Taking “ID is science” out of the ID/Creation argument

I have committed the unpardonable sin of promoting ID as theology and arguing ID is not science. ID is the lineal descendant of Paley’s natural theology (as in contrast to “revealed theology”). I’ve publicly disputed the use of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics as a general argument in favor of ID/Creation, and I’ve been mildly critical of the concept of specified complexity and its successors. I’ve suggested ID is most appropriately taught in college/seminary theology and philosophy departments. When I published a 2005 exchange between myself and Eugenie Scott of the NCSE regarding the appropriateness of ID being taught in college religion and philosophy departments, Eugenie was much kinder to me than some in the ID community who insist “ID is science.” See: Correspondence between Salvador Cordova and Dr. Eugenie Scott

To that end, in conjunction with university professors, deans of Christian and secular colleges (who are favorable to both Intelligent Design and belief in Special Creation), I’m helping build out the electronic component of courses that teach ID and concepts of Creationism for such venues.

The first order of business in such a course is studying Paley’s watch argument and modern incarnations of Paley’s watch. But I’ve found compartmentalizing the pure science and math from the theological issues is helpful. Thus, at least for my own understanding and peace of mind, I’ve considered writing a paper to help define terms that will avoid the use of theologically loaded phrases like “materialism”, “naturalism”, “theism”, and even “Intelligent Design”, etc. I want to use terms that are as theologically neutral as possible to form the mathematical and physical foundation of the ID argument. The purpose of this is to circumvent circular arguments as best as possible. If found what I believe are some unfortunate equivocations and circularity in Bill Dembki’s definition of Design using the explanatory filter, and I’m trying to avoid that.

VJ Torley was very kind to help me phrase the opening of my paper, and I have such high respect for him that I’ve invited him to be a co-author of the paper he so chooses. He of course is free to write his own take on the matters I specify in the opening of my paper. In any case, I’m deeply indebted to him for being a fellow traveler on the net as well as the example he has set as a meticulous scholar.

Here is a draft opening of the papers which I present here at TSZ to solicit comments in the process of revising and expanding my paper.

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Multiverse or Miracles of God?
Circumventing metaphysical baggage when describing massive statistical or physical violations of normative expectations

Intro/Abstract
When attempting to set up a framework for expressing the improbability of phenomena that may turn out to have metaphysical implications, it may be helpful to isolate the metaphysical aspects of these phenomena from the actual math used to describe them. Additionally, the probabilities (which are really statements of uncertainty) can be either observer- or perspective-dependent. For example, in a raffle or a professional sporting league, there is a guaranteed winner. Using more formal terminology, we can say that it is normative that there is a winner, from the perspective of the entire system or ensemble of possibilities; however, from the perspective of any given participant (e.g. an individual raffle ticket holder), it is by no means normative for that individual to be a winner.

With respect to the question of the origin of life and the fine-tuning of the universe, one can postulate a scenario where it is normative for life to emerge in at least one universe, when we are considering the ensemble of all universes (i.e. the multiverse). However, from the perspective of the universe in which an observer happens to be situated, the fine-tuning of that particular universe and the origin of life in that universe are not at all normative: one can reasonably ask, “Why did this universe turn out to be so friendly to life, when it could have been otherwise?” Thus, when someone asserts that it is extremely improbable that a cell should arise from inanimate matter, this statement can be regarded as normative from the perspective of human experience and experimental observations, even though it is not necessarily normative in the ultimate sense of the word. Putting it more informally, one might say that abiogenesis and fine-tuning are miraculous from the human point of view, but whether they are miraculous in the theological or ultimate sense is a question that may well be practically (if not formally) undecidable.

The objective of this article is to circumvent, or at least minimize, the metaphysical baggage of phrases like “natural”, “material”, “supernatural”, “intelligent,” when formulating probabilistic descriptions of phenomena such as the fine-tuning of the universe and the origin of life. One can maintain that these remarkable phenomena are not explicable in terms of any accepted normative mechanisms which are known to us from everyday experience and scientific observation, and remain well within the realm of empirical science. However, whether fine-tuning and the origin of life are normative in the ultimate sense, and whether they are best explained by God or the multiverse, are entirely separate issues, which fall outside the domain of empirical science.

