Dna And Its Origins

[Khandro]

In the light of new findings, DNA is even more beautiful and complex than we imagined, considering that it was in existence in the early life-forms on the planet, doesn't any theory of the origin of life by a blind series of chemical accidents seem preposterous ?
Surely only the most unimaginative and feeble-minded could believe in this.

[jomifl]

Khandro, Your last posting suggests that you haven't either read or in the least bit understood the carefully crafted posts that non-believers have selflessly submitted for your improved erudition. You won't understand if you don't put some effort in.

[Hypognosis]

@Khandro

//The problem you and others have is that your approach is 'top-down'. //

No other way to do it, pending supercomputers. Old fashioned biochemistry involved putting rat liver in a blender and then measuring what the enzymes did.

Look out for the frequent repetition of the phrase "in vitro" (rat paté) and the way it is contrasted with "in vivo": the immeasurabilty of the metabolic goings on inside whatever you cannot put in the blender.

Does "The Blind Watchmaker" (I've not read it) extend the analogy to the point of trying to understand Swiss clockwork engineering with the aid of a lump hammer and a magnifying glass?

Reductive reasoning is sort of like that: break things into simpler subunits, try and work out what they do, in isolation, (that's division of labour, really; many researchers x many years) then try to piece it all together into a coherent picture, as the general public could never relate to just bits and pieces.

//Your basic belief is that there could not possibly be an explanation for the origin life anywhere else but on this planet //

Introduction of unnecessary additional entities, without reason.
Apply Occam's Razor.

Invoking planet seeding, even if appropriate for this planet only kicks the can down the road and, worse leaves us in the dark about the gravity levels and conditions required to get abiogenesis working.

//and this blinds you to even consider such a possibility, largely because you fear it might smack of a 'higher power/ prime mover' or whatever one wants to call it. //

I would call that "giving up trying"; armwaving; "oh, it's all too complicated, there must have been a supernatural being that did it".

Believe whatever you like, just don't mess with other people's learning process. Let them make up their own minds.

As I keep saying, they can go and do cancer research without the slightest understanding of abiogenesis. When we've cured all cancer, researchers need an avenue to pursue. Why be so impatient for the answer in your lifetime?

[Khandro]

jomifl; Question my erudition if you like, but your "carefully-crafted, selflessly submitted" posts miserably fail to answer the question; How do you think the DNA, evident in the very earliest forms of life on Earth got there? Either give your theory, or cool it.

Hypo; As usual, your long rambling post, like an electric fire, gives out more heat than light. Hiding behind bluster and distortions you fail also to give any credible answer to the above question.

Stephen Hawking and others have said that the chances of DNA being produced by accident on Planet Earth are extremely remote, do you refute this assertion and if so on what grounds?

[Peter Pedant]

OK a shorter one

//doesn't any theory of the origin of life by a blind series of chemical accidents seem preposterous ? //

yes you're right !

it is far far more likely that Princess Di - probably on the Moon where we know she now lives teamed up with Elvis to design DNA top down

well - do you have any evidence to prove that is preposterous more or less ?


if not Di then the pharaohs

[vetuste_ennemi]

I think you're unfair to Hypo, Khandro. His key argument was contained in the phrase "kicking the can down the road".

[Peter Pedant]

Khandro if he wishes can judge something to have more heat than light before he reads it

fairness doesnt come into it
neither does sanity

[THECORBYLOON]

KHANDRO, you wrote previously,

'Corby; Neither, [Hawking] has said "We do not know how DNA molecules first appeared. The chances against a DNA molecule arising by random fluctuations are very small."

He went on to say,

'The early appearance of life on Earth suggests that there's a good chance of the spontaneous generation of life, in suitable conditions. Maybe there was some simpler form of organisation, which built up DNA. Once DNA appeared, it would have been so successful, that it might have completely replaced the earlier forms. We don't know what these earlier forms would have been. One possibility is RNA. This is like DNA, but rather simpler, and without the double helix structure. Short lengths of RNA, could reproduce themselves like DNA, and might eventually build up to DNA. One can not make nucleic acids in the laboratory, from non-living material, let alone RNA. But given 500 million years, and oceans covering most of the Earth, there might be a reasonable probability of RNA, being made by chance.'

Does he not appear to support RNA being produced by chance followed by the appearance of DNA by chance?

[Khandro]

WOW! Having written the above post, I retired to bed and opened my book where I'd left off; Barnaby Rudge, by Charles Dickens Chapter XXIX, which commences "The thoughts of worldly men are forever regulated by a moral law of gravitation, which, like the physical one, holds them down to earth. The bright glory of day, and the silent wonders of a starlit night appeal to their minds in vain. /............../ and who, looking upward at the spangled sky, see nothing there but the reflection of their own great wisdom and book-learning."

Nighty-night! :0)

[Peter Pedant]

Hawking as a evolutionary molecular biologist...
hmmm I am not sure

does he have by the way any views on Ebola or flu vaccine ?

[Peter Pedant]

yes but Khandro

Barnaby Rudge is set in 1780
and he aint worldly - so it is a contrast rather than a truism

Rudge gets involved in the Gordon Riots and is sentenced to death
but is then reprieved ! and goes home with his dog ....

Tale of two cities and B R are his only two historical novels and he gave up after that - too much research for little come back

apparently people used to write to him and say it wasnt like that then . ...
it was like this .....

[Zacs-Master]

Khandro, your reference to Hawking needs no refuting. He said 'extremely remote' but not impossible. Your sound bite is also out of context:
http://www.hawking.org.uk/life-in-the-universe.html

[Theland]

Why the objections to a first cause?

[Old_Geezer]

A chance can be as remote as "it likes" but in a universe this vast it still means it's almost a certainty it'll occur. And since this is about self reproduction, a near certainty there'll be a lot of it about.

[Hypognosis]

Get yer luvverley ribose folks

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formose_reaction

(Found via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller–Urey_experiment )

Note the bit about revisiting stored samples and finding more than 20 amino acid products, far more than they listed on initial publication.

Some other websites haven't caught up with this news. Some crass revisionists are even turning it around and using Miller-Urey as proof that abiogenesis is impossible.

http://creation.mobi/why-the-miller-urey-research-argues-against-abiogenesis

Choose wisely, Glasshopper.

[vetuste_ennemi]

Smart Ass 1 Humility 0

[vetuste_ennemi]

The argument seems to about the origin of life on earth.: "blind" physical and chemical processes versus design by an external intelligent agent.

I willingly subscribe (lacking a better explanation) to the latter thesis. But only if its proponents concede that the external agency is morally retarded.

[Theland]

So you the created being can judge the morals of the Creator?
Cool.

[vetuste_ennemi]

Where was the Potter when my wife died?

[vetuste_ennemi]

I hope you understand the question, fellow pot.

[Khandro]

O.G. //A chance can be as remote as "it likes" but in a universe this vast it still means it's almost a certainty it'll occur//
As a schoolboy I was told that given and infinite amount of monkeys and typewriters, the complete works of Shakespeare would be produced, but I don't think so. Experiments have been made using the most powerful computer to randomly re-arrange Shakespeare's English language making many billions of random possibilities, I think it came up with only two consecutive short words and one of them was misspelt.