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Author Topic:   Could RNA start life?
RAZD
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Posts: 20714
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(2)
Message 4 of 105 (682605)
12-04-2012 2:09 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by dayalanand roy
12-04-2012 12:50 AM


abiogenesis
Hi dayalanand roy, welcome to the fray.
As we know, still majority of evolutionists believe in an RNA world hypothesis. ...
Wrong.
Many accept that the RNA hypothesis may be true, many are skeptical of it being true and are waiting for more information.
... However, I have a problem in imbibing this theory. ...
That would appear to be a personal problem, not a scientific one. Whether or not you accept the theory of gravity has no effect at all on the behavior of gravity.
... Nucleic acids are the information storage system of life. ...
Sorry but this is wrong thinking again, they are just imperfect replications of what has survived.
... When there was no life, why did nature invent a storage system to store the information about sometning (Life) which was still not existent, and hence there was no information to store. ...
Curiously, this should tell you that your premise regarding information storage is false, rather than this being a problem for the development of life.
... Can we suppose the invention of a floppy disk, a CD or a pen drive before the invention of computer? Can we suppose the invention of bank before the invention of money? ...
Again, this is poor thinking: none of these things reproduce.
... Similarly, when there was no lfe, there was no information about it, and hence no question to store it, and hence no question to invent an storage system to store it.
And yet, once replicating molecules developed, they could proceed to follow the precepts of evolution: random mutation causing differences, and natural selection allowing the ones better able to survive and reproduce, to become more dominant.
Enjoy.
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This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by dayalanand roy, posted 12-04-2012 12:50 AM dayalanand roy has seen this message but not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 33 by dayalanand roy, posted 12-08-2012 9:14 AM RAZD has replied
 Message 62 by Ed67, posted 04-18-2014 9:57 AM RAZD has replied

  
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1404 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 15 of 105 (682688)
12-04-2012 4:48 PM
Reply to: Message 14 by crashfrog
12-04-2012 4:01 PM


abiogenesis - last stages?
Hi crashfrog & nwr
... Now, trace back one step to its immediate predecessor which by definition is not life, so let's call it the "last proto-life." What kind of chemistry does the last proto-life do, and how does it do it?
Both replication and metabolism -- replication needs raw materials being consumed to make the next (imperfect) copy. This would likely be enclosed in a lipid shell, so we have a ways to go before getting back to the "first" system\aspect of life.
Life certainly evolved out of spontaneously occurring chemistry, but it wouldn't be life until the chemistry was controlled and not spontaneous. Right?
Why? There could be whole slews of different chemical systems, and what we call life could come from one and then dominate\consume all others.
Edited by RAZD, : added

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This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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RAZD
Member (Idle past 1404 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 38 of 105 (683227)
12-08-2012 7:26 PM
Reply to: Message 33 by dayalanand roy
12-08-2012 9:14 AM


Re: abiogenesis
Hi again dayalanand roy,
... However, I am unable to follow exactly your posting tips.
regards.
When you look at the top right coner of the block for Message you're replying to: you will see two radio buttons, on for Normal (default) and one for Peek Mode: -- change to peek mode and you can see how the message you're replying to was formated.
Also see Posting Tips
Enjoy

we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
Rebel American Zen Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.


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RAZD
Member (Idle past 1404 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 47 of 105 (713629)
12-14-2013 10:47 PM
Reply to: Message 46 by PlanManStan
12-14-2013 10:41 PM


Re: Good Question
... Finding a a being with only RNA (such as bacteria) would strongly confirm this.
Viruses.
Google RNA world
Enjoy.

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RAZD
Member (Idle past 1404 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 49 of 105 (713666)
12-15-2013 8:38 AM
Reply to: Message 48 by PaulK
12-15-2013 2:57 AM


Re: Good Question
sweet!

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RAZD
Member (Idle past 1404 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 60 of 105 (724576)
04-18-2014 9:01 AM
Reply to: Message 50 by Ed67
04-15-2014 9:14 PM


