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Abiogenisis

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
I wonder why.
Since there are presents under the Christmas tree, then Santa Clause automatically follows. Huh?
Doesn't follow, does it?
:facepalm:. Santa Claus is more akin to your beliefs. You should try to learn how scientists know that the biblical narrative is wrong.
 

It Aint Necessarily So

Veteran Member
Premium Member
It probably did happen, because it could have happened. There. There is your evidence.

But that's not the argument. Nobody here has said that.

Once there was no life on earth. Now there is life. Therefore an intelligent agent must have created life

That a creationist argument. If you were mocking those accepting the possibility of naturalistic abiogenesis, perhaps you meant the opposite.

That's why I like Nimos. She does not make dogmatic claims, which she knows cannot be supported, and then stick out to the end that it's true, like the die hard atheists.

How about an example of an atheist making a dogmatic claim that cannot be supported and repeating it? Do you have one, or is that how you understood what you have read? You seem to have a propensity for transforming what you read into something never said.

There is no evidence an intelligent mind was behind creation? Hard to figure out what the atheist on here consider evidence to be.

Evidence is whatever is evident to the senses (same word in noun and adjective form). Accurately deciding what it is evidence of requires knowledge. Evidence of an intelligent designer would be any apprehension best understood as requiring an intelligence to occur. The ID people understood that that is not going to be found in nature unless specified or irreducible complexity is found in biological systems. They didn't find either.

...and faith is based on evidence, so it's moving from evidence to faith, which is the same thing scientist do, otherwise they would know everything, but to the contrary, they need faith in the things they propose, suppose, and build on, and toward.

People use the same spelling and pronunciation ("faith") to mean different things. When I use the word, I'm referring to unjustified belief, not the justified belief that experience brings, such as that one's car will usually start. People also call that faith, but that's ambiguous, so I don't. What's the difference between justified belief and faith? It's the supporting evidence you just referred to. If you have it, your belief is not faith-based. It's evidence based.

Listen to Myers as well. ...and have an open mind.

You're interacting with very open-minded people here. They also have analytical minds and recognize and reject unsound claims. When the faithful ask for people to be more open-minded, they generally mean to relax those standards and believe without sufficient evidence. That's not what open-mindedness is. The mind is open to the logical ramifications of evidence, but not to insufficiently justified claims.

Scientists look for natural explanations. So, is it fair to say, scientists, are not necessarily seeking to follow the evidence where it leads, but presupposing that the evidence must lead to natural explanations?

That comment is incorrect. Science follows the evidence to logical conclusions, which are all naturalistic. No evidence leads to sound supernatural explanations, not even when believers in the supernatural are making those arguments.
 
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nPeace

Veteran Member
Depends on the evidence? :)
Why? Is evidence not evidence, or is evidence relative to each person now?

They didn't, but I think it would be the natural assumption, that RNA and DNA didn't just come into existence as they are now. But rather that they evolved from something more primitive, but that is just my guess, I am not an expert in abiogenesis at all and what exact theories they are working with. :)
Oh. Okay. We do have to guess at times, or speculate.
I don't think you promote your guesses as fact, so that's okay. :)

Yes, as I just replied to you in the other post, I don't think the scientists working in this field believe that RNA and DNA simply existed in the shape and form as they are now. So they are trying to figure out through natural means how RNA and DNA could be made. And from my limited understanding, there are certain things which is required, and they have again from my understanding, demonstrated how some of these components could be created from simpler processes. But they have not been able to get all the way yet, they are still working on it.
Yes, I know what they believe. It's still their guess.
Hopefully, you aren't going to disappoint me, and claim it's not guessing... as the die hard atheists do. ;)
 

exchemist

Veteran Member
I wonder why.
Since there are presents under the Christmas tree, then Santa Clause automatically follows. Huh?
Doesn't follow, does it?

Please don't be silly. There was no life and then there was. That means that, if you follow the scientific method (which is founded on methodological naturalism), life arose somehow via natural processes.

