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Author Topic:   first genetic material
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 76 of 84 (508232)
05-11-2009 3:41 PM
Reply to: Message 75 by dpeele
05-10-2009 11:51 PM


Re: Fortuitous happenstances
Both positions appear to build on or back into unapprovable assumptions.
No ... scientists aren't allowed to do that. That's why you can find scientists saying that there are things they don't know.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 75 by dpeele, posted 05-10-2009 11:51 PM dpeele has not replied

  
Richard Townsend
Member (Idle past 4732 days)
Posts: 103
From: London, England
Joined: 07-16-2008


Message 77 of 84 (508235)
05-11-2009 6:08 PM
Reply to: Message 58 by Dr Adequate
05-10-2009 7:00 PM


Re: Fortuitous happenstances
Something must have produced an excess of matter over anti-matter, because this excess exists.
But no-one knows for certain what. As a result, as invariably happens in such cases, scientists say: "We don't know. So let's try to figure it out"; and creationists say: "We don't know. Therefore we do know: it was caused by God doing magic to make the universe in an act of fiat creation 6000 years ago. Oh, and as a corollary all the things that scientists know for certain must be wrong."
You will notice that only one of these reactions is logical. You may also consider that, given scientists' track record of finding things out, and creationists' track record of being wrong about everything, the smart money would be on the scientists.
Wonderfully put, Dr Adequate

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Richard Townsend
Member (Idle past 4732 days)
Posts: 103
From: London, England
Joined: 07-16-2008


Message 78 of 84 (508236)
05-11-2009 6:12 PM
Reply to: Message 75 by dpeele
05-10-2009 11:51 PM


Re: Fortuitous happenstances
My thought in regards to the origin of the universe is the theories backs into unprovable assumptions.
No, It doesn't. It backs into ignorance.
That you think they are assumptions makes me think you believe that scientists treat cosmological theories as a matter of faith - so they are 'believing' things about which they have no information.
It doesn't work like that. These theories are just our best current understanding of how things are. Our current theories *will* change. They are used as a guide as to which problems to study, and a context into which to fit results and new theoretical developments. They not sacrosanct and a scientist does not have to 'believe' them. In fact we know they are incomplete, and in some areas very speculative and probably wrong.
Edited by Richard Townsend, : No reason given.

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IchiBan
Member (Idle past 4937 days)
Posts: 88
Joined: 07-07-2008


Message 79 of 84 (508284)
05-12-2009 1:19 AM
Reply to: Message 44 by Coyote
05-10-2009 12:01 AM


Re: Heinlein as a philosopher
I dont need to debate Heinlein here.
Its obvious you are an atheist-evo with an axe to grind. I just pointed out that you worship Heinlein's ideas and interject them into the discussion every chance you think you get no matter how off topic it is. Actually that is your pattern with some of your other material also.
As for Heinlein? He wrote some great novels and some bad ones, when I was much younger I found them all entertaining. As a philosopher, he is a waste of time for me.
You can have the last word.

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EZscience
Member (Idle past 5154 days)
Posts: 961
From: A wheatfield in Kansas
Joined: 04-14-2005


(1)
Message 80 of 84 (508528)
05-14-2009 4:18 PM


New Evidence
Just a bit of breaking news to get the discussion back on topic.
An article is about to be published in Nature on thursday describing a landmark breakthrough in chemistry. The authors have pieced together how to obtain natural generation (read chemistry that can happen pretty much by itself) of 2 of the 4 nucleotides that form RNA, now generally believed to precede DNA as the original molecule of life. You can read about it here:
Chemist Shows How RNA Can Be the Starting Point for Life
An excerpt for those averse to news subscriptions:
An English chemist has found the hidden gateway to the RNA world, the chemical milieu from which the first forms of life are thought to have emerged on earth some 3.8 billion years ago...
For more than 20 years researchers have been working on this problem. The building blocks of RNA, known as nucleotides, each consist of a chemical base, a sugar molecule called ribose and a phosphate group. Chemists quickly found plausible natural ways for each of these constituents to form from natural chemicals. But there was no natural way for them all to join together.
The spontaneous appearance of such nucleotides on the primitive earth would have been a near miracle, two leading researchers, Gerald Joyce and Leslie Orgel, wrote in 1999. Others were so despairing that they believed some other molecule must have preceded RNA and started looking for a pre-RNA world.
The miracle seems now to have been explained. In the article in Nature, Dr. Sutherland and his colleagues Matthew W. Powner and Batrice Gerland report that they have taken the same starting chemicals used by others but have caused them to react in a different order and in different combinations than in previous experiments. they discovered their recipe, which is far from intuitive, after 10 years of working through every possible combination of starting chemicals.
EZ

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onifre
Member (Idle past 2950 days)
Posts: 4854
From: Dark Side of the Moon
Joined: 02-20-2008


Message 81 of 84 (508678)
05-15-2009 2:28 PM
Reply to: Message 75 by dpeele
05-10-2009 11:51 PM


