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A positive argument against abiogenesis

exchemist

Veteran Member
Granted we don’t have trilobites, but we do have “simple” arthropods today, we have modern animals that are as simple as animals from the Cambrian.

That is my point while complex life forms evolved from simpler organisms, that doesn’t mean that everybody evolved in to more complex life forms, some organisms stayed “simple” because in some environments being simple is good.

Just to be clear, my point is that not everybody evolves in to more complex life forms, some stay the same and some become simpler (sometimes becoming simpler is an advantage) ………….do you agree with this point?
The point is that extinctions take place all the time, for a multitude of reasons, so the absence of a particular life form today is not an argument for anything.

I honestly don't know why you keep on with this interminable nonsense.
 

leroy

Well-Known Member
Why do you assume all that? Says who? What evidence of it do you have? The first widespread life we have fossil evidence of was already quite complex.
Because I am assuming that abiogenesis is true………………supposedly simple life formed in the primordial soup (or some other environment)…….. Complex organisms like modern-like procaryotes are said to have evolved billions of years after abiogenesis.

Given the assumption that abiogenesis is true , we would expect to have simple life today…………..given that we don’t have simple life today., them maybe (just maybe) abiogenesis never happened.

In this context abiogenesis means the idea that simple life formed in a soup (or some other environment) and slowly evolved in to modern like organisms


The first widespread life we have fossil evidence of was already quite complex.
Which supports premise 2 in my argument (see the OP)…………….”life has always been complex”


DO you agree with this premise
 

leroy

Well-Known Member
The point is that extinctions take place all the time, for a multitude of reasons, so the absence of a particular life form today is not an argument for anything.

I honestly don't know why you keep on with this interminable nonsense.
You are making a straw man, I am not saying that a particular organism should be alive today…………I am saying that organisms that are nearly as simple as the first organisms should be alive today.
 

Clara Tea

Well-Known Member
There is a third option, at least for life on earth. It could have come from space. Since @leroy hasn't stated in this thread which option he prefers, he could, with the same arguments, be supposing the panspermia hypothesis.

Thank you for coming up with other alternatives. Thinking outside of the box sometimes comes up with the correct solution.

Scientists have given much serious thought to the idea that life might have come from space. We know that a rock in Alaska came from Mars (blown off by a meteor impact). At first scientists believed that the markings on the rock were similar to bacterial colony marks, but I believe that those could be naturally occurring without life.

There was a student at Cal Tech who got his doctorate in physics for for showing that life could survive locked inside a meteor rock (where temperatures were not hot enough to kill it upon impact with the earth). My nephew was supposed to be the valedictorian of his PhD class that year, but was beaten out. A his graduation ceremony I got the chance to listen to the basics of the theory.

Life could exist as we don't know it (like an energy life form from Star Trek), or like a liquid methane creature from a methane geyser moon.

But, life, as we know it (which likely spawned life today), would require conditions of earth. At one time, Venus had water, but the greenhouse gasses caused it to overheat and boil off into space. At one time, Mars, too, had water, and we can see ancient river beds on Mars. But, smaller than earth, Mars was unable to hold its water. The water of Venus and Mars "might have" worked its way to earth.

Yet, with all of the possibilities, it seems most probable that life originated on earth. Certainly the fossil record goes back many years, so we know that life has been here for a long time.

There is no clear cut evidence that life existed anywhere but on earth. Because of that, it seems likely that life evolved here, and not on Mars or Venus.

Comets were also considered a possible source of life, since amino acids were detected.
 

Heyo

Veteran Member
Thank you for coming up with other alternatives. Thinking outside of the box sometimes comes up with the correct solution.

Scientists have given much serious thought to the idea that life might have come from space. We know that a rock in Alaska came from Mars (blown off by a meteor impact). At first scientists believed that the markings on the rock were similar to bacterial colony marks, but I believe that those could be naturally occurring without life.
ALH 84001 (I guess you mean this) was found in Antarctica, not Alaska, but, yes, that was fascinating. (One step to my saying "it's never aliens".)
There was a student at Cal Tech who got his doctorate in physics for for showing that life could survive locked inside a meteor rock (where temperatures were not hot enough to kill it upon impact with the earth). My nephew was supposed to be the valedictorian of his PhD class that year, but was beaten out. A his graduation ceremony I got the chance to listen to the basics of the theory.

Life could exist as we don't know it (like an energy life form from Star Trek), or like a liquid methane creature from a methane geyser moon.
There are reasons why "energy" life and liquid life can't exist, but that's off topic.
But, life, as we know it (which likely spawned life today), would require conditions of earth. At one time, Venus had water, but the greenhouse gasses caused it to overheat and boil off into space. At one time, Mars, too, had water, and we can see ancient river beds on Mars. But, smaller than earth, Mars was unable to hold its water. The water of Venus and Mars "might have" worked its way to earth.

Yet, with all of the possibilities, it seems most probable that life originated on earth. Certainly the fossil record goes back many years, so we know that life has been here for a long time.

