This article by Michael Marshall on the The Secret of How Life on Earth Began is probably the best summary on the topic I have read to date. I compiled a quick glossary below.
It’s not just about the “smoker” vs “souper” debate (sometimes referred to as the Metabolism First vs RNA World Brouhaha). This article also examines other disparate competing hypotheses regarding the origin of life and even suggests that a unifying grand hypothesis may be possible.
A great read!
oparin haldane charles darwin atp tree of life chemiosmosis rna world franklin hershey chase peter mitchell cyanide nick lane alkaline vents hydrothermal vents clay meteorites geothermal pond volcanic pond ultraviolet compartmentalisation first lipid world genetics first montmorillonite citrate magnesium copper lipid precursors hodge podge world metal ion core deborah kelley lost city william martin luca last universal common ancestor origin of life reactor pier luigi luisi glycol nucleic acid günter wächtershäuser jack corliss michael russell pyrite david bartel philipp holliger gerald joyce peter nielsen polyamide nucleic acid pna albert eschenmoser threose nucleic acid tna eric meggers miller urey watson crick orgel john sutherland thomas cech walter gilbert thomas steitz jack szostak ribozyme rna enzymes ring of life vitalism trofim lysenko alexander oparin j. b. s. haldane armen mulkidjanian jillian f. banfield friedrich wöhler benjamin moore biotic energy warm little pond
walto,
He needed a second bottle of Grecian. Thus demonstrating Godel’s incompleteness theorem.
🙂 🙂
How is that? The laws already explain it the what do the Angels do?
peace
By true randomness I mean the lack of pattern or predictability in events. Pseudo randomness on the other hand would be a measure of our personal ignorance rather than the actual state of affairs.
If true randomness existed it would be evidence against the Christian God who is Sovereign over everything that happens. That’s why it’s not a meaningless test.
Because God is omnipresent and consistent if the laws of nature weren’t consistent it would be evidence against God.
It’s just the opposite if the pioneers of science did not believe in the Christian God natural laws that we could understand would have never been considered.
peace
I don’t know about that, it’s just a restatement of the current scientific consensus on the origin of life.
peace
By far the most popular QM interpretations involve what you call ‘true randomness.’ Very few physicists believe that it’s an epistemic matter only. There was de Broglie and his pilot waves and Bohm and his implicate order, but the research hasn’t gone well for them and the consensus is long gone. God apparently plays dice.
I’m aware of the current consensus in QM. So it’s really silly to say that for me the God hypothesis is unfalsifiable.
peace
The key word here is apparently. If God does in fact play dice he is not Yahweh.
peace
That reveals a problem faced by those who think that life on earth just emerged by happenstance. The chemical properties of earthly matter is extremely conducive to the production of a multitude of living forms. But for all the skill and ingenuity humans throw at it we find that putting these chemicals together in a way that starts the process is beyond our present abilities. The raw material is readily available but to achieve life from non life obviously takes far more organisational skills than our best intellects possess.
You can fill a bucket with all the substances required to make living organisms; prokaryotes, eukayotes or whatever you wish, nothing will ever crawl out of it. Its a foregone conclusion that whoever is experimenting in the origins of life will not just be gazing into a bucket of chemicals, there will be a tremendous amount of manipulation going on.
IMO life takes an enormous amount of organisation, it was never and will never be achieved by accident.
I think you should make up your mind. According to your last post on this subject, if humans DO manage it, it won’t show anything anyhow.
Kind of a nice comfortable cocoon you’ve made for yourself there, Charlie.
If that’s your test, it’s basically already been falsified. Like Charlie, you don’t seem particularly worried, though.
I’m guessing there will be other hurdles.
It’s true that deterministic QM isn’t at the forefront of cutting research, but that doesn’t mean there’s a clear-cut consensus. In any event all it takes for a consensus to be overturned is some brilliant innovation by an up-and-coming grad student or post doc.
Quite frankly, I don’t see how general relativity and QM could be integrated into a more comprehensive theory unless we either get an empirically verified deterministic version of QM (the problem with pilot waves is that they are in principle undetectable) or if QM is superseded with a deterministic theory (which seems unlikely, but who knows?).
Anyway, why are we talking about this in a thread about abiogenesis?
How so. Are you suggesting that QM as it now stands can account for every phenomena in the universe. That is news to me.
Not really. It’s pretty strait forward
quote
“If there is one single molecule in this universe running around loose, totally free of God’s sovereignty, then we have no guarantee that a single promise of God will ever be fulfilled.”
end quote
R.C. Sproul
peace
Why do you require the world to be designed?
Do you always get what you want?
There’s a word for that, and it is “No.”
Glen Davidson
It would be unobserved.
Probably.
Does anything happen if nobody is watching?
Is that a serious question?
Exactly. Only god and you could know if there is a difference.
Don’t be shy. Tell us.
tell you what?
of course
peace
Did you read the article?
Quote:
Using only the materials and conditions found on the Earth over 3.5 billion years ago, we have to make a cell.
end quote:
“Materials” are more than laws. Wouldn’t you agree?
peace
I would say no but then again I’m a theist and in my worldview someone (God) is always watching.
According to the atheist worldview all most all things including the origin of life must happen when no one is watching.
If that’s true seeing the laws of nature as “observed regularities” doesn’t seem to make any sense
peace
Then it sounds like a dice playing God can do one thing more than Yahweh.
CharlieM,
Hey, glad to see you got the joke … So who actually thinks life emerged by ‘happenstance’? Unless you define happenstance as everything not intended. The failure of life to emerge from buckets is hardly a problem for a ‘naturalistic’ origin.
