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
So why did Sagan and Muncaster do it?
Kindly give me a link to the PROOF that Sagan and Muncaster published. It's brain-drizzle, not science, whether it's done by Behe or Sagan.
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.
Do you suffer the impression that you can make something true by saying it over and over? The official Tree of Life, not exactly a sideshow to biological sciences, has just been revised at its root due to mutational distance studies of the ribosomes of all the ancient microscopic families. Woese's work, upon which this revision is based, shows that prokariotes are not, in fact, the oldest lifeform. In fact, Ribosomal backvectors suggest that something way older than cellular life had to be the precursor even of thermatoga, the current longevity champ.
You are free to dislike abiogenesis, but you are not free to proclaim that it has fallen as a science without being quite properly dismissed as a delusional crank.