Abiogenisis by the Numbers

Of course the assembly process is key to the question. Your rebuttal implies that those theories discuss the assembly without discussing that which is being assembled. So I'll ask again, How do the three theories you mention other than RNA world describe the first replicators? (or the assembly of the first replicators, if you prefer)? About what percentage, since you are knowledgeable in this area? "Earth seeding" isn't a proper abiogenesis theory. It simply describes how life arose on this planet and not how life actually arose."Underwater vent" is also not a complete abiogenesis theory. It simply describes where life arose on this planet.Honestly, I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "chemical affinity" theory (perhaps you could provided a reference).In any case, you've given nothing but your "surely" that "most" of these "theories" don't use RNA as replicators in their systems.

You do realize that PaulK asked you 107 messages ago, and you've been asked in dozens of messages since then?

Do you actually have conditions and calculations for how this probability was derived? No ID proponent in this thread has provided any yet.

I think there are underlying assumptions in the argument in this thread that we simply can't make. The common ID perspective is that conditions for the arisal of life are impossibly strict, and therefore were unlikely to occur on Earth. What evidence do we have to support that view?We simply don't know enough about the nature of our planet a few billion years ago to understand how likely chemical abiogenesis would have been...For all we know, huge portions of Earth may have been under absolutely ideal conditions for the assembly of nucleic-acid based life, and may have stayed that way for millions of years.On the other hand, perhaps the production of self-replicating chemical systems is inevitable in a system as complex as the planet Earth. Thus the conditions on Earth didn't determine if life would arise, the conditions determined what kind of life would arise.The assumption that chemical abiogenesis has a near impossible probability of occurring is just that - an assumption.

We could, but we'd only be predicting if modern life, as we know it, could survive under the new conditions. That is another huge assumption - that the only way life can exist is in the form we know. Perhaps a gravity "tweak" that would kill life as we know would have simply changed selective forces, producing a different form life. It is an assumption - since you call it "huge" do you have any evidence to counter it? Do you have any evidence supporting your assumption of it being an unlikely place for life to arise? If you do, I'd be interested in seeing it.You also didn't address my point that the formation of chemical replicators (life) is inevitable in a complex system, and that the system simply determines the kind of chemical replicator that forms.

Exactly. We don't even know what the first life form was, let alone the conditions it formed under. To try to assign any numbers to these processes (or your 150 criteria) isn't possible. That's a problem of evolution, not abiogenesis, and shouldn't figure into abiogenesis calculations.Do you have a way I could see the list of 150 criteria? Who came up with it? I guess it depends on what you mean by unlikely - but to me it is a generalized assumption based on bias rather than evidence, since we don't know the ideal conditions for abiogenesis (of potentially multiple types of life), or if they occured anywhere on this planet or others, and if they did, how long they lasted. You mean hostile like high-temperature, high-radiation, high-pressure, high-cyanide, etc.? There are life forms on this planet that thrive in such hostile environments.Indeed the hostile/unstable environment may have served as a reaction engine and selective force to drive abiogenesis and early evolution. In my opinion it is more probable for life to form and evolve in an unstable enviroment than a stable one - indeed, it seems that many in the abiogenesis field study "hostile" factors as key components in abiogenesis.

I'm guessing this is your 150 criteria? It is just a list - what is it based upon?How did Hugh come up values for "number, intensity, and location of hurricanes", "quantity of forest & grass fires", and "mass of Neptune" that are life permitting? How did he figure out that the probability of Neptune being a life-permitting mass (for life on Earth) as 0.1?More importantly, what do hurrricanes, flora fires, and Neptune have to do with the initial formation of life? Nothing.These are criteria that permit existing life to continue living (though I'm still not clear what Neptune has to do with life on Earth).Hugh's conclusion is that only divine intervention could have produced a planet that is compatible with life as we know it. He is ignoring the fact that the planet was the selective force acting during evolution. That is, the planet wasn't created to be compatible for life, life evolved to be compatible with the planet. This is the prediction of evolution.The very concept behind those 150 criteria is incorrect, they are "probability of the Earth being exactly like the Earth" calculations. Do you know what the real probability of the Earth being exactly like the Earth is?100%And I can tell you that without making up a bunch of probabilities regarding such things as the "mass distribution of Kuiper Belt asteroids".