I agree it's necessary for both sides of a discussion to share a common ground understanding of the terms discussed on a point to point basis. I was objecting to the idea that the definition must be exactingly complete from the outset, i.e. the idea that implications of B and C must be outlined in order to discuss A, etc. Sometimes this is the case but sometimes not. Experience has taught me that semantic circles can be detected and avoided if both parties are alert to divergences and quick to act on them as they come up
666...the Devils Moving Average
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I agree it's necessary for both sides of a discussion to share a common ground understanding of the terms discussed on a point to point basis. I was objecting to the idea that the definition must be exactingly complete from the outset, i.e. the idea that implications of B and C must be outlined in order to discuss A, etc. Sometimes this is the case but sometimes not. Experience has taught me that semantic circles can be detected and avoided if both parties are alert to divergences and quick to act on them as they come up
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Well I think we are just batting back and forth here. >> << though that a reducing atmosphere IS conducive to the synthesis of organic molecules. As I mentioned earlier in this thread, the early primitive atmosphere of earth was mostly formed from volcanic out gassing. Volcanic vapor consists of shit loads of of water vapour, comparatively small amounts of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, nitrogen gas and yes .... very little oxygen. That leaves a nice big "friendly" environment for the primitive anaerobic bacteria which can't live in oxygen.
Oxygen accumulated in the atmosphere about 2.5 billion years ago (not 4 billion years.. that's supposed to be how old the earth is) kicked off the 'Biological Era'. A free oxygen atmosphere would not in any event interfere with 'amino acid assembly'.... in the sea !!!
So now as free oxygen gradually accumulates there is potential for land based 'amino acid assembly' AND life form evolution - from sea based 'amino acid assembly' - just what is the problem here? Is it "this "reactions occur at least 30 MILLION times slower" assumption?? So you KNOW for a fact the exact amount of free oxygen present in primitive earth's atmosphere, which could slow down molecular synthesis to "at least 30 MILLION times" .......even where there is no free oxygen for around 1.5 Billion years or so!! ???
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No, I'm sorry. Origin of life researchers now universally recognized that they overestimated the abundance of hydrogen, which produces quick reactions, easy energy and easy acids back in the early "prebiotic soup" days. Even a neutral atmosphere (of nitrogen, water and CO2) is the kiss of death for all the biotic soup experiments (including Oparin and Urey). Even a neutral atmosphere is GROSSLY slow for amino acid production and synthesis. It most easily produces ammonia, nitric acid and formaldehyde - not amino acids!
Since 1979, articles based on the premise that life arose through chance random reactions over billions of years are not accepted in any reputable journal.
Well I think we are just batting back and forth here. >> << though that a reducing atmosphere IS conducive to the synthesis of organic molecules. As I mentioned earlier in this thread, the early primitive atmosphere of earth was mostly formed from volcanic out gassing. Volcanic vapor consists of shit loads of of water vapour, comparatively small amounts of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, nitrogen gas and yes .... very little oxygen. That leaves a nice big "friendly" environment for the primitive anaerobic bacteria which can't live in oxygen.
Oxygen accumulated in the atmosphere about 2.5 billion years ago (not 4 billion years.. that's supposed to be how old the earth is) kicked off the 'Biological Era'. A free oxygen atmosphere would not in any event interfere with 'amino acid assembly'.... in the sea !!!
So now as free oxygen gradually accumulates there is potential for land based 'amino acid assembly' AND life form evolution - from sea based 'amino acid assembly' - just what is the problem here? Is it "this "reactions occur at least 30 MILLION times slower" assumption?? So you KNOW for a fact the exact amount of free oxygen present in primitive earth's atmosphere, which could slow down molecular synthesis to "at least 30 MILLION times" .......even where there is no free oxygen for around 1.5 Billion years or so!! ???
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No, I'm sorry. Origin of life researchers now universally recognized that they overestimated the abundance of hydrogen, which produces quick reactions, easy energy and easy acids back in the early "prebiotic soup" days. Even a neutral atmosphere (of nitrogen, water and CO2) is the kiss of death for all the biotic soup experiments (including Oparin and Urey). Even a neutral atmosphere is GROSSLY slow for amino acid production and synthesis. It most easily produces ammonia, nitric acid and formaldehyde - not amino acids!
Since 1979, articles based on the premise that life arose through chance random reactions over billions of years are not accepted in any reputable journal.
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Isn't that the kind of patronizing supercilious pomposity that you wanted people not to assault YOU with.
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Patronizing, yes. Pomposity, no.
Isn't that the kind of patronizing supercilious pomposity that you wanted people not to assault YOU with.
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Patronizing, yes. Pomposity, no.
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A true geek would deal only in true numbers.
Again I say yours are not the numbers of reputable scientists, they are the construction of people who want to practice the art of misrepresentation.
