Chemical evolution:

[Write4U]

Why must the true answer to life's origins be "scientific"?

Because it involves only chemical transmutation, not any extraneous ID or other exterior interference .
I think there is a category error being committed in this entire conversation...

There is no Elan Vital. That's old stuff!
Criticism

The general consensus of geneticists is that they see no "life force" other than the organisational matrix contained in the genes themselves, according to R.F. Weir.[8]

The British secular humanist biologist Julian Huxley dryly remarked that Bergson’s élan vital is no better an explanation of life than is explaining the operation of a railway engine by its élan locomotif ("locomotive driving force").

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Élan_vital

Abiogenesis

In evolutionary biology, abiogenesis, or informally the origin of life (OoL),[3][4][5][a] is the natural process by which life has arisen from non-living matter, such as simple organic compounds.[6][4][7][8] While the details of this process are still unknown, the prevailing scientific hypothesis is that the transition from non-living to living entities was not a single event, but an evolutionary process of increasing complexity that involved molecular self-replication, self-assembly, autocatalysis, and the emergence of cell membranes.[9][10][11]

Although the occurrence of abiogenesis is uncontroversial among scientists, its possible mechanisms are poorly understood. There are several principles and hypotheses for how abiogenesis could have occurred.[12]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis

Organic compound
Methane, CH4; is among the simplest organic compounds.

In chemistry, organic compounds are generally any chemical compounds that contain carbon-hydrogen bonds. Due to carbon's ability to catenate (form chains with other carbon atoms), millions of organic compounds are known. The study of the properties, reactions, and syntheses of organic compounds comprises the discipline known as organic chemistry. For historical reasons, a few classes of carbon-containing compounds (e.g., carbonate anion salts and cyanide salts), along with a handful of other exceptions (e.g., carbon dioxide), are not classified as organic compounds and are considered inorganic.

Other than those just named, little consensus exists among chemists on precisely which carbon-containing compounds are excluded, making any rigorous definition of an organic compound elusive.[1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_compound

Abiogenesis is a chemical process and therefore falls in the domain of Science, not spirituality.

 

[paddoboy]

Do you doubt that abiogenesis is a chemical process?

I don't know how it happened. Do you?

Bingo James!!! Now you're getting it!!! It happened, but as yet we don't know exactly how it happened. A gold star!!

The key word being, in this discussion, "somehow".

Yes, it happened, somehow.

Assumption. Your assumption, you mean.Assumption piled upon assumption. Why do you insist on doing that?

I could say plenty about assumptions but you would probably move it to another thread.

"abiogenesis" is just a label for whatever (currently unknown) process formed life from non-life.

No, its a process by which we logically arrive at, because it is the only solution.

 

[paddoboy]

Paddoboy repeats his mantra once again as if the strength of an argument is a function of repetition...

I repeat my argument, just as essentially you are doing, because I see it as correct.

Can support what? Your conclusion? How does one get from simply observing that life appears to have had an initial origin (somehow, somewhere) to a never-clearly-stated conclusion that you seem to believe is absolutely devastating against the creationists?

Is that what's troubling for you? The fact that it is absolutely devastating for our creationists/IDer friends?

If you want to make progress from the place where you are currently stuck you will need to clearly state what your conclusion is and then argue for it as best you can, making clear all your hidden assumptions.

I advise you to talk to James about assumptions. All I'm saying is that Abiogenesis is the only scientific answer to how life arose. That's not an assumption, until someone can give me another scientific process about how life arose.

Why must the true answer to life's origins be "scientific"? What prevents these other sorts of accounts of life's origins from being true?

Interesting question...so we have a choice, science and a scientific answer, based on some evidence and chemical processes, or ancient mythical faith based answers, that evolved in ancient times, before that terrible discipline of science reared its head.

If you want to slay creationism

I'm not out to slay creationism. People are free to accept what they will. But I will argue when people come to a science forum, preaching fire and brimstone, as opposed to a logical scientific answer.

