Chemical evolution:

[Q-reeus]

Those two things are not necessarily the same. You can believe your favorite God guides chemical evolution, if you like. He has to do it in such a way that it leaves no detectable evidence that he's guiding it supernaturally, that's all.

Nitpicking. The two are synonymous fapp and certainly as assumed this thread.

Self-creation sounds like pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. I don't know what self-creation would look like, exactly. I assume you have something in mind.

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

No. The underlying concept you want to try to grasp here is called "science".

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.

Science literally just refers to knowledge. Its methods assume naturalism, unless and until there is some convincing evidence of the existence of a supernatural.

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.

If, at some point, science hits a wall and can go no further in explaining the origin of life (or the universe, or whatever), then the answer won't default to God. We'd still need some positive evidence for God - or whatever else did the trick.

For sensible folk, any truly hitting that wall then becomes strong indirect evidence for a God. What third option is there?

I'll leave you religious types to fight out the question of what is "true" religion.

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.

 

[Q-reeus]

And I agree. So?
. I don't. I just point out its relevance is not as you describe - your mistake is in your attempt to discuss the sufficiency of Darwinian theory in the light of that issue. You don't understand Darwinian theory, is the problem (or statistics, but that can wait). That's my guess for your weird habit of linking to dumbass Evangelical Protestant Christian creationist sites instead of some site run by one of those "workers in the field" you are so familiar with - it makes more sense to you.
? Where? (Posted the exact opposite often, hate be contradicting myself via typo or whatever).

Keyword for you: "4 billion years".
I have posted nothing more clearly and plainly than the observation that almost nothing about abiogenesis is anywhere near "resolved", let alone something as vast and tricky and sophisticated as the evolution of large biological proteins. That's been one of my major objections to the creationist habit of inventing bogus scenes of supposedly irreducible complexity and using them to dismiss Darwinian theory entirely - their imagination is not nearly good enough. How could you possibly have missed that, if you read any of my posts here?

Those issues do not "face" abiogenesis much at all, let alone confine their force to non-creationist theories of same.

Abiogenesis begins before there is bio, remember. There's no bio until after it's "generated". If you assume bio - RNA, cells, living stuff, - you've jumped the gun by probably millions of years.

And people complain about my repetition - - - -

Please cease chronically misrepresenting my position. I don't have the time or inclination to endlessly make correctives.

 

[James R]

Nitpicking. The two are synonymous fapp and certainly as assumed this thread.

Whatever floats your boat.

Are you being serious? Unless one believes in an eternal universe, self-creation is the only other option compatible with atheism.

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

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'.

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.

Yes but only by way of how modern science is narrowly defined.

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.

For sensible folk, any truly hitting that wall then becomes strong indirect evidence for a God. What third option is there?

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.

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.

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.

 

[iceaura]

Please cease chronically misrepresenting my position.

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.

I don't have the time or inclination to endlessly make correctives.

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.

For sensible folk, any truly hitting that wall then becomes strong indirect evidence for a God.

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.

 

[Q-reeus]

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

 

[James R]

Try and offer another one yourself.

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.

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.

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.

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/

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.

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'.

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.

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.

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.

 

[Q-reeus]

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.

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.

 

[James R]

Bye.

 

[Traverse]

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.

 

[Yazata]

It would be very nice, Messieurs, if we could just stick to Science & to purely scientific (esp. chemical) discussion on this thread, as originally intended.

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.)

ID etc simply isn't Science

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.

and adherents of such childishly-hopeful & eternity-fearing mythical neurotic nonsense should stick to using the available expertises here for clarifying their understanding of scientific matters, rather than be continually distracting discussion by bleating-out their petulant cries of desperation for enough rational doubt that they can continue to cling to their most cherished fantasies.

That was a fiery little rant, wasn't it?

 

[Traverse]

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?

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.

 

[Yazata]

I don't think that any of us is looking to find the accurately historical way in which Life definitely arose naturally on the early Earth

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?

 

[Traverse]

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?

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.

 

[Write4U]

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

LA JOLLA, CA—Chemists at Scripps Research have made a discovery that supports a surprising new view of how life originated on our planet.

In a study published in the chemistry journal Angewandte Chemie, they demonstrated that a simple compound called diamidophosphate (DAP), which was plausibly present on Earth before life arose, could have chemically knitted together tiny DNA building blocks called deoxynucleosides into strands of primordial DNA.

The finding is the latest in a series of discoveries, over the past several years, pointing to the possibility that DNA and its close chemical cousin RNA arose together as products of similar chemical reactions, and that the first self-replicating molecules—the first life forms on Earth—were mixes of the two.

The discovery may also lead to new practical applications in chemistry and biology, but its main significance is that it addresses the age-old question of how life on Earth first arose. In particular, it paves the way for more extensive studies of how self-replicating DNA-RNA mixes could have evolved and spread on the primordial Earth and ultimately seeded the more mature biology of modern organisms.

“This finding is an important step toward the development of a detailed chemical model of how the first life forms originated on Earth,” says study senior author Ramanarayanan Krishnamurthy, PhD, associate professor of chemistry at Scripps Research.

The finding also nudges the field of origin-of-life chemistry away from the hypothesis that has dominated it in recent decades: The “RNA World” hypothesis posits that the first replicators were RNA-based, and that DNA arose only later as a product of RNA life forms

https://www.scripps.edu/news-and-events/press-room/2020/20201223-krishnamurthy-dna.html

 

[Traverse]

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

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.

 

[Q-reeus]

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.

 

[Traverse]

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

 

[Write4U]

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?

Krishnamurthy and others have doubted the RNA World hypothesis in part because RNA molecules may simply have been too “sticky” to serve as the first self-replicators.

A strand of RNA can attract other individual RNA building blocks, which stick to it to form a sort of mirror-image strand—each building block in the new strand binding to its complementary building block on the original, “template” strand. If the new strand can detach from the template strand, and, by the same process, start templating other new strands, then it has achieved the feat of self-replication that underlies life.

But while RNA strands may be good at templating complementary strands, they are not so good at separating from these strands. Modern organisms make enzymes that can force twinned strands of RNA—or DNA—to go their separate ways, thus enabling replication, but it is unclear how this could have been done in a world where enzymes didn’t yet exist.

A chimeric workaround

Krishnamurthy and colleagues have shown in recent studies that “chimeric” molecular strands that are part DNA and part RNA may have been able to get around this problem, because they can template complementary strands in a less-sticky way that permits them to separate relatively easily.

The chemists also have shown in widely cited papers in the past few years that the simple ribonucleoside and deoxynucleoside building blocks, of RNA and DNA respectively, could have arisen under very similar chemical conditions on the early Earth.

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.

 

[Q-reeus]

Libelous rant now not merely potentially so - #877. Foolish it is to condemn without giving the accused a fair hearing.

 

[Traverse]

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.

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.