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Sorry, I don't know how else to say it except that you and axe do not know what you are talking about. Here's a couple of examples of geniuses who are willing to admit the numbers just don't work for the origin of life:
At the famous Wistar Symposium in Philadelphia in 1966, mathematicians Murray Eden of MIT and Marcel P. Schutzenberger of the French Academy of Sciences argued exactly that chance could not have possibly produced complex living organisms. These guys are the "best and brightest" and they're essentially asking for us all to quit hoping for the impossible. Randomness can't explain the first cell.
Another example: the chemist Michael Polanyi wrote in 1968 in Science that if the DNA molecule were explained as random chemical bonds, "then such a DNA molecule would have no information content. Its code-like character would be effaced by an overwhelming redundancy." This is obvious as well to anyone who takes the time to think about the stochastic side of the original genetics.
Again, I'm not wanting you guys to say, "Oh, I believe there's a God, SSB. See you on Sunday!" I just want you to see that the origin of life research is currently an almost dead field. It takes no survivors.
And let's be honest here: if the universe was Designed, the Origin of Life findings are exactly what one would expect. Life would have sprung very quickly in an unexplainable and seemingly miraculous fashion.
Does that prove God? No. Does that prove God could have done it? Of course.
And I'm not sure if I should be insulted by being called an untrue geek...
A true geek would deal only in true numbers.
Again I say yours are not the numbers of reputable scientists, they are the construction of people who want to practice the art of misrepresentation.
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Sorry, I don't know how else to say it except that you and axe do not know what you are talking about. Here's a couple of examples of geniuses who are willing to admit the numbers just don't work for the origin of life:
At the famous Wistar Symposium in Philadelphia in 1966, mathematicians Murray Eden of MIT and Marcel P. Schutzenberger of the French Academy of Sciences argued exactly that chance could not have possibly produced complex living organisms. These guys are the "best and brightest" and they're essentially asking for us all to quit hoping for the impossible. Randomness can't explain the first cell.
Another example: the chemist Michael Polanyi wrote in 1968 in Science that if the DNA molecule were explained as random chemical bonds, "then such a DNA molecule would have no information content. Its code-like character would be effaced by an overwhelming redundancy." This is obvious as well to anyone who takes the time to think about the stochastic side of the original genetics.
Again, I'm not wanting you guys to say, "Oh, I believe there's a God, SSB. See you on Sunday!" I just want you to see that the origin of life research is currently an almost dead field. It takes no survivors.
And let's be honest here: if the universe was Designed, the Origin of Life findings are exactly what one would expect. Life would have sprung very quickly in an unexplainable and seemingly miraculous fashion.
Does that prove God? No. Does that prove God could have done it? Of course.
And I'm not sure if I should be insulted by being called an untrue geek...
SB"And let's be honest here: if the universe was Designed, the Origin of Life findings are exactly what one would expect. "
False.
This is another area where ID falls flat on it's face.
If there IS a creator, capable of something as extraordinary
as the WHOLE universe and ALL life in it.... quite mind boggling
as it is, we would NOT expect to see what we do see.
Why do I say this?
Because a creator THIS intelligent, would not have made
so many GLARING errors in his design.
A 1st year, MERE HUMAN, mechanical engineer would know
NOT to wire an optic nerve IN FRONT of the light sensitive
receptor cells in the human eye.
Our eye's are wired BACKWARDS!
Dawkins goes through numerous of these evolutionary
hiccups in his books. OBVIOUS, and really bad design
errors abound in nature.
Errors that any semi competent engineer would not make.
Yet they exist. Evolution explains why these exist
quite well, but intelligent design certainly does not.
(Unless god ain't too bright
)
Now I expect 2 or 3 types answers from the creationists,
maybe more...
1) It IS a good design.... (rejecting reality)
2) There is some hidden greator purpose in the supposed flaw
that a mere human couldn't possibly understand (cop out)
3) God can make mistakes ( but is smart enough to create
an incredibly universe with 50+ vars just right for life , uhhhh no )
peace
axeman
False.
This is another area where ID falls flat on it's face.
If there IS a creator, capable of something as extraordinary
as the WHOLE universe and ALL life in it.... quite mind boggling
as it is, we would NOT expect to see what we do see.
Why do I say this?
Because a creator THIS intelligent, would not have made
so many GLARING errors in his design.
A 1st year, MERE HUMAN, mechanical engineer would know
NOT to wire an optic nerve IN FRONT of the light sensitive
receptor cells in the human eye.
Our eye's are wired BACKWARDS!
Dawkins goes through numerous of these evolutionary
hiccups in his books. OBVIOUS, and really bad design
errors abound in nature.
Errors that any semi competent engineer would not make.
