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Author Topic:   Self-Replicating Molecules - Life's Building Blocks (Part II)
Wounded King
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Posts: 4149
From: Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
Joined: 04-09-2003


(2)
Message 16 of 97 (612789)
04-18-2011 6:20 PM
Reply to: Message 13 by Hunter
04-18-2011 5:01 PM


Re: Probability
This doesn't even touch the probability of thousands of these protein molecules forming into DNA strands; which turns out to be 1 in 10^40,000.
I'm surprised it isn't a whole lot more than that considering that DNA is not composed of proteins.
It is massive biology fails like this undercut any point you may be trying to make. Given that you lack even a basic grasp of molecular biology it is hard to believe that you nevertheless have a cogent and sophisticated critique based on it up your sleeve.
And that is before we even start on the flaws in your grasp of arguing from probability.
TTFN,
WK

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Tanypteryx
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Posts: 4344
From: Oregon, USA
Joined: 08-27-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 17 of 97 (612798)
04-18-2011 9:16 PM
Reply to: Message 13 by Hunter
04-18-2011 5:01 PM


Re: Probability
Hunter writes:
the chance that our universe could/would be laid out the way it is, is extremely improbable. It's 1 in 10^133, to be exact.
To be exact???? Are you sure is isn't 10^133 +4? or +7?
Extremely improbable, based on what?
We have one Universe that is laid out like it is, so the probability looks like 1.0 to me.
Your numbers are gibberish if you don't show us how you calculated them.

Tactimatically speaking, the molecubes are out of alignment. -- S.Valley
What if Eleanor Roosevelt had wings? -- Monty Python
You can't build a Time Machine without Weird Optics -- S. Valley

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dwise1
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Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(2)
Message 18 of 97 (612812)
04-19-2011 1:25 AM
Reply to: Message 13 by Hunter
04-18-2011 5:01 PM


