There are numerous definitions of naturalism. Here is one definition with some additional observations from infidels.org:
As defined by philosopher Paul Draper, naturalism is “the hypothesis that the natural world is a closed system” in the sense that “nothing that is not a part of the natural world affects it.” More simply, it is the denial of the existence of supernatural causes. In rejecting the reality of supernatural events, forces, or entities, naturalism is the antithesis of supernaturalism.
As a substantial view about the nature of reality, it is often called metaphysical naturalism, philosophical naturalism, or ontological naturalism to distinguish it from a related methodological principle. Methodological naturalism, by contrast, is the principle that science and history should presume that all causes are natural causes solely for the purpose of promoting successful investigation. The idea behind this principle is that natural causes can be investigated directly through scientific method, whereas supernatural causes cannot, and hence presuming that an event has a supernatural cause for methodological purposes halts further investigation.
http://infidels.org/library/modern/nontheism/naturalism/
For the purposes of this discussion, I’m not going to be too insistent on particular definitions, but it seems to me this captures the essence of naturalism: “More simply, it [naturalism] is the denial of the existence of supernatural causes.”
Personally, I’d be on the side of naturalists or at least agnostic if I felt the origin of life question were satisfactorily resolved. So although I have sympathy for the naturalistic viewpoint, I find insistence on it too closed-minded. I don’t think reality operates in a completely law-like, predictable fashion, it only does so mostly, but not always.
The word “natural” can be equivocated to death and is often equated with “ordinary” or “typical” when it should not be. So if someone insists that naturalism is true but wishes to also be fair with the facts and avoid such equivocations, when they comment on the origin of life, they might say:
The origin of life was an atypical and unique event far from ordinary expectation, but many of us presume it happened naturally since supernatural events are not observed in the lab.
That would be the an accurate way to characterize the state of affairs, but this not what is usually said by advocates of naturalistic origins of life. Most origin-of-life proponents insinuate that the origin of life event was not terribly extraordinary, that OOL fits well within “natural” expectation, even though by accepted laws of physics and chemistry and current knowledge, such an event violates the ordinary (dare I say “natural”) expectation that non-living things stay non-living.
Turning to evolution, if someone insists on naturalism, but is at least fair with our present day knowledge, they might say:
It is NOT typical for something as complex as an animal to emerge from a single-celled organism, but we presume it happened naturally since animals share some DNA with single celled creatures.
Again, that would be the an accurate way to characterize the state of affairs, but this is not what is usually said by advocates of naturalistic evolution of life from the first cell. Evolutionists insinuate that the necessary events to evolve an animal from a single cell must not have been terribly extraordinary because animals and single-celled creatures share some similar DNA — the idea is insinuated even though it is a non-sequitur because something can share DNA via extraordinary or atypical events, at least in principle.
Darwin and his supporters argue that most evolution of complex function proceeded via a mechanism which Darwin labeled “natural selection”. However, if Darwin’s claims actually entail highly atypical events rather than ordinary ones, then his label of “natural selection” for how things evolved would be a false advertising label. If major evolutionary changes require highly atypical events, then “highly atypical events almost indistinguishable from miracles” would be a far more appropriate label for Darwin’s proposed mechanism of evolution. Instead, Darwin’s label of “natural” is presumptuous and unproven at best and completely false at worst. For all we know, natural selection prevents major evolutionary change. Michael Lynch points out:
many genomic features could not have emerged without a near-complete disengagement of the power of natural selection
Michael Lynch
opening, The Origins of Genome Architecture
Many? How about most? No one knows for sure, and thus Darwin’s label of “natural” for “natural selection” is presumptuous. For all we know the correct theory of evolution could be “evolution of significant novel forms by highly exceptional events”.
Animals and single-celled creatures share some DNA, but from all that we know, the transition from single-celled creatures to something as complex as a multi-cellular animal is highly atypical and so far from natural expectation that something of that order of change might likely not happen again in the history of the universe.
If naturalism can accommodate any atypical or extraordinary event as a matter of principle, no matter how improbable, then naturalism can accommodate events that would otherwise be indistinguishable from miracles.
