Abiogenesis Is Not Working, So What's Next? Panspermia.

[Runewolf1973]

Your argument seems to be that we can't have such a concept without it derailing our ability to think dispassionately about the phenomenon called life.

Frankly, I don't really know what emotional response you are talking about. You and I seem to be discussing the concept without romanticizing it or being emotional.

Sorry, but I still don't see a reason to abandon the concept of life.

We should not abandon the term, we should merely save it for when we speak in the context of philosophy and religion. The terms life and consciousness are too subjective for scientific use IMO.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

That is great that we have so many different ways of looking at things, but if we want a truly scientific understanding of something there is only one way we should look at it...piece by piece.

Disagree for reasons already given but not addressed by you.

Reality is best understood when considered at all scales collectively - what I called a holistic view. Reductionism is a myopic perspective. You can't find the picture in any single pixel. You can't find the house in any single brick.

The greatest problem in physics today is unifying the relativistic and quantum scales of reality, that is, the science of the largest and smallest scales of physical reality.

I'm not saying we should elliminate the word life altogether, but it should be used within certain contexts.

That's not the impression you gave me as is evident by the many times I told you that I find the concept useful and can see no reason to abandon it. Why didn't you deny that that was your intent following any of those posts?

So exactly what is it you are proposing if not to jettison the concept of life? What would you have people do differently, and with what anticipated benefit?

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

We should not abandon the term, we should merely save it for when we speak in the context of philosophy and religion. The terms life and consciousness are too subjective for scientific use IMO.

Why are philosophy and religion better places to speak of life than biology, the science of life?

What does philosophy have to offer us regarding this matter?

Or religion?

 

[Runewolf1973]

Disagree for reasons already given but not addressed by you.

Reality is best understood when considered at all scales collectively - what I called a holistic view. Reductionism is a myopic perspective. You can't find the picture in any single pixel. You can't find the house in any single brick.

The greatest problem in physics today is unifying the relativistic and quantum scales of reality, that is, the science of the largest and smallest scales of physical reality.



That's not the impression you gave me as is evident by the many times I told you that I find the concept useful and can see no reason to abandon it. Why didn't you deny that that was your intent following any of those posts?

So exactly what is it you are proposing if not to jettison the concept of life? What would you have people do differently, and with what anticipated benefit?

Use it selectively to avoid the subjectivity and uncertainty brought about by such terms.

 

[Runewolf1973]

Why are philosophy and religion better places to speak of life than biology, the science of life?

What does philosophy have to offer us regarding this matter?

Or religion?

Biology is the science of life, but they to this day can't pinpoint what actually causes the apparent difference between so-called living and non-living matter. A chemical reaction of sorts? Physics rules the day. What does philosophy or religion have to offer? A place for subjective thinking.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Use it selectively to avoid the subjectivity and uncertainty brought about by such terms.

I'm still having difficulty understanding what problem you are seeing that you hope to remedy. Where is the concept of life a problem? Please be specific. Please show me concrete examples of people making mistakes or progress being impeded because they are discussing life rather than atoms.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Biology is the science of life, but they to this day can't pinpoint what actually causes the apparent difference between so-called living and non-living matter. A chemical reaction of sorts?

I don't see a problem there, or how your idea makes anything more clear.

Do you plan to address the idea of emergent phenomena - things that appear at greater scales but are not evident in their constituent parts? Neurons can't think, but collections of them organized just so can. Where is thought in a neuron? Nowhere.

 

[columbus]

Are you agreeing with me or disagreeing? You seem to be agreeing, but you began with, "This is the point."

Sorry I was unclear.
I'm agreeing with you. The part of your post I quoted was, to me, the whole point here.
We use the words life and living to mean something. Hydrogen atoms probably have characteristics beyond our current understanding, but that doesn't make them alive. Referring to them that way makes life a meaningless term, from the standpoint of biology.
Tom

 

[Runewolf1973]

I'm still having difficulty understanding what problem you are seeing that you hope to remedy. Where is the concept of life a problem? Please be specific. Please show me concrete examples of people making mistakes or progress being impeded because they are discussing life rather than atoms.

