Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

An Eye Into The Materialist Assault On Life’s Origins

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Synopsis Of The Second Chapter Of  Signature In The Cell by Stephen Meyer

ISBN: 9780061894206; ISBN10: 0061894206; HarperOne

When the 19th century chemist Friedrich Wohler synthesized urea in the lab using simple chemistry, he set in motion the ball that would ultimately knock down the then-pervasive ‘Vitalistic’ view of biology.  Life’s chemistry, rather than being bound by immaterial ‘vital forces’ could indeed by artificially made.  While Charles Darwin offered little insight on how life originated, several key scientists would later jump on Wohler’s ‘Eureka’-style discovery through public proclamations of their own ‘origin of life’ theories.  The ensuing materialist view was espoused by the likes of Ernst Haeckel and Rudolf Virchow who built their own theoretical suppositions on Wohler’s triumph.  Meyer summed up the logic of the day

“If organic matter could be formed in the laboratory by combining two inorganic chemical compounds then perhaps organic matter could have formed the same way in nature in the distant past” (p.40)

Darwin’s theory generated the much-needed fodder to ‘extend’ evolution backward’ to the origin of life.  It was believed that “chemicals could “morph” into cells, just as one species could “morph” into another “ (p.43).   Appealing to the apparent simplicity of the cell, late 19th century biologists assured the scientific establishment that they had a firm grasp of the ‘facts’- cells were, in their eyes, nothing more than balls of protoplasmic soup.   Haeckel and British scientist Thomas Huxley were the ones who set the protoplasmic theory in full swing.  While the details expounded by each man differed somewhat, the underlying tone was the same- the essence of life was simple and thereby easily attainable through a basic set of chemical reactions.

Things changed in the 1890s.  With the discovery of cellular enzymes the complexity of the cell’s inner workings became all too apparent and a new theory that no longer relied on an overly simplistic protoplasm-style foundation, albeit one still bounded by materialism, had to be devised.  Several decades later, finding himself in the throws of a Marxist socio-political upheaval within his own country, Russian biologist Aleksandr Oparin became the man for the task. 

Oparin developed a neat scheme of inter-related processes involving the extrusion of heavy metals from the earth’s core and the accumulation of atmospheric reactive gases all of which, he claimed, could eventually lead to the making of life’s building blocks- the amino acids.  He extended his scenario further, appealing to Darwinian natural selection as a way through which functional proteins could progressively come into existence.  But the ‘tour de force’ in Oparin’s outline came in the shape of coacervates- small, fat-containing spheroids which, Oparin proposed, might model the formation of the first ‘protocell’.

Oparin’s neat scheme would in the 1940s and 1950s provide the impetus for a host of prebiotic synthesis experiments, most famous of which was that of Harold Urey and Stanley Miller who used a spark discharge apparatus to make the three amino acids- glycine, alpha-alanine and beta-alanine.  With little more than a few gases (ammonia, methane and hydrogen), water, a closed container and an electrical spark Urey and Miller had seemingly provided the missing link for an evolutionary chain of events that now extended as far back as the dawn of life.  And yet as Meyer concludes, the information revolution that followed the elucidation of the structure of DNA would eventually shake the underlying materialistic bedrock.          

Meyer’s historical overview of the key events that shaped origin-of-life biology is extremely readable and well illustrated.  Both the style and the content of his discourse keep the reader focused on the ID thread of reasoning that he gradually develops throughout his book.

