Quote from ShoeshineBoy:
Let's start with #3. I can only speculate that you are reading from a 1960's text book. The origin of life research is in complete disarray. Let me explain:
1. Fully formed cells show up in the fossil record as far back as 3.5 billion years, and limestone, formed from the remains of organisms dates back 3.8 billion years. This is also verified by the C/C ratio found in certain ancient sediments. These 300 million years were a period of intense bombardment from asteroids, comets and meteors. Astronomers estimate that there must have been AT LEAST 30 life exterminating impacts during this time period.
Your "fact" does not read sensibly. Cells as far back as 3.5 billion years OK but... "These 300 million years were a period of intense bombardment ¨ ?? what does that mean ? It looks like it is YOU who is in disarray here.
Do you mean to suggest during the 3.5 billion years when life was estimated to have come about, 300 million of those years were subject to either continuous or sporadic asteroid bombardment, of which AT LEAST 30 were life exterminating?? So according to your "facts".... for 90% of the 3.5Billion years there were NO such 'life exterminating impacts'
Furthermore and using your data, during the 10% of remaining time, how many of the "AT LEAST 30" life exterminating impacts" do you know destroyed ALL life forms, ALL cell forms (including [deep] sea) and All bacteria??
May I suggest to you that none of them would.
2. Prebiotic soup experiments, after decades of coaxing from the greatest biochemists on the planet, have shown virtually zero propensity for self-organization and self-replication.
Just what "coaxing from the greatest biochemists on the planet¨ are you referring to?? This sounds like false argument by erroneously constructed headline
Would "coaxing from the greatest biochemists on the planet¨ include the Nobel prize winners Altman and Cech's work on catalytic RNA which showed the capability of molecules replicating on their own without enzymes assisting was possible. Are you seriously saying this amounts to "zero propensity for self-replication" ??
Do the self replicating RNA polymerase mutations not account for self-replication ?? and doesn¡'t the subsequent Evolution of such molecular mutation describe very effectively the "self-organization¨ ???.
3. In the late 80's atmospheric physicists established that the earth's atmosphere has been highly oxidizing for at least the last 4 billion years. This is the "kiss of death" for amino acid self-assembly. In an oxidizing environment nucleotides operate 30 MILLION times more slowly.
That doesn't seem to make ANY sense. You say Earth's atmosphere has been "highly oxidizing¡¨ ?? What is that???
Are you confusing this obscure statement with the science which supports
primitive bacteria can't live in oxygen and you stretch this to somehow - life could not therefore have started on earth without intervention from a supreme being or something.??
But there are similar anaerobic bacteria alive today which live in low oxygen environments ie swamps, ponds and mud etc. There is no reason to assume similar first life cellular forms didn¡'t, or couldn¡'t have same or similar metabolic processes.
Or do you mean oxygen entered the atmosphere and eventually was abundant enough to form the ozone layer ?.....
But this is what would have made life n possible on Earth, This heralded the 'Biological Era' It was the accumulation of oxygen in the atmosphere itself which kicked off eukaryotic cell development, a most significant step in the creation of life
This is the "kiss of death" for amino acid self-assembly¨
The Early self replicator molecules had a sequence of 32 amino acids, The simplest bacteria today has 400 . Genome are now seen to encode 4300 proteins, each of which consists of 100 to 1000 amino acids Your "highly oxidizing earth's atmosphere" does not appear to be impairing large protein development.
Forgive my noticing this shoeshineboy, but there are a lot of 3's cropping up in your stuff (3.8 billion years, 300 million years, AT LEAST 30 and 30 MILLION times) .Isn't all this just juggling a lot of simplistic sound bite assumptions ,mixing them all up and trying to assert it is now science proving something or other.?? That is not what science is for you know
.
4. Molecular biophysicist Harold Morowitz calculated the odds of self-assembly . He said that if one were to take the simplest living cell and break every chemical bond within it, the odds that the cell would reassemble under ideal natural conditions (which would NOT be earth's early atmosphere) would be one chance in 10 to the 100,000,000,000.
So to summarize: the materialist must believe that an event that has a one in 10 to the 100,000,000,000 likelihood event occurred over 30 times in an impossibly harsh chemical environment.
How is that not faith by any definition of the word?
OK I rescind for the benefit of doubt on the 30âs theory as we are now in the world of the 10âs
Morowitz did no such thing . His work was connected with thermal equilibrium, such circumstances have never come about on planet earth. His presentation was about establishing a fact to do with entropy and had nothing to do with odds of life coming about on this planet.
You have brought up this âfantastic oddsâ argument earlier, perhaps a different explanation might clarify.
It appears to me that the idea you want to instill in this thread is that the building blocks of life (molecules / RNA DNA / amino acid sequences....whatever combinations) could not âself assembleâ due to the enormous odds of perfect order coming from random events. (At this point I will ignore the notion that life is necessarily a perfect order of things).
Creationist use the argument over and over that Amino acid sequences - RNA molecular mutation - cannot occur purely by chance due to some ridiculous high odds against, for instance "10 to the 100,000,000,000" . Therefore an external Creator controls or determines the âperfect orderâ.
Yet simple Chemistry shows the nonsense of this math and the silliness of its assertion. The math used here by Creationists is quite simply faulty and bogus.
Hereâs why....
There is room for 8 electrons in each Atom. Atoms are always trying to attain stability from holding 8 electrons.
Oxygen has 6, Hydrogen has 2. They are readily and strongly attracted to each other as 6+2=8 electrons.. This is very sound reason why there is so much water on the planet and why life forms are made up in large proportion of it. .Of the billions and billions of Atoms available over a period of billions and billions of years, this is not a random arrangement.... but an inevitable one. What has become basic chemistry and simple example shows how suitable Atom candidates seek to bond with each other in preference to bonding with other Atoms which would be offering less than 8 electrons as a result. A form of Natural Selection at the earliest stages. Religious apologists and Creationists not so long ago were demanding only God could know of such things.
Itâs fallacious (is that illegal in some states?
) to misuse giant numbers as some sort of cosmic wheel of chance. There are â10 to the countless 00000âsâ against
you being born, yet there ARE extremely high chances that there will be birth. Youâve won the biggest lottery there could ever be, against countless numbers of other individuals that would have been born had you not been conceived in their place. And purely by random chance of 1 particular sperm bonding with one particular egg against all the other countless numbers of combinations in the equation which did not. This big number math is being used falsely though, as there were always âodds onâ a birth would come about, but its only you who is making the condition that it must be
you. Countless billions of 0000âs of potential life (people) never got their chance of consciousness. Nature is apparently indifferent that it is
you who won it, Yet it seems Natureâs odds are overwhelmingly in favour of life and overwhelmingly life is inevitable given the circumstances. Individual
youness though is overwhelmingly not. inevitable - nevertheless you DID make it against ALL your odds of "10 to the 100,000,000,000" (and add a stack more 000000000âs) !!
An enzyme with a sequence of 32 amino acids whose individual amino acids are attracted and bond only with the next suitable amino acid in its chain is not chance. It appears that it is an overwhelmingly inevitable sequence given the circumstances of the universe. That such an enzyme goes on to self replication and mutation also rather dramatically explains, how Evolution kicks in at the very earliest stages of life.
Not so long ago there was no explanation of such events and everything was thought only to have a God Almighty reason for its occurrence. But these things have been found to have natural materialistic reasons for occurring, offering up substantial supporting evidence and explanations, - not divine ones. There is no real reason to expect further knowledge yet to be discovered will have anything other than natural explanations of a similar kind.