Whether there is a theological dimension with atypical events is a separate question. Can there be an event atypical enough that it warrants supernatural explanations? That’s a philosophical question with probably no formal resolution.
Proponents of naturalistic emergence of biological complexity desperately pretend the sequence of necessary events are not atypical, but rather within the realm of ordinary expectation. Hence they try to render the question of supernatural origins as moot as the question of whether supernatural causes are needed to make ice melt on a hot day.
But imho, efforts to characterize emergence of biological complexity as “not that out of the ordinary” are failing. The more we learn of life’s complexity the more it seems highly atypical events were involved to create them. Perhaps these events were so atypical that they are virtually indistinguishable from miracles of supernatural creation.
I’m certainly not alone in those sentiments:
If we do not accept the hypothesis of spontaneous generation, then at this one point in the history of evolution we must have recourse to the miracle of a supernatural creation
Ernst Haeckel, 1876
Pasteur’s experiments and those followed from 1862 disproved spontaneous generation. Ernst Haeckel’s 1876 quote shows how false ideas like spontaneous generation die a slow death. Haeckel’s quote symbolizes how naturalism seems inherently uncomfortable with anything that suggests a highly atypical event actually happened somewhere in the past.
Funnily enough, I wasn’t aware of that particular remark before Petrushka posted it.
You are entitled to your own opinions.
As I said, in a sterile environment, it doesn’t matter how clunky, hit-and-miss, imperfect to replicate you are, you have the place to yourself.
Alan Fox,
These are simple relative to life but technologically they are more advanced then anything man has ever designed. The question is, are they the minimum form of sustainable life?
I agree that apoptosis is a multicellular mechanism but what about DNA repair. How long can a bacterial population survive without it? If it can’t then was it necessary at the origin?
Yes, in some ways the environment is a designer way beyond human capability. Of course the environment has had 4 billion years to work with. Humans? Less than a generation, really.
I’d say no. It’s hopefully going to be a fruitful area of research.
Was DNA a necessary element in first living organisms? There are modern
bacteriaviruses* who employ RNA as their genetic store. So if no DNA, no need to repair it. And why couldn’t life clunk along without a repair mechanism, initially?*ETA oops viruses, not bacteria
Alan Fox,
Mutations without repair degrade genetic material too fast. Since the sequence space is so large soon you have garbage. Without the genetic material to produce ATP and enzymes for rapid chemical reaction then the population dies. IMHO rapid and accurate copying of genetic information is mission critical for sustaining life.
The origin problem is the requirement for all the chickens and eggs to show up at once 🙂
You assume too much.
That first life is a clunky, hit or miss replicator.
That having the place to yourself is a good thing.
That not having the place to yourself is a bad thing.
Not sure if there is not an evolutionary advantage such that DNA repair mechanisms evolved once DNA was established as the vehicle for genetic inheritance. But the fact that RNA viruses exist today suggests DNA was not necessarily the first vehicle for hereditary material.
Not sure the sequence space has much to do with it. There are two opposing effects: the degrading effect of imperfect copying and the restorative effect of natural selection. Excess of one over the other leads to extinction or adaptation.
Yet here we are along with the rest of life that teems on Earth!
Oh, for sure!
Just that it doesn’t need to be any better than just enough to survive in a “green field”.
“Good”? Opportunities is how I see it. A completely free and open space with no competition is an opportunity.
“Bad”? Only if you lose out to the competition. If you let the competition do the hard work of turning themselves into easily digestible food and then eat them but without sending them extinct, you have created an opportunity for yourself.
TODAY.
There seems to be a rather popular misconception amongst creationists: the idea that apoptosis, or DNA repair, or some other (near-)ubiquitous function is absolutely required at its modern level of efficiency for “life” to exist. This idiotrope demonstrates a telling ignorance of the biology of extant organisms and an equally telling failure to think. “A new flagellum must be generated every 20 minutes.” Really? Why?
All extant organisms, including the retroviruses and RNA viruses that creationists seem blissfully unaware of, are amazingly complicated. But that isn’t the primary characteristic that distinguishes them from their potential ancestors. The difference is this: all extant organisms are highly optimized. That is, the distinction that Mung and colewd appear unable to wrap their brains around is not the simplicity of early replicators, it’s how mind-numbingly crappy they could be, and still win out. Early replicators could have doubling times measured in months or years, and efficiency levels that are a fraction of one percent.
