Not only does life require protein building macines and assembly lines but DNA replication (for one) requires a nucleotide building/ assembly line. You can’t have DNA replication without spare nucleotides.

I remember watching a video that demonstrated DNA replication and protein forming- it was similar to what is seen in “Unlocking the Mystery of Life” except many years prior. I asked about those spare nucleotides that were shown joining to the exposed backbone of the unzipped DNA. The video just shows them coming into the picture but it didn’t tell us from whence they came. The answer given was they are in the cell. Well no duh.

DaveScott:
I have a problem with DNA being the whole enchilada for what makes a cell what it is too.

The issue is if DNA isn’t “the whole encilada” then mutations to it isn’t going to do very much- except perhaps cause death, disease or some slight oscillating variation(s). Common descent requires much, much more than that (as you already know).

I believe that the anti-IDists say that DNA is the whole enchilada. They, at this point in time, don’t have much of a choice.

This is my thinking-

Fundamental entities:

1) Matter
2) Energy
3) Information
4) Life (Life in this context is separate from living organisms)

Sorry for missing the last part. I have a problem with DNA being the whole enchilada for what makes a cell what it is too. As far as I know life only comes from life and it takes a cell to make a cell. Presumably every living cell today is the tip of an unbroken cell line going back to a progenitor cell billions of years and hundreds of billions of generations ago. More than just DNA is required to construct a cell as far as anyone knows, and in and of itself DNA may not be enough to specify the entire construct.

Then there’s also the problem of the hardest part of a materialist explanation, the origin of the first DNA/ribosome based cell, had the least amount of time to happen. As you said, cyanobacteria evidently came on the scene very early in the earth’s history. Literally not long after the earth cooled off enough for liquid water to exist. That alone makes it dubious as to whether the first cell came into being on this planet or even in this solar system.

Storing = planning.

You’d think so, huh? DNA is, among other things, digitally encoded program and data storage that both specifies the construction and operation of a robotic protein assembly machine called a ribosome. Every living cell examined has that protein factory and the same basic codes that control it along with a library of abstract protein specifications the organism requires for survival. Some have larger libraries than others. All library information is interchangeable among different organisms. It wasn’t until well into the industrial revolution that humanity came up with using interchangeable parts. To make matters worse DNA requires a ribosome to duplicate the DNA molecule and the ribosome requires DNA to construct it. It’s literally the mother of all paradoxes. Cells have been making proteins this way since, as far as we know, the earth cooled enough to allow them to exist here at all.

I don’t posit that the God of Abraham came up with this scheme but until someone comes up with a plausible, testable scenario where such a complex program controlled protein factory could self-assemble from chance interactions of inanimate chemical precursors then I’m certainly going to reject that hypothesis as well. The only thing I know that can create program controlled machinery like that is intelligent agents in general and humans in particular. Until another method that doesn’t require planning and purpose to git ‘er done comes along a design inference is the best explanation. I don’t expect there will ever be a better explanation but I remain open to any where the proposed chemistry and environment is feasible and critical aspects can be tested in a contrived laboratory environment similar to the proposed natural environment. I don’t think that’s asking much. It’s already been demonstrated that intelligent agents can do the planning and bring the chemicals together so there’s nothing to prove on that score. Score: Design 1, Chance 0.

I am certainly not going to reject separate creations of life when everything we know indicates that is a very real possibility and is in perfect concert with what is really known about the great mystery of evolution.

DS:
The usual criticism is that genetic information can’t be stored unexpressed for billions of years without being hopelessly corrupted.

Now THAT is funny.

DS:
That’s a valid criticism ONLY if RM+NS is the real driver of evolution.

But RM&NS wouldn’t have created genetic information to be stored in the first place. Storing = planning. Do anti-IDists think before they speak?

Nitrogen fixation- My thinking is that IF (yup big IF) we had the ability to do it we would also require a control mechanism that would only allow the specified/ required amount into the system/ organism for protein synthesis. AND IF all organisms had the ability we would require some mechanism to replace what we used as we would be using quite a bit. A mechanism/ organism similar to the relationship of plants/ animals pertaining to O2 and CO2. And if protein synthesis is the only function affected by nitrogen intake why bother with the design details when the designed digestive system works fine in that regard- that is as long as one eats the right foods?

However above I was refering to the observation that bacteria are in the lowest strata. But they are not there because they florished eons before plants & animals, but they are there because plants & animals required them in the soil. IOW it was a design spec.

Front-end loading is an interesting concept. However does that scenario rely on DNA to be THE information for making an organism what it is? If so then I have major issues with it.

Sorry for the ramble- I am very affected by the major stumble of the Red Sox. How the heck can they lose 5 games in a row at Fenway Park? And to the Spankees- what has this world come to? Where are the National League teams when you need them?