Re: Probability
You say that you think it’s very possible that there was debris left behind from the life cycle of previous stars and planets, but have you ever really looked into or calculated the probability of one protein molecule forming from such debris or mineral like material. The probability of one single protein molecule randomly forming on its own is 2.02 in 10^321. This doesn't even touch the probability of thousands of these protein molecules forming into DNA strands; which turns out to be 1 in 10^40,000.
That one's so old its whiskers have whiskers growing on them. How long have you been feeding on creationist claims? A few years? Most of those claims are three decades or older and were soundly refuted almost immediately (ie, decades ago); on this forum, we use an abbreviation for them, PRATT, "Point Refuted A Thousand Times". And many critics of those claims have been studying them for nearly as long and have been active in discussing them with creationists. OTOH, very few creationists last very long in such discussions. Indeed, many of those who now oppose "creation science" creationism had been "creation science" creationists themselves, until they tried in vain to defend the indefensible and learned that those claims are false.
I know that's a helluva welcome to give you, but you deserve to hear the truth at least once. Stay, participate, learn.
Back to your probability claim. I know that you got it from another source, a book on the philosophy of religion -- which makes me wonder about their approach -- so I won't ask you to show us your work or your model. That's right, your model. You've undoubtedly heard the saying that figures don't lie, but liars sure can figure. The basis for that saying lies in yet another simple fact that is enshired in yet another familiar saying: Garbage in, garbage out. Which means here that the veracity of a probability calculation depends on the veracity of the model that it's based on.
Maybe this will help to explain things (my emphasis added):
Setting aside the improbability of protein molecules and DNA strands forming on their own, the chance that our universe could/would be laid out the way it is, is extremely improbable. It's 1 in 10^133, to be exact.
Now, we know how dice roll. We know how cards get shuffled and dealt. We know how a roulette wheel turns. We know how lottery balls produce the winning numbers. But just what the hell do we know about how the universe came to become the exact way that it did? With our knowledge of dice, cards, roulette wheels, and the lottery, we can calculate exact probabilities for those systems. With our extremely limited knowledge of every single aspect of the universe, just how are we supposed to produce anything close to an "exact" probability for the universe, both the extremely limited portion that we do know and the extremely vast portion that we do not?
An exact probability calculation requires complete knowledge of the system. Are you telling us that the authors of that book have complete knowledge of the universe? C'mon! We both know full well that such knowledge is humanly impossible. In fact, my own fundamentalist training emphasized that fact very explicitly and very heavily.
In order to produce an accurate, or at the very least reliable, probability calculation, you need to have a model that is itself accurate. What was your model for the protein probability? (since you presented it, I'm going to let you take responsibility for it -- ignoring for the moment that the fundamentalist approach to morality is one of shifting responsibility away from oneself) Based on past experience, let me guess:
quote:
What is the probability of a specific modern protein consisting of n amino acids coming together in one single attempt and with one single specific amino acid sequence?
Was that it? We've been through this canard far too many times. Creationism is P.T. Barnum's famous quote come to life: There's a sucker born every minute. And I say that with all due respect. (as per Woody Allen)
Are you expecting a modern protein to fall together from out of nothing? Who would expect such a thing? Evolutionary theory? No, evolutionary theory would posit that the modern protein had evolved from a pre-existing protein. Rather, the idea of a modern protein just falling together out of nothing is pure creationism. Word of advice: if you are going to criticize what somebody believes, you really should take a little time and effort to learn what they actually believe.
The next problem with this "model" is the requirement that the amino acids be in only one single specific sequence for this protein to work. That is wrong. Easy refutation: the same protein in different species are have different sequences. Indeed, we find that the differences in the same proteins in different species do indeed match what we would expect if evolution were right -- despite creationism's flagrantly false claims about proteins (oh, the things I could tell you!).
Now here's the less easy refutation. Many years ago, two professors at San Diego State University, Bill Thwaites and Frank Awbrey, had the only true "two-model" course. They gave half the lectures and professional creationists from the then-nearby Institute for Creation Research (ICR), literally the men who wrote the book on "creation science", gave the other half of the lectures. Since the students were able to learn what the actual evidence is, creationism never fared well. Thwaites and Awbrey finally had to discontinue the course because of the extreme pressure the Christian clubs exerted against the university administration. So much for Christians and Truth.
In their class notes, which was published by the university bookstore, they examined this claim. Here is my presentation of it on my website (which is no longer on-line since my webhost abruptly went out of the business):
quote:
Rather than brandying about a hypothetical protein, let's look at a specific case. In the class notes of Frank Awbrey & William Thwaites' creation/evolution class at UCSD (the Institute for Creation Research conducted half the lectures and Awbrey & Thwaites the other half), they give the example of a calcium binding site with 29 amino acid positions: only 2 positions (7%) require specific amino acids, 8 positions (28%) can be filled by any of 5 hydrophobic amino acids, 3 positions (10%) can be filled by any one of 4 other amino acids, 2 positions (7%) can be filled with two different amino acids, and 14 of the positions (48%) can be filled by virtually any of the 20 amino acids.
The sequence of the 15 specified positions is:
L* L*L* L*D D* D*G* I*D* EL* L*L* L*
Where:
L* = hydrophobic - Leu, Val, Ilu, Phe, or Met
Prob = (5/20)^8
D* = (a) Asp, Glu, Ser, or Asn
Prob = (4/20)^3
OR (b) theoretically also Gls or Thr
Prob = (6/20)^3
D = Asp
Prob = (1/20)
E = Glu
Prob = (1/20)
G* = Gly or Asp
Prob = (2/20)
I* = Ilu or Val
Prob = (2/20)
Remaining positions = any of 20
Prob = (20/20)^14 = 1^14 = 1
Total Prob = Prob(L*) * Prob(D*) * Prob(D) * Prob(E) * Prob(G*) * Prob(I*)
= (a) 3.05 x 10^(-12)
OR (b) 10.2 x 10^(-12)
Your own calculation of the probability of a functional order coming up (ie, the standard
creation science method) would be: (1/20)^29 = 1.86 x 10^(-38).

