Probabilities and the Genesis of Life
| December 13, 2009 | Posted by GilDodgen under Intelligent Design |
The important thing to keep in mind concerning probabilities and the origin of life is that proteins, and everything else in a living cell, are manufactured by machinery which is controlled by an abstract-representation digital coding system. Proteins not only don’t self-assemble, they cannot self-assemble, because basic chemistry drives the process in the opposite direction.
Once this is taken into consideration all arguments that assert, “But it could have happened by chance,” are rendered ludicrous on their face.
By way of analogy, the basic Darwinian argument for the origin of life goes something like this:
1) Clay occurs naturally.
2) Bricks are made of clay.
3) Therefore, there is some (given enough time) probability that houses made of clay bricks came about by stochastic processes and the chemistry of clay.
This is the way I see it, and so do most people with common sense. Apparently, one needs a Ph.D. in Darwinian Speculation (or sufficient indoctrination in this academic, “scientific” specialty) not to recognize the obvious.
144 Responses to Probabilities and the Genesis of Life
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vjtorley,
Before I reply further (which may take some time as I have other pressing things to get done this afternoon), I would like to point out that I was reacting specifically to your mentioning of the molecular weight differential between one nucleotide and the entire genome of M. genitalium. Somehow it seemed to me you were tying the number of chemical steps with the number of nucleotides, which didn’t make sense. My apologies for misconstruing your argument– I’m glad the error was on my part.
As for the number of actual chemical steps and pathways, it is important to keep in mind the kinds of initial assumptions being made. Early on in our discussion here I mentioned that Sutherland’s work was important because it threw out some initial assumptions that rendered the synthesis of ribonucleotides nearly impossible to achieve under pre-biological conditions. I think, as the work proceeds on abiogenesis, that other assumptions will be thrown out as well. I will mention a few in a subsequent comment.
Mr Nakashima,
Yes, that was what I was trying to address, but now I don’t think that was what vjtorley was trying to argue. At least, I hope not.
vjt,
“How many more steps do they need to complete before they’ve built the simplest kind of cell in existence (M. genitalium)? 999,992.”
Whatever the numbers, this seemingly misses the point. Life is not the collection of its parts (ask a physiologists) as you acknowledge.
Life is the intricate coordination of those parts into a function.
Let’s assume the synthesis of every part of an organism (after all, they do exist already). Take the M. genitalium you mention – what is its proteome count up to now – over a couple thousand for the smallest bacterium? (http://www.strgen.org/proteome/).
A complete demonstration of the assumption that unguided processes lead to living organisms is not just getting to the synthesis of the nucleic acids, its the getting to those nucleic acids embedded with the instructions for the development of a proteome and metabolome and coordinating those into function and replication with the capacity of inheritance (without unwarranted investigator input).
The work that has been done is incredibly interesting and will pay fantastic dividends (and is a heck of a testament to intelligent beings doing what intelligent beings do), but it does not demonstrate what is essential to life. It’s not even close.
I think this is why many ID proponents are perhaps happy that all this research is being done. The sooner we get past the parts and the entrenched ideology; we can get down to the idea that it doesn’t just coordinate itself. This is most likely to become apparent when we try to do it ourselves.
Mr BiPed,
Yes, if we can get past the synthesis of the physical components, things will be prepared to challenge the next level – whether or not autocatalytic sets actually form as predicted by mathematical models.
Upright BiPed:
Sorry for the delay. I didn’t ignore your question — I was just too busy furthering our knowledge of the natural world.
No.
Let me clarify a bit: science cannot rule out that evolution (or anything else for that matter) is somehow guided. Unless you would care to be more specific about how the guidance takes place, with sufficient detail to allow some testable predictions to be made.
It is therefore also incorrect to say that science “assumes” unguidedness. “Guidance” is so ill-defined that it cannot be incorporated in scientific models in a useful way. That’s not the same as denying that guidance exists.
lryna,
So, I asked if science had proven the assumption and you said “no”.
