NM, wasn’t the first to post Murchison
I didn’t read the entire thread so I apologize if it has been mentioned, but there is often a misunderstanding with regards to the source of handedness among the amino acids. I think it was Isaac Asimov that once explained that everything evolved from a single organism and that is why the biologic molecules are all the same chirality. This may have been a reasonable idea in the 70’s, but since then much has been discovered. There is no need for life at all in order to propagate molecules of a single chirality from a complex system. Asymmetric autocatalytic amplification is a phenomenon that will very quickly turn a racemic mixture to one hand or another. Since it is very likely that the initial formation of complex molecules was an autocatalytic process, the result is inevitable that one configuration would dominate long before life began.
Keep in mind, you are discussing a sequence of events that took place over a billion years. Normal kinetics simply cannot be relied on over that length of time. Reaction rates are inversely proportional to seconds. Over the course of a billion years throughout the volume of the entire ocean things like the deprotonation of methane become plausible. We can’t even begin to conceive of the reaction mechanisms that occur. The earth was a perfect system for complex molecules to form. You had every type of energy, oceans of solvent, and a reducing atmosphere. The fact that complex molecules can be found in the vacuum of space is interesting as a demonstration that these molecules are easy to form even in extremely unlikely situations. Chemistry is near impossible in a vacuum and for that reason alone I find the idea that the seeds of life came from outer-space to be needlessly complicated.
We may never know how life forms. We simply can’t wait a billion years to see if an experiment plays out. Even if we could, the nay-sayers would simply play their little god of the gaps game. It is not a conversation worth having. I’ve known decent creationists. It is rare that these conversations produce mutual understanding.
As to the OP’s question of the probability of life beginning, I am at the exact opposite of the spectrum. I not only think that the probability of life beginning on earth is near one, but I think that life began multiple times in multiple places. I even consider that right now there exists a nonzero probability that the process is continuing in some form. Right now though, the process would be quite different since it is being supplied with ready made complex molecules.
Oh yeah, then how come I never find a living creature when I open a jar of peanut butter? Huh? 'Splain that!
Just today I was forwarded a link to an article that appeared in the New York Times which cites an experiment that (according to them) many chemists are hailing as a breakthrough in the formation of RNA during the early days of the earth.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/science/14rna.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
The article says that
The thing they’ve done differently seems to be mainly in the order of the reactions they used. They don’t mention any difficulty in creating the ribose, which according to ITR champion was a big stumbling block, so I don’t know if this experiment addresses that concern or not.
And although the chemist himself is definitely being cautious in saying they’ve really made a break through (as befits a scientist), the article paints the feedback from the scientific community as being quite positive.
By the way, adenine’s nitrogen base can be formed from five molecules of cyanide. It’s been speculated that its simplicity means it was the first nucleotide to show up, and perhaps that’s why ATP is the standard currency of metabolic energy.
The arguments presented are good but they all neglect to consider that there is no chance, probility or staistical possiblity of a universe if there is no system to create it. One can’t be dealt a royal flush if there are no cards, no table, no prize to win or lose, no dealer and no players to observe and evaluate the results. We even need a place to play these cards in order to have a game. We can’t roll 7’s or 11’s or snake eyes for that matter if there are no dice. Probability works only if there is a system with rules to govern this probability. The author of this thread has presumed a result without a system to provide that result. The universe is the result of a system in action, without a system there is no result. The rules of probability cannot be applied to nothingness.
That’s really sort of a different disucssion altogether.
I agree. Nobody is really arguing this. It is similar to the antidarwinists claiming that natural selection doesn’t explain how life began. They are right, it doesn’t. It doesn’t intend to. Likewise, abiogenesis doesn’t explain where the universe came from. Nobody really knows how abiogenesis occured, but there may be many hypothesis. I think they know even less about where the universe came from. As far as I can tell, every hypothesis is as valid as any other since there is basically no evidence for any of them. “God did it” is just as valid as “it just happened for no reason”.
“God did it” doesn’t even answer the question - if the issue is that things-regardless-of-probability cannot exist “if there is no system to create it”, then all that one does by placing God at the start of the chain of creation is raise the question of what created God. “It just happened for no reason” at least has the dual advantages of 1) being simple, and 2) actually answering the question.