Comments
Adel, Don't bother. Some people in this forum present meaningful, informed challenges to my point of view. Sometimes I have to look past their tone because their content is constructive. Others offer "What’s the alternative? An unnatural explanation?"ScottAndrews
July 31, 2009
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ScottAndrews, You seem unwilling or unable to answer simple questions about your beliefs. That's fine for now. I'll catch up with you later. Regards, AdelAdel DiBagno
July 30, 2009
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Nakashima-san: There is a distinct threshold of function, allowing identification and measure. Absent a replicator based on a code, storage, a reader and an implementer, there is no active self-replication. No active self-replication, no life. No self-replicating life, no possibility of hill climbing by blind variation and selective replication on differential success. Thus, until you have a viable life form with a viable body plan (including the von Neuman replicator set) you have no basis for hypothesied or observed evolving. Thus, we see a sharp distinction between that which can replicate and that which cannot. Functionality is in an island, and non-function on self replication is the surrounding sea. GEM of TKIkairosfocus
July 30, 2009
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KF-san, That’s odd: as has been repeatedly pointed out, we observe cell based life as a self-replicating system, which works though the von Neumann type self-replicator architecture: blueprint, reader, implementer allowing self replication. Here I have to respond similarly to my response to Mr BillB's use of the term autocatalytic sets. Such a thing as a Von Neumann replicator might be the ultimate goal you are aimed at, but it isn't the way you measure progress. You might as well say that the Empire State Building is your measure of buildings. This is either a quite unwieldy way of measuring small buildings, or it is a boolean variable, true for one building and false for every other. Either way, not very helpful as a measure. Measures such weight, volume, and power consumption are more useful measures for buildings than "is it the Empire State Building?" However, this kind of boolean measure is useful for your argument. A GA that only gets one bit (literally) of feedback from its fitness function is reduced to random search.Nakashima
July 30, 2009
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3] What an independent origins science education course could look like FYI, BB, such a fresh approach should include an advanced placement -cum- college level survey course that covers: [1] an overview of the strengths and weaknesses of science, including the difference between origins and operational science: projecting to a remote, unobserved past and seeking to explain it is not at all epistemically equivalent to matters of direct observation in the present. [2] a survey of cosmology including stars, galaxies, cosmos, planet system formation and timelines [including terrestrial dating techniques], with relevant finetuning to operating point issues. [3] A survey of OOL, including the relevant thermodynamics and information theory considerations in light of the information system at he heart of cell based life. [4] A similar survey of origin of body plan level biodiversity, with a look at typical icons over the past 150 years. [5] A survey on origin of conscious, reasoning, en-conscienced mind, and raising issues tied to that. [6] Addressing origins science in society based on the context of the ideological war that now threatens to fatally break the heart of our civlisation, inviting the kind of strategic defeats that Byzantium suffered in the C7 and France suffered in 1940. --> Such a critical survey course on a controversial aspect of science is very feasible. --> And, as an INDEPENDENT course, such will not be vulnerable tot he control of the sort of nasty censorship and hostage-taking tactics that now so often obtain at the hands of the NCSE, ACLU, NAS etc. --> In an Internet dominated era, such can be offered online quite easily, thank you. --> All that is required is to actually construct and present such a course, which can be done based on the above outline. 4] Adel, 396: What’s the alternative? An unnatural explanation? Close but no cigar. From the days of Plato on, the ART-ificial -- thus, intelligent -- has been a classic distinction to the "natural." Design theory gives us a way to draw that distinction, based on reliable signs of intelligence. 5] Nakashima-san, 398: simply imagined, asserted without proof. First, science is not about PROOF; but instead, empirically warranted provisional inference to best explanation. For that, the bottomline for this thread still obtains: [1] FSCI is real and quantifiable, [2] it is routinely produced by intelligence in our observation, [3] it is ONLY observed to be produced by intelligence, [4] on search space grounds, it is unlikely that non-intelligent forces such as chance and/or necessity will be able to achieve FSCI. In short, the conclusion is inductively strong. 6] How can you assert the existence of islands of function when you cannot articulate a clear idea of what function means in a pre-biotic environment, and on what kind of entity function is being measured? That's odd: as has been repeatedly pointed out, we observe cell based life as a self-replicating system, which works though the von Neumann type self-replicator architecture: blueprint, reader, implementer allowing self replication. That constitutes an irreducibly complex set, which necessarily is an island of function. No code and/or no storage, and/or no reader and/or no effector, and observed self-replication capacity vanishes. So, we have a threshold of required functionality based on a logically based framework. In addition, we do observe existing life forms, and see tha the DNA storage ranfes upwards of 100's of kilo bases, i.e independent life [not parasitic on preexisting life for key nutrients etc] starts out at about 600 - 1,000 kilo bases. Parasitics start out at 100,000 or so bases, or about 200 k bits. All of these are well beyond the practical limitations of the search resources of the observed cosmos; of which 1,000 bits is a very reasonable threshold. GEM of TKIkairosfocus