This constantly repeated assertion of yours about "abiogenesis" being the "only scientific assumption/theory/process" isn't really about theory or process at all, is it? It isn't about the exceedingly technical details of nucleic acid polymerization, the genetic code and its regulation, protein synthesis, cell organization, or the origins of autotrophic chemical and energy metabolism or any of that. You don't seem interested in the strengths and weaknesses of all the gritty details of all of the hypotheses.

"Abiogenesis" seemingly just serves you as an occasion for slipping in your own metaphysical belief about the nature of reality as your initial premise without stating it openly, so that you can triumphantly pull it out again with all of the supposed authority of "science" behind it in order to slay the evil creationists.

Again, I'm not out to slay anyone, and yes I do see science as the only answer, and yes, I certainly am not a scientist that can give you a nitty gritty blow by blow account of biological processes.
I do read some though, and see answers and assumptions re life and the universe that I find much much more logical, and natural then some inner comforting, creative myth, to warm the cockles of someone's heart, and help them forget about the finality of death and the indifference of the universe as a whole, to all life.

But hey, Yazata, don't despair...I still find you a heaps better philosopher then iceaura or James!

 

[Yazata]

Bingo James!!! Now you're getting it!!! It happened, but as yet we don't know exactly how it happened. A gold star!!

Yes, it happened, somehow.

No, its a process by which we logically arrive at, because it is the only solution.

How is "it happened, somehow" a solution to life's origins?

How does saying that life appears to have had an origin leave people any more knowledgeable about the nature of that origin?

There's pretty clearly additional premises sneaking in. Logically, there would have to be.

 

[paddoboy]

Your nonsense about denial is irrelevant and I will ignore it. I walked you through that stuff already.

That's OK, your choice.

A word isn't an answer. Nor is it a theory.


Paul never says he has a theory of abiogenesis, or that anybody else has one. This is irrelevant.

Only irrelevant to someone with a possible agenda.
Whether you call Abiogenesis a theory, a process, or an assumption, I don't really care. It is though the only scientific answer we have for how life evolved.

False dichotomy. There are thousands of other possibilities that this guy isn't considering. You ought to pick your authorities more carefully that by random google searches.

Is there?
So we have the fact that once there was no life, then there was and either one of the following.....

1. Life arose from non-living stuff by itself.
2. A magical creature from who-knows-where magicked it all into existence.

What are the other thousands of possibilities? So as to not put you to too much trouble, 10 of that thousands will do.

 

[paddoboy]

How is "it happened, somehow" a solution to life's origins?

How does saying that life appears to have had an origin leave people any more knowledgeable about the nature of that origin?

There's pretty clearly additional premises sneaking in. Logically, there would have to be.

Obviously we do not have a direct solution or piece by piece solution to life's origins. That does not invalidate Abiogenesis.
But personally I have a liking [for know particular reason] for Panspermia.

 

[Yazata]

Whether you call Abiogenesis a theory, a process, or an assumption, I don't really care. It is though the only scientific answer we have for how life evolved.

Simply observing that life appears to have had an initial origin doesn't even start to answer the question of the nature of that origin. It's not an "answer" at all.

So we have the fact that once there was no life, then there was and either one of the following.....

1. Life arose from non-living stuff by itself.
2. A magical creature from who-knows-where magicked it all into existence.

What are the other thousands of possibilities? So as to not put you to too much trouble, 10 of that thousands will do.

The best and certainly most defensible one would probably be, 3. Life's origin is currently unknown.

Or somebody (not me) might want to argue that 4. Life originated through the action as an as-yet unknown formative principle. There need to be nothing "magical" about that, unless we think of the 'laws of physics" as magic. They are obviously formative principles of a sort. So the fundamental rules of reality may be set up in such a way as to be conducive to the appearance of life. (The various "fine tuning" arguments purport to find empirical evidence of this.)

We normally think of physical reality as rational in the sense that it conforms to reason. So one might want to argue that whatever is responsible for the rationality of reality is itself rational in some sense. This, btw, is the line of argument that many of the ancient, medieval and early modern neo-Platonists took. There's some sort of abstract and transcendant level of pure rational order that steers events down here.