Yet they exist. Evolution explains why these exist
quite well, but intelligent design certainly does not.
(Unless god ain't too bright
)Now I expect 2 or 3 types answers from the creationists,
maybe more...
1) It IS a good design.... (rejecting reality)
2) There is some hidden greator purpose in the supposed flaw
that a mere human couldn't possibly understand (cop out)
3) God can make mistakes ( but is smart enough to create
an incredibly universe with 50+ vars just right for life , uhhhh no )
peace
axeman
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OK to get this clear. 1. It is scientific fact that DNA/RNA enzyme self-replicating proteins exist
2. The "Prebiotic soup experiment" has nothing to do with demonstrting self-replicating proteins replicate That has already been established.
To then go on and try to reproduce what conditions are required or might have been like in early earth history , to kick start the "Prebiotic soup experiment" is a quite separate issue.
It is like saying puppy dogs self replicate - the evidence and proof of that is now obvious...but how can the conditions which kick starts this self replication be recreated in a laboratory. (On second thoughts it would be more interesting if the subject matter were buxom blonde replication in a laboratory).
But these are laboratory conditions !!! The Universe as a laboratory has infinitely more forces and (yet) unknown phenomena about itself. It is has been impossible to emulate the sun's power or to create precious elements at will in the scientists' laboratory. If time is one ingredient which is essential for 'Prebiotic soup experiments' then they will be buggered from the get go. Billions of years is a long time to be hanging around to see if you can kick start life. A way around that complication is needed but "Prebiotic soup experiments" do not negate self-replicating proteins as creationists would have them do.
However notwithstanding all this, proteins from an amino acid chain (ie: organic polymers) have bloody well been produced in the lab. so have all 20 amino acids , so have the purine and pyrimidine bases found in DNA/RNA. So there
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Look you can keep holding onto the hope that RNA is the miracle solution if you want, but that theory is 20 years old and beaten to a pulp. Here's a neutral link showing just what I mean:
http://www.santafe.edu/sfi/research/focus/networkDynamics/projects/biochemicalNetworks.html
Here it explains how Morowitz is hoping that origin of life research can begin in the Kreb's cycle (as I mentioned previously).
Here's your "main man", one of the foremost biogeniuses in the world, giving up the ship on RNA/DNA and yet you insist that everything is just going along guh-rate with Origin of Life scholarship in this area...
OK to get this clear. 1. It is scientific fact that DNA/RNA enzyme self-replicating proteins exist
2. The "Prebiotic soup experiment" has nothing to do with demonstrting self-replicating proteins replicate That has already been established.
To then go on and try to reproduce what conditions are required or might have been like in early earth history , to kick start the "Prebiotic soup experiment" is a quite separate issue.
It is like saying puppy dogs self replicate - the evidence and proof of that is now obvious...but how can the conditions which kick starts this self replication be recreated in a laboratory. (On second thoughts it would be more interesting if the subject matter were buxom blonde replication in a laboratory).
But these are laboratory conditions !!! The Universe as a laboratory has infinitely more forces and (yet) unknown phenomena about itself. It is has been impossible to emulate the sun's power or to create precious elements at will in the scientists' laboratory. If time is one ingredient which is essential for 'Prebiotic soup experiments' then they will be buggered from the get go. Billions of years is a long time to be hanging around to see if you can kick start life. A way around that complication is needed but "Prebiotic soup experiments" do not negate self-replicating proteins as creationists would have them do.
However notwithstanding all this, proteins from an amino acid chain (ie: organic polymers) have bloody well been produced in the lab. so have all 20 amino acids , so have the purine and pyrimidine bases found in DNA/RNA. So there
************************************************
Look you can keep holding onto the hope that RNA is the miracle solution if you want, but that theory is 20 years old and beaten to a pulp. Here's a neutral link showing just what I mean:
http://www.santafe.edu/sfi/research/focus/networkDynamics/projects/biochemicalNetworks.html
Here it explains how Morowitz is hoping that origin of life research can begin in the Kreb's cycle (as I mentioned previously).
Here's your "main man", one of the foremost biogeniuses in the world, giving up the ship on RNA/DNA and yet you insist that everything is just going along guh-rate with Origin of Life scholarship in this area...
Here is another example:
Dean Kenyon, who worked in the lab of Nobel prize winner Melvin Calvin, in 1969 authored a book called Biochemical Predestination and became an apostle of the materialistic origin of life theory. He belonged to your guys' "old school" thinking that "life is inevitable" and chemicals are naturally attracted to each other in the DNA molecule.
Thirty years later he had completely reversed himself! He actually became willing to accept the idea that the origin of life was so beyond chance or simple naturalistic processes that an intelligent force must have played a role!