Same reason the concept of 'elan vitale' was dropped. It offers no actual scientific value. How is the concept of "living" or "animate" matter so different? Think of it...ordinary matter which neither lives nor dies yet we ascribe this term "living" like it's some kind of special force that only certain kinds of matter possess.

I don't see a problem there, or how your idea makes anything more clear.

Do you plan to address the idea of emergent phenomena - things that appear at greater scales but are not evident in their constituent parts? Neurons can't think, but collections of them organized just so can. Where is thought in a neuron? Nowhere.

I propose that what we call thought is a complex interaction. A single neuron does not interact in such a complex way in and of itself to generate that most complex interaction we call thought. It takes bunches of neurons interacting in certain ways to generate such complex neuronal activity.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

I propose that what we call thought is a complex interaction. A single neuron does not interact in such a complex way in and of itself to generate that most complex interaction we call thought. It takes bunches of neurons interacting in certain ways to generate such complex neuronal activity.

That's my point. Thought, like life, is an emergent phenomenon not present in any of its constituent parts - only in their interactions as a whole. Concepts like thought and life refer to distinct phenomena worthy of contemplation and investigation, and as such are useful ideas that describe specific realms of reality, and therefore need and deserve names.

 

[Runewolf1973]

That's my point. Thought, like life, is an emergent phenomenon not present in any of its constituent parts - only in their interactions as a whole. Concepts like thought and life refer to distinct phenomena worthy of contemplation and investigation, and as such are useful ideas that describe specific realms of reality, and therefore need and deserve names.

I agree with that.

 

[jonathan180iq]

There has been no compelling evidence of extraterrestrial life has yet been found in astrobiology.

False.

Something on Mars produces methane. It seeps throughout the year but spikes during the warmer months, meaning there are either great stores of it beneath the permafrost, or it's continually being replenished with higher activity and production during the Spring and Summer.

Perhaps you should google sources of methane to learn of its origins.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Abiogenesis hasn't gone much further since the Miller-Urey experiment in 1952. Thus, it needed an update.

I don't think this is even a theory. It's hypothesis. I suspect it's gonna lead to aliens. This is why NASA thinks they'll find an extraterrestrial microbe in outer space or on another planet.

"Panspermia (also known as exogenesis) is a hypothesis that originated in the 19th century in opposition to the theory of spontaneous generation. Pansperia propounded that reproductive bodies (seeds) of living organisms exist throughout the universe and develop wherever the environment is favorable. The term is derived from the Greek word 'pan' meaning all and 'sperma' or seed. Exogenesis comes from the Greek words meaning outside origin. It is a hypothesis which maintains that microscopic living organisms came to our planet from outer space. It is largely distinguished in that it makes no prediction about how widespread life is in the cosmos.

The basic assertion of these hypotheticals is that primitive life, which originated elsewhere, was deposited on Earth’s surface by means of a collision with some other object that already harbored life. An asteroid or comet, perhaps containing primitive cells or simple bacteria, fell to Earth at some time in the past. Then over billions of years they evolved into the more advanced forms of life now spread across our planet. To date no meteorites have ever been shown to harbor bona fide life.

The search for extraterrestrial life (exobiology) has been repopularized upon the realization of the improbability that life formed through abiogenesis. Scientists have been unable to get a cell to form under any conceivable condition. Likewise it has also become clear that for the basic building blocks of life to form, oxygen must be absent, and yet oxides have been found in rocks supposedly 300 million years older than the first living cells.

Much of the research currently underway by NASA, such as the recent expedition to Mars, is aimed at finding proof that life might have begun elsewhere.

College biology textbooks nationwide either highlight or place front-and-center the "extraterrestrial origin of life" as the front-running theory of modern science.

These are only a few examples of how the concept is being seeded into the culture. Of concern for creationists: This not only mainstreams the idea of space-aliens as a valid scientific endeavor, it fully accepts the argument-from-design while at the same time co-opting and assimilating it into secular discussions, stripping it from creationist discussion."

