Information doesn’t preclude abiogenesis, and that’s not what I said. I said scientific law precludes the creation of information, because law by definition excludes contingency and information requires contingency.
What do you think the YEC in my profile means? Do you propose some natural process that can create all land creatures in a single 24 hour period? Or all birds or all sea creatures?
That is not what I said, and you know it. I looked in my records and cannot find the one @Herman_Mays gave me. I don’t have grant money for software programs to organize my papers for me. Give me a paper that you have read which you think shows such great progress in abiogenesis research, and I will read it and discuss with you.
No, the disagreement is between naturalism and some forms of Christianity that take issue with abiogenesis. Naturalism is as much of a religion as Christianity is. Neither of these things has anything to do with the scientific study of abiogenesis, which is indifferent to religious or philosophical questions. Respectfully, you come across as a naturalist.
Why should that PhD impress us, Vincent? Has Stadler done any original work in any relevant field?
Please stop with the credentialism; it suggests that you haven’t engaged with anything scientifically.
But it does not do so accurately.
Tellingly, it omits the most important evidence for the RNA World by omitting the most important evidence about the existing ribozyme aka the ribosome, evidence about which Meyer, Dembski, and Wells literally lie.
It also completely ignores metabolism-first hypotheses. Why?
So what? The question is, are they active scientists with a record of original contributions to science? If not, why mention their PhDs?
Not at all. It’s only powerful in its deceptiveness.
One problem is they completely neglect the large part of the field focused on things other than RNA self-replication. They pretend the entire field consists only and entirely on the search for a self-replicating RNA ribozyme, and that nobody in the field is aware of the unsolved problems with this idea and that there aren’t people exploring other options.
For a different perspective you can start here:
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No. First of all it’s full of misleading jargon that has no meaning. They speak of the fact that Spiegelman’s monster “devolved”(probably a deliberately chosen words) because the RNA strand replicated in Spiegelman’s experiment got shorter and shorter after consecutive rounds of competitive selection (it’s faster to copy a short rather than long sequence), and claim this somehow only showed that something functional or useful can only “spiral towards uselessness and malignancy”.
Of course it proves no such thing. Being shorter is neither useless nor malignant, and reproducing faster because the sequence is shorter isn’t “devolution”. Of course, the Speigelman’s monster “problem” is recognized in the field (direct competition for a limited resource, in the absence of other selective factors, favors replication speed). But of course, there’s this:
They then speak of the fact that RNA can’t simultaneously function as both information storage and a functional molecule because folding RNAs(the ones that perform catalytic roles) are difficult to unfold and replicate, disregarding work such as this(see the discussion):
Incidentally ID-proponent and overall incompetent crackpot James Tour has also asserted in some of his videos that 2’-5’ linked RNA backbones would mean the RNA wouldn’t work, proving that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, doesn’t know what is going on in the field, and is just clown shouting on the street corner.
Then they assert RNAs “by themselves could not run all of the things needed for even simple life”, which is just an assertion(they actually have no idea whether that is true), but more importantly it isn’t even clear RNA alone would be required to run all of the things needed for simple life (consider how, in PCR, a fluctuating temperature cycle performs the function of extremely complex DNA/RNA helicase enzymes in extant life). The general idea is that many of the functions performed by complex molecules in extant life were basically performed by environmental cycles or chemical disequilibria at the origin of life, during chemical evolution. Be that temperature cycles, wet-dry cycles, ionic strength, pH gradients, or what have you. To say RNA couldn’t do “all” of it alone, when it isn’t clear that is even necessary, is a red herring.
Then they speak of the fact that RNA isn’t as good as what it does, as proteins are at what they do. But still admit RNA can do it. Okay, then what is the significance of that statement? Life evolved and adapted, and better functional polymers were found. Proteins are also known to have evolved to be better at folding and catalysis over time (the genetic code expanded), since their first emergence. Things can improve from an initial state where it functions more poorly, but still actually function.
They then go on a veritable gish-gallop of supposed problems, but never show that they actually are problems or to what extend they are problems. It is no use to say that RNA has a certain half-life in water under certain conditions of temperature and metal concentrations without doing some work to look at the actual rates. That just means the rate of synthesis must match or exceed the rate of decomposition. Yes, and? They never show this is a problem that can’t be overcome.
All the subsequent problems suffer from this issue. They say something is a problem and then basically pretend it is insurmountable, but they never show it. “If the nucleotides in the cell could link up and form RNA polymers this would be a problem.” Uhm, wouldn’t that depend on the rate at which this occurred? We don’t get any rates.
And then they misrepresent what many of these papers are supposed to show or be a “proof of concept” of. For example some papers on selection driving cooperation between different replicator systems being “proof of concept that life could have started before that thing existed”, when it is not being claimed to be proof of any such thing.
They then flat out lie and say the “very concept of a self-replicating molecule that chemically evolves into life contradicts many very well-understood laws and processes of chemistry”. They then flash in an instant what are supposed to be these supposed laws and processes, and yet none of them “(annealing, parasitic RNA, folding paradox, etc.)” do any such thing. It’s just flat out made up bs.
Nobody is saying any hitherto performed experiment is “proof of concept for the origin of life”. By mischaracterizing the work done in some experiments on RNA-world evolution in this way can they then claim it is false.
It’s trash. Stupid misleading trash. They’ve wasted your time Vincent.
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…from the Discovery Institute, famously dishonest…
…who is not an honest person…
…although they don’t bother to name them…
The scientific arguments aren’t presented, and certainly not fairly. It’s just standard creationist nonsense.