662 thoughts on “Taking “ID is science” out of the ID/Creation argument

  1. Fair Witness: We know the gaps are real.It’s the god that we never seem to find in any of them.

    Yet, in many of those gaps science has filed them with bad science. Should we also say since they were wrong then why should we believe they are right now?

    Benjamin Rush
    Treasurer of the Mint, signer of the Declaration of Independence, author of medical textbooks, Benjamin Rush was America’s best known and most trusted doctor. In his thriving private practice Dr. Rush doused patients with cold water in the winter, gave them “artificial diarrhea” and bled them-in Mr. D.T.’s case, four gallons. Rush’s biggest contribution was in the area of psychiatry. Believing mental illness to be caused by bad circulation to the brain, he “twirled” patients from ropes suspended from the ceiling, for hours on end. He also invented the “tranquilizer chair,” employed all over the world. This innovation restrained a patient’s hands and feet, covered his head with a wooden box and had a hole cut in the bottom, for bodily functions. Believing that pain and suffering were curative, Dr. Rush beat, starved and verbally abused his patients, and poured acid on their backs. He cut them with knives and kept the wounds open for months or years, to facilitate “permanent discharge from the brain.” Known as a strong advocate for the humane treatment of the mentally ill, his likeness still adorns the seal of the American Psychiatric Association.

  2. stcordova: But what I’m teaching is for a religion/philosophy class, like I said in the OP!

    Like from the very title:

    and first paragraph

    Now, you may dislike religion, but at least what you dislike can’t be based on me saying that my ultimate belief in God is necessarily a scientific one.What is scientific is that “a cell comes from a pre-existing cell [except by some unexplained exceptional mechanism]”.

    Seems to me you constantly sprinkle your arguments with sciency jargon and pretty diagrams to make them pass as science. You say conventional ID isn’t science, but do you explicitly inform your students that what you’re teaching them isn’t science either? If you do, I take back what I said, but there’s still the elephant in the room of how poor your argument is. So at best, it’s horribly bad philosophy as far as I can tell.

  3. stcordova: What is scientific is that “a cell comes from a pre-existing cell

    And dogs come from preexisting dogs, yet they evolved

  4. dazz: And dogs come from preexisting dogs, yet they evolved

    You know this because…? if they didn’t God exists and atheists lives are ruined.

  5. phoodoo: You know this because…?if they didn’t God exists and atheists lives are ruined.

    You realise that dogs evolved from wolves through artificial selection, do you?

  6. dazz: You realise that dogs evolved from wolves through artificial selection, do you?

    A dog is a wolf. A wolf is a dog. No difference.

  7. dazz: And dogs come from preexisting dogs, yet they evolved

    Actually I think dogs evolved from a creature that was a placental mammal ancestor to dogs, wolves, jackals, maybe a few other creatures. But I’m not a Baraminologist, and I don’t aspire to ever be one. 🙂

    Dazz:

    You say conventional ID isn’t science, but do you explicitly inform your students that what you’re teaching them isn’t science either?

    Good idea, I think it would be helpful to make a distinction when I’m teaching science vs. theology. But, since some of the theology requires biochemistry, I need to teach some science. I would for example hope some people could learn what an amino acid is and how protein/polypeptides are polymers of amino acids.