I didn’t consider it off-topic at all to bring up nitrogen fixing. I purposely put out a teaser about a phylogenetic stem cell and you were exploring an aspect of its feasibility. It’s an aspect that no one else has mentioned and I thank you for it. The usual criticism is that genetic information can’t be stored unexpressed for billions of years without being hopelessly corrupted. That’s a valid criticism ONLY if RM+NS is the real driver of evolution. Preservation of information that isn’t needed for immediate survival purposes requires planning and purpose which RM+NS doesn’t have. Preserving information to any required required reliability standard is a trivial thing for a designer that’s capable of building a living cell from scratch. For that matter giving a eukaryote an organelle that fixes nitrogen isn’t hard to do either. It also occured to me as I was thinking about atmospheric terraforming that a designed terraformation scheme could have first brought cynobacteria to life while keeping the next stage of life, that requiring fixed nitrogen and free oxygen, kept in stasis until the atmosphere was ready. Another thing an intelligent space faring species would need in order to accomplish their goal is a ready supply of energy to drive the industrial civilization preceding and during the phase they’re building telescopes and spacecraft. So the plan includes hundreds of millions of years of laying down what will become fossil fuel for the industrial species to come – storing solar energy that will eventually power an industrial civilization long enough to get off the rock they’re on. Evolution just appears more and more contrived the more you look at the big picture.

My bad as I (wrongly) thought that PT was calling it a “free living parasite” and my next question would have been “how long can it live without a host?” However you have cleared up my misconception.

That said I don’t see how the PTers can use this as an example that would substantiate evolutionism.

(As for the nitrogen part I won’t go into that now because that is not the topic of your thread and I apologize for even bringing up that tangent- and no my scenario wasn’t meant to refute front-end loading and yes metazoans could have, at one time, had the ability to take in and use the free nitrogen in the atmosphere. And yes there may be metazoans alive today with that ability. No need to elaborate further here but I may bring it up on my blog when I have the time, which for now seems like a life-time away)

You have me convinced that creative organic evolution, if not over forever, isn’t going on anymore today. Where we part company is my belief that creative technological evolution (genetic engineering) has been part of the plan all along and that is progressing at an exponentially accelerating rate. I believe the scheme of life is much bigger and older than this planet. If life is to survive longer than the earth remains habitable then it must have some means to find suitable new fertile grounds and transport itself there. This is the model used by many individual species so if one presumes that these patterns repeat on different scales, just like you and I believe that ontogenesis and phylogenesis are parts of the same process, then it makes sense that phylogenesis repeats as well on even longer time scales over a far greater area. At any rate, in order to locate and move the seeds of life to a new planet requires a technological species able to build telescopes that can locate suitable new worlds around distant stars and build spacecraft that can carry at least microbes for the thousands of years required to make the journey. At this point in time our first interstellar spacecraft, Voyager 1, has just left the solar system. Undoubtedly there were microbial spores unintentionally hitching a ride on it. Also at this point in time the next generation of telescopes being planned and built will be able to locate earth-size planets in the galatic neighborhood and get spectoscopic readings telling us what they’re like. In other words, the technology is almost there. The race is on to see whether we deplete the earth’s resources before getting life established on a new world or not. It’s my belief (well not a firm belief but a best fit kind of thing) that our ultimate purpose as a species is to reproduce the life on this planet to other planets in an ongoing cycle of life that may last a trillion years until the heat death of the universe.

I wonder what your take on John Sanford’s book is WRT deleterious mutations. He goes further than you and cites Kimura’s range saying that mutations aren’t mostly neutral, they are nearly neutral deleterious. Thus, it is impossible to select out for these since selection occurs at the whole organism and a nearly neutral mutation is barely noticed at the species level. Therefore, as the nearly neutral mutations build up, it only guarantees the extinction of a species.

I’ve heard you say that natural selection does nothing except ensure extinction. Is this what you mean by that?

I don’t put much faith in mutation differences. They are nearly all and possible all either neutral or downright deleterious. All living things are remarkably similar at the point locus level.

I share Grasse’s view that alleic mutations are little more than mistakes on what he called the “..’magnetic tape’ on which the primary information for the species is recorded.”
Evolution of Living Organisms. page 243

It is only natural that I would like Grasse’s opinion because it is in complete concert with the Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis.

As for allelic mutations ever having played a role in either ontogeny or phylogeny, I defer to Leo Berg with whom I am in complete agreement.

“Neither in the one nor in the other is there room for chance.”
Nomogenesis, page 134

I only wish he had used the past tense for phylogeny because, as everyone must realize by now, I remain convinced that -

“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
John A. Davison