Here is an informative little video by a guy named Steve Mould who does a lot of “science” videos on youtube. Its all (ostensibly) about how simple little processes can make “meaningful” structures from stochastic processes-and he uses magnetic shaped little parts to show this. Its a popular channeled followed by millions, and is often referenced by other famous people in the science community-and his fans love it.
And hey, it does show how meaningful structures CAN form from random processes. Right? So you can learn from this. Wink, wink. Nod, nod. And all the skeptics will know exactly what he is really saying. Cause we are all part of the clique that knows this language-the language of the skeptic propagandist. I mean, he almost hides it, the real message, it is just under the surface, and the less skeptically aware, the casualist, might even miss it. The casualist might not learn as much about Steve Mould and what he is trying to say here-but the skeptic knows. “See, atheism is true! Spread the word!” Steve has given the wink. The same wink used by DeGrasse Tyson, and Sean Carroll, Lawrence Krauss, Brian Greene, and on and on. You know the one.
And for 95% of his viewers, whether they know it or not, they got his message. I mean, look, its plain as day, right? He just showed you, that is certainly a meaningful structure that arose from random processes, isn’t it? Its defintely meaningful, its a, a, a , well, it’s shape that, we have a, a name for…that’s kind of…anyway, defintely random, I mean other than the magnets and the precut shapes, and the little ball with nothing else inside, and the shaking only until its just right then stopping kind of way…That’s random kind of right???
But there are 5% percent of his viewers that spotted his little wink and nod, and said, hold on a second. If you want us to believe that your little explanation about how simply life can form from nonsense without a plan, how blind exactly do you want us to be? 95%, they are hooked, you got them (Ryan StallardThere are so many creationist videos this obliterates. Especially 4:18.). But some likeGhryst VanGhod helpfully point out: “this is incorrect. the kinesin travels along fibres within the cell and takes the various molecules exactly where they need to be, they are not randomly “jumbling around in solution”. https://youtu.be/gbycQf1TbM0 ” and then you get to see a video that tells you just a few more of the things that are ACTUALLY happening which are even more amazing if you weren’t already skeptical (the real kind).
And if you go through some more of the comments you will notice a few more (real) skeptics, not the wink and nod kind, and you will start to notice why the wink nod propogandist skeptics everywhere you look in modern culture are a very puposefully designed cancer on knowledge and thought.
It would seem according to the materialists that the ethics are still inside the bottle, and it just needs more shaking.
Maybe soon that will be what hospitals do. Just take patients that have died and shake them in a bottle to make new ones. The ingredients are all there, should be just as easy as Mould says it is.
What’s all this nodding and winking about rocks and kangaroos? I thought you you were proposing a bearded guy as creator of the universe, as God.
Must say, I think it a bit odd to refer to God as “he” (and reinforce it with a beard). If God is unique, why does he need male attributes? If God could choose his own pronouns, what would they be?
Alan Fox,
Allan proposed he had a beard. makes no difference to me.
Again, its the atheists who are all concerned with how God looks.
Its also the atheists who have no problem imaging there are infinite universes. THAT theory is not too crazy for them.
phoodoo,
Projection, phoodoo.
Why not? You seem to be a fan of the top down approach.
Hard to predict what an inscrutable ,omnipotent designer might choose to design. Or how It chooses to do it . Designing aliens capable of creating simulations or lisping dogs seem all options for an unknown designer.
We know designers are capable of creating wooden legs. Why not?
Some believe the Designer created a Burning Bush capable of speaking Hebrew.
. Certainly with omnipotent design there is that possibility.
You may not believe it but there is nothing that a unknown designer with unknown capabilities is incapable of. Logic itself might be no limit.
Perhaps sitting around a fire at night , influenced by the Holy Spirits , is more conductive to such discussions .
Simulation, alternate universes, alien projections..you atheists have all kinds of crazy views. Whatever makes you feel better Alan.
Live and let live man!
If you believe Jesus was an aspect of designer , seems likely at some point a beard was happening.
Ever been to Rome? Pretty ,pretty sure all that those depictions of God were not commissioned by atheists.
Think that is more a hypothesis than a theory . But true not sensible like believing in an eternal, omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, being , who is capable of creating all things logically possible , possibly including an infinite number of universes .
