Life As We Know It Nearly Created in Lab

livescience.com ^ | January 11, 2009 | Robert Roy Britt

[Free ThinkerNY]

One of life's greatest mysteries is how it began. Scientists have pinned it down to roughly this:

Some chemical reactions occurred about 4 billion years ago — perhaps in a primordial tidal soup or maybe with help of volcanoes or possibly at the bottom of the sea or between the mica sheets — to create biology.

Now scientists have created something in the lab that is tantalizingly close to what might have happened. It's not life, they stress, but it certainly gives the science community a whole new data set to chew on.

The researchers, at the Scripps Research Institute, created molecules that self-replicate and even evolve and compete to win or lose. If that sounds exactly like life, read on to learn the controversial and thin distinction.

[wendy1946]

It is also made up of people smarter than me...

That doesn't appear to be asking for much...

For example, how is a theological attack on TToE (based in science) different than a theological attack on radioastronomy (based in science)?

The problem is with the basic laws of mathematics and probability, with which evolution is essentially incompatible.

The best illustration of how stupid evolutionism really is involves trying to become some totally new animal with new organs, a new basic plan for existence, and new requirements for integration between both old and new organs.

Take flying birds for example; suppose you aren't one, and you want to become one. You'll need a baker's dozen highly specialized systems, including wings, flight feathers, a specialized light bone structure, specialized flow-through design heart and lungs, specialized tail, specialized general balance parameters etc.

For starters, every one of these things would be antifunctional until the day on which the whole thing came together, so that the chances of evolving any of these things by any process resembling evolution (mutations plus selection) would amount to an infinitessimal, i.e. one divided by some gigantic number.

In probability theory, to compute the probability of two things happening at once, you multiply the probabilities together. That says that the likelihood of all these things ever happening at once (which is what you'd need), best case, is ten or twelve such infinitessimals multiplied together, i.e. a tenth or twelth-order infinitessimal. The whole history of the universe isn't long enough for that to happen once.

All of that was the best case. For the pieces of being a flying bird to evolve piecemeal would be much harder. In real life, natural selection could not plausibly select for hoped-for functionality, which is what would be required in order to evolve flight feathers on something which could not fly apriori. In real life, all you'd ever get would some sort of a random walk around some starting point, rather than the unidircetional march towards a future requirement which evolution requires.

And the real killer, i.e. the thing which simply kills evolutionism dead, is the following consideration: In real life, assuming you were to somehow miraculously evolve the first feature you'd need to become a flying bird, then by the time another 10,000 generations rolled around and you evolved the second such reature, the first, having been disfunctional/antifunctional all the while, would have DE-EVOLVED and either disappeared altogether or become vestigial.

Now, it would be miraculous if, given all the above, some new kind of complex creature with new organs and a new basic plan for life had ever evolved ONCE.

Evolutionism, however (the Theory of Evolution) requires that this has happened countless billions of times, i.e. an essentially infinite number of absolutely zero probability events.

And, if you were starting to think that nothing could possibly be any stupider than believing in evolution despite all of the above (i.e. that the basic stupidity of evolutionism starting from 1980 or thereabouts could not possibly be improved upon), think again. Because there is zero evidence in the fossil record to support any sort of a theory involving macroevolution, and because the original conceptions of evolution are flatly refuted by developments in population genetics since the 1950's, the latest incarnation of this theory, Steve Gould and Niles Eldredge's "Punctuated Equilibrium or punc-eek" attempts to claim that these wholesale violations of probabilistic laws all occurred so suddenly as to never leave evidence in the fossil record, and that they all occurred amongst tiny groups of animals living in "peripheral" areas. That says that some velocirapter who wanted to be a bird got together with fifty of his friends and said:

Guys, we need flight feathers, and wings, and specialized bones, hearts, lungs, and tails, and we need em NOW; not two years from now. Everybody ready, all together now:
OOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.....

You could devise a new religion by taking the single stupidest doctrine from each of the existing religions, and it would not be as stupid as THAT.

But it gets even stupider.

Again, the original Darwinian vision of gradualistic evolution is flatly refuted by the fossil record (Darwinian evolution demanded that the vast bulk of ALL fossils be intermediates) and by the findings of population genetics, particularly the Haldane dilemma and the impossible time requirements for spreading genetic changes through any sizeable herd of animals.

Consider what Gould and other punk-eekers are saying. Punc-eek amounts to a claim that all meaningful evolutionary change takes place in peripheral areas, amongst tiny groups of animals which develop some genetic advantage, and then move out and overwhelm, outcompete, and replace the larger herds. They are claiming that this eliminates the need to spread genetic change through any sizeable herd of animals and, at the same time, is why we never find intermediate fossils (since there are never enough of these CHANGELINGS to leave fossil evidence).

