I have already pointed out the part that is not based upon empirical science (IMO) in Dr Szotaks article above. My main beef is with public communication about OOL.
I can definitely go through Sutherland’s paper and see if I can point out more examples.
Edit:I will start out with articles/communications about OOL as it’s far easier to understand than the Sutherland paper.
Let me start with simple article in berkeley.edu on the origins of life .
Claim 1- Simple organic molecules were formed
Living things (even ancient organisms like bacteria) are enormously complex. However, all this complexity did not leap fully-formed from the primordial soup. Instead life almost certainly originated in a series of small steps, each building upon the complexity that evolved previously
Even considering naturalistic processes alone, why rule out a meteor delivering the first living cells? See the word almost certainly? What’s the certainty? Have they calculated probabilities or defined any process for this?
Claim 2-
Self-replication opened the door for [natural selection](javascript:Glossary(‘Naturalselection’,1)). Once a self-replicating molecule formed, some variants of these early replicators would have done a better job of copying themselves than others, producing more “offspring.” These super-replicators would have become more common — that is, until one of them was accidentally built in a way that allowed it to be a super-super-replicator — and then, that variant would take over. Through this process of continuous natural selection, small changes in replicating molecules eventually accumulated until a stable, efficient replicating system evolved.
How do we know natural selection did all this… what is the actual empirical or theoretical science that proves this?
Claim 3-> > Replicating molecules became enclosed within a cell membrane.
The evolution of a membrane surrounding the genetic material provided two huge advantages: the products of the genetic material could be kept close by and the internal environment of this proto-cell could be different than the external environment.
Cell membranes must have been so advantageous that these encased replicators quickly out-competed “naked” replicators.
This breakthrough would have given rise to an organism much like a modern bacterium
Wow, cell replication and the evolution of the cell wall… again how?
I don’t see how these are not just assertions without much evidence.
Claim 4- > Some cells began to evolve modern metabolic processes and out-competed those with older forms of metabolism.
Up until this point, life had probably relied on RNA for most jobs (as described in Step 2 above). But everything changed when some cell or group of cells evolved to use different types of molecules for different functions: DNA (which is more stable than RNA) became the genetic material, proteins (which are often more efficient promoters of chemical reactions than RNA) became responsible for basic metabolic reactions in the cell, and RNA was demoted to the role of messenger, carrying information from the DNA to protein-building centers in the cell. Cells incorporating these innovations would have easily out-competed “old-fashioned” cells with RNA-based metabolisms, hailing the end of the RNA world.
There story over… Does this look like a field where Scientists are just exploring processes? The entire story is said with such confidence even though there is almost slzero evidence…
As far as I can see, communication of OOL is positivism+ naturalism + Science… and the science seems to be the little brother here.
OK, so here’s a quote that @Ashwin_s cited as problematic. For context, it comes from a Nature Communications article by Jack Szostak that is a part of their Innovations In: The Biggest Questions in Science “special report” so it isn’t a research article (no references and an infographic instead of data, for instance) but more of a “so where are we?” review. OK, so there’s the context, @Ashwin_s’s quote is from the opening paragraph:
OK, so a question for you @Ashwin_s (when you get a chance) is, what specifically do you think Szostak is asserting? The quote itself is two questions, I don’t actually see any assertions so I think that would be a good starting point.
I have already explained all this above. It was in the context of the discussion of Dr Tours comments and challenges to show statements made in the article which are not scientific.
I think Szostak is zooming into the two best ways to see OOL from natural processes.
a) as an extremely unlikely chance event.
b) As a direct result of some kind of “natural law”.
These are not scientific evidence backed claims. They are conclusions reached based on a naturalistic metaphysic.
OK, your interpretation seems a bit loaded. I took him very differently. It looks to me like he’s establishing common “book ends” of possibilities (fluke or inevitable, simple or impossible) that the average reader might come into the article thinking. It’s just a basic “engage the reader” type questions. I can’t imagine he’s trying to produce an exhaustive list of philosophical and scientific positions on OOL and then limiting which are “valid” or anything like that.
I don’t think the answer is probably either (fluke or inevitable) but I’m certainly not offended by his questions. I don’t seem him asserting anything in the questions themselves, just trying to engage his audience with some opening questions. Perhaps this isn’t the strongest case for your argument so I’ll leave it there.
I don’t find his questions offensive either. I just recognise it is influenced by a commitment to MN and definitely not based in any empirical findings. These are the two options or bookends as you say which are available in a naturalistic system.
You see similar assumptions which are based on naturalism being stated upfront in other articles also. I see these claims as what they are. Philosophical/metaphysical claims. I have shown it above in a Baylor university article on OOL too.
Read the literature. There are tons of reasons why scientists don’t find this plausible
People who criticize a certain area of research are never even up to date on it. So irritating
OK, so here we have a evolution education website making several claims. So context is, again just to be clear, that this is not a scientific research article but rather an educational resource.
On one hand, I do think that means it has to be particularly sensitive to a wide audience and the level of certainty it’s portraying.
