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Author Topic:   Converting raw energy into biological energy
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 211 of 314 (419874)
09-05-2007 7:35 AM
Reply to: Message 192 by Rob
09-04-2007 11:53 PM


Re: There's been work done since 2004
Rob writes:
Percy:
Setting up the initial conditions can be construed as human intervention, but the intervention is with existing conditions in order to impose the insert: construed conditions of the early earth in a laboratory. Once those conditions have been replicated insert: even though they are construed then what follows should be a reenactment of what happened on the ancient earth. There is no human manipulation during the experiment.
That is why I highlighted the word 'supposed' in your last reply. Because we do not know what the conditions were. We only theorize based upon limited data.
There was no need to highlight the word "supposed" because I used it with purpose and intent, not because I temporarily forgot myself and gave the game away. Science is tentative, so there can be no guarantee (no proof) that we've nailed down the environmental conditions of the early earth. No proof ever. Increasing evidence might increase our confidence, but it can never reach certainty.
You made insertions to my text that include the word "construe", and this is the precisely right word. A construal is an interpretation. Our current thinking about environmental conditions on the early earth are interpretations of the available evidence. They are not 100% definite facts. Certainty is extremely rare in science, and some of us argue that there is no certainty anywhere in science, that even facts are tentative.
But your original objection ran along different lines. You seemed to believe that recreations and simulations include human interventions, which would, of course, be invalid. Hopefully you now see that that isn't the case.
Anyway, the original point I was making wasn't, "We know precisely how ATP was formed on the early earth." Rather, the point was, "Natural pathways exist for the production of ATP under conditions thought to exist on the early earth." And of course, this isn't actually my point, but almost everyone's point here in this thread, especially Molbiogirl who has done the legwork uncovering relevant citations.
To understand how strong a rebuttal this is you have to understand your original claim, which was that ATP can't be produced unless you already have some ATP. Molbiogirl provided citations to research indicating that the pre-existence of ATP is not required for the production of more ATP. This is all that was actually required to rebut your claim, but the research went beyond that. The conditions under which ATP was produced were not laboratory conditions, but conditions thought to replicate those of the early earth.
You provided a lengthy Behe excerpt about synthesizing AMP. His objection seems to be that the set of processes leading to AMP are far too difficult to have happened naturally. This is similar to your objection about ATP, for which Molbiogirl provided references indicating that such natural pathways do, in fact, exist. I'm sure she can do the same for AMP.
Let me again caution you about Behe. He is not very much a working scientist anymore. He primarily writes for the lay public trying to convince people that his views have merit. If he were a practicing scientist he would be writing technical papers for his peers so that a dialogue concerning his views could take place. Unfortunately he has not done this. He's gone to the lay public telling them his views are legitimate science, but what constitutes accepted science isn't subject to a popular vote. What the scientific community currently believes is what constitutes accepted science, and Behe has made no effort to present his views to this community.
In other words, when Behe tells the lay public that his views are legitimate science, he knows that by the standards of science this is not true, and he knows he is lying.
An aside: This thread has only 90 messages left, let's use them wisely. Please, no more one-line, content-free messages like Message 206 and Message 207. This is not a chat room. If you feel a discussion is at a stage where chat-style exchanges would be helpful because the other party appears to be on-line at the same time then post a single "Please meet me in the chat room" message.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 192 by Rob, posted 09-04-2007 11:53 PM Rob has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 215 by Rob, posted 09-05-2007 10:13 AM Percy has replied

Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 212 of 314 (419877)
09-05-2007 7:48 AM
Reply to: Message 194 by Rob
09-05-2007 12:13 AM


Re: You just couldn't wait to drag in the Second Law, could you?
Rob writes:
All I was saying is that the factory itself (in this case a chloroplast) is made in the cell by way of a process that uses ATP. It is the chicken and the egg. That was my point.
I thought you had a larger point concerning where the original ATP came from, and the research from Molbiogirl's citations discuss possible production paths for ATP that may have existed prior to the evolution of the processes we find in modern cells which merely assume the availability of the ATP they produce.
Please don't feel the need to respond by quoting my text and highlighting the words "possible" and "may". Just remind yourself that science is tentative.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 194 by Rob, posted 09-05-2007 12:13 AM Rob has not replied

Rob 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5849 days)
Posts: 2297
Joined: 06-01-2006