Obvious problems with punctuated equilibria include, minimally:

1. It is a pure pseudoscience seeking to explain and actually be proved by a lack of evidence rather than by evidence (all the missing intermediate fossils). Similarly, Cotton Mather claimed that the fact that nobody had ever seen or heard a witch was proof they were there (if you could SEE them, they wouldn't BE witches...) This kind of logic is less inhibiting than the logic they used to teach in American schools. For instance, I could as easily claim that the fact that I'd never been seen with Tina Turner was all the proof anybody should need that I was sleeping with her. In other words, it might not work terribly well for science, but it's great for fantasies...

2. PE amounts to a claim that inbreeding is the most major source of genetic advancement in the world. Apparently Steve Gould never saw Deliverance...

3. PE requires these tiny peripheral groups to conquer vastly larger groups of animals millions if not billions of times, which is like requiring Custer to win at the little Big Horn every day, for millions of years.

4. PE requires an eternal victory of animals specifically adapted to localized and parochial conditions over animals which are globally adapted, which never happens in real life.

5. For any number of reasons, you need a minimal population of any animal to be viable. This is before the tiny group even gets started in overwhelming the vast herds. A number of American species such as the heath hen became non-viable when their numbers were reduced to a few thousand; at that point, any stroke of bad luck at all, a hard winter, a skewed sex ratio in one generation, a disease of some sort, and it's all over. The heath hen was fine as long as it was spread out over the East coast of the U.S. The point at which it got penned into one of these "peripheral" areas which Gould and Eldredge see as the salvation for evolutionism, it was all over.

The sort of things noted in items 3 and 5 are generally referred to as the "gambler's problem", in this case, the problem facing the tiny group of "peripheral" animals being similar to that facing a gambler trying to beat the house in blackjack or roulette; the house could lose many hands of cards or rolls of the dice without flinching, and the globally-adapted species spread out over a continent could withstand just about anything short of a continental-scale catastrophe without going extinct, while two or three bad rolls of the dice will bankrupt the gambler, and any combination of two or three strokes of bad luck will wipe out the "peripheral" species. Gould's basic method of handling this problem is to ignore it.

And there's one other thing which should be obvious to anybody attempting to read through Gould and Eldridge's BS:

The don't even bother to try to provide a mechanism or technical explaination of any sort for this "punk-eek"

They are claiming that at certain times, amongst tiny groups of animals living in peripheral areas, a "speciation event(TM)" happens, and THEN the rest of it takes place. In other words, they are saying:

ASSUMING that Abracadabra-Shazaam(TM) happens, then the rest of the business proceeds as we have described in our scholarly discourse above!

Again, Gould and Eldridge require that the Abracadabra-Shazaam(TM) happen not just once, but countless billions of times, i.e. at least once for every kind of complex creature which has ever walked the Earth. They do not specify whether this amounts to the same Abracadabra-Shazaam each time, or a different kind of Abracadabra-Shazaam for each creature.

[freedumb2003]

That doesn't appear to be asking for much...

I stopped reading your long cut-n-paste at that point. I hope you enjoyed posting it -- no one will be reading it.

I asked for respect -- your insult proves you are not of God nor Godliness.

I see you can't do this without using insults either, Ted.

Not unusual for you and your ilk.

[wendy1946]

I asked for respect...

Who would you expect to respect somebody who thinks that a complex information code like RNA/DNA just sort of happened??

[freedumb2003]

.Who would you expect to respect somebody who thinks that a complex information code like RNA/DNA just sort of happened??

I have been clear on my interpretation of the science in the experiment. Your purposeful misconstruing of my post does not add to the discussion. Please note I have been respectful and very denotative.

I insulted no one in my analysis. If you do not agree with my historical analysis of how science stairsteps then I invite you to tell all of us where I am wrong -- from a PROCESS perspective and in your own words (I suggest you be brief if you wish your response to be read by anyone).

You could not go 1 sentence without a direct insult.

Which, based on my observations, is the way you God people like to post. Look at E/S and your own posts. Is this how Jesus asks you to talk to people?

I will continue to be respectful and denotative.

I ask you for the second time to do the same, Ted.

[wendy1946]

Not only is sitting around trying to guess identities of posters against the rules of every known forum including this one, but I have noticed one certain and several likely cases of you and your DC crew getting people banned from FR who had NO idea of what was going on, and you ask for respect??

[freedumb2003]

Not only is sitting around trying to guess identities of posters against the rules of every known forum including this one, but I have noticed one certain and several likely cases of you and your DC crew getting people banned from FR who had NO idea of what was going on, and you ask for respect??

That does not undo your direct insult. If you are not Ted, you most certainly are free to say so.

And you haven't answered which part of Jesus' teachings suggest that insult is a proper way to meet those with whom you disagree.

