Is Abiogenesis a fact?

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, one tenth of them will have combined to make molecules that are twice as complex.

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How is one to asses this complexity? The word "complexity" does not bother me prima facie. Deciding what ordinal "twice" refers cardinally to atomically does.Are you saying that if Gold and Mecury bonded then this would be more complex to an Alchemist even if this does not itself turn into Gold as said magician might have thought? In other words is a polymer "more complex" simply because it has a longer series of atoms connected together, or is it in the process of combining, that there is some different superposition (of) orbital structures that indicates that the combined supramolecular medium possesses, DIFFERENT,(over and above) properties or attributes, thus becoming not simply a manifestation of the sum of the individual atomic orbitals (as a representation of thing-itself to have been) on the average but something you might have said is more "complex"?This message has been edited by Brad McFall, 04-28-2006 08:46 AM

I suspect we will never know precisely how life arose on earth even if we observe life arising on other worlds.I am confident that scientists will one day demonstrate one or more modes of abiogenesis in the lab, but the question of whether any particular mode was ours is probably unanswerable.My hunch is that abiogenesis is an emergent property of our universe and that we will discover that property emerging in environments too "extreme" for us. The "ToA" may well turn out to be a theory of emergent complexity rather than a theory of one or more particular chemical processes.This message has been edited by Omnivorous, 04-28-2006 08:56 AM

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I am confident that scientists will one day demonstrate one or more modes of abiogenesis in the lab, but the question of whether any particular mode was ours is probably unanswerable.

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Yes, I think so, too. However, if several earth-like planets are observed in the process of generating life, and it can be determined that the same processes and modes are using in each case, then one could conclude that of the several possible modes, one in particular is the one more likely to be using in the real universe, and so that is probably the mode that occurred on the earth.-

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The "ToA" may well turn out to be a theory of emergent complexity rather than a theory of one or more particular chemical processes.

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Interesting point. But I interpreted the question as referring mainly to the earth and what happened in our own past. Which may never be known beyond a range of possibilities.

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"Religion is the best business to be in. It's the only one where the customers blame themselves for product failure."
-- Ellis Weiner (quoted on the NAiG message board)

I thought I defined what I was talking about quite plainly? That pretense involved the assembly of billions of small molecules into a complex whole. While I used the phrase "one huge complex molecule", can you see that this is at least partly equivalent to "the right parts in the right places"? Especially when you include the fact that much of molecular biology is simple key-in-lock mechanics, and that most "wrong" molecules just don't fit (can't become part of the complex whole).

You reduced the mitochondria to a cardinal quantity (you smoothed over the difference of water, ammonia, and methane and supposed the ORDER of the “simples” so circumsized matters not IN THE PROCESS of doubling to the ostensive mitochondrial level of organization. This requires that artifical selection and natural selection MUST be the same things. They are not. We may learn how to manipulate artifical selection on the level of selection you discuss but it will always be possible that the molecules outside the cylinder interact differently with the edge of the model and if order matters might influence the pattern of non-smoothed over simples DURING the doubling) WHILE you did not care how MANY additional simples are made at each juncture. This thinking precludes a feedback from the size doubled TO to the doubled complexity itself. This is a property of ordinal numbers and one that seems quite helpful to the abiotic scientists so I wouldn’t sacrifice it if I had the choice ( a given cardinal number determines transfinitely all of the ordinal numbers of the next larger cardinal number class(this is a math example of “doubling” complexity))But it is only with an infinite background of force motion that I can even see how one can imagine that 1/10 molecules combine to form a number of more molecules twice more complicated UNLESS YOU ANSWERED WHAT I ASKED IN THE FIRST POST. And I would guess that you are not for any kind of possible physics of Boscovich. You have explained cardinal complexity but is that all life really is? Are you just worth 3.50$ for your atoms. If not then if life arose from non-living things we should be able to find the properties of the doubling hierarchies qualities that given us mitchondria and all supramolecules “twice” as complex by any measure of information theory.So it seems to me that one needs to rely on space and not time (rate) and say precisely what the non-smoothed differences in the simples (differences in orbital structures relative to crucial electron transitions etc possible facilited by random photons coming from a specific external (larger than the simple) direction etc) else you fall into my own pattern of thinking and many here will tell you that that can be a trap frought with all kinds of anoids anyoing ions etc. I once called them Aexions to give them my own name.

Yes, but I also made part of the problem harder than that simplification suggests by itself. Something like 80-90% of a living cell (depending on what you are measuring) are simple uncombined water molecules, after all, yet I have included that in the "total complexity". Next, note how "total organic matter on Earth" is referenced in the main calculation-paragraph of Msg #33, thereby letting me pretend that water inside a life-form counts as organic matter--when of course it actually isn't. And I used a medium-sized mitochondria cell, whereas the simplest known bacteria are, I understand, rather smaller (and the very first bacterium would have been simpler yet, not having evolved defenses against others). It was partly because I knew I was making those kinds of assumptions/pretenses that I invited others to use different ones that might be more appropriate/accurate. Yet my goal was to get a ballpark figure more than anything else. If the early Earth had, according to my result, materiel allowing a thousand different places simultaneously where molecular complexity could approach Life, then those more accurate calcs should yield many times more opportunities. And that, combined with the key-in-lock stuff I mentioned in my last post, is what the abiogenesis-ists have going for them, when some different interpretation of "complexity" is introduced.

