J
jackfrost10
Guest
Really???
- Status
R
ricmat
Guest
You said a few posts ago that abiogenesis could be simulated on a computer.
R
ricmat
Guest
LOL
I’m suggesting that scientific theories are sometimes based on - shall we say, scanty to imaginary and unprovable evidence. And that sometimes theories are wrong.
I know you find that hard to believe, but…
R
ricmat
Guest
Yes. Tokamaks take more energy to run than they end up producing, which doesn’t make for a good source of power. But the theory was soooooo elegant, etc…Really???
J
jackfrost10
Guest
Right, well so far. But that is not what you implied. I fail to the what bearing the amount of energy we can produce has to do with the elegance of the theory, and what bearing the elegance has on the truth?
R
ricmat
Guest
Tell me what you inferred, and we can talk about it. For a while anyway…yawn…
R
ricmat
Guest
The theory of stellar evolution says that nuclear fusion is what is at work at the heart of the sun, and that it needs to produce more energy than it consumes to produce the energy. It also says that the corona should be cool, and the interior of the sun should be much hotter (which is obviously the reverse of what we actually see). Perhaps the theory is not correct.
I was joking about the way scientists talk about elegant theories, as though that made them correct. Of course, it doesn’t.
BTW - this is way off topic, and I’m done for the day (my scheduler wakes me up at 4:30am), so I’ll get back to you tomorrow. I’m not actually trying to say anything profound here, except that “You may be wrong” which is what I say to everybody
Oh, I forgot, a power source is not very useful if it takes more power to operate it than it produces.
N
Nec5
Guest
Ah, but we have observed those cosmic events to some degree. No one has observed living organisms evolving out of chemicals. Observation is an integral part of science.
Do it in a lab. What is missing? For black holes and novas, we don’t have the technology to create explosions that massive or master the forces at work within a lab environment.
I thought the theory is that chemicals->l+time=life? We have the chemicals. We can create an environment similar to early earth. The only constraint is time, but we should be able to observe those chemicals doing something, should we not? Your comparison between chemicals forming life and interstellar forces creating stars is not effective. Life is more than chemical reactions. Craft it in the lab, or admit it’s a grasp at proving your theory.
N
NowAgnostic
Guest
Repeating the same bad argument doesn’t make it any better. We can observe degradation of DNA and proteins in the laboratory. Chemical reactions are only statistically, not absolutely, irreversible (moving into a higher entropy state); the more basic laws of physics are time-reversible. Thus, with the right initial conditions, DNA and proteins would spontaneously form from more basic chemicals. We can’t create those initial conditions in the laboratory, however. At least not yet. But we’re close I think. Craig Venter’s group has already created a “designer” bacteria with a man-made genome (taken from yeast). You can read about it here: sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1173759
N
NowAgnostic
Guest
Yeah, and you don’t need a natural selection evolutionary algorithm to do so, unlike the computer programs you were talking about. I made it clear from the start that natural selection was not the issue - the issue is how you get the first self-replicating life form or the necessary genetic diversity once life is there - something for natural selection to actually operate on.
Yes, but the basic laws of physics and chemistry are hardly in that category.I know you find that hard to believe, but…
R
ricmat
Guest
We actually TOTALLY agree on the part that natural selection is not the issue, but getting the first self replicating life form to begin with. I make that point over and over again on these forums. It’s good to know that we can agree on something.
But with regard to the computer simulations…the same issue applies. Forget the natural selection part of things. Amino acids are not proteins, which are not DNA. These things are many many orders of magnitude more complex than amino acids. You need to explain how the first ones came about, and that is not easy.
Really, there is a very good scientific discussion of this issue (and others), with references to peer reviewed articles, in Signature in the Cell. This book explains the logic and evidence used both to support “chemical evolution” / abiogenesis, and the evidence and logic which support the idea that the process was guided rather than unguided. And as the title suggests, it also goes into a lot of detail on how the first cell could, and could not have evolved. (There’s a huge chicken and egg situation with both self-replicating matter, and the cell. Essentially, the building blocks from which self-replicating matter is created, can only be created from already self-replicating matter. And the machinery inside any single cell needs to ALL be there simultaneously, in working order, for there to be a cell. It seems that even the most ardent supporters of abiogenesis do not have an explanation for the cell.)
It’s not an easy read, unfortunately (most of the books I recommend are the easy ones.)
Ah, but the question is “Which basic law of e.g. physics best explains what we see when we look at the sky?” This is off topic, but in cosmology, gravity and explosions are used to explain almost everything. Nuclear fusion. The elaborate intertwined glowing threads of matter in many nebula. Yeah, an explosion of a star caused that. But really a better explanation, which actually CAN be duplicated in the lab (in a smaller scale) is available, but since it doesn’t match the status quo explanation, it is dismissed. (In this case, the explanation is that electrical currents flow between stars, and create the elaborate nebular structures we see in Hubble photos.
N
Nec5
Guest
Wait, if it’s from yeast, it isn’t man made. It is possible to write DNA to create bacteria. Big deal. That has no bearing on the ability of non-designed chemicals to eventually form living creatures.
