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Science of Abiogenesis:- By popular demand

RNA must be how it all started.... wait, our tests show how unlikely this would be.... ok lets change the theory.... RNA and DNA began it all in tandem....

How long will it be before a believer in this revised theory will write in these forums that this was how it all likely began...

What you describe is exactly how science works; scientists revise their views based on new evidence. This is one of the key differences between evolution science and creationism, and is not as negative a thing as KBC1963 seems to think.

Furthermore, I would like to point out that the work of Krishnamurthy and Szostak is far from being a theory. However, if data such as theirs continues to accumulate, then yes, in a few years the tandem evolution of RNA and DNA will become the accepted version of events (until and unless new data arises to disprove it).
 

KBC1963

Active Member
What you describe is exactly how science works; scientists revise their views based on new evidence. This is one of the key differences between evolution science and creationism, and is not as negative a thing as KBC1963 seems to think.

You seem to be missing the point. All the gung ho enthusiasm you put in to promoting an RNA theory is wiped away in a few experiments. Your entire thread was a waste of time to argue for or against because the evidences in hand did NOT support the premise of the theory. It will be likely that even this new theory will also fall by the wayside after further experiments just as all the previous brilliant ideas did.

Furthermore, I would like to point out that the work of Krishnamurthy and Szostak is far from being a theory. However, if data such as theirs continues to accumulate, then yes, in a few years the tandem evolution of RNA and DNA will become the accepted version of events (until and unless new data arises to disprove it).

And YES their work is faaaaaarrrrrrrr from being backed by evidence to support the supposition. Remember they found by experiment that the previous brilliant idea that you absolutely new was correct was in fact wrong, so, in lieu of a backed theory they and you are now back to the drawing board with a fresh supposition to BEGIN performing experiments for.

This has been the way of evolutionary theory since its inception.

I don't typically cite a creationist for reference to anything that I wish to discuss but in this case I will cite this one chemist;

A world-famous chemist tells the truth: there’s no scientist alive today who understands macroevolution
Professor James M. Tour is one of the ten most cited chemists in the world. He is famous for his work on nanocars (pictured above, courtesy of Wikipedia), nanoelectronics, graphene nanostructures, carbon nanovectors in medicine, and green carbon research for enhanced oil recovery and environmentally friendly oil and gas extraction. He is currently a Professor of Chemistry, Professor of Computer Science, and Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at Rice University. He has authored or co-authored 489 scientific publications and his name is on 36 patents....

"Although most scientists leave few stones unturned in their quest to discern mechanisms before wholeheartedly accepting them, when it comes to the often gross extrapolations between observations and conclusions on macroevolution, scientists, it seems to me, permit unhealthy leeway. When hearing such extrapolations in the academy, when will we cry out, “The emperor has no clothes!”?
…I simply do not understand, chemically, how macroevolution could have happened. Hence, am I not free to join the ranks of the skeptical and to sign such a statement without reprisals from those that disagree with me? … Does anyone understand the chemical details behind macroevolution? If so, I would like to sit with that person and be taught, so I invite them to meet with me."

In a more recent talk... given on 1 November 2012 at Georgia Tech, Professor Tour went further;
Let me tell you what goes on in the back rooms of science – with National Academy members, with Nobel Prize winners. I have sat with them, and when I get them alone, not in public – because it’s a scary thing, if you say what I just said – I say, “Do you understand all of this, where all of this came from, and how this happens?” Every time that I have sat with people who are synthetic chemists, who understand this, they go “Uh-uh. Nope.” These people are just so far off, on how to believe this stuff came together. I’ve sat with National Academy members, with Nobel Prize winners. Sometimes I will say, “Do you understand this?” And if they’re afraid to say “Yes,” they say nothing. They just stare at me, because they can’t sincerely do it.
I was once brought in by the Dean of the Department, many years ago, and he was a chemist. He was kind of concerned about some things. I said, “Let me ask you something. You’re a chemist. Do you understand this? How do you get DNA without a cell membrane? And how do you get a cell membrane without a DNA? And how does all this come together from this piece of jelly?” We have no idea, we have no idea. I said, “Isn’t it interesting that you, the Dean of science, and I, the chemistry professor, can talk about this quietly in your office, but we can’t go out there and talk about this?”
A world-famous chemist tells the truth: there’s no scientist alive today who understands macroevolution | Uncommon Descent

Now you can dismiss this persons opinion as I expect will happen but lets refer to the a large conglomerate of scientists opinion;

Scientists Confirm: Darwinism Is Broken
Darwinian theory is broken and may not be fixable. That was the takeaway from a meeting last month organized by the world's most distinguished and historic scientific organization, which went mostly unreported by the media.
The three-day conference at the Royal Society in London was remarkable in confirming something that advocates of intelligent design (ID), a controversial scientific alternative to evolution, have said for years. ID proponents point to a chasm that divides how evolution and its evidence are presented to the public, and how scientists themselves discuss it behind closed doors and in technical publications. This chasm has been well hidden from laypeople, yet it was clear to anyone who attended the Royal Society conference, as did a number of ID-friendly scientists...