Panspermia - CreationWiki, the encyclopedia of creation science."

"Popularization of science was of great concern to Arrhenius throughout his career. His most successful venture into this genre was Worlds in the Making (1908), originally published in Swedish and translated into several languages. In it he launched the hypothesis of panspermism—that is, he suggested life was spread about the universe by bacteria propelled by light pressure. These speculations have not found their way into modern cosmogony."

Svante Arrhenius, Swedish chemist
Svante Arrhenius | Swedish chemist

You're pretty behind on the science. I suggest going off to do some reading on the scientific advancements made since 1952, before continuing on with this thread.

Synthesis of purines under possible primitive earth conditions. I. Adenine from hydrogen cyanide - ScienceDirect
CHEMICAL EVENTS ON THE PRIMITIVE EARTH
The Origins of Prebiological Systems and of their Molecular Matrices - ScienceDirect
Synthesis of organic compounds from carbon monoxide and water by UV photolysis
A Reassessment of Prebiotic Organic Synthesis in Neutral Planetary Atmospheres

 

[james bond]

False.

Something on Mars produces methane. It seeps throughout the year but spikes during the warmer months, meaning there are either great stores of it beneath the permafrost, or it's continually being replenished with higher activity and production during the Spring and Summer.

Perhaps you should google sources of methane to learn of its origins.

Ha ha. We've been looking for life on Mars, so if your hypothesis is correct, then where is it?

 

[james bond]

You're pretty behind on the science. I suggest going off to do some reading on the scientific advancements made since 1952, before continuing on with this thread.

Synthesis of purines under possible primitive earth conditions. I. Adenine from hydrogen cyanide - ScienceDirect
CHEMICAL EVENTS ON THE PRIMITIVE EARTH
The Origins of Prebiological Systems and of their Molecular Matrices - ScienceDirect
Synthesis of organic compounds from carbon monoxide and water by UV photolysis
A Reassessment of Prebiotic Organic Synthesis in Neutral Planetary Atmospheres

I seem to remember you and I went over this before. Apparently, you believe what you want to believe. You hear what you want to hear. Just what are these chemicals and how do they form life?

Here's what creation scientists say,

""What is the theory of abiogenesis? What is the definition of abiogenesis?"

Answer: Abiogenesis is the idea of life originating from non-living material (non-life). This concept has expanded a great deal as mankind’s understanding of science has grown, but all forms of abiogenesis have one thing in common: they are all scientifically unsupportable. There have been no experiments demonstrating abiogenesis in action. It has never been observed in a natural or artificial environment. Conditions believed to have existed on earth are either incapable of producing the building blocks needed, or self-contradictory. No evidence has been found suggesting where or when such life might have generated. In fact, everything we know of science today seems to indicate that abiogenesis could not have happened under any naturally possible conditions."

This has been proven scientifically impossible in an experiment by Louis Pasteur. It isn't that hard to replicate.

"It wasn’t until the mid-1800s that men like Pasteur proved experimentally that living things can only come from other living things. That is, science eventually proved conclusively that the only supportable origin for any living cell is another living cell."

 

[james bond]

This abiogenesis thing should be put to bed. The fact that NASA is looking for microbes, i.e. their version of aliens, in outer space should tell you that they're still looking for origins of life.

As for those Theory of Evolution people, I recently found that ToE does include the origins of life. Thus, abiogenesis is part of biological ToE. Another atheist myth bites the dust.

There is a growing trend among evolutionists today to attempt to sidestep the problem of abiogenesis by contending that evolution has nothing to do with the origin of life, but rather is a theory which starts with life already in existence and explains the origin of all species from that original life form.

In 1960, British evolutionary physiologist, G.A. Kerkut, listed abiogenesis as the first assumption in a list of non-provable assumptions upon which evolution is founded. “The first assumption is that non-living things gave rise to living material, i.e., spontaneous generation occurred” (Kerkut, 1960, p. 6).