Comparing the lower probability to yours shows it to be 1.64 x 10^26 times greater.
This invalidates your colored-box-car analogy as it stands (to correct it, you would need to allow for a variety of different combinations) and it invalidates your probability calculations.
So if your model requires specific amino acid sequences, you now see that that is a false assumption.
The other problem is your single-step selection probabilities vs Dawkins' cumulative selection probabilities (as presented in Chapter 3 of The Blind Watchmaker). Your model undoubtedly is single-step, requiring each effort to start completely from scratch. That is not how evolution works -- remember my recommendation that you first learn that which you wish to refute? Evolutionary change is cumulative; each small step is from a point that was reached by a sequence of other small steps.
I have done the math! Have you? We do not have room here for me to present the entire essay, but I did do the math. In Dawkins' book, he described his WEASEL program that would generate a line from Shakespeare, "Methinks it is like a weasel", but he did not print the code. Many of us, including myself (back around 1990), wrote our own WEASEL programs, though I named mine MONKEY after Eddington's "infinite monkeys" (from my monkey.html page):
quote:

A. S. Eddington. The Nature of the Physical World: The Gifford Lectures, 1927:


... If I let my fingers wander idly over the keys of a typewriter it might happen that
my screed made an intelligible sentence. If an army of monkeys were strumming on
typewriters they might write all the books in the British Museum. The chance of
their doing so is decidedly more favourable than the chance of the molecules
returning to one half of the vessel.
Douglas Adams. The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy:


"Ford!" [Arthur] said, "there's an infinite number of monkeys outside who
want to talk to us about this script for Hamlet they've worked out."
Lennon and McCartney:


Everybody's got something to hide, except for me and my monkey!
RFC 2795: The Infinite Monkey Protocol Suite (IMPS)


Abstract

This memo describes a protocol suite which supports an infinite
number of monkeys that sit at an infinite number of typewriters in
order to determine when they have either produced the entire works of
William Shakespeare or a good television show. The suite includes
communications and control protocols for monkeys and the
organizations that interact with them.



Years ago, Ian Musgrave collected these WEASEL programs and created a page that still exists: http://health.adelaide.edu.au/...m/Musgrave/essays/whale.htm On that page, he also notes that my own MONKEY was critisized in a book by one Walter ReMine, who claimed that it demonstrates Haldane's Dilemma, though that is doubtful.
Here's the bottom line. The standard target of MONKEY, although you could specify your own, was the Roman alphabet in alphabetical order. If we were to use single-step selection to attempt to produce it and it were to take our computer one millisecond for each attempt (remember, this was back when PCs ran at a few Norton Indices -- one NI equaled a true-blue-IBM PC/XT running a 8086 at 4.77 MHz), then it would take the program 20 times the current age of the universe, about 12 billion years, for the program to have one-in-a-million chance of producing the target. But using the cumulative-selection method, it took MONKEY less than a few minutes to produce the target -- nowadays, it would take a few seconds. I did the math. I analyzed the math, using Markovian chains:
quote:
CONCLUSIONS:
This discussion was meant to compare the probabilities involved in the two methods of selection described by Richard Dawkins: single-step selection and cumulative selection. In applying both methods to the problem of randomly generating the alphabet in alphabetical order, we have seen that cumulative selection far surpasses single-step selection in obtaining the desired results. In calculating the probabilities involved in both methods, we have found that cumulative selection enjoys vastly greater chances for success than does single-step selection. In summary:
                   Single-Step      Cumulative:
10 copies 20 copies 100 copies
----------- --------- --------- ----------
Prob of success
in 100 steps: 1.6244 E -37 6.829 E -6 3.45 % 99.99 %
Number of Steps
Needed: 2.0 E 37 (est.) 21,136 383 42
Time needed to
succeed: 1.5 E 26 yr (est.) 22.15 min 41.5 sec 25.6 sec