The opening presentation at the Royal Society by one of those world-class biologists, Austrian evolutionary theorist Gerd Müller, underscored exactly Meyer’s contention. Dr. Müller opened the meeting by discussing several of the fundamental "explanatory deficits" of “the modern synthesis,” that is, textbook neo-Darwinian theory. According to Müller, the as yet unsolved problems include those of explaining:

  • Phenotypic complexity (the origin of eyes, ears, body plans, i.e., the anatomical and structural features of living creatures);
  • Phenotypic novelty, i.e., the origin of new forms throughout the history of life (for example, the mammalian radiation some 66 million years ago, in which the major orders of mammals, such as cetaceans, bats, carnivores, enter the fossil record, or even more dramatically, the Cambrian explosion, with most animal body plans appearing more or less without antecedents); and finally
  • Non-gradual forms or modes of transition, where you see abrupt discontinuities in the fossil record between different types.
As Müller has explained in a 2003 work (“On the Origin of Organismal Form,” with Stuart Newman), although “the neo-Darwinian paradigm still represents the central explanatory framework of evolution, as represented by recent textbooks” it “has no theory of the generative.” In other words, the neo-Darwinian mechanism of mutation and natural selection lacks the creative power to generate the novel anatomical traits and forms of life that have arisen during the history of life. Yet, as Müller noted, neo-Darwinian theory continues to be presented to the public via textbooks as the canonical understanding of how new living forms arose – reflecting precisely the tension between the perceived and actual status of the theory that Meyer described in “Darwin’s Doubt.”

...Indeed, by the end of Day 3 of the meeting, it seemed clear to many of our scientists, and others in attendance with whom they talked, that the puzzle of life's novelties remained unsolved – if, indeed, it had been addressed at all. As a prominent German paleontologist in the crowd concluded, “All elements of the Extended Synthesis [as discussed at the conference] fail to offer adequate explanations for the crucial explanatory deficits of the Modern Synthesis (aka neo-Darwinism) that were explicitly highlighted in the first talk of the meeting by Gerd Müller.”

...James Shapiro’s talk, clearly one of the most interesting of the conference, highlighted this difficulty in its most fundamental form. Shapiro presented fascinating evidence showing, contra neo-Darwinism, the non-random nature of many mutational processes – processes that allow organisms to respond to various environmental challenges or stresses. The evidence he presented suggests that many organisms possess a kind of pre-programmed adaptive capacity – a capacity that Shapiro has elsewhere described as operating under “algorithmic control.” Yet, neither Shapiro, nor anyone else at the conference, attempted to explain how the information inherent in such algorithmic control or pre-programmed capacity might have originated.
Scientists Confirm: Darwinism Is Broken
 

KBC1963

Active Member
Here is a little more SCIENCE for your rejection....

The “Wow! signal” of the terrestrial genetic code
Icarus
Volume 224, Issue 1, May 2013, Pages 228–242

Abstract
It has been repeatedly proposed to expand the scope for SETI, and one of the suggested alternatives to radio is the biological media. Genomic DNA is already used on Earth to store non-biological information. Though smaller in capacity, but stronger in noise immunity is the genetic code. The code is a flexible mapping between codons and amino acids, and this flexibility allows modifying the code artificially. But once fixed, the code might stay unchanged over cosmological timescales; in fact, it is the most durable construct known. Therefore it represents an exceptionally reliable storage for an intelligent signature, if that conforms to biological and thermodynamic requirements. As the actual scenario for the origin of terrestrial life is far from being settled, the proposal that it might have been seeded intentionally cannot be ruled out. A statistically strong intelligent-like “signal” in the genetic code is then a testable consequence of such scenario. Here we show that the terrestrial code displays a thorough precision-type orderliness matching the criteria to be considered an informational signal. Simple arrangements of the code reveal an ensemble of arithmetical and ideographical patterns of the same symbolic language. Accurate and systematic, these underlying patterns appear as a product of precision logic and nontrivial computing rather than of stochastic processes (the null hypothesis that they are due to chance coupled with presumable evolutionary pathways is rejected with P-value < 10–13). The patterns are profound to the extent that the code mapping itself is uniquely deduced from their algebraic representation. The signal displays readily recognizable hallmarks of artificiality, among which are the symbol of zero, the privileged decimal syntax and semantical symmetries. Besides, extraction of the signal involves logically straightforward but abstract operations, making the patterns essentially irreducible to any natural origin. Plausible ways of embedding the signal into the code and possible interpretation of its content are discussed. Overall, while the code is nearly optimized biologically, its limited capacity is used extremely efficiently to pass non-biological information.
The “Wow! signal” of the terrestrial genetic code
 
You seem to be missing the point. All the gung ho enthusiasm you put in to promoting an RNA theory is wiped away in a few experiments. Your entire thread was a waste of time to argue for or against because the evidences in hand did NOT support the premise of the theory. It will be likely that even this new theory will also fall by the wayside after further experiments just as all the previous brilliant ideas did.

