Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by James on January 8, 2012 at 5:01pm

http://www.debate.org/debates/Abiogenesis-Is-Impossible/1/

Great, a link to a debate where both come up short... The point I was making with that hypothesis for Abiogenesis wasn't that we KNOW that's what happened. Heck, we still don't know the exact conditions of early Earth will 100% certainty. We can estimate the conditions as closely as possible given what info we do have, and this can always change as well. Fact is, I don't know if that example is how life started. I simply picked an example of how life (and information) could arise naturally given proper conditions. If the right ingredients were there in order for the mechanisms to work (on Earth or elsewhere), then you have a natural alternative... Something you said was impossible. True, the case outlined may not be how it happened. We may never know how it happened for certain. As our knowledge grows, we may even disprove that specific model definitively in respect to Earth. But even if that is done, and there is a chemical recipe that would work if the conditions were right, then you can't say it's totally impossible, just that it didn't happen that way here. So please don't confuse that I am saying that we know exactly how it happened. I don't know for certain, and neither case has been proven. Hopefully that'll can be my last word on Abiogenesis.

Since we know the complex life of Earth evolved from much simpler forms

We don't know that. That is a unsupported claim.

Angelo... I'm not going to even get into that here. There have been plenty of threads on here about evolution that make the case wonderfully. Honestly, the case for evolution is so well made that I can only assume that you're being deliberately ignorant or discarding the evidence out of hat.

Cheers!

Permalink Reply by Angelo on January 8, 2012 at 9:21pm

i have only said that codified , complex, specified information as contained in DNA cannot arise spontaneously, by chance. That is strong evidence that a intelligent mind created life. That fact is evidenced by empirical proofs. 

Permalink Reply by James on January 8, 2012 at 9:56pm

You're assuming we're saying there was nothing then *poof* DNA. DNA is the most recent and complex version. Why is it so impossible to you to imagine that simple 'information' was replaced by something slightly more complex, which was replaced by something more complex, which was replaced buy something more complex, etc, etc in gradual steps until we ended up with RNA and then DNA?

Secondly, just because we haven't specifically figured out the natural creation of DNA doesn't mean that it can't happen. It just means that we haven't seen it happen. I fail to see how the lack of a specific natural explanation somehow decrees 'god did it' as somehow more accurate as 'we don't know'. In the lack of verifiable evidence, 'I don't know' is the more honest answer. Additionally, how do you make the jump from 'a god' to your specific god?

Permalink Reply by Angelo on January 8, 2012 at 9:59pm

You're assuming we're saying there was nothing then *poof* DNA. DNA is the most recent and complex version. Why is it so impossible to you to imagine that simple 'information' was replaced by something slightly more complex, which was replaced by something more complex, which was replaced buy something more complex, etc, etc in gradual steps until we ended up with RNA and then DNA?

that is simply not possible:

http://elshamah.heavenforum.org/t287-information-evidence-for-a-cre...

if every square foot of the earth's surface was covered with monkeys randomly typing on typewriters, at the rate of ten characters per second (about 5 times the realistic speed) they could not do the job. Even if they typed non-stop for 30 billion years there would not be the slightest chance that one of them would type even a single five word sentence of 31 characters, with spaces and punctuation in the correct place. The probability for them to achieve this is less than one chance in a trillion. 

Richard Dawkins also appeals to the monkeys to convince his readers that evolution by natural selection is plausible. He believes that a thousand such monkeys could type Shakespeare's sentence, "Methinks it is like a weasel." However, the probability of them typing this six-word sentence (including spaces), is one chance in 1039. 

It has been calculated that it would be statistically impossible to randomly type even the first 100 characters in Shakespeare's "Hamlet". If the monkeys typed only in lower case, including the 27 spaces in the first 100 characters, the chances are 27100 (ie. one chance in 10^143). 

but it comes even worse....