July 29, 2009
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Following up: 1] Adel (and Nakashima-san) Thanks, NYRB, okay. Pity they just give a preview for a 1997 article! 2] BB, 395: your mind, once closed, remains forever shut. your opinions are fixed and you believe that repeating your assertions will somehow make them fact. This is yet another turnabout false accusation; and on the matter of the Weasel case, an outright misrepresentation of the truth. (Onlookers, observe how this is (a) yet another rabbit trail led out to a strawman soaked in ad hominems [to be ignited . . . ], and (b) is false to the actual outcome on the merits, which I have in my always linked here. As teh just linked demonstrates, BB et al cannot be trusted to give a true and fair view of the case on the merits.No prizes for guessing why there is much interest in stating a twisted summary and little interest in actually addressing my point on the merits. See why I have spoken about the attritional implications of repeated rhetorical wave attacks, not only for UD [which is being snowed under], but for our civilisation as a whole which is having the civility at the heart of democracy eaten out by scorched earth rhetorical stratagems, at 338 above?) Now, too, a glance at either the always linked or the weak argument correctives of which I am a co-author, will show that my positions are taken on evidence and on inference to best current explanation in light of such evidence. ["Proof" in any strong sense is not in the power of science.] And, it remains the case that intelligence is the ONLY observed cause of FSCI such as will have to be explained for the case of OOL. Indeed, it is the ROUTINE cause of FSCI. So the inference on best explanation from FSCI as sign to intelligence as cause is inductively strong. So strong that the usual resorts are not to providing solid counter-examples (several suggestions having been shot down in flames in this thread) but to censoring Lewontinian a priori materialism, often under the disguise, "methodological naturalism." 2] I await your invasion of Poland, although from what I have heard about their education minister Liljana Colic’s attempts to ban evolution from schools it may already have begun. unworthy, ad hominem laced rhetoric. And, what part of the following, from 338, constitutes "banning evolution from schools"? Namely:
g –> I therefore suggest that it is time to deploy not just a set of weak argument correctives and a brief glossary but at minimum highlighted links to adequate tutorials across the range of ID studies, constituting an ID 101 with actual FAQ’s addressing not just rhetorical dismissals and distortions, but need for basic information. [A good start to that would be a critical review of the Wikipedia page on ID.] h –> This should be augmented by links to major ID papers and works on the net, including where relevant Google Books online. i –> I also advocate for a fresh start on origins science education, that will break the evolutionary materialist monopoly and prepare a new generation for breaking out of the Lewontinaian version of Plato’s cave with the shadow shows based on so many misleading icons. [A wiki based set of tutorials covering underlying issues, cosmology, origin of life, origin of biodiversity, origin of mind and origins science in society would I think do a lot of good. Not least by simply breaking he monopoly out there.]
[ . . . ]kairosfocus
July 29, 2009
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KF-san, The topology of islands of function in a sea of nonfiction is not “imaginary”, in short — but it is inconvenient for those who would wish that contra what Shapiro and Orgel have counselled after a lifetime in the field, organised complexity assembles itself conveniently out of small prebiotic molecules. Not imaginary perhaps, but simply imagined, asserted without proof. How can you assert the existence of islands of function when you cannot articulate a clear idea of what function means in a pre-biotic environment, and on what kind of entity function is being measured?Nakashima
July 29, 2009
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Adel: I find your comments pointless. You criticize what I've said by restating and confirming it. What am I to say? Your last question was willfully ignorant.ScottAndrews
July 29, 2009
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Thanks to BillB for coming back and eliciting the following from ScottAndrews:
None of those narratives have reached the level of probability where we might ask, “How do we know for sure?”
Such is the nature of historical science. Especially when we're talking about the very, very remote past. In any case, science never knows anything for sure. I thought that was common knowledge.
I’m not denigrating the research.
I think you are. Read your own words. As someone said, "You aren’t conceding anything by admitting it."
It’s one thing to look for a natural explanation - go for it - but another to assume a priori that it’s waiting to be found.