The new data doesn't "wipe away" the versions of events being discussed here. They complicate the picture, yes, since they suggest the DNA was around at the same time as RNA, and hybrid molecules between the two were selected against, but it doesn't negate the core premise. One particularly important fact the the new data doesn't alter is the importance or ribozymes in these early systems, since DNA cannot catalyze reactions (except perhaps in some rare cases I'm not familiar with). The old RNA world hypothesis hasn't fallen by the wayside, it has merely been amended to fit the more complete data we have today, and will probably be amended many more times before it becomes a full-fledged theory.

And YES their work is faaaaaarrrrrrrr from being backed by evidence to support the supposition. Remember they found by experiment that the previous brilliant idea that you absolutely new was correct was in fact wrong, so, in lieu of a backed theory they and you are now back to the drawing board with a fresh supposition to BEGIN performing experiments for.

Their work is backed by evidence, yes, but what I was saying was that there wasn't enough evidence for it to rally be called a theory, since even the RNA world hypothesis they are trying to amend isn't backed by enough evidence to be considered a theory. Their data in no way negates that obtained by past experiments, but rather shows a more complete analysis of what may have been going on at the beginnings of life. In no way does it send abiogenesis "back to the drawing board", as you suggest.

As for the remainder of your post, with all due respect to James Tour, I don't really understand how someone specializing in nanomaterials is more qualified to judge the validity of molecular biology research than the people involved in it. A lot of his critiques of evolution are outdated and based on misconceptions routinely addressed on this forum, and the conference you mention appears to have been an exclusively creationist event, so it is unlikely that those attending would have a very nuanced understanding of evolution and the *current* evidence supporting it.
 

KBC1963

Active Member
. As for the remainder of your post, with all due respect to James Tour, I don't really understand how someone specializing in nanomaterials is more qualified to judge the validity of molecular biology research than the people involved in it.

indeed how would a Professor of Chemistry understand anything about the chemistry of life. Its not like the 2 subjects have anything in common... There must be one school for biotic chemistry that has no relevance to any other type of chemistry being taught.

....and the conference you mention appears to have been an exclusively creationist event, so it is unlikely that those attending would have a very nuanced understanding of evolution and the *current* evidence supporting it.

Oh yes this is definitely a creationist event.....

New trends in evolutionary biology: biological, philosophical and social science perspectives
When: 07/11/2016 - 09/11/2016
Where: The Royal Society, London - U.K.
Developments in evolutionary biology and adjacent fields have produced calls for revision of the standard theory of evolution, although the issues involved remain hotly contested. This meeting will present these developments and arguments in a form that will encourage cross-disciplinary discussion and, in particular, involve the humanities and social sciences in order to provide further analytical perspectives and explore the social and philosophical implications.

The schedule of talks, biographies and abstracts can be found in the draft programme (PDF). Recorded audio of the talks will be available on this page after the event has taken place.

Attending this event:

This event is intended for researchers in relevant fields and is free to attend, but advance registration is essential. An optional lunch can be purchased at the time of registration and is priced at £20 per day.

Meeting organisers:

  • Professor Denis Noble CBE FMedSci FRS
  • Professor Nancy Cartwright FBA
  • Professor Sir Patrick Bateson FRS
  • Professor John Dupré
  • Professor Kevin Laland
Additional information can be found on the British Academy website
http://www.vph-institute.org/events/new-trends-in-evolutionary-biology-biological-philosophical-and-social-science-perspectives.html

Look the creationists are now publishing their events in Nature....


New Trends in Evolutionary Biology: Philosophical and Social Science Implications
7th - 9th November 2016
Organization:
[URL='https://royalsociety.org/science-events-and-lectures/for-scientists']The Royal Society

Type:
Conference
Venue:
The Royal Society, London
Location:
London, United Kingdom
Website:
New Trends in Evolutionary Biology: Philosophical and Social Science Implications
http://www.nature.com/natureevents/science/events/40817-New_Trends_in_Evolutionary_Biology_Philosophical_and_Social_Science_Implications

Darn creationist are masquerading as real scientists....

Scientists Seek to Update Evolution
Recent discoveries have led some researchers to argue that the modern evolutionary synthesis needs to be amended.

