I haven't been into debate in a long time, but this occasion was enough to get me to post. I have been expecting, and have waited for, something like this for a long time. It is the natural conclusion of the atheist belief system, and it seems to have finally been vindicated by science. We have (the largest part of) the first link in the chain that got us to where we are now.
I'll be the first to admit that there are still plenty of problems... however, as it stands now, it has been shown that at least two (and the two thought to be most difficult) of the four pieces that make up RNA can and would have (and most likely still do) occur naturally.
The relevant part:
For more than 20 years researchers have been working on this problem. The building blocks of RNA, known as nucleotides, each consist of a chemical base, a sugar molecule called ribose and a phosphate group.
Chemists quickly found plausible natural ways for each of these constituents to form from natural chemicals. But there was no natural way for them to join together.
The spontaneous appearance of such nucleotides on the primitive Earth "would have been a near miracle," two leading researchers, Gerald Joyce and Leslie Orgel, wrote in 1999.
The miracle seems now to have been explained. In article to be published today in Nature, Sutherland and his colleagues Matthew Powner and Beatrice Gerland report that they have taken the same starting chemicals used by others but caused them to react in a different order and in different combinations. Instead of making the starting chemicals form a sugar and a base, they mixed them in a different order, in which the chemicals naturally formed a compound that is half-sugar and half-base. When another half-sugar and half-base are added, the RNA nucleotide called ribocytidine phosphate emerges.
A second nucleotide is created if ultraviolet light is shined on the mixture. Sutherland said he had not yet found natural ways to generate the other two types of nucleotides found in RNA molecules, but synthesis of the first two was thought to be harder to achieve.
RNA is the precursor to DNA, and is enough to create the very simplest of organisms.
I haven't been into debate in a long time, but this occasion was enough to get me to post. I have been expecting, and have waited for, something like this for a long time. It is the natural conclusion of the atheist belief system, and it seems to have finally been vindicated by science. We have (the largest part of) the first link in the chain that got us to where we are now.
I'll be the first to admit that there are still plenty of problems... however, as it stands now, it has been shown that at least two (and the two thought to be most difficult) of the four pieces that make up RNA can and would have (and most likely still do) occur naturally.
The relevant part:
RNA is the precursor to DNA, and is enough to create the very simplest of organisms.
Having not read the article yet (at work) I am immediatly struck by one question based on your statements:
How does a person artificially creating the building blocks of life in any way support the premise that it can occur without intervention?
It has just always struck me as odd to say "We have created the building clocks of life, therefore they can occur naturally!"
Because we created them by simply (re)creating the circumstances for those building blocks to form, circumstances of which we have reason to believe that they occurred on an early lifeless earth (for example because the starting molecules are known to occur in space and/or on other planets).
But this is not the case:
From an article I read on Slashdot about this same thing:
“It’s not as simple as putting compounds in a beaker and mixing it up. It’s a series of steps. You still have to stop and purify and then do the next step, and that probably didn’t happen in the ancient world.”
By performing steps that probably didn't happen in the ancient world, they aren't trying to recreate the conditions of the ancient world.
Not all religions are the enemy of science, it is mainly fundamentalists that take a liturgical view of scriptures. Fundamentalists =! all religious people. Atheism still has to contend with the initial formation of life under the "precise conditions under which life was created." Which religion is just going to say, "Oh that's how <insert mythical entity here> did it!" Truthfully, I'm rather tired of the "God debates." It's already been touched upon.
Either way, it is interesting to see gains in this field.
I don't know how exactly the research went. It's published in a scientific magazine, so it requires a subscription (or just payment) to look at the entire thing. Thus I can't vouch for what those steps were and how they affected the experiment. But just because some steps were taken does not mean it instantly becomes completely invalid. They could also have been done to make detection (of the intermediates) possible, or as simulations of events they considered possible in the ancient environment.
At the same time, if the steps were not too intrusive, this experiment does show that RNA is not some junkyard jumbojet molecule.
I'm not trying to argue the invalidity of it at all, I'm trying to point out that it is by no means near conclusive evidence that "life formed on its own without outside intervention" which is the tone of the original post.