What's the alternative? An unnatural explanation?Adel DiBagno
July 29, 2009
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KF There seems little point me continuing this discussion. It is clear from this thread and others, most memorably the WEASEL comedy, that your mind, once closed, remains forever shut. your opinions are fixed and you believe that repeating your assertions will somehow make them fact. Nakashimas comment at 388 is very pertinent, you lack all the qualities you demand in others and in the opinions of others. I realized I misinterpreted your story about the Germans for which I apologize; You are not accusing us of being the Nazis you were equating science with the allies of WW1, ID with the Germans and proposing a new strategy based on that history. I await your invasion of Poland, although from what I have heard about their education minister Liljana Colic's attempts to ban evolution from schools it may already have begun. It all makes sense now!BillB
July 29, 2009
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Attn: kairosfocus I've goofed again, see: Nakashima @379
I’m responsible, perhaps, for KF-san citing NYRB. I did not find a reference on the NYT site, but I did find a NYRB source so perhaps it is Dr J Bloom that needs to correct something.
Of course you're right. Shame on Bloom for the misattribution, but thanks to him for making it available gratis.Adel DiBagno
July 29, 2009
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sea of non-function!kairosfocus
July 29, 2009
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Adel 378: Thanks. You are right. 9i'll have to fix my offhand quoting.) BTW, the left off part of the paragraph is where Mr Lewontin reveals his lack of familiarity with the subject matter. For miracles to stand out as signposts pointing beyond the everyday world they REQUIRE a well-ordered predictable backdrop. Similarly, for morality to have any validity, this demands a predictable world in which actions are expected to have consequences. In short, a world created by a God who intervenes miraculously in a moral context will be one in which science is possible; and it will not be a chaos but a cosmos. That is a part of why founding era modern scientists saw themselves as thinking God's thoughts after him. GEM of TKI PS: Briefly, re BB @ 381 on 338: turnabout rhetorical stratagems, and illustrative of the issue raised on rhetoric in 338. (And, note i wa snot attacking persons but warning on the implications of tactics at work and where UD needs to go to deal with this reality.) PPS: And, BB should kindly show us how we observe von Neuman self replicators using blueprints and readers and implementers forming themselves out of molecular noise in realistic model prebiotic soups today. The topology of islands of function in a sea of nonfiction is not "imaginary", in short -- but it is inconvenient for those who would wish that contra what Shapiro and Orgel have counselled after a lifetime in the field, organised complexity assembles itself conveniently out of small prebiotic molecules.kairosfocus
July 29, 2009
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"while the untested hypothesis which leads to it is called “likely.” And, they have volumes to prove it.Upright BiPed
July 29, 2009
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Nakashima: The "aura of fact" appears in the very first sentences of the introduction.
The size of the first informative molecules was strongly constrained by the accuracy in replication. In an environment where proofreading mechanisms were initially absent, replicating biomolecules had to be necessarily short. This represented a strong limitation in the amount of genetic information that could be stored and reliably transmitted to subsequent generations, as well as to the functional capabilities of the evolving molecules.
Do the authors actually know anything about the size of the first informative molecules or their functional capabilities? These are purely hypothetical statements worded as factual ones. Next,
That process likely led to the appearance of molecular quasispecies (Eigen 1971), large and heterogeneous populations of replicating molecules that initiated Darwinian evolution.
Here, the end result, "large and heterogeneous populations of replicating molecules that initiated Darwinian evolution," is presumed to be factual, while the untested hypothesis which leads to it is called "likely."ScottAndrews
July 29, 2009
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If anyone has read the Hazen book, then they will know that the OOL effort is essentially no where. Hazen is an honest researcher and appears to be a believer that the OOL could be due to a natural process but essentially he admits that there is nothing on the horizon that gets any where. He surveys what has been done so it is unlikely there is any effort of substance left unturned in his book. Now, it is a couple years since his book but I have not seen anything to make the science leap forward. The construction of a couple nucleotides in the lab is one thing but all that is is the construction of a couple tinker toys when what is needed is a 747 or maybe just a private jet to get to the first cell.jerry
July 29, 2009
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KF-san, In short the paper in question is a mass of galloping hypotheses that soon take on the aura of “fact.” Since you've been quoting the paper freely, why don't you quote the part where it takes on the aura of fact? Or are you making something up? If there is any aura of fact that is unwarranted, it is your repeated and repeated assertions without any attempt at humility, without any awareness or admission your statements are hypothetical, are speculative. It is indeed telling that you can find such humility and circumspection in the paper under discussion but not in your repeated and repeated copy and post.Nakashima
July 29, 2009
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BillB: There are a number of narratives, all of them hypothetical, and all covering only certain aspects of life's origin. None of those narratives have reached the level of probability where we might ask, "How do we know for sure?" If we were trying to figure out where computers, rather than life, originated, right now we're at the point where we've just discovered how to get silicon from sand. I'm not denigrating the research. But it's important to be honest about what we do and don't know and how very far we are from understanding how life did or could have come about. It's one thing to look for a natural explanation - go for it - but another to assume a priori that it's waiting to be found.ScottAndrews
