Woese's progenote hypothesis

PaulK, no you proved nothing. You refused to admit that Woese was arguing the changes were too great for a genote to be the common ancestor or misunderstood what that means, and so even though I would like to discuss the alternative of no common ancestor since you refuse to engage the data, no discussion has really taken place with you, and yet you have fouled up the thread with baseless charges. in other words, you have chosen to make asinine comments on a thread in which you have no intention of doing the necessary work to find out what the thread is about and so be able to discuss it intelligently. So, on the one hand, you admit your ignorance, and yet you assert here sufficient knowledge to dismiss an alternative. Sounds like willful belief, as usual for evos I might add, without having knowledge of the facts.

There is a distinction between one of the kingdoms evolving into all three, and a precursor genote evolving into all three. Woese argues there could be no genote precursor because normal evolutionary processes are insufficient to explain the emergence of the 3 kingdoms. He also, as a subset of that argument, states that one kingdom could not evolve all three even though if there was just one kingdom, that could be explained by a genote precursor.The relevance here is first is that the alternative explanation is that the 3 kingdoms may not have shared a common ancestor. A larger question, but probably beyond the scope of this thread is that this fits a pattern of the common ancestor for various taxa being absent. For example, we never see any living common ancestors, nor in the fossil record, and Woese has a problem with microevolutionary processes of evolution we observe today being sufficient to explain the emergence of the 3 kingdoms.

\It's not natural selection on vertical evolution, meaning natural selection on an organism itself, and so it's really not the same thing at all.Of course, handwaiving this away is not unexpected from the evo side of things.Edited by randman, : No reason given.

Why would the "common ancestor" not just be the design properties within chemistry? Certainly, if the chemical properties of whatever suppossedly spontaneously evolved into life are indeed capable of that, wouldn't they necessarily exert a common influence by their physical properties? Or could the explanation simply be that there was more than one event of spontaneous generation of life?I am not saying that I agree with abiogenesis, btw, but the adherence to the one-time only, or the one-time that made it only, doesn't seem very likely. if evolving into life is a property of chemistry, then we should expect it to happen often over vast periods of time.

What if God-did-it? Oh, your "what-if" just-so story is OK, but no on else's? We don't know that for sure. For all we know, life existed and the evidence from so long back just didn't remain. This ignores an interdependence aspect to life. Human beings may be more fit, for example, than cattle, but we keep them around for meat. The idea that one lineage would be squeezed out rather than both depending on the other is wholly unproven and illogical, and just more mythmaking on the evo-side of things.The myth is that somehow, just be chance, a singular event occurred, and gave rise to life, which then competed with one another to evolve everything we soo today, totally via chance I might add. It's a myth, and never was nor ever has been validated by empirical data.The whole idea of the singular event, or the singular event that somehow beat out all the rest is illogical. If within the properties of chemistry, there is the likelihood of evolving life, a big IF, then life would have evolved a bunch of times over such long periods of time, and if life evolved bunches of times, chances are that there would be considerable interdependence such that more than one lineage would survive, and if this magical story really happened, chances are since the real common ancestor would be the properties of chemistry, then we would expect to see all the various commonalities you guys insist can only be explained via one living ancestor species or group.

Ok, so the Bible is scientific evidence when it agrees with you, but not when it disagrees with you. Makes so much sense.... You can. I just want you to recognize it for what it is. I am not that concerned about your beliefs. I am more concerned about your reasoning process, and believe if we can get some self-awareness of what that is and what it isn't, that you (plural you really) will be more open to truth. This is pretty funny. Yep, and new taxa are not evolving either. If you cannot see the inconsistencies of your position here, I am not sure explaining it to you will help much. I'd love to, but you guys have a hard time separating facts and data from interpretation and theory. You have no evidence for that. That's the problem. If life started, it could be every life-form was and will always be carbon-based, and so saying because all life forms are carbon-based means they had a single living common ancestor is a fallacy. So all three basic kingdoms are the same, eh? Or all species, genera, family, etc,...? Can you try going over those "facts" again. Seems like you have posted a bunch of theories and called them facts, and then say your "facts" which are really theories fit your overall theory, which you probably think of as a fact as well. Your approach is classic myth-making disguised as science. Unbelievable! Not sure if a comment is even needed.