On the other hand, as someone who does science education as a job, there is no way to simultaneously engage an audience and provide evidence for everything you say. I recently read a literature review that was so heavily cited (what you want) that it was completely unreadable. An educational resource that does what you want (provide convincing scientific evidence for every statement) would be similarly unreadable. Additionally, the fact of the matter is educators 1) are often not the ones producing the science and 2) will often “gloss over” or overly simplify things to help students digest enormous amounts of material. Problem 1 can be worked on, but probably never eliminated. Problem 2 is mostly a function of the human brain only being able to process so much at a time. I spend a big proportion of my time in General Chemistry teaching stuff that I know is not strictly true, or at least needs lots of nuance. I have to leave the further, more detailed analysis, to more advanced courses. One of the ways you lose students fast is to present multiple competing explanations without the knowledge and skills to tell which one is better. Often in science education we give one (hopefully the best) answer until students develop the knowledge and skills enough to wrestle with the ambiguity and uncertainty. Some students interpret this as “lying” or “changing science”, but it’s not.
@Ashwin_s, I would say again, this one may not be the best example. This one has clear assertions, but it’s not intended to be a nuanced, thoroughly cited (it’s barely a couple paragraphs for decades of work and hundreds, if not thousands of research papers) or “the final word”.
I have said from the beginning that my issue is with the communication of OOL.
I agree. Do you think the level certainty portrayed is correct/ justified.
At what point would “nuance” become miscommunication or a lie?
Would a disclaimer that you are showing a simplified rendering help.
Take the reliance of the story told by Baylor.edu on natural selection. How much actual evidence is there that natural selection can fine tune simple self replicating moelcules to the levels required.
Why not present the sequence as a hypothesis and show how it can be falsified?
Is the picture even detailed enough to be falsified?
I think you are dodging the issue here. Do you think Baylor could not have qualified their assertions?
How many of these assertions are just assertions? Take the cell wall appearing and being selected for followed by DNA and protein based metabolism…
How much of this is an educated guess at best?
People trust scientists and university. An assertion made with confidence by a reputed Scientist/university is taken as scientific fact by most people.
Trust is a terrible thing if lost.
I would like to point to a more honest way of talking about OOL. This time by Indiana.edu.
http://www.indiana.edu/~geol105b/1425chap10.htm
They start with a clear disclaimer/modus operandi-
it should come as no surprise that the earliest beginnings of life are enigmatic. Basically, scientists do not know the exact processes that led to life on Earth. Because the evidence for very primitive life probably was destroyed by more efficient life forms that succeeded them, we may never know the exact answer. Nonetheless, scientists have made important progress in understanding the types of chemical processes that may have led to living structures.
To illustrate the problem, just imagine the following: A friend that you know to live in your hometown of Chicago, calls you and tells you that he currently is in San Francisco. How would you know the exact route he took to get there? He could tell you of course, but lets assume that he won’t. From the time of your last encounter with him you might be able to guess whether he traveled from Chicago by airplane, train, or car. Then you could try to guess which airline or train he took, or which highways he might have followed. However, unless you get access to the reservation system of the airline or travel agency that booked his flight or train, or to the computer of his credit card company to track his movements, or even follow his suspected route and check for eyewitnesses that might have seen him, it will all remain just that – an educated guess. Unless you have this detailed information, you have to be satisfied with developing plausible scenarios based on (1) your knowledge of the starting and ending points and (2) the approximate time it took him to make the trip.
We are in a similar predicament with our understanding of the origin of life. Because we don’t have detailed information on the exact steps we will have to be content with developing plausible scenarios based on information concerning conditions on the early Earth around the time life originated nearly four billion years ago. It is these scenarios that we will discuss in the following paragraphs.
It’s not very difficult to communicate. I can respect this kind of communication.
I rarely see it though
I think this is worse than even you state. No one has really established the simple to complex model that all this is based on. How are complex systems improved upon to get more complexity.
What is the mechanism? Self replication and copying error plus the most favorable sequence survives?
The origin of life is difficult but so is the origin of the eukaryotic cell, the first multicellular organism etc. Every step takes boat loads of new functional information. We have no evidence we can create large amounts of information algorithmically or by trial and error yet we assume this is true.
I agree with you Ashwin it is time for science to get real here. They are misleading the public and fooling themselves into counted wasted amounts of man hours based on an assumption that is not supporting by evidence.
(facepalm) Yes Bill, we have an overwhelming amount of positive evidence natural evolutionary processes can and have produced the complexity we see. You’ve been shown the evidence over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over yet you still make these false statements. That’s why we know you aren’t interested in honesty or learning the science.
You have not idea what you have. This is simply an unsupported assertion that you simply repeat.
We will see if any of the scientists here can help you support this clam.
I’m not sure this makes any sense. There is no indication that self-replicating molecules must be fine-tuned.
Ashwin, would you mind providing a link for this? I can’t seem to find it.
No one said they are.
There are specific hypotheses that are being tested, regarding specific steps of the abiogenetic process. Feel free to look them up, if you are interested. None of them involve magically poofing things by a God, but if you can think of a way to test that, I’m sure we’ll all be interested
I’ll give my overall impression from reading this discussion.
Some of the Christian participants seem deathly afraid that a final success of OOL research would totally and completely refute their religious beliefs.
It is mostly the ID supporting Christians who give that impression. For example, I doubt that @swamidass is at all worried about OOL research.
To those who are troubled by OOL research – may I suggest that you seem to be short on faith.
Yet it may enhance religions beliefs as Behe’s concept of a pool shot is a pretty spectacular description of a creation process.
The science problem is different. All this work will ultimately require validation of the simple to complex model and the mechanism that allows for this process to unfold. We know we have the components (atoms) now we need to figure out how assembly occurred.
I thought you agreed to stop arguing this foolishness?
How are you ever going to prove to ANYONE that God did not make a complex process happen via evolution?
What grade are you in?