    One of the pioneering pastor’s of President Trump’s church (McLean Bible), Lon Solomon, believed in God after studying enzymes, for example. Here is a 4-minute clip of Lon Solomon’s sermon (not a science class) to his congregation about how his study of enzymes made him believe in God:

    https://drive.google.com/open?id=1LPOohx0ClvmVB7EahWfI2fhfbTpROMae

  8. stcordova: Actually I think dogs evolved from a creature that was a placental mammal ancestor to dogs, wolves, jackals, maybe a few other creatures

    Thanks for the correction, but the point was that dogs always come from dogs, yet they can still evolve from precursors that aren’t dogs. Just like cells could have evolved from protocells. This can’t be news to you, right?

    stcordova: But, since some of the theology requires biochemistry, I need to teach some science

    LOL

    stcordova: One of the pioneering pastor’s of President Trump’s church (McLean Bible), Lon Solomon, believed in God after studying enzymes, for example. Here is a 4-minute clip of Lon Solomon’s sermon (not a science class) to his congregation about how his study of enzymes made him believe in God:

    Haven’t watched it but let me guess, it goes like this. “It’s super complex, therefore Jesus”. Amirite?

  9. Tom English: Never, ever have I made an argument about intelligent agency. What I have pointed out, quite a number of times over the past 20 years, is that psychologists and ethologists regard intelligence as a hypothetical construct — not something that is physically real.

    It’s a paraphrase of an exchange. I’ve argued that halting oracles fit the bill as an intelligent agent, and you’ve argued that even if we detect the presence of halting oracles we can just wrap them up as another physical law, thus they don’t indicate there is anything outside of the physical universe.

  10. dazz: Haven’t watched it but let me guess, it goes like this. “It’s super complex, therefore Jesus”. Amirite?

    Yes, that’s the precise weakness of only arguing the improbability of it all. It is indeed just god of the gaps in that case. In ancient days, people had no idea how the physical world worked, so gods ran everything. This sort of improbability argument is just more of the same.

    The ID argument is not god of the gaps because it combines the improbability argument with specification, providing an alternative hypothesis.

  11. Welp, atheist prediction confirmed. Solomon’s punch line is

    “I became convinced there was a god, simply by looking at the incredible complexity of human life, looking at the incredible complexity of the human body, and saying, from my mathematical, scientific point of view, I’ve gotta be honest, there’s no way all this happened by chance, there has got to be a god”

    So yeah, Sal, same old stinky bullshit. This is not science, not even close.

  12. phoodoo: A dog is a wolf. A wolf is a dog. No difference.

    Then wolves make perfect pets and you can trust them around children, and you can’t tell the difference between a poodle(say) and a wolf, right?

  13. phoodoo: You know this because…? if they didn’t God exists and atheists lives are ruined.

    Sorry mate, but this is just a really crappy excuse you invent to try to make yourself feel good.

    I used to believe in God. If I became convinced again that God exists, why would my life be ruined? I don’t remember my life as a believer being in any way bad. I now think I was wrong back then, I don’t think I was worse off or stupid or anything.

    Could it be that you’re actually just projecting? Is it not plausible that if you lost your faith in God, you think your life would be ruined, and that that is the main stumbling block in our conversations?

  14. Rumraket: Does ID lead to testable predictions? Does the multiverse? If they do, they’re both science,

    That seems like kind of a low bar. Not every empirical claim is a scientific claim, is it? I mean, if I say, I could really go for a candy bar right now. And then I grab one–am I doing science?

  15. EricMH: The ID argument is not god of the gaps because it combines the improbability argument with specification, providing an alternative hypothesis.

    No, it’s a Something Else Of The Gaps argument. The specifications that make any sense are versions of fitness (or traits reflecting adaptations, such as flying speed). They are not specially provided to us by some alternative hypothesis.

    So the argument is, we (think we can) show that ordinary evolutionary processes cannot achieve genotypes that have this specification, so therefore we conclude in favor of Something Else.

  16. EricMH:

    The ID argument is not god of the gaps because it combines the improbability argument with specification, providing an alternative hypothesis.

    A specification is a before the fact design document laying out the performance requirements the design is supposed to meet.

    IDiots only make after the fact measurements of existing biological forms and called them a specification. In fact no one has an actual specification for anything to do with life discovered on the planet.

    It’s just one more variation on the Sharpshooter fallacy with the IDiots trying to define their “evidence” into existence.

    It’s still “God of the gaps” all the way.