July 29, 2009
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ScottAndrews: I would have thought God of the gaps applies anywhere there is a gap, of any size. My impression is that OOL research has a number of narratives, some of which are based on direct experimental research rather than speculation. There are also gaps and the inevitable problem of 'how do you know for sure' which also applies to almost everything else that has not been dorectly observed.BillB
July 29, 2009
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Joseph: In 1902 observation would suggest that only birds can fly. Fortunately some people thought that the ability to fly might be explainable by mechanism rather than metaphysics.BillB
July 29, 2009
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BillB: You too, with the books and the volumes? Forget them! They were an illustration to help one visualize what gaps look like. Perhaps posts in a fence would have been a better illustration. My context of my point has long passed, making it irrelevant. It was (in response to another comment) explaining that one cannot commit a "god of the gaps" fallacy with regard to OOL. "God of the gaps" applies when we have a nearly completed body of knowledge with a few pieces missing. In this case, every piece is missing, or hypothetical. I'm not making a broad argument against the merits of OOL research. Rather, I'm stating the obvious, that it has not provided any substantiated narrative or details between which there could be gaps. You've said so yourself. I don't think this should be controversial.ScottAndrews
July 29, 2009
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BillB, Observations say that only life begets life. And all current scientific data does not help your position. Also we do not know about the processes that formed our planet. The best we can do is guess given a world-view. BTW our knowledge of evolution is limited. We don't even know what makes an organism what it is.Joseph
July 29, 2009
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ScottAndrews: Our knowledge of OOL is limited to what we can discover about the process that helped form our planet and our understanding of the chemistry of life and the behaviour of complex chemical systems. Whilst we can never 'know' what actually happened we can infer plenty and certainly understand what was required, if those requirements are scarce and if our planet ever met those requirements.
Whatever your argument with ID is, you’ve just confessed to having no specific alternative.
...
No one is talking about two competing shelves full of books.
If you are not claiming that ID scientists can know what happened then we are talking about competing inferences. The the OOL shelf has plenty of volumes whereas the ID shelf seems to have a single book that we are not allowed to look at.BillB
July 29, 2009
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KF, firstly, after going away for a few days, I see in you post at 338 that you have predictably abandoned discourse and resorted to personal attack by, as far as I can tell, complaining that we are all a bunch of Nazis and that we are engaged in uncivil discourse for refusing to accept your blind assertions. Never mind, I forgive you. Moving on, I see you are still making claims about your imagined 'islands of functionality in a sea of non function' but haven't really made any attempts to understand Nakashimas points about how you measure pre-biotic function. You evidence for these islands seems to be purely that if you apply mass randomisation to a working mechanism it will probably break. This is quite true but it is no reason to assume an island topology for the configuration space. You need to remember the other observed and tested evidence about how gradual modifications to mechanisms can shift functions, as well as break them, so when this fact is factored in you end up with topologies that consist of interconnected islands and continents - certainly the vast majority of configuration space is inanimate (although as has been pointed out, gas giants can serve functions to living systems) but there is no evidence to suggest that all configurations of matter that work to self replicate or form part of a self replicating system are isolated islands - this is just wishful thinking on your part and is not backed up by any evidence.
Thus, the attempt to rhetorically extend the island of function by appealing to a sloping ocean floor fails.
This is a rhetorical dismissal, the point we are making is that you are the source of function in this context, it is a metric you have imposed on configuration space. If you remove it you still have a configuration space and you can put demarcation lines around interesting groups of configurations like replicators but you then are able to see that a pre-biotic topology exists. It is not one determined by natural selection but is is not all noise either, there are rules and processes that may drive some systems towards the interesting demarcation lines - this is what a lot of OOL research is investigating.
some scientists have presumed that nature has an innate tendency to produce life’s building blocks preferentially
They hypothesised this and are testing these hypotheses. The research I mentioned earlier and couldn't find references for have now been found for me, it is by Higgs & Pudritzis and called "A thermodynamic basis for prebiotic amino acid synthesis and the nature of the first genetic code" and a PDF is available here although it appears to be pre-review copy with the final version in print as "A thermodynamic basis for prebiotic amino acid synthesis and the nature of the first genetic code." in Astrobiology 2009. It is also worth looking up the work that is being done on the maximum entropy production principle. The point here, and in relation to ScottAndrews points, is that there are many papers in the journals, which are on the shelf, relating to many aspects of pre-biotic life and complex chemistry.