From an article I read on Slashdot about this same thing:
“It’s not as simple as putting compounds in a beaker and mixing it up. It’s a series of steps. You still have to stop and purify and then do the next step, and that probably didn’t happen in the ancient world.”
By performing steps that probably didn't happen in the ancient world, they aren't trying to recreate the conditions of the ancient world.
That's because one of the other conditions of Earth back then was hundreds of millions of years. Scientists don't have that long, so they're going for proof of concept (also purification eliminates extraneous variables). I think it's plausible to say that "this could happen naturally" given that it would happen over a huge timeframe with random occurrences.
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Do I Contradict Myself? Very Well Then I Contradict Myself.
That's because one of the other conditions of Earth back then was hundreds of millions of years. Scientists don't have that long, so they're going for proof of concept (also purification eliminates extraneous variables). I think it's plausible to say that "this could happen naturally" given that it would happen over a huge timeframe with random occurrences.
but the quote from the actual scientist who performed it indicates that it isn't plausible that it happened this way. :-?
Misquotes by the ignorant fools responsible for science coverage in the media.
howso?
If you would provide the "correct quote" or something showing how it was taken out of context, I'd believe you, as it is what you are saying is "it doesn't support what I want the experiment to support, so it must be misquoted."
The "ignorant fools responsible for science coverage" are the ones saying that the origins of life have been proved! blah blah blah, not the scientist who did the experiment...
The "ignorant fools responsible for science coverage" are the ones saying that the origins of life have been proved! blah blah blah, not the scientist who did the experiment...
I just read the first article and no one claimed to have proven the origin of life, they proved that it is possible for RNA to have synthesized naturally. That's all.
Thought that doesn't dimishinsh the significance of the discovery one bit.
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I just read the first article and no one claimed to have proven the origin of life, they proved that it is possible for RNA to have synthesized naturally. That's all.
Thought that doesn't dimishinsh the significance of the discovery one bit.
I admit, the proved statement was an exaggeration. my original point, and I'll try and stick closer to it now, is that it has not proven that RNA could have come into existence without a designer, as the scientist who performed the experiment admitted that there were required steps which he performed that would not have happened naturally.
I'm not arguing that it could not have happened naturally, I'm arguing that this experiment doesn't prove nearly as much as the OP was saying it did.
My original question is: How does performing an experiment, which includes steps that would not have happened naturally, provide evidence against a designer/creator?
How does performing an experiment, which includes steps that would not have happened naturally, provide evidence against a designer/creator?
You cannot provide evidence against a designer/creator for the same reason you can't provide evidence against the fact I have an invisible, immaterial dragon living in my garage.
I admit, the proved statement was an exaggeration. my original point, and I'll try and stick closer to it now, is that it has not proven that RNA could have come into existence without a designer, as the scientist who performed the experiment admitted that there were required steps which he performed that would not have happened naturally.
But the article doesn't explain what the implication of those steps are. He says the steps probably wouldn't have happened in the ancient would, but he doesn't say those steps are vital to the sucess of the reactions. Purification, for example, could simply mean making sure nothing unknown contaminated the process to produce results that can't be recreated.
My original question is: How does performing an experiment, which includes steps that would not have happened naturally, provide evidence against a designer/creator?
It doesn't, in as much as there really is no such thing as a scientifc way to disprove something supernatural by definition.
What is does do is disprove the argument against evolution theory which claims the basic components of life are too complex to have occured spontaneously in nature. Or to frame it in a more positive way, it fills in one of the important gaps in evolution theory.
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What is does do is disprove the argument against evolution theory which claims the basic components of life are too complex to have occured spontaneously in nature. Or to frame it in a more positive way, it fills in one of the important gaps in evolution theory.
But it doesn't even disprove that. It provides evidence as to how the basic building blocks of life may have come about. And then openly admits that it is not a process which would have been repeated in nature. Saying it "disproves" the argument is a lot stronger than saying it "provides evidences against" the argument. The later is true, while the former is false.
But it doesn't even disprove that. It provides evidence as to how the basic building blocks of life may have come about. And then openly admits that it is not a process which would have been repeated in nature. Saying it "disproves" the argument is a lot stronger than saying it "provides evidences against" the argument. The later is true, while the former is false.