.....Kevin Laland looked out across the meeting room at a couple hundred people gathered for a conference on the future of evolutionary biology. A colleague sidled up next to him and asked how he thought things were going.
“I think it’s going quite well,” Laland said. “It hasn’t gone to fisticuffs yet.”
Laland is an evolutionary biologist who works at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. On a chilly gray November day, he came down to London to co-host a meeting at the Royal Society called “New Trends in Evolutionary Biology.” A motley crew of biologists, anthropologists, doctors, computer scientists, and self-appointed visionaries packed the room....
...
Laland and a like-minded group of biologists argue that the Modern Synthesis needs an overhaul. It has to be recast as a new vision of evolution, which they’ve dubbed the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis. Other biologists have pushed back hard, saying there is little evidence that such a paradigm shift is warranted.

This meeting at the Royal Society was the first public conference where Laland and his colleagues could present their vision. But Laland had no interest in merely preaching to the converted, and so he and his fellow organizers also invited prominent evolutionary biologists who are skeptical about the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis.

Both sides offered their arguments and critiques in a civil way, but sometimes you could sense the tension in the room — the punctuations of tsk-tsks, eye-rolling, and partisan bursts of applause.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/20161122-scientists-seek-to-update-evolution/

Yup there was definitely a preacher in the group.[/URL]
 

ftacky

Member
A basic principle of biology is: Nonliving material will not become a living thing. Pretty basic.

'Abiogenesis' is not only a waste of time, it's unscientific and false.

Question: Why would a scientist or university professor who KNOWS this basic principle of biology, then make the claim that nonliving materials became a living thing?

Answer:
1) He is required by the State to teach this non-science so if he wants to keep his job....
2) Jesus gave us the real answer:

Matthew 7:13: “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. 14 But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it."

The wide gate is the road filled with 99% of humanity running away from the God who gave them life, food, family, friends, and the brain with which they are now using to reject the Giver of all they have. Flat-out rude if you ask me. The Bible calls this "UNTHANKFULNESS" with a capitol T.

You will notice Jesus made no mention of the educational or intellectual status of these people because it doesn't matter.

I can have ten PhDs but if my attitude is one of UNTHANKFULNESS, I will be on that 'broad road' running away from my Creator, and if I happen to be a university professor, I will do all I can to teach my students to jump onto my bandwagon as well.

So much for impartial 'higher education'. No wonder our public schools are in so much trouble....
 

ftacky

Member
Abiogenesis (Life from Non-life): Mission Impossible

M.Denton (molecular biologist): Evolution: A Theory in Crisis
"Instead of revealing a multitude of transitional forms through which the evolution of the cell might have occurred,molecular biology has served only to emphasize the enormity of the gap...
To grasp the reality of life as it has been revealed by molecular biology, we must magnify the cell a thousand times...What we would see would be an object of unparalleled complexity and adaptive design. On the surface of the cell we would see millions of openings, like the port holes of a vast space ship, opening and closing to allow a continual flow of materials in and out. If we were to enter one of those openings, we would find ourselves in a world of supreme technology and bewildering complexity...Considering the way the prebiotic soup is referred to in so many discussions of the origin of life as an already established reality, it comes as something of a shock to realize that there is absolutely no positive evidence for its existence...The complexity of the simplest known type of cell is so great that it is impossible to accept that such an object could have been thrown together suddenly by some freakish, vastly improbable event. SUCH AN EVENT WOULD BE INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM A MIRACLE..."

R.Dawkins: Climbing Mt Improbable
"...informed speculation begins in what has been called the primeval soup...Nobody knows how it happened but, somehow, without violating the laws of physics and chemistry, a molecule arose that just happened to have the property of self-copying—a replicator. This may seem like a big stroke of luck...So the sort of lucky event we are looking at could be so wildly improbable that the chances of its happening, somewhere in the universe, could be as low as one in a billion billion billion in any one year. If it did happen on only one planet...that planet has to be our planet—because here we are talking about it."

Comment: This ludicrously oversimplistic explanation of "here we are, so it must have happened" is not exactly a shining moment for our current hero of atheists, but he (Dawkins) does make a huge sum of money ($100K minimum) for his speaking engagements, so who notices?

Romans 1: They exchanged the truth of God for a LIE......(the lie in this case is replaced with a 'miracle').
 

beenherebeforeagain

Rogue Animist
Premium Member
Really? You have some current citations for this assertion? Please do share.

Since I first studied biology in the 1970s (yes, in high school), it seemed clear to me that biologists thought even back then, that given time, science would eventually figure out how biology got started.

That there are a number of competing hypotheses about how life started from pre-biotic chemicals--and now, so much more actual archeological and laboratory evidence compared to what was available back then--I'd say those scientists are making progress.