Can you provide a little more detail for this argument? We see evos claiming identical or nearly identical features arose independently all the time, such as the Placental and Marsupial pairs, the emergence of the mammalian ear bones, etc,.... Now, there you guys state that just because there are alternative structures that could work does not mean they shared a common ancestor with those structures, and criticize creationists who point out the improbability of such identical designs evolving into the same patterns.Evos say environmental factors dictate the patterns, which imo, is totally insufficient an explanation, but this is the reasoning given to justify the data and maintain common descent.Now, apparently the environmental factors of chemistry are so wide-ranging that similarities must necessitate a common living ancestor?If abiogenesis occurs, there is a design within chemistry for it occuring, a formula if you would, and this information-set probably dictates, if it is real, what would and can evolve. That, to me, seems infinitely more reasonable than the current evo approach, being inconsistent within itself. Why? If the design for abiogeneis exists within the properties of chemistry, why wouldn't it dictate that the genetic code would arise and even dictate nearly the same genetic code? So on the one hand, abiogenesis is treated as a near certain fact without knowing anything about it, and yet then to make an inference as I have, you insist since we do not know anything about it, your scenario must be the right one. And you, as a scientist, don't see any problem with that?The fact is you guys posit that extremely rare, hypothetical situations happen all the time because of the extreme length of times involved with geologic time. That is a basic staple of evolutionist logic, but to apply that same logic to the beginning of life, all of the sudden is wrong? If it is a rare occurence, given the millions or billions of years involved, it would take a miracle for it to happen only once or for only one lineage to survive, and moreover, there is no reason to think it wouldn't happen approximately the same way multiple times. But imo, advocating miracles is staple of evolutionist thought, but just minus the Miracle-maker.On the cattle argument, the point is interdependence. It's not meant to be a precise example, but to illustrate what should be an unchallenged point, namely that life is an interdependent process. To assume that one lineage would only compete rather than become interdependent of the other is a false assumption. In fact, if the 3 kingdoms arose independently, they clearly demonstrate interdependence and so prove my point.

"Know" here on this thread refers to the scientific sense of "know." We don't know that life did not exist always in the past. That's a factual and scientific statement. So you arguing from your vantage point that we know life did not exist is sort of silly since you don't know that.You then presented the Bible as the means of knowing; hence my statements to you.But you here are a good example of the typical fallacious arguments of evos. Try to stick evos with a discussion based purely on facts and science, and more often than not they will introduce the Bible, theology, God, etc,...and that's because the facts are uncomfortable for you guys. You really can't figure it out, can you? To say that, hey, we see no examples of abiogenesis occuring today and that means it only happened once is internally inconsitent on several points. First, we see no evidence is just as much evidence it didn't happen as it only happened once. Secondly, the fact that within maybe 50 years of looking or less, considering our levels of technology, we see no evidence of something that could occur quite a lot under evo dating if it occurred once every, say, 1000 or million years, is an incredibly ignorant and fallacious argument on your part. Third, evos are the ones always saying very rare things are probable because of the immense time-scales involved, and yet now you argue the opposite. Not a fact. That is a belief, but probably true. That life exists here is an observed fact. Yep, fact. So what? I don't disagree they can CREATE such molecules, and I bet people today can engineer new life forms too. So what?Note btw, and not that it is relevant, but they did not duplicate conditions of earth's early atmosphere. Once again, so what? First, the experiments done that you referred to were based on a faulty understanding of the earth's early atomosphere, but once again, so what? Organic molecules still exist on the earth, and probably exist elsewhere in the universe as well.If this is your "evidence", you basically have next to nothing.

It's a theory and a wrong one, that the Miller experiments duplicated earth's atmosphere, and that's not your only argument either. First, you don't know if it is happening today or not. Secondly, you don't know what conditions are necessary for it to occur, and third, you don't even know if sponteneous generation has ever occurred at all. Now, those are 3 facts, not theories mind you. First, you don't actually know what those conditions were and secondly, what you think you know is apparently out of date and wrong. Uh huh? Not having time to look in-depth, note these comments: http://www.carm.org/evolution_archive/life_origins.htmThis guy thinks it could still happen but would get eaten before too long. Maybe, just maybe, what you think you know, kuresu, you never knew in the first place.But what is mainstream opinion today anyway? Just a moment...Seems to me like your facts were never facts in the first place and never correct either. I know this is hard for you guys because you assert your beleifs as synomous with facts at times, but beliefs and facts are not the same thing. Now, do I think the facts suggest that an Intelligent Designer created the universe? Sure. But as far as science goes, that is a theory.Is science the basis for my religious belief that God and Jesus Christ exist? No, but I doubt science is the basis for your personal relationships either.