“There is a theory which states that many living animals can be observed over the course of time to undergo changes so that new species are formed. This can be called the ‘Special Theory of Evolution’ and can be demonstrated in certain cases by experiments. On the other hand there is the theory that all the living forms in the world have arisen from a single source which itself came from an inorganic form. This theory can be called the ‘General Theory of Evolution’ and the evidence that supports it is not sufficiently strong to allow us to consider it as anything more than a working hypothesis. It is not clear whether the changes that bring about speciation are of the same nature as those that brought about the development of new phyla. The answer will be found in future experimental work and not by the dogmatic assertions that the General Theory of Evolution must be correct because there is nothing else that will satisfactorily take its place.”

—Kerkut, G.A. (1927–2004), Implications of Evolution, Pergamon, Oxford, UK, p. 157, 1960 (available online in the Public Domain at ia600409.us.archive.org/23/items/implicationsofev00kerk/implicationsofev00kerk.pdf).

Implications of Evolution, GA Kerkut
Implications of evolution : Kerkut, G. A : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive

 

[jonathan180iq]

Ha ha. We've been looking for life on Mars, so if your hypothesis is correct, then where is it?

Subsurface microbes that have incredibly small regions of habitability...
The only method of transfer, or mobility that would not result in almost immediate death, come from briny seepages near impact sites or flowing from a few natural areas of runoff. We have not, to this date, been able to approach the more interesting sites, for various reasons.

There are ethical and scientific protocols in place which do not allow us to approach possibly biologically sensitive sites without first having a completely clean and uncontaminated vehicle, which is an incredibly expensive process that we forgo in most of our robotic excursions to save on costs... Contamination of a pristine biological environment has serious ethical ramifications that are an active part of the decision making process when choosing landing sites - not to mention the scientific necessity of avoiding contamination for credibility, biointegrity, and a prerequisite for future study.

And not only that, but...

For reference:

Please note that, to date, our landers, rovers, and probes have been no where near the most chemically interesting sites. This is because, unlucky for us, the most active regions of the Martian surface are also the most dangerous for attempted landings. Preparing a multi-billion dollar mission, with a vehicle that has been decontaminated of all possible Earthly pathogens, only to have it crash into a hilly or rocky area on the surface of another planet would be a complete waste of time and energy, and cause detrimental effects to the public's desire to fund such practices in the future.

This is another reason why your conclusions are a little short sighted. Just because "we've been looking for a long time" doesn't mean that there should be grandiose expectations of discovery. We know more about Mars than our own Moon, thanks to all of the international collaborative work that has been happening there for the last 30 years.

Be patient.
Space exploration, and astrobiology in particular, take time. Once we get a human on the surface, we'll have definitive answers once and for all. Until then, keep watching, Mr. Armchair Quarterback.

 

[jonathan180iq]

This abiogenesis thing should be put to bed. The fact that NASA is looking for microbes, i.e. their version of aliens, in outer space should tell you that they're still looking for origins of life.

As for those Theory of Evolution people, I recently found that ToE does include the origins of life. Thus, abiogenesis is part of biological ToE. Another atheist myth bites the dust.

There is a growing trend among evolutionists today to attempt to sidestep the problem of abiogenesis by contending that evolution has nothing to do with the origin of life, but rather is a theory which starts with life already in existence and explains the origin of all species from that original life form.

In 1960, British evolutionary physiologist, G.A. Kerkut, listed abiogenesis as the first assumption in a list of non-provable assumptions upon which evolution is founded. “The first assumption is that non-living things gave rise to living material, i.e., spontaneous generation occurred” (Kerkut, 1960, p. 6).

“There is a theory which states that many living animals can be observed over the course of time to undergo changes so that new species are formed. This can be called the ‘Special Theory of Evolution’ and can be demonstrated in certain cases by experiments. On the other hand there is the theory that all the living forms in the world have arisen from a single source which itself came from an inorganic form. This theory can be called the ‘General Theory of Evolution’ and the evidence that supports it is not sufficiently strong to allow us to consider it as anything more than a working hypothesis. It is not clear whether the changes that bring about speciation are of the same nature as those that brought about the development of new phyla. The answer will be found in future experimental work and not by the dogmatic assertions that the General Theory of Evolution must be correct because there is nothing else that will satisfactorily take its place.”

