Um, it isn’t intended, on its own, to explain the OOL. It is meant to show how the sorts of “probability” arguments you and other ID proponents cling to actually do not rule out chemical mechanisms for the OOL.
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Haven’t tried that, but I would assume you select the first portion of text from a comment and select the quote button when it appears. Then scroll to the next comment and select the portion of text from there that you want and hit the quote button when it appears. Then when you have the appropriate quotes in the editor hit the upper left arrow and choose the option to move it to a new topic. Next time if I need to I’ll try it and let you know how it works.
Freudian slip? 
@jety @Jim I don’t believe you can split threads. I think that we mods have to do so. You can create new ones, though.
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Well, in a sense OoL research has been going on forever 
But more seriously, I would think the pace of OoL research is going to be very dependent on the pace of developing the tools and techniques need to investigate it. It’s not just a matter of doing some math or looking around with a microscope.
That just doesn’t seem like an actual thing, to be honest. Scientists don’t just go “well, we’ve been working on that one for a while and it doesn’t seem like we’re getting far, must be there’s no answer.” Individual people might give up but don’t see any inherent reason why OoL research should stop researching. I think it’s a bad idea to go down metaphysics-of-the-gaps road.
Well, I’m not an OoL researcher, nor a molecular biologist so I can’t give specifics, but I’d point to the development of the RNA World hypothesis (not it’s existence but it’s development), The Origin of Biological Homochirality - PMC and:
Just think about the advancements in computing and genomics that had to be in place before scientists can dig into the evidence. Just because 1950’s biochemistry couldn’t get that far doesn’t mean the field is dead.
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No, this is a different kind of first principles.
The english version of the book
It’s basically a guide to Exactly How the simplest possible chemical self-replicating automaton should look like. His approach is not as unique as I once thought, but it is still a very good summary that seamlessly integrates chemical and philosophical considerations.
Basically, for life to emerge you need
*a food source
*a reaction cycle to produce the molecules the chemoton needs
*a control reaction cycle that contains irreversible reactions
*a membrane system to contain the previous two
page 119 “Perhaps it will not be superfluous to remind the Reader of our aim to find the simplest possible abstract system, independently of whether it can be actually realized or not.”
I love this book, and not just because I’m a hungarian. Well, that too. Even though I think it doesn’t solve the origin of life problem, it takes us as close as humanly possible, and gives us a great and mature conceptual framework so that we may actually know what to aim for.
That’s not at all what I’m suggesting. But I think at a certain point in time there is a reasonable point where science has to admit that there doesn’t seem to be a plausible explanation, and punt it to metaphysicians for the time being. And if in further research something turns up that would change things, then the ball could go back into the scientific court.
The main point I’m stressing here is that I think scientists should recognize that it’s possible that naturalism is false, and therefore recognize that there may be cases where science won’t be able to come up with a natural explanation because the explanation is metaphysical.
To a priori assume naturalism is true is to risk basing your reasoning on a false premise. If it turns out to be false you are bound to end up with a lot of theories that are way off center. I think it’s much more reasonable and better in the long run to keep open to both naturalism and theism until it can be shown that either of those positions is false.
Thanks for the paper.
. A plausible proposal is that partial enantioenrichment could have taken place at the molecular level, but that prebiotic amino acids and sugars need not to have evolved completely to single chirality before the formation of the first biopolymer chains.
So it appears they are claiming evolutionary mechanisms prior to first life. Thoughts? What is the mechanism that moved them to single chirality?
How many papers relevant to the OOL, published in the last year, have you read?
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But there’s no real methodology for determining that. Since we don’t always know what we don’t know, how would we know when we’ve hit that point? It looks like OoL researchers are still getting appointments, grants, and are publishing papers in the field. But again, it seems like you are saying there is either a scientific answer or a metaphysical answer. But in general, that’s not the relationship between science and metaphysics. They typically speak to different aspects of reality.
But what OoL researcher has said that there must be a scientific explanation to the exclusion of any metaphysical explanation? They are just saying “this is the best science can do right now, hopefully we can explain more tomorrow” as far as I can tell.
I think you are just asserting that, I can’t see why that would have to be true. An a priori assumption of naturalism within science would ultimately only lead to an incomplete view of reality, not a wrong view of reality, unless you’re saying that God deceives us on a large scale, and hence our senses can’t be trusted.
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I don’t get the impression that they are specifically talking about biological evolution at that point per se. The point of the paper is that an initial bias towards one “handedness” is not the problem (it’s actually trivial), the problem is how to amplify it to the point of essentially uniform handedness. In that paragraph, my take is that they are saying that homochirality could be more functional in biopolymers than mixed chiralities. At that point it is then just a 50/50 shot to get the chirality we have today.
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Who are you to judge the progress of science? Are you part of an NSF funding group? If you want OOL research to progress faster, more funding is needed for research. However, I think that you actually don’t want OOL research to progress as you are afraid of the impact new research with have on your beliefs. Which is it? Do you want to see more funding in OOL research or less funding? Why?
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I agree.
In general how do we do science with non predictable mechanisms as being proposed in biology? If it is not predictable how do you build a model and eventually test that model?
Why do you think it would have impact on his beliefs?
What do you mean by non-predictable?
I’m only going on second hand information which is why I didn’t claim that I knew for certain. Maybe you could clue me in on what progress has been made?
I don’t know. But he does seem scared of OOL research. With precision cosmology, and human origins genetic sequencing, is OOL the only big gap left for you to complain about?
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Why don’t you study the progress being made on human origins especially in the area of ancient genome sequencing. So much progress and real surprises going on in this area of paleontology.
Something I cannot model. I can model what happens when I let go of a ball at 5 feet.
I cannot model the effect on a population that random mutations will have.