Abiogenesis

metabolism being the process of repair and maintenance of the cell and replication being the process of making a copy of specific cell structures I would have to agree.It is more a matter of degree than a different process. Like micro and macro evolution.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist

Against my better judgement about getting into an one-upmanship contest, I will answer this one simply: Until you do that your argument is all based on a false assumption of what I said. Your quotes do not show that. My posts do not show that.You are in error. Again.I have no need to converse with fools who repeat their mistakes. Especially after being corrected.Enjoy yourself.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist

Poor fool.ALL you have shown is that viruses and prions are not living. The fact is that your whole argument, that your ample demonstration via books quotes that viruses and prions are not living shows my arguments to be flawed, is based on the mistaken belief that I said they were. The fact is that you continue to attack something that is not there. After being shown that fact several times. The only conclusion is that you are congenitally incapable of either (q) seeing the truth or (8) admitting you made a mistake even to yourself. As such I will take pity on you and no longer reply to your posts. This will allow you to declare victory and assuage your ego. You made your bed and you lie in it.Enjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist

For me the search for the elusive transition from non-life to life has to be two pronged:(1) from the bottom up -- looking for what happens naturally in a variety of environments to build more and more complex molecules from the materials available. This search also includes simulating a variety of early earth environments and possible environments on other planets (mars) or moons (europa). These molecules are the building blocks, making towers from them is the quest.(2) from the top down -- reducing life to a bare minimum, also in a variety of environments to find what can be done away with from the evolved systems and still have a (possibly crude and likely inefficient) form of life. The variables will likely change with different environments and sources of energy that go with them. This is where LUCA comes into the picture. Taking the skyscraping towers of today and going back through time to the original huts.As such research is done from both sides an awareness will build about how near one is to the other and bridges can begin to be built ... studies on how to get from tower foundation (D) to small tower structure (42) , very much like the Golden Gate bridge was built from each side of the bay in closing increments even though most engineers of the day said it could not be done.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist

Ah, the old improbable probability problem ...The errors in this are multifold and pervasive

• The calculation is a mathematical model of reality and not the reality itself. When a model fails to replicate reality it is not reality that is at fault but the mathematical model. When a hurricane prediction program crashes because it can't model the first hurricane on record in the South Atlantic, the meteorologists don't go out to the hurricane and say "you can't be here, our model does not allow you to be here" ... they fix the model by looking for and taking out the failed assumptions (ie - that all hurricanes are north of the equator).
• The probability of winning a lottery by any one ticket is extremely low, but the probability that the lottery will be won is extremely high. How do you reconcile these two very disparate probabilities? By knowing that any one of the millions of tickets is a valid winner if picked. To show that this is not the case for the calculations mentioned (ie -- in order to say "1 out of") you have to show that no other combination works of all the other probabilities. This has not been done.
• The calculation fails to account for the known pre-existing molecules used in the formation of life that are found throughout the universe, and this failure means the calculation with creation-all-at-once including these molecules is unnecessarily extended downward.
  
• The calculation fails to account for combinations of groups of such molecules in smorgas board fashion instead of in assembly line fashion all at once all from nothing. And, all the "failed" experiments are still available to be cut and reassembled into new experiments without having to go through the preliminaries. It fails to account for actual combination process as used in natural assembly of large organic compounds. This failure means that all the ways to reach the final necessary combination are not included and thus it unnecessarily excludes possible combination methods.
  
• The calculation fails to account for the fact that the first life need not be as complicated as a modern cell, that the minimum configuration is much simpler as shown by the LUCA studies. This failure means that the calculation is unnecessarily extended upward.
  
• The improbability of a thing occurring is not proof of impossibility of it occurring. It could well be that this is the only planet in all the universe that has life on it because it is a very improbably event. And if you divide the surface of the planet into all the different types of environments and do the same for all the other planets and moons and asteroids in the solar system alone you will have billionsXbillions of little experimental crucibles for carrying out experiments and if that is carried out over several billion year periods (4.55 billion year old earth, in a 13.7+ billion year old universe) with multiple "experiments" in a {day?week?month?} time period, and do the same for all the billions of stellar systems throughout the universe it does not take long to create an equally mind boggling number that reduces 1e14billion to a definite probability. I'm at 1e36 already ...

Care to play another game?
{{text in pink has been added by edit}}[This message has been edited by AbbyLeever, 03-31-2004]

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

ahahahahaa I love it.I used a similar argument to "The probability of an event occurring, after it has already occurred, is exactly 100%" on another board (I said the probability defaults to 1 after it has occurred) and the other person didn't understand it ... that there is no probability that it could not have occurred anymore, for we are here.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

Sometimes the envelope needs to be pushed across the table before it is opened.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

why there and not here? I will find it.

Black --Welcome to the fray from another newbie. Nice post. Don't worry, I think this is DNU's modus operandi with new people. Are you saying that we do not need DNA in a protocell construct to show behavior attributed to living matter? Would not this structure be somewhere between a virus and a (primitive) cell (the virus having lost elements of the protocell that it can replace by using elements in a current cell)? Is this occurring within a cell (or protocell) environment or is it occurring in a more open environment? Agreed this is not "LIFE" but it certainly looks to the development of self-replicating organic systems, definitely applicable to abiogenesis. Another analogy is a bridge - one shore is non-life, the other is life. From one shore we can build an abutment extending into the river based on known organic molecules that existed and can be easily created (amino acids would be in this group). From the other shore we can build an abutment extending into the river based on minimizing the elements needed for a living cell (LUCA would fall in this category, self replicating RNA would fall in this category). The river is swift and filled with rocks -- some rocks can be used as stepping stones to build a temporary guide for the bridge, some rocks are eroded (viruses and prions) and some are fairly robust (replicating peptides), but all are useful.I look forward to your next post on this topic.
AL.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

btw --I googled on {self-replicating peptides 32-amino-acid peptide} - the information you gave and found this site:
http://www.santafe.edu/sfi/People/kauffman/sak-peptides.htmlwhich talks about the whole procedurethanks for the info. {{{an open mind looks up from the hilltop to see if there are higher peaks to find}}}

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

It would help to have a little more info on which message you are replying to (If you use the little reply button with the red arrow at the end of the message it links your reply to the message). Remember that we are talking about a time before there was an oxygen rich atmosphere on earth that would count as an event that has already happened.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

ever consider how UV penetrates the atmospheres of venus and jupiter?the whole atmosphere was different.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

This message was supposed to be a response to Black's message
EvC Forum: Abiogenesis
and was posted in reply to DNAUnion by mistakethis edit is a corrction of that mistake, leaving this message I have for DNAUnion: [This message has been edited by AbbyLeever, 04-11-2004]

black -- I can sympathize, as a similar experience happened to me. This, and his use of multiple posts in answer to one post, seem to be his main tools in an argument, the purpose of which appears to be an attempt to shout down the other opinions and evidence regardless of their worth. His problem also seems to be exacerbated by a propensity for misunderstanding other posters.He has gone so far as to take out of context quotes from two different posts of mine (separated by a series of other posts and about different things) to give the impression that I have contradicted myself, when in fact there is no such contradiction. That showed me that he was willingly dishonest, and I refuse to reply to any of his posts anymore as a result.I find your posts informative and constructive, and thank you for them.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}