(I feel guilty even addressing this off-topic subject in this thread.)
My point is that life is inseperable from the universe. If the universe is the product of some grand engineered system, than life, as part of the universe is also engineered and did not arise on it’s own. Life in this universe was the deliberate result of some grand mind’s intention and is not the result of chance. Call that mind what you will.
That’s a big “If”.
Hah, and for a moment as I saw this thread pop up in my ‘subscribed’ list, I thought maybe ITR Champion had returned to acknowledge that some of his assertions may have been a little bold. Fool that I am!
Instead, it’s that immeasurably brilliant and compelling argument of ‘I don’t know, so god’. Sing hallelujah.
Hi, I was wondering if anyone has answers to this?
Thanks!
I’ve got to hand it to you, man. Your balls are way, way bigger than mine.
JohnClay, here I’m quoting your quote as if it’s your own words…
Yes, simple amino acids and lipids spontaneously form when the right ingredients are present.
What? Heat and cold aren’t forces, and I don’t see the connection to God.
What?
Sure, the laws of thermodynamics presuppose some heat energy, because it’s the study of how heat energy gets transferred around. It doesn’t attempt to explain where the first energy came from. So?
And higher life form? Where the hell did that come from? That makes no sense!
That really is an outstanding paper - brings together ideas that the PI has been thinking about for a long time. It will need some digestion of course, but could well be a breakthrough in pre-biotic chemistry. I don’t know if it’s available online without a subscription, but it’s very well written and OK to follow if you know a bit of chemistry, worth reading if you can.
The key point of the paper is that just because RNA comprises phosphate, ribose and a nucleobase, doesn’t mean it has to be synthesised from phosphate, ribose and a base. This has been an infamous problem - the bases don’t react with ribose under any plausible conditions. The solution to this is an elegant piece of thinking that makes a pivotal C-N bond very early on in the synthesis.
I’m pretty confident that this will never change the ideas of anyone in this thread, but I do have to wonder what the OP thinks of this:
From Self-Sustained Replication of an RNA enzyme (behind a paywall, but you can also find a related press release here.)
It seems to me that progress is being made in the process of locating self-replicating non-biological systems that provide the basic machinery for self-replicating biological systems.
About lipids and the lipid theory:
“Still, no biochemical mechanism has been offered to support the Lipid World theory.”
Does that mean that the lipid thing works in theory? Thanks.
I stopped reading somewhere along the way. I’m sure you’ve put a lot of thought into this, and I’d like to encourage you to continue thinking. Of course, it’s a far better course to try to reason something out than just adopt the “God of the gaps” as is vogue now.
But problem with trying to predict the odds of something happening that has already happened is that you lose the predictive power of probability. (I am very, very sorry for the alliteration).
It simply doesn’t do to take someone who, oh say, won the lottery and then calculate the odds they won it. The odds that they won it are, well, 1. The proof is that they actually did it. Probability doesn’t work that way. Now, it would have been impressive to know the odds of that person winning, and then saying, “I now predict this person will win, given that they have a 1 in _____ chance of winning.” Then it’d be curious if that person won.
The odds of life arising on Earth? 100%. It’s here.
You also must factor in that the trials for the right combination, even if random, aren’t subsequent. They’re simultaneous. The little chemicals that first sprang life weren’t waiting in a long line milling around and going to one guy and seeing if they matched, then to another. You have many, many trials happening all at the same time.
Also, and this is where I stopped reading, it isn’t a random process. Chemistry doesn’t work that way. Chemicals don’t just go bonding all willy nilly. It’s an orderly process.
What does atheism, or even theism have to do with this? Science is religion-neutral. Any theory in science can incorporate any god, or no god. Postulating a god just isn’t necessary for the science itself, though it seems to comfort individual scientists.
It’s a red herring to say the atheists want . . .
As it turns out, many Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Last Thursdayists, whatever are also scientists. This would seem to render your assertion wrong; whether you do so out of intention or ignorance is a question for you and your god to sort out.
I’d also like to mention that I should have read all of the posts here before I posted my last reply. Alas, I couldn’t edit it, which sucked because I attempted to add:
I should have read through all these before replying, because though what I’ve said is quite accurate it’s been said already. And in some cases said better.