Obtuseness personified; of course Darwin couldn't possibly have known anything of genetics in the 1800s. He died still wanting to know about heredity, about the origin of life, and about the origin of the angiosperms in the Cretaceous. Nobody here's said that Darwin's genius ideas were based on an intimate understanding of Molecular Biology, mon ami.
Chemical evolution:
- Thread starter paddoboy
- Start date
If I was "obtuse", I apologize. The non sequitur I was referring to related to the word "therefore" in the phrase "Darwinism...... therefore requires...... a genetic oligomer".
Just a tip: try not to patronize established members, and moreover, that arrogant chest-thumping will win you no friends here
Just a tip: try not to patronize established members, and moreover, that arrogant chest-thumping will win you no friends here
Surface chemistry can furnish a primitive homogeneous lipid bilayer vesicle. Allow a truly freakish vesicle disruption, then engulfing a conveniently adjacent self-replicating & metabolizing complex, then closing again. Assume that amazingly the violence needed to disrupt the vesicle did not also disrupt the engulfed complex. We have a foreign body enclosing some complex of RNA or similar molecules, that was just doing its specialized thing before the freak engulfing event. There is no chance that complex will spontaneously recognize and develop the means to synthesize and direct the transport of lipid bilayer material to the primitive membrane. Which is a real problem because unless the newly formed 'cell' divides on a regular basis, it dies. But repeated cell division is impossible without membrane growth. And this dilemma still assumes a simple lipid bilayer could work as an effective membrane. Whereas real cell membranes are complex structures with lots of semi-permeable protein mediated ion pumps and small molecule pore channels and surface sugar receptors signalling what to let in or not.
There is no way it could all work unless the cell membrane is an integral component of the cell from the get go. Of course most here can't accept that since it doesn't fit a Darwinian paradigm. Have fun actually dealing with the above then.
There is no way it could all work unless the cell membrane is an integral component of the cell from the get go. Of course most here can't accept that since it doesn't fit a Darwinian paradigm. Have fun actually dealing with the above then.
Horse puckey. I understood your Latinism perfectly well, so there's no need to be patronising, either back then or now. You seem to have precious little to offer to this thread on a scientific front, let alone on a specifically chemical one, and I'm certainly not here to court anybody's virtual friendship. One merely hopes for some rigorously vigorous discussion of salient points. One would've thought that a self-congratulating "established" member of this forum would've had more to offer than armchair know-it-all snarkiness. And fyi, you'd be sore-pressed indeed to understand Darwinism in its depths sans Molecular Biology.
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The above fantastically-demanding membrane scenario shows: (a.) an appreciation of the present end-result of ~4 billion years of evolution; & (b.) a stunning ignorance of the amount of geological time available to CE over which things like the above-compressed scenario could have occurred, invoking both the sheer number of molecules involved (any grasp of Avogadro?) as well as their exploration of the sequence space, configurational, conformational, etc. degrees-of-freedom. The permeability of membranes isn't a fundamental physical problem in CE, and neither is their encapsulation of all manner of molecular species, whether it be out in open solution or mediated by a surface or by other physical phenomena.
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Write4U
Valued Senior Member
I look forward to informed discussion. Not having had the privilege of higher education, my knowledge comes from research of topics being discussed here. I'd be lost otherwise.
The field is so vast, one needs direction.......
.......
......................I like your enthusiasm & vigorous pursuit of understanding. Your posts make us stop and think to double-check on our own understandings of things. In that way, yours serve a useful purpose, and the responses that you catalyse help everyone.I look forward to informed discussion. Not having had the privilege of higher education, my knowledge comes from research of topics being discussed here. I'd be lost otherwise.
The field is so vast, one needs direction.......
And you're quite right about there being an enormous amount of possibly-relevant material to be aware of, and to have considered, particularly from a 'winnowing' perspective (i.e., good/reliable stuff & clues, versus junk & irrelevancies or postponables-until-later-on-in-CE-stories), which is what higher education lets one do with a reasonable degree of confidence.
As expected the response to #963 fails utterly to appreciate that hand-wavy appeals to geological time won't work. A truly miraculous transformation from foreign body to integral cell membrane has to occur in one or at most a few cell lifetimes. Literally a do-or-die situation. Darwinian evolution offers no realistic way out. One could add several other crucial requirements all needing to be accomplished in just one cell lifetime. For instance simple self-replication of RNA molecules, if left unchecked will burst any enclosing membrane, spilling the contents out to a less than entirely friendly environment. So in a single cell lifetime, the self-replicating complex has to figure out a way to enable highly orchestrated cell division (i.e. undergo an astonishing number of teleologically directed genetic changes). I don't think so.
"Darwinism"?
That is not true.
Darwinian evolutionary theory was formulated before genes and other features of nucleic acid inheritance had been discovered. It applies in a wide variety of circumstances, many not involving living beings.
I doubt any one thing filled the role now filled by NAs in living beings, in the millions of years over which abiogenesis occurred. For one thing, the role itself did not exist for a good share of that process - maybe all of it, depending on how one eventually comes to recognize "living" or "life".