Progress made in baby steps ...
"There has been an interesting new development."
Yes, there always is.
And a few years later they all end up on the garbage heap.
Curiously, this latest investigation is built on previous investigations and the increasing knowledge of how the basic systems and conditions needed work together to form a protocell.
Things only end up on the garbage heap in science when they are invalidated. That hasn't happened here. What frequently happens is that such discoveries fade from the public consciousness as time passes.
What is learned is a building block for later work.
But they fulfill their PR purpose in the meantime...
There is no PR purpose to science other than to let other scientists know what has been accomplished, usually via peer reviewed articles in scientific journals. so that another facet of science can be done: replication of the work by other scientists to validate the process and discovery.
Message 58: But where do you think the journalists GET their incessant stories about the 'new discoveries' that all but prove abiogenesis? Do you think the press has moles in the scientific community that steal these 'secrets'?
From having "science editors\writers" assigned to review the scientific journals and regurgitate the information in a dumbed-down and often incorrect article purportedly tailored to "average" intellectual comprehension. And then sensationalized in order to boost sales ...
Message 53: I'm talking about this kind of discovery:
"The creation of a working protocell which could ALMOST be plausible in a prebiotic environment."
TRANSLATION: "Scientists are right on the CUSP of proving abiogenesis true once and for all"
These are the 'discoveries' that end up in magazines and newspapers enough to give the public the impression that scientists 'pretty much know' that life originated by natural causes.
Slight correction: " ... that scientists 'pretty much know' that life could have originated by natural causes."
We won't know how life actually developed without finding evidence of how that actually happened.
Of course, it's been my impression that these 'discoveries' fall by the wayside and get forgotten, but by then the newest 'discovery' has taken the spotlight...and so on
And if you read the scientific journals rather than the glossy tabloid type magazines you would likely get a different impression: that the work is ongoing, that it is a slow process, that a lot of work goes into developments leading to the next stage of discovery, and that all the work done to date is building toward resolution of the basic question of whether or not it is possible for life to develop ... and that this appears to be increasingly likely.
Consider this last work: it shows a self-replicating RNA inside a protocell ... rather a major degree of progress from the first spontaneous production of amino acids in the '50's eh?

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This message is a reply to:
 Message 50 by Ed67, posted 04-15-2014 9:14 PM Ed67 has replied

Replies to this message:
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RAZD
Member (Idle past 1404 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 66 of 105 (724669)
04-19-2014 11:07 AM
Reply to: Message 62 by Ed67
04-18-2014 9:57 AM


Re: abiogenesis
Message 61: Could RNA start life?
Evidence from experiments are pointing strongly in the direction that the "RNA world" was an intermediate stage between chemical replication and our current "DNA world" ... especially when you consider how similar RNA is to DNA. It is conceivable that DNA could evolve from RNA, rather than develop on it's own.
Of course anything 'could have' happened. But the interesting question is:
"Could RNA start life without the assistance of an intelligent designer?
So why would a vastly intelligent designer start with a half vast system of replication rather than build the DNA world from the start?
Or, why would a vastly intelligent designer not design a system where life develops and then evolves without needing assistance along the way -- if they designed the RNA world to produce the DNA world, why not design the universe to produce the RNA world?
[qs=RAZD] ... [qs]
You missed the / before the last qs -- that's the "close" command.
quote:
and you can type [qs=RAZD]quotes are easy[/qs] and it becomes:
RAZD writes:
quotes are easy

First, you insist that some scientists are skeptical about the RNA world hypothesis, then you berate the person for his own skepticism.
Denial is not skepticism, disbelief is not skepticism, opinion is not skepticism, rejection is not skepticism; rather they are all (emotional) responses (to information that is contrary to your worldview). These all carry (emotional) resistance to accepting the (new) concept/s.
Scientific skepticism on the other hand would hold that the evidence is not complete enough to show that the concept is valid (even when the concept is not contrary to their worldview). This shows (non-emotional) caution to accepting the (new) concept/s.
In science skepticism is balanced by confidence that accrues as theories are tested and tested and tested without being invalidated.
The theory of evolution is one that has been extensively tested and extensively validated without any hint of invalidation, for over 150 years now, and this gives us a lot of confidence that it is a valid explanation of the diversity of life.
The theory/ies regarding abiogenesis are not so well tested and there are still unknown facets for a natural process for the development of life, and this gives us low confidence in the various processes under discussion being valid parts of the final explanation -- they could be part of the process or some other yet unknown process may be better.
LOL you're funny.
How words are used is important to conveying information properly, so that what you say is understood in the way you mean it. Science has a tendency to use terms to mean specific things in order to clearly convey information.
See Definitions, Daffynitions, Delusions, Logic and Critical Thinking. for further discussion.
Edited by RAZD, : confidence
Edited by RAZD, : a

we are limited in our ability to understand
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This message is a reply to:
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RAZD
Member (Idle past 1404 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 74 of 105 (724821)
04-21-2014 10:31 AM
Reply to: Message 71 by Ed67
04-20-2014 9:36 PM


