The Origin of Life

[The Irish Ram]

Keep in mind, odds and probabilities are only predictions. You could pick up a penny and flip it a hundred times and get heads a hundred times. There is nothing to say an event needs billions of instances to produce something. One may have been enough, or fifty. It is most likely there were pools with trillions of amino acids floating around, which are produced naturally in the universe, where countless interactions could have occurred to produce self-replicating life.

But the point is it could have happened with the first interaction as easily as the trillionth. It may have taken one day or a million years of chemical reactions, bonds, broken bonds, reformed bonds, over and over. It may have happened and that life died the same day. The reactions continued until it happened again. All is possible. The only thing we know is at least one of the events led to a never ending self-replicating single prokaryote cell with no nucleus, just chemicals in an enclosed reaction that replicates itself.

DNA says you need billions of instances to produce something other than what is coded. DNA would have to make a mistake, and not self correct as it is coded to do, and then make the exact same mistake consistently, for millions of years to create new species. We would be walking on the bones of so many transitional missing links...
If you think DNA happened by chance then you don't understand the complexity of DNA. It is not that there are amino acids floating around, it is that they find the exact left handed ones that the code tells it to attach to, that you are leaving out of the scenario. All is not possible. DNA is specific. How would an amino acid know if it was right or left handed without a code to follow?

Take a working eye. Millions of optic nerves head from the brain toward the eye. Millions of optic nerves head from the eye, through the flesh to the optic center in the brain, where each one has to find it's match for the eye to see. Without a code for them to follow, sight would be a rare crap shoot.
And here is the icing on the evolution cake:

"To suppose that the eye with all it's inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to difference distances, for admitting different amounts of light, AND for the CORRECTION of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by chance, seems, I freely confess, ABSURD IN THE HIGHEST DEGREE." ~ Charles Darwin

.

The hearing ear, and the seeing eye, the Lord hath made even both of them. Proverbs 20:12

First off you are talking about evolution, not how life started. DNA doesn't have to continually mutate. One mutation that produces a benefit to the organism is all that is needed for it to change permentantly. And a simple search online will produce endless examples of how organisms radically changed over time and we have fossils documenting the change.

And arguing from the end is a classical fallacy. When things began they were far simpler. And you fail to grasp what I said. If you have trillions of amino acids in a water matrix and they interact they are likely to form bonds and break bonds at astronomical levels. But it could have been that the very first bonding created a viable life form. Odds and probabilities are only rough predictors. They are not even close to laws. You can drop a basketball from a helicopter and try to put it through a hoop 500 times before you do it. Or it could happen the first time.

As for the ridiculous eye theory we have abundant fossil progression from simple lumps of cells more sensitive to light than others that progress to more complex forms over millions of years.

Honestly people you need to get a degree or at least read something other than the Watch Tower or listen to Pat Robertson to get a real grasp on evidence for evolution and the origin of life.

Apparently you don't understand what Darwin understood. That it would be absurd to believe that the eye's design was not a design. A design would work in all things that have eyes.
If it was a random act, what caused the same randomness that occurred in the first seeing eye, to happen in the second seeing eye?

Your assumption that we went from simple to complex was shattered with the discovery of DNA. The first living thing had a complex code inside of it. Code is not spontaneous. It is purposeful.

 

[Flash]

As far as we know there is a finite universe. In any finite model unique things can exist.

And a person could technically run blindfolded across a shooting range or a busy interstate at rush hour and not get hurt. But it would be stupid to believe that would be the case, wouldn't it?

Bizarre how people make statements like this "As far as we know there is a finite universe. In any finite model unique things can exist."

Drive down the road and see if you can find any two wheel designs that are the same.

Nature produces planets. If conventional wisdom is correct Nature can't even produce two snowflakes or grains of sand that are exactly the same.

Mars, Earth and Venus are are all similar planet design but vastly different, aren't they?

 

[The Irish Ram]

You contradict Darwin, Newt. He knew that turning an image upside down to focus, and to calculate distance required more that cells clumping together.

Why did random life stop? We still have ponds, and scum, and amino acids and everything necessary. Why are single celled amoebas still single celled amoebas? Why aren't things turning into other things while we watch? Why aren't random new creatures emerging from the swamp as we speak?
It is because they are coded to remain what they are. It's in their DNA.

 

[Dr Grump]

Think about it. The greatest engineering marvel in the history of the universe with complexity unrivaled by anything in the universe just randomly assembled itself?