Quite frankly, your attitude--specifically:

Nonliving material will not become a living thing.

is not a scientific proposition: "Oh, it's unknown, and it's just so difficult for us to figure out, therefore it must be impossible and therefore we shouldn't investigate it at all and just accept that Goddidit.":confused:o_O:oops::rolleyes::facepalm:
 

KBC1963

Active Member
"Oh, it's unknown, and it's just so difficult for us to figure out, therefore it must be impossible and therefore we shouldn't investigate it at all and just accept that Goddidit."

On the other hand holding a belief that any proposition put forth by scientist will eventually be found to be true is a faith centered belief. Can you cite how many propositions have been made by scientist that have subsequently been found to be false?

Here is a site that deals with just a few of these failures;

.DarwinsPredictions
Cornelius G. Hunter, copyright 2015

This paper evaluates 22 fundamental predictions of evolutionary theory from a wide range of different categories. The paper begins with a brief introduction to the nature of scientific predictions, and typical concerns evolutionists raise against investigating predictions of evolution. The paper next presents the individual predictions in seven categories: early evolution, evolutionary causes, molecular evolution, common descent, evolutionary phylogenies, evolutionary pathways, and behavior. Finally the conclusion summarizes these various predictions, their implications for evolution’s capacity to explain phenomena, and how they bear on evolutionist’s claims about their theory.
Introduction
Early evolution predictions
Evolutionary causes predictions
Molecular evolution predictions
Common descent predictions
Evolutionary phylogenies predictions
Evolutionary pathways predictions
Biological architecture predictions
Behavior

Conclusions

The assertion that because people may posit an intelligent designer would be a rationale for not performing further scientific inquiry is a straw man attack. Scientific inquiry was begun to investigate how the god they believed in at the time structured the creation so, it is clearly not a brick wall to scientific inquiry to preliminarily presume design.
Suppose that life on the earth is in fact the result of a seeding event by an ancient race who was spreading life to inhabitable planets. do you believe that arbitrarily excluding intelligent causation would allow you to determine that a seeding event actually happened?
 

A Vestigial Mote

Well-Known Member
On the other hand holding a belief that any proposition put forth by scientist will eventually be found to be true is a faith centered belief.

I hold a different opinion of all of this altogether. Whether science can or can't reproduce or ever prove that evolution is the way to explain life's diversity, or whether it can be shown that life most probably arose from non-life... what difference does this make in the effort to get someone to believe in God? I mean truly?

Even if all the greatest scientists in the world made a public, communal announcement that they had no idea what in the hell has gone on over the past several hundred million years... so what? Does that make God the only explanation at that point? Is that what you think?

I know that I wouldn't be any closer to believing in God. All God has on His side from what I have seen is a crap-ton of less plausible and more outlandish explanations for things, a complete lack of understanding of Himself and His position with respect to humanity and a way of supposed "governing" over the universe that is highly morally suspect - at least from a human perspective, which He supposedly cherishes (I mean - He looks to us for worship of him for goodness sake).
 

sayak83

Veteran Member
Staff member
Premium Member
New Theory For Origin Of Life On Earth Challenges RNA World Hypothesis Of DNA Evolution
29 September 2016

Findings of a new study... offer evidence suggesting that RNA would not have been able to sustainably give rise to DNA....

The research conducted by chemists from The Scripps Research Institute in California leads researchers to suggest a second alternative RNA-DNA origin story that proposes the two molecules may have formed at the same time.

If the RNA world theory is correct, there would have been an intermediary stage that created heterogenous strands characterized by RNA nucleotides serving as the rungs and the DNA sugar molecules as the side.
Ramanarayanan Krishnamurthy, an associate professor of chemistry at TSRI, and colleagues built these so-called DNA-RNA chimeras and found instability problems. The chimeras do not stay together as pure DNA or pure RNA compromising the molecules' ability to hold genetic information and replicate.
In cells today, sophisticated enzymes will make a quick fix if RNA nucleobases mistakenly join a DNA strand. Evolution favors more stable, homogeneous molecules. Researchers said these enzymes have not yet likely existed during the early evolution of the RNA and DNA so the substitution may have crippled the molecules' ability to replicate and function.

The findings led researchers to propose an alternative theory that suggests RNA and DNA may have risen in tandem.

"These results point to the difficulties for the transition from one homogeneous system (RNA) to another (RNA/DNA) in an RNA world with a heterogeneous mixture of ribo- and deoxyribonucleotides and sequences, while suggesting an alternative scenario of prebiological accumulation and co-evolution of homogeneous systems (RNA and DNA)," the researchers wrote in their study, which was published in Angewandte Chemie on Sept. 21.