Until an adequate account of origin of information is accepted, the “gap” between the two will remain unbridged.
The problem is that your definition of information requires an intelligent source. Mechanisms for generating the information in biology are observed but when we build models and use them to verify the process you complain that because the models were designed (to replicate nature) the information has been put in by the designers. You have rendered the notion of 'information' impossible to test because anyone who does somehow inserts it into the results. Looking at your later posts KF I see that you take the Manrubia-Briones paper and add lots of your own text to help highlight how this investigative science is done, how hypothesise are developed from existing research which provide avenues for new research to test them. I'm not quite sure why you think this is wrong?BillB
July 29, 2009
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Adel, I'm afraid you're missing the point by a wide margin. No one is talking about two competing shelves full of books. My extremely simple point is this. Our "knowledge" of life's origin is limited to what materials life is composed of and what the finished product looks like. That's it. Period. It doesn't matter how many books you reference or what experiments were performed. No one knows what happened. No one claims to know what happened. There are no gaps in our understanding of life's origin because there is no understanding. Am I wrong? Is there some step in the chain from inanimate matter to replicating life where we know what happened, something not preceded by "perhaps," "possibly," or "could have?" I thought this was common knowledge. You aren't conceding anything by admitting it.ScottAndrews
July 29, 2009
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DiBagno-san, I'm responsible, perhaps, for KF-san citing NYRB. I did not find a reference on the NYT site, but I did find a NYRB source so perhaps it is Dr J Bloom that needs to correct something. Google is your friend! ;)Nakashima
July 29, 2009
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kairosfocus, Please correct your attribution of Lewontin's article. It was not published in the New York Review of Books, but in the NY Times Book Review: http://www.drjbloom.com/Public%20files/Lewontin_Review.htm Further, I am taking the liberty of quoting the last sentence of the paragraph that you have cited:
To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen.
Adel DiBagno
July 29, 2009
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ScottAndrews, Upright BiPed, I'm sorry that my comment was offensive. That was not my intention. To try to redeem myself in your eyes, here are some books on the OOL shelf: The Emergence of Life: From Chemical Origins to Synthetic Biology, by Pier Luigi Luisi (2006) Genesis: The Scientific Quest for Life's Origins, by Robert Hazen (2005) Origins: A Skeptic's Guide to the Creation of Life on Earth, by Robert Shapiro (1987) I've read the Hazen and Shapiro books (Shapiro is the person whose recent criticisms of the RNA hypothesis kairosfocus has quoted). But not the Luisi book (it's expensive), but it has been highly recommended. Now, what are the books on the other shelf or shelves?Adel DiBagno
July 29, 2009
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PPS: the above should also show the key equivocation involved in asserting that since we observe the creation of organic molecules in nature, we have a major plank in the bridge from the speculative prelife "organic soup" to life. Organic chemistry is about carbon-chain molecules. Life in cells is about INFORMATIONAL macromolecules working together to implement a von Neuman replicator. Until an adequate account of origin of information is accepted, the "gap" between the two will remain unbridged. And, the ONLY known, empirically observed source of functionally specific, complex information is intelligence. but, through the dominance of evolutionary materialism, that little fact is too often blocked from speaking at the outset of investigation or discussion; rendering utterly implausible speculations the only players allowed on the field. As US National Academy of Sciences member Lewontin confessed:
It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. [NY Review of Books, 1997]
That should tell us a lot about what is going on.kairosfocus
July 29, 2009
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In his recent critique of the RNA world in Sci Am, Shapiro aptly observed: ______________ >> RNA's building blocks, nucleotides, are complex substances as organic molecules go. They each contain a sugar, a phosphate and one of four nitrogen-containing bases as sub-subunits. Thus, each RNA nucleotide contains 9 or 10 carbon atoms, numerous nitrogen and oxygen atoms and the phosphate group, all connected in a precise three-dimensional pattern. Many alternative ways exist for making those connections, yielding thousands of plausible nucleotides that could readily join in place of the standard ones but that are not represented in RNA. That number is itself dwarfed by the hundreds of thousands to millions of stable organic molecules of similar size that are not nucleotides . . . . The RNA nucleotides