Shaped from clay [origin of life]

Nature Magazine ^ | 03 November 2005 | Philip Ball

[MineralMan]

"Where did the SEEDS come from?

Who did the SEEDING?"

---

Read the article, please. Methanol has occurred naturally in this experiment. I am not responsible for your not reading the article, thank you very much.

If you are not willing to take the time to read what is presented, please don't ask others to do your work for you.

[Elsie]

Neither selection nor inheritance is random.

Right - it has RULES.

[js1138]

I'm too old to think. I can't remember when I first read Microbe Hunters, but then I can't remember where I left my shoes...

[Elsie]

Mutation is random on the individual level, but it is guided by natural selection, which is inherently non-random and purpose-driven.

[Varda]

No doubt and the only real purpose of scripture is theological. I think turning scripture into a simple sequence of events strips it of the meaning God and the sacred writers intended.

[MineralMan]

They're under the coffee table in the living room.

[Elsie]

The sacred writers purposefully placed stumbling blocks in the writing to take certain ideas off the table.

Huh?

[Elsie]

For growing crops clay soil is better than sandy soil.

Kinda depends on WHICH crops; don't it?

[Elsie]

What's that? It's "Beat up on Pharmboy" day?

(Elsie hasn't shown up yet.... ;^)

[Quark2005]

If this be Science: replicate it!

That's exactly what they did:

The group simulated the vent environment in the laboratory, immersing various types of clay in pressurized water at 300 °C for several weeks and looking at the fate of a simple organic compound, methanol, in this stew.

Sorry, but it DEMONSTRATES nothing.

It just CLAIMS that it does.

I'm not sure I understand this comment - are you suggesting the experiment is a hoax? (The journal Geology has a pretty impeccable reputation and high standard for publication; I'd hate to think they have their guard down..)

[Elsie]

My point is that God has told us about creation and many of us insist on making up our own stories.

You might want to check with Coyoteman about this, as he is a resident Creation Story expert.

(Coyoteman pinged as a courtesy since I mentioned his name, too.)

[Elsie]

But...but if evolution says that God does not exist, it has to explain where life came from!

< /idiot creationist mode >

No it Doesn't!!!

 

We avoid that topic like the Third Rail!

 

 

EvoDude

But...but if evolution says that God does not exist, it has to explain where life came from!

< /idiot creationist mode >

No it Doesn't!!!

We avoid that topic like the Third Rail!

EvoDude

[Elsie]

If one wants to simulate conditions on the primative earth we have a mechanism, that still exists today, to create large organic molecules and look, they form themselves into cells.

Only if one GUESSES to what those 'conditions' actually were!

[MineralMan]

"Only if one GUESSES to what those 'conditions' actually were!"

Don't be silly. The undersea vents exist. They existed before. Simulating their environment seems a good way to experiment with them.

No guesswork is involved.

[Varda]

"Divine Wisdom has arranged for there to be certain stumbling blocks or interruptions of the narrative meaning, by inserting in its midst certain impossibilities and contradictions, so that the very interpretation of the narrative might oppose the reader, as it were, with certain obstacles thrown in the way. By them Wisdom denies a way and an access to the common understanding, and when we are shut out and hurled back, it calls us back to the beginning of another way, so that by gaining a higher and loftier road through entering a narrow footpath it may open for us the immense breadth of divine knowledge."
Origen of Alexandria (ca. 185-254)

[Quark2005]

I think it was less a leap of faith than a conclusion drawn from from calculations and observation.

I think you're half right. Calculations, yes, observations, no. LeMaitre realized that Einstein's equations of general relativity led naturally to an expanding universe, but the observation of an expanding universe did not yet exist. Einstein (incorrectly) handled the problem by adding an extra term into his GR equations - LeMaitre stated that the term didn't need to be there if the universe originated from a primeval expansion. Eventual observations proved his hypothesis. But you are right - scientists shouldn't have bashed the man's idea, because what he proposed was a testable hypothesis. (Interestingly, Russian physicist Alexander Friedmann drew the same conclusions independently of Lemaitre.)

[Elsie]

They are ASSUMING that vents were present on early Earth; aren't they?

Sea floor spreading needs a FLOOR to spread and according to the Pangea theory, there was NO floor until it broke apart into our continents.

At that time there were already fossils imbedded in the rock layers,; weren't they?

[Elsie]

Read the article, please. Methanol has occurred naturally in this experiment. I am not responsible for your not reading the article, thank you very much.

If you are not willing to take the time to read what is presented, please don't ask others to do your work for you.

 

 

HMmmm... when I read it, I found THIS line in it:

 

They chose methanol because their earlier work had shown that the compound could be formed in a vent environment from simple gases such as carbon dioxide and hydrogen.

 

It appears to me that what you assert is a bit off target.

[Quark2005]

We avoid that topic like the Third Rail!

I think the existence of this article is pretty good evidence that this statement isn't true....

[Elsie]

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