Krishnamurth and colleagues were not the first to propose this theory but their findings offer scientists new evidence that could strengthen what Canadian American biologist Jack Szostak of Harvard University has already demonstrated. The 63-year-old Nobel laureate has shown there is loss of function when RNA and DNA are mixed.

New Theory For Origin Of Life On Earth Challenges RNA World Hypothesis Of DNA Evolution

RNA must be how it all started.... wait, our tests show how unlikely this would be.... ok lets change the theory.... RNA and DNA began it all in tandem....

How long will it be before a believer in this revised theory will write in these forums that this was how it all likely began...
You have failed to understand either the finding or the conclusions of the finding. DNA is not a necessary molecule for early life and it is well established (see my posts above) that RNA was the earlier molecule that stored genetic information as well as participated in cellular reactions. This paper is dealing with the much less well understood evolutionary transition from RNA based genetic life to DNA based genetic life, and is not really that relevant to the origin of life question. It is quite possible that by the time DNA entered the picture, the cells and enzymes had become sophisticated enough through evolutionary processes to synthesize it. A modern cell has thousands of complex compounds and research projects that tease out how they arose through evolutionary processes continue. They are however not relevant to the question of the origin of life. Such is the case for DNA.
 

sayak83

Veteran Member
Staff member
Premium Member
@Jumi
@Mestemia
@Daemon Sophic
@Sapiens
@Kirran
@Animore
@beenherebeforeagain
@Skwim
@A Vestigial Mote

In my previous post, I showed research showing how the units of RNA, proteins and cell membranes spontaneously form together in prebiotic conditions from chemistry involving HCN, H2S in presence of metal salts, water and CO2.

The next logical step is to find out how these units could come together in polymer form and interact in a functioning protocell.

I am including an excellent talk by Dr . David Deamer and his research collaborators who had done excellent work in addressing these questions. I will try to explain the various parts of the talk in subsequent posts. But its very worth watching on its own (the video quality becomes excellent after 3 minutes). In brief the talk covers all these steps sequentially:-
1) A specific model of how the polymerization and protocell forming processes occured in proposed.
2) The likely places where such processes might occur is identified (Yellowstone hot spring type environment).
3) Fields studies in Yellowstone and in Russian Kamchatka were conducted in these environments to understand the physics and chemistry that are going on in there.
4) Lab experiments were built to mimic the environment found in these places with changes made to water and atmospheric composition based on early earth conditions (which are hotter, at 60 C, with no free oxygen and the environment dominated by CO2 and N2).
5) Results from the lab tests discussed and it is shown how many of the key steps proposed in the model were actually observed to happen in these experiments.

Here is also a brief article on the work
https://www.quantamagazine.org/20160317-david-deamer-origins-of-life/







I would strongly recommend everyone to watch the video as it shows (in a simple manner) how the entire scientific method works and is used (model development, testing out plausibility of models by field study and observations, experiments developed that are guided by these field studies, using the results of the experiment to add finer details to the model and generate new predictions) in the origin of life science.


It has often been argued that a fundamental roadblock to building life from natural processes has been the chirality problem. That means, that molecules of life are exclusively right handed or left handed. Natural processes are thought to have difficulties producing purely right or left handed molecules. While over the last decade multiple natural processes have been shown to produce exclusively right and left handed molecules, recent research has shown that the entire problem might be a red herring. Early life would have worked quite well without exclusively right or left handed molecules and the specialization only came later.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/20141126-why-rna-is-right-handed/

The problem as originally thought

At a chemical level, a deep bias permeates all of biology. The molecules that make up DNA and other nucleic acids such as RNA have an inherent “handedness.” These molecules can exist in two mirror image forms, but only the right-handed version is found in living organisms. Handedness serves an essential function in living beings; many of the chemical reactions that drive our cells only work with molecules of the correct handedness. But the pre-biological building blocks of life didn’t exhibit such an overwhelming bias. Some were left-handed and some right. So how did right-handed RNA emerge from a mix of molecules?
Joyce was able to build RNA out of right-handed building blocks, as others had done before him. But when he added in left-handed molecules, mimicking the conditions on the early Earth, everything came to a halt. “Our paper said if you have [both] forms in the same place at the same time, you can’t even get started,” Joyce said.

His findings, published in Nature in 1984, suggested that in order for life to emerge, something first had to crack the symmetry between left-handed and right-handed molecules, an event biochemists call “breaking the mirror.”

But science moves on, and the same researcher who discovered and highlighted the chirality problem has now demonstrated that it is not after all a problem!

Three decades later, Joyce’s latest research has shown that perhaps life came first after all.
They have created an RNA enzyme — a substance that copies RNA — that can function in a soup of left- and right-handed building blocks, providing a potential mechanism for how some of the first biological molecules might have evolved in a symmetrical world. The new experiment, published in the November 20 issue of Nature, is reinvigorating the discussion over how life first arose.