Message 213 of 314 (419882)
09-05-2007 9:29 AM
Reply to: Message 208 by molbiogirl
09-05-2007 3:02 AM


Re: Behe's Balderdash II
molbiogirl:
Nucleoside 2 or 3 phosphates sometimes give nucleoside 2 or 3 cyclic phosphates in good yield in this way. More recently it has
been shown that AMP can be converted to ADP and ATP by cyanate in the presence of insoluble calcium phosphates (Yamagata, 1999).
Yamagata, 1999. That's the paper I cited, Rob.
I think I see the problem and it's no big deal really...
Look carefully at part of what I quoted here: http://EvC Forum: Converting raw energy into biological energy -->EvC Forum: Converting raw energy into biological energy
All roads lead to Rome, it is said, and similarly there are many ways to synthesize AMP. A book for chemists on my shelf lists eight different ways to make adenine (which is the top part of AMP without the foundation); the remainder of the molecule can be put together in a variety of ways also. Chemists who want to synthesize adenine, however, use completely different routes from that used by cells. Because they involve reactions in oily liquids at extremes of acidity, these conditions would cause the quick demise of any known organism.
(Behe 'DBB' pg 149)
Behe's point is that adenine is added unnaturally by chemists, and that in that case, yes AMP is easy to synthesize.
But they have failed to show that adenine was present in (as orgel confesses here: Taylor & Francis - Harnessing the Power of Knowledge pg 102-104) under relevant or plausible prebiotic conditions.
C'mon Molbiogirl, your the PhD here right?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 208 by molbiogirl, posted 09-05-2007 3:02 AM molbiogirl has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 217 by molbiogirl, posted 09-05-2007 11:17 AM Rob has replied
 Message 218 by molbiogirl, posted 09-05-2007 2:55 PM Rob has replied

Rob 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5849 days)
Posts: 2297
Joined: 06-01-2006


Message 214 of 314 (419883)
09-05-2007 9:34 AM
Reply to: Message 209 by molbiogirl
09-05-2007 3:08 AM


molbiogirl:
A chloroplast is irrelevant to abiogenesis.
Protocells don't generate energy using chloroplasts.
Are you invoking belief again based upon unproven assumptions?
What protocells?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 209 by molbiogirl, posted 09-05-2007 3:08 AM molbiogirl has not replied

Rob 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5849 days)
Posts: 2297
Joined: 06-01-2006


Message 215 of 314 (419887)
09-05-2007 10:13 AM
Reply to: Message 211 by Percy
09-05-2007 7:35 AM


Re: There's been work done since 2004
Percy:
Science is tentative, so there can be no guarantee (no proof) that we've nailed down the environmental conditions of the early earth. No proof ever. Increasing evidence might increase our confidence, but it can never reach certainty.
Science is believed by most to be empericism. It is theorized, tested, and confirmed (ie. it is proved). We then have what we call evidence.
That is what good science is...
What you're talking about is theory, and that is tentative. Because based upon the evidence, we can make all kinds of theories.
As I said in message 1:
I think that some of you have simply moved past the evidence and take for granted that it is possible based upon your 'methodological naturalist' bias. Molbiogirl spoke of a theoretical explanation for the problem of energy conversion. And I must confess that it is probably internally coherent, but there is no external evidence to support or test it. I want to discuss the subject.
Percy:
To understand how strong a rebuttal this is you have to understand your original claim, which was that ATP can't be produced unless you already have some ATP.
And I have since repositioned the question to reflect the real problem and I am told it is irrelevant becase of the a priori fact that it happened in some form as yet unknown. A position which you appearently support.
The real problem is that the processes which assemble the known energy conversion systems, are themselves built with processes that depend upon the production of ATP. That is what the evidence shows.
You are assuming the existence of protocells and abiotic chemical soups that are not relevant to current biological function. And you have no proof or evidence for these systems. They are merely assumed to be true, because otherwise, life's appearance is illogical and not thermodynamically favored by a material cause.
Lewontin is well known for his belief in evolution. And he is honest about what it is, and why he proceeds.
Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.
(Wiki-evolution /Richard Lewontin, 1997. Billions and billions of demons, The New York Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997)
Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection in particular is hopelessly metaphysical, according to the rules of etiquette laid down in the Logic of Scientific Inquiry and widely believed in by practicing scientists who bother to think about the problem. The first rule for any scientific hypothesis ought to be that it is at least possible to conceive of an observation that would contradict the theory. For what good is a theory that is guaranteed by its internal logical structure to agree with all conceivable observations, irrespective of the real structure of the world? If scientists are going to use logically unbeatable theories about the world, they might as well give up natural science and take up religion. Yet is that not exactly the situation with regard to Darwinism? The theory of evolution by natural selection states that changes in the inherited characters of species occur, giving rise to differentiation in space and time, because different genetical types leave different numbers of offspring in different environments... Such a theory can never be falsified, for it asserts that some environmental difference created the conditions for natural selection of a new character. It is existentially quantified so that the failure to find the environmental factor proves nothing, except that one has not looked hard enough. Can one really imagine observations about nature that would disprove natural selection as a cause of the difference in bill size? The theory of natural selection is then revealed as metaphysical rather than scientific. Natural selection explains nothing because it explains everything.
(Richard Lewontin / “Testing the Theory of Natural Selection” Nature March 24, 1972 p.181)