Heard some believe it is possible to fly to the moon , talk over great distances, crazy stuff.
velikovskys,
In one of the versions of God he has a beard. In another he has just long sideburns the color of candy corn. In another God is a one of your grandmother’s doilies. And in another God is an asbestos covered Swiss Bernese Mountain dog.
This is what I learned from science. Because in alternate universes all other things have happened. In fact in one he is both an asbestos covered mountain dog AND a doilie. That’s how infinite universes work!
Scientists are amazing (in this world-in some they are also doilies).
I think we should leave the testing to the experts. There has been extensive work done on this especially by Masayasu Nomura, whose work I can across while looking into your question.
Here in the article, “Structure and function of E. coli ribosomes. V. Reconstitution of functionally active 30S ribosomal particles from RNA and proteins”, in an experiment they had set up they did indeed witness the assembly of a 30S subunit from it parts, although these parts, themselves are complex structures. Also, rather than a case of blind jostling the assembly appears to better resemble a choreographed dance.
This video goes into detail on the processes by means of which, despite their complexity, bacteria can assemble thousands of the “remarkable machines” known as ribosomes, in minutes with terrific precision.
In the bacterial 30S small subunit, 21 proteins attach to the folding rRNA core of the forming subunit.
In the video, Brett Thurlow tells us, “essentially the process of ribosome subunit biogenesis is an intricate dance of RNA folding and simultaneous S protein binding”. The process involves proteins binding to the rRNA molecule in a thermodynamically interdependent hierarchical manner as shown in the diagram below from the video.
Considering that ribosomes are a fundamental necessity for all living creatures, how they have come about should be of interest to anyone who has thought about the origin of life on earth.
See my previous comment.
I’m in no position to test these things but luckily for me there are people who have the expertise, time, money and equipment to do so and to publish their work, some of which I can access.
Jostling is a property of all molecules within living systems, so I’m not going to deny that. But blind jostling alone will not result in the specifically complex molecules required by living processes. Any such undirected activity is always used in such a way that it takes place within a higher directed process.
As an example there is this
They do get a fair bit of assistance.
You didn’t get it phoodoo. “Dust to dust” comes from a religious collection of books. So, if your ethics depend on what you’re made of, then you have the same problem any of your imaginary materialists has.
Your lack of a sense of dimension doesn’t mean that’s what Mould tried to get across.
phoodoo,
So you think that wild speculation is the very same as science itself, just because some science popularizers engage in it?
Also, well, I doubt someone who believes in magical beings in the sky, like yourself, is qualified to judge anything else as ridiculous. Take notice of the innumerable beams in thy own eyes first.
Ahh so in fact, yes, they do self-assemble from a solution of their parts, by randomly moving around until they encounter each other and then their mutual compatibility determine whether they stick together. As we were saying.
From the article:
CharlieM: Refuted!
LOL. What article did you read? Not this one you linked. Hahahaha what the fuck. This one basically proves it’s fundamentally a product of random justling of the constituent molecules, which have the capacity to correctly self-assemble under brownian motion.
Oh it looks like there’s an editing mistake in my post above. It seems I accidentally spliced my own commentary into a quote from the article halfway down, but I can’t edit my post now to correct it. Just to correct any misapprehensions, this part is entirely my own words:
Most remarkably, the “reconstitution” of ribosomes was more efficient at 37 degrees C, compared to at 0 degrees C, basically proving that the random brownian motion imparted to the constituents by solvent molecules is a significant factor contributing to the self-assembly process. From the results:
Are they? How do you know?
Sure, but ribosomes are the product of evolution, and go back to the RNA world.
The exact nature of that RNA world and it’s relation to the origin of living cells as we know them today, are still largely an unknown, but what we can say based on the evidence we already have, is that the ribosome is an evolved complex that appears to have it’s ultimate origin in the dimerization of a single, small piece of RNA. How exactly this piece of RNA arose, what function it performed, and the context in which this happened (as part of a cell-like vesicle, or some even simpler chemical system?) is still not known.
They get “assistance” from completely physical molecules that move around by random brownian motion but are “guided” by their structure and the forces of attraction and repulsion inherent in every chemical compound.