Please see my earlier comments. We don't have information regarding the implications of the unnatural (if you will) steps involved. Though steps were involved that wouldn't have naturally occured, the article doesn't say whether those steps are essential to the process or not. While you do have a point, you seem overly dismissive of the findings. The entire point of the experiment, after all, is to recreate the conditions under which life was thought to have evolved as accurately as possible.
It's possible the article is overstating the significance of the beakthrough, but the way I read it is that this is about as close to scientific proof as science can get. (i.e., saying that the experiment must perfectly recreate the conditions under which life is thought to have evolved without any interferance whatsoever to be considered proof is creating an impossible standard.)
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The Golden Rule of forums: If you're going to be rude, be right. If you might be wrong, be polite.
I haven't been into debate in a long time, but this occasion was enough to get me to post. I have been expecting, and have waited for, something like this for a long time. It is the natural conclusion of the atheist belief system, and it seems to have finally been vindicated by science. We have (the largest part of) the first link in the chain that got us to where we are now.
Don't get too excited. As others have already pointed out in the thread, this isn't exactly the grand-slam breakthrough that only happens in movies about scientists written by nonscientists. I'd also like to add that the "first link in the chain" is really the Big Bang, not the origin of life on Earth.
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
We have only really discovered like 4% of the universe (and since its very very possible the universe is infinite, 4% is a gift)
Is it possible, that all of the entire universe is not the result one ONE-SINGULAR body of gasses and matter exploding, but maybe many?
I only say this because....part of me doesn't quite agree that there was only ONE giant ball of junk that exploded, but multiple???
Then again, there had to eventually at some point BE a BEGINING....I have more to think about now
We can speculate about an unknown causal chain as long as we please. But the Big Bang is manifestly the origin of the observable universe, the very first event that we know* happened - and we don't know why.
*For a given value of "know". Perhaps I should say it is the scientific consensus that it happened.
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
More to the point, where did that 4% figure come from? Everything I've learned about astronomy (some, not too much) would suggest that we simply don't have access to information that'd let us draw that conclusion, nor will we ever.
A quick Google search suggests that this references how ordinary matter is estimated/assumed to be about 4% of the observed universe, which is a very, very different statement from what IcecreamMan said.
More on topic, I recently came across an interesting article in Discovery from last year (link). A man conducted a twenty-five year experiment looking into the possibility of abiogenesis in frozen environs, which had some rather spectacular, unexpected results suggesting that ice and its formation could have very positive effects on RNA formation. I believe other scientists are looking to duplicate the experiment now.
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My anecdotal evidence disagrees with yours! EXPLAIN THAT!
I watched this show on BBC discovery channel....had Sam Neil from Jurrasic Park films as the host. It was all about the universe Hyperspace. Thats where I got the 4%, but its not a good number...its just from BBC discovery channel.
Still. Imagine for a moment, all of the universe that WE have discovered comes from a big bang event that scientists agree happened.
But what if, another "big bang" happened its just so far away, that THAT part of the universe has not, and maybe will not be discovered by US any time soon.
Picture it like this....
I place a firecracker* on the 1 yard line of a football field. It blows up scattering little pieces all over, up to say 10 yards away from where i placed it. (This is the universe we have discovered)
Now imagine I placed one of these firecrackers at the 40 yard line, the 80 yardline, and one in row F of the bleachers.
Now imagine....that I the football field is 3-dimensional and I placed firecrackers at different points in this grid.
Thats kinda my lame idea, but again, its just a thought...I have no proof.
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Thanks to Xenphire @ Inkfox for the amazing new sig
“Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by slight ligaments
are we bound to prosperity and ruin.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
More on topic, I recently came across an interesting article in Discovery from last year (link). A man conducted a twenty-five year experiment looking into the possibility of abiogenesis in frozen environs, which had some rather spectacular, unexpected results suggesting that ice and its formation could have very positive effects on RNA formation. I believe other scientists are looking to duplicate the experiment now.
Yes, I remember reading that.
The point to all of this is that these experiments show how it's possible to spontaneously generate biotic structures using various ingredients, conditions, etc. rather than constructing them artificially, piece by piece. Regardless of whether we've found the specific way by which life on Earth began, we know that processes in nature are capable of doing so in several different ways.