Re: Fortuitous happenstances
The point is we don't know.
I think the point is that YOU personally don't know and figure no one else knows either. But people do know, are well educated on it, and owe you and I nothing in regards to having to justify what they know.
We can re-engineer the universe back to a certain point and then have to say "I don't know what this is, how it got here or how it works".
Followed by...
"So let's continue to study it until we do know and not make any assumtions".
When we started our thread my purpose was never to dispute scientific facts.
Yet you disputed the facts:
dpeele writes:
Do you believe this quote to be true. I start have trouble at this point.
The "quote" was the scientific explanation of nucleosynthesis. So you disputed the facts.
dpeele writes:
Very well... do you believe the statement to be accurate?
You dispute the facts again.
dpeele writes:
See.. my doubt is based on claims that I feel have not been proven.
...and again.
dpeele writes:
I don't accept the time frame - could have been 15.756489347 seconds or a billions years - face it...they don't know.
...and again.
Need I go on?
Face it, your attempt was to pose the question with the intent to disagree with any scientific explanantion that was given to you. However, perhaps you didn't anticipate the fact that it was so well documented and evidenced that now you have back peddled and waved a white flag.
Do you disagree with the origin of the elements?
In other words, do you disagree with the theory explaining nucleosynthesis?
I have posed similar questions to creationists and they go back as far back as a Being with no beginning, no end, all powerful, etc... with no other explanation.
Ok. But from the moment that the Big Bang "occurs" and matter forms - til today - every single element that composes up all of life is understood how it originates. If you are seeking the origin of the universe you are in the wrong thread.
Both positions appear to build on or back into unapprovable assumptions.
The origin of the universe is still being studied.
However, and I know this is off topic, but who do you think will eventually give us the answer, a scientist or a clergyman?
I'm in the "I don't know, but let's research it camp", but I can't tell someone this is how it happened when there are so many unknowns.
Fair enough, but there is still no reason to invoke god(s)/supernatural entities/metaphysical energies/etc. Point being it will have arose through natural forces like everything else. There has never been any reason to think otherwise other than wishful thinking.
- Oni
Edited by onifre, : No reason given.

"I smoke pot. If this bothers anyone, I suggest you look around at the world in which we live and shut your mouth."--Bill Hicks
"I never knew there was another option other than to question everything"--Noam Chomsky

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JRTjr
Member (Idle past 4305 days)
Posts: 178
From: Houston, Texas, USA
Joined: 07-19-2004


Message 82 of 84 (535280)
11-14-2009 10:36 AM
Reply to: Message 80 by EZscience
05-14-2009 4:18 PM


Re: New Evidence
Dear EZscience,
This is great stuff (I read the whole article), and thank you for getting us back on topic.
I have posted on this subject before; and would like to make a few comments on this article, since, as you stated, it is ‘on topic’.
Please, also note that I am only going to make a couple of comment on a few aspects of this article. This is because I tend to have long postings and have been asked to shorten my responses.
Mr. Nicholas Wade writes in his New York Times article ‘’Chemist Shows How RNA Can Be the Starting Point for Life’:
It will also mean that for the first time a plausible explanation exists for how an information-carrying biological molecule could have emerged through natural processes from chemicals on the primitive earth.
First: Notice the wording here a plausible explanation could have emerged.
My father loves to debate the ‘possible’ versus the ‘impossible’ with me. Granted, statistically speaking there is not a 100% certainty that any number of variable did not line up just the right way at just the right time. However, there is a point where your chances are so remote that a better explanation is necessary. Would you not agree?
If I handed you a set of dice, told you that it was ‘possible’ for you to roll snake eyes thirteen times in a row and then wanted you to make bets with other people; how many of those people do you think would win the bet?; and how often do you think you would win?
Would you bet, big money, that you could roll snake eyes thirteen times in a row?
So, I guess my question would have to be: ‘Exactly how ‘possible’ is ‘possible’
Second: Mr. Nicholas Wade claims that now a ‘possibleexplanation exists for how an information-carrying biological molecule could have emerged through natural processes from chemicals on the primitive earth.
Lets just say, for the sake of argument, that these biological molecule did emerged through natural processes; They still need the information to carry
Information is the key to the origin of life because no matter whether you’re talking about RNA, DNA, or some prequel you still have to account for the information these information-carrying biological molecule’s are carrying.
The storage and transmission of Information is the domain of Intelligence.
You may, with enough badgering, get me to believe that a thumb drive ‘evolved’, under just the right conditions, by itself {without an intelligent designer}, however, the idea that the software and/or files on that thumb drive are a product of random chance (naturalistic evolutionary processes) is just that much further beyond the pale.
One last thing: Even if you convinced me that the thumb drive was the product of evolution, does that mean it, in fact, is true {a fact}?
In other words, should we base our ideas of what is real {factual} on our limited understanding and feelings or should we base our limited understanding and feelings (of how things are and should be) on the facts we know to be true?
So; if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and sounds like a duck; you’re going to have to give me some pretty convincing evidence before you can convince me that it’s not a duck. ;-}
Emphases added in quoted remarks.

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Replies to this message:
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 Message 84 by lyx2no, posted 11-14-2009 11:12 AM JRTjr has seen this message but not replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 83 of 84 (535282)
11-14-2009 11:09 AM
Reply to: Message 82 by JRTjr
11-14-2009 10:36 AM


Re: New Evidence
JRTjr writes:
If I handed you a set of dice, told you that it was ‘possible’ for you to roll snake eyes thirteen times in a row and then wanted you to make bets with other people; how many of those people do you think would win the bet?; and how often do you think you would win?
What is it about this process described in the article that seems to you even remotely similar to snake eyes 13 times in a row:
New York Times Article writes:
Instead of making the starting chemicals form a sugar and a base, they mixed them in a different order, in which the chemicals naturally formed a compound that is half-sugar and half-base. When another half-sugar and half-base are added, the RNA nucleotide called ribocytidine phosphate emerges.
More details are available from the article.
--Percy

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lyx2no
Member (Idle past 4716 days)
Posts: 1277
From: A vast, undifferentiated plane.
Joined: 02-28-2008


Message 84 of 84 (535283)
11-14-2009 11:12 AM
Reply to: Message 82 by JRTjr
11-14-2009 10:36 AM


Life is Chemistry
The storage and transmission of Information is the domain of Intelligence.
Na + Cl contain the necessary information to combine into salt. Whence comes that information? DNA and RNA do nothing more. Life is mere chemistry on a grand scale.

It's not the man that knows the most that has the most to say.
Anon

This message is a reply to:
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