Again, those times were from a time when we were running no faster than 10 NIs. Nowadays, we are running how many hundreds or even thousands of NIs -- I don't even know whether the Norton Index is even alive anymore. My interpretation of the results was that the real calculation was for cumulative selection to fail. If a generation fails to advance, no loss. If a generation were to back-slide one or two places, then OK it was still viable. The bottom line was that for cumulative selection to fail, then each and every generation had to fail. For each step (and it was different for each step, depending on how far we were from the target), we could calculate the probability of advancing, staying put, and back-sliding. The probability that we would not advance or would even back-slide each and every time became vanishingly small. It quite literally reached a point where the probability of success approached certainty, swamping out any possibility of failure.
But that's not the important part. I read Richard Dawkins' description of his WEASEL and do you know what my reaction was? Disbelief! I had already been an atheist for 25 years. I had already started learning about evolution and been supportive thereof thoroughly convinced thereof for at least 20 years. But I could not believe what he had just told me. So what did I do? I put it to the test! I wrote my own WEASEL, albeit named MONKEY, and I tested it. And, not believing the results I saw, I analyzed it! And in the end I found that it was right and I knew why it was right!
Would you do the same? Would you take a creationist claim and test it? Would you ever even question any creationist claim?
Here's one, from Kent Hovind. He notes that the sun is burning up 5 million tons of matter each second and he claims therefrom that 5 billion years ago the sun would have been so incredibly massive as to "such the earth in". What about that claim? He is almost right about that "5 million tons" -- actually, it's more like 4.7 million tons. So what about the rest of his claim? How would you approach this claim? Would you be skeptical? Or would you accept it at face value because he is also opposing that common evil, Evolution and an old earth? I had been skeptical about Dawkins' claim; could you be skeptical about Hovind's claim?
Do the math. Hovind, self-proclaimed expert at science and math because he had taught both subjects for 15 years (as he would repeatedly boast in his seminar tapes) -- in a Christian school that he had founded -- should have done at least that. But he hadn't. I emailed him with questions about where he had gotten this claim from and whether he had ever done the math. His "response" was to try, twice, to pick a fight with me over my AOL screenname, DWise1 (which has an incredibly mundane origin).
Do the math. Forget that Hovind seems to think that something like combustion is happening (I have evidence that that is what he thought), even though there is no loss of mass in combustion (something that anybody with even the slightest knowledge of chemistry would know). Forget that Hovind thinks that part of the sun's energy output is due to gravitational collapse (this being part-and-parcel of the "shrinking sun" claim), which would entail absolutely no mass loss. Calculate how many tons of matter would have been lost at that rate, 5 million tons per second, over a period of 5 billion years (5x109, since Europe has a different value for "billion"). Then compare that to the current mass of the sun. You will find that the total solar mass lost at the stated rate (calculated by measuring the sun's current energy output and plugging that into Einstein's e = mc2) over all those billions of years will only amount to a few hundredths of one percent of the sun's total mass. How far would the earth get "sucked in" by that additional mass? About 60,000 miles. How critical is that? Every year, the earth gets 1.5 million miles closer and farther away from the sun, which makes 60,000 miles insignificant. Do you know when we are 1.5 million miles closer to the sun? Around 4 January, in the dead of winter.
Chief Inspecteur Jacques Clouseau (yes, of the "Pink Panther" movie series) once said something very wise: I assume nothing! I suspect everything! (in the beginning of A Shot in the Dark as he unknowingly poked his nose into cold cream). Assume nothing! Suspect everything! Test everything!
-------------------------------
There is also the research by Sidney Fox in the late 1970's. He showed that amino acids in a dilute solution and subject to high-enough temperatures -- or at lower temperatures with catalysts present -- will readily form into protein-like chains which have been called either thermal proteins or proteinoids (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proteinoid).
The up-shot here is that amino acids will produce protein-like chains very readily.
{Edit test - Adminnemooseus}
Edited by dwise1, : proteinoids
Edited by Adminnemooseus, : dwise1 had reported an editing quirk.
Edited by Admin, : Fix message width.