Sure, the modern earth is teeming with organic molecules that the pre-biotic earth lacked, and these molecules might be useful building blocks for nascent life. The modern world does offer that advantage, but it comes at a very steep price: any nascent replicator on the modern earth needs to avoid becoming lunch for any existing beasties. That’s a huge problem for any modern OOL.
IMO, the only way that a modern OOL could take hold would be if NONE of its constituent molecules were digestible by ANY extant organisms, or a simple mutant thereof. It’s interesting to note that only synthetic polymers seem to fit that “non-biodegradable” bill, although some natural hydrocarbons come close.
So if one is looking for a modern OOL event, I would suggest that one should look for a germanium/silicon/boron-based lifeform, quietly replicating in semiconductors…
That might explain “bit-rot”.
😮
Alan Fox thinks “chemotrophs” are simple enough to have been the first life.
You’re probably confusing me with Salvador.
Only if Sal wrote:
You realize, don’t you, that I was mocking Alan’s argument?
But to return to something you wrote:
Highly optimized for other forms of highly optimized life. Not for simple life.
There’s no reason to believe that the highly optimized organisms of today would even recognize a simple life form or be able to digest it for food.
Just because Darwin thought something doesn’t make it true.
Alan Fox,
Oh the wonder of circular reasoning 🙂
DNA_Jock,
How crappy can they be and an animal can still sustain critical processes. The organism needs to stay alive to win. Mung and I do appreciate the creative “just so” stories 🙂
Very.
I like your style. Someone who knows orders of magnitude mopre than you about this tries to explain, but you won’t understand because understanding would dispel what is obviously very comfortable ignorance. Nobody should wonder anymore HOW you stay so ignorant, because it’s so simple – just reject what you don’t like and blame those who know. THEY are being “creative”. Right?
Flint,
Ask for the corresponding ID narrative ..
In fact, better to be clunky, hit-and-miss right? The more imperfect you replicate, the better!
That was another one of the lucky breaks of evolution, that it was imperfect. Now if something came along and replicated itself perfectly, oh that would be bad, very bad. It couldn’t evolve. It couldn’t get better at being better.
So it sure is a good thing that evolution is sloppy, or it wouldn’t be very good at all. The goldilocks of evolution. Sloppy JUST RIGHT!
Isn’t it “what we see is much too complex to have happened by accident, so it must have been Designed?”
Provided you do it better than the competition. Evolution is a multi-billion year arms race. The competition keeps getting better all the time.
Totally inadvertently, you raise a good point. If all organisms started off perfectly suited for their niche and unable to change, we’d have total extinction when the niches change. In theory, there is an optimum amount of variation (which you’d call “imperfection”) — too much, the organism couldn’t survive at all. Too little, it couldn’t survive very long. There is a “goldilocks” amount of variation, and evolution gradually honed in on that as well.
YES! You are correct. Both too much and too little “slop” and you go extinct.
I has 4 billion year destroy or prevent life, not create it or evolve more complexity in it.
It may be the wrong assumption that time is the friend, when in fact time is the enemy.
From memory, I think the earliest life-forms that we have evidence for show up around 3.6 billion years ago. It seems to have taken another 2 billion years for eucaryotes and multicellularity to evolve. The initial period where cellular biochemistry is developing and optimizing can only be hypothesized largely from circumstantial information but enough exists for this to be plausible. Much harder to hypothesize, because we have no evidence at all remaining from the time when abiogeniesis happened, is the precise circumstances and mechanisms of that event.
But it is far more than an assumption. The time-scale is clear. What makes you suggest time could be “the enemy”?
I realise Sal, Mung, Colewd and phoodoo find evolutionary theory and a “naturalistic” explanation for the origin of life unbelievable. Let me add that I am far less optimistic than some regarding ever establishing an explanation for the origin of life on Earth (find evidence or echos of evidence of life elsewhere and everything changes 🙂 ). Until then, I’m content to concede we really don’t have anything approaching a complete explanation.
