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rossum
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Not a problem. Partly my fault for picking the M-M experiment among all the possible examples.
rossum
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buffalo
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Should we throw away all the pre 2005 evo stuff along with it?
This would be real trouble wouldn’t it?You guys always make me do this. I should provide tons of links right at the beginning, but you knew of course I have more.
However, the more important issue is that the key to life is information. DNA has it. It is a sophisticated powerful language with super capabilities.
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edwest2
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2005? Ancient history Now, it appears there was a lot of oxygen in the early atmosphere:
sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090324131458.htm
Peace,
Ed
Now, it appears there was a lot of oxygen in the early atmosphere:sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090324131458.htm
Peace,
Ed
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rossum
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Did you read the article ed? To quote:In fact, the researchers suggest that to have sufficient oxygen at depth, there had to be as much oxygen in the atmosphere 3.46 billion years ago as there is in today’s atmosphere. To have this amount of oxygen, the Earth must have had oxygen producing organisms like cyanobacteria actively producing it, placing these organisms much earlier in Earth’s history than previously thought.2005? Ancient history
sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090324131458.htm
These rocks date from after abiogenesis and the oxygen they contain is biologically generated by photosynthesis. Cyanobacteria can photosynthesise.
These results have no impact on the prebiotic atmosphere which is relevant for abiogenesis and which is used in the Miller-Urey and similar experiments.
Nevertheless, an interesting article indicating an earlier start to the oxygen catastrophe than was previously thought.
rossum
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rossum
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Science is provisional. When a new result comes in then all relevant existing science is examined to see if it needs to change to accommodate the new result. Calculations of the probability of abiogenesis depend critically on the chemical composition of the early earth so results in that field will need to be reconciled with new data.Should we throw away all the pre 2005 evo stuff along with it?
You guys always make me do this. I should provide tons of links right at the beginning, but you knew of course I have more.
How do you measure the quantity of information present? What is your metric?
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buffalo
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We could take the English language with its 26 letters. Just the shuffling of letters gives a huge amount of possibilities, then we add context, inflection, slang, etc… It is huge.
But simply what amount of information gives purpose?
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rossum
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We are talking about the information in DNA. How are you measuring it? I can measure Shannon Information. I can measure Kolmogorov information. How can I measure the sort of information you are talking about?
rossum
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buffalo
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It may be unmeasurable.
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rossum
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If it is unmeasurable then it is impossible to tell whether or not a given process increases information, decreases information or leaves information unchanged. Hence all those creationist arguments about “evolution cannot generate new information” are nugatory.
If information is measurable then those same creationist arguments become testable once we have an agreed way to measure information.
We already know that evolutionary processes can increase Shannon information and Kolmogorov information. Drs Dembski and Marks’ recent paper showed that evolutionary processes can transfer information from the environment into the genome, resulting in an increase of information in the genome. How much is really left of the creationist argument from information?
To quote Lord Kelvin:When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge of it is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced it to the stage of science.
This is science. You need to specify a way to measure the kind of information you are talking about.
rossum
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buffalo
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I do not know of a way to measure context or semantics. Do you?
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rossum
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No, I do not. However, I do not need to since I use already established measures of information that do not deal with context or semantics. Whenever a creationist uses the “evolution cannot increase information” argument it is incumbent upon that creationist to show what measure of information they are using. To say “cannot increase” is to make a quantitative statement, and without a quantitative measure any such statement is nugatory.
The usual problem with things like context, semantics and meaning are that they are heavily subjective. Someone who understands Tibetan will see more semantic information and meaning in “bdag nyid la byams pa ltar gzhan la yang byams pa dang” than someone who does not.
rossum
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buffalo
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What you have is a measurement of the ability to preserve semantics.
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VARC
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Laser vision! That’s classic!
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redneck22
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All the known results and observations show it cannot happen.
We only have the Word of God as He was the only witness to the event.
You don’t need to do experiments, amino acids are EVERYWHERE and there not assembling themselves into “life”.
…of which none have shown that life happens NATURALLY, therefore the only other option is supernaturally.
I do apologise if I have lead people astray, I was referring to “all the experiments in science” relating to abiogenesis.
All the experiments have shown that they did not produce life.
Miller produced dead chemicals, which is no suprise since that is what he started with.
Creation is the only scientific logical choice, since it is based on what we do know not what we don’t know.
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tjm190
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I rolled a dice 1000 times and didn’t get all sixes- therefore my experiment showed it’s impossible. Oh wait, there’s a difference between “failing to prove” and disproving. Nobody said making life was easy- we know it took quite awhile and our knowledge of the conditions under which it happened are quite fuzzy. If a few failures with such inadequate knowledge equate to impossibility, then obviously the creating of the light bulb was much more ‘impossible.’
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reggieM
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How do you know how long it took to make life?
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Dharles_Carwin
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Don’t skip the point…
"Whenever a creationist uses the “evolution cannot increase information” argument it is incumbent upon that creationist to show what measure of information they are using. To say “cannot increase” is to make a quantitative statement, and without a quantitative measure any such statement is nugatory."
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rossum
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Again you are incorrectly using the word “all”. What you should have said was “None of the relevant results …”
If you insist on “all” then please indicate how Powner et al’s paper Synthesis of activated pyrimidine ribonucleotides in prebiotically plausible conditions shows that abiogenesis “cannot happen”. That paper gives a scientifically relevant result. Please support your contention with actual evidence.
- As was Allah, Krishna etc, all of whom have also claimed to be witnesses and all of whom give differing accounts.
- God’s account contains at least one error - there is no firmament as described in Genesis 1:6-8. Where a witness is known to be unreliable in at least one particular then we can be forgiven for not accepting whatever else that witness says without independent corroboration.
So how do you make life without amino acids? Even viruses have amino acids. Miller-Urey showed that amino acids can occur through natural processes. That is one step towards building a theory of abiogenesis. I would not expect amino acids alone to assemble themselves into life, since every known form of life contains more than just amino acids. Life contains water, yet we do not expect to see pure water assembling itself into life. You are tilting at windmills here.
None of the experiments or observations were attempting to show the complete process, just part of the process. Science has part of the process; creationism has none of the process. I will go with the option that has partial evidence over the option that has no evidence. Science has naturally produced amino acids, you have no supernaturally produced amino acids so we are ahead of you on that one.
Apology accepted.
They were not attempting to do so. The experiments were attempting to show small steps on the path from non-life to life. We have got evidence for some of those small steps; creationists have no evidence at all.
Miller-Urey produced complex chemicals from simpler chemicals. This refutes the typical creationist argument from the Second Law of Thermodynamics; sometimes complex things do arise naturally from simpler beginnings. There is no difference between “dead chemicals” and “living chemicals” - chemicals are chemicals. You have ‘living salt’ in your body which is chemically identical to the ‘dead salt’ you put on your plate. Vitalism was discredited a very long time ago.
Creationism is based on belief in a particular religion. Young earth creationism is based on a particular interpretation of the holy book of a particular religion. Creationism relies on belief, not on knowledge.
rossum
I grow weary of reading this argument.
OK, if it is possible, do it. Publish the results, post them on this thread.
Do not lay claim that something is possible (or for that matter, impossible) until we have a full understanding of it.
We cannot say how life began. Nor can we duplicate it in a lab.
Is it impossible?
Perhaps. We cannot know.
is it possible? At least at present, NO.
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tjm190
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My bad- since it’s clearly quite complicated and doesn’t happen every 20 minutes, we assume it took awhile.
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