  17. i have a poor opinion of Eugenia Scotts integrity or science ability.
    Anyways. iD is not for theology. this is an absurdity. the whole point is to find in nature, and do, that complexity could not create itself. so a creator did it. yes its paleys watch!! that was science too. The other side tries to say complexity can create itself. thus debunking that is also science or THAT clai9m would not be science.
    Its science by the sack full.

  18. Rumraket: and you can’t tell the difference between a poodle(say) and a wolf, right?

    And you can’t tell the difference between a poodle(say) and a great Dane, right?

    Yet you call them all dogs.

  19. walto: I could really go for a candy bar right now. And then I grab one–am I doing science?

    Yes, provided that you specify which candy bar in advance. 😎

  20. Robert Byers: iD is not for theology. this is an absurdity. the whole point is to find in nature, and do, that complexity could not create itself. so a creator did it. yes its paleys watch!! that was science too.

    Hmmm. What was the title of the book again in which William Paley introduced the watchmaker analogy? Ah yes:

    Natural Theology or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity

    If that was not theology, then why did he say so in the title, I wonder?

  21. phoodoo: I don’t see how anyone can expect to discuss aspects of realms outside of our universe and experience, and try to define those parameters and meaning, using only our experiences of this world, and expect to say anything logical or meaningful at all.

    I agree, but why then don’t you object when people claim that realms outside our universe and experience exist in the first place? Or is that existence not an aspect of them?

  22. Tom English: Never, ever have I made an argument about intelligent agency. What I have pointed out, quite a number of times over the past 20 years, is that psychologists and ethologists regard intelligence as a hypothetical construct — not something that is physically real.

    Surely you are not suggesting that people have been reifying the abstract concept of intelligence 😉 ?

  23. stcordova: Is it far to say won’t believe God created life unless He shows up to say, “I did it?”I commend your skepticism.But I’m just trying to clarify what standard of evidence would make the God-explanation an acceptable one to you.

    Speaking for myself, you will first need to define God in such a way that he has actual testable properties. Most theistic concepts of God I’ve seen are far too vague ever to be put to an empirical test.

  24. faded_Glory: Speaking for myself, you will first need to define God in such a way that he has actual testable properties. Most theistic concepts of God I’ve seen are far too vague ever to be put to an empirical test.

    faded_Glory: I agree, but why then don’t you object when people claim that realms outside our universe and experience exist in the first place?

    Do you have the same objections to multiple universes theories?

    No being able to test for God doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, any more than not being able to test for multiple universes doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

  25. walto: That seems like kind of a low bar. Not every empirical claim is a scientific claim, is it? I mean, if I say, I could really go for a candy bar right now. And then I grab one–am I doing science?

    Yes. Not particularly interesting, or useful, or rigorous science. But yes, you are.

  26. Adapa to EricMH:

    It’s just one more variation on the Sharpshooter fallacy

    The sharpshooter fallacy fails in the face of the Law of Large numbers. violoations of the Law of Large Numbers is a specialized case of violations normative expectations.

    When one can frame the Design Argument in terms of the Law of Large Numbers, the Sharpshooter Fallacy fails.

    One of my most pointed objections to Specified Complexity and the Explanatory Filter is the virtual absence of the mention of the the Law of Large Numbers. The way my friend Bill Dembski attempted to refute the Caputo example in his No Free Lunch book was like trying to kill a fly with a sledge hammer. He could have been more succinct if he just use the Law of Large numbers and the binomial distribution!!!!

  27. Adapa to EricMH:

    It’s just one more variation on the Sharpshooter fallacy

    I have a question to you, one which was posed to Evolutionary Biologist Nick Matzke in so many words…

    If you came across a table and all the fair coins on the table were all heads, would you say the 100% heads arrangement was the result of a random process? If I said that arrangement of 100% heads being improbable is improbable based on the sharpshooter fallacy?

    HINT: try using the Law of Large Numbers to come up with an answer. If you can’t stop calling ID proponents Idiots.

    Btw, The Law of Large Numbers, btw applies nicely to the problem of the beta-D-deoxyribofuranose (above), alpha peptide bonds in amino acids, so many other examples in the problem of abiogenesis.