But you are making a whole series of quick-fire replies on all sort of things now, most of them ill-conceived. So I think now I'm going to wait for your Gish Gallop to die down and then return to the question that interests me most, which to ask you what this evidence is that you think science is ignoring.
 

Valjean

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Interesting.
That's not what I heard.

What the famous Miller-Urey experiment got wrong
The Miller-Urey experiment showed that the building blocks of life could form in the primordial soup. But it overlooked one key variable.
......
The Miller-Urey experiment is a daring example of testing a complex hypothesis. It is also a lesson in drawing more than the most cautious and limited conclusions from it.
What incautious conclusions do you think we've drawn from it?
A theory that life on earth began at hydrothermal (hot water) vents in the ocean floor has been proved false by recent experiments. “This is probably the most unlikely area for the origin of life to occur,” said chemist Jeffrey L. Bada of the University of California. The theory had been advanced after the discovery of thriving bacteria and other organisms, such as giant clams and worms, around the hydrothermal vents. Simulating the temperatures and pressures of the vents, Bada and his colleague, Stanley L. Miller, found that amino acids, the building blocks of life, decomposed rapidly under such conditions. “The combination of amino acids into larger peptide molecules, known as polymerization, was found to be impossible in the presence of water at any temperature,” notes The New York Times. “And more complex molecules carrying the genetic code, a requirement for living organisms, did not last long in the extreme heat.” According to the Times, the researchers concluded “that the hot waters in the primitive oceans would have destroyed rather than created organic compounds in the primitive oceans.”
Theory, or hypothesis?
This seems to be assuming that life developed directly in the superheated vent flow, rather than at some remove, utilizing the heat and chemistry created by the vents.
Nothing, even the current, vent adapted life, lives in the vent flow.


Though later studies have indicated that the reducing atmosphere as replicated by Miller and Urey could not have prevailed on the primitive earth, still, the experiment remains to be a milestone in synthesizing the building blocks of life under the abiotic conditions ...
Seriously? Wow.
What's your disagreement with this?
That reminds me of when they thought living creatures could arise from nonliving matter and that such processes were commonplace and regular, simply because why?
"There were no flies. Now there are flies."

Spontaneous generation - Wikipedia
Spontaneous generation was taken as scientific fact for two millennia. Though challenged in the 17th and 18th centuries by the experiments of the Italian biologists Francesco Redi and Lazzaro Spallanzani, it was not discredited until the work of the French chemist Louis Pasteur and the Irish physicist John Tyndall in the mid-19th century.
Spontaneous generation was never taken as "scientific fact. It was folklore or speculation. As soon as the scientific process began to be applied to it, it was discredited.
Such ideas have something in common with the modern hypothesis of the origin of life, which asserts that life emerged some four billion years ago from non-living materials, over a time span of millions of years, and subsequently diversified into all the forms that now exist
.

Simple reasoning, huh.
Might as well believe Goddidit.
Goddidit is neither evidence-based nor reasoned, nor is it an explanation.
Abiogenesis, on the other hand, is reasonable, observable, understandable using known processes, and testable. It is the only way anyone, including yourself, can think of for life to have developed.

I think you need to get a better grasp of what science is, what constitutes evidence, and what conclusions can be drawn from it. Your comparisons and analogies are not analogous.
 

Nimos

Well-Known Member
Why? Is evidence not evidence, or is evidence relative to each person now?
Evidence is evidence but one still has to present them so one can determine whether they are actually evidence for what they claim to be.

Yes, I know what they believe. It's still their guess.
Hopefully, you aren't going to disappoint me, and claim it's not guessing... as the die hard atheists do. ;)
It's not purely based on a guess in that sense, they, like all other science, follow some ideas that they believe are likely and then they are going to test to see whether that is actually the case or not. Meaning that they do have some knowledge of what DNA and RNA is how it works, and how they are "constructed" and they try to see if they can recreate that.