Nobody denies that a lot of complex stuff is going on or that the assembly process is not completely haphazard. What people are arguing against is your implicit suggestion that the properties of the biomolecules themselves are insufficient to ensure the proper assembly of biological complexes but that some additional vital force is required (what you call “the etheric life principle”). In arguing for this élan vital you will need to deal with the fact that all of the complexity and functionality of biomolecules can be accounted for by naturalistic explanations: That the specific sequence of polynucleotides and polypeptides (and hence their specific properties) is determined by information in the DNA*, which has been shaped by billions of years of adaptive evolution. The choreographer of your dance is natural selection.
*ETA: or in the case of RNA world, the RNA itself
No, no, no. The ‘processes’ by which matter interacts are inseparable from that matter. Things aren’t shoved around by external forces, but by forces intrinsic to matter. You should stop thinking of matter at the molecular level as if it were inert building blocks at our level.
CharlieM,
There was no offence. My sarcastic point was related to your telling people who know biochemistry is complex about the complexity of biochemistry. Being aware of that complexity has never been a significant blocker to a naturalistic explanation. Certainly too complex for undetectable forces to orchestrate, at any rate.
This cuts to the heart of the issue I mentioned above. You think of it as an assembly problem. But assembling actual molecular structures is a very different activity from, say, constructing a ball-and-stick model of that same molecular structure. You can’t just lever atoms into position, without them reacting as they pass.
A favourite analogy of mine (cos you know how I love an analogy!) is with regard to Hoyle’s dreadful ‘tornado in a junkyard’. People who think of molecular assembly as an exercise in macro-world-like dynamics are ignoring the very different physics ‘down there’. Determining a minimal system that has to be intelligently assembled is like trying to assemble Hoyle’s Jumbo in mid-flight, manouvring components that react violently on proximity to each other or to water or oxygen, fuel spilling everywhere, sparks from the electrics all over the shop. Intelligence cannot overcome physics.
phoodoo,
This was, I shouldn’t need to make explicit, a joke – you had just strawmanned an OoL scenario, so I figured one good strawman deserves another.
CharlieM,
You would be mistaken if you thought that this question had not been given any consideration. Nonetheless, you err in declaring a feature of all extant life as fundamental to life. All extant life is protein coding. RNA World explicitly rejects the idea that protein coding is fundamental.
Ideas can be refuted, not people. And I’m not sure what ideas of mine you think have been refuted.
Here are some of my comments re self assembly and stochasticity:
“These “self assembling structures” are difficult to produce so I think a more apt term would be “engineered self assembling structures”. They need a great deal of assistance if they are to “self assemble”.”
“He shows a set of magnetic pieces self assembling. What he does not show is the directed activity that went into the planning and manufacture of these pieces and setting up the conditions prior to them being made to move around randomly…
“In order to self-assemble organisms are experts at recruiting what they need from their environment”
“But we all know that there is much more to intracellular processes than stochasticity and molecules floating around and coming together by accident…
“Stochastic processes are easy to demonstrate if the conditions are set up in isolation, but how much deliberate action within the cell is necessary to facilitate any stochastic process?”
“Cells don’t just tolerate a measure of chaos, they use it to their advantage to achieve the dynamic organization within the plasma membrane”
“If they (tRNAs) are floating around randomly then there must be some sort of control constraining them to do so within limited areas awaiting reuse.”
“Self-assembly is a useful tool in many directed processes. That’s why materials scientists are looking into how nature does it…
My point is that they are designed to self-assemble when required and fall apart when required.”
The natural condition for living entities is to be whole. If they are taken apart, so long as the pieces retain enough life force then they will try to recover this wholeness. And by using the word “try” I am not implying any conscious choice. I am using it in the same way that I would say water always tries to get as close to the centre of the earth as possible.
Plants are a good example of this striving for wholeness.. We can take cuttings from many plants and regrow the complete organism. As animals evolve to higher stages they gradually lose this ability. Unlike us amphibians can regenerate limbs. And as we have seen magnets will assemble as they do because of the invisible magnetic field forces.
Here is a description of 60S (large eukaryote subunit) formation:
The 60S subunit assembles in stages in the nucleus and cytoplasm. Does anyone believe that these complexes can be assembles bottom-up from the attractive forces of individual molecules? Reading the complete paper gives an idea of the complexity involved.