Last year, Joyce and Sczepanski decided to start from scratch. They unleashed a pool of random right-handed RNA molecules and let them react in a test tube with left-handed building blocks. They hoped that within that random pool of RNA molecules was a ribozyme capable of stringing the building blocks together. They then isolated the best candidates — ribozymes that could copy RNA of the opposite handedness — replicated them, and subjected the new pool to the same trial over and over again.In just a few short months, they had a surprisingly effective ribozyme. The right-handed version binds to a left-handed RNA template and produces a left-handed copy.

As usual evolution, through mutation and selection, whether in nature or test tube, solved a problem that human design had been struggling with for 30 years.

Perhaps even more exciting is how well the enzyme works. Other ribozymes created to date are too finicky to have spawned life; they replicate only certain RNA sequences, like soil that will grow potatoes but not carrots or peas. But Joyce’s ribozyme could produce a range of sequences — including its own. And it’s still getting better. The ribozyme in the paper emerged after just 16 rounds of evolution, a shockingly short run for this kind of experiment. Further rounds of evolution have already boosted its abilities, though these findings are not yet published. “The beautiful thing is that this is still a young enzyme,” Lehman said. “There’s lots of room for improvement.”

The reason the new ribozyme works so well lies in the unusual way it operates. It binds based on the molecule’s shape rather than its sequence, an approach that turns out to be much more flexible. “They found something completely novel,” Lehman said. “It goes to show there’s a lot out there we don’t know.”


The new ribozyme may provide the best shot yet. It nearly fulfills the most basic properties of life — the ability to replicate and to evolve. “They went so far as to show the mirror image can copy itself,” Chaput said. “That gets very close to replication.” The next step will be to make that happen iteratively. “If you look in the mirror, make a copy, then put yourself in the mirror, and make a copy of the person in the mirror, then you have replication,” Chaput said.

That's one more supposedly insurmountable problem resolved and one more step towards abiogenesis. :)
 

A Vestigial Mote

Well-Known Member
As usual evolution, through mutation and selection, whether in nature or test tube, solved a problem that human design had been struggling with for 30 years.

Once again, great stuff @sayak83. I can't imagine the take these scientists at the fore have on life/creation/the universe. I have to believe that uncovering these types of things is nothing short of breathtaking.
 

Milton Platt

Well-Known Member
I have noticed that faith based creationists here often take recourse to the inability of evolution to account for the origin of first life when all other arguments fail. Thus I thought it would be good to start a thread on the science of abiogenesis to complement all the evolution threads that have been going on .

First point I will note. It takes a lot to get to a well established scientific theory. The Theory of Evolution is near the pinnacle of what it means to be an established science (second only to Quantum Theory and General Relativity taking the third spot).

The science of abiogenesis is instead, a scientific project aimed at developing a comprehensive theory about how life can originate from non-life processes of ancient earth specifically and other potential planets in general. For those familiar with technology, if evolution is like computational sciences in its level of establishment then abiogenesis is like the program to develop quantum computation. Both abiogenesis and quantum computation has had its successful breaks enabling the projects to move forward, but a fully developed matrix of well-established models of how to make everything work has not yet happened.

Yet, and I will underline this point, even an ongoing and promising scientific project is far far more securer a footing to ground one's worldview than the idle ignorance masquerading as nonsense speculation that goes for the views commonly expressed by creationism and ID in general.

A promising scientific project shows progress, i.e. over the decades it should show that its ability to throw more and more light on the phenomena it seeks to explain has grown. I will show that abiogenesis research project has shown excellent progress over its relatively short time period. I will show what progress has been made in discerning how life began and what remains to be learned and how scientists are developing specific research programs to address these topics.

Hope this will help. At least creationists will know what is it they are supposed to reject. ;):p

No disagreement on the topic....but I think abiogenesis is a scientific theory, not a science. (Pardon me for being overly pedantic).
 

Etritonakin

Well-Known Member
I have found both religious and non-religious people who seem to think that life was not planned before the beginning of the physical universe.
Non-religious generally do not believe in a creator, and some religious believe that all life was directly created in the days of Genesis (which -if referencing the definitions of translated words -actually describes a renewal of Earth) -and do not consider the possibility of indirect creation of life.

The elements -which once did not exist -lend themselves to the formation of a physical environment and physical life to inhabit that environment (though element-based life is not necessarily the only sort possible) -eventually to knowingly manipulate that environment.
However, the elements must undergo specific processes in order to do so. It is possible for elements to be arranged directly -but also indirectly -by "natural" processes. As long as the same things are done in the same order, the result is the same. However, what we see as "natural" processes from our perspective and at our level could well have been set in motion by a intelligence (though the most basic natural processes would logically compose and self-produce any initial intelligence. Awareness and self-awareness are apparently inevitable in "nature" -and creativity makes possible things which otherwise could not be -the only real question is likely one of first instance)

We may find that the universe -which is fairly similar everywhere -will constantly repeat those processes to form life -though some afterthought can obviously produce certain types of life which would not be produced "naturally".