There is no clear cut evidence that life existed anywhere but on earth. Because of that, it seems likely that life evolved here, and not on Mars or Venus.
I agree that life probably wasn't transferred from Mars or Venus.
Comets were also considered a possible source of life, since amino acids were detected.
That's a more likely scenario.
I also believe that life originates from earth but panspermia (and @leroy's objection to abiogenesis) has an argument that can't be ignored: time.
Our oldest fossils are about 3.8 billion years old. And those were already "complex" creatures leaving life a very small window to generate and reach Stromatolite complexity. Since all planets formed at about the same time, it wouldn't change much if life originated on an other planet. (Mars would have had a head start of a few million years because it is smaller and would have cooled a little earlier.)
Comets are much older but they have the opposite problem of planets: they are too cold.
My guess is that many of the necessary chemicals came to Earth on comets forming a primordial soup of abundant building blocks that only had to be assembled. The exact composition is unknown but once life formed, the ingredients were rapidly depleted so that life only started once.
And the resulting scarcity of pre-built chemicals made an inner metabolism necessary so that life also couldn't go back to the simple form that got all its needs on a silver platter.
 

TagliatelliMonster

Veteran Member
Genetic fallacy, my personal motivations are irrelevant

To the argument, sure.
I didn't present it as a counter-argument though.


Well then deal with the reasons that I provided and explain why aren’t this good reasons to accept the premises.

I already did.
There's no scientific reason at all for your premise. No scientist working in relevant fields has this expectation. No data suggests that species whose simplicity is on-par with first life would thrive for 4 billion years.
If anything, data suggests otherwise - like what it would take to survive The Great Oxidation and beyond.

And even if I would bend over backwards and assume such life could still exist - the fact that we haven't found it could just as well mean that
- we simply haven't found it yet
or
- eventhough it could have survived, it didn't.

So in either case, you can't possibly begin to support your premise.


Ohh wait you are an atheist , you don’t support your claims

:rolleyes:


I don’t know……….do you?

I know of none.
It's curious that you don't know though, since it's your argument. I'ld assume that you didn't pull your premise out of thin air, but apparantly..............................

Hence why I said that your premise/argument isn't motivated by data or evidence. If it were, then you would know.


I haven find any papers that suggest that they should have gone extinct ether , this is one of the reasons I presented this argument in this forum just hoping to find peer reviewed information that would ether support or refute the argument.

It is generally accepted that early life rose to relative complexity rather quickly. (relative to the simplicity of first life). In just about every genetic algorithm I have ever seen running that started with extreme simplicity, the level of complexity rose very fast at first and then stabilized. At that point, it is true that at times simplicity is favored over unnecessary complexity. But this is not at all true at the start of the process. The extremely simple get outcompeted rather quickly.

And as has already been told you, surviving the great oxidation would have involved evolving systems that protect the life form from the toxic effects of oxygen, which necessarily requires a certain level of complexity.

And unlike other mass extinction events, the earth didn't return to its prior state afterwards. The oxygen was here to stay, meaning all life had to deal with it.


There's also, quite ironically, the idea of evolved "irreducibly complex" systems. :p
Once a life form gets to that stage, it's very hard to have evolutionary paths to revert it.
 

TagliatelliMonster

Veteran Member
Again if someone times “simple” does well in the competition and sometimes “simple” even trumps complex, why is it that we don’t have “simple life” today?

We do have "simple" life today. But "simple" only relative to the rest of extant life.
Not "simple" relative to first life 4 billion years ago. Nobody expects to see such "ridiculously simple" life today. So we can only guess why you do. I think I have a pretty good idea though..... :)

In an environment where “moving slow” and “save gasoline” is beneficial, then a 1920 would overcome a modern car.

It would not as modern engines would be way more energy efficient.

*Well I don’t know much about cars , maybe 1920 cars waste more gas, but hopefully you see my point.

No.

Again, even ignoring everything else, the great oxidation event alone already poses a big problem for your premise. Any life that survived that event, and beyond, would have to have complex evolved mechanisms that provide protection to toxic oxygen.
 

exchemist

Veteran Member
Because I am assuming that abiogenesis is true………………supposedly simple life formed in the primordial soup (or some other environment)…….. Complex organisms like modern-like procaryotes are said to have evolved billions of years after abiogenesis.

Given the assumption that abiogenesis is true , we would expect to have simple life today…………..given that we don’t have simple life today., them maybe (just maybe) abiogenesis never happened.

In this context abiogenesis means the idea that simple life formed in a soup (or some other environment) and slowly evolved in to modern like organisms



Which supports premise 2 in my argument (see the OP)…………….”life has always been complex”


DO you agree with this premise
It's meaningless: complex compared to what? Complexity is relative. All life is complex compared to inorganic chemical processes. However a prokaryote is simple compared to a multicellular organism. So I won't agree with your "premise" until you give me a specific context in which you want to use it.

