What do you think about abiogenesis?

[Salvador]

Whenever I see wording like "is claimed" I immediately become suspicious. It is claimed that aliens have visited the earth and abducted, probed and returned humans. So I think I am being fair when I ask, by whom is it claimed.

Furthermore, you would need to explain what is/was present in other parts of the universe, but not on earth, that allowed life to begin there but not here.

You might also take some time to find out where scientists stand on the question of "what is life".

Researchers use Moore's Law to calculate that life began before Earth existed.

https://phys.org/news/2013-04-law-life-began-earth.html

"An extrapolation of the genetic complexity of organisms to earlier times suggests that life began before the Earth was formed. Life may have started from systems with single heritable elements that are functionally equivalent to a nucleotide. The genetic complexity, roughly measured by the number of non-redundant functional nucleotides, is expected to have grown exponentially due to several positive feedback factors: gene cooperation, duplication of genes with their subsequent specialization, and emergence of novel functional niches associated with existing genes. Linear regression of genetic complexity on a log scale extrapolated back to just one base pair suggests the time of the origin of life 9.7 billion years ago. This cosmic time scale for the evolution of life has important consequences: life took ca. 5 billion years to reach the complexity of bacteria; the environments in which life originated and evolved to the prokaryote stage may have been quite different from those envisaged on Earth; there was no intelligent life in our universe prior to the origin of Earth, thus Earth could not have been deliberately seeded with life by intelligent aliens; Earth was seeded by panspermia; experimental replication of the origin of life from scratch may have to emulate many cumulative rare events; and the Drake equation for guesstimating the number of civilizations in the universe is likely wrong, as intelligent life has just begun appearing in our universe. Evolution of advanced organisms has accelerated via development of additional information-processing systems: epigenetic memory, primitive mind, multicellular brain, language, books, computers, and Internet. As a result the doubling time of complexity has reached ca. 20 years. Finally, we discuss the issue of the predicted technological singularity and give a biosemiotics perspective on the increase of complexity."

 

[siti]

The only alternative is that biological life has existed eternally.

 

[exchemist]

I don't see that there is any possibility that everything living today sprang from one highly complex amino acid. My feeling is that there were multiple "beginnings". Not multiple in the sense that life started, stopped, started, stopped, started, stopped. But in the sense of many different points of origin over perhaps millions of years.

The concept is similar to the origin of complex atoms. It wasn't just one helium atom that gave rise to all oxygen atoms. There were untold numbers of helium atoms, some of which, eventually, became oxygen atoms. There are still helium atoms becoming oxygen atoms.

Poorly explained but I think you get the gist.

I would certainly agree it seems likely that various building blocks came along at widely spaced intervals. But as for the idea that there are still processes going on today that are producing complex pre-biotic chemistry under our noses, I don't see how that can be the case, because we would be able to detect it. It would great, in fact, as it would make the study of abiogenesis far easier. But you don't read any reports of discoveries like this.

 

[Shad]

What are some of the most interesting facts and possibilities regarding abiogenesis? Where do you think it might go in the future? Did it exist in the distant past?

I think this will be one of the great mysteries until we got off this rock. We need more evidence to push the idea beyond theoretical which could be found such as remains on Mars and whatever we may discover on Europa's ocean. More lines of evidence which are independent of Earth based evidence.

I do not reject the idea. I just acknowledge it has issues due to evidence and experiment issues.

 

[exchemist]

The first paragraph is entirely written word for word originally by me. You will neither find this paragraph on any other website nor written by anybody else. ....

So let's see, that would the first, out of a total of about seventeen paragraphs, by my reckoning. The other sixteen being cut and paste.

 

[PureX]

Why does there need to be a why?

Because we can ask, and because it matters to us.

 

[ImmortalFlame]

Because we can ask, and because it matters to us.

That answers why people need an answer, but it doesn't demonstrate the need for there to actually be an answer.

 

[PureX]

That answers why people need an answer, but it doesn't demonstrate the need for there to actually be an answer.

People are "actuality". We are that which exists, and that which asks for a reason. Existence, therefor, is asking itself for that reason (through us). Why would existence develop such a quest, if it were not attainable?

 

[ImmortalFlame]

People are "actuality". We are that which exists, and that which asks for a reason. Existence, therefor, is asking itself for that reason (through us). Why would existence develop such a quest, if it were not attainable?

Again, you're pre-supposing a why when there needn't be one. We can simply be the result of natural processes without any of what we would consider to be intent.

Asking "why" is pointless, unless you can derive an objective, quantifiable measure from which to derive an answer. Otherwise, the Universe need not have a "why", and nobody is owed one.

 

[Salvador]

So let's see, that would the first, out of a total of about seventeen paragraphs, by my reckoning. The other sixteen being cut and paste.

That having been quoted with source referenced, yes.