As opposed to a super being that randomly assembled itself?

 

[BreezeWood]

.

what caused the same randomness that occurred in the first seeing eye, to happen in the second seeing eye?

proof that the metaphysical axioms exist and are responsible for the preservation of knowledge from one generation to the next. the same necessity for the initiation of life itself.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

Until then we only know what we know and right now we only know that there life on earth.

Which is not good evidence or good argument to declare or even suspect that there is not life elsewhere. If I showed you 1 housecat out of 100,000,000,000,000 in existence, and it was black...would you then say, "it's maybe the only black housecat"? No. While it may be technically possible that is is the only black housecat, such an idea would never gain any traction in your mind.

Unless, of course, you were already subscribed to some sort of magical paradigm that declared black cats to be unique, or that there was only one black housecat in the universe. THEN, perhaps, you would try to peddle such an idea.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

Statistics doesn't produce life, does it? Something else does.

Yes, selection by physical forces. It's not a mystery.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

That it would be absurd to believe that the eye's design was not a design

Bullshit. It's absurd to believe it IS a design. We can literally watch the eyeball evolve throughout the fossil record. We can find species in existence today that display the eye forms that occured on the way to the evolution of the eyeball. It's not a mystery.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

You contradict Darwin,

So what? That's a terrible argument. We also contradict the beliefs of Newton and Pasteur, as we have gained mountains of new ideas and evidence. It's a much stronger argument to say it is correct to contradict some of the assumptions of these people, as they arose from ignorance.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

If conventional wisdom is correct Nature can't even produce two snowflakes or grains of sand that are exactly the same

So what? Who is presuming that life anywhere is exactly like Earth life? If anything, you are arguing for abundance of life, pointing out the nearly infinte ways it can be assembled.

 

[Flash]

Until then we only know what we know and right now we only know that there life on earth.

Which is not good evidence or good argument to declare or even suspect that there is not life elsewhere. If I showed you 1 housecat out of 100,000,000,000,000 in existence, and it was black...would you then say, "it's maybe the only black housecat"? No. While it may be technically possible that is is the only black housecat, such an idea would never gain any traction in your mind.

Unless, of course, you were already subscribed to some sort of magical paradigm that declared black cats to be unique, or that there was only one black housecat in the universe. THEN, perhaps, you would try to peddle such an idea.

So, in your opinion, statistics produces life?

We need more than one data point in order to make assumptions about probability. If you ever took a course in statistics you would know that.

Right now we only have one data point on life.

Come up with the next data point and then we can talk.

We know that life exist on one planet, in one solar system, in one galaxy and in one universe.

As far as we know that is unique.

Once (if ever) we come up with another data point then we can start making assumptions on the probability of life existing elsewhere. Until then we have nothing..

Until then we are only guessing, hoping, wishing and making things up.

We like to do that a lot in cosmology because we have all been brainwashed with science fiction our entire lives.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

So, in your opinion, statistics produces life?

I plainly said selection via physical forces produces life. Pay attention!

You have a measurable probability of contracting brain cancer. Is that the same as saying statistics cause brain cancer? No, so please drop this idiotic mischaracterization of what I am saying.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

As far as we know that is unique.

Wrong. As far as we know, it happened at least one time. To say that our knowledge allows us to say it didnt happen more than once is not just an egregiois error in logic, it's a lie.

 

[Flash]

So, in your opinion, statistics produces life?

I plainly said selection via physical forces produces life. Pay attention!

You have a measurable probability of contracting brain cancer. Is that the same as saying statistics cause brain cancer? No, so please drop this idiotic mischaracterization of what I am saying.

We have more than one data point on the frequency of occurrence for brain cancer, don't we? If anybody needs to pay more attention then it is you. Have you ever taken a course in Statistics? Doesn't look like you have.

 

[Flash]

As far as we know that is unique.

Wrong. As far as we know, it happened at least one time. To say that our knowledge allows us to say it didnt happen more than once is not just an egregiois error in logic, it's a lie.

You are really confused about this aren't you?

How can you say that is earth is not unique to life until you have found at least one other planet with life? Do you just guess or pull it out of your ass or what?

 

[DOTR]

we have only DNA (or RNA in some cases) based life in evidence.

