The Four Dirty Secrets Against Darwin Evolution

[Pogo]

Can you supply a reference please?

Sargonski

how self replicating biochmical systems arose

This should be could arise, with that in mind, you were a chemist and you know how to use the internet, that puts you well ahead of most of us.

 

[Valjean]

I mean that life started somewhere, somehow on earth for evolution to purportedly have taken place, didn't it? For evolution to have taken place and continued, something had to start the initial process, didn't it?

If you want to understand how the first life arose there's an established field of study investigating this. You're perfectly free to review it's findings.

This focus on evolution is just a distraction from the questions you really seem interested in.

 

[exchemist]

This should be could arise, with that in mind, you were a chemist and you know how to use the internet, that puts you well ahead of most of us.

I was (still am by training), I do and I am not familiar with this. So either the information is wrong, or it refers to something I have not recognised from the way it is being described. The state of the art as far as I can see is represented by this: From self-replication to replicator systems en route to de novo life - Nature Reviews Chemistry
Hence my request for the one making the claim to provide a reference to support it.

 

[Valjean]

Yes. Something had to start life. And it probably was abiogenesis. But it does not have to be abiogenesis.

You can pretend that God started life and let it evolve from then on already knowing that it would end up with man, if that makes you feel any better.

But that still explains nothing. It just points to an agent.
Personally, I'd be more more interested in how than who.

 

[Valjean]

OK, thank you. I do have faith that life did not start without Someone to start it. That 'Someone' is God the Almighty as said in the Bible. Will anyone on earth ever find out what happened? I don't think so. But that is, of course, my opinion. I don't "know" that. There are several reasons why I believe that is the case.
1. We don't know how non-organic substances were put together, or made.

But we do. We know, and have observed, several different mechanisms.

2. Because we don't know that, we cannot know how biologic life started.

At one time we didn't know what caused earthquakes, disease, or storms. That didn't mean that we could not know how these were caused.
Please review the state of the art before you dismiss it as impossible.

3. If God wanted us to know everything about it, He would have told us.

But He didn't. We lived and thought little different from the other apes we lived amongst, for most of our history. All we know we've learned, and what we've learned seems to be accurate and useful.

4. It would probably take much more than the many pages of the Bible to explain
or describe it, filling more than the halls of the Library of Congress in the United States.

Which is why we have scholarly journals where are findings are published. We do have halls filled with the research.

5. He must not think it was necessary for humans to know all the in's and out's of 'how it all happened.'

So He should have left us like chimps. Why did He endow us with inquiring minds and the intelligence to develop effective research modalities, if these were going to lead to our downfall?

6. The Bible is not a science textbook.

Exactly. It's useless as a guide to any of the processes theists are so obsessed with. So why not turn to the actual textbooks for answers?

 

[YoursTrue]

Yup and nobody knows exactly how life got here, You have faith that your god exactly it happen and theistic scientists agree, but atheists and theistic scientists also agree that we don't know exactly how, it happened. This is the study of abiogenesis and it is the same study whether you believe a god controlled it or believe that it happened naturally.

I certainly do not know more about the start of life than anyone else. How it may have happened is still up in the air, to use an expression. And yes, I believe, unlike atheists, that there is a Creator who made and started life on the earth. But I agree that no one on earth knows the particular process. Yet evolution would not be possible unless first there was life.

 

[YoursTrue]

This should be could arise, with that in mind, you were a chemist and you know how to use the internet, that puts you well ahead of most of us.

Yes, it's that self-replicating thing that is rather mysterious, shall we say. From what I read, scientists say in a manner of speaking, it just must have happened that way.

 

[Valjean]

Can you supply a reference please?

Watch this lecture series. The first two or three may be skipped if you want an explanation of the actual dynamics.
It's pretty basic. High-school level, I'd judge. Non-chemists should be able to follow.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDQWFZPqXPRBNQJO-uoskk0zL_beqhkt7

 

[Polymath257]

I was (still am by training), I do and I am not familiar with this. So either the information is wrong, or it refers to something I have not recognised from the way it is being described. The state of the art as far as I can see is represented by this: From self-replication to replicator systems en route to de novo life - Nature Reviews Chemistry
Hence my request for the one making the claim to provide a reference to support it.

Aaargh! I can't get access to this article from my institution.

 

[Valjean]

Yes, it's that self-replicating thing that is rather mysterious, shall we say. From what I read, scientists say in a manner of speaking, it just must have happened that way.

Self-replicating molecules and structures are well known and easily observable