These kind of ideas have been around in various forms since antiquity, especially in the Platonic tradition. They inform lots of religious thinking, which needn't be imagined as the Biblical literalism of fundamentalist protestantism.

 

[paddoboy]

Simply observing that life appears to have had an initial origin doesn't even start to answer the question of the nature of that origin. It's not an "answer" at all.

Of course it does, although we have a long way to go.

The best one would probably be, 3. Life's origin is currently unknown.

Or somebody (not me) might want to argue that 4. Life originated through the action as an as-yet unknown formative principle. There need to be nothing "magical" about that, unless we think of the 'laws

When that unknown formative principle rears its head, I'll consider it.
On your first one that you put in at [3] you would have to give me that third scientific process, other then Abiogenesis, and of which I don't believe we have one.

 

[Write4U]

How is "it happened, somehow" a solution to life's origins?

Because it happened chemically, somehow.

We do not have a solution to the exact chronological how, but we know that the "how" must have fallen in the general category of chemistry and specifically in the sub-category of bio-chemistry, and NOT in the category of miracles.

Well, maybe if you're religious......

 

[paddoboy]

(The various "fine tuning" arguments purport to find empirical evidence of this.)
.

Any apparent "fine tuning" is only seen that way, because we are a product of that tuning and are here to observe/experience it. If it wasn't that way, we would not be here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle
The anthropic principle is a group of principles attempting to determine how statistically probable our observations of the universe are, given that we could only exist in a particular type of universe to start with.[1] In other words, scientific observation of the universe would not even be possible if the laws of the universe had been incompatible with the development of sentient life. Proponents of the anthropic principle argue that it explains why this universe has the age and the fundamental physical constants necessary to accommodate conscious life, since if either had been different, we would not have been around to make observations. Anthropic reasoning is often used to deal with the fact that the universe seems to be fine tuned.[2]

 

[Write4U]

Anthropic reasoning is often used to deal with the fact that the universe seems to be fine tuned.[2]

IMO, the question of a universe fine-tuned for life is a bogus question.
If anything it's the other way around. The abundance of universal spaces, times, and chemical resources, made it "inevitable" and possibly "necessary" for life to emerge.

The universe is a (near) infinite warehouse of resources. Natural selection of bio-chemistry uses these resources in the fine tuning of life to all possible environments, everywhere.

Life can be found in the most inhospitable places imaginable. Where has the Universe been fine tuned to encourage life in those places? The statement makes it sound as if the same environment exists throughout the Universe. It doesn't!

Fine-tuned universe
Main articles: Fine-tuned universe and Anthropic principle

Some physicists have explored the notion that if the dimensionless physical constants had sufficiently different values, our Universe would be so radically different that intelligent life would probably not have emerged, and that our Universe therefore seems to be fine-tuned for intelligent life.

However, the phase space of the possible constants and their values is unknowable, so any conclusions drawn from such arguments are unsupported.

The anthropic principle states a logical truism: the fact of our existence as intelligent beings who can measure physical constants requires those constants to be such that beings like us can exist.

There are a variety of interpretations of the constants' values, including that of a divine creator (the apparent fine-tuning is actual and intentional), or that ours is one universe of many in a multiverse (e.g. the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics), or even that, if information is an innate property of the universe and logically inseparable from consciousness, a universe without the capacity for conscious beings cannot exist.

The fundamental constants and quantities of nature have been discovered to be fine-tuned to such an extraordinarily narrow range that if it were not, the origin and evolution of conscious life in the universe would not be permitted.[16]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_constant#Fine-tuned_universe

This is completely backwards. It makes no difference how inhospitable the universe is to life. As long as there is dynamic interaction of bio-chemicals, Life will find a way to "establish" and "thrive" in places completely taboo for other forms of life. There is no single universal fine-tuning to all of life. All life is fine tuned to its immediate environment.

Extremophiles do not live in environments fine-tuned for life.
Deep-Earth worms do not live in an environment fine-tuned for life.