Again, it’s real simple. You claim that chemicals and the right conditions will spontaneously turn into living cells/bacteria/microorganisms. Fine. Maybe it’s true. Maybe it isn’t. Until you can reproduce that process or observe it taking place, it does not wash. Observable evidence and preferably the ability to reproduce the process are key to science. Once you can demonstrate that chemicals will form life without biological interference, then it becomes likely that this explains the origins of life. This, by the same way, is the same standard that evolutionists hold creationists to. According to rigid scientific methodology, they must prove that something or someone can create life from nothing.
Why are you so unwilling to produce the evidence or suspend judgment until the evidence is verified?
N
NowAgnostic
Guest
OK.We actually TOTALLY agree on the part that natural selection is not the issue, but getting the first self replicating life form to begin with. I make that point over and over again on these forums. It’s good to know that we can agree on something.
Granted. But merely citing lack of knowledge about that is only an argument to ignorance.
I very highly doubt whether Stephen Meyer would deny that it would be possible for a designer to set the initial conditions under which a protein or DNA strand would self-assemble, since the same author writes in another article:
And then the argument admits the possibility of abiogenesis and evolution, but just insists a designer must set the initial conditions (“guiding” it) such that it occurs. I just want to be sure we’re not arguing apples and oranges and are on the same page. Is this your position?
Or would you insist a violation of the laws of physics and chemistry at the micro (quantum) level must occur for abiogenesis and evolution? That position is easily refuted, because these laws are time-reversible, and we know proteins and DNA strands degrade.
I skimmed over the book’s website. What I’m pleased to see is that the arguments now seem to center on how where the information came from. Because, all of empirical science is an information theory, and all philosophical “problems” regarding science (including those mentioned in the above-cited article of Stephen Meyer’s) vanish when this is properly understood.
Unfortunately, if my position is correct, no amount of evidence could ever support or disconfirm the idea of design or intervention, due to the infinitely large hypothesis space.
That is off topic, and I am not very knowledgeable in matters of cosmology. But what I meant by basic laws of physics are quantum mechanics, four fundamental forces, etc., and basic laws of chemistry those regarding reversible and irreversible reactions, composition of the nucleus, electron orbitals, etc.
N
NowAgnostic
Guest
You aren’t getting the point. Venter’s lab didn’t “directly” create the new life form. What they did create was the **right initial conditions **under which the right reactions would take place in order to create it. And yet the “probability” of such a life form, with its “designer DNA” occurring “naturally” would be astronomical,
Come on. It’s been explained to you several times already.
It’s known that DNA and proteins degrade. (A clear observation)
If these reactions were to occur backwards, you would get DNA strands and proteins constructed out of their constituent parts (nucleotides or amino acids). (By definition)
At the micro-level, the basic laws of physics governing these reactions are time-reversible. These basic laws of physics have been verified countless, countless times.
Therefore chemical reactions where DNA and proteins self-assemble from their constituent parts are only a statistical, not an absolute impossibility.
And, are you really going to claim it is impossible for scientists to synthesize DNA or proteins in the lab? Well, synthetic peptides are created in laboratories today. Now scientists have no power to change physical laws. All they can do is change the initial conditions.
R
ricmat
Guest
The TOE needs to explain it in order to be a reasonable theory, IMHO. Signature in th Cell makes an explanation. You may agree with the explanation or not if you read the book.
He doesn’t deny that it would be possible.
It is clearly explained in his book that one of the criteria for acceptance of any theory is it’s explanatory power, and in another sense, the probability of it happening. He doesn’t say that it couldn’t have happened by chance, but that design provides a more likely hypothesis.
Meyer clearly distinguishes between micro-evolution, macro-evolution, and abiogenesis. I think he believes that the initial cosmic conditions were set by a designer, the laws of nature were set by a designer, etc. In addition to that, he believes (as I recall) that the original DNA and/or the original cell were directly the result of the hand of the designer. From that point, he is not adamant (in this book anyway) how things occurred. Micro-evolution - possible. Macro-evolution - not addressed in any depth in the book.
I think you’re way off base here. Have you ever seen a broken egg reassemble itself? If I gave you 10^80 broken eggs, and all the time you want, would you ever get even one that reassembled itself?
But you raise another point. If the laws of nature are such that advanced life (or really any life) is an inevitable outcome, that says to me regarding the laws of nature - that’s one heck of a design.
But it’s not an infinitely large hypothesis space (and I think by this you mean “probabilistic resources” which is the term Meyer uses. We know how many particles of any type exist in the universe, and we know how old the universe is (billions of years). That’s a huge number, but way short of infinite.
My main point in bringing all that up was to point out that given what we all accept as the fundamental laws of nature, sometimes scientists dig themselves into a hole. In the case of cosmology, that hole is called gravity. Gravity is used to explain almost everything in cosmology. Very complicated and band-aid sorts of solutions are proposed to explain observations using gravity, where a different fundamental law (electricity) provides an easier - even repeatable in the lab - explanation for those observations. But the “gravity alone” folks won’t even peer review the articles which use current flow through space to explain things in a much more obvious and dare I say “elegant” manner. I see this situation as very similar to that of the Darwinian vs. IDer.