You then went on to deny that such an assumption is real within the sciences. Your denial falls with the sound of a thud against what is verifiably true. As if the constant pronouncement coming from science to the public is not real, does not exist, cannot be demonstrated, is a thing of fiction. How disingenuous can you be?
Let’s look:
“science cannot rule out that evolution (or anything else for that matter) is somehow guided.”
Firstly, this thread isn’t about evolution and I am not certain if the word had even come up until you yourself brought it up. We were talking about a demonstration surrounding theories regarding the beginning of life on this planet. Why the change of topic?
In any case, your comment is completely false. Science makes judgments about guided things all the time. (Forensics, SETI, historical sciences, etc). The reason that the methodologies of these disciplines are withheld from the biological sciences is for nothing but the protection of the core assumption, which of course, you deny exists.
Even more interesting is how a question about science providing some empirical basis for its metaphysical assumption of unguided-ness morphed into a safehouse statement about an inability to disprove guided-ness regarding an issue not even under discussion. It’s awash in political maneuver. Just butt the tactical answer given to the simply question asked, and take it for a drive:
(smirk)
“It is therefore also incorrect to say that science “assumes” unguidedness.
Really? Lets both start typing. You type all the quotes from science that proves your point and I’ll do the same for those that prove my point. Let’s see who dies typing.
“Guidance is so ill-defined that it cannot be incorporated in scientific models in a useful way.”
We’ve now moved away from the fact that science has failed to provide empirical evidence for an entrenched assumption, and we’ve all but forgotten that the assumption is peddled to the public every single day. We are now squinting our eyes and moving into the illogical justifications for ignoring the previous facts.
The website you are on is dedicated to the proposition that we can make rational inferences to design from the observable evidence (in DNA, for instance) using the same explanatory techniques used within the other historical sciences, as well as forensics, and even the search for extraterrestrial life.
“That’s not the same as denying that guidance exists.”
Sure, whatever. But hey, thanks for confirming the evidence for the materialist’ assumption has not been provided.
By “guidance”, you mean a miracle, right? No one can ever prove or disprove the existence of miracles.
Anyone is free to maintain that absent a sufficiently detailed explanation for the emergence of the first living organisms, (or any natural event) they’ll continue to believe that it was a miracle. That is the very essence of a god-of-the-gaps position. The weakness of that position is that no matter where you make a stand you’ll eventually have to move.
Clive Hayden,
The great thing about language is that we can make anything have a counterpart, just put the prefix “non” in front of it.
There is no utility in trying to compare the natural and the non natural. Simply chalk the concept of the later up to the generous ‘nature’ of language and the creative abilities of the human mind.
lastyear,
Then call it super instead of non natural. It doesn’t much matter. We don’t know what nature is, and cannot rule out super or non natural things.
Mung, you said…
So nothing non natural exists.
Upright BiPed, Dave Wisker, Mr. Nakashima, IrynaB and Mark Frank:
First of all, Upright BiPed is perfectly correct to point out that my “steps-along-the-road” metaphor fails to adequately convey the real difficulty of undirected abiogenesis. The main reason why I used the “steps along the road” metaphor is that ordinary people (including myself) are psychologically wedded to it. Discuss any outstanding problem at work with your boss, and he/she will ask you when you’re on track to finish. And when people read articles in The New York Times suggesting that progress has been made in discovering how life evolved, their natural response is: “Well, how far along the road are we?” The purpose of the “steps” metaphor was to lend a sense of perspective to the issue. We are nowhere close to finding out how life evolved. The “size” metaphor ws intended for the same purpose. People want to know stuff like that, because that’s how they think. Ordinary people (including myself) appreciate vivid visual metaphors. Telling people that scientists have made a molecule that’s 1,000,000 times smaller than the simplest cell immediately conveys that progress achieved to date has been very limited. That’s why popular science magazines pushing abiogenesis never mention these awkward facts.
