Abiogenisis by the Numbers

You still haven't explained what you meant. I can only conclude, at this point, that you don't even know, either. What? No, not at all. The precession of Mercury was immediate evidence for relativity.I don't understand how you're able to read my statements and then interpret them as saying the exact opposite of what is so plainly written. But when we showed you almost those exact two things, you rejected them. In fact you dismissed them with sarcasm. Can you explain this discrepancy? I know I can - it's obvious that, no matter what you state about what evidence you'll accept, you'll never accept any evidence that seems to confirm a natural origin of life, no matter what. Oh, really? Cite your source, please. Your comments on these physical theories bear absolutely no relationship to anything that scientists have written about them, or to anybody else's understanding of the theories in question. It's obvious that you're pretty much making this stuff up as you go along, and I can't imagine why you would do that when it's so easy to look stuff up on the Internet and check your facts. Evidence that you can't seem to supply, even when asked repeatedly. It's obvious to the rest of us, therefore, that you have absolutely no evidence at all. I know that you don't. Why do you think ignorance is a good position from which to argue? Could that maybe be because you've never done any research into the topic whatsoever, as is obvious from your posts? Not faith, a conclusion from evidence - in this case, the evidence of simpler living things than cells. That's exactly what I'm saying. Given time and the proper conditions, it'll happen. If not here, then somewhere else. Well, I'm looking around, but I don't see Dembski here. You're the one making assertions; you get to be the one who supports them.If you've got a copy of Dembski's book, why don't you just tell us what it says? You can quote short passages without violating copyright law. No. At a constant, very complex level. Every single cell organelle is self-assembling. There's absolutely nothing simple or basic about the self-assembly occuring in every single one of your cells. Yes, you're completely ignorant. Soap bubbles form because the soap-water film tries to compact against the pressure of the air trapped within. Lipid bilayers form because lipid groups have both hydrophilic and hydrophobic ends, and readily attach to each other laterally.But I haven't told you anything just now you wouldn't have learned from a 7th grade biology textbook, or from a 30-second readthrough of a Wikipedia article. You don't even seem to know enough to know how little you know.

Another silly assertion. Amino acids are made of multiple "components" just like nucleotides. If the "components" of nucleotides were "chemically incompatible", they would not form. Since all life is seething with nucleotides, we know they do form.Also, short RNAs have been discovered that catalyze the production of nucleotides.By the way, terms like "chemically incompatible", "undirect", and "shapeless goop" are pseudoscientific mumbo-jumbo that mean very little. So in other words, though the "overwhelming" majority of "undirect" chemical reactions produce "undesired shapeless goop", (whatever the hell that is), some reactions do produce nucleotides.It doesn't have to work everytime in order for it to happen. Honestly, did you even read my post? I said it depends on the conditions. Everything in chemistry depends on conditions.I went on to state that even if RNA strands were less likely to form than protein, the net probabilities based on standard ID methods would still favor active RNA strand formation. Because of this, ID arguments generally use protein-based probabilities to make abiogenesis seem impossible. Are you serious? Honestly, RisenLord, where is the "intelligence" or the "design" in producing random molecules? Thanks for the silly, incorrect analogy. Perhaps you could provide some math or evidence instead of groudhog stories? Yes, evolution can "act" upon it. Any imperfectly replicating template is subject to mutation and selection, the processes that result in evolution.Yes, it can survive on its own, as long as it is stable under the conditions. Unstable conditions would lead to the selection for mutant strands that were more stable, or perhaps for strands that had become engulfed by micelles, forming protocells. Wow. No. Not at all correct.If there is a 1 in 65536 chance of a specific event happening in a population, and the population is one million, you divide the population by the probability to get the probable number of specific events in that population:1,000,000 / 65536 = 15.25In other words, for every million events, about 15 will be the specific one you are looking for given that probability.This is why I said under conditions where a million or billion reactions per second were taking place, 1:65536 odds is essentially a "sure thing".Do you understand how probabilities work at all? Maybe you should learn before you start a thread based on probabilities - it really is quite basic math.Speaking of math, do you have any numbers or calculations from the ID camp for us to examine?