IcecreamMan, your idea is interesting, but reality is actually even more interesting. The universe that we have information about, called "the observable universe" is only a part of the whole universe - the part close enough that the light has had enough time to travel to us. It's from the amount of light (and a couple other things) that we get our estimates of the age of the universe. Every day, light from further out reaches us and the size of the observable universe grows.
But we have absolutely no idea how much more of the universe there is than what we can see now.
And that ice study makes it slightly more likely that we'll find life on Europa or Titan, or even in Martian ice. I rather doubt there's any there, but I still find it an interesting notion.
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My anecdotal evidence disagrees with yours! EXPLAIN THAT!
A better article:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2009217588_rna14.html
I haven't been into debate in a long time, but this occasion was enough to get me to post. I have been expecting, and have waited for, something like this for a long time. It is the natural conclusion of the atheist belief system, and it seems to have finally been vindicated by science. We have (the largest part of) the first link in the chain that got us to where we are now.
I'll be the first to admit that there are still plenty of problems... however, as it stands now, it has been shown that at least two (and the two thought to be most difficult) of the four pieces that make up RNA can and would have (and most likely still do) occur naturally.
The relevant part:
RNA is the precursor to DNA, and is enough to create the very simplest of organisms.
Having not read the article yet (at work) I am immediatly struck by one question based on your statements:
How does a person artificially creating the building blocks of life in any way support the premise that it can occur without intervention?
It has just always struck me as odd to say "We have created the building clocks of life, therefore they can occur naturally!"
But this is not the case:
From an article I read on Slashdot about this same thing:
“It’s not as simple as putting compounds in a beaker and mixing it up. It’s a series of steps. You still have to stop and purify and then do the next step, and that probably didn’t happen in the ancient world.”
By performing steps that probably didn't happen in the ancient world, they aren't trying to recreate the conditions of the ancient world.
See: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/43723/title/How_RNA_got_started
Either way, it is interesting to see gains in this field.
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Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
I'm not trying to argue the invalidity of it at all, I'm trying to point out that it is by no means near conclusive evidence that "life formed on its own without outside intervention" which is the tone of the original post.
That's because one of the other conditions of Earth back then was hundreds of millions of years. Scientists don't have that long, so they're going for proof of concept (also purification eliminates extraneous variables). I think it's plausible to say that "this could happen naturally" given that it would happen over a huge timeframe with random occurrences.
Very Well Then I Contradict Myself.
but the quote from the actual scientist who performed it indicates that it isn't plausible that it happened this way. :-?
Misquotes by the ignorant fools responsible for science coverage in the media.
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howso?
If you would provide the "correct quote" or something showing how it was taken out of context, I'd believe you, as it is what you are saying is "it doesn't support what I want the experiment to support, so it must be misquoted."
The "ignorant fools responsible for science coverage" are the ones saying that the origins of life have been proved! blah blah blah, not the scientist who did the experiment...
I just read the first article and no one claimed to have proven the origin of life, they proved that it is possible for RNA to have synthesized naturally. That's all.
Thought that doesn't dimishinsh the significance of the discovery one bit.
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She knows why.
I admit, the proved statement was an exaggeration. my original point, and I'll try and stick closer to it now, is that it has not proven that RNA could have come into existence without a designer, as the scientist who performed the experiment admitted that there were required steps which he performed that would not have happened naturally.
I'm not arguing that it could not have happened naturally, I'm arguing that this experiment doesn't prove nearly as much as the OP was saying it did.
My original question is: How does performing an experiment, which includes steps that would not have happened naturally, provide evidence against a designer/creator?
You cannot provide evidence against a designer/creator for the same reason you can't provide evidence against the fact I have an invisible, immaterial dragon living in my garage.
Netdecking is Rightdecking
My latest data-driven Magic the Gathering strategy article
(TLDR: Analysis of the Valakut matchups. UB rising in the rankings. Aggro correspondingly taking a dive.)
But the article doesn't explain what the implication of those steps are. He says the steps probably wouldn't have happened in the ancient would, but he doesn't say those steps are vital to the sucess of the reactions. Purification, for example, could simply mean making sure nothing unknown contaminated the process to produce results that can't be recreated.
I think you're overstating the OP's original claim. But I may be wrong.