..and we can't even pretend to have done an exhaustive search of the evidence, nor could we. What you have in your hands is evidence that life occurred at least once on our planet, and at least once in our universe. You do NOT have evidence that it did NOT occur at least twice, in either case.

it will never bee exhaustive but it has been, lets say, intense and unremitting. In fact it is so intnse that we find tiny traces of organic life well over 3 billion years old.
But nothing else.
How and where else would you suggest searching?

 

[DOTR]

So you want us to limit ourselves to only "testable" ideas? You sure?

Yep, absolutely sure of that one.

Then lets hear no more tales of imaginary life that arose and then dies off with no trace. Or extraterrestrial life. Unless you can provide a test for it with positive results.

 

[DOTR]

Rare Earth hypothesis - Wikipedia

The Rare Earth hypothesis argues that the evolution of biological complexity requires a host of fortuitous circumstances, such as a galactic habitable zone, a central star and planetary system having the requisite character, the circumstellar habitable zone, a right sized terrestrial planet, the advantage of a gas giant guardian like Jupiter and a large natural satellite, conditions needed to ensure the planet has a magnetosphere and plate tectonics, the chemistry of the lithosphere, atmosphere, and oceans, the role of "evolutionary pumps" such as massive glaciation and rare bolide impacts, and whatever led to the appearance of the eukaryote cell, sexual reproduction and the Cambrian explosion of animal, plant, and fungi phyla. The evolution of human intelligence may have required yet further events, which are extremely unlikely to have happened were it not for the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event 66 million years ago which saw the decline of dinosaurs as the dominant terrestrial vertebrates.

In order for a small rocky planet to support complex life, Ward and Brownlee argue, the values of several variables must fall within narrow ranges. The universe is so vast that it could contain many Earth-like planets. But if such planets exist, they are likely to be separated from each other by many thousands of light years. Such distances may preclude communication among any intelligent species evolving on such planets, which would solve the Fermi paradox: "If extraterrestrial aliens are common, why aren't they obvious?"[1]

The Fermi paradox crushes the Drake Equation without the unlikely existence of some common filter which occurs AFTER advanced civilization develops. (one suggestion is that AI inevitably wipes out intelligence)

It is Carl Sagan who is responsible for the Argument from Mediocrity...and the crew of atheists who have followed him. They took great pleasure in it.

Ward and Brownlee sound interesting. Ill read them.

We all would like to think that the worlds we see in science fiction exist because we have been brainwashed all our lives with it. We want to see Captain Kirk trekking across the universe screwing pretty green alien women and kicking Klingon ass and want to believe in the Empire in a galaxy far far away but that is not the reality. The reality is that we see life on earth but everything else that we can observed is sterile.

The other reality is that the universe may be teeming with life but we humans will never see it because we will never get out of our solar system. All we have now is chemical energy for propulsion and that is not going to get us very far. There may (or may not) be some other viable propulsion technology (like"warp drive") but we haven't seen it yet. Physics is working against us ever being interstellar or galactic space explorers. Economics is also a bummer when it comes to space exploration. We can't even afford to return to the Moon after 50 years no less send a human to Mars.

I suspect humans will die out as a species before we will know if life exist elsewhere. I also suspect that under the best of all circumstance the most distance a human will ever travel from earth will be to Mars.

I am a fan of the older Science Fiction..Heinlein, Asimov and when a kid even Lester Del Ray. And the one thing you see when you read science fiction, even up until Philip K Dick and Larry Niven and yes even Gene Rodenberry, is that they are prisoners of their own milieu.
The writers of today always push women to the forefront because they live in a bubble that says do so. Rodenberry was being bold by including a few women in the crew in lower positions. Now a female starship captain is required. In "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" the women served tea...in Bladerunner 2049 they run police departments. A failure of imagination.
They always exclude religion (except for Orson S Card) because they live in little bubbles of no religion.
And of course, except for Asimov, the universe does "teem with life" in earlier Sci Fi. It was as de rigueur during that age as a dykey cursing female star ship captain is today. They assumed that it would be very soon that we would discover such.
No closer today than during the Star trek era.