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


(3)
Message 19 of 97 (612821)
04-19-2011 3:22 AM
Reply to: Message 13 by Hunter
04-18-2011 5:01 PM


Re: Probability
You say that you think it’s very possible that there was debris left behind from the life cycle of previous stars and planets, but have you ever really looked into or calculated the probability of one protein molecule forming from such debris or mineral like material.
No, but if you have I'd be delighted to see your working.
I would point out, before you get into this, that protein molecules are formed all the time. "That's life", as they say. So if you've come up with a figure of 10^321, then you must be neglecting some of the ways in which proteins are actually formed.
This doesn't even touch the probability of thousands of these protein molecules forming into DNA strands; which turns out to be 1 in 10^40,000.
Uh, no. The probability of protein molecules forming into DNA strands is 0. This is because DNA strands are not, in fact, made of protein molecules.
And this illustrates a fundamental problem in your thinking. There's no point trying to make this sort of calculation unless you're taking the facts of biology into account. And you are not.
... the chance that our universe could/would be laid out the way it is, is extremely improbable. It's 1 in 10^133, to be exact.
You have not shown your working.
Until you get round to it, here's something to consider. Take two decks of cards. Shuffle them together well. The chance that they end up the way they do is even more improbable.
What of it?
An undirected process is highly likely to produce results at long odds if most of the results it can produce are at long odds.
In order for your figure about the universe to be in any way significant, you'd have to show, not just that there was a very small chance of it coming up this way, but also a very large probability that it would come up some other particular way.
Let me try to clarify this with an example.
If there were ten billion balls in a jar, each with a different number on, and you drew one out at random, then the particular number you drew would be a one-in-ten-billion chance, but then so would all the other numbers you might have drawn, so I would not be impressed.
If, on the other hand, there were ten billion balls in a jar, and one was white and all the others were black, and you drew out one at random and it was the white one, then that, like in the previous case, would also be a one-in-ten-billion chance, but this time it would be impressive, because the one alternative, getting a black ball, would not be another one-in-ten-billion shot.
By drawing the white ball, you'd have hit a one-in-ten-billion chance when there was only a one-in-ten-billion chance of you doing so; as opposed to the first situation, when you were guaranteed an absolute certainty that you'd hit a one-in-ten-billion chance. You see the difference?
Now in order for any figure about the improbability of the universe to be at all impressive, you need to show that it's like the second case.
---
Now, this presents you with a big, big problem. Because in order to come up with any figures at all, including the one you've already presented, you need to know about the ensemble of possible universes from which our universe was picked.
Let me illustrate with another example. Suppose I have a number of playing cards. I shuffle them, you pick one, it's the ace of hearts. I shuffle it back in, you pick one, it's the ace of hearts. I shuffle it back in, you pick one, it's the ace of hearts. I shuffle it back in, you pick one, it's the ace of hearts.
What are the odds of that?
You have no idea. Why not? Because I haven't shown you the deck of cards from which you're drawing. If it was a standard deck, the odds against what just happened was one in seven million. If, on the other hand, it consisted entirely of aces of hearts, then it was a stone-cold certainty.
Now in order for any calculations about the probability of the universe to be based on anything, you have to know about the "deck" of universes from which our particular universe was selected.
If you ever manage to get anywhere with that question, you shouldn't be wasting your time posting on internet forums, you should be publishing in the peer-reviewed literature and buying a big can of Nobel Prize Polish.
The theory you laid out in your second paragraph was nicely done, but it’s only a theory. No one has ever seen this complete process take place. Why would we base our beliefs on the origin of life on a theory?
It's not a theory, it's a hypothesis. Theories are hypotheses that have been proved.
(Note to Popperians: I mean proved in the colloquial sense. Go jump in a lake.)
And you shouldn't definitely believe it, no-one said you should. But it is an interesting hypothesis with a certain amount of plausibility. You are free to come up with another one.
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

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granpa
Member (Idle past 2341 days)
Posts: 128
Joined: 10-26-2010


Message 20 of 97 (612871)
04-19-2011 4:55 PM
Reply to: Message 8 by Dr Jack
07-04-2009 1:24 PM