J
Julian0404
Guest
To: NowAgnostic,
Well put but still moot because your argument is also dependent upon the existence of “genetic diversity”.
Well put but still moot because your argument is also dependent upon the existence of “genetic diversity”.
J
Julian0404
Guest
NowAgnostic:
You do not “create” if you borrow from some genetic diversity, such as yeast. When Mr. Venter starts with nothing, and creates something, then he will be God. Until then, you are hoping against hope that exising genetic diversity can be used to explain away God.
To extrapolate your arguement into the realm of the living, Padre Pio once was confronted by a man who claimed no fear of God, for he did not believe in hell. Padre Pio having many gifts of discernment, simply stated, “You, will when you get there.” In your arguement, we cannot know the truth until after we have discovered all the facets of the what leads to the truth does not translate into the belief of God, for we walk by faith alone. However, it is not an ignorant faith based upon the unkown, it is faith that comes from reason not blinded by the world or by tunnel thinking.
N
NowAgnostic
Guest
The initial conditions were such that a self-replicating molecule formed and then a cell. That’s an explanation.
A designer either set those initial conditions or somehow directly intervened to create the first self-replicating molecule and cell. That’s also an explanation. In the colloquial sense.
OK, good. Glad we’re on the same page. So the question is, given that these initial conditions (necessary for abiogenesis) are an extremely small subset of all initial conditions, what inductive inferences can be drawn?
OK then this is exactly what I want this debate to be about. “Explanatory power” has a very specific meaning in information theory.
In an infinity of time, yes - in fact they would all reassemble. That’s the difference between statistical and absolute impossibility. Of course we haven’t seen a broken egg reassemble itself because we haven’t been observing for an infinity of time - the likelihood of us seeing it in the time we’ve been observing is infinitesimally small.
And there’s the problem with unfalsifiability of design. If laws of nature on their own → no life, that’s evidence of design. If laws of nature on their own → life, that’s also evidence of design. What would actually constitute evidence of design, or evidence against design? Until such can be stated, design is not an empirically scientific hypothesis but a philosophical a priori position.
Again, “probability” only relates to our ignorance. We do not predict that all the air in a room will go to one side with a vacuum on the other. That is because of our ignorance of the initial conditions, each molecule’s position and velocity, and since each possible configuration is as epistemically likely as any other, we say it is highly, highly, unlikely such a thing would happen. If such a thing did happen, we could then go back however and infer the initial conditions had to be such.
I agree the hypothesis space for abiogenesis is finite, due to the finite number of particles and time (which also results in a finite number of possible life forms.) Abiogenesis thus has at least some explanatory power for why there are the life forms that there are.
But what I meant was that the hypothesis space **for design **is infinite, because there is an infinity of possible life forms and possible universes. And inductive inference only “works” on finite subsets. Thus “design” has no explanatory power at all - the likelihood of the designer’s designing humans, rather than some other life form, is mathematically zero, unless some constraint can be put upon the designer to make the hypothesis space finite.
Perhaps, but that only would show scientists are misapplying them, not that there is any reason to doubt them in themselves.
N
Nec5
Guest
That reasoning does not follow. You can observe DNA degrade. No one has observed it form out of chemicals without biological interference. Until you do, it is an assumption and a rather large one at that. You can repeat the “basic laws of physics being time-reversible” line all you want. Let’s see it in action regarding chemicals->DNA and then I’ll shut me up. It may be statistically unlikely or it may be impossible. We don’t know. Prove it.
I already stated that is possible to synthesize DNA in a lab. It will eventually be possible to design humans to do all sorts of things. The ethics of that are another matter.
N
NowAgnostic
Guest
I am sorry but intellectual honesty on your part is a necessary prerequisite for having a meaningful discussion. It is not a mere assumption that this is possible when I have repeatedly given an argument demonstrating its possibility. You miscategorize the conclusion as an assumption. That’s intellectually dishonest.
And do you really want to claim that because we haven’t observed it, it is impossible. The only possible things are those we are able to observe? No one has observed God create humans from other living or non-living matter. It must therefore be impossible. Don’t think you want to go there.
I am sorry but the object of the game is not to shut you up, but to get at the truth of the matter using reason and logic. It’s a free country and you can be illogical if you choose, and shout it from the rooftops if you please. Just don’t expect to convince very many others. If you actually care about the logic, let me spell me things out for you:
- If the basic laws of physics are time-reversible at the micro-level, then the reverse of the reactions in which DNA and proteins are degraded are statistically unlikely, but not absolutely impossible. This logically follows from the definition of “time-reversible” and “statistically unlikely” and “absolutely impossible”.
- The basic laws of physics have been empirically confirmed (countless times) and they are time-reversible at the micro-level.
- Therefore, from 1) and 2) and modus ponens, the reverse of those reactions is statistically unlikely, but not absolutely impossible.
- Status