From here
Ribosome subunits assemble through a complex process that involves much more than the parts sticking together. The separate polymers fold into and intertwine with each other as they come together. It has been likened to origami but is obviously much more complicated than any paper design.
Ribosomes components do self assemble but the life force is just as much an aspect of the “self” as the physical material.
Why would that be remarkable?
Life at all levels slows down as temperature decreases. The whole reflected in the parts. 🙂
From reading about them as here:
And here,
Understanding the role of assembly factors in ribosome biogenesis has:
All known organisms use ribosomes to produce proteins.Do you know of any living creatures that do not use ribosomes?
Hypotheses and speculations are not facts.
Well, about that:
This “life force” sure seems insignificant when compared to random brownian motion. Can you tease apart the role such random motion has from the “life force” then?
CharlieM,
Blam! There goes your foot.
If you think that it’s because you don’t seem to even know what you’re saying.
You say you are fine with stochastic elements to the processes that occur in life and in nature, yet you also can’t somehow resist the desire to state that you also think there has to be some sort of deliberation to it. You think things must be “set up” so as to occur.
But that just becomes one of those infinite regression-type arguments. If one stochastic process gives rise to conditions that favor another, you can just move back a step and ask how the first one arose, and at some point we’re going to bottom out of our current level of knowledge, and then in this gap in our understanding is where your deliberations hide. “Prove to me it can occur without deliberation” becomes the challenge you put to us.
I think these are good examples of exactly that:
Conditions don’t have to be “set up” for self-assembly to occur. Conditions can occur too. Nobody had to set up the atmosphere for clouds to form, that also happened naturally.
I don’t see why we should think any is. Is the Sun deliberately heating up the water molecules in the ocean?
Then you seem to be contradicting yourself, as you said above that “deliberate action” is required to set things up. Is deliberate action required to get water as close to the centre of the earth as possible?
I’m sorry but just what the hell are you saying?
That’s just the life we know of, which is not a good basis for thinking it is a fundamental requirement of all possible life. All currently known life shares common ancestry and inherited their ribosomes from the last universal common ancestor. That doesn’t make it a fundamental requirement for life.
No but I also don’t believe I know of all possible living organisms. Do you know of all possible living organisms?
That’s what the claim that ribosomes are fundamental to life is. Btw the conclusion that ribosomes are the product of evolution isn’t speculation, there really is evidence for it. You may call it a hypothesis, but it’s a hypothesis that generates testable predictions, some of which have been empirically tested and confirmed. It would simply not be reasonable to dismiss that as speculation.
I’m not sure you quitr get the freedom of movement available to very many of these molecules when they come together and when the proteins and rRNAs fold into their fundamental forms. Forms which are in constant flux. Bonds are continually broken and and made. Complexes and molecules are in continual movement around each other in the processes involved in translation. And it is the same for transcription, alternative splicing, mitosis, apoptosis and any other cellular functions you care to mention.
The formative forces are as natural as moving molecules in a similar way that electromagnetic forces are as natural as the movement of iron filings.
Any RNA scenario requires a supply of specific amino acids, a cell-like selectively permeable membrane, some sort of copying ability and an energy source which is controlled in some way.
There are no satisfactory demonstrations as to how all of these components just happened to have come together. There may have been many clever suggestions, but the Ptolemaic system of the movement of heavenly bodies was also a very clever system which worked very well mathematically.
Considering elliptical orbits in place of perfect circles revolutionized astronomy, I believe that when fields are given their due over matter then there will be a revolution in the understanding of life. After all what are chemical bonds but an interaction of fields.
Yes, I agree with that.
Yes, we all should! At that level there are no lumps of matter, only fields. Even the gross material world we see before us is our interpretation of fields which is provided by our senses. A piece of solid matter is a highly concentrated field.
I’m not dogmatically telling anyone anything. My posts are for anyone to read if they care to do so. And that includes myself.
I quite often look back on posts and question what I said or how I said it. When I look back in this way and reflect on what I wrote, I would probably change the majority of my posts. Especially posts that have been written in haste.
I like your “Jumbo” analogy.
Life does not get assembled piece by piece like some human manufactured machine. Any living form begins from wholeness and continues to be whole throughout its development. An embryo in an egg is a whole creature which contains all the processes it needs to function in the environment to which it belongs. A chick in the nest is a whole being which is in a constant state of development. Its internal processes are not adapted for flying, they are adapted for growing and maturing. The complete suite of processes which allow it to fly will come later. A time will come when much of the energy it once used for growth will then be used for flight.