Amen, Brother Sasquatch! Ask any of us that got even as far as Organic Chemistry 255, laboratory, one credit hour for nine hours a week in Stinkville.

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Behe refers to such experimental "proof" of replicating RNA self-assembling as flying a thousand ground hogs to the last lane of a thousand lane highway and placing them between the 999th and 1000th lane.

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Thanks for the silly, incorrect analogy. Perhaps you could provide some math or evidence instead of groudhog stories?

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Behe's groundhog story (which RL has totally garbled) is delightfully torn to pieces by Pennock in Tower of Babel and reproduced at Metaphors on Trial or, How did the Groundhog Cross the Road?.

Thanks, JonF, for the link - I enjoyed it.Hopefully RisenLord will read it as well, since he seems to have gotten Behe's incorrect analogy incorrect...

I thought it was us ID proponents who were the ones who made "arguments from ignorance".......and, no, we don't know enough to calculate the odds on first life......but, as I've stated repeatedly, Dembski, et al, to avoid this very criticism, never ATTEMPT it. They simply attempt calculation on the formation of one viable protein, which is much simpler than most scientists believe first life to have been. What, you want me to go out and buy a 75$ book just to win an internet argument? I can probably provide you with quotes, but that's the best I can be reasonably expected to do....... What I've been saying.... There's no proof that my dog can talk and is hiding that fact because she's afraid scientists will disect her brain if they find out she has this extraordinary ability, but I think it's pretty safe to rule out....... Says the man pulling the admin card to give him an edge in debate.......

That's a bit correct. The post was a bit in between. Now would you show me where I used it to get an edge?You made that comment but didn't anwer the question. Perhaps it would be better to focus on the actual points. Oh really? What do scientists believe the first life must have been?You seem to be claiming that this protein calculation sets a upper bound on the probability of life forming. Therefore you are claiming that this is an attempt at getting to some sort of answer for that calculation. The choice of this protein is not, that we've seen so far, defended in anyway. Please give the reasoning behind it.This message has been edited by NosyNed, 11-15-2004 01:29 AM

I thought it was self explanatory that I meant genesis, as it was only one letter off from "genisis", is phonetically identical to "genisis" and is the only word which would make sense in that context.See, this is called logical deduction......I don't need to know everything about the English language to logically deduce that "genesis" is the only word I could have meant. Likewise, I don't need to know everything about first life to logically deduce that it didn't self-assemble. I believe I should emphasize "UPON CONCEPTION" The mathematical work was done, THEN the implications of its accuracy were realized. Math preceeding evidence.BTW, I like the way you keep ignoring my emphasis on SPECIAL relativity, which, again, has nothing to do with the orbit of Mercury........ When have you done this? No, sir......you brought it up (and I believe it was a mistake, as you're demonstrating that while biochemistry is definitely your subject, physics aint), so it's your job to back your assertion; how does quantum gravity "theory" explain universal variability? Just because I don't know something doesn't mean I'm arguing from ignorance.......I'll never know EVERYTHING about ANYTHING, but I can know enough to logically deduce. Then why does all life come in cell form? What roll does the cell play in keeping living things alive.BTW, this is a moot point anyway, because the most complicated processes that life would have to achieve are much more complicated than the cell wall........namely, reproduction and replication. Sure, anything that CAN happen, WILL happen given proper time and conditions........but there WASN'T proper time. That's the point. Ah, time for the desperation play, huh? The seeded Earth hypotheses. That just takes the same problem and moves it somewhere else........ That's because I don't, as I've stated previously. And that self-assembly is either A. the product of a quadzillion years of EXTREMELY gradual evolution or B. the product of design.If you assume the former, it demonstrates just how poorly nature self-assembles. And the only difference between the two is that the latter is self-sustaining........

