I misread you. I apologize.
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Thanks for your biographical clarification, Michael.
Then our interests are different. But that’s not surprising. Thanks for answering my questions.
No.
Of what? The enzymatic capacity of RNA? There’s nothing incompatible with “design” about that. If the subject is the origin of life, the only thing incompatible with design is the assertion that the first life formed by accident. If the RNA world hypothesis doesn’t demand that, if it is in fact compatible with the conclusion that the first life required design, then I have no beef with the RNA world hypothesis.
There is, if your goal is to convince the world that life did, or could have, arisen without any design. Of course, if your goal is only to kick around speculative ideas about what happened 4 billion years ago with like-minded others who already are convinced that no design was involved, then no, you don’t need a more elaborate hypothesis, since storytelling is already accepted as “science” in that community of people.
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You’re welcome.
Are you saying there is no similar onus upon those who assert it occurred thru design?
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Even that doesn’t appear to be intrinsically incompatible with “design”, unless “design” actually means “the first life formed was designed”, rather than “some aspects of life currently on the planet were designed”.
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When there comes into being a massively subsidized body of tenured professors and researchers in the life sciences, controlling hiring, tenure, promotion, research grants, etc. who uncritically take design for granted, and belittle, mock, or professionally ostracize colleagues who are skeptical of design, you can be sure that I will be there, rising to the defense of the design skeptics, in the name of intellectual and academic freedom, and in the interest of a more lively and truly Socratic university education. Right now, however, the opposite social situation obtains.
I combat whatever is the unthinking dogma of the age is. That’s what the Socratic man does. Uniformity of thought among the intelligentsia of a civilization is dangerous, both to a free society, and to the quest for truth.
I don’t assert that design has been proved, or can be proved. Rather, I act as a gadfly to the confidence of those who would dismiss it and substitute storytelling about non-recoverable events in the distant past for rigorous argument. The onus of proof is for me always more on those who are very confident and very sure they know the score, not on those who are merely expressing doubts about what the confident are telling them.
Nice speech. Mel Gibson in blueface couldn’t have done better.
However, what I asked: Do you believe those who assert life arose thru “design” bear the same onus to support their claims as do those who are investigating abiogenesis thru means other than design?
If you can’t or won’t answer, just say so. No need for another Oscar clip speech. We’ll just add it to the pile of Issues “Eddie” Refuses to Engage.
No. The fact that the guts of the ribosome are RNA, what I’ve been talking about all along and you don’t seem to grasp.
No, the subject is the hypothesis that catalysis in life was performed by RNA before proteins came along.
If design is compatible with everything, it’s scientifically meaningless.
You really don’t think about this stuff except to try to score points, do you? I’m still amazed that you didn’t even know that ribosomes are universal.
Your rejection of the scientific method is showing. Hypotheses don’t make demands, they make predictions. I can’t believe that I have to explain so many basics to you.
My goal has always been to help other people by learning about how biology works. I don’t share your pomposity.
What’s your design hypothesis? Clearly your heroes don’t have one, or they wouldn’t be misinforming their readers about ribosomes.
Hypothesis testing is what is accepted as science in my community. Why are you so afraid of testing a hypothesis?
Why don’t you know something as fundamental as the fact that all living things synthesize proteins with ribosomes, when you write pages and pages here in an attempt to fool people into thinking that you (and your ID idols) are deep thinkers whose thoughts should be taken seriously?
You act as comic relief.
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When there comes into being a massively subsidized body of tenured professors and researchers in the life sciences, controlling hiring, tenure, promotion, research grants, etc. who uncritically take the Tooth Fairy for granted, and belittle, mock, or professionally ostracize colleagues who are skeptical of the Tooth Fairy, you can be sure that Mr. Robinson will be there, rising to the defense of the Tooth Fairy skeptics, in the name of intellectual and academic freedom, and in the interest of a more lively and truly Socratic university education. Right now, however, the opposite social situation obtains.