are familiar to chemists because of their abundance in life and their resulting commercial availability. In a form of molecular vitalism, some scientists have presumed that nature has an innate tendency to produce life's building blocks preferentially, rather than the hordes of other molecules that can also be derived from the rules of organic chemistry. This idea drew inspiration from . . . Stanley Miller. He applied a spark discharge to a mixture of simple gases that were then thought to represent the atmosphere of the early Earth. ["My" NB: Subsequent research has sharply undercut this idea, a point that is unfortunately not accurately reflected in Sci Am's caption on a picture of the Miller-Urey apparatus, which in part misleadingly reads, over six years after Jonathan Wells' Icons of Evolution was published: The famous Miller-Urey experiment showed how inanimate nature could have produced amino acids in Earth's primordial atmosphere . . .] Two amino acids of the set of 20 used to construct proteins were formed in significant quantities, with others from that set present in small amounts . . . more than 80 different amino acids . . . have been identified as components of the Murchison meteorite, which fell in Australia in 1969 . . . By extrapolation of these results, some writers have presumed that all of life's building could be formed with ease in Miller-type experiments and were present in meteorites and other extraterrestrial bodies. This is not the case. A careful examination of the results of the analysis of several meteorites led the scientists who conducted the work to a different conclusion: inanimate nature has a bias toward the formation of molecules made of fewer rather than greater numbers of carbon atoms, and thus shows no partiality in favor of creating the building blocks of our kind of life . . . I have observed a similar pattern in the results of many spark discharge experiments . . . . [N]o nucleotides of any kind have been reported as products of spark discharge experiments or in studies of meteorites, nor have the smaller units (nucleosides) that contain a sugar and base but lack the phosphate. To rescue the RNA-first concept from this otherwise lethal defect, its advocates have created a discipline called prebiotic synthesis. They have attempted to show that RNA and its components can be prepared in their laboratories in a sequence of carefully controlled reactions, normally carried out in water at temperatures observed on Earth . . . . Unfortunately, neither chemists nor laboratories were present on the early Earth to produce RNA . . . . The analogy that comes to mind is that of a golfer, who having played a golf ball through an 18-hole course, then assumed that the ball could also play itself around the course in his absence. He had demonstrated the possibility of the event; it was only necessary to presume that some combination of natural forces (earthquakes, winds, tornadoes and floods, for example) could produce the same result, given enough time. No physical law need be broken for spontaneous RNA formation to happen, but the chances against it are so immense, that the suggestion implies that the non-living world had an innate desire to generate RNA. The majority of origin-of-life scientists who still support the RNA-first theory either accept this concept (implicitly, if not explicitly) or feel that the immensely unfavorable odds were simply overcome by good luck. >> __________________ That should suffice to underscore just how ill-founded the above speculations and optimistic reports on RNA world experimental support are. The bookshelf is quite literally empty of adequate and relevant EMPIRICAL evidence, thought he one above it on speculation on "scenarios" positively groans with papers and books. And so, today's rhetorical wave attack goes down in flames. GEM of TKI PS: of course, as Orgel highlighted in his posthumously published response, the metabolism first OOL model in its own way is just as speculative and lacking in empirical warrant. Each of these founder on the key fact observed in real life: INFORMATION is carefully stored and maintained then used to control the step by step process of making the nanomachines of life and organising them into functional units arranged in useful configurations. Information of an order of complexity that makes its spontaneous origin through lucky noise so incredible that speculations on short informational molecules are used to paper over the gapingly empty bookshelf. That is, there is no empirically robust model or theory of origin of life in absence of intelligent origination of the required bio-information for cell based life as we see it. So blatant is this, that attempts are now being made through speculations and equivocations on terms like replication, mutation and selection, to extend the range of the Darwinist model of evolution through chance variation and natural selection to the pre-life world. But, knowledge is not equal to such speculations; especially where plainly relevant alternatives are being filtered out before the known facts on the origin of information can speak; through Lewonitian censorship through a priori materialism.kairosfocus
July 29, 2009
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