I had been thinking about all of this when I saw an article about self-assembling cell phones.

( MIT built a self-assembling cell phone )

The process seems quite similar to life self-arranging while the universe is in motion (if that is what happened here / is happening everywhere) -though, unlike physical life, the phone is not of a design to continually re-design.

Still -that does not negate the possibility of direct creative acts, direct reproduction or redesign of previously developed life forms, etc.

I have also been thinking recently that "evolution" is sufficient and beneficial for certain types of life -but that it is not /is no longer sufficient or beneficial for humans. Our ability to think and act beyond it has created a necessity that we are no longer subject to it. This is evidenced by the fact that humanity's problems cannot be answered by humanity in its present form and of its present nature.

It is logical that our bodies somehow change to be able to accomplish that which we can imagine -but evolution is not really up to the task of making us not subject to itself -and self-evolution would be as problematic as any of our other endeavors.

The wide gap between our imaginations and our abilities may well indicate that we are not the product of evolution alone -and that our becoming not subject to evolution in form -even as we are not subject to it in imagination -was previously intended.

Many scoff at the idea of "God" -but the solutions to our problems require that we become God-like, and our becoming God-like requires God.
 
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Milton Platt

Well-Known Member
I have found both religious and non-religious people who seem to think that life was not planned before the beginning of the physical universe.
Non-religious generally do not believe in a creator, and some religious believe that all life was directly created in the days of Genesis (which -if referencing the definitions of translated words -actually describes a renewal of Earth) -and do not consider the possibility of indirect creation of life.

The elements -which once did not exist -lend themselves to the formation of an environment and life to inhabit that environment -eventually to knowingly manipulate that environment.
However, the elements must undergo specific processes in order to do so. It is possible for elements to be arranged directly -but also indirectly -by "natural" processes. As long as the same things are done in the same order, the result is the same. However, what we see as "natural" processes from our perspective and at our level could well have been set in motion by a intelligence (though the most basic natural processes would logically compose and self-produce any initial intelligence. Awareness and self-awareness are apparently inevitable in "nature" -and creativity makes possible things which otherwise could not be -the only real question is likely one of first instance)

We may find that the universe -which is fairly similar everywhere -will constantly repeat those processes to form life -though some afterthought can obviously produce certain types of life which would not be produced "naturally".

I had been thinking about all of this when I saw an article about self-assembling cell phones.

( MIT built a self-assembling cell phone )

The process seems quite similar to life self-arranging while the universe is in motion (if that is what happened here / is happening everywhere) -though, unlike physical life, the phone is not of a design to continually re-design.

Still -that does not negate the possibility of direct creative acts, direct reproduction or redesign of previously developed life forms, etc.


How do we know the universe is similar everywhere, and what does thst actually mean?

The cell phone is a poor analogy, as there were only six components and they were each already assembled.
 

gnostic

The Lost One
A basic principle of biology is: Nonliving material will not become a living thing. Pretty basic.

'Abiogenesis' is not only a waste of time, it's unscientific and false.

Question: Why would a scientist or university professor who KNOWS this basic principle of biology, then make the claim that nonliving materials became a living thing?

It is apparent that you have failed biology and biochemistry.

You do realise that many of the organic matters by themselves, aren't actually or aren't necessarily "alive" or "living"?

Some are organic but not "living".

Our muscles, tissues, bones, fat, hair, etc are made of molecules, like proteins, DNA, RNA, etc. Every cells, every genes, every chromosome, they are all made of molecules and compounds.

For instance, the most common molecule in the human body content is water, however water or H2O (about 48% to 60% of our masses) are not themselves "alive".

And if we were to break down those molecules (including water, proteins, DNA, etc) into their most basic elements, most of those organic materials, we mostly get hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and carbon. Each of those elements, are themselves, not "alive" or "not living".
 
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Polymath257

Think & Care
Staff member
Premium Member
A basic principle of biology is: Nonliving material will not become a living thing. Pretty basic.

'Abiogenesis' is not only a waste of time, it's unscientific and false.

On the contrary, ALL living things are made of the same elements that appear in the periodic table. NONE of those elements are alive. So, living things *are*, in fact, made out of non-living things. No individual atom in your body is alive. No individual molecule is alive. But the *collection* of all the chemicals in your body is *you* and is alive.

So your basic thesis is simply false. Living things *do* come from non-living things. And they do so today and *you* are an example of it.
 
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