—Kerkut, G.A. (1927–2004), Implications of Evolution, Pergamon, Oxford, UK, p. 157, 1960 (available online in the Public Domain at ia600409.us.archive.org/23/items/implicationsofev00kerk/implicationsofev00kerk.pdf).

Implications of Evolution, GA Kerkut
Implications of evolution : Kerkut, G. A : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive

Your ignorance of the topic at hand, and the ignorance of whatever source led you to this quote in the first place, is showing again.

You're either unaware that you're quote mining, or you care nothing of intellectual honesty... Neither of those are something that you should want to be associated with.

By citing this source, you're allowing Kerkut's words to serve as an authority. In doing so, you are admitting that what he calls the "Special Theory of Evolution" is, in fact, valid and reproducible via experimentation... You're citing evidence for speciation via natural selection, which is something that you claim doesn't happen...

So which is it? You can't cite a source to support one part of your argument but then negate it for another part without being intellectually dishonest. You also can't make the point you're trying to make without doing so....therefore?

The reason that people tell you that Evolution has nothing to do with abiogenesis is because they're already assuming the point that you're trying to make here, which is that Kerkut's "General Theory of Evolution" is nothing more than a working hypothesis. Until it is validated that is, admittedly, all that it is.

This may be a breakthrough for you in understanding the position of the "Atheist evo's" as you like to call them. But it's nothing new for anyone else...

Evolution happens, and Abiogenesis is not really a part of the main study of that science. We already know all that - just like Kerkut.

 

[Yerda]

As for those Theory of Evolution people, I recently found that ToE does include the origins of life. Thus, abiogenesis is part of biological ToE. Another atheist myth bites the dust.

So the guys who run evolutionary game theory simulations would have to make assumptions about how life began?

 

[james bond]

Subsurface microbes that have incredibly small regions of habitability...
The only method of transfer, or mobility that would not result in almost immediate death, come from briny seepages near impact sites or flowing from a few natural areas of runoff. We have not, to this date, been able to approach the more interesting sites, for various reasons.

There are ethical and scientific protocols in place which do not allow us to approach possibly biologically sensitive sites without first having a completely clean and uncontaminated vehicle, which is an incredibly expensive process that we forgo in most of our robotic excursions to save on costs... Contamination of a pristine biological environment has serious ethical ramifications that are an active part of the decision making process when choosing landing sites - not to mention the scientific necessity of avoiding contamination for credibility, biointegrity, and a prerequisite for future study.

And not only that, but...

For reference:

Please note that, to date, our landers, rovers, and probes have been no where near the most chemically interesting sites. This is because, unlucky for us, the most active regions of the Martian surface are also the most dangerous for attempted landings. Preparing a multi-billion dollar mission, with a vehicle that has been decontaminated of all possible Earthly pathogens, only to have it crash into a hilly or rocky area on the surface of another planet would be a complete waste of time and energy, and cause detrimental effects to the public's desire to fund such practices in the future.

This is another reason why your conclusions are a little short sighted. Just because "we've been looking for a long time" doesn't mean that there should be grandiose expectations of discovery. We know more about Mars than our own Moon, thanks to all of the international collaborative work that has been happening there for the last 30 years.

Be patient.
Space exploration, and astrobiology in particular, take time. Once we get a human on the surface, we'll have definitive answers once and for all. Until then, keep watching, Mr. Armchair Quarterback.

>>Preparing a multi-billion dollar mission, with a vehicle that has been decontaminated of all possible Earthly pathogens, only to have it crash into a hilly or rocky area on the surface of another planet would be a complete waste of time and energy, and cause detrimental effects to the public's desire to fund such practices in the future.<<

Just give me the billions and I'll get you a microbe in outer space. Nobody said playing God would be easy.

It's better to colonize the moon or space station and grow plants and provide supplies for other missions. I rather go mine other planets to see what minerals and chemicals they have. I could give squat about a microbe.