This message is a reply to:
 Message 211 by Percy, posted 09-05-2007 7:35 AM Percy has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 216 by Percy, posted 09-05-2007 11:07 AM Rob has replied

Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 216 of 314 (419893)
09-05-2007 11:07 AM
Reply to: Message 215 by Rob
09-05-2007 10:13 AM


Re: There's been work done since 2004
Rob writes:
Percy:
Science is tentative, so there can be no guarantee (no proof) that we've nailed down the environmental conditions of the early earth. No proof ever. Increasing evidence might increase our confidence, but it can never reach certainty.
Science is believed by most to be empericism. It is theorized, tested, and confirmed (ie. it is proved). We then have what we call evidence.
That is what good science is...
What you're talking about is theory, and that is tentative. Because based upon the evidence, we can make all kinds of theories.
You've got a lot of the right words in there, but you've tangled them up into a confused and meaningless mess, plus you should never say "proved" when speaking scientifically. Rather than digressing into a discussion of the nature of science and the relationship between evidence and theory, let me just reiterate that we will never reach certainty about the conditions on the early earth.
Percy:
To understand how strong a rebuttal this is you have to understand your original claim, which was that ATP can't be produced unless you already have some ATP.
And I have since repositioned the question to reflect the real problem and I am told it is irrelevant becase of the a priori fact that it happened in some form as yet unknown. A position which you appearently support.
You're following a false line of reasoning and using some misleading terminology. It is true that we don't know the origin of ATP with certainty (and never will), but we have some possible candidate processes. Characterizing this situation as "it happened in some form as yet unknown" makes it seem as if we don't know of any possibilities, and that's not the case.
Your reasoning then continues that since we don't know if the possibilities we've identified are the correct ones, or if some as yet unidentified possibilities are the correct ones, that this implies a designer.
This is simple God-of-the-gaps reasoning. You're arguing that anything which we do not yet know is evidence of a designer. This is the type of reasoning Behe was trying to avoid.
What Behe believes is that there are some microbiological structures and processes that are irreducibly complex (and so could not have come about naturally) or incredibly unlikely from natural causes. He only concludes a designer for things which are impossible, or which have prohibitively small probabilities.
The formation of ATP through natural processes is neither irreducibly complex nor prohibitively unlikely. We know this because we've already discovered processes that generate ATP under replicated conditions of the early earth.
The reason you can't use Behe to rebut the research citations Molbiogirl has provided is because Behe is no longer very active within the scientific community. He hasn't submitted his ideas about irreducible complexity to the scientific community, and so no scientific dialogue about his ideas has yet taken place. For the most part Behe just continues making his case to the lay public while ignoring the rebuttals some scientists have provided of what he's published in the popular press.
You are assuming the existence of protocells and abiotic chemical soups that are not relevant to current biological function. And you have no proof or evidence for these systems.
You didn't ask about current biological function. You asked about the origins of energy conversion in life processes.
And of course we have no proof. There's no such thing as proof in science.
What we do have is evidence for what conditions may have been like on the early earth. This evidence comes from the examination and analysis of ancient geological layers, and from the analysis of the content of meteorites and comets and moons and other planets that provides hints about the composition of the early solar system. It is this evidence that scientists use in replicating what conditions may have been like on the early earth.
Concerning Lewontin, if you'd like to begin a discussion about the nature of science and evolution's qualifications as legitimate science, propose a new thread.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 215 by Rob, posted 09-05-2007 10:13 AM Rob has replied