Life in deep Earth totals 15 to 23 billion tons of carbon—hundreds of times more than humans, by Deep Carbon Observatory

A nematode (eukaryote) in a biofilm of microorganisms. This unidentified nematode (Poikilolaimus sp.) from Kopanang gold mine in South Africa, lives 1.4 km below the surface. Credit: Gaetan Borgonie, Extreme Life Isyensya, Belgium

https://phys.org/news/2018-12-life-deep-earth-totals-billion.html#:

 

[iceaura]

Another example of complete misrepresentation of what I was actually saying.

I'm responding to your posts, including the contents of the links you posted as they pertain. What you are "actually saying" is that, see.

You lost the drift some time back. And it's likewise tedious and frustrating dealing with your other statements here.

How would you know?

The immediately prior post included this, for example:

And your assertion '...As were complex and elaborate nonliving chemical structures...' in a prebiotic world is just that, an unevidenced assertion.

There is a very large amount of evidence for the ability of chemical elements to combine in complex molecular structures today. There is also the fact that many of these structures replicate with variation, exhibit chirality, and so forth. And finally, there is the fact of selection among different molecular structures in all plausible early environments. That combination of circumstances will - with probability near 1 - produce complex structures over time.

What do imagine would have prevented such structures from forming?

I took that to be "you saying" (to use your language) that my claim of complexity and elaboration in the chemical structures that covered and saturated the surface of the planet at the time was without evidence.

I noted that your claim was clearly wrong, and posted the most obvious reason: they form now to a limited extent even in the face of degradation and consumption by living beings, and there was nothing to prevent them from forming then.

This is maybe the overlooked pivot: If conditions are suitable (mainly: replication with selectable variation, enough time) Darwinian evolution is essentially inevitable (with probability not significantly different from 1).

That great complexity of chemical structure existed prior to life is therefore a default assumption - one would need a good argument and much evidence to claim the contrary.

Do you have that good argument?

 

[Q-reeus]

That great complexity of chemical structure existed prior to life is therefore a default assumption - one would need a good argument and much evidence to claim the contrary.
Do you have that good argument?

The more complex a notionally self-replicating molecule becomes, the more fragile it is, for the obvious reason there are more reactive sites subject to random environmental attack. It only takes attachment of one foreign radical to render it no longer self-replicating. The idea the environment can be naturally free and maintained free of poisonous molecular species is a totally unrealistic fantasy. I recommend taking 15 minutes to listen to this podcast:
https://idthefuture.com/1328/

 

[iceaura]

The more complex a notionally self-replicating molecule becomes, the more fragile it is,

Once again in the wake of the creationist bs that gets posted here in lieu of physical fact, the rhetorically mild but quite significant response:

That's not necessarily true.

Quite a few chemical compounds are stabilized by adding elements and structures, by adding complexity, by embedding them in complex arrangements. There's no particular reason all replicating ones would be excluded from that crowd.
Notice that DNA, in particular, is quite stable in chain lengths of millions. (DNA does not, of course, self-replicate - it is replicated by various protein complexes and the like. The fact that the replicated DNA then codes and abets the construction of those protein complexes and auxiliary factors, among others, opens up serious complications and large new fields of possibility for those attempting to discover what happened all those eons ago.

The idea the environment can be naturally free and maintained free of poisonous molecular species is a totally unrealistic fantasy.

Another irrelevancy of that kind.
In a discussion of abiogenesis via Darwinian evolution on this planet there is no "the environment". There are millions of environments.
Neither are there "poisonous" molecular species identifiable in advance of explication - until we know what happened, we can't say much about what was a threat to it. We can say a little, carefully, if we have the theory down pat.

ID folks are far from careful, and in my experience never (seriously: never have I run across personally) have Darwinian theory down pat.

 

[Write4U]

ID folks are far from careful, and in my experience never (seriously: never have I run across personally) have Darwinian theory down pat.

Perhaps it is a careful and intentional misdirection of interpretation of Darwinian theory.

The only way to attack evolution is to prove there are gaps in the evolutionary record which should then be interpreted as proof of external interference and ID fine tuning.

The false claim of a fine tuned universe is one of those reverse logical arguments. The Universe is not fine tuned for life, life is fine tuned to the universe, just as evolution is not the result of environmental fine tuning for life by an IDer, but the result of biological fine tuning to the environment.