So it would be more correct to say that it is based on an assumption or idea. But obviously, they don't know, as there would be no reason to study it then :D
 

nPeace

Veteran Member
But that's not the argument. Nobody here has said that.


Said no one. Another straw man. How about addressing the arguments actually made?
Said me, myself, and I.
Clearly, you are not following.

How about an example of an atheist making a dogmatic claim that cannot be supported and repeating it? Do you have one, or is that how you understood what you have read? You seem to have a propensity for transforming what you read into something never said.
You mean like what you are doing? No.

Evidence is whatever is evident to the senses (same word in noun and adjective form). Accurately deciding what it is evidence of requires knowledge. Evidence of an intelligent designer would be any apprehension best understood as requiring an intelligence to occur. The ID people understood that that is not going to be found in nature unless specified or irreducible complexity is found in biological systems. They didn't find either.

People use the same spelling and pronunciation ("faith") to mean different things. When I use the word, I'm referring to unjustified belief, not the justified belief that experience brings, such as that one's car will usually start. People also call that faith, but that's ambiguous, so I don't. What's the difference between justified belief and faith? It's the supporting evidence you just referred to. If you have it, your belief is not faith-based. It's evidence based.
Justified belief?
Alvin I. Goldman’s “What is justified belief?”
To be reliable, a belief-forming process needs only a tendency to produce beliefs that are true rather than false. This suggests that beliefs formed on the basis of reliable belief-forming processes can be false. Nevertheless, even these beliefs can be justified, for they too are formed on the basis of reliable belief-forming processes. Thus, reliabilism allows for fallibilism.

False beliefs can be justifiable beliefs.

Apostle Paul - Hebrews 11:1
Faith is the assured expectation of what is hoped for, the evident demonstration of realities that are not seen.

There is demonstrable evidence for beliefs, thus justifiable.
The believer has the assurance, in this case, the title deed, to the things they believe.
In other words, not only is their belief justified, it has a solid basis - a guaranteed foundation on which to build.

I've never seen it collapse, like the justified beliefs you speak of.
 

nPeace

Veteran Member
Please don't be silly. There was no life and then there was. That means that, if you follow the scientific method (which is founded on methodological naturalism), life arose somehow via natural processes.

But you are making a whole series of quick-fire replies on all sort of things now, most of them ill-conceived. So I think now I'm going to wait for your Gish Gallop to die down and then return to the question that interests me most, which to ask you what this evidence is that you think science is ignoring.
I can't get more silly than what you asserted.
As regards your question, I addressed that, here, and here.
 

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
Make a life form without a controlled experiment.
Then when you do that, take your blender apart, and check it everyday, and see if it assembles, and starts working.

Sorry. I should really stick to organic stuff.

Scientists Assemble a Biological Clock in a Test Tube to Study How it Works
“Reconstituting a complicated biological process like the circadian clock from the ground up has really helped us learn how the clock proteins work together and will enable a much deeper understanding of circadian rhythms,” said Carrie Partch, professor of chemistry and biochemistry at UC Santa Cruz and a corresponding author of the study.

These results were so surprising because it is common to have results in vitro that are somewhat inconsistent with what is observed in vivo. The interior of live cells is highly complex, in stark contrast to the much simpler conditions in vitro,” said Andy LiWang, professor of chemistry and biochemistry at UC Merced and a corresponding author of the paper.

Can you point out something that scientist did not have to do in a controlled environment, which actually happened... like abiogenesis?... is the question of the OP... basically.

...it is common to have results in vitro that are somewhat inconsistent with what is observed in vivo. The interior of live cells is highly complex, in stark contrast to the much simpler conditions in vitro

Hard to believe how one can think it requires intelligent minds to build simple things, but highly complex things require no intelligent mind.
that baffles me.

And you misunderstood the purpose of that experiment. Why am I not surprised? They were trying to study one aspect of life. They were not trying to reproduce it.
 