But UprightBiPed hit the nail on the head with his comments. For, as he correctly observes, life is not just a collection of parts, but the intricate coordination of those parts into a function. In other words, the defining feature of life consists in its form, not its matter. Mr. Nakashima acknowledges the same point when he suggests that we need to get past the synthesis of the physical components, and move up to the next level.
Nothing we see in the world is totally unstructured. We can speak of a form-matter spectrum, for the sake of convenience. Although it represents a geneuine advance, the foregoing discussion of ribonucleotide synthesis by Sutherland et al., is much closer to the “matter” end of the spectrum than the “form” end, as far as life is concerned.
With life, we see layer upon layer of complexity. The rich 3D structure of life is a marvel that we are struggling to explain. When I narrated my story of making a model shark, I remarked that it was very hard to fit the pieces into the right 3D shape. But assembling an RNA molecule would be incomparably more difficult: as I remarked in my previous thread, it has a rich 3D structure.
Mark Frank: the reason why the development of metazoans took so long was that it was a much bigger jump, in terms of complexity. You might like to have a look at these pages, which will answer your questions:
http://www.darwinsdilemma.org/.....losion.php
http://www.darwinsdilemma.org/pdf/faq.pdf
As to the late emergence of animals: maybe the reason was that the early Earth needed to be stabilized first (think of climate systems etc).
It has been a pleasure exchanging views with you all. Bye for now.
Mr Vjtorley,
I respect your exit from the conversation for now, and I hope you do not feel chased by a bear! Enjoy your vacation reading as much as you can!
Here is an article that sketches the origin of the RNA World in a way similar to that which I laid out above. I offer it with compliments and a hope you enjoy Christmas and New Years.
Oramus 115, Joseph 116, vjtorley 133
You are right! I had not thought about the requirement to create an oxygen rich atmosphere to sustain multicellular life.
I do disagree with Joseph’s line in #116
One doesn’t have to know the motivations to critique the design
If you don’t know what the design is intended to do – how can you know if it does it well?
Mr Nakashima,
That was a good reference. Tied in with the following article, we can begin to see how tRNAs (which are actually very small)could form from random RNA sequences. This then ties in well with the stereochemical hypothesis for the origin of the genetic code.
Nagaswamy U & GE Fox (2003). RNA ligation and the origin of tRNA. Origins of Life and Evolution of the Biosphere 33: 199-209
vjtorley,
I would like to echo Mr Nakashima’s comments and say this discussion has been a pleasure.
Clive Hayden
That is correct. There’s all manner of things that we cannot rule out. But just because something cannot be ruled out doesn’t mean it has any merit or even makes sense.
lastyear,
Nor does it mean that it doesn’t make sense. We cannot make sense of nature, therefore we have no real basis for comparison when comparing nature to super or non natural things. If we don’t understand the rule, we cannot rule out the exception.
Mr Nakashima & vjtorley, you both might enjoy this article as well:
Costanzo G, S Pino, F Ciciriello, & E Di Mauro (2009). The generation of long RNA chains in water. The Journal of Biological Chemistry 284: 33206-33216.
Mr Frank,
If the atmosphere became oxygenated 2.4 billion years ago, and metazoa appeared 600 million years ago, there is still a vast gulf of time not explained by that hypothesis.
Somewhere in that gap, life invented and refined the idea of sexual reproduction. Judging by memories of my own teenage years, I am not at all surprised if this took a billion years to figure out!
#141
Yes – but this diagram on Wikipedia suggested to me that the oxygen content was low until just before the Cambrian – mind you it is in German so maybe I don’t understand it!
Mr Frank,
The Wiki (English) entry for “Oxygen catastrophe” has a clearer and more detailed image.
While I can imagine a link between oxygen levels and a motile, carnivorous lifestyle, just being multicellular could apply to plants as well.
On a related note, I wonder if anyone has studied the timing of the endosymbionic events for chloroplasts and mitochondria.