So if we can’t micromanipulate matter, with a particular presently unknown physico-chemical system that works of the squillions of possibilities, it can’t happen? I love this human-hubris that comes out in the discussions. Our best scientists can’t create life. So what? They are all thumbs. It is hardly a simple task to micro-manipulate proton- and electron-level matter, and it’s obviously not just a matter of mixing chemicals. And, we would not know if a replicating molecule had emerged in our apparatus, until it had achieved a certain threshold concentration.
You are essentially saying that, because intelligence can’t make life, it can’t arise without it. Not the first time I’ve seen a crypto-Creationist offer that particular paradox.
You don’t say.
IMO life is clearly capable of being supported by physics and chemistry of this earth. That’s how I’m able to type. So I don’t see any fundamental barrier to the physics and chemistry of this earth getting to a self-replicating configuration from one that is not self-replicating. ‘By accident’ is a dumb way of expressing the position of ‘natural’ abiogenesis, as if there is a dichotomy: things either happen ‘by accident’, or someone chooses that they occur. Whence comes the chooser, and how do they know what to do?
Presumably your god is alive. Presumably your god is organised. Therefore your god did not come about by accident and must have been created by another being. And likewise that being.
Or do your rules only apply to one and not the other?
Don’t bother to reply. I’ve heard it all before. I’m just pointing out your double standards.
Standards are good. Double standards, twice as good.
For certain meanings of the word “good,” anyway.
Glen Davidson
God (like all of us) can’t do what is against his nature.
That is not a deficiency that is a strength.
peace
That is the definition of happenstance is it not?
peace
This could work, if Allan hadn’t ruined it in advance:
I get that evolution is this thing: It cannot be experimentally done, but it can happen (and that’s solid scientific proof that it actually did).
We have guys with standards like this talking about other people’s double standards.
Evolutionists and ID’ists deserve each other. I blame Darwin. Biology was okay until he came along.
For example: The artificial controversy was good for book sales.
Lots of stuff was better, I understand. There were way fewer painful shots at the doctor’s office. Computers and phones weren’t constantly getting all weird and losing stuff (Am I right?!?). Nobody thought you were nuts when you went to church and spoke in tongues.
I hear sex was better too!
Screw Darwin.
fifth:
newton:
And a dice-playing God with good anger management skills can do at least two things that Yahweh cannot.
Is anyone in this thread defending the view that there were physical laws that operated to bring about the first life and the reason we don’t see new life popping into existence out of lifeless matter any longer is that those laws somehow lost the object of their affection?
Sincerely doubt it.
fifthmonarchyman,
No. Although it’s a stupid word that I never use, so I could easily be wrong. If an atom of chlorine and an atom of sodium come together through the sharing of electrons, is that ‘happenstance’? If so, then I think ‘happenstance’ has very powerful capabilities, well beyond the things we can direct hrough intent.
Erik,
Then you don’t actually get it, because I was not talking about evolution, but the origin of life. Without replicators, you cannot have evolution. I know you apply a blanket sneer to every argument offered, but there are distinctions that are worth appreciating.
And indeed, no, life has not been experimentally observed to arise. The experiment may indeed be unachievable, due to the nature of the materials and conditions. It is not as easy to manipulate atoms as people suppose it ought to be if-it-were-true. Still, all that applies to Life-By-Fiat just as much as Life-from-Non-Life. Failure to directly observe Life-from-Non-Life does not bolster Life-By-Fiat.
Mung,
Not me.
Yes, you’ve nailed it.
All hail the power of happenstance.
Let atheists prostrate fall.
Bring forth the royal scepter of chance,
and crown it Lord of all.
The Designer fixed everything before technology.
Except for the unworthy, of course. Evil babies!
Glen Davidson
Mung,
So you think that every molecule – indeed, every atom – is held together by God? It seems there is nothing that is happenstance on that view. So it is a word without a job. So glad it came up; it really helps move the discussion along.
Not by God directly, but by tiny little angels.
ETA: Scientists call groups of these angels “forces”.
Mung,
Indeed. So the force that holds molecules together – is it happenstance?
Sure, no overall theory, no comprehensive explanation, peculiarities abounding that had no functional causes, and categorization without mechanism. Yes, it was doing every bit as well as stamp collecting.
A lot of people miss those days, but certainly not because of the meager science existing then in biology.
Glen Davidson
Stamp collecting was more fun before Darwin too. Nobody knows why, but it just was.
Then a God whose nature encompasses dice playing can do one thing more than a God whose nature doesn’t if you prefer.
Stamps with Darwin’s picture on them were particularly hard to come by.
Darwin–stealing your funs for his own ungodly purposes!
Glen Davidson
By what standard was my response a blanket sneer? Does a guy who accepts things happening without any evidence while demanding evidence for things that don’t suit him even have a standard?
No. Nobody here believes that.
Next question.
Once again I find I have to agree with Erik. What a preposterous idea it would be if someone actually believed in the caricature that “it cannot be experimentally done, but it can happen, and that’s solid scientific proof that it actually did”.
Wow. I’d even go so far as to say that anyone who thinks like that is downright stupid. Glad I’m not like that.
Why don’t you try to find such a guy and ask him? May I suggest the mirror?
Erik has this remarkable talent that he seems to always run into people with the most absurd beliefs. They believe in things without evidence, yet requires lots for things they hate. They hold mutually contradictory views, multiple of them. They claim to know stuff they can’t. And so on and so forth. Yet he seems entirely unable to point these people out, or show where they make these statements or profess these beliefs. It’s really weird to read his posts, it’s like he’s conversing with people not around. What a truly strange thing to observe.