I am curious as to what those that mock attempts at scientific hypotheses think happened. There appears to be no hypothesis attributable to the “Intelligent Design” movement that could be stretched to any sort of explanation for the origin and subsequent diversity of life on Earth. Have our Evolution Skeptics any positive ideas of their own they’d like to share?
Sal? Mung? Colewd? phoodoo? Anyone? Is there a thread topic there?
I would expect precisely the same results as the “how decisions work in phoodoo world thread”. Lots of talk from them about anything except the topic itself.
Mung,
It’s amazing the extent to which people will dodge with things which, in other arenas, I’d bet they would accept without demur.
The thing which is being argued a rare event – ‘cos it only happened once – is the origin of Life-Like-Our-Life. And it is the case that LLOL is very predatory towards the molecules of LLOL, because they are building blocks and contain ‘free energy’ (in multiple senses of the term). LLOL doesn’t know the ancestry of the things it predates upon. If it’s LLOL, it’ll have it if it can.
The excuse ‘You don’t know if current life would be predatory to any new life form or not.’ is feeble. We do know, because we are talking specifically of LLOL – life like our life, the thing we are suggesting could happen multiple times and here’s a perfectly valid potential reason we don’t see it.
Multiple origins of that kind of life would struggle to become noticed among that already there, whatever other kinds of life you may have in mind that wouldn’t. That kind of life – LNLOL – we have no reason to bring into the picture at all.
Alan Fox,
Just something colewd saw on the internet the other day, and decided to add to his list.
Mung,
Ecology. New organisms struggle to supplant long-established forms, as a matter of general principle. It happens, but it’s not the rule. Otherwise, how does anything ever become established?
Selection. Adaptation involves the elimination of some forms. It is very unlikely that a novel form would be sufficiently better adapted to outcompete an existing form without any adaptation in its history at all.
Yeah, yeah, I know that’s not evidence! We’re deep in ‘were you there?’ territory at this point.
Alan Fox,
Dang, you mentioned Darwin! Nothing more guaranteed to make the shutters go up!
Again I have visions of Mung as a five year old wearing an adults lab coat. He sort of gets it, but fails to understand why what is unconvincing to him personally has been convincing to others who’ve actually seriously invested in the field.
Given you’ve totally failed to understand any objective empirical evidence presented to you in the past who cares, Mung?
No, it wasn’t inadvertent at all.
LOL. You’re not fooling anyone.
I reckon that everything that you write here is mocking, Mung. My point was that your focus on “simple” vs “complicated” misses the point, viz: OOL would have been riotously inefficient.
See, you’re doing it again. And missing my point, which was that IFF a modern OOL event shares basic chemistry with modern life, then it will get eaten before anyone notices it. There’s plenty of reason to believe that a crapulous life-form that shares chemistry with extant life will get eaten for lunch.
Yeah, I assumed the same. I thought everybody did?
Sarcasm. You are doing it wrong. Again.
As others have noted, there is a Goldilocks range of mutation rates. If mammals magically lost polymerase proof-reading, we’d be screwed. (Note that without it, we would not have evolved such large and complex genomes.) At the other end of the spectrum, RNA viruses and retroviruses have very high (per nucleotide) mutation rates, so there’s a limit on their genome size. But the high mutation rate is a big plus for them when they kill humans, since it makes it far more difficult for the wilier humans to devise drugs to stop them. Hence the multi-drug cocktails used to treat HCV and HIV.
So long as they are fractionally less crappy than their crappy cousin, they will win out.
Your use of the word “animal” here suggests to me that you are thinking about multicellular life. We were talking about OOL.
If they’re the same resources as life uses now, then new life starting now would be seriously behind.
If life, for example, started by some sort of RNA-replication, it would be pretty much doomed. Naked RNA is a food-source for bacteria. As are the basic constituents used to make ribonucleotides: phosphate, sugar and nucleobases. They take it in and break it down into it’s basic constituents and either use it for fuel or to make RNA of their own.
But that’s because they’re the break-down and waste-products of life that exists now, which is also USED and eaten by life that exists now. And life now is very good at taking up and using those resources. It is extremely hard to invade an already occupied niche. All the best spots are taken.