He also shattered the myth of the RNA experiments (which Stu cited) in a 1995 essay called Re-creating the RNA World. He said: "In vitro RNA selection does not demonstrate that complex ribozymes could have arisen naturally in prebiotic soup, because the in vitro experimental conditions are wholly unrealistic."
Again, how much evidence do I have to present that the Origin of Life world is reeling?
Dean Kenyon, who worked in the lab of Nobel prize winner Melvin Calvin, in 1969 authored a book called Biochemical Predestination and became an apostle of the materialistic origin of life theory. He belonged to your guys' "old school" thinking that "life is inevitable" and chemicals are naturally attracted to each other in the DNA molecule.
Thirty years later he had completely reversed himself! He actually became willing to accept the idea that the origin of life was so beyond chance or simple naturalistic processes that an intelligent force must have played a role!
He also shattered the myth of the RNA experiments (which Stu cited) in a 1995 essay called Re-creating the RNA World. He said: "In vitro RNA selection does not demonstrate that complex ribozymes could have arisen naturally in prebiotic soup, because the in vitro experimental conditions are wholly unrealistic."
Again, how much evidence do I have to present that the Origin of Life world is reeling?
Hi,
How come that threads on God and threads on devils rake up such extravagant participation numbers?
Blaise Pascal, who must be considered the founder of probability theory may have been right. He wrote something to the extent that the belief in God simply makes sense in terms of probabilities. (sorry, I can't find the exact quote). People's preoccupation with this question seems to have remained unchanged for the last 350 years. "Science" appears not to have added one iota of additional information to this question since the days of Pascal.
A few lines on the "Definition of God" problem as percieved by some ET people:
Exodus.3:
[14] And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.
John.1:
[17] For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.
[18] No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.
Symbolum Nicenum:
Et iterum venturus est cum gloria judicare vivos et mortuos cuius regni non erit finis.
[If you don't quite get this, go buy a record of J.S.Bach's H-Moll Messe. He will blow it into your ears and hammer it into your head].
nononsense
How come that threads on God and threads on devils rake up such extravagant participation numbers?
Blaise Pascal, who must be considered the founder of probability theory may have been right. He wrote something to the extent that the belief in God simply makes sense in terms of probabilities. (sorry, I can't find the exact quote). People's preoccupation with this question seems to have remained unchanged for the last 350 years. "Science" appears not to have added one iota of additional information to this question since the days of Pascal.
A few lines on the "Definition of God" problem as percieved by some ET people:
Exodus.3:
[14] And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.
John.1:
[17] For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.
[18] No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.
Symbolum Nicenum:
Et iterum venturus est cum gloria judicare vivos et mortuos cuius regni non erit finis.
[If you don't quite get this, go buy a record of J.S.Bach's H-Moll Messe. He will blow it into your ears and hammer it into your head].
nononsense
Well, no doubt to YOU it seems like a cop out. Then again, I've never for one moment believed you have any intention whatsoever of gaining any kind of greater understanding about God. You're just so intent on parading around your worn out old atheist rhetoric that you are one person on here that I am convinced routinely misses the forest for the trees. Which is a pity, because there's obvious intellect there.
Anyway, I'm amazed that for such a strict adherent to logic that the logical truth that you cannot know if something was optimally designed or not until you know what it was designed to optimally do has escaped you. Talk about bias.
By the way, you guys are forgetting another key fact: the Origin of Life situation is so desperate that many of the greatest scientists of the 20th century have played with or even turned to panspermia, the idea the first life on earth was seeded from outer space.
1) Oparin, the apostle of the biotic soup, wrote about an "infection" from space.
2) Hoyle, one of the 10 most famous astrophysicists of this century, wrote several books on the subject including the Astronomical Origins of Life: Steps towards Panspermia
3) Frances Crick, codiscoverer of DNA, wrote about it in his 1973 paper "Directed Panspermia".
There are others as well: these are just the big guns.
You don't get any more famous and impressive list of scientists than this. This is the equivalent of Soros, Buffett and Lynch all weighing in on investing. Would any of these men have speculated about life coming from outside our solar system if things were looking good right here on earth? Of course not.
Plus, has anybody heard of a movie called Contact?
1) Oparin, the apostle of the biotic soup, wrote about an "infection" from space.
2) Hoyle, one of the 10 most famous astrophysicists of this century, wrote several books on the subject including the Astronomical Origins of Life: Steps towards Panspermia
3) Frances Crick, codiscoverer of DNA, wrote about it in his 1973 paper "Directed Panspermia".
There are others as well: these are just the big guns.
You don't get any more famous and impressive list of scientists than this. This is the equivalent of Soros, Buffett and Lynch all weighing in on investing. Would any of these men have speculated about life coming from outside our solar system if things were looking good right here on earth? Of course not.
Plus, has anybody heard of a movie called Contact?