  28. DNA_Jock: beta-D-deoxyribofuranose

    Well, well, how would you suggest the first DNA of say 100 bases emerged? Would you say it is a highly probable or improbable event based on chemical expectation.

    But Sal, you need to take into account the different ways the base could be attached to the sugar (9, 9, 15 and 6 for A, C G, & T respectively). That’s
    12.5% / 9 x 12.5% / 6 = 0.029% for an A:T base pair and
    12.5% / 9 x 12.5% / 15 = 0.012% for a C:G base pair.

    If I did, that would make the improbability even more remote, so my omission was to help your side of the aisle out.

    If you’re right, this is a true show-stopper for abiogenesis. You should publish this.

    ME? What do you me by publish, as in trying to persuade people who aren’t willing to say abiogenesis is a violation of chemical expectation. Some manage to do this, but if you mean, like post it on Vixra, that can be arranged.

    Let me ask you this. Do you think abiogenesis is a highly probable event (as in requiring a few trials) or it needs lots and lots and lots of trials before succeeding (as in multiple universes on the extreme end of improbability).

  29. phoodoo quoted faded_Glory:

    faded_Glory: Speaking for myself, you will first need to define God in such a way that he has actual testable properties. Most theistic concepts of God I’ve seen are far too vague ever to be put to an empirical test.

    faded_Glory: I agree, but why then don’t you object when people claim that realms outside our universe and experience exist in the first place?

    I’m not faded_Glory, but I think we agree on those points.

    phoodoo said:
    Do you have the same objections to multiple universes theories?

    There’s some differences. Multiple universe hypotheses (I doubt they’re theories yet, but I’m no cosmologist) arise from models about the origin of our universe. In other words, multiverses are predictions of these models. Does that mean there’s multiple universes? I don’t know. I’d say maybe not. But, again, I’m no cosmologist. Another difference is that, further exploration of the consequences predicted by those models, there might be ways of testing the hypotheses. One more is that our universe is undeniably real. So there’s no big leap of faith involved in thinking there might be more than one. Again, nothing conclusive from where I seat and my limited knowledge about cosmology, but there’s scientific avenues to multiverses, and philosophical grounds for giving them the benefit of the doubt.

    phoodoo said:
    No being able to test for God doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, any more than not being able to test for multiple universes doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

    Agreed. Not being able to test for “God” doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. However, giving this one the benefit of the doubt requires a huge leap of faith. All of the gods imagined by humanity look exactly like that: imagination, fantasy. The “sacred” books don’t look sacred, or like the products of anything else but humanity’s wild imagination. So, sorry, but I cannot allow myself to give those kinds of fantasies any credit, other than in terms of how amazing our imaginations can be.

  30. Joe Felsenstein,

    No, it’s a Something Else Of The Gaps argument. The specifications that make any sense are versions of fitness (or traits reflecting adaptations, such as flying speed). They are not specially provided to us by some alternative hypothesis.

    What makes sense is that fitness can preserve an existing feature. That explains very little.

  31. colewd:
    What makes sense is that fitness can preserve an existing feature. That explains very little.

    Actually it explains so much, and so well, that, often, scientists get carried away blaming everything on natural selection.

  32. So we have water and DNA in a pre-biotic soup which has water.

    Will it spontaneosly connect like a genome (I’m not even requiring it be able to code for anything). It would seem a little difficulty given that the formation for the PhosphoDiester bond is a condensation reaction described here:

    https://teaching.ncl.ac.uk/bms/wiki/index.php/Phosphodiester_bond

    To get this to happen with water in the vicinity, well, one needs some sort of machinery, but without that machinery (such as in a living cell) this is kind of hard.

    In fact DNA strands in contact with water, I would presume is favorable to hydrolysis reactions (as in breaking them apart, albeit slow), but also deamination and depurination. Time doesn’t exactly help the cause of a DNA-first chemical-evolution scenario.