I apologized upthread and admitted I was wrong. I have made a promise which I am and shall hew to about how I will conduct myself.

Now, will you admit you are merely hurling insults, wipe the slate clean and begin a real debate based on fact and logic?

[wendy1946]

The guessing game itself tells me you’re not serious and that you’re more interested in having other people banned than in conducting any sort of a rational debate, and that that’s basically how you mean to “win” debates...

[metmom]

Many to most of the scientists who became the early members of Darwin Central were banned from this site. Most were banned for supporting the theory of evolution.

FOTFLOL!

Most of them were banned for violating forum rules, vulgar, obscene accusations against creationists about their moral lives (there are still copies of some of those posts floating around the internet), defying the mods warnings about behavior, name calling, and asking to have their accounts nuked.

No one was banned for simply supporting evolution no matter how many times you say it or how much you wish it were so.

And I'd bet that most of the EVOS banned weren't really scientists either. You can't pretend that all the evos are scientists either because many of them are not.

[valkyry1]

Amazing on how someone who so prides themselves on being accurate are so willing to mis-represent the truth

[freedumb2003]

The guessing game itself tells me you’re not serious and that you’re more interested in having other people banned than in conducting any sort of a rational debate, and that that’s basically how you mean to “win” debates...

Well, as an adieu, I remind you that sock puppetry is pretty much proscribed behavior.

Let me summarize:

• Your responses to everyone has been insult-laden
• Those insults are not what Jesus tells us to do
• I have not insulted you
• You appear to be a sock puppet and have not directly refuted the suggestion
• You have succeeded in derailing the discussion away from the science of the matter, which I am now fixing

I may continue to respond to others on this thread. I shall not be responding to you.

I hope you can make peace with your God on your behavior on these threads.

Good night and may God bless you anyway.

[freedumb2003]

No one was banned for simply supporting evolution no matter how many times you say it or how much you wish it were so.

Sorry mm -- that is just not true. Many or most were banned for their views on (read: understanding of) evolution -- including me. Yes, some were frustrated and resorted to snide retorts, but not even CLOSE to what they were met with. You have only to see E/S and wendy####s responses on THIS VERY THREAD. Those types of responses got many DCers banned. Creationists had immunity. Including you.

Revisionist history is not a good thing under any circumstance.

But, FWIIW, you were honest in your discussion and always tried to keep it on an objective level. Not so, many of your colleagues who just resort to name calling.

[wendy1946]

Your self righteousness is misplaced.

[TheOldLady]

Electricity, cancer treatments, inventions, improvements are all within our human purview. Creating life is God's job. I just don't think we'll ever succeed at it. Besides, they've been announcing that life has been created in the lab since I was in high school in the 1960's. Back then, it was "primordial soup and electricity."

Don't you get it? It's just another lie like "change."

[metmom]

Some asked to have their accounts nuked, some were banned for taking liberal positions on political or moral issues, some threatened lawsuits against JR, some made incredibly obscene comments to and about DLR, some were nuked for being retreads.

For all the bannings that I remember seeing, they were all for violating forum rules and defying the mods corrections regarding behavior and post content.

There are copies of pulled posts that resulted in the plug being pulled on some of those FReepers floating around. They were nuked with good reason.

So, please, which FReepers were banned for merely supporting evolution and why then, weren’t more banned, and why were you allowed back if that’s the criteria.

The bannings haven’t been one sided either. There are more than a few on the creationist side who have incurred FR’s blue screen of death.

[Sopater]

Uh, no. They simulated conditions from 4 billion years ago.

I didn't see that in the article. I only saw that they "synthesized RNA enzymes that can replicate themselves without the help of any proteins or other cellular components, and the process proceeds indefinitely."

What exactly were the conditions 4billion years ago and what were the conditions in this experiment?

[Sopater]

Ping!

[Sopater]

Ping!

[Sopater]

...the odds are 100% certain that consciousness probably ...

Ya had me, and then ya lost me.

[Sopater]

And I'd bet that most of the EVOS banned weren't really scientists either.

That would be an extremely safe bet. Most scientists are honest enough to admit that there is indeed a line between what is know and what is not know; what is science and what is not science; what can be tested and what cannot be tested. They won't stoop to levying personal attacks in order to defend their faith, and they won't call their faith "science".

[freedumb2003]

Electricity, cancer treatments, inventions, improvements are all within our human purview. Creating life is God's job. I just don't think we'll ever succeed at it. Besides, they've been announcing that life has been created in the lab since I was in high school in the 1960's. Back then, it was "primordial soup and electricity."

Don't you get it? It's just another lie like "change."

Scientific pursuit of the conditions within which life was created is a valid scientific pursuit. There are none, nor should there be, any areas in the natural Universe "off limits" to science.

Not quite sure what lie to which you refer. The report is quite hopen and honest about what it does and does not conclude.