Right now ID-Creationism and the Tooth Fairy have the identical amount of positive supporting scientific evidence. Teach the controversy, right?
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Well, yes, but then, there isn’t really much difference, from the design (as opposed to creationist) point of view, between saying, “a designer put together the first living form,” and “a designer established the properties of matter, laws, constants, etc., such that the first life was inevitable.” The second statement moves the design insertion backwards in time, but it still regards design as a necessary explanatory factor to explain why life exists at all. I don’t believe that most of the people posting anti-ID sentiments on these sites believe that design was needed even at one remove from the actual formation of the first living thing. They appear to be almost as uniformly skeptical of the existence of intelligent “fine tuning” as they are of a personal, intervening designer.
I don’t know if it seems implausible to @Eddie but it seems implausible to George Church, arguably one of the best ribosome expert.
Now I have a question. How do you pass from a purely RNA world to a world made of RNA and proteins? How do you produce proteins if you only have RNA in the first place. You seem to think that this is not a big deal, for you postulate that an RNA ribosome could do the job. But wouldn’t this hypothetical RNA ribosome also need some additional proteins, namely several aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases, to do the trick ? Do you have any evidence that the aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase activity could be sustained by RNA?
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Re: blurb written by George Church (actual biologist) on a book by a DI author.
Here it is:
Darwin’s Doubt represents an opportunity for bridge-building rather than dismissive polarization—bridges across cultural divides in great need of professional, respectful dialogue—and bridges to span evolutionary gaps.
I don’t know much about Church’s positions on design in biology. Among credible sources, I could only find this Radiolab episode (which I haven’t listened to) and this transcript of an interview that includes some pretty vague comments about design. Based on those comments, I would say that Church’s stance is similar to mine on the overall importance of design theorizing in biology. Re the author of DD and the book itself, he credits it with asking interesting questions and that’s it. The official blurb above merely points to the book as an opportunity for “bridge-building” and that’s not actually a comment about the contents of the book, IMO.
I do like his apparent openness to design ideas as expressed in the interview. I’d like to see more of that from biologists, though as I’ve written here before, many biologists are vigorously pursuing design thought while appropriately ignoring the DI and the misnamed ID movement.
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Good to know that some blogging atheists have some literary taste. 
Those who assert positively that life required design, yes. Those who merely express skepticism about current anti-design views, no, they don’t have to demonstrate anything about design, only to show that the current speculations (regarding origin of life) are not yet anywhere near the status of “knowledge.”
I regard ID as a project, something in process, not something demonstrated. There are strong prima facie argument for design in life. Even Dawkins admits that life looks designed. But I don’t claim anyone has provided proof. I certainly couldn’t provide a “proof” that would satisfy anyone here, and I don’t regard any arguments I may have advanced here for design as “proof.” I’m merely standing against those who swaggeringly argue that design has been positively disproved and that non-design explanations are soundly established, with only a little cleanup remaining regarding the details.
This is a huge strawman. No origin of life researcher regards his or her hypothesis as fact, but a plausible explanation of one more aspects of the prebiotic world. Each of these hypotheses has some level of supporting evidence and that’s what makes them plausible. ID has no such supporting data and that’s why scientists see it as nothing more than an ideology.
Then it will never be part of science.
If these arguments aren’t based on rigorous data, then they are worthless to science. Peter Duesberg offers pretty strong arguments for AIDS not being caused by HIV, but virologists mock him because his claims are not based on evidence.
I think the same way too when I ponder on the amazing ability of HIV to recognize helper T-cells in particular and progressively destroy the immune system. To be frank, I nearly bought the conspiracy theory that HIV was intelligently designed to wipe out Africans because of the apparent purposefulness in its mechanism of action.
Good. Unfortunately, many ID proponents don’t think like you.
Non-design explanations for the OoL are gradually becoming established, thanks to the hardwork of researchers. I haven’t seen any such progress for ID.
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With evolution.
Now how do you pass from a world without any biochemists and engineers into a world with life?
