It is the mathematics of the physical properties. The water certainly wouldn't run uphill. That is not mathematically allowed.
W4U said, In doing so it unconsciously generates a kinetic energy

No, unconscious is the absence of consciousness.
W4U said, generates a kinetic energy.

No objection from me on this.
W4U said, All this is a result of unconscious behaviors

And explained.
W4U said, quasi-intelligent behavior

Physics is not a behavior per se. Quasi-intelligent behavior identifies the natural functional mathematical dynamics, translatable by human conscious intelligence into Physics.
W4U said, behavior

Why? Physical things do not behave in accordance with their inherent potentials? Physical things just happen?
W4U said, of the universe and its physical/mathematical potentials.

No, I lay it at the door of the Universe, the spacetime pattern (stuff) which posseses an incredible amount of inherent, albeit chaotic potential for energy, from just after the BB. The science which studies that is named Physics and deals with the physical potentials as their values are expressed in one of the universal mathematical languages, such as specific geometrics and chemical value communication.

What you see of the universe is the physically expressed potentials inherent in the very fabric of the universe. At one time a spiral galaxy was a mere universal deterministic potential.

Physics is the science which studies enfolded (inherent) physical mathematical properties (potentials) and unfolded (expressed) mathematical physical patterns in reality, from the very subtle to gross physical expression. PHYSICS is the science which employs mathematics to qualify and quantify the inherent and expressed universal potentials.

We have a physical universe, which function mathematically based on its relative physical values and functions. Can't do the physics without the maths. You'll end up with Gods.

They kinda seemed a little redundant, but I always appreciate your ....

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That tends to confuse most of us. Perhaps its our definition of "nothing" that needs reappraisal. Perhaps the pre BB quantum foam is as close to nothing as is possible?
https://www.abc.net.au/religion/a-u...ing-the-krauss-craig-debate-into-per/10099686


Awe inspiring, amazing concept, sure...But how more amazing, and questionable is the process of an already assembled deity of infinite knowledge, all knowing omnipotent etc that doesn't need to abide by the laws of physics and GR?

 

Okay, that makes sense. But, we're still just guessing.

 

Well, you seem to have lost your mind altogether.
"The rest of us see physics"? And what would that look like, pray tell?

Do you even have a clue as to how many gods there have been in human history, the first god starting most likely with the first hominid who looked up in the sky and wondered........

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Top part of a rune stone found at Sanda, Gotland, Sweden, dating to the Viking Age, thought to depict Odin, Thor and Freyr. The runic inscription reads: 'Rodvisl and Farbjörn and Gunbjörn'

How many gods have ever lived?

https://atheism.wikia.org/wiki/How_many_gods?

Oh and this more focused version; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_deities

 

Is that sarcasm? Lol

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If one believes in a higher power, it’s not all that far fetched. But, this doesn’t mean we don’t apply reason, logic and intellectual honesty to these topics.

 

It looks like the opposite of an entirely unscientific "quasi-intelligent universe".

 

That's not "guessing" at random, or trivially. That's formulating hypotheses that fit what facts we have, to guide research in potentially fruitful directions. We are building up a body of knowledge here.

It's wonderful, and kind of amazing when you think about it, that we have ability to discover and establish facts about the chemical environment of this planet three billion years ago. By comparison, conjuring up an apparently unnecessary and essentially unknown deity that is to be equipped with whatever powers one needs to account for what it's supposed to have done seems a bit - searching for a term - "lazy"?

 

You must not have read my post above.
Remember, I believe that spirituality and science can coexist.

 

Max Tegmark must be a devoutly religious man, he believes in an entirely quasi-intelligent mathematically deterministic universe.
One big natural self-referential quasi-intelligent deterministic computer. David Bohm's holographic universe.

Such a reality would easily lend itself to imaginings of godlike entities, but that's all redundant.
The physical/mathematical structure of this universe can do it all, seems.
Omnipotence ? Who knows. Universal Potential ! Oh yeah, we're swimming in it....

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Lol not him again!

He’s an atheist, as I recall.

 

Nothing wrong with that. But remember to use you own self-referential spirituality to guide you.
Your spirit dwells within you, it's one of your intellectual potentials, treat it with respect......

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No no no

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physics was operating long before WE came along and created maths to help US figure out physics

As for your rebuttals (?) I will stick with my versions

Likewise

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Well physics is the operating system of the Universe so it the active you see every day occurs because of physics

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My understanding is scientists are learning (moving) to the concept (theory) that a state of NOTHING is a impossibility and that energy and matter (but not matter in its current configuration) has always existed

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Kinda like the chicken and the egg question.
With physics you mean the physically manifested mathematical patterns?

In a self-organizing deterministic physical environment mathematical functions are necessary for the orderly chronology of physical values and behaviors and interactions in the formation of regular predictable patterns.

That's where the deterministic aspect begins. With order, not stuff.
IMO, it begins with relative values of universal stuff and certain logical processing functions, constants, which guide the manner in which the values interact and become physically expressed as regular patterns in our observable reality.

We don't have to be anywhere for reality to manifest itself into mathematically ordered physical patterns. A spiral galaxy is the same in our observable universe as in the unobservable universe. It's an efficient mathematical configuration, and in harmony with other constants acting on the whole system.
A spiral happens to form in accordance to the universally present mathematical law of the exponential Fibonacci Sequence. It's everywhere, its a universal potential.

 

Coexist is fine, no need to step into the others back yard, just chat over the fence

No need either to insult or belittle the others

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I'm not insulting or belittling anyone.

 

Those numbers are far too low.

Just consider proteins. The human genome has something like 20,000 genes.

"Following the hypothesis of "one gene = one protein," there should be at least ~20,000 nonmodified (canonical) human proteins. Taking into account products of alternative splicing (AS), those containing single amino acid polymorphisms (SAPs) arising from nonsynonymous single-nucleotide polymorphisms (nsSNPs), and those that undergo PTMs, as many as 100 different proteins can potentially be produced from a single gene. Of the many different terms proposed to describe protein variants, here, we chose "protein species" or "proteoforms"...

The number of different proteins comprising the human proteome is a core proteomics issue. Researchers propose numbers between 10,000 and several billion different protein species. Here, we describe the theoretical prediction for the number of different proteoforms that might arise from AS, SAP or PTM events...

Applying these numbers to the equations (N = 20,043), we estimate that in humans there exist 0.62 or 0.88 or 6.13 million protein species."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4889822/

It's still a pretty wide range, but 600,000 to 6 million different kinds of proteins gives us a ballpark figure.

Considering that proteins' functions are often a function of their elaborately folded shape, with active sites that fit, like locks into keys into other chemicals, considering that proteins operate like gritty little nanomachines, selectively pumping specific chemicals across membranes, considering that they comprise the ubiquitous enzymes that catalyze chemical reactions throughout the cell, and the complexity starts to become apparent.

http://www.biology-pages.info/P/Proteins.html

Just restricting our attention go prokaryotes like bacteria. I think that it's safe to say:

No human machine ever made even approaches a simple bacterium in complexity.

Perhaps not trillions, but certainly many thousands. The material inside even the simplest cell, its cytosol, isn't just a featureless goop. It's a jostling and seething mass of molecules, like tiny machines on the atomic level. The cell membrane isn't just a plastic bag, it's... busier... than that.

http://www.biology-pages.info/D/Diffusion.html#active

From David Goodsell, The Machinery of Life, Springer 2005, p. 9:

"The human body is a living, breathing example of the power of nano-technology. Almost everything happens at the atomic level. Individual molecules are captured and sorted, and individual atoms in these molecules are shuffled from place to place, building entirely new molecules. Individual photons of light are captured and used to direct the motion of individual electrons through electrical circuits. Molecules are packaged and transported expertly over distances of a few nanometers. Tiny molecular machines... orchestrate all of these nanoscale processes of life. Like the machines of our modern world, these machines are built to perform specific tasks efficiently and accurately. These tasks, however, are molecule-sized tasks and the molecular machines in cells have been perfected to operate at the level of atoms."

Addressing bacteria, much simpler than the eukaryotic human cells...

"Escherichia coli is currently the most-studied cellular organism known to science... Study of Escherichia coli cells played a major role in many of the seminal discoveries of biochemistry, including the genetic code, glycolysis, and the regulation of protein synthesis... More recently, scientists have been looking a whole cells and trying to figure out the way that the parts work together. Escherichia coli was one of the first organisms to be fully sequenced, so we can now look at its genome to see the entire set of plans needed to specify all of its proteins... we are very close to having a complete parts list and specification for this well-studied cell...

The most plentiful ingredient in a typical Escherichia coli cell is water, making up about 70% of the weight of the cell. The other 30% is comprised of proteins, nucleic acids, ions and all the other molecules....The genome encodes over 4,300 different protein chains and another 191 different RNA molecules. These perform an estimated 1250 enzymatic reactions and 255 transport tasks. About 1220 types of small molecules, including amino acids, nucleotides, sugars and a host of others, circulate through the spaces in between the larger molecules...

The cell must also control when and where each gene is used. The information held in the DNA genome is highly regulated. A host of repressors and activators interact with each gene, determining when it will be used to create proteins." (pp. 60-61)

http://www.biology-pages.info/L/LacOperon.html

http://www.biology-pages.info/T/Transcription.html