It doesn't, in as much as there really is no such thing as a scientifc way to disprove something supernatural by definition.
What is does do is disprove the argument against evolution theory which claims the basic components of life are too complex to have occured spontaneously in nature. Or to frame it in a more positive way, it fills in one of the important gaps in evolution theory.
Current New Favorite Person™: Mallory Archer
She knows why.
But it doesn't even disprove that. It provides evidence as to how the basic building blocks of life may have come about. And then openly admits that it is not a process which would have been repeated in nature. Saying it "disproves" the argument is a lot stronger than saying it "provides evidences against" the argument. The later is true, while the former is false.
Please see my earlier comments. We don't have information regarding the implications of the unnatural (if you will) steps involved. Though steps were involved that wouldn't have naturally occured, the article doesn't say whether those steps are essential to the process or not. While you do have a point, you seem overly dismissive of the findings. The entire point of the experiment, after all, is to recreate the conditions under which life was thought to have evolved as accurately as possible.
It's possible the article is overstating the significance of the beakthrough, but the way I read it is that this is about as close to scientific proof as science can get. (i.e., saying that the experiment must perfectly recreate the conditions under which life is thought to have evolved without any interferance whatsoever to be considered proof is creating an impossible standard.)
Current New Favorite Person™: Mallory Archer
She knows why.
Don't get too excited. As others have already pointed out in the thread, this isn't exactly the grand-slam breakthrough that only happens in movies about scientists written by nonscientists. I'd also like to add that the "first link in the chain" is really the Big Bang, not the origin of life on Earth.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Is the first link in the chain "THE big bang"
We have only really discovered like 4% of the universe (and since its very very possible the universe is infinite, 4% is a gift)
Is it possible, that all of the entire universe is not the result one ONE-SINGULAR body of gasses and matter exploding, but maybe many?
I only say this because....part of me doesn't quite agree that there was only ONE giant ball of junk that exploded, but multiple???
Then again, there had to eventually at some point BE a BEGINING....I have more to think about now
Thanks to Xenphire @ Inkfox for the amazing new sig
“Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by slight ligaments
are we bound to prosperity and ruin.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
We can speculate about an unknown causal chain as long as we please. But the Big Bang is manifestly the origin of the observable universe, the very first event that we know* happened - and we don't know why.
*For a given value of "know". Perhaps I should say it is the scientific consensus that it happened.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Off topic but I thought we used to think it was infinite but then came to the conclusion that it is not?
A quick Google search suggests that this references how ordinary matter is estimated/assumed to be about 4% of the observed universe, which is a very, very different statement from what IcecreamMan said.
More on topic, I recently came across an interesting article in Discovery from last year (link). A man conducted a twenty-five year experiment looking into the possibility of abiogenesis in frozen environs, which had some rather spectacular, unexpected results suggesting that ice and its formation could have very positive effects on RNA formation. I believe other scientists are looking to duplicate the experiment now.
Still. Imagine for a moment, all of the universe that WE have discovered comes from a big bang event that scientists agree happened.
But what if, another "big bang" happened its just so far away, that THAT part of the universe has not, and maybe will not be discovered by US any time soon.
Picture it like this....
I place a firecracker* on the 1 yard line of a football field. It blows up scattering little pieces all over, up to say 10 yards away from where i placed it. (This is the universe we have discovered)
Now imagine I placed one of these firecrackers at the 40 yard line, the 80 yardline, and one in row F of the bleachers.
Now imagine....that I the football field is 3-dimensional and I placed firecrackers at different points in this grid.
Thats kinda my lame idea, but again, its just a thought...I have no proof.
Thanks to Xenphire @ Inkfox for the amazing new sig
“Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by slight ligaments
are we bound to prosperity and ruin.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
Yes, I remember reading that.
The point to all of this is that these experiments show how it's possible to spontaneously generate biotic structures using various ingredients, conditions, etc. rather than constructing them artificially, piece by piece. Regardless of whether we've found the specific way by which life on Earth began, we know that processes in nature are capable of doing so in several different ways.
But we have absolutely no idea how much more of the universe there is than what we can see now.
And that ice study makes it slightly more likely that we'll find life on Europa or Titan, or even in Martian ice. I rather doubt there's any there, but I still find it an interesting notion.
Spam infraction.