Some abiogenesis considerations

This paper was posted as an example of a peer-reviewed article I presented as an example of such scholarship. I had no intention of supporting or even discussing its contents in this thread.Since you have not read this paper, apparently neither do you.Please stop misrepresenting my position. Edited by anglagard, : in this thread

All current life having a common ancestor does not imply that life only rose once. It implies that of the many times life may have arisen, the descendants of only one of those life forms survived to the present. Most biologists find this credible due to the "compound interest" argument.(and please don't ask me to give the names of all those biologists in the 'most' category).The compound interest argument is as follows: suppose that there are one trillion primitive forms that have arisen independently and have about the same generation rate. We'll suppose that in some typical generation time they replicate on the average by a factor of 1.005. That is, about one half of one percent of them duplicate in this time. Suppose that one of those trillion forms undergoes a beneficial mutation that allows it to reproduce at the rate of 1.0051, i. e., just slightly faster than the rest of the entities. At the time of its beneficial mutation, it represents just one trillionth of the total biomass. After 1000 replications, the descendants of the mutated form will still only represent slightly more than one trillionth of the total biomass. But after one million generation times, the mutant's descendant's biomass will be 1.6x10^31 times as great as the non-mutated forms. That is, there will be 16 million trillion trillion times as many of the mutants as non- mutants. All but a very miniscule part of life will have descended from this one common ancestor. If a million generations sounds like a lot, remember that that is about the number of generations your gut bacteria will go through during your lifetime.Of course, this is a very simplified example that assumes that all these primitive life forms grow independently. In actuality, they will be competing for the same limited resources, holding up their tiny bowls and begging 'more'. As the mutes begin to swamp the non-mutes, they will consume all the goodies, and the non-mutes will die out. Life's a bitch. So, few biologists doubt that various forms of pre-life arise independently, or that they might still arise on occasion. But this is a race that swiftly went to the swiftest.I'll write out the simple formula used in the preceding, but I have no idea how it will appear in the post on your computer:F = ((1.0051)^N)/((10^12)x(1.005)^N)where F is the fraction of mutes after N generations (or the fraction of the biomass they represent). If you use this and put in N = 10^6 (one million) into your calculator you will just get an overflow error. But this formula is identical to:F = ((1.0051/1.005)^N)/(10^12)which should work fine on any scientific calculator.It is this kind of argument that allows one to believe that life can arise very easily and commonly, and yet lead to a single descendant family as we now observe. There are many books on the various theories of abiogenesis, some of them actually very good, and a couple of journals devoted to the subject. If you like, I could post an short annotated bibliography of the ones I've read, but your best bet would be to go to Amazon.com and look up 'origin of life'. Read the customer's comments for a lot of insights and laughs. Unfortunately, the best book: 'The creation of life : past, future, alien' by Andrew Scott, is out of print and hard to get. But your library should have an interlibrary loan service that can get you a copy. Its an easy and fascination read if this topic really interests you.

couple of points We don't observe this. Don't want to nitpick but just point out the phrasing here can be a little overly suggestive that something is factual and observed rather than merely believed to be true.As far as the theory, it is a nice story, but it's not really that verifiable; it doesn't really deal with the alternative; and it is unnecessary to explain current observation and ignores the interdependence factor. For example, the growth of some types of organisms enable more growth of others. More plants enables more plant eaters. There is no reason for one "family" line to exclude the other lines since it is not a zero sum game.Edited by randman, : No reason given.

What misrepresentation?I asked for papers that seek to substantiate the theory of evolution as being true. This paper really doesn't do that, but it does raise a serious problem within evolutionary theory and offer a solution. I think the solution is probably untenable and thus the paper, imo, is more evidence against evolutionary theory than for it.

Apparently the point went right over your head. Oh well.....

Luckily for those of us living in the 21st century form is not all we have to go on.TTFN,WK

Hi, AIG, plenty of copies of Andrew Scott`s book available on ABE from US$1.00 up.

Thank you NT for the info, but what is ABE? I'd love to get a copy of this book, which to me is an excellant example of how such a book should be written, for my library. I notice that Annafan had no interest in taking me up on my offer of titles of well researched and written literature that responds to his/her question. It is so much more fun to argue from ignorance that to do the hard work of studying what has been learned to date. I know, since that is my own modus operandi. Thanks again, and let me know what ABE is or their URL so I can check them out.Regards, AnInGe

AbeBooks | Shop for Books, Art & CollectiblesTTFN,WK

Fortunately, scientists know the difference between shared-acquired and shared-derived characterestics. Yes, when there is no common environmental pressure to account for similarities. For example, the radius-ulna arrangement in the forelimbs of tetrapods cannot have arisen in the forelimbs of humans, bats, horses, seals, etc as a result of common adaptation to a common environmental challenge, since they are not used for the same purpose. By employing a sufficiently large number of morphological criteria of a like nature, the chances of a coincident resemblance can be reduced effictively to 0.In all of recorded history, no science has ever been overturned by an amateur sitting in an armchair declaring that he doesn't understand it. Comparative morphology will be no exception.

Hi,well I'm sorry for not answering sooner and the slight misunderstanding it causes. I was actually thinking about what worthwhile I could add in a reply, and it turned out it wasn't much .I did not post the message to express opposition against the idea of common descent. I just wondered anyone had considered some of the remarks I had, so your message answered that to some degree.I still retain a slight feeling that, given the many cases of symbiosis etc that we observe among carbon/DNA life, other types of life could be expected to not be pushed aside completely and occupy some niche, however small. I guess some of your literature covers that issue. I just don't have a solid enough background in chemistry to really go for that, I fear. (and motivation in combination with that, lol)But thanks for the reply!

I see WK beat me to it. Apart from ABE and Amazon, checking Ebay for used books can work out a lot cheaper if the required book surfaces in your time period. Alternatively, the goodies can be scanned for on Ebay by clicking the watch link for email notification.

The vast complexity of a single cell and the nature of chemistry makes abiogenesis simply impossible. Edited by Guido Arbia, : No reason given.

And your reasoning is?

And my reasoning is.............................................Irreducible Complexity