 

[ecco]

The first paragraph is entirely written word for word originally by me. You will neither find this paragraph on any other website nor written by anybody else. ....

OK. You wrote...

There's a mark of intelligence embedded in our genetic code as evident by how the numeric and semantic message of 037 appears in our genetic code.

One of your links was to this article...

Expression of multiple horizontally acquired genes is a hallmark of both vertebrate and invertebrate genomes
Finally, we applied a still more stringent filter to define class A foreign genes (a subset of class B), which had only very poor alignments to metazoan sequences and whose orthologs, as used to define class B, also had similarly poor alignments to metazoan sequences. To do this, we identified those sequences whose best match to a metazoan had a bitscore <100 and whose ortholog groups contain no genes with metazoan matches of bitscore ≥100 (Figure 2A). The gene gob-1 has no metazoan matches with bitscore ≥100 (best metazoan match = 39.3) and the same is true for its homologs (best matches of 37, 38.9 and 36.6, respectively), as such it is also class A HGT.
​

Perhaps you could explain what this means and how it supports your argument.

 

[ecco]

Researchers use Moore's Law to calculate that life began before Earth existed.

https://phys.org/news/2013-04-law-life-began-earth.html

Here are excerpts from your article (with my emphases)

(Phys.org) —Geneticists Richard Gordon of the Gulf Specimen Marine Laboratory in Florida and Alexei Sharov of the National Institute on Aging in Baltimore have proposed, in a paper uploaded to the preprint server arXiv, that if the evolution of life follows Moore's Law, then it predates the existence of planet Earth.
​

The two researchers acknowledge their ideas are more of a "thought exercise" than a theory proposal, but at the same time suggest their calculations ought to be taken seriously. They start with the idea of genetic complexity doubling every 376 million years—working backwards, they say, means that life first came about almost 10 billion years ago, which of course predates the creation of Earth itself. Most scientists agree the Earth formed just 4.5 billion years ago. Assuming that Moore's Law does apply to biological complexity, this would suggest that life began somewhere other than on Earth and migrated here.

Of course there are other possibilities to explain what happened, as the two acknowledge—life could have evolved following Moore's Law during certain periods but not at others—a deep freeze could have temporarily halted changes in complexity, for example, or cataclysmic events could have periodically killed off the more advanced biotic life forms. There is also the possibility that the development of life had to reach a certain stage of development before it began to conform to Moore's Law. Then of course, there is the very real possibility that the beginnings and evolution of life don't conform to Moore's Law at all.​

We will note the researchers give no reason why anyone should believe that there is any reason to assume that Moore's Law has anything to do with determining how lif progressed on earth.

 

[Thief]

What do you think about abiogenesis?

With just the forces known to current science, I hold complex life to be a longshot of the greatest proportion. I believe the involvement of conscious intent and intelligence to be the more reasonable position. And from more than my own reasoning I believe this comes from sources that I believe see beyond the physical-only level of reality as well.

I gather....you believe in a Greater Spirit?
a nonphysical Entity?

 

[George-ananda]

I gather....you believe in a Greater Spirit?
a nonphysical Entity?

One spirit = Brahman in a myriad of nature forms.

 

[We Never Know]

What are some of the most interesting facts and possibilities regarding abiogenesis? Where do you think it might go in the future? Did it exist in the distant past?

It comes down to life either arose naturally or magically. I choose naturally.

 

[Thief]

It comes down to life either arose naturally or magically. I choose naturally.

clarify your line drawn

spirit first?.....prompting life into substance
or

substance as self starting
self replication
self motivated
having a sense of self

 

[Cooky]

Again, you're pre-supposing a why when there needn't be one. We can simply be the result of natural processes without any of what we would consider to be intent.

Asking "why" is pointless, unless you can derive an objective, quantifiable measure from which to derive an answer. Otherwise, the Universe need not have a "why", and nobody is owed one.

Reductionism, or deductive reasoning, for many, is like a fish coming out of water... It just feels wrong.

It stems from the scientific method. And i think that's where it should stay.

 

[We Never Know]

clarify your line drawn

spirit first?.....prompting life into substance
or

substance as self starting
self replication
self motivated
having a sense of self

It comes down to life either arose..
naturally -life/living organisms from inorganic or inanimate substances through chemical reaction.
OR
magically -by the supernatural/gods

 

[Cooky]

It comes down to life either arose naturally or magically. I choose naturally.

Agreed.

...I'm just not convinced that science has uncovered all the natural and "universal" laws of nature. But we're an acquisitive species.

 

[Thief]

It comes down to life either arose..
naturally -life/living organisms from inorganic or inanimate substances through chemical reaction.
OR
magically -by the supernatural/gods

I use the word magic when smoke and mirrors are applied
slight of hand.....that sort of thing

as for life.....

the dust took a breath and declared...... I AM!!!!

or

a Spirit did so before creating the dust