He said it: On origin of life, “we now have an inkling of the magnitude of the problem”
| October 31, 2011 | Posted by News under News, Origin Of Life |
In one sense the origin of life problem today remains what it was in the time of Darwin — one of the great unsolved riddles of science. Yet we have made progress. Through theoretical scrutiny and experimental effort since the nineteen-twenties many of the early naive assumptions have fallen or are falling aside — and there now exist alternative theories. In short, while we do not have a solution, we now have an inkling of the magnitude of the problem.
- Carl Woese, microbiologist, and Gunter Wachtershauser, chemist and attorney, “Origin of Life” in Derek E. G. Briggs and Peter R. Crowther, eds., Paleobiology: A Synthesis (Oxford: Blackwell Scientific Publications, 1990), 9
Still do.
Follow UD News at Twitter!
8 Responses to He said it: On origin of life, “we now have an inkling of the magnitude of the problem”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Joseph asked the question that should have been asked first. I do wish people would quit confusing the words murder and killing.
Another question that comes first is, “How should any conflict between the good of one person and the good of another be resolved?” Only the principle of non-aggression gives any appearance of a final resolution to this question.
Crap, I was replying to the murder thread, and it got sent here. Administrators, please move it.
Don’t you think with all the recent advances in OOL research you shouldn’t rely on a quote that is over 20 years old?
Scientific quotes don’t get better with age:
“Heavier than air flying machines are impossible” – Lord Kelvin, President of the Royal Society of England, 1895.
What recent advances?
Are you talking about the recent advances that say no way?
as to:
The numbers one gets, from scientists in origin of life research, truly are beyond the reach of meaningful human comprehension:
In fact Dean Kenyon, who was a leading Origin Of Life researcher as well as a college textbook author on the subject, admitted after years of extensive research:
In fact years ago Fred Hoyle arrived at approximately the same number, one chance in 10^40,000, for life spontaneously arising. From this number, Fred Hoyle compared the random emergence of the simplest bacterium on earth to the likelihood “a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747 therein”. Fred Hoyle also compared the chance of obtaining just one single functioning protein molecule, by chance combination of amino acids, to a solar system packed full of blind men solving Rubik’s Cube simultaneously.
Professor Harold Morowitz shows the Origin of Life ‘problem’ escalates dramatically over the 1 in 10^40,000 figure when working from a thermodynamic perspective,:
Dr. Don Johnson lays out some of the probabilities for life in this following video:
Dr. Morowitz did another probability calculation working from the thermodynamic perspective with a already existing cell and came up with this number:
Ilya Prigogine, an eminent chemist and physicist who received two Nobel Prizes in chemistry, Regarding the probability of life originating by accident, he said:
I would like to point out that the ‘statistical probability’ of life happening by accidental material processes truly is zero:
It is very interesting to note that quantum entanglement, which conclusively demonstrates that ‘information’ in its pure ‘quantum form’ is completely transcendent of any time and space constraints, should be found in molecular biology on such a massive scale, for how can the quantum entanglement ‘effect’ in biology possibly be explained by a material (matter/energy) ’cause’ when the quantum entanglement ‘effect’ falsified material particles as its own ‘causation’ in the first place? (A. Aspect) Appealing to the probability of various configurations of material particles, as Darwinism does, simply will not help since a timeless/spaceless cause must be supplied which is beyond the capacity of the material particles themselves to supply! To give a coherent explanation for an effect that is shown to be completely independent of any time and space constraints one is forced to appeal to a cause that is itself not limited to time and space! i.e. Put more simply, you cannot explain a effect by a cause that has been falsified by the very same effect you are seeking to explain! Improbability arguments of various ‘special’ configurations of material particles, which have been a staple of the arguments against neo-Darwinism, simply do not apply since the cause is not within the material particles in the first place!
But to try to get a grasp on just how incomprehensibly large these numbers are against any life ‘accidentally’ happening, I offer this article from a study on prophecy:
Theologian R.C. Sproul interviews Stephen C. Meyer – video
http://networkedblogs.com/phlv.....038;ref=nf
Youtube link:
Theologian R.C. Sproul interviews Stephen C. Meyer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVHZrSuXZkY
GinoB, I agree with you that the quote is pretty old.
If we take into account recent advances in OOL research, then we probably can’t even say that we have an inkling of the magnitude of the problem.