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
I keep forgetting that @nPeace could not handle my refutations and put me on ignore. Can someone please use my original article which his article distorted that showed that the use of borosilicates was one of the correct things done in the Miller Urey experiment? I will relink the article.

The role of borosilicate glass in Miller–Urey experiment | Scientific Reports

EDIT: And I must correct myself since it had been a while since I read the article. The experiment whose container did not mimic nature was a Teflon container. Teflon is definitely not found in nature. It does not react so in some ways it seems to be a superior container at first glance. But the idea was to replicate nature and silicates are everywhere in nature. The initial chemicals would have reacted with whatever they came in contact with ,and in this case it was borosilicates. In nature clay is a silicate. A huge percentage of surface rocks are silicates. You can't get away from silicates so eliminating them in the experiment would be arguably a mistake. And the Teflon experiment demonstrated that.
 
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Valjean

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Yeah, two.
Twenty are needed, and all twenty must be left-handed.
Miller-Urey yielded five amino acids, and that was 70 years ago. Do you think subsequent experiments haven't created more?
Yes, twenty are present, and nine are essential. It hasn't been established that 20 are necessary.
And so what? What conclusion are you drawing from this?
There are hundreds of amino acids. Wouldn't we expect evolution to have selected those with be best bonding chemistries?

So no experiment have shown the precursors to life.
Balderdash! You've been here for years, nPeace. Have you picked up nothing from the hundreds of explanatory posts you've read?
Aren't amino acids, sugars, monomers, polymers, membranes, nucleobases, and vesicles "precursors of life?"
Every amino acid produced in the lab, had both left and right handed molecules.
So what? It isn't that all the isomers must be left handed, it's just that only the left handed ones are biologically active -- in the amino acids. Right-handed ones just go along for the ride, doing nothing.
In other biologically active chemicals, only the right handed isomers are active. That's just how biochemistry evolved, not how it must needs be.
 
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Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
Please don't be silly. There was no life and then there was. That means that, if you follow the scientific method (which is founded on methodological naturalism), life arose somehow via natural processes.

But you are making a whole series of quick-fire replies on all sort of things now, most of them ill-conceived. So I think now I'm going to wait for your Gish Gallop to die down and then return to the question that interests me most, which to ask you what this evidence is that you think science is ignoring.
What drives me nuts are the articles that he chooses that involve scientists looking at one small part of the problem of abiogenesis. They of course do so to understand independent mechanisms. But all they ever do is to say "That did not produce life". And they answer is always "Of course not". That was not its intent.


And speaking of that here is just one of many articles on solving the chirality problem. From my understanding there are actually several possible solutions so we may never know for sure which one is responsible for us. You may be able to read this, And if I sat down and kept cross checking terminology I might get it too. But right now I am lazy and am just gathering info:

Origin of Homochirality in Biosystems
 

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
Miller-Urey yielded five amino acids, and that was 70 years ago. Do you think subsequent experiments haven't created more?
Yes, twenty are present, and nine are essential, So what? What conclusion are you drawing from this?
There are hundreds of amino acids. Wouldn't we expect evolution to have selected those with be best bonding chemistries?

Balderdash! You've been here for years, nPeace. Have you picked up nothing from the hundreds of explanatory posts you've read?
Aren't amino acids, sugars, monomers, polymers, membranes, nucleobases, and vesicles "precursors of life?"
So what? It isn't that all the isomers must be left handed, it's just that only the left handed ones are biologically active -- in the amino acids. Right-handed ones just go along for the ride, doing nothing.
In other biologically active chemicals, only the right handed isomers are active. That's just how biochemistry evolved, not how it must needs be.
Oh how timely!! Check out my article on solving the chirality problem. @nPeace will not see it.
 

