Abiogenesis

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Dubious use the word fact. Since when are assumptions facts?

You're begging the question: You are assuming that you are right and using that "fact" as argument to prove that you are right?

What if you are wrong? Or is that something you are unable to consider?

Also, creation is (as far as I know) not transitive. If A created B and B created C then you can in generally not say A created C, unless A expressly created B to create C.

Last edited by Meta on 11 Dec 2009, 1:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I'm terribly sorry, but nothing but natural forces have ever been discovered to take an active part in the interactions of the world. There is a good deal of BS literature (to be kind) asserting otherwise but nothing solid, observable and reproducible in a controlled situation. I am willing to find myself wrong when any other but natural forces are discovered. Otherwise I seem to be on very solid ground.

No, your not

Please define the term "natural forces" because maybe, it could happen, we don't share the same definition. I understand it like the term "natural causes"? The opposite of unnatural causes? How would you define unnatural forces or causes?

Anything physical is natural. The only forces we know about by objective, inter subject observation. None other has ever been observed and verified to have been observed.

So far everything anyone has ever seen, heard, felt, smelled etc has been physical and natural.

ruveyn

What is the argument now??? That because things are engineered using physics in their design that they are therefore produced by physics alone?

No, it won't just replicate itself until it runs out of resources because it's been shown that the self-replication of RNA is not 100% perfect. Small errors that occur in the self-replication would appear as modifications and additions to the RNA molecule and chemical reactions with the modified RNA can lead to changes in the membrane as well. In effect the RNA is the genetic material of the protocell. If any of these "errors" are detrimental to the self-replication of the modified protocell, then that particular kind of modified protocell would die off. If however, they result in the protocell being able to self-replicate more rapidly, then the modified protocell with the beneficial "error" in its RNA would eventually overtake the original kind of protocell which would die off. The "errors" would accumulate over time and eventually the protocells would turn into the more complex kind of cells we see today.



You can define life any way you want. It wouldn't change the hypothesis that it arose from more simple structures.



Occam's Razor: "entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity". What this means is that in formulating any given hypothesis, we must not make more assumptions than what is needed to explain what we want to explain. Now, the idea that in abiogenesis, life arose from simpler structures is an assumption but so is the idea that the simplest life is too complex to arise naturally with any reasonable degree of probability. Frankly, the only reason for making latter assumption is to motivate another assumption that life arose by the supernatural intervention of an intelligent designer. That makes two assumptions. In the hypothesis where we assume that life arose from simpler structures, only that one assumption is required because then the rest is explained by the same natural laws that we know applied at every other time in the history of the universe (apart from the Big Bang?). Since the hypothesis that the simplest life is too complex to have appeared naturally requires multiple assumptions whereas the alternative requires one, Occam's Razor favors the alternative. Therefore the assumption that, in the beginning, life arose from simpler structures must be ruled out first. This has got nothing to do with materialism, it's just that that hypothesis is the simplest in terms of the number of assumptions it makes.



With regards to it being wrong, see my response to your first reply. With regards to it being unscientific, I cannot see how the assumption that an intelligent designer intervened supernaturally to start life plus a further assumption that the simplest life is too complex to have appeared naturally, which is made only to motivate the first assumption, is any better. At least mechanisms for the alternative hypothesis can be demonstrated in a lab. How can you demonstrate the existence of supernatural events? The definition of "supernatural" suggests that it can't be.

Reality is independent of definitions. Advocates of abiogenesis have always hypothesized the existence of a protocell as the starting point from where life originated. It's the creationists who made the assumption that abiogenesis meant that complex cells arose spontaneously. Also they are not just defining things in such a way that it makes it easy for them to make it in a lab. If they can build the hypothetical protocell in the lab that can self-replicate, they can demonstrate whether or not changes can occur within multiple repeats of the self-replication process.

*Note: if I don't reply like I didn't yesterday, it's not because I don't have things to say. I've been busy lately and didn't have much time.

Last edited by Jono on 11 Dec 2009, 5:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.

If life is defined by reality rather than arbitrary definitions, then it would take examples from what is observable. A protocell is unobservable, therefore advocates of abiogenesis are not defining life by reality rather than arbitrary definitions.

Actually, it's not about definitions, its about the assumption that the hypothetical self-replicating protocell could of formed naturally by chemical processes from pre-existing organic chemicals and then can mutate, evolve and change over time to become the more complex cells, via natural selection. Whether or not the protocells are defined as life doesn't change the hypothesis. Also the assumption can in principle be demonstrated in the lab. See my response to Meta at the bottom of the last page to this thread to see why you would want to make such an assumption.