    I haven’t worked out the numbers, but presume if one through nucleobases, phosphorus, and sugars, one would get anything resembling a genomic like strand of even 100 bases. And no, this isn’t the Texas Sharp Shooter fallacy, this is a violation of chemical expectation and the Law of Large Numbers.

  33. stcordova: So we have water and DNA in a pre-biotic soup which has water.

    Says who? Which scientists posits this as a serious model of abiogenesis? Can you link the publication?

  34. Rumraket: Says who? Which scientists posits this as a serious model of abiogenesis? Can you link the publication?

    Like anyone who describes chemicals in a solvent.

  35. Like the issue with 500 fair coins arranged to be 100% heads, there are physical issues regarding stability and predictability of outcomes. In physics class we called this the problem of inertial stability epitomized by :

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

    Now a fair coin does have stable configurations. Either Heads or Tails, but very unlikely (though not impossible) to be found on its side.

    At the molecular level, there are some analogous situations, such as with the molecules of life: DNA/RNA, Amino Acids.

    They can connect up together, but, like with the fair coins, there are issues with violations of the law of large numbers when these things are floating around in a solvent. Just like the coin flipping around in the air, the molecules are flipping around in orientation about its axes. There are some slight preferred bonding preferences (as suggested above with the deoxyribose sugar in water), but in the unlikely event a bond forms in a solvent like water, or even via some condensation reaction, there is no guarantee only one kind of bond will form repeatedly unless the randomizing process is arrested or deterred, based from the issues of bio-physics alone.

    Now a Robot can go around a pile of fair coins and make them all 100% heads. The Robot is in essence arresting the effects of randomizing process. In engineering terms, we call this filtering.

    The issues is that from the space of possibilities, a random process which “selects” arbitrary configurations is EXPECTED to result in behaviors consistent with the Law of Large Numbers, much like the reason we expect a system of a buzzillion fair coins, after being randomly flipped, will tend to be 50% heads, not 100% heads.

    In living creatures, we have something comparable to robotic/cybernetic systems that expend energy to create violations of the Law of Large Numbers and other violations of normative expectation.

    So the question is in the absence of a cybernetic system arresting the effects of randomizing processes, and a cellular replicator arise.

    Of course a replicator can easily arise if we’re dealing with certain materials. Salt crystals are an example of a “replicator.” The issue is whether the kind of replicators given the materials involved is the normative chemical/physical expectation.

  36. stcordova: Like anyone who describes chemicals in a solvent.

    Really? So give me the link. Link me the publications that hypothesizes abiogenesis happened with “water and DNA in a pre-biotic soup”.

  37. Rumraket,

    You’re not giving a charitable meaning to the figures of speech that I’m using. Your word lawyering is sidestepping the issue whether abiogenesis is probable. You can state the reasons why you believe, from first principles, “a cell comes only from a pre-existing cell.”

    As an aside, I found this new buzzword:

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

    Biocybernetics is the another naming scheme (the term “cybernetics” itself originated as an reflection about biological systems functioning) used in cybernetics as an description of biological science understood in technological terms, composed of biological disciplines that benefit from the application of cybernetics including neurology and multicellular systems. Biocybernetics plays a major role in systems biology, seeking to integrate different levels of information to understand how biological systems function.

    The issue is how, in the absence of a BioCybernetic system and/or God-like intelligence, how molecules that are floating around in solvent or just lying around wherever are spontaneously oriented and positioned and then connected in a way that violates the law of large numbers.

    That’s one of the basal issues of abiogenesis. Whether it’s RNA first, DNA first, proteins first, metabolism first — those are just kicking the problem around.

    This isn’t even the Scrabble/information problem stephen meyer describes. How about just getting scrabble pieces to line up side by side in the middle of a flat table through random shaking of the table. This is a more basal problem for abiogenesis, not even the supposed “information” (as in recipe) problem.

  38. stcordova: The sharpshooter fallacy fails in the face of the Law of Large numbers. violoations of the Law of Large Numbers is a specialized case of violations normative expectations.

    Ah, good old Sal the bullshit artist with his usual off-topic deflection and his favorite “500 coins” non-sequitur.