Valjean

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Make a life form without a controlled experiment.
???? -- What's your point? This isn't evidence for anything.
Then when you do that, take your blender apart, and check it everyday, and see if it assembles, and starts working.
Blenders don't reproduce with variation; they don't reproduce at all. Evolution doesn't apply to them.
You've read how evolution works in hundreds of posts. How is it you make such absurd "analogies" and think they're somehow meaningful?
Why do you post on these threads if you're going to ignore everything you read?
“Reconstituting a complicated biological process like the circadian clock from the ground up has really helped us learn how the clock proteins work together and will enable a much deeper understanding of circadian rhythms,” said Carrie Partch, professor of chemistry and biochemistry at UC Santa Cruz and a corresponding author of the study.

These results were so surprising because it is common to have results in vitro that are somewhat inconsistent with what is observed in vivo. The interior of live cells is highly complex, in stark contrast to the much simpler conditions in vitro,” said Andy LiWang, professor of chemistry and biochemistry at UC Merced and a corresponding author of the paper.

Can you point out something that scientist did not have to do in a controlled environment, which actually happened... like abiogenesis?... is the question of the OP... basically.
Are you saying biological processes that occur in nature are different from those observed in vitro, or that the same processes can't be observed both in vitro and in vivo?
...it is common to have results in vitro that are somewhat inconsistent with what is observed in vivo
. The interior of live cells is highly complex, in stark contrast to the much simpler conditions in vitro
What point are you trying to make here? Apparently I'm missing it.
Hard to believe how one can think it requires intelligent minds to build simple things, but highly complex things require no intelligent mind.
that baffles me.
Huh? Where'd you come up with that? Whoever said it requires intelligent minds to build simple things? Both simple and complex things occur naturally, with no magic or intelligence needed.
 
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Valjean

Veteran Member
Premium Member
That simply is not true. I heard about this on a video special hosted by Niel Degrasse-Tyson emphasizing how much we DON'T KNOW about the universe. And in this instance, about the origins of life. And he was the one stating that this idea that life may have come to Earth from elsewhere has been gaining popularity among scientists of late.

No offense, but when it comes to a choice between your opinions and Neil, or wikipedia, I think I'm going with Neil on this one.
Yet even given panspermia, the question of life's origins remains the same, you've just shifted the venue; "kicked the can down the road," as our chemist said.
 
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nPeace

Veteran Member
What incautious conclusions do you think we've drawn from it?
Theory, or hypothesis?
Scientists use these words loosely, and at times interchangeably.
Don't ask me, I can't keep up with them.

This seems to be assuming that life developed directly in the superheated vent flow, rather than at some remove, utilizing the heat and chemistry created by the vents.
Nothing, even the current, vent adapted life, lives in the vent flow.

Though later studies have indicated that the reducing atmosphere as replicated by Miller and Urey could not have prevailed on the primitive earth, still, the experiment remains to be a milestone in synthesizing the building blocks of life under the abiotic conditions ...

What's your disagreement with this?

Spontaneous generation was never taken as "scientific fact. It was folklore or speculation. As soon as the scientific process began to be applied to it, it was discredited.

Goddidit is neither evidence-based nor reasoned, nor is it an explanation.
Guess you'll need to take that up with the Wikipedia editors.

Spontaneous generation is a superseded scientific theory that held that living creatures could arise from nonliving matter.

Spontaneous generation was taken as scientific fact for two millennia.

Why hasn't anyone corrected that mistake, on the part of Wikipedia editors?
Why do you argue that it was not a scientific fact?
What year wer you born?

Discarded theories[edit]
Biology[edit]
  • Spontaneous generation – a principle regarding the spontaneous generation of complex life from inanimate matter, which held that this process was a commonplace and everyday occurrence, as distinguished from univocal generation, or reproduction from parent(s).
There is an edit button. Click it.

Proponents of at least some aspects of spontaneous generation included well-respected philosophers and scientists such as Aristotle, Rene Descartes, William Harvey, and Isaac Newton. Spontaneous generation was a popular notion due to the fact that it seemed to be consistent with observations that a number of animal organisms would apparently arise from nonliving sources.

Fact; Theory. That's not the point. Is it.