Mr Jack writes:
Two tailed lipids will spontaneously form bilayered spheres (called liposomes), yes, but one-tailed lipids (aka detergents) form micelles (little balls without an inside) instead - and here's the problem - detergents disrupt the formation of liposomes.
I'm not sure how this problem is supposed to be addressed.
lipids can also stack into 1 dimensional structures.
In the primordial ocean, these would grow from the ends until they became capped but some (possible rare) side linking subunits could link to the sides and thereby allow the structure to branch. These molecules would reproduce but could not evolve.
to get a fully RNA-like self reproducing molecule (capable of evolving) you would need some kind of environmental selection that would concentrate these side linking subunits until they were nearly all that was left.
PAH world hypothesis - Wikipedia
quote:
Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons are the most common and abundant of the known polyatomic molecules in the visible Universe, and are considered a likely constituent of the primordial sea.[4] PAHs, along with fullerenes (or "buckyballs"), have been recently detected in nebulae.
PAH's are not normally very soluble in sea water, but when subject to ionizing radiation such as solar UV light, the outer hydrogen atoms can be stripped off and replaced with a hydroxyl group, rendering the PAHs far more soluble in water.
These modified PAHs are amphiphilic, which means that they have parts that are both hydrophilic and hydrophobic. When in solution, they assemble in discotic mesogenic stacks which, like lipids, tend to organize with their hydrophobic parts protected.
Edited by granpa, : spelling
Edited by granpa, : clarification
Edited by granpa, : add color and remove side material
Edited by granpa, : clarification
Edited by granpa, : added quote of message I am replying to.
Edited by granpa, : become capped
Edited by granpa, : In the primordial ocean

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Ed67
Member (Idle past 3328 days)
Posts: 159
Joined: 04-14-2014


Message 21 of 97 (724972)
04-23-2014 10:04 AM
Reply to: Message 18 by dwise1
04-19-2011 1:25 AM


Re: Probability
dwise1 writes:
But that's not the important part. I read Richard Dawkins' description of his WEASEL and do you know what my reaction was? Disbelief! I had already been an atheist for 25 years. I had already started learning about evolution and been supportive thereof thoroughly convinced thereof for at least 20 years. But I could not believe what he had just told me. So what did I do? I put it to the test! I wrote my own WEASEL, albeit named MONKEY, and I tested it. And, not believing the results I saw, I analyzed it! And in the end I found that it was right and I knew why it was right!
-Argument from personal experience isn't very convincing.
dwise1 writes:
Would you do the same? Would you take a creationist claim and test it? Would you ever even question any creationist claim?
Here's one, from Kent Hovind.
-Straw man. I don't listen to Kent Hovind. He seems to be a YEC, and as such does not represent the thinking of ID.
Why not choose Stephen Meyer? I have analyzed much of his arguments.

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New Cat's Eye
Inactive Member


Message 22 of 97 (725029)
04-23-2014 1:40 PM
Reply to: Message 21 by Ed67
04-23-2014 10:04 AM


Re: Probability
I don't listen to Kent Hovind. He seems to be a YEC, and as such does not represent the thinking of ID.
Why not choose Stephen Meyer? I have analyzed much of his arguments.
Stephen Meyer works with the Discovery Institute. They are interested in promoting Christianity, not doing science. Have you read the Wedge Document?
quote:
We are building on this momentum, broadening the wedge with a positive scientific alternative to materialistic scientific theories, which has come to be called the theory of intelligent design (ID). Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions.
ID is terrible "science" dressed up to hide that fact that it is a Christian promotion, i.e. Lying for Jesus.

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 23 of 97 (725040)
04-23-2014 2:14 PM
Reply to: Message 21 by Ed67
04-23-2014 10:04 AM


Re: Probability
-Argument from personal experience isn't very convincing.
That would actually be an argument from having replicated the experiment. If we're meant to discount those, we can kiss goodbye to much of science.

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Ed67
Member (Idle past 3328 days)
Posts: 159
Joined: 04-14-2014


Message 24 of 97 (725139)
04-24-2014 1:04 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by RAZD
06-24-2009 10:38 PM


RAZD writes:
This does not explain all the questions of how life developed on earth over 3.5 billion years ago, but it goes a long way in showing how possible it was for life to develop from existing chemicals in the conditions that existed in the pre-biotic earth.
quote:
I realized that [the RNA world hypotheses] presupposed or ignored, rather than explained, the origin of SEQUENCE SPECIFICITY - INFORMATION - in various RNA molecules
"Signature in the Cell", by Stephen Meyer, p. 312
So you haven't explained how the complex, specified information could have been generated. Your sources simply state:
"Evolution did it - POOF". That's, again, a statement of faith, not supported by any of the facts you presented.