We might be arguing past each other. I dont know. It is hard to tell when a new poster arrives (at least this takes a little spare sparing time for me to figure out).If water counts as part of the "chromatographic column" view in macrothermodynamics FROM hierarchical thermodynamics
http://www.endeav.org/evolut/hierar/hierar.htm
then the details of hydrogen bonding might indeed quantitatively be a part of the mechanism Gladshev supposes even if it only returns a fixed qualititive difference (but the issue for us, in this post is simply if this constantcy is part of the doubling complexity or not etc). So I need not have also said with you, "of course, the water isn't". And in fact my own ideas about Lamarck's two-factor theory get by a lot of Gould's spandrels as dead empty space precisely because I do not see the Evolutionary Synthesis like he did relying on Will Provine's notion of "constriction" but then expanding THAT to restriction plus hardening. Simple, just add water. Just make sure they are not those creatures from the movie that turned from naughty and were no longer nice. Neat huh? - well probably not.If as Sasquach said, that there was no life but but only dead complex molecules before the ball park, it doesnt matter what the initial lot is, whether it is a baseball or a basketball divided, as it could have been that there are two different genetics on earth or more from different contingent seedings or only one. 1,000 or a million simultaneous starting places will not result in a decision on this and this is needed to asses the qualitative aspects I referred BACK to. You are thinking like a physicist. That is ok, my two brothers reason this way. I am only trying to indicate where the biology is. I also think the pink is but a panther but that is a skin of another gum.I will think about what you said again, but I do not think that the place is properly situated here.This message has been edited by Brad McFall, 05-02-2006 03:11 PM

With the order of th OP facts reversed:

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Fact - There used to be no life on earth. There is now life on earth.

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Fact - Living things change over time

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It is easy to see how FutureIncoming had had the idea presented inter thread alia.The issue here seems to me to be whether it is true with S.J. Gould("The Structure of Evolutionary Theory"), that hierarchicalization of life (from whatever it was before life was here, not to life itself, but to the life we actually have) is historically contingent. Gould writes that the different levels in life have their own orthogonal properties relative to any other locus focused on but that this (hierarchical) structure was not PRESENT on the "Earth" in this thread, that "in fact" was without life. Stephen made up his mind that there is a difference of allometry and fractal self-similiarity here. Futureincoming calculations *could* apply to this kind of notion of evolution.I do not thik this is correct. I think the failure to appreciate the position I am accomodating is not people can not understand the general view but only that the STRUCTURE of evolutionary theory is not itself, hierarchical, in the proper FORM. FutureIncoming did not appreciate the effect of structure-dependent form as far as I understood so far what was said here. Evolutionary Theory needs itself to be hierarchical even while it might not be disputed that nature is itself in a indviduated state of various 'layers' of complexity etc. The reason Will Provine could not find "purpose" in nautre was because he looked at BOOKS rather than ORGANISMS. Gould looks at organisms but has constructed an overly wordy language to discuss the problem, as I see it. Will however rested in the notion that theoretical population genetics GAVE the structure. It does not give the spandrelized strucutre that Gould requistions.I think that fractal self-similarity WILL come to dominate many areas that Gould keeps only linguistically seperate and if analysis is carried as far as my less than Gouldian clear words do convey, I feel fairly confident that A hierarchical (life)structure, will have already been found to be present in nature, even "without life on this Planet", in other words, that it was here all along, but we had a hard time communicating it because the theory itself is not so structured (nor are our communication devices).Croizat sets of greater inclusion of track, node, main mass, baseline; Gladyshev's hierarchical thermodynamic monohierarchies of time dependence; and Cantors real number sets denied by Dedekind based on increasing size of cardinal numbers: may indeed provide the kind of hierarchicalization that can falsify Gould's linguistic stucture with a science whose deep structure in the orthogonalities of electron and photon actions in substitutable base DNA garners a focal point that already was.This message has been edited by Brad McFall, 05-03-2006 07:26 AM

Abiogenesis is not fact. The four fundamental forces in the universe cannot and do not transform inanimate matter into life for the reason that the forces are constants which result in the mechanics [limits] of the universe. This is why inanimate matter bouncing off each inanimate matter results in inanimate matter. Edited by Lex_Luthor, : No reason given.

Why do creationists argue this? Their own Bible claims that life was created out of non-life on earth. If so, then that is abiogenesis.

I was posting a reply to you, but it turned out to be nearly identical to my own Message 7 in this post It's an area of potential equivocation that everyone should be vigilant of. Abiogenesis is often discussed as a natural process of life coming from non-life. Contrasted with theo- and xeno- genesis. In the light of this thread, all genesis' variants are abiogenesis. Indeed, ALL geneses are abiogenesis. That kind of takes away somewhat from the point of having the word abiogenesis except when contrasting with biogenesis.On the one hand you are dead right, but abiogenesis can be used to mean different things, and it serves as a convenient label for the non supernatural/alien formation of life. A more accurate name for it might be atheogenesis. However, the problem remains that this could include xenogenesis - using the a- prefix when there are more than two options is problematic. So we need a positive word for natural genesis of life. How about physikagenesis? A bit clumsy I supposeI guess we are stuck with the nomenclature that others use.

The meaning of that statement is not clear. If taken to mean exactly what it says, it`s clearly a non sequitur

Why is the statement non-sequiter? Edited by Lex_Luthor, : No reason given.

because the statement is not a logical consequence of the premise

It also seems strange to talk about "forces are constants". I can't figure out what that means.