Some scientists and educators have tried to get around the above problems by speculating that as long as all the chemicals that make up the molecule of heredity (and the information it contains) came together at some time in the past, then life could have begun.
Life is built upon information. In fact, in just one of the trillions of cells that make up the human body, the amount of information in its genes would fill at least 1,000 books of 500 pages of typewritten information. Scientists now think this is hugely underestimated.
Where did all this information come from? Some try to explain it this way: imagine a professor taking all the letters of the alphabet, A–Z, and placing them in a hat. He then passes the hat around to students of his class and asks each to randomly select a letter.
It is easy for us to see the possibility (no matter how remote it seems) of three students in a row selecting B then A and finally T. Put these three letters together and they spell a word—BAT. Thus, the professor concludes, given enough time, no matter how improbable it seems, there is always the possibility one could form a series of words that make a sentence, and eventually compile an encyclopedia. The students are then led to believe that no intelligence is necessary in the evolution of life from chemicals. As long as the molecules came together in the right order for such compounds as DNA, then life could have begun.
On the surface, this sounds like a logical argument. However, there is a basic, fatal flaw in this analogy. The sequence of letters, B-A-T, is a word to whom? Someone who speaks English, Dutch, French, German, or Chinese? It is a word only to someone who knows the language. In other words, the order of letters is meaningless unless there is a language system and a translation system already in place to make the order meaningful.
In the DNA of a cell, the order of its molecules is also meaningless, except that in the biochemistry of a cell, there is a language system (other molecules) that makes the order meaningful. DNA without the language system is meaningless, and the language system without the DNA wouldn’t work either. The other complication is that the language system that reads the order of the molecules in the DNA is itself specified by the DNA. This is another one of those “machines” that must already be in existence and fully formed, or life won’t work!

Permalink Reply by Jacob LeMaster on January 8, 2012 at 10:09pm

You know if you took one letter from each monkey and put them in the right order you could write anything.

Permalink Reply by James on January 8, 2012 at 11:11pm

Yes, very highly improbable if you're looking for it to be perfect in right away. But suppose you have system A and B. Then the more successful system is selected for, so on and so forth until you arrive closer and closer to an end result that seems impossible in one take. It's not just blind chance at play, but checks and competition as well. The monkeys will continue typing with no proofing or correction. They are unaware that they are not reproducing Hamlet, nor are they aware that they are supposed to be (or even know Hamlet). But this other discussion is something else entirely. Suppose there are a handful of precursors to RNA. No one is assuming them to transition directly to RNA in a single go. However, there could be 'codes' that are more efficient at copying, they may be more stable or they may be able to hold more 'information' than another. It's not impossible that the more successful weeded out the less so. After that, further evolutions on the 'code' could transition theoretically to a 'code' distinguishable from whence it came. Then there's homo-DNA. It uses six sugars instead of standard DNA's five. It is similar to DNA, and is actually more stable. However, it looks more haphazard and has been to a 'slowly writhing ribbon' compared to DNA's twisted ladder. Homo-DNA actually has a more versatile pairing system, yet due to the different sugar backbone, the pairing rules are different (DNA- G:C is similar to homo-DNA- G:G or A:A). While it is more versatile and stable, it pales to DNA in regards to reduced pairing efficiently. So there's the possibility of a past landscape where DNA and homo-DNA were in competition and homo-DNA lost out to DNA. But the plethora of sugars and alternative bases mean almost endless combinations to be tried and weighed until DNA hit gold.

Do we know how? No. But it seems like a good enough possibility to continue weighing the matter, and certainly sounds like discarding the possibility out of hat is unwarranted.

Permalink Reply by Angelo on January 9, 2012 at 12:14am

But suppose you have system A and B. Then the more successful system is selected for, 

http://www.darwinismrefuted.com/molecular_biology_16.html

Evolutionist John Horgan admits the impossibility of the chance formation of RNA;

As researchers continue to examine the RNA-World concept closely, more problems emerge. How did RNA initially arise? RNA and its components are difficult to synthesize in a laboratory under the best of conditions, much less under really plausible ones

2. Even if we suppose that it formed by chance, how could this RNA, consisting of just a nucleotide chain, have "decided" to self-replicate, and with what kind of mechanism could it have carried out this self-replicating process? Where did it find the nucleotides it used while self-replicating? Even evolutionist microbiologists Gerald Joyce and Leslie Orgel express the desperate nature of the situtation in their book In the RNA World:

This discussion… has, in a sense, focused on a straw man: the myth of a self-replicating RNA molecule that arose de novo from a soup of random polynucleotides. Not only is such a notion unrealistic in light of our current understanding of prebiotic chemistry, but it would strain the credulity of even an optimist's view of RNA's catalytic potential.275

3. Even if we suppose that there was self-replicating RNA in the primordial world, that numerous amino acids of every type ready to be used by RNA were available, and that all of these impossibilities somehow took place, the situation still does not lead to the formation of even one single protein. For RNA only includes information concerning the structure of proteins. Amino acids, on the other hand, are raw materials. Nevertheless, there is no mechanism for the production of proteins. To consider the existence of RNA sufficient for protein production is as nonsensical as expecting a car to assemble itself by simply throwing the blueprint onto a heap of parts piled up on top of each other. A blueprint cannot produce a car all by itself without a factory and workers to assemble the parts according to the instructions contained in the blueprint; in the same way, the blueprint contained in RNA cannot produce proteins by itself without the cooperation of other cellular components which follow the instructions contained in the RNA.