    Suppose I walk in and find 500 coins is ANY configuration, then record the configuration after the fact and claim DESIGN! because the coin pattern is “specified”. Is that a valid ID argument? Because that’s exactly what the IDiots are doing with the biological features they claim are “specified”.

    Sorry Sal, your Law of Big Numbers won’t make that IDiot nonsense work.

  39. How about the Milky Way? What are the odds that every single celestial body in it spins in the same direction? 500 coins? that’s nothing. There are hundreds of billions of stars in the Milky Way! Isn’t God wonderful?

  40. stcordova:
    The issue is how … [bullshit trying to get a magical “solution” pass for a valid default deleted from quote] … how molecules that are floating around in solvent or just lying around wherever are spontaneously oriented and positioned and then connected in a way that violates the law of large numbers.

    Easy. Because neither the molecules, nor the “medium” (solvent and/or surface) are inert molecules. They can have charges, and/or other hydrophilicities, and/or hydrophobicities, and/or oxidative/reductive tendencies, which means that, due to those properties, molecules interact with each other and with their medium. Also because there’s cycles of light, heat, cold, etc. This is not merely a matter of “large numbers,” but a matter of physics and chemistries.

  41. stcordova: You’re not giving a charitable meaning to the figures of speech that I’m using

    Don’t be a hypocrite Salvador. You talked about DNA floating in water in your whole post as if it were the way scientists thought that life started. It wasn’t a figure of speech.

  42. stcordova: Rumraket,

    You’re not giving a charitable meaning to the figures of speech that I’m using.

    You weren’t using a figure of speech. You were trying to make abiogenesis appear unlikely by positing that the theory requires that life began with DNA randomly polymerizing in water. I have never seen such a scenario seriously suggested by any contemporary origin of life researcher.

    Your word lawyering is sidestepping the issue whether abiogenesis is probable.

    You can’t calculate the probability of an unknown process. You can calculate the probability of an imaginary process, but nature is under no obligation to have followed your imaginary process, so your calculation would accomplish nothing.

    What we could say, given your calculation, is that IF life originated that way, it would be very unlikely. But DID it originate that way? You’d presumably like to argue that it would have to without intelligent design, but how do you know that? Good luck demonstrating the truth of that claim.

    You can state the reasons why you believe, from first principles, “a cell comes only from a pre-existing cell.”

    I don’t believe that a cell only comes from a pre-existing cell. Ironically if that was true, then creation by God would be impossible, or alternatively God would have to be a pre-existing cell if he created any other cells.

    But to understand why I don’t believe that, we need only look at Big Bang cosmology. Current evidence tells us that, going back far enough in time, the universe was so small that the density of matter would have made the existence of biological cells impossible, and that the state of the universe was a boiling soup of subatomic particles at unfathomable temperatures and densities. Given this, however far back life as we know it goes, even assuming it came from some other planet and predates the 4.5 billion year history of our own planet, it would ultimately have had to originate somehow at some time AFTER the universe became cool enough for biological cells to exist.

    So however that origination event happened, whether from non-living matter, or creation by God, it could not have been by cell-division from a pre-existing cell (barring the hilarious idea that God is a cellular lifeform, but hey we’re supposedly created in his image so maybe we should praise his membrane?).

  43. Rumraket: You weren’t using a figure of speech. You were trying to make abiogenesis appear unlikely by positing that the theory requires that life began with DNA randomly polymerizing in water. I have never seen such a scenario seriously suggested by any contemporary origin of life researcher.

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7690155

    Isolation of new ribozymes from a large pool of random sequences

    The paper described terms like “solution” and molar concentrations. It’s a pool, a soup, a warm pond like Darwin suggested, whatever.

    Do you have any more trivialities to stress rather than addressing substantive issues?

  44. Rumraket, to Sal:

    You were trying to make abiogenesis appear unlikely by positing that the theory requires that life began with DNA randomly polymerizing in water. I have never seen such a scenario seriously suggested by any contemporary origin of life researcher.

    It’s just a variation of tornado-in-junkyard.