ID does not provide the answer to the topic question.
Good point. But when the search for natural causes gets to the origin of life, it stalls out. There has been no naturalistic answer in the half century since discovering the structure of DNA. ...
Gosh, a whole 50 years has past and we haven't solved abiogenesis ... therefore ... what?
... The reason is that, at the level of the cell, virtually all of the molecular systems exhibit irreducible complexity ...
A falsified PRATT: CB200: Irreducible complexity
quote:
  1. Irreducible complexity can evolve. It is defined as a system that loses its function if any one part is removed, so it only indicates that the system did not evolve by the addition of single parts with no change in function. That still leaves several evolutionary mechanisms:
    • deletion of parts
    • addition of multiple parts; for example, duplication of much or all of the system (Pennisi 2001)
    • change of function
    • addition of a second function to a part (Aharoni et al. 2004)
    • gradual modification of parts
    All of these mechanisms have been observed in genetic mutations. In particular, deletions and gene duplications are fairly common (Dujon et al. 2004; Hooper and Berg 2003; Lynch and Conery 2000), and together they make irreducible complexity not only possible but expected. In fact, it was predicted by Nobel-prize-winning geneticist Hermann Muller almost a century ago (Muller 1918, 463-464). Muller referred to it as interlocking complexity (Muller 1939).
    Evolutionary origins of some irreducibly complex systems have been described in some detail. For example, the evolution of the Krebs citric acid cycle has been well studied (Melndez-Hevia et al. 1996), and the evolution of an "irreducible" system of a hormone-receptor system has been elucidated (Bridgham et al. 2006). Irreducibility is no obstacle to their formation.

Just some of the falsification information. Essentially "irreducible complexity" is a useless term that fails to describe reality.
Here is a visual example:
Each of the layers you see are composed of blocks of rock held in place by gravity and friction: remove one of those rocks and the arch fails (either part of it falls or the whole falls). So it is "irreducibly complex" -- yet it's natural formation is easily described.
Layers form and are lithified
They are uplifted and warped
The layers crack into closely fitting boulders
Rock layers underneath are removed by erosion
Voila a natural arch similar to a roman arch complete with "keystone" architecture.
... and the code embedded in the DNA sequence is something that can not yet be explained ...
and which does not mean that it can't ever be explained by science, just that the currently tested explanations are incomplete ... NOR have the current hypothesis been invalidated. Hardly a "stalled" dead issue.
... without positing an intelligent designer.
.. if you want to leap to a self indulgent untestable unscientific theistic\philosophical answer instead of pursuing a scientific one.
Is it possible that intelligence can exist without a living physical body to sustain it?
Is it possible that a living physical body can exist without intelligence to design it?
Philosophical questions are not scientific until you can test them -- if they are testable and if they are falsifiable.
Can you falsify the existence of an intelligence without a physical body to sustain it?
Can you falsify that a living physical body can exist without intelligence to design it? by natural means? ... will this be falsified when abiogenesis succeeds?
How do these philosophical questions relate to science?
There's a bare, logical possibility for both questions; it's just our viewpoint that results in which option you believe to be MORE LIKELY. But without more information than science can provide, there's no basis for committing either way. More information is needed.
If more information is needed then any conclusion is a leap of faith, not a scientifically derived one.
For the Biological research establishment to admit that, scientifically speaking, there is room in the origin of life for an intelligent designer, would require an admirable example of scientific self-criticism.
But there already is room: provide a testable hypothesis and then go test it. Publish results in peer reviewed journals and voila: science done. The room is there, you just have to go into the room rather than complain from outside.
Until you can provide us with a scientifically testable methodology to determine the existence of such intelligence and how it behaves, how it actualizes the designs, it is just another unsubstantiated hypothetical concept -- valid for philosophy perhaps, but not yet ready for science.
Unanswered questions from Message 66:
quote:
Of course anything 'could have' happened. But the interesting question is:
"Could RNA start life without the assistance of an intelligent designer?
So why would a vastly intelligent designer start with a half vast system of replication rather than build the DNA world from the start?
Or, why would a vastly intelligent designer not design a system where life develops and then evolves without needing assistance along the way -- if they designed the RNA world to produce the DNA world, why not design the universe to produce the RNA world?
Again I direct your attention to Is ID properly pursued?, rather than replicate it here. If you can afford the time to read the ID concepts of irreducible complexity, surely an honest approach is to also read articles critical of how ID is implemented ... unless you aren't really interested in answers, in reality ...
Have fun.

we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
Rebel American Zen Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.