The RNA catalyzes the formation of protein polymers.
How do you produce any if there are no biochemists?
That has been shown.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1074552198901132
The demonstration that peptide bond formation could be catalyzed by RNA alone would both provide evidence for the RNA world and indicate how the RNA world might have led to the contemporary DNA-protein world. Several laboratories have tried without success to catalyze the ribosome peptidyl transfer reaction using only 23S rRNA (or portions thereof) [99–101]. In contrast, in vitro selection methods have isolated ribozymes able to catalyze each of the critical steps resulting in protein synthesis [102]: aminoacyl-AMP formation [103], amino acid transesterification to tRNA [104–110] and peptide bond formation [111, 112]. Of particular note are the small (196 nucleotides) in vitro selected ribozymes with peptidyl transferase activity [111]. A randomized RNA pool presenting Phe at the 5¢-end was able to react with an N-blocked Met-AMP analog to produce a tethered dipeptide product. The resulting ribozyme was capable of utilizing Leu- and Phe- as well as Met-derived substrates for peptide bond formation. Remarkably, two regions of the active ribozyme resemble the peptidyl transferase region of 23S rRNA in sequence and structural context [112]. Furthermore, when the Phe-containing substrate is presented on a short oligonucleotide rather than on the ribozyme itself, the ribozyme is able to catalyze multiple turnovers [112]. Thus, demonstration that these selected ribozymes can carry out all the critical steps of protein biosynthesis argue for an RNA mediated emergence from an RNA world to the current DNA-protein world.
No. Amino-acylation can be catalyzed by RNA.
Ribozyme-catalyzed tRNA aminoacylation | Nature Structural & Molecular Biology
Abstract
The RNA world hypothesis implies that coded protein synthesis evolved from a set of ribozyme catalyzed acyl-transfer reactions, including those of aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase ribozymes. We report here that a bifunctional ribozyme generated by directed in vitro evolution can specifically recognize an activated glutaminyl ester and aminoacylate a targeted tRNA, via a covalent aminoacyl-ribozyme intermediate. The ribozyme consists of two distinct catalytic domains; one domain recognizes the glutamine substrate and self-aminoacylates its own 5’-hydroxyl group, and the other recognizes the tRNA and transfers the aminoacyl group to the 3’-end. The interaction of these domains results in a unique pseudoknotted structure, and the ribozyme requires a change in conformation to perform the sequential aminoacylation reactions. Our result supports the idea that aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase ribozymes could have played a key role in the evolution of the genetic code and RNA-directed translation.
… as short as five nucleotides:
The meaning of a minuscule ribozyme - PMC
ABSTRACT
The smallest ribozyme that carries out a complex group transfer is the sequence GUGGC-3′, acting to aminoacylate GCCU-3′ (and host a manifold of further reactions) in the presence of substrate PheAMP. Here, I describe the enzymatic rate, the characterization of about 20 aminoacyl-RNA and peptidyl-RNA products and the pathways of these GUGGC/GCCU reactions. Finally, the topic is evolution, and the potential implications of these data for the advent of translation itself.
Turns out the answer is yes.
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I would like to see where any serious OOL researcher claims they know how life arose. I have not seen it, despite how often ID apologists and other creationists complain about this. But that could just be my ignorance.
That said, suppose I have a theory, which is mine, that life arose from a bowl of chocolate pudding that was magically created by a non-intelligent non-design process.
How upset do you think I would be justified in being if OOL researchers just carry on their work as if my theory does not exist?
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None of the quotes from Church seems to say that ribosomes are implausible. What were you thinking of? I don’t know whether he’s an expert on ribosomes; has he published extensively on them?
Not necessarily. What if tRNAs were originally self-charging? There’s a fair amount of literature on the transition from RNA world to protein world, most of which I have not read. If you’re interested, and your questions are serious, you could try searching for it, rather than assuming it doesn’t exist.
I think you were right not to take too serious an interest in the RNA world hypothesis as it seems to be a dead end.