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 25 of 97 (725154)
04-24-2014 2:12 PM
Reply to: Message 24 by Ed67
04-24-2014 1:04 PM


"Evolution did it - POOF". That's, again, a statement of faith ...
... which you made up in your head, and for some reason enclosed in quotation marks as though someone had said it.

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Theodoric
Member
Posts: 9076
From: Northwest, WI, USA
Joined: 08-15-2005
Member Rating: 3.7


Message 26 of 97 (725179)
04-24-2014 3:19 PM
Reply to: Message 25 by Dr Adequate
04-24-2014 2:12 PM


I am not sure he knows how any punctuation works. He certainly has no idea what a quotation mark is or how it is used. He might have periods down, but haven't seen enough question marks to know if he has an issue with them too.

Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts
"God did it" is not an argument. It is an excuse for intellectual laziness.

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Pressie
Member
Posts: 2103
From: Pretoria, SA
Joined: 06-18-2010


Message 27 of 97 (725253)
04-25-2014 4:13 AM
Reply to: Message 24 by Ed67
04-24-2014 1:04 PM


Ed67 writes:
"Evolution did it - POOF".
That's interesting. Could you provide any reference where anyone wrote: 'Evolution did it, poof'?
That's apart from creationists claiming that 'people say: evolution did it, poof'?
Edited by Pressie, : No reason given.

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RAZD
Member (Idle past 1404 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 28 of 97 (725260)
04-25-2014 7:37 AM
Reply to: Message 24 by Ed67
04-24-2014 1:04 PM


So you haven't explained how the complex, specified information could have been generated. Your sources simply state:
Curiously I can't explain how something could have been generated that does not exist in reality.
Please explain what "complex, specified information" means to you ... I've explained what it means to me, based on common understanding of the english words involved ... Semiotic argument for ID, Message 148:
quote:
So we have something too complex and mysterious for the average person to understand or explain, specified by and unspecified specifier to specifically accomplish the specific task of inserting the unspecified specifier, that acts to inform someone\thing and implying a communicator and a receiver.
In other words ... gigo. Words thrown together with connotations intended to imply something that isn't necessarily there, something with no metric to determine how to measure it. Pseudo-terminology: word jumbles with no real meaning for the purpose of fooling the gullible.
So until you tell me what this word salad "complex, specified information" means to you, I can't answer your question.
Now I expect you'll lay down another insulting string of words so that you can pretend that you know what it means (as you have done in response to others) or you can answer the question.
Until you answer what "complex, specified information" means to you, I (and likely everyone else) will continue to assume that you have no idea what it means.
"Evolution did it - POOF". That's, again, a statement of faith, not supported by any of the facts you presented.
Which is, of course, a lie. "POOF"ing is your belief department, not the way evolution works, if we are dealing with evolution at this point (which we can't be as this thread is about how life develops - a point I thought you had conceded ... ).
"Signature in the Cell", by Stephen Meyer, p. 312
Wishful thinking in a book, by Stephen Meyer ... hope you weren't suckered into buying the book ...

we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
Rebel American Zen Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.


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AZPaul3
Member
Posts: 8513
From: Phoenix
Joined: 11-06-2006
Member Rating: 5.2


(2)
Message 29 of 97 (725353)
04-26-2014 8:05 AM
Reply to: Message 24 by Ed67
04-24-2014 1:04 PM


So you haven't explained how the complex, specified information could have been generated.
Hell, you can't even tell us what it is, how it is identified and measured, can't even show us that it exists at all, yet you expect us to tell you how it formed? Very entertaining, funny little man.
Inform your masters at the Discovery Institute that they really should be more selective in the shill they send in here. You're horrible.