We've gone over this before, and it seemed any conclusions were premature, but that you suspected that analogous structures were indeed based on similar or identical genetic patterns.If the same structures can arise without and do arise without a common genetic basis, then why should we assume similar structures represent common descent in the first place? I think you are missing the point. Genes must have evolve, right? So if evos think the environment can dictate common patterns via convergent evolution, then why discount that the chemical environment does and did the same? Well, let's look at what we do know then, and what we know is that life is carbon-based and shares similarities. There is no reason to assume that this is all the result of a common ancestor when it could be that life, or life on earth, could only possess these factors as this is the only way for life to have evolved. We don't even have evidence really that this happened, and so speculating that there may have been other types of life is sort of silly. We have no evidence that any other type of life is possible. So the same pattern could emerge, again and again, and with the same similarities and yet no common ancestor. Hmmm....so without compelling evidence that aliens did not plant life on earth, aliens must have planted life on earth....same sort of logic WK. All the evidence WE DO HAVE is that all life must be carbon-based, genetic, etc,.., and so any occurence of abiogeneis should repeat the same pattern. is this really an unwarranted assumption. If a car flips once, there is a good chance another car of the same make and model has flipped, no? If life can evolve from chemistry and happened once, there is every reason to expect given the billions of years involved, that it has happened a lot, unless you are advocating the action of a Designer. I am not the one out here claiming abiogenesis is likely or a fact. I actually think it's unscientific to believe in spontaneous generation, but if it did happen, it's likely to have happened more than once. Uh, and so you rule out a priori God as having done it, and then claim abiogenesis as a fact even though you have really no way to know that life spontaneously generated, but you are certain if it did, it would not have resulted in the same design, but the same designs occur with convergent evolution, but somehow the same could not happen with abiogenesis, and you really think the evo position here makes sense? But you are saying more. You are saying that if it happened multiple times, it wouldn't always produced DNA, etc,...and I am saying that's bogus. In other words, even if God does something, science must insist that a lie be true and God did it because of the artificial boundary secular scientists have created between natural and supernatural. The only reason for the drift is that you guys won't censer kuresu and to a lesser extent PaulK. You want to the discussion to stay on-topic, but allow all sorts of off-topic comments, arguments, baseless assumptions, etc,.....from the evo-side of things.TTFN,

Kuresu, .....well let me say it like this, you are not the brightest tool in the shed if you still think that is a contradiction. A quick, dumb error is understandable, but .....let's review it. Believing something and stating something is a scientific fact are not the same thing. You appear not to know how to distinquish between the 2.As to the rest of your post, you are just dodging the issues here.You erroneously insist you knew what the atmospheric conditions of early earth were, and in fact, failed to understand even current theories of what the earth's early atmosphere were, much less actuall knew for a fact what it was, and also failed to realize that Miller and Urey didn't even have it right on that point. You have consistently mistated opinions as facts, and not only that, but didn't even realize your ideas on things have been outdated, and yet you post in a deragotory manner as if your argument and reasoning is educated and informed or more educated and informed when clearly that's not the case.Edited by randman, : No reason given.

To be frank, you can't be serious. I cannot believe you are not able to see the fallacy in your post, but maybe circular reasoning is the primary mode of evolutionist thought?But let's give you a chance. Please explain the mechanics of abiogenesis and why those mechanics would allow for non-carbonbased life forms to evolve on earth.

And that estimate is not what Miller and Ulrey thought. Do you realize that?On smarts, etc,....didn't realize your age. Doing well in AP and IB is commendable. Takes a lot of hard work. But on the stuff we are talking about, you have some more work to get up to speed. I think you are getting too far ahead of your knowledge on that one....do some more research on this stuff.The relevant point here though is that there is no reason to think if carbon-based, genetically based life arose from chemistry, that it would only happen once and that it would produce a radically different concept that the genetic code.

Well, what do you think? Do you believe analogous structures are the result of analogous genetic aspects or not? Do we have the data yet to even determine that? Ok, so if we were to isolate the area within a creature's genome that is responsible for the mammalian ear bones, and did a sample from one strain that arose independently of the other, would the genetic area be similar or not, in a roughly analogous manner to similar morphology, function, etc,....?If not, then it's really not fair to say, is it, that just because 2 species share a common feature, that this is indicative of a common ancestor? Hold on a minute here. If there is an absence of data on abiogenesis and there is, you can't just formulate a detailed theory that has very little evidence for, and then when someone formulates an alternative, you say, hey, that doesn't work because of a lack of data. IF and it's a massive IF abiogenesis occurred, the environment consisted of the properties of chemicals that would give rise to the life form, and so all of the evidence (not a total lack) indicates that the early environmental pressures would be chemical, and so would assert a known pressure to develop in a certain pattern.Now, of course, since abiogenesis is essentially an imagines process and we don't know the principles involved really, it's hard to say, but we do know those principles would be chemical, or we think we know, right? Well if we don't know there is no reason not to think it didn't happen multiple times, and always produce a similar result, and so produced multiple lineages such as the 3 kingdoms, or maybe it didn't happen and those lineages appeared in some other way.

So contrary to what you ealier claimed, a whole bunch of different atmospheres can be in place and organic molecules be produced. Glad we got that cleared up, but once again, so what? Haven't organic molecules been on meteorites as well. That doesn't mean life has evolved there too, nor does it mean life forms aren't spontaneously generating every single day and we haven't noticed it because they are share a similar pattern dictated by the heretofore unknown principles of abiogenesis.