Abiogenesis, on the other hand, is reasonable, observable, understandable using known processes, and testable. It is the only way anyone, including yourself, can think of for life to have developed.
Guess those scientists were unreasonable.
That's modern day mentality, I suppose.

I think you need to get a better grasp of what science is, what constitutes evidence, and what conclusions can be drawn from it. Your comparisons and analogies are not analogous.
So you have repeatedly said.

A scientific fact is the result of a repeatable careful observation or measurement by experimentation or other means, also called empirical evidence. These are central to building scientific theories. Various forms of observation and measurement lead to fundamental questions about the scientific method, and the scope and validity of scientific reasoning.

In the most basic sense, a scientific fact is an objective and verifiable observation, in contrast with a hypothesis or theory, which is intended to explain or interpret facts.

See Experimental approach.
 

nPeace

Veteran Member
Evidence is evidence but one still has to present them so one can determine whether they are actually evidence for what they claim to be.


It's not purely based on a guess in that sense, they, like all other science, follow some ideas that they believe are likely and then they are going to test to see whether that is actually the case or not. Meaning that they do have some knowledge of what DNA and RNA is how it works, and how they are "constructed" and they try to see if they can recreate that.

So it would be more correct to say that it is based on an assumption or idea. But obviously, they don't know, as there would be no reason to study it then :D
In what sense?
You made a guess, didn't you?
Now why would you think I understand that to mean you did not base it on some knowledge, or facts?
Is it because atheists try to pin that one on believers, as though they just make guesses out of thin air, for their beliefs?

Come now Nimos. let's not stoop to that level.
Leave that for the die hard atheists - the ones that are desperate for something to win against. ;)
 

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
Yet even given panspermia, the question of life's origins remains the same, you've just shifted the venue; "kicked the can down the road," as the chemist said.
I might have found the video involving Tyson:


Please note it is the narrator that claims that "many scientists are considering panspermia". Also Tyson's version of Panspermia is not what I would call it in the video. He pointed out that life could have come from Mars caused by meteor impact. He did not say from other star systems. And he only said that it was a possibility, not the probable source.
 

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
Scientists use these words loosely, and at times interchangeably.
Don't ask me, I can't keep up with them.


Guess you'll need to take that up with the Wikipedia editors.

Spontaneous generation is a superseded scientific theory that held that living creatures could arise from nonliving matter.

Spontaneous generation was taken as scientific fact for two millennia.

Why hasn't anyone corrected that mistake, on the part of Wikipedia editors?
Why do you argue that it was not a scientific fact?
What year wer you born?

Discarded theories[edit]
Biology[edit]
  • Spontaneous generation – a principle regarding the spontaneous generation of complex life from inanimate matter, which held that this process was a commonplace and everyday occurrence, as distinguished from univocal generation, or reproduction from parent(s).
There is an edit button. Click it.

Proponents of at least some aspects of spontaneous generation included well-respected philosophers and scientists such as Aristotle, Rene Descartes, William Harvey, and Isaac Newton. Spontaneous generation was a popular notion due to the fact that it seemed to be consistent with observations that a number of animal organisms would apparently arise from nonliving sources.

Fact; Theory. That's not the point. Is it.


Guess those scientists were unreasonable.
That's modern day mentality, I suppose.


So you have repeatedly said.

A scientific fact is the result of a repeatable careful observation or measurement by experimentation or other means, also called empirical evidence. These are central to building scientific theories. Various forms of observation and measurement lead to fundamental questions about the scientific method, and the scope and validity of scientific reasoning.

In the most basic sense, a scientific fact is an objective and verifiable observation, in contrast with a hypothesis or theory, which is intended to explain or interpret facts.

See Experimental approach.
No, what we call science today is a relatively new concept. There were no "scientific facts" before Galileo's time because there was very limited science. There were a few scholars that used a good part of the scientific method, but that was never formalized into an actual method that applied to many different areas of study. This is not a strict rule, but most discoveries before Galileo would not qualify as being scientific

History of scientific method - Wikipedia.
 
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