Posted on 06/07/2002 11:35:28 AM PDT by jennyp
"Some future day may yet arrive when all reasonable chemical experiments run to discover a probable origin of life have failed unequivocally. Further, new geological evidence may yet indicate a sudden appearance of life on the earth. Finally, we may have explored the universe and found no trace of life, or processes leading to life, elsewhere. Some scientists might choose to turn to religion for an answer. Others, however, myself included, would attempt to sort out the surviving less probable scientific explanations in the hope of selecting one that was still more likely than the remainder."
--Robert Shapiro
All this pseudo-mathematical blather does nothing to prove that prokariotes are the spontaneous beginning of life. You have invented a theory no branch of science holds, and roundly refuted it. Congratulations.
Give me a break. One failed experiment regarding one possible way RNA might have self-reproduced without DNA is hardly a definitive indication. I still await your PROOF that RNA couldn't have gotten going without DNA. It quite obviously could have--there are substantial machines in our present reproductive makeup that are made of RNA exclusively.
So although we may never know the exact conditions under which abiogenesis occurred we can nonetheless come up with scenarios that show it is possible. But even if we find such a scenario it doesn't mean that it actually happend that way. Afterall it may have taken an other pathway but at least it would have been demonstrated that it is not chemically impossible. Of course it may require a chain of very unlikely events but this doesn't mean that it is impossible or that it needs a very long time to happen. An event with low probability may occur in the next five minutes or it may take ten gazillion years until it happens.
What have I just been saying? There are plenty of hypotheses presently extant just now regarding how prokariotic life might of had substantial precursors, even pre-cellular precursors. No one has offered anything even remotely resembling a proof that any of them might not, in fact, be the actual case.
What's essential is self-reproduction with constrained modification & self maintainance in some kind of energy capturing chemical cycle. One could say that, at base, you are just a citric acid cycle with mostly useless energy-consuming doo-dads attached. Nobody writ on a stone tablet somewhere that you had to have protein, DNA, or even RNA, or even a specific location with a phosphorus-based hydrophobic/philic skin around it to get the ball rolling.
And, certainly, nobody as demonstrated that there must be a huge miracle somewhere along the way to get from that to Mozart--and without said demonstration, unmasterable complexity arguments are not going to be any more persuasive for scientists than the fossil gap argument, which is the same sort of fundamental refusal to understand that reasoning by induction on samplings is how science operates, and that merely pointing out that science isn't all knowing is not an adequate way to refute a scientific hypothesis.
As I have been pointing out, this future day cannot arrive, since there are an infinite number of chemical experiments one could try, whose reasonableness cannot be determined sight unseen, and therefore no possibility of "reasonable" closure in a finite universe.
You are playing games with words here
No. I am making the same point here that I just made above. Unmasterable complexity arguments without a state-space & a selection criteria most of the science community buys into, is so much brain-drizzle--not a scientific proof of anything.
massive computational attempts to look back in history, as proof, has little to do with science
So why did Sagan and Muncaster do it?
and the obvious failure of such attempts, should they be made, would have no impact whatsoever on science.
It seems they have an impact. Abiogenesis has fallen as a science. Getting life to sponateously arise from chemicals is akin to transmuting lead into gold. Except success is exponentially less likely.
Perhaps you didn't see this, which I posted to you in another thread three hours ago?
You:
I've pointed out the extreme unlikelihood of the accidental occurance of life. Arguably, it is an event which is mathematically impossible -- based on the age of the universe and the amount of events possible during that time. Frankly, it is more rational to believe in miracles.Me:
This notion is like the Terminator. It just won't die, no matter how many times you shoot it, blow it up, crush it, burn it, etc., it just keeps on coming ...You seem to have this notion of a strand of complicated DNA just popping into existence out of random atoms scattered around the universe, but chemistry doesn't work like that. You start with an ocean full of organic compounds which form naturally (and which can be demonstrated to do so in the lab). Make that several oceans, because earth has lots of ocean. Carbon forms organic compounds very easily. You can't really prevent it. Carbon atoms are very promiscuous. They can naturally form long, complicated chains of organic molecules. Most of those chains are worthless, but you've got oceans full of this stuff, trillions of organic molecules drifting around, and you've got hundreds of millions of years to play with. That's billions and billions of potential combinations and re-combinations going on all the time, for millions and millions of years. Some compounds may have drifted in from comets, as they form so readily that we find them off the earth as well as here at home. It just takes one time that one of those already complicated strands combines with another and blunders into the configuration required to be a self-replicator. It doesn't pop into existence from scratch; it's assembled from pre-existing components (this is the point so often missing in the "life from non-life is impossible" math models). Then, before long, you've got oceans of self-replicating molecules. They bubble and boil and combine and re-combine for millions of years. It's not really inevitable that you'll get living material out of this organic brew. But it's certainly not impossible. And here we are. Ta-da!
957 posted on 6/13/02 4:43 PM Eastern by PatrickHenry
Originally liberals were social conservatives who advocated growth and progess mostly technological(knowledge being absolute/unchanging)based on law--reality...the nature of man/govt. does not change.
Atheist secular materialists through evolution removed the foundations...made the absolutes relative and call all technology evolution(science) to substantiate their efforts--claims...social engineering--PC!
Liberals/Evolution BELIEVE they are the conservatives too!
What's left?
Evolutionistas are liberal moles---cancer!
Originally liberals were social conservatives who advocated growth and progess
For an enlightening experience look up the word "liberalism" on Merriam Webster Online. I did and was shocked when I learned that I was a liberal.
Evolutionistas are liberal moles---cancer!
Once upon a time I believed in evolution, and I'm still willing to consider the scientific arguments. What caused me to drift away more than anything was that it's advocates appeared to be defending it as a religion rather than a scientific theory.
I've said before that I'm willing to go back to it and accept Genesis as an allegory. My faith in Jesus and God won't be affected in the least.
What bothers me more than anything in this debate is that evolution proponents don't seem willing to consider the possibility that macro-evolution may not have occurred and that there is strong evidence for this.
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One more thing I want to know is whether all species that ever lived (animal or plant) were created at one point in the past or whether they were created consecutively.
My inclination would be to say consecutively.
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