Replies to this message:
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molbiogirl
Member (Idle past 2642 days)
Posts: 1909
From: MO
Joined: 06-06-2007


Message 217 of 314 (419894)
09-05-2007 11:17 AM
Reply to: Message 213 by Rob
09-05-2007 9:29 AM


Re: Behe's Balderdash II
Behe's point is that adenine is added unnaturally by chemists, and that in that case, yes AMP is easy to synthesize.
Oh, you are going to be disappointed!
Prebiotic Adenine Revisited: Eutectics and Photochemistry, Leslie Orgel, Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres, Volume 34, Number 4, August, 2004
Orgel writes:
Recent studies support an earlier suggestion that, if adenine was formed prebiotically on the primitive earth, eutectic freezing of hydrogen cyanide solutions is likely to have been important. Here we revisit the suggestion that the synthesis of adenine may have involved the photochemical conversion of the tetramer of hydrogen cyanide in eutectic solution to 4-amino-5-cyano-imidazole. This would make possible a reaction sequence that does not require the presence of free ammonia. It is further suggested that the reaction of cyanoacetylene with cyanate in eutectic solution to give cytosine might have proceeded in parallel with adenine synthesis.
Behe's point is that adenine is added unnaturally by chemists, and that in that case, yes AMP is easy to synthesize.
Orgel disagrees!
Edited by molbiogirl, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 213 by Rob, posted 09-05-2007 9:29 AM Rob has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 221 by Rob, posted 09-05-2007 9:05 PM molbiogirl has replied

molbiogirl
Member (Idle past 2642 days)
Posts: 1909
From: MO
Joined: 06-06-2007


Message 218 of 314 (419926)
09-05-2007 2:55 PM
Reply to: Message 213 by Rob
09-05-2007 9:29 AM


Re: Behe's Balderdash II
Behe writes:
All roads lead to Rome, it is said, and similarly there are many ways to synthesize AMP. A book for chemists on my shelf lists eight different ways to make adenine (which is the top part of AMP without the foundation); the remainder of the molecule can be put together in a variety of ways also. Chemists who want to synthesize adenine, however, use completely different routes from that used by cells. Because they involve reactions in oily liquids at extremes of acidity, these conditions would cause the quick demise of any known organism.
Btw, Rob.
AMP = Adenosine Mono Phosphate
That means (pay close attention now) Adenine + Ribose + Phosphate
Behe is talking about the synthesis of AMP, not just the synthesis of adenine. My earlier cite (re: aqueous solution) stands.
And Orgel liked the study I cited too!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 213 by Rob, posted 09-05-2007 9:29 AM Rob has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 220 by Rob, posted 09-05-2007 9:00 PM molbiogirl has not replied