All this futzing around with "premises" is a waste of time, anyway. You can't prove what you seek to prove by manipulating language. The evidence we have is what counts. And the evidence we have points to life arising from non-life about 3.5bn years ago and then developing progressively. There is no evidence of any departure from the normal processes of nature, so none is invoked.
 

exchemist

Veteran Member
You are making a straw man, I am not saying that a particular organism should be alive today…………I am saying that organisms that are nearly as simple as the first organisms should be alive today.
Which is wrong, as I've tried to explain. Consider: since the spread of the prokaryotes across the world, there is no corner of it that is not teeming with the things. Bacteria exist that can metabolise almost anything. The first life would have been the first chemical system able to sustain itself and replicate. It would probably have involved a few nucleotides, naked apart from a very simple bi-lipid membrane, if that, and replicating inefficiently and slowly. Chemical systems like that most likely would not stand a chance, in a world full of bacteria. They would simply be hoovered up.
 

9-10ths_Penguin

1/10 Subway Stalinist
Premium Member
I am talking about the simple life that supposedly existed billions of years ago…..(ether RNA based or something else)
Well, we have evidence that RNA-based life once existed.

Scientists in general agree that something as complex as a modern like bacteria could have not formed in the soup………….so presumably (they would say) that something simpler formed and later evolved in to modern like bacteria.

All I am saying is that if those simple life forms ever existed we would expect to have some organisms that are nearly as simple as them.
... since if they exist now, then it stands to reason that they existed in the past?

Why wouldn't evidence that they existed in the past be all you need?
 

leroy

Well-Known Member
Yes, that is what I'm saying. Oxygen is a chemical radical and leads to Oxidative stress - Wikipedia. This requires all cells to evolve complex mechanisms to deal with oxygen, protecting and/or repairing DNA and other vital components.

Oxygen is easily soluble in Water (and combines to H2O2 under UV light, an even more radical substance). All life was in the ocean (and there was only one) so that oxygen was inescapable.

Here is a short (5:43 min) overview from the great channel PBS Eons:

I have 3 comments with respect to the oxidation event.

1 Atleast according to a documentary that I saw this morning, not all anaerobic organisms died….I know that documentaries are not 100% reliable, but unless you provide a robust source that suggests the opposite, I would say that my source is “good enough for now”…….the implication is that simple life survived and therefore we would expect to have it in modern days

2 I don’t grant that the only way to fight oxygen is by becoming more complex … do you have any source suggesting that?..... when bacteria become resistant to antibiotics usually the become simpler or they change something without becoming more complex


3 even if we assume that one necessarily needs complex traits to fight oxygen, then at most we would have simple life, with just a few complex traits that would help them fight oxigen……..in other words we would have life that is a little bit more complex than the original life, but still much much simpler than modern microbes.

So I don’t think the oxidation even success in expalinig the lack of simple life

Just to be clear, I am not saying that this proves intelligent design, I am not saying that this conclusively refutes abiogenesis, but I would say that this is a nail in the coffin that “abiogenesis supporters” have to deal with. There is not an obvious explanation for this.

@TagliatelliMonster you also mention the oxidation event, so this reply also applies to you.
 

leroy

Well-Known Member
Which is wrong, as I've tried to explain. Consider: since the spread of the prokaryotes across the world, there is no corner of it that is not teeming with the things. Bacteria exist that can metabolise almost anything. The first life would have been the first chemical system able to sustain itself and replicate. It would probably have involved a few nucleotides, naked apart from a very simple bi-lipid membrane, if that, and replicating inefficiently and slowly. Chemical systems like that most likely would not stand a chance, in a world full of bacteria. They would simply be hoovered up.
Not all bacteria are predators; it is easy to imagine a warm little pond, where both bacteria and “simple life” coexisted happily.
 

leroy

Well-Known Member
Well, we have evidence that RNA-based life once existed.


... since if they exist now, then it stands to reason that they existed in the past?

Why wouldn't evidence that they existed in the past be all you need?
Sure any evidence that shows that simple life (ether RNA based or sopmethign else) lived in the past would trump my argument.
 

leroy

Well-Known Member
I know of none.
It's curious that you don't know though, since it's your argument. I'ld assume that you didn't pull your premise out of thin air, but apparantly..............................
.
The premise (premise 2 in the OP) is supported by the fact that on average complexity doesn’t increase as a result of evolution, while some complex things evolved from simpler stuff, the “simple” counterparts don’t disappear , they tend to do well in at least some environments.


I did supported the premise in the OP with a source, so why did you ignore it?
 

leroy

Well-Known Member
We do have "simple" life today. But "simple" only relative to the rest of extant life.
Not "simple" relative to first life 4 billion years ago. Nobody expects to see such "ridiculously simple" life today. So we can only guess why you do. I think I have a pretty good idea though..... :)

.
Because in general terms evolution doesn’t favors complexity over simplicity, in some environments being complex is not an advantage.

Do you agree with this statement?
 
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