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The only way to honestly say the second sentence is if you’ve read all of the literature. Thank you for confirming you are actively and intentionally dishonest. We all already knew, but thanks for the confirmation.
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I’m quite skeptical of “conservation of information”. Random number generators create information, and the information that they create is useful in cryptography.
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To me, the video came across as a piece of slick marketing. And I tend to see slick marketing as professional lying.
There are natural systems that do some sort of replication. A forest fire emits sparks that ignite other fires. A hurricane spawns smaller storms such as tornados. These are not self-sustaining, but it seems plausible that life developed from earlier pre-life systems that weren’t self-sustaining. That’s why I find the metabolism first approaches to be of interest.
No, the problem of origin of life has not been solved. But the researchers are learning interesting things.
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I think that is a false equivalency. Do you think Christianity as little a faith as naturalism?
The ideal gas law is naturalism. Weather forecasts are naturalism. These are not in any way sects, religions, cults, denominations, or idols.
It seems to me that you are saying that the information requirement for life does preclude abiogenesis, at least in the sense of life arising without some external intelligent agency. If information doesn’t preclude abiogenesis, then what is the barrier?
Not really, because one can reject naturalism and still accept unguided abiogenesis. But, of course, a Christian could also accept it. So I did misspeak when I said the disagreement was over whether an intelligent being existed before the origin of life. That is just the position that the most vociferous opponents of abiogenesis are invested in protecting.
@BenKissling, if by information you mean Complex Specified Information as defined by Dembski, then it needs to be mentioned that direct measurements have shown that life as we know it is a Zero CSI proposition. CSI is a fiction foisted on us by ID proponents that has nothing at all to do with real living things. This sort of makes the unsupported assertions about information and contingency rather pointless.
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How can any form of Christianity take issue with abiogenesis itself, when the Bible itself describes abiogenesis?
@Faizal_Ali, this is the sort of ridiculous strawmanning to which I was referring.
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True, but you did write:
Which papers?
How did it change from plural to singular?
But not the same “single 24 hour period” as the creation of the universe. Hence, you believe that Abiogenesis happened – you just believe (i) it happened days rather than billions of years after the universe came into existence, and (ii) you believe it happened supernaturally rather than naturally.
There’s nothing in the definition of “Abiogenesis” that specifies that it must have been a natural process.
And all this is completely beside the point to the fact that there is abundant evidence contradicting your “decades with no progress” claim. You are simply quibbling over irrelevant details.
Does a carbon atom and two oxygen items “come together” on their own according to chemical processes to form carbon dioxide? Or where they “put together by God”? You are demanding a false dichotomy. You badly need to read my post again. A proximate cause and an ultimate cause can both be true without a logical contradiction.
Does an automobile manage to travel to the next town because of the driver or because fuel is burned in an internal combustion engine? Both an ultimate cause and proximate cause can be true.
I never said God is dead. I assumed that you understand that God is NOT a biological organism. And as I’ve explained many times on this form, the fact that modern English appears to conflate biological-life and non-biological life with the same word (“life”) does NOT mean that the languages of the Bible conflate them. See one of my posts on the topic at:
In fact, you would do well to read the entire thread on that topic so as to address your tendency to apply English language semantic fields to the Greek and Hebrew words related to life in Bible.
Obviously, abiogenesis is about biological-life from non-biologically-living ingredients. God is not a biological lifeform nor is God non-living chemical ingredients. That doesn’t make God “dead.” (Actually, I think you understand these distinctions but find it convenient for your argument to ignore them.)
I already made very clear that I considered God the ultimate cause.
Apparently you prefer a view of God who “poofs” everything into existence (one at a time perhaps) rather than by means of proximate causes. Both of the verses I cited in Genesis speak of the ERETZ (the land) bringing forth plants and animals. Again, the idea that both God and the chemical elements of the planet produced the first living things poses no logical contradiction nor theological contradiction.
Again, you are making the same mistake of Christians of the past who insisted that only God could create organic chemicals like urea.
(1) Science has been explained to you many times on this forum. (2) I don’t know of any definition of science which includes theology and all fields of philosophy. Are you claiming that everything is under the rubric of science? If yes, I’m wasting my time here.
You are conflating two different topics in the philosophy of science. The Demarcation Problem does NOT imply that science automatically includes everything. Oh my. Please investigate a topic before pontificating. You are dealing with academics on this forum who are not uninformed.
Oh my. This is a slogan/taunt of uniformed amateurs which has nothing to do with my statement. It is a self-contradiction made possible by arrangements of words. (A concoction of semantic contradiction does not pose a philosophical conundrum. Just because a language can express an idea doesn’t make that idea valid—nor an impressive argument.) My statement was not a self-contradiction. This is basic undergraduate logic. Only dilettantes think it poses a problem.
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I respect your skepticism. However, I do not think the example of random number generators generally conflicts with the law. For one, we have to differentiate between algorithms for pseudo-random numbers, and “true” random number generators that produce their output directed by some quantum mechanical process. The latter type do not so much produce information as they translate it into a more quantifiable form than the process itself might at a glance appear to be. Conservation of information is a quantum theoretical principle/inference in the first place, so the existence of an information extraction procedure stands in no conflict with that theory. Pseudo-random number generators, on the other hand, are strictly deterministic. Knowing the seed and the algorithm, every number in the sequence can be predicted. A computer tasked with running that algorithm will as well produce the sequence without fail, to the extent to which electronics in general is consistent, and what little quantum mechanical randomness may be admitted (and only out of charity at that point, really) is, once again, covered.