IMO, Evolution is not causal to, but a result of Natural Selection, i.e. "survival".

 

[Q-reeus]

.Quite a few chemical compounds are stabilized by adding elements and structures, by adding complexity, by embedding them in complex arrangements. There's no particular reason all replicating ones would be excluded from that crowd.
Notice that DNA, in particular, is quite stable in chain lengths of millions. (DNA does not, of course, self-replicate - it is replicated by various protein complexes and the like. The fact that the replicated DNA then codes and abets the construction of those protein complexes and auxiliary factors, among others, opens up serious complications and large new fields of possibility for those attempting to discover what happened all those eons ago

Indeed to the last highlighted. Like deftly avoiding deleterious cross reactions from adverse molecular species. To suppose any of your 'millions of environments' could replicate human ability to purify and maintain requisite chemical purity is wholly unrealistic.
And re the first highlighted - those millions of base units long DNA strands are only safe within a whole living cell. Notice how easily the author here:
https://portlandpress.com/emergtopl...-difficult-case-of-an-RNA-only-origin-of-life
inserts an encapsulation stage in fig.1. That miraculously engulfing membrane is a foreign object and has zero opportunity to be genetically connected and directed by the hypothetically self-replicating strands within.
Contrast with real cells:
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/356/6342/1022.full
where repair of a damaged membrane is readily accomplished. But only because there is intimate communication between the membrane and repair machinery within the interior. The magical jump required to go from foreign encapsulating bag to highly selective semi-permeable membrane integrally connected to the interior cell factory is just that - magical wishful thinking. Without the latter those hypothetical self-replicating strands will degrade quickly. And there is so much more required that only a living whole cell can provide. For instance continued cell division is impossible unless the cell membrane/wall is an integral not foreign entity.

Anyway just believe what you want.

 

[Write4U]

The magical jump required to go from foreign encapsulating bag to highly selective semi-permeable membrane integrally connected to the interior cell factory is just that - magical wishful thinking. Without the latter those hypothetical self-replicating strands will degrade quickly. And there is so much more required that only a living whole cell can provide. For instance continued cell division is impossible unless the cell membrane/wall is an integral not foreign entity.

Anyway just believe what you want.

You forget that human cells make up only 10 % of the human micro-biome. The other 90% is an army of protective bacteria that assist us in a host of survival activities and indeed, without which we could not survive.

You may want to learn something about the human micro-biome before you start analyzing what can kill it.

You may want to study this lecture to understand our current Covid pandemic.

You made a correct observation of survivability due to genetic drift and other damage, but that only confirms the process of "natural selection", where bad genetics are weeded out and only good genetics "survive to procreate".

In your argument you conveniently forget that 95% of all living things that have ever existed are now extinct.
Not all of them died from old age!

 

[Write4U]

Abiogenesis?

How about the evolution of inorganic life?

Check this out

But what mode of transportation do they use?

 

[Write4U]

All micro-organisms use 4 modes of transportation;
Ciliates, Flagellates, Amoeboids (pseudo-podia), Sporozoa.

If we compare this to the macro world we have; Rowing, Rotational Propulsion, Flooding/Spreading, Sowing.
Not too much difference in fundamentals between single celled and multi-celled organisms.

Journey to the Microcosmos

If you were a protozoan, how would you zoom zoom zoom all around the microcosmos? From false feet to microtubules, find out how these single-celled eukaryotes make their way through the universe.

See also sub-forum: Microtubules

 

[Write4U]

Abiogenesis and Evolution of living organisms.

Journey to the Microcosmos

Life is chemistry. From diatom to Diana, life is not a magical imbued trait, is a process of the physics of our universe. The precise and convoluted chemistry of life requires specific physical and chemical situations. And this planet has a dizzying variety of such circumstances that, over millions or even billions of years, living chemical systems have evolved to thrive in

In the argument of fine tuning it is conveniently overlooked that 95% of all living things that have ever existed are now extinct.
Not all of them died from old age! The ones that survived are fine tuned to their environment by process of Natural Selection, not by purposeful Intelligent Design.