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This message is a reply to:
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RAZD
Member (Idle past 1404 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


(3)
Message 96 of 105 (725270)
04-25-2014 9:00 AM
Reply to: Message 84 by Ed67
04-24-2014 1:10 PM


begin again with the basics
The reason for the resistance from the scientific establishment, and that it hasn't done science from a design perspective, is its commitment to methodological materialism.
So why haven't all your purported design theorists not done any? Anyone can do science -- just follow the scientific method.
Perhaps you have it backwards:
The reason for the resistance from the IDological crowd, and that it hasn't done any science from a methodological materialistic perspective, is its commitment to supernatural forces.
The reason for the resistance from the scientific establishment, and that it hasn't done science from a design perspective, is its commitment to methodological materialism.
Yes, sadly (for you), science is so committed to doing science:
quote:
Methodological materialism is neither a belief nor an assumption but a restriction on method. Briefly stated it holds that a non-material assumption is not to be made. Science, for example, is necessarily methodologically materialist. Science wishes to describe and explain nature. Diversion into the supernatural begins to describe and explain matters that are not natural and obfuscate the natural.
Methodological materialism is a defining characteristic of science in the same way that methodological woodism is a defining characteristic of carpentry. Science seeks to construct natural explanations for natural phenomena in the same way that carpentry seeks to construct objects out of wood. In operating in this manner neither discipline denies the existence of supernatural forces or sheet plastics, their usefulness or validity. The use of either supernatural forces or sheet plastics is simply distinguished as belonging to separate disciplines.
You can't study wood carpentry with plastic sheets. You can study plastic construction ...
You can't study science with supernatural forces. You can study philosophy and theology ...

we are limited in our ability to understand
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This message is a reply to:
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RAZD
Member (Idle past 1404 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 97 of 105 (725274)
04-25-2014 9:46 AM
Reply to: Message 90 by Ed67
04-24-2014 1:41 PM


Re: Detection of a supernatural designer?
ringo writes:
You can detect artifacts but how do you connect them to some undetectable non-physical entity?
Those were the only kind of intelligent entities around at the time, apparently, because we now have a full overview of how the replication system and cell operate. ...
Um, that didn't really answer the question now, did it?
Presumably you are claiming that "how the replication system and cell operate" are the assumed "artifacts" of "some undetectable non-physical entity" but you haven't shown how they are connected.
... My personal opinion is that there is too much design expressed in living things, let alone humans, to be ignored or explained away.
Unfortunately, for you, opinion, and the argument from incredulity, have demonstrated a total inability to alter reality in any way.
Message 93: And what if there is a higher intelligence than humans? Someone intelligent enough to construct life from chemicals using the laws of chemistry and physics? Someone who understands more natural processes than humans currently do?
And what if there is a higher higher intelligence than your higher intelligence? Something intelligent enough to construct the universe and the laws of chemistry and physics so that life develops naturally as a result of that design? Something who understands more natural processes than your higher intelligence?
Edited by RAZD, : added second

we are limited in our ability to understand
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Rebel American Zen Deist
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This message is a reply to:
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RAZD
Member (Idle past 1404 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 104 of 105 (737989)
10-03-2014 8:42 AM
Reply to: Message 102 by djufo
10-02-2014 8:31 PM


pre-biotic molecules
... Life in the universe should be viewed as something more like an "infection" it spreads around, and wherever is an environment suitable for development, it evolves. ...
The evidence that we can see is that pre-biotic molecules exist in space, and they could be the basic building blocks for the development of life on earth.
see Panspermic Pre-Biotic Molecules - Life's Building Blocks (Part I)
The thesis of this thread is that RNA developed as the first replicator molecule along the path of development of life on earth.
see Self-Replicating Molecules - Life's Building Blocks (Part II) - Self-Replicating Molecules - Life's Building Blocks, Part II for more.
... according to historical data, during the formation of the solar system this planet got infected with life from the collision between what it was the original earth and another celestial body orbiting the solar system which already had life on it.
Curiously, I must have missed that day in history class - can you provide reference material?
The evidence is that there may have been a collision between the primordial earth and what is now the moon -- where did the life on the moon go?
... and another celestial body orbiting the solar system which already had life on it.
And where did that life come from?
Enjoy

we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
RebelAmerican☆Zen☯Deist
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