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Author Topic:   Does Death Pose Challenge To Abiogenesis
Blue Jay
Member (Idle past 2698 days)
Posts: 2843
From: You couldn't pronounce it with your mouthparts
Joined: 02-04-2008


(2)
Message 6 of 191 (533043)
10-28-2009 10:44 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by Cedre
10-28-2009 9:20 AM


The difference between "dead" and "not living"
Hi, Cedre.
I would argue that there is a difference between "not living" and "dead." To be "dead," something has to have previously been "alive."
Thus, the fact that something is "dead" indicates that something went wrong that caused its "aliveness" to cease.
Not so with "not living" or "abiotic" things.
Neither the religious nor the scientific think life is nothing but its chemical components. The "emergent properties" Ned mentioned are qualities of life that arise as a result of the chemical components interacting, such as via the electrical currents Coragyps mentioned.
So, just having all the parts in one place doesn't mean something should be able to come to life. Nor does anyone think differently. You could pile all the parts of a car into one place, and still not have a functioning automobile if the brake pedal isn't attached to the brake pad, or the fuel tank isn't attached to the fuel injector. Likewise, if some parts aren't working properly, the entire automobile may not function properly.
But, abiogeneticists don't think the earliest lifeforms had all of these complex, interacting parts that required such precision: they were just amalgams of associated chemicals that gradually grew in complexity until the result could be considered "alive" by our definition.
There is a major difference between turning borderline "not living" into bordeline "living" and turning "dead because of malfunction" into "alive again."

-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)
Darwin loves you.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by Cedre, posted 10-28-2009 9:20 AM Cedre has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 15 by Buzsaw, posted 10-28-2009 11:16 PM Blue Jay has replied

  
Blue Jay
Member (Idle past 2698 days)
Posts: 2843
From: You couldn't pronounce it with your mouthparts
Joined: 02-04-2008


(1)
Message 7 of 191 (533045)
10-28-2009 10:49 AM
Reply to: Message 5 by Cedre
10-28-2009 10:33 AM


Re: Death?
Hi, Cedre.
Cedre writes:
Bacteria do die at some point, everything is subject to the second law of energy. Due to predation or limited food supply disease etc. But the fact is when life sin't sustained it does cease.
First, it's the Second Law of Entropy.
Second, dying of external cause is fundamentally different from failing to sustain oneself. Bacteria can sustain themselves indefinitely, as long as there is ready access to all necessary resources. Humans and mice, however, cannot sustain ourselves indefinitely, even if we have ready access to all necessary resources.

-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)
Darwin loves you.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 5 by Cedre, posted 10-28-2009 10:33 AM Cedre has not replied

  
Blue Jay
Member (Idle past 2698 days)
Posts: 2843
From: You couldn't pronounce it with your mouthparts
Joined: 02-04-2008


Message 48 of 191 (533200)
10-29-2009 10:37 AM
Reply to: Message 15 by Buzsaw
10-28-2009 11:16 PM


Re: The difference between "dead" and "not living"
Hi, Buzsaw.
Buzsaw writes:
Interesting; Lifeforms having no life.
Still going for the rhetorical points, I see.
I didn't say that, although, admittedly, the syntax of my sentence made it a bit ambiguous.
-----
Buzsaw writes:
It would seem that the less complex a compound of chemicals is, the more subject to entropy it would be...
And yet, every winter, huge quantities of water (a three-atom molecule) freeze into an organized crystalline structure that we call "ice."
Seems that the thesis of your argument is entirely refuted by one of the most basic observations available in the natural world.

-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)
Darwin loves you.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 15 by Buzsaw, posted 10-28-2009 11:16 PM Buzsaw has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 61 by Buzsaw, posted 10-29-2009 12:27 PM Blue Jay has replied

  
Blue Jay
Member (Idle past 2698 days)
Posts: 2843
From: You couldn't pronounce it with your mouthparts
Joined: 02-04-2008


Message 121 of 191 (533358)
10-30-2009 10:32 AM
Reply to: Message 61 by Buzsaw
10-29-2009 12:27 PM


Re: The difference between "dead" and "not living"
Hi, Buzsaw.
Buzsaw writes:
Bluejay writes:
...the syntax of my sentence made it a bit ambiguous.
Ambiguous?
I understood you to refer to life forms as an amalgamation of inorganic chemicals from which life eventually emerged.
This is what I wrote:
Bluejay writes:
[Earliest organisms] were just amalgams of associated chemicals that gradually grew in complexity until the result could be considered "alive" by our definition.
Here it is in "unambiguous syntax":
Bluejay writes:
[Earliest organisms] were just amalgams of associated chemicals that had gradually grown in complexity until the result could be considered "alive" by our definition.
Clear?
-----
Buzsaw writes:
Bluejay writes:
And yet, every winter, huge quantities of water (a three-atom molecule) freeze into an organized crystalline structure that we call "ice."
Seems that the thesis of your argument is entirely refuted by one of the most basic observations available in the natural world.
And this is suppose to model the abiogenesis of life, or am I miss-reading you?
Of course you're misreading me: when have you ever read me correctly?
You missed the keyword: "thesis," meaning "the central concept of a piece of writing" (it's a grammar term: not your strong suit, I know).
You invoked SLoT, saying that simpler forms should be more heavily affected by increasing entropy than advanced forms. That is your thesis.
I showed you an example of an extremely simple system that readily and repeatedly decreases in entropy, which is a direct refutation of the central principle of your argument. Now, you have to support your thesis, or your entire argument fails.
Understand?
-----
Your posts since than have only been disingenuous ploys to score cheap rhetorical points with semantic arguments bereft of substance.
Stop arguing with words and argue with some content.