Since, as I have indicated, cosmologists have analyzed the history of the universe back to the original big bang and the very elements which are required to form the complicated molecules of life did not exist at the beginning, there was no possibility for life to exist at the inception of the universe. This means that life spontaneously formed after the required elements were created in the furnace of the stars or that some alien interception into our universe took place, whether from outside our universe or from some supernatural influence. Since there is no evidence in scientific understanding that either aliens or supernatural forces interceded into our continuum the conclusion has to be that there was a spontaneous formation of life somewhere. To claim that the very complication of molecular action is not a proof of alien or supernatural intervention, it merely is an indication of current ignorance of molecular processes.

Any real numbers to work with? How long is this RNA? How do all the nucleotide get created? etc... (Is there any empirical evidence for this hypothetical RNA?)
I think the most likely outcome is that it stops working all together? Again, any real statistics to work with? No, you can't argue that failure does not matter because only the most fit will continue to self-replicate... every failure will remove resources (which will be sparse to begin with anyway. There is a lot going on in cells to prevent the most likely (and devastating) chemical reactions to occur.
How is it even remotely plausible?
No, it would not. It would have wasted resource and might have produced products which are even more damaging.
We have no evidence that a process of unguided variation-and-selection will ever result in something even remotely resembling the kind of cellls we see today. Especially, there is no explanation of the hmo we see in cells today, and it can't really explain the origin of the symbolic encoding/hardware compiler functionality.

Note that I expressly make a point of it that there is a necessity? ...but not sufficient?
The later however seems to be confirmed by observation.

How would your argument change if someone would give a definitive evidence (purely mathematica) that selection-and-variation processes can't do what you assume from them?

So intelligence is now supernatural? Humans are supernatural? If not, I would still like to have a test to see if and when intervention is supernatural or ... what is the alternative?

Personally I don't see any reason why it would require supernatural intervention. It would just mean that life as we know it is artificial.

But only if all other things are the same. They are however not the same, so Occam's Razor does not apply.

Again, define "supernatural". I think it does not exist. Please, how do you test if an observed event is supernatural or natural? I don't understand how you do that? Personally I think that any intervention by an intelligence does not require anything out of the ordinary, maybe some advanced technology but nothing inconsistent with physics.

Last edited by Meta on 12 Dec 2009, 12:59 am, edited 1 time in total.

Meta wrote:
"Personally I don't see any reason why it would require supernatural intervention. It would just mean that life as we know it is artificial."

I am curious as to what your suppositions are as to the origins of life. Since you disregard the possibility of supernatural intervention (as I do) I wonder how you think life came about. To attribute it to some cosmic flux of reproductive organisms of extra-terrestrial origin merely moves the original inception to a location other than Earth but does not confront the obvious question of the existence of life at all. What do you mean by the use of the term "artificial". If some other organism created life somewhere else, that organism had to have an origination without any but natural forces. Your argument makes no sense to me.

@Sand. Well, that's easy enough to answer:

Notice that I often write "this kind of life"? That's essential: I don't know another kind. This kind of life however has a distinct technological construction, like I said the hierarchical modular organization, the use of an encoded symbolic representation of data and code to instruct and control a hardware compiler, etc.

Many modules (organized into modules) which [at the moment] can't be explained by anything other then design by an intelligence. Unguided processes of variation-and-selection just don't result in anything even remotely similar.

The design of life does however show the same signs that our own designs show, features which can only be properly explained by some of the limitations of our minds. Limitations which a unguided process of variation-and-selecton does not have.

I don't assume an intelligence, I infer it from the evidence available, it's a deduction. Our kind of life is an artifact of intelligent design. Which makes our kind of life artificial: Not natural, not caused by natural causes, consistent will physics but requiring intelligent causation to be created, not something which can be generated by natural causes.

I can't say to much about our designer(s) except that they appear to have a human-like mind. Unless we are one day able to examine a designer we can't say much about their origin. Maybe their construction can be explained by natural causes? Without a proper examination it's impossible to say.

The only problem I have with your answer is the same one I indicated in my post. You can assume Earth type life had a designer but that designer had to have originated naturally unless you prefer to extend the chain of designers indefinitely. But an indefinite extension requires an indefinitely long existence of the universe which is in direct opposition to the physical evidence accepted by cosmologists that indicates a beginning to the universe. How do you deal with that?

That this universe is only one component of a larger reality, and that God, or the Designer/Creator, is not a component of this universe. His existence supersedes our experience of existence.

Aah well, the little domesticated animal wags its happy tail and trots back to God when it stares into the blank chasm of ignorance.