For reasons stated, that doesn’t follow. In fact it is opposite to the truth.
Yes. Phylogenetics. Even within LUCA, there are detectable homologous relationships between individual genes. Allan brought up the clusterings of aaRS enzymes. This is evidence that pieces of the translation system itself has an evolutionary history that extends further back than LUCA (and that the translation system used to be simpler than it was in LUCA). There are other examples in the literature if one can be bothered looking.
Various other seemingly fundamental processes and molecular machines, when analyzed in detail, exhibit properties of being the result of an evolutionary process, such as (to pick an example) components of the ATP-synthase molecular machine.
If memory isn’t failing me, there are some core metabolic enzymes in the carbon fixation pathway of LUCA that are homologous, meaning they evolved from a promiscous common ancestor prior to LUCA.
What do you think I said, for crying out loud??
Yes, lucky evolution, it just so happens to get the exact Goldilocks range it needs. Just like ALL THE OTHER LUCK it got!
Just another coincidence!
Natural selection. If you deviate from the range, selection will tune it back into it. That’s why it works and why it’s not some kind of “happy coincidence”.
Rumraket,
Oh, so you mean initially DNA copied itself perfectly every time, but natural selection didn’t like those, so they all died off. Then some got a mutation for mutations, then natural selection preferred them, so they won out.
See guys, evolutionists aren’t story tellers. No, no. They are carnival barkers.
Two somewhat contradictory positions seem to be being pushed. OoL-style events are expected to be both rare (because it takes ‘luck’), and routine (if they occur at all, we should see loads).
Pushed by whom?
What is the evolutionists position?
phoodoo,
By youm – the critical side of the discussion. Not necessarily all by 1 individual.
Can’t speak for the rest, but my position is in relation to the OP’s contention that ‘naturalism’ must have a problem with an event like OoL that is, it seems, far in the tails of a probability distribution, because so far as we can tell it happened only once and no more. I can think of, and have presented, several objections to this line of reasoning, which seem to being being met with a rearguard squirm as if I had been the one advancing an argument, as opposed to addressing one.
Allan Miller,
I am talking about the replication process. Apparently from the very beginning it would have had to be both bad, but not too bad, no other parameters would work.
Another lucky break.
phoodoo,
The latitude available on a sterile earth for a short genome is substantially greater than that available on a populated earth for a long genome. ‘Bad-but-not-too-bad’ is not a uniform measure independent of circumstances. If a genome cannot replicate at all it leaves no descendants, for sure. But it only takes one – one genome that replicates to leave at least one offspring capable of replication – to get the ball rolling. It certainly doesn’t have to be a perfect copy.
The other part of the ‘Goldilocks spectrum’ – that replication is too good – I think we can discount at this stage, don’t you?
Sure – to the extent that we are talking of a stochastic process, you won’t see the failures, and how unlikely success is depends on unknown circumstances. You are on no firmer ground assuming it vanishingly unlikely than I would be in assuming otherwise. If the probability (which we don’t know) is within a certain range for the number of trials available, you will see the event, however ‘lucky’ it might appear.
Unless probability is zero, as trials increase then not-seeing-it becomes the unlikely outcome, in that possibly counterintuitive way probability works. Like allele frequency, a change from 45% to 55% (say) cannot but be a change from 55% to 45% for the alternative outcome.
Why can we discount it, what does this mean. The replication has to be bad, but not too bad, and good but not too good. Why are we discounting the luck of the replication process not being too good?
phoodoo,
OK, you can have it back if you want. I find the spectacle of a Creationist thinking it worth considering that an OoL produced a perfect replicator first time off to be a bit of a novelty, but … yeah! It was soooo lucky it wasn’t too perfect to evolve! Another bullet dodged by our ancestor.
Creos hate narratives with explanatory power. Especially if the narrative is consistent with evolutionary processes and applies to early replicators right after OOL. To them they’re just so stories. Poof IC flagellum is it!
This goes to the point I was making earlier: we don’t have the relevant background knowledge necessary to determine whether abiogenesis was extremely unlikely, or extremely likely, or anywhere in between.