-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)
Darwin loves you.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 61 by Buzsaw, posted 10-29-2009 12:27 PM Buzsaw has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 162 by Buzsaw, posted 10-31-2009 9:06 PM Blue Jay has not replied

  
Blue Jay
Member (Idle past 2698 days)
Posts: 2843
From: You couldn't pronounce it with your mouthparts
Joined: 02-04-2008


Message 123 of 191 (533361)
10-30-2009 10:57 AM
Reply to: Message 49 by Cedre
10-29-2009 11:06 AM


At the moment of death
Hi, Cedre.
Cedre writes:
The fact that dead organisms are not alive despite being in one piece, a dead human being for example still has all the required carbon-compounds for life, and these carbon compounds are still in the right positions, yet the person is lifeless, this reveals that there's more to life than mere parts.
But the "carbon compounds" are not still in the right positions!
Have you ever noticed how our bodies degrade slowly before we die of old age? This is because things are breaking down:
  • muscles are losing their strength due to failures of chemical pathways to provide the right molecules in the right places at the right times.
  • Bones become more and more brittle as the chemical pathways used to produce mineralized matrices fail.
  • Brain cell connections degrade, so that electrical synapses can no longer be sent between them, resulting in neurological disorders such as dementia.
  • Telomeres degrade, allowing genes inward of the telomeres to begin degrading, causing their molecular products to be synthesized incorrectly, so their functions are not performed correctly.
What about when someone dies a traumatic death?
  • Lacerations cause massive blood loss, and the loss of blood makes the body inable to put oxygen in the correct place at the correct time, so that energetic reactions in the body cannot happen.
  • Traumatic injuries to vital organs can cause muscles to desynchronize their movements(fibrillate), resulting in poor performance of the lungs, heart, diaphragm, etc., which can reduce bloodflow or oxygen transport and also cause death.
  • Traumatic injuries to the brain can disrupt synaptic pathways and cause important functions in the body from occurring.
You will never, ever find a situation in which a perfectly-functioning body just dies for absolutely no reason. There is always a cause of death, and, by definition, a "cause of death" is something that makes the body stop functioning correctly.
This idea that, at the moment of death, all the parts are in the right place is completely and unbelievably false. I wish creationists would stop trying to bring it up.

-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)
Darwin loves you.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 49 by Cedre, posted 10-29-2009 11:06 AM Cedre has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 133 by Cedre, posted 10-31-2009 4:11 AM Blue Jay has replied

  
Blue Jay
Member (Idle past 2698 days)
Posts: 2843
From: You couldn't pronounce it with your mouthparts
Joined: 02-04-2008


Message 156 of 191 (533537)
10-31-2009 5:23 PM
Reply to: Message 133 by Cedre
10-31-2009 4:11 AM


Re: At the moment of death
Hi, Cedre.
Cedre writes:
Bluejay writes:
But the "carbon compounds" are not still in the right positions!
I have given you evidence that they are...
Baloney.
-----
Cedre writes:
...I have provided several links which maintain that tissue breakdown happens in stages...
And, stages of tissue breakdown have absolutely nothing to do with this debate. For those of us who will die of old age, these stages begin long before death happens.
-----
Cedre writes:
And if tissue hasn't began to breakdown it means that the cells and their components that comprise the tissue haven't either thus the carbon compounds comprising the cells and their components are in position, the only time they are not in position must be when the tissue begins to breakdown.
Again, this is baloney.
I'm not talking about tissue breakdown, Cedre: I'm talking about oxygen-transport, nerve signaling and the like. If you bleed to death, then the chemical reactions that are supposed to be taking place in your blood are not taking place. Thus, some of your body's carbon compounds are not in the right place. If you asphyxiate, then oxygen is not attaching to the right carbon compounds, and those carbon compounds arrive in the right place, but in the wrong chemical form.
When somebody dies, it means that some vital carbon compound is not in the right place at the right time, or does not have the right chemical conformation, or has not performed its task properly.
If you want to talk on the molecular level, you have to consider more than just tissues, because tissues are not the only molecular parts in your body.

-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)
Darwin loves you.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 133 by Cedre, posted 10-31-2009 4:11 AM Cedre has not replied

  
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