The wisdom integral to nature is revealed in the sequential stages of living systems and the suitability of basic substances for use in the development of form. The properties of water, of carbon, of nitrogen, of oxygen, of hydrogen and all of the other molecules and elements involved all contribute to, and are perfectly suited to, making earthly life possible.
Life cannot begin through RNA alone.
I would reject the idea that any one particular feature is fundamental. Life at its most fundamental would require at least three contemporaneous features.
Yes. In the same way that I can tease apart Brownian motion from the nuclear forces or electromagnetic forces of a bar magnet or gravitational forces or the directed force of a butting bull.
Thinking about someone shooting off their own foot. It could be explained in terms of the fundamental forces of nature. But would this explanation capture the reality of everything that was involved in that incident, the creativity the produced the weapon, the pain felt, the horror felt by any witnesses?
deliberate is a good word. I think when people use the word teleology its another way of saying its deliberate (I think KN has been guilty of trying to confuse the meaning of the word.)
But the many books he referenced and many scientists in the field now consider it normal to add “teleology” into the modern synthesis thinking of biology. I have a problem with the concept of “modern synthesis” because its just vague and can include anything and everything, but are you disagreeing with these scientists who say biology has teleology? Because several here have already said they have no problem with there being teleology in biology, but I suspect the reason they are willing to concede this is because they aren’t thinking through what that means-and you clearly know that teleology(deliberate) spells the end for atheist biology teachings.
So do you accept there can be teleology in the modern synthesis or not?
Why you think teleology or design is an issue in biology is a puzzle to me. Evolution designs. It’s what we observe. No purely random process could explain what we see.
The meaning of this statement is clear to me in a similar way that mud is a useful material to make windows out of.
Are you trying to tell me that you consider the etheric life principle to be a physical force?
Yes, you confuse teleology with intentionality. If you wish to use those words as synonyms, then what word should we use for non-deliberate goal-oriented behaviour such as bacterial chemotaxis?
Once again you are asking questions to me that are clearly directed at the wrong person. The problem is either your inability to understand the topic, or your inability to click on the correct link. I suppose it could also be both.
But I will put you on record as saying you accept teleology in biology. Do I believe you know what teleology means? Not really. I am sure you will make up your own defintions again. Yet, the world knows what it means. Rummy knows what it means. That’s why HE doesn’t accept it.
I don’t confuse it at all. I know what teleology means. Rummy knows too.
I don’t really require a word for chemicals moving from a higher concentration to a lower one. It could be either teleological doing so or not. I don’t have enough information about the particular phenomenon to know.
Deliberation is undeniable in the example in Mould’s video. This is an example which shows that the stochasticity must be seen in context.
The production of the polypeptides that make up the capsid is a very structured process. Just look at the typical language used. Here from Nature, they write:
and
No matter where we look we find the language of directed activity. And of course we know that transcription and translation are fairly well understood processes which change one set form into another set form. Messages are sent from one area to be received at another site and this is not left to chance.
Here is an example
Cargoes such as mRNA can be carried “over long distances”.
Clouds are just one feature of the water cycle. They belong and do not exist in isolation.
Maybe deliberate is too strong a word. Guided action might have been a better phrase.There are plenty of examples of molecules being moved by active transport
I’m saying that there are more activities involved than just stochastic movement. In addition to this motion there is active transport and facilitated diffusion.
I wasn’t asking you a question in that comment. I was confirming that there is a biological designing process called natural selection.
You can quote anything I wrote. I doubt you’ll find the word “teleology” in anything I’ve written other than above. I simply don’t know if there is a hidden explanation behind what we can physically observe. What we do observe is natural selection and interaction between living organisms and their invironment resulting in change over time in organism and environment, in other words environmental design.
Like me try to talk as much like a 4 year old as possible, to make it easier for you.
R u m r a k e t t h i n k s i t i s a n i s s u e!
phoodoo,
Rumraket is the best person to say what he thinks. Your mind-reading abilities are also unreliable.
CharlieM,
Ah, if it’s demos we’re after, let’s see yours. Show these components not ‘just happening’ to come together, but nonetheless coming together.