Well, sure.........until you get down to an undiscoverable plank-length quanta, EVERYTHING is made of multiple components. Amino acids are made of just a few atoms, if I recall correctly. Nucleic acids are apparently much more complex. Now THIS is a silly assertion........you state that because highly-evolved or designed bioprocesses produce nulecic acids, despite their natural tendancies against self-assembly, that it somehow proves that nucleic acids are prone to self-assembly....... Putting the cart before the horse.......if there were no nucleotides self-assembling (as they apparently can't), then you'd get no RNAs to catalyze the self-assembly of other nulceotides. I agree. Perhaps he used such lingo to keep from drowning a layman in complexity. Considering the level of popularity for the RNA world hypothesis, I assume this is true. Usually, when scientists use terms like "overwhelming majority of the time", they're speaking of ASTRONOMICAL numbers......... This makes no sense. Obviously, if RNA strands were less likely to form than protein, then the odds of a single RNA strand forming are less than the odds of a single protein forming....... The squiggles a three year old produces with crayons are, by definition, intelligently designed........and without intelligent creatures, we'd get no three year olds scribbling over pandas in the nursery at my church........I didn't glance over at the panda and say "oh, look, squiggles self-assembled"........I took the crayon away from the three year old. How stable is "stable"? I'm getting the feeling that "stability" does't include being left alone in an ocean (even a dead one, like on primitive Earth). Or, door number 3 (the most likely result), the animals immediate death. I assumed the 1 in 65536 number was the odds of a single RNA strand self-assembling period, not of a self-replicating strand forming. Am I incorrect? If I am not, my math still holds.

I'd love to, if you'd stop trying to moderate my points away........ Well, every theory involving abiogenesis, with the sole exception of the much critisized RNA world theory, requires the self-assembly of proteins.......and certainly not just one.Therefore, every theory except one depends on first life being much more complex than a single protein, and there are apparently many chemical boundaries to the sole exception........which is why only ONE guy on these boards is arguing from that viewpoint, even though you all apparently know your stuff on the subject and are all arguing vehemently.Or am I misreading you? What do you think of the RNA world?

And there are also a few other more practical obstacles that I can think of to first life forming.......for instances, yeah, it could metabolize, but how did it FIND food? A baby can metabolize, but if you don't feed it, it dies. Also, I'd have to imagine that the odds of one pieces of life surviving in a great big, dangerous ocean are remote.....which means that there were probably a few pre-first lifes which died shortly after conception, which would then decrease the odds of there having been "first" life by many times.

Well, it didn't make any sense at all, and it still doesn't. Here's the statement for reference:

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And we've never observed anything happening from its genisis, either.

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Look, I'll come right out and ask, because for the fourth time, you've failed to explain: what the fuck does that even mean? "Happening from its genesis"? Even with the spelling corrected, it doesn't make any sense. But as I already explained, that math was founded on the observations of the Michelson-Morely experiment. So, evidence preceeded math. Well, we've already shown how current "RNA World" thought means that living things can be a lot simpler than previously thought. I guess I'm not sure why you think the "affinity" of one nucleotide to another amino acid, whatever that means, is at all relevant. I presume it's something you half-remembered from one of Dembski's books. It's actually your job to back your own assertions, but since I'm feeling generous, here's an academic paper that applies string theory to the question of the physical constraints on potnetial universes. System Unavailable It doesn't. Haven't you ever heard of viruses? No, you seem to have misunderstood. I'm making no claim that the Earth was "seeded"; rather, it is likely that abiogenesis has happened on multiple planets, and had organisms capable of noticing not evolved here, they would have evolved on one of those other planets. (And probably have, anyway.)Try and stay on track, here, ok? You're all over the place because you're not reading my posts closely. So, you're arguing from a source that you don't even have? Did you even read it? All indications are "no." You've made it quite apparent that your modus operandi is to argue from ignorance, just making up whatever pops into your head. Another completely unintelligable statement. Either that, or its idiotic. While evolution has given rise to self-assembling structures of incredible interconnectedness and complexity, intelligent design has never, ever succeeded in creating anything in the least self-assembling, except that which we've plagerized from the natural world. ..."self-sustaining?" You do have absolutely no idea what we're talking about, do you? Why don't you hit up a wikipedia article instead of embarassing yourself like this?What kind of idiot thinks ignorance is a good foundation for argumentation? Can you tell me, please?

