Abiogenesis

Oh really? Prove it then. Genes are after all just chemicals.

Nosy wrote: Are they? Rocks are all just chemicals. Dirt is all just chemicals. Planets are all just chemicals. The whole universe is all just chemicals. Why shouldn't life be all just chemicals? Chemists arrogantly like to ask those questions.But life is more than just a bunch of chemicals. Because nowhere in this universe, so far as we, nothing but life that depends upon a digital code to facilitate its chemical survival and biological evolution. Take away it encoded messages and deciphering alphabet and whaddaya got? A lot amino acids floating around with nowhere to go and nothing to do...but, of course, they're all just a bunch of chemicals.”HMEdited by Hoot Mon, : No reason given.

I see you are still simply trying to avoid answering the question while moving goal posts and making unsupported assertions. Of course. You can have any expectation you want. I just wondered if there was any reason for such an expectation, and based on your responses, the answer is that you have NO reason for holding such an expectation.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Oh, and don't forget "palming the pea." NO reason good enough for you, perhaps. Why do you cling to your chemicals when molecular biologists have already shown that there is more to life than molecular biology?”HM

Again, nowhere have I made such an assertion.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

You said you would prove that it was more than just chemicals.I'm waiting for that proof. The DNA is a chemical too HM. It changes and replicates with chemical reacations.

You’re almost right there, Hoot. After some millennia of replication and the development of a rudimentary genetic code by chemical trial and error some simple “bugs” would have been formed and would have eaten other replicators, scraps of partial replicators and other bugs just as they do today. It is a bug-eat-bug world out there. This is, after all, still a "Bacteria Planet." So, Hoot, is it your contention that some simple rudimentary combination of molecules acting as a crude genetic code some 3.5 billion years ago could not have evolved into the elegant genes we know and love today? Would you share this proof you have that life is more than just a collection of chemicals?

a phrase so loved by Hoot Mon to describe DNA.Let's take a look at computer data. It's 1 and 0. Each byte is composed of 8 bits (which i think means a sequence of 8 of those 1s or 0s).now then, 1s and 0s are just electronic signals. 1 is on (i believe), 0 is off (and if this is not the case, it's just vice versa).That's what computer data is. Electricity. But wait, you say--it's digital information.Yes and no. 1s and 0s are just electronic signals, just like DNA is just chemicals. The "information" part is not separate, like you seem to imply. It is, it would seem, an inherent part of the structure.Anyhow, you're argument is bull. True, DNA holds information. But it is just chemicals, just like 1s and 0s are just electrical signals.I think you're confusing the thing itself for the interpretation of that thing.Edited by kuresu, : realized I never asked a question . . .so that sentence got axe'd

I wonder if Hoot Mon is trying to sneak souls in through the back door with this "more than chemistry" stuff.

The dog ate my homework is an excuse, most usually a lie. Life didn't eat our evidence, since we do not think that there is any evidence for life to eat. Prebiotic chemicals don't have the opportunity to chemically self organize and develop hereditary traits - since those chemicals will be being used for other things by existing and prevalent life. Abiogenesis would be very unlikely to occur on present day earth because present day life basically prohibits it. However, in early biotic times, life would not eat itself. Certainly Life A will eat Life B, but life B would reproduce and the offspring will eat more Life As. There would be a Darwinian struggle, you might say.

It probably depends on your preferred model. In the Lipid World model, they talk about cell membrane like formations developing. Some models are more 'naked' than this.

He may be, but I don’t think so.The Hooter will correct me if I am wrong here.I get the impression that what Hoot is trying to convey is that our knowledge is so deficient to explain life (read: the complexity of a genetic code) yet our knowledge of chemistry is so vast that we must have missed something. I would not say he is looking toward some metaphysical poofery or “life force” or essence but more towards some grand universal organizing principle we just have not yet discovered, like some underlying imperative of an Information-based Universe. This is not to mean that there is some Intelligent Omniscient Being directing creation but more a meaning of a universe whose structure is not determined solely by some chart of particles and a few fundamental forces but rather by some basal information paradigm embedded in the fabric of the cosmos.But, then again, I may be full of excremental dollops. Edited by AZPaul3, : Oh, let's see...I added nothing actually. Subtracted nothing, either. Hopefully no one will notice any change so, on that hope, I'll not reveal my slight error and thus pretend there was none.

Most definitions of “Abiogenesis” evoke at least a primitive, cursory but functional cell in that it exhibits metabolism and replication. In this definition I agree that such a formation would be extremely rare on this planet today.However, I do put forward the position that, shall we call them Replicator Events (?), still do happen on this planet; the serendipitous combination of chains of molecules that exhibit metabolism/replication where none was before.I say this because this planet is a much richer “soup” than an abiotic planet with every nook and cranny now crammed full of the detritus of past life.Take a drop of water from a pond, clear away all the plankton, flies toes, bug antenna, all that large stuff, and you will be left with small globs of cytoplasm, segments of cell membrane, scraps of nuclear membrane, husks of mitochondrial bodies, full proteins and chromosomes being rent by hydrostatic pressures flinging chains of aminos and fragments of helical nucleics everywhere. It is a bacterial smorgasbord to be sure. But, with all this biochemical stuff already half-formed and ready to go the probability of a replicator event is much greater now than on a pristine abiotic Earth. But, once spawned, having such a thing survive, progress and evolve in today’s world is dubious.

AZPaul3 wrote: Sure, if you're into thought experimentation. Take two E. coli bacteria and put them in separate test tubes containing the same sterilized, healthy medium. Now, using your nanosurigical skills, take one bacterium and shuffle all of the nucleotides on its DNA, making sure you have all the very same nucleotides you started out with after the shuffling is complete. You won't change the chemical at all”it's still DNA with every one of its nucleotides present and accounted for (only in a different order). To the second bacterium you perform the same kind of nanosurgery, to neutralize surgical effects, but you will leave the order of nucleotides on its DNA alone. Make sure you put 'em all back in the right places, OK. Start the clock and let the experiment run for 24 hours. Return and examine your results.I predict that one test tube will have lots of healthy microbes swimming around. And I predict one test tube will not have any at all. There is the proof you desire, because BOTH bacterial cells contained ALL the chemicals they allegedly require to get on with their bacterial affairs. But only one of them contained that pure, digital information we have come to know as genes. That bug did fine. But take those whispy codes away and whadaya get? A tiny lump of chemicals and nothing else.Case closed.”HM

Woodsy wondxers: Not souls. Codes.”HM