 

[Flash]

Rare Earth hypothesis - Wikipedia

The Rare Earth hypothesis argues that the evolution of biological complexity requires a host of fortuitous circumstances, such as a galactic habitable zone, a central star and planetary system having the requisite character, the circumstellar habitable zone, a right sized terrestrial planet, the advantage of a gas giant guardian like Jupiter and a large natural satellite, conditions needed to ensure the planet has a magnetosphere and plate tectonics, the chemistry of the lithosphere, atmosphere, and oceans, the role of "evolutionary pumps" such as massive glaciation and rare bolide impacts, and whatever led to the appearance of the eukaryote cell, sexual reproduction and the Cambrian explosion of animal, plant, and fungi phyla. The evolution of human intelligence may have required yet further events, which are extremely unlikely to have happened were it not for the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event 66 million years ago which saw the decline of dinosaurs as the dominant terrestrial vertebrates.

In order for a small rocky planet to support complex life, Ward and Brownlee argue, the values of several variables must fall within narrow ranges. The universe is so vast that it could contain many Earth-like planets. But if such planets exist, they are likely to be separated from each other by many thousands of light years. Such distances may preclude communication among any intelligent species evolving on such planets, which would solve the Fermi paradox: "If extraterrestrial aliens are common, why aren't they obvious?"[1]

The Fermi paradox crushes the Drake Equation without the unlikely existence of some common filter which occurs AFTER advanced civilization develops. (one suggestion is that AI inevitably wipes out intelligence)

It is Carl Sagan who is responsible for the Argument from Mediocrity...and the crew of atheists who have followed him. They took great pleasure in it.

Ward and Brownlee sound interesting. Ill read them.

We all would like to think that the worlds we see in science fiction exist because we have been brainwashed all our lives with it. We want to see Captain Kirk trekking across the universe screwing pretty green alien women and kicking Klingon ass and want to believe in the Empire in a galaxy far far away but that is not the reality. The reality is that we see life on earth but everything else that we can observed is sterile.

The other reality is that the universe may be teeming with life but we humans will never see it because we will never get out of our solar system. All we have now is chemical energy for propulsion and that is not going to get us very far. There may (or may not) be some other viable propulsion technology (like"warp drive") but we haven't seen it yet. Physics is working against us ever being interstellar or galactic space explorers. Economics is also a bummer when it comes to space exploration. We can't even afford to return to the Moon after 50 years no less send a human to Mars.

I suspect humans will die out as a species before we will know if life exist elsewhere. I also suspect that under the best of all circumstance the most distance a human will ever travel from earth will be to Mars.

I am a fan of the older Science Fiction..Heinlein, Asimov and when a kid even Lester Del Ray. And the one thing you see when you read science fiction, even up until Philip K Dick and Larry Niven and yes even Gene Rodenberry, is that they are prisoners of their own milieu.
The writers of today always push women to the forefront because they live in a bubble that says do so. Rodenberry was being bold by including a few women in the crew in lower positions. Now a female starship captain is required. In "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" the women served tea...in Bladerunner 2049 they run police departments. A failure of imagination.
They always exclude religion (except for Orson S Card) because they live in little bubbles of no religion.
And of course, except for Asimov, the universe does "teem with life" in earlier Sci Fi. It was as de rigueur during that age as a dykey cursing female star ship captain is today. They assumed that it would be very soon that we would discover such.
No closer today than during the Star trek era.

I have a complete collection of all of Heinlein's books and stories.

Science Fiction has changed the way we view science and not necessarily in a good way.

Our expectations because of the SF influence is not even close to reality.

Religion and science is not incompatible. After all, the Creator has rules, like the Laws of Physics. .

 

[DOTR]

I have a complete collection of all of Heinlein's books and stories.

Science Fiction has changed the way we view science and not necessarily in a good way.

Our expectations because of the SF influence is not even close to reality.

Religion and science is not incompatible. After all, the Creator has rules, like the Laws of Physics. .

It is about to get worse. Science fiction has been taken over by Marxist Feminists these days. Hugo and Nebula awards now have quotas and the protagonist gets points for being female/trans/homosexual/whatever-other-weird-provlivity-is-faddish. Several writers have been banned. Larry Correi, Vox Day, Kate Paulk, Sarah Hoyt and Brad Torgerson led a rearguard fight to keep Science Fiction Fiction free of political correctness but they lost and were expelled from the WSFS.

I recently reread "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress". Last time was in high school (many moons ago as Elizabeth Warren would say). I hadnt remembered it as such a strident libertarian work. Of course when it was written Marxism hadn't made such inroads into an more innocent America but I guess it illustrates that politics were always around to some extent.
Its is just that before these last few years the politics were more American and less Soviet.