molbiogirl
Member (Idle past 2642 days)
Posts: 1909
From: MO
Joined: 06-06-2007


Message 219 of 314 (419973)
09-05-2007 6:50 PM


Thermosynthesis For Dummies
Thermosynthesis as energy source for the RNA World: A model for the bioenergetics of the origin of life, Anthonie W.J. Muller, Biosystems, Volume 82, Issue 1, October 2005, Pages 93-102
Since you seem to have trouble finding the appropriate cites, I will be generous with my snippets:
The postulated molecular heat engines produced the same ATP as contemporary ATP synthase, but with much less power (energy produced per unit time) because the enzyme turnover time equaled the long thermal cycle time of a convection cell (Fig. 1). The latter constituted the inanimate self-organizing dissipative structure that any origin of life model requires. In this context, it is relevant that according to rRNA sequences, the niche of the last common ancestor of all living organisms was a - plausibly convecting - hot spring (Woese, 1987).
In the model, we apply the rule of parsimony (Benner et al., 1989) to primordial enzymes (Black, 1970) and enzyme mechanisms: in addition to broadly specific phosphorylations - that yield NMPs, NDPs, NTPs and phospholipids - pF1 also condensed amino acids and peptides to new peptide bonds. In this way, thermosynthesis effected the endergonic synthesis of high-energy products, enabling the modeling of a simple but powerful primordial metabolism. The basic primordial energy generating mechanism is therefore suggested to have been the binding of a substrate in a dehydrated local environment, followed by its conversion into a product with similar free energy in that environment, but a higher free energy in water. The higher free energy made direct release impossible; this release required a temperature change.
The genetic machinery is hypothesized to have emerged in seven stages (Fig. 5). Protocells, a suitable starting point for the origin of life (Morowitz et al., 1988), are assumed to have been stabilized by membrane lipid phosphorylation by pF1 in stage 1. There are many protocell candidates, some composed of lipids or material found in meteorites (Mautner et al., 1995, Dworkin et al., 2001, Hanczyc et al., 2003 and Chen et al., 2004). In stage 2, a proposed early pF1 synthesized by thermosynthesis a library of proteins of which a tiny fraction had multiple substrate condensing ability. In this way, pF1 propagated functionally, making daughters with similar capability but not necessarily identical composition. Such compositional replication is implausible for proteins (Orgel, 1987): a few small proteins cannot be expected to recognize and copy during peptide bond synthesis the many possible different combinations of amino acid residues. Random synthesis of a specific long protein sequence is also implausible (Orgel, 1987). The pF1 protein must have had a short motif sequence that is frequent in a long random sequence. The amino acid residue motif contained only a dehydration pocket and glycine hinges that enabled a lobe to cover a substrate in the dehydrated pocket. The lobe resembled the lobe of ATP-using enzymes that consist of the G(X)4KT/S(X)6I/V motif (Walker et al., 1982).
The NTPs generated in stage 3 of the mode were used for RNA synthesis (Joyce and Orgel, 1993). The self-replicating RNA-replicase of stage 4 is the key theoretical entity of the RNA World. A version that can replicate up to 14 nt has been found (Johnston et al., 2001). It is assumed that RNA replication resembled the DNA amplification by PCR demonstrated in a convection cell (Krishnan et al., 2002). RNA that enhanced the synthesis rate of pF1 was selected.
The emergence of ribozymes with aminoacylation ability constituted stage 5. Predicted already in 1958 (Crick, 1958), these ribozymes were found in the 1990s (Illangasekare et al., 1995, Illangasekare and Yarus, 1999, Yarus and Illangasekare, 1999, Lee et al., 2000, Schimmel and Kelley, 2000 and Saito et al., 2001). In stage 6 of the model, charged tRNAs increased the overall, still random, protein synthesis rate by their enhanced reactivity (Fig. 6a) that was catalysed by pF1 or ribozymes (Zhang and Cech, 1997); such ribozymes were progenitors of rRNA.
Other implications of thermosynthesis were discussed extensively previously (Muller, 1995). In addition, we refer to recent studies on nucleic acid polymerisation by convection (Krishnan et al., 2002, Braun et al., 2003, Braun and Libchaber, 2003 and Braun, 2004). We identify in pF1 a plausible component of the pre-RNA World (Orgel, 2003), describe this proposed pre-RNA World (Crick, 1993 and Dworkin et al., 2003) and illustrate how a protein could have supported the RNA World (Schuster, 1993) by yielding the free energy (Mehta, 1986 and Jeffares et al., 1998). We agree with the suggestion that only a few proteins were present during the emergence of the genetic code (Trevors and Abel, 2004).
Hey! Lookee! Your favorite real scientist! Leslie Orgel!
More pF1 research to come ...
Oh. Btw, Rob.
Percy writes:
Please don't feel the need to respond by quoting my text and highlighting the words "possible" and "may". Just remind yourself that science is tentative.
Ditto.

Rob 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5849 days)
Posts: 2297
Joined: 06-01-2006


Message 220 of 314 (419989)
09-05-2007 9:00 PM
Reply to: Message 218 by molbiogirl
09-05-2007 2:55 PM


Re: Behe's Balderdash II
molbiogirl:
AMP = Adenosine Mono Phosphate
That means (pay close attention now) Adenine + Ribose + Phosphate
Behe is talking about the synthesis of AMP, not just the synthesis of adenine. My earlier cite (re: aqueous solution) stands.
No it doesn't... and I'll be answering that other reply shorlty...
Adenine + Ribose + Phosphate = AMP
Where'd you get the adenine? That comes in my next response...

