Has there been life for 1/4 of the age of the Universe?

Why do you keep using the term "biogenesis" when you seem to mean "abiogenesis"?

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Are you saying that encryption is not a mechanical process?

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How could it not be?What is being changed by the "encryption" process? Are we not just talking about arrangements of chemical elements bonded together into molecules? Wouldn't "encryption" just be a different mechanical arrangement?You just seem to be trying to overcomplicate the situation by introducing some woo-woo factor that we can never understand.It's just Tinker-Toys. Lots and lots of Tinker-Toys.

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What do you mean by "remove the genes"?You say "by changing the order of those nucleotides on the chromosomes" but that's just a mechanical rearrangement. The organism is not "materially identical" - it has the same materials but in a different arrangement.The "code" is the arrangement of the molecules, is it not?How is that not mechanical?

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Yes it does. The magnetic "code" on the tape is converted to electrical impulses in the player, which are converted to compression waves in the air, which are converted to vibrations in the ear, which are converted to electrical impulses in the nervous system. All mechanical. Of course, but you haven't demonstrated the existence of an equivalent to a "song" in out genetic makeup. It seems like you wish it was there, but you can't show any evidence of it or even any rationale for why it should exist.

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No. The song is the magnetic pattern on the tape. Whether or not it transcends the tape is irrelevant. The only way that the song can be transmitted - i.e. communicated - is in some physical form. The pattern exists - because it has been replicated mechanically from parent to child over the generations. Once again, you haven't demonstrated that there is any "supra-mechanical durability". You have not demonstrated any discontinuity in the mechanical generation-to-generation replication of the genes. If you mean that the genes don't have any existence "outside" the molecules that comprise them, yes, that's the way I see it. (I am certainly willing to be wrong about that. It's just that you haven't presented anything but woo-woo in support of your position.) It seems to me that you're trying desparately to see something that isn't there. Your life would be a lot simpler if you would look at what is there.

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What life is and where it came from are not the most important questions though. We're more interested in how it works, so we can fix it when it doesn't (and so we can manipulate it in sometimes more sinister ways).What's more important to know about your car - every step along the assembly line that made it, or what to do when it won't start?And how much time do you waste asking, "What is a car?"

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So, finally we approach the topic. It seems to me the question should be: once conditions on earth became hospitable to life, why wouldn't life arise? What would stop it?If we understand "effectively NOTHING about how abiogenesis occurred", as you claim, how can you assign a probability to it? Unless we do know something about how abiogenesis might have occurred, we have no way of calculating the timing of the process.So which is it? Do we know nothing about it? Or do we know enough to say, "It couldn't happen here," or, "It couldn't have happened that early"?

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I know what your position is. I'm asking: How do you arrive at that position? If "we" - i.e. you - don't know the potential pathway(s) for abiogenesis, how can you conclude that it is improbable? I'm looking at it from the opposite direction: Do you know of any scientific principles that prevent abiogenesis?We know that all living creatures are made up of chemical elements. We know that those chemical elements can combine together in various ways, based on the principles of thermodynamics, electromagnetics, etc. The question is: Why wouldn't a particular arrangement of chemicals - e.g. us - "come together", given the appropriate conditions?Consider my Tinker-Toy analogy. The onus is not on me to find a phantom "principle" that allows building a replica of the Eiffel Tower. The onus is on you to show a principle that prevents that construction.

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No. You're asserting a negative and I'm trying to find out why you think it's negative.I'm saying, "Here we have a pile of Tinker-Toys and here we have an Eiffel Tower made of Tinker-Toys." You're saying, "We don't know enough about Tinker-Toys to know whether or not we can build an Eiffel Tower out of them." I'm saying, "Look at the Eiffel Tower. It's right there. We can see that the pieces can go together like that. All we're missing is the exact order to assemble them."If you claim that the letters "w", "o", "r" and "d" probably can't come together to form a word, then the onus is indeed on you to show us why. And I keep asking you: How do you know we don't know "enough"? How much is "enough"? How are you calculating "enough"? We have the principles of chemistry. What more do you want? And what I'm asking you is: what puts you in the position of being able to make that claim?

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I don't care what might disqualify you. I'm asking what qualifies you: I'm asking on what calculations you base your claim that abiogenesis "probably" didn't take place on earth.

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For example, here: and here: and here: I can go back further if you like, but that seems to be your theme song. It was statements like that which gave me the impression that you think earth-bound abiogenesis "improbable". What does "safer to assume" mean, if not probability-eise?Do you or don't you think that abiogenesis "probably" took place elsewhere? Because if you're comparing the "likelihood" that abiogenesis took place in my back yard with the "likelihood" that it took place in the Crab Nebula, I'd like to see the basis for that comparison.There is a candlestick-shaped wound on the victim's head and the victim's blood is on the candlestick. So what if the candlestick is available at Wal-Mart for $9.95? We would need compelling evidence before we could conclude that this is not the crime scene.You're saying that "we don't know enough" to determine that this is the crime scene. That's backwards. The victim is here and the weapon is here. This is the crime scene until the evidence shows otherwise. "We don't know enough" isn't evidence.I'll ask again: If you claim "we don't know enough" about abiogenesis to decide it happened here, how much is "enough" and how do you decide how much is "enough"? Then it's a good thing nobody is asking you to. I have already said: the "abiogenic principles" are the principles of chemistry. You've been saying all along that you don't have a hand....

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We've been through that before, in this thread or another. Where is your evidence that there is a "language" above and beyond the normal bump and grind of chemical interactions?

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It's one thing to use a language to describe what is happening. You seem to be insisting that the language prescribes what is happening - i.e. the events can not happen without the magic of language. Chemistry is "chemical" on the level of buckets and beakers. On the molecular level, it's decidedly mechanical. Tab A fits into slot B and it don't need no instruction book to tell it so. It's just *bump* and yer hooked up.Just curious, do you know anything about chemistry at all? Because you seem to look at it from a Brothers Grimm viewpoint.

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Not necessarily. The last time I studied chemistry, there were only four elements in the periodic table. But I do get the impression that I'm a page ahead of you in the textbook. It's a good thing you weren't around a few hundred years ago when they couldn't even explain something like 2H₂ + O₂ --> 2H₂O.Give them a chance. The science of chemistry is a lot less than 1/4 the age of the Universe. Edited by Ringo, : Spellin.

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