Proteins are produced in the ribosome factory with the help of many enzymes, and as a result of extremely complex processes within the cell. The ribosome is a complex cell organelle made up of proteins. This leads, therefore, to another unreasonable supposition-that ribosomes, too, should have come into existence by chance at the same time. Even Nobel Prize winner Jacques Monod, who was one of the most fanatical defenders of evolution-and atheism-explained that protein synthesis can by no means be considered to depend merely on the information in the nucleic acids:

The code is meaningless unless translated. The modern cell's translating machinery consists of at least 50 macromolecular components, which are themselves coded in DNA: the code cannot be translated otherwise than by products of translation themselves. It is the modern expression of omne vivum ex ovo. When and how did this circle become closed? It is exceedingly difficult to imagine.

Permalink Reply by Kir Komrik on January 9, 2012 at 12:47am

Hey Angelo,

Evolutionist John Horgan admits the impossibility of the chance formation of RNA;

 

This makes more sense to me. However, do we know the minimum base pair sequence required for natural selection to operate?

But, I guess it gets worse in these kinds of unknowns, right? I mean, is there a process other than natural selection that boot strapped natural selection? A process that no longer operates in nature? Could that process require just a few base pairs?

How do we know that that is not the case? It seems there are all sorts of ways to think of how RNA could have been assembled with sufficient complexity for other natural processes to take over. Perhaps it was pass the baton, with numerous processes in a chain, some of them not even occuring at Earth?

In fact, couldn't aliens have created RNA? I mean, it is possible, right? I'm only asking if that is possible, you understand?

The hypotheticals, to include your "god" as one possibility, are endless, right? How do we know it was your god and not an alien, or whatever of a million possibilities it could have been?

 

As for monkeys and typewriters, isn't the base pair sequence just a "history" of selection pressures, mutations, etc.?

 

- kk

 

 

Permalink Reply by James on January 9, 2012 at 8:57pm

Angelo, thank you once again for ignoring most of what I wrote and copy and pasting a bunch of information discussing exactly what I wasn't saying... If you re-read you will see that I was talking about the possibility of complex systems like RNA and DNA coming from simpler systems one step at a time. Not  the sudden and random appearance of RNA or DNA all in one go. I was talking of simple systems + competition selecting the better systems, repeating over geologic time with complexity slightly increasing all the while. The discussion of DNA vs homo-DNA highlighted this idea of competition selecting for the more successful system. I don't know definitively how it happened, and truthfully, neither do you. One thing clear is that you non-explanation isn't the only choice as you'd like us to think.

Permalink Reply by Kir Komrik on January 9, 2012 at 12:39am

Hey Angelo,

 

I just looked up "Information theory" vis-a-vis DNA and have found very little. So, I'll start with some questions. DNA consists of base pairs which, depending on the exact linear sequence of base pairs A-G, C-T, a specific amino acid is "coded" (where you get the word "code" from?). And a specific combination of amino acids constitutes a specific protein.

 

Natural selection, as I understand it, suggests that these specific sequences are present, at least in one way, by selection pressures. So, the specific sequence of base pairs is a "history" of the experience of potentially multiple species over time (depending on the time interval evaluated)?

 

Why do you need a "god" to get that "code"? Seems like natural selection does the job; in the sense that this "code" is just a "history". Nothing more, nothing all that exciting. Can you explain? Yes, it is encoded in one context and decoded in another but, still, how is that so exciting?

 

- kk

Permalink Reply by Kris Feenstra on January 9, 2012 at 12:50am

"Code" is a legitimate term in genetics, but it has to be used in its correct context just as almost all words.

Permalink Reply by Kir Komrik on January 9, 2012 at 12:57am

@Kris,

 

So, in this context we mean to say it is coding for a specific amino acid, and that yet longer chains of base pairs could code for a protein?

 

In this sense, what we are talking about is a "coding" of ancient selection pressure effects into a contemporaneous organism carrying those genes? Is that right? I'm totally guessing here but I'm trying to understand Angelo's argument as I have not heard this one before.

 

- kk

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