Since, in this thread, you've succeeded in recalling absolutely nothing correctly except your username and password, why did't you look it up?Here, I'll do it for you. Here's a table of the structures of amino acids: Wikimedia ErrorAnd here's the four nitrogenous bases, arranged in their complimentary pairs: Wikimedia ErrorAs you can see, not appreciably more complex.

That's not what I said. I said that your assertion that the components of nucleotides are "chemically incompatible" was wrong, since obviously those components come together in nucleotides. I didn't say the catalytic RNAs needed to be there before nucleotides could form. But once such RNAs did form, they would catalyze the formation of nucleotides, making it a more efficient process. Just because ribozyme catalysis makes a reaction more efficient doesn't mean that the reaction can only occur with that specific ribozyme. Then stop quoting him and silly groundhog analogies. Post some calculations. No they're not. What a ridiculous statement. In some fields an overwhelming majority of the time could easily refer to say, 75% of the time. Wrong again. First it depends on conditions (the third time I've said that.) Under some conditions nucleotides form more readily than amino acids.Secondly, reread the post above where I posted the probabilities. The specific protein probability is so much higher than the specific RNA probability that you could easily adjust for ribonucleotides being a trillion times less likely to form than amino acids, and the RNA strand would still be much, much more probable.(And don't come back and tell me I've stated a nucleotide is a trillion times harder to form than an amino acid - that was simply an extreme example.) I'm not sure about your analogy, but let me co-opt to describe the scientists method in producing RNA:What the scientists did was like putting a crayon and a sheet with a panda on it in a closed box, then putting that box on a paint shaker for thirty seconds. The crayon and paper fly randomly around the box, and some marks are made on the paper. They repeat this a few million times. Most of the papers are covered in random crayon marks - these they burn. However, on a few of them all of the marks are within the panda drawing - these they keep. An outside observer handed only those few would likely state that they were the product of a directed process, even though they were not. Presented with all of the millions of papers one would see a random process.So the "intelligent design" by the scientists in the actual experiment went as far as putting a bunch of single nucleotides in a random RNA strand synthesis reaction. They discarded those without activity, and kept the ones with activity.However, they did not "intelligently design" the sequences that produced activity. That was the result of a random process. Ocean? Why the ocean? Left alone?
A simplistic statement. Yep, you're absolutely correct. If you've got a billion replicators in a stable environment, and suddenly change the environment, most of them will probably "die". But the few that don't because of some heritable difference will go on to repopulate the new environment. It's called natural selection. You are incorrect.Your math DOES NOT hold.You obviously don't understand basic probabilities, and I'm tired of explaining them to you.Provide some math or other evidence or quit with the assertions.

I've read a fair bit of Dembski's work. Practically everything he's published on the Web and The Design Inference.Like I said, the DI isn't known for being reluctant to come forward and boast about their "successes". But instead all we get is things like Meyer's recent paper - which manages to misrepresent Dembski's views as Dembski managed to misrepresent Behe's - thse guys can't even get EACH OTHER'S arguments right !. "Meticulous" ?But you don't need to look at what I'VE read to know that it is very obscure. We can look at YOUR knowledge. Guess what - you don't even know where in Dembski's work it can be found.Apparently we are expected to track down every last thing Dembski's written - books, magazine articles and the rest to find it - or simply accept whatever you say about this suppised "calculation". You don't think that that is just a bit unfair ?