This message is a reply to:
 Message 218 by molbiogirl, posted 09-05-2007 2:55 PM molbiogirl has not replied

Rob 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5849 days)
Posts: 2297
Joined: 06-01-2006


Message 221 of 314 (419992)
09-05-2007 9:05 PM
Reply to: Message 217 by molbiogirl
09-05-2007 11:17 AM


Re: Behe's Balderdash II
Molbiogirl:
Prebiotic Adenine Revisited: Eutectics and Photochemistry, Leslie Orgel, Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres, Volume 34, Number 4, August, 2004
Orgel writes: [b]"Recent studies support an earlier suggestion[b/] that, if adenine was formed prebiotically on the primitive earth, eutectic freezing of hydrogen cyanide solutions is likely to have been important. Here we revisit the suggestion that the synthesis of adenine may have involved the photochemical conversion of the tetramer of hydrogen cyanide in eutectic solution to 4-amino-5-cyano-imidazole. This would make possible a reaction sequence that does not require the presence of free ammonia. It is further suggested that the reaction of cyanoacetylene with cyanate in eutectic solution to give cytosine might have proceeded in parallel with adenine synthesis."
Rob:
Behe's point is that adenine is added unnaturally by chemists, and that in that case, yes AMP is easy to synthesize.
Molbiogirl:
Orgel disagrees!
Did you even read what Orgel said?
Where did he say that it was found or tested or proven?
He said, if it was formed prebiotically... Do you know wahat the word if means. Or is it like the word is that some folks in high positions seem to have trouble with?
Seriously!
I am far from dissapointed...
Edited by Rob, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 217 by molbiogirl, posted 09-05-2007 11:17 AM molbiogirl has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 222 by crashfrog, posted 09-05-2007 9:10 PM Rob has not replied
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crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 222 of 314 (419993)
09-05-2007 9:10 PM
Reply to: Message 221 by Rob
09-05-2007 9:05 PM


Re: Behe's Balderdash II
He said, if it was formed prebiotically...
...and then goes on to explain how that might have happened, at least in the portion you quoted.
Is it just that you're having reading comprehension problems? I confess that, even with a semester of chemistry behind me, there's a lot here to wrap my brain around. No surprise if you aren't getting it right the first time. But that should really put you in the position of curious learner, not devoted debunker. Don't you think? I've never understood why creationists think ignorance is the foundation of a good argument.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 221 by Rob, posted 09-05-2007 9:05 PM Rob has not replied

Rob 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5849 days)
Posts: 2297
Joined: 06-01-2006


Message 223 of 314 (419994)
09-05-2007 9:13 PM
Reply to: Message 216 by Percy
09-05-2007 11:07 AM


Re: There's been work done since 2004
Rather than digressing into a discussion of the nature of science and the relationship between evidence and theory, let me just reiterate that we will never reach certainty about the conditions on the early earth.
And that is why it is hopelessly metaphysical as Lewontin said.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 216 by Percy, posted 09-05-2007 11:07 AM Percy has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 225 by crashfrog, posted 09-05-2007 9:21 PM Rob has not replied

kuresu
Member (Idle past 2513 days)
Posts: 2544
From: boulder, colorado
Joined: 03-24-2006


Message 224 of 314 (419996)
09-05-2007 9:19 PM
Reply to: Message 221 by Rob
09-05-2007 9:05 PM


Re: Behe's Balderdash II
Um, all you did was bold the tentativity of science.
Precisely what Percy and Molbiogirl have told you to not do, for an obvious reason. Science is tentative! Of course it uses tentative language!
And do you realize you are only quoting the abstract to the whole article? You don't possibly think that Orgel might just go on to explain how adenine could have been formed in a prebiotic earth?
You do know what an abstract is, right?
You know, I too am far from disappointed. You're just playing the same old tricks of being unable to read and realize that science uses tentative language because science is tentative. Read the whole article.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 221 by Rob, posted 09-05-2007 9:05 PM Rob has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 226 by molbiogirl, posted 09-05-2007 9:27 PM kuresu has replied

crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 225 of 314 (419997)
09-05-2007 9:21 PM
Reply to: Message 223 by Rob
09-05-2007 9:13 PM


Re: There's been work done since 2004
And that is why it is hopelessly metaphysical as Lewontin said.
So, that's your position? That if we don't know everything, we don't know anything? That until we're completely certain, we're lost in uncertainty?
When I put it that way, do you see how stupid what you're saying is? Or do you need me to explain further?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 223 by Rob, posted 09-05-2007 9:13 PM Rob has not replied

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