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RAZD
Member (Idle past 1404 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


(1)
Message 30 of 97 (743721)
12-03-2014 6:01 PM


News to Chiral about
New Twist Found in the Story of Life’s Start
By: Emily Singer
Quanta Magazine
November 26, 2014
quote:
For 30 years, Gerald Joyce has been trying to create life. As a graduate student in the 1980s, he studied how the first RNA molecules chemical cousins to DNA that can both store and transmit genetic information might have assembled themselves out of simpler units, a process that many scientists believe led to the first living things.
Unfortunately, he had a problem. At a chemical level, a deep bias permeates all of biology. The molecules that make up DNA and other nucleic acids such as RNA have an inherent handedness. These molecules can exist in two mirror image forms, but only the right-handed version is found in living organisms. Handedness serves an essential function in living beings; many of the chemical reactions that drive our cells only work with molecules of the correct handedness. But the pre-biological building blocks of life didn’t exhibit such an overwhelming bias. Some were left-handed and some right. So how did right-handed RNA emerge from a mix of molecules?
Joyce was able to build RNA out of right-handed building blocks, as others had done before him. But when he added in left-handed molecules, mimicking the conditions on the early Earth, everything came to a halt. Our paper said if you have [both] forms in the same place at the same time, you can’t even get started, Joyce said.
His findings, published in Nature in 1984, suggested that in order for life to emerge, something first had to crack the symmetry between left-handed and right-handed molecules, an event biochemists call breaking the mirror. ...
Three decades later, Joyce’s latest research has shown that perhaps life came first after all. Joyce, now at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., and Jonathan Sczepanski, a postdoctoral researcher, created an RNA enzyme a substance that copies RNA that can function in a soup of left- and right-handed building blocks, providing a potential mechanism for how some of the first biological molecules might have evolved in a symmetrical world. The new experiment, published in the November 20 issue of Nature, is reinvigorating the discussion over how life first arose. ...
... Joyce thought that this assembly process might generate a crack in the mirror. A reaction that selectively plucked right-handed building blocks from the primordial soup would quickly start to create only right-handed molecules, just as a machine that selects only red or only blue Legos from a mixed box would create single-colored towers.
Such a process would simultaneously solve two problems in the origins of life: It would create complex biological molecules while breaking the mirror. ...
So last year, Joyce and Sczepanski decided to start from scratch. They unleashed a pool of random right-handed RNA molecules and let them react in a test tube with left-handed building blocks. They hoped that within that random pool of RNA molecules was a ribozyme capable of stringing the building blocks together. They then isolated the best candidates ribozymes that could copy RNA of the opposite handedness replicated them, and subjected the new pool to the same trial over and over again.
In just a few short months, they had a surprisingly effective ribozyme. The right-handed version binds to a left-handed RNA template and produces a left-handed copy. The left-handed copy can then go on to produce a right-handed version. It’s amazing what they did, said John Chaput, a biochemist at Arizona State University in Tempe. It really does get to the heart of the question of the origins of chirality and provides some solid evidence to move things forward.
Perhaps even more exciting is how well the enzyme works. ... Joyce’s ribozyme could produce a range of sequences including its own. And it’s still getting better. The ribozyme in the paper emerged after just 16 rounds of evolution, a shockingly short run for this kind of experiment. ...
... it binds based on the molecule’s shape rather than its sequence, an approach that turns out to be much more flexible. They found something completely novel, Lehman said. It goes to show there’s a lot out there we don’t know.
Scientists now have an enzyme that doesn’t need a chiral world. ...
If chirality emerged sometime after the origins of life, the question remains: Why did right-handed RNA win? Left- and right-handed molecules have chemically identical properties, so there’s no obvious reason for one to triumph.
Joyce and others suspect it’s simply chance. Say a ribozyme capable of transforming a pool of mixed nucleic acids into left- and right-handed RNAs appeared on the early Earth. It would produce two distinct groups, lefties and righties, which in turn might have functioned like competing populations. If the right hand stumbles on useful mutations and runs away with the game, then the other side of the mirror can go dark, Joyce said. ...
More studies are underway on this new approach, but at this point it looks like it may explain the mirror problem.
And we are another step closer on the building blocks of life.
Enjoy

we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
RebelAmerican☆Zen☯Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.


Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)

Replies to this message:
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