  45. stcordova: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7690155

    Isolation of new ribozymes from a large pool of random sequences

    The paper described terms like “solution” and molar concentrations. It’s a pool, a soup, a warm pond like Darwin suggested, whatever.

    Do you have any more trivialities to stress rather than addressing substantive issues?

    This has nothing to do with polymers of DNA forming in water. So first of all, RNA, not DNA.

    The purpose of that paper is to see if an RNA ligase based on a ribozyme can be isolated and evolved(as in, determine whether that function is possible for an RNA-based catalyst, aka a ribozyme, and whether mutation and selection can improve it), not that the settings employed to accomplish this are claimed or even implied to be prebiotically plausible in any way.

    Further, nowhere in the paper is it claimed these ribozymes magically polymerized from in an aqueous solution of monomers(in fact they explicitly explain that they are created by PCR using DNA-polymerase protein enzymes). Nothing about what they actually carry out here in seach of the ribozyme activity is meant to constitute a model of abiogenesis. The discussion is cast in the context of an RNA world, the specifics of which are barely mentioned.

    Usually condensation reactions of the type that would polymerize nucleotides in the absense of catalytic enzymes are thought have happened by evaporation (wet-dry cycles, in the dry zone of the cycle when the condensation reaction would be favored), which isn’t attempted or analyzed in that paper. Or alternatively by adsorption on mineral surfaces. Here’s a recent couple of recent articles on that subject: Dry/Wet Cycling and the Thermodynamics and Kinetics of Prebiotic Polymer Synthesis. And Mineral surfaces select for longer RNA molecules.

  46. keiths:
    Rumraket, to Sal:

    It’s just a variation of tornado-in-junkyard.

    By the time creationists realize that’s a stupid argument, and by the Law of the Large Numbers, about a thousand 747’s will have been assembled by tornadoes in junkyards around the globe… and a million perfect replicas of Donald Trump in dunghills

  47. keiths: It’s just a variation of tornado-in-junkyard.

    That too, but Sal wanted to make a point about the kinetics of uncatalyzed phosphodiester bond formation in water to make it all seem even worse. He was trying to say something like the following:

    A) First you need to get the DNA to polymerize without a catalyst, which it doesn’t normally want to do in water.
    B) Then you need it to produce the correct sequence (tornado in a junkyard).
    C) And then you’ve still got next to nothing, because DNA is pretty much chemically inert*, so now you need a whole host of associated protein enzymes to process that DNA and turn it’s sequence into something useful, replicate it, etc. etc(so more tornadoes in more junkyards).

    Don’t think for one goddamn second Sal didn’t know that he was trying to stack the deck in this fashion by proposing the most ludicrous model imaginable and then pretending that’s the only way life could have originated.

    * Technically it isn’t, as deoxyribozymes have been evolved. Yes. ribozymes made of deoxyribonucleotides(DNA), though these aren’t really prebiotically plausible, but still.

  48. Rumraket: This has nothing to do with polymers of DNA forming in water. So first of all, RNA, not DNA.

    Sure it does, because thus saith the abiogenesis RNA world community, “from RNA came DNA. ” But in any case, if one want’s a pre-biotic soup to make DNA genomes first, try this:

    https://www.nature.com/articles/s42004-019-0130-7

    In a 7-ml glass reaction vessel the below reagents were added: 1000 µl of 0.1 M glycine, 1000 µl of 0.1 M 5′-phosphate D-ribose and 1000 µl of 0.1 M adenine. The pH was adjusted to the desired value using acid (HCl) or base (NaOH) and finally the total volume was taken to 4 ml using the corresponding amount of HPLC water….

    They even use the phrase ” the simultaneous one-pot formation”. As in a pot of soup. 🙂

    And it spontaneously creates nucleoside isomers, which is part of the problem that must be overcome regarding the Law of Large numbers.

    Read it and weep:

    https://media.springernature.com/full/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1038%2Fs42004-019-0130-7/MediaObjects/42004_2019_130_Fig1_HTML.png?as=webp

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