Maybe. Depends on what happened.
The beginning of what, exactly?
It was a gentle mockery of the outdated and largely political term "Darwinism", a favorite of the creationist political lobby, which is at best unnecessarily confusing in the context of Darwinian evolutionary theory (and could be worse: By in some people's minds excluding the application of Darwinian theory to the temporal development of inorganic and non-biological systems, it might prevent or long delay the explication of abiogenesis).
In general, "isms" have an unfortunate track record in science.
from wiki:
What are you talking about? How does one "obfuscate from"?
And if I'm not, we can stay on topic.
No one has come close to demonstrating that they are "primary". That would be a very big step here.
Being central to modern biology and otherwise not found is pretty good evidence that they are derivative, from an evolutionary perspective - it's been more than three billion years, and the crude or inefficient have been subjected to selection on a planetary scale.
Good thing I'm not a researcher in the field, obviously.
Meanwhile, for your reinforcement of my repeated and much-maligned observation that the chemical complexity of the abiotic planet has been deeply, widely, and consistently underestimated by the creationist spam squad, I thank you.
And yet they remain unsolved.
Which is hardly surprising - the field is new, our ignorance of matters pertaining to those events of four billion years ago is vast.
What's wrong with Darwinian evolutionary mechanisms as likely and best supported by what evidence we have?
That's what the research is about. If somebody has a sudden fantastic breakthrough and publishes it, I'll post it here for you, ok?
You guys never factcheck anything. That's why you are wrong about so much stuff.
This is getting silly.
To repeat: We're talking close to four billion years ago, before biological organisms existed. There are no cells, or lifetimes. There is no such thing as the lifetime of a cell. There is no such thing as a do or die situation. Nothing dies.
For all we know some key event in abiogenesis happened along some ocean shore that had been crusted over with billions of inorganic macromolecular assemblies cocooned in little lipid vesicles for hundreds of thousands of years, waiting for lightning to strike just the right patch.
Ha ha ha. Frankenstein meets Darwin. A variant of hopeful monster desperate speculation.
And nevertheless completely realistic from what we know so far. When stone cold realism strikes one as bizarre speculation, it's time to take stock and figure out why.
You just got done posting a second or third "argument" based on cellular lifetimes and do or die situations in a thread on abiogenesis. How did you end up in such a ridiculous situation?
btw, and maybe hint: The monster was your invention. The speculation was of the scale of your ignorance - hardly desperate, that. Not even speculative, in the normal sense.
And Darwin? You know as well as I do that you have never studied Darwinian evolutionary theory.
to repeat:
Rule of thumb: They (you) do not understand Darwinian evolution. No counterexample has ever appeared on this forum. (It's not a glitch or happenstance that this guy appears to think I have claimed that a lightning strike would bring one of those cocoons to life - it's not mere appearance: he does. He knows I find Darwinian explanation the most likely, and that's his idea of a Darwinian explanation).
The tactic of quoting entire posts by way of setting up one line innuendos that miss all points is workable, though. I've noticed most of you guys fetch up there for a while, with the one line getting shorter and featuring question marks as time goes by.
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Of course. It's the appropriate response given how much diversionary straw man narrative you serial post with seeming inexhaustible resolve. Akin to how addicted gaming freaks get their adrenalin high. I figured some time back that answering you point by point simply invites being sucked into an interminable time wasting tit for tat battle of wits. No thanks.
Write4U
Valued Senior Member
Of course, all change is teleologically directed in your book. You are an ID adherent and will stay so without any evidence or logical reason till the bitter end. Then you'll accuse everyone of conspiring against religions and stomp of in a huff, convinced that "they have done you wrong".
In the mean time science maintains its firm stance on Deterministic Cause and Effect, rather than the teleological "the Universe was Created for a Divine Purpose".
Write4U
Valued Senior Member
Ever watched religious zealots on an adrenalin high?
I had one talk to me in"tongue"....
.... It seemed I was visiting a mental institution.Outright lying, or just half mad? Either way, just another irritating tirade. Ditto for your following post, which scurrelously implies I'm a Pentecostal tongue speaker. Cease your fool engagement with me.
Write4U
Valued Senior Member
You introduced the term "teleological".
Perhaps you're not familiar with it's definition?
And you accused me of being akin to being on an adrenalin high. Do you really expect me to take that without retort? Atheists do not get adrenalin highs from religious ecstasy!
Religious people do!
The Ecstasy of Saint Francis is a painting by Giovanni Baglione which was uploaded on March 1st, 2015.
https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/religious-ecstasies-jazz/
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This is what I meant by half mad. Go back and check the relevant post. It was clearly directed at someone else! But you failed to notice that - somehow.
Write4U
Valued Senior Member
I answered by proxy. I don't think Ice minds.
The statement holds true, regardless of the author.
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Anyone can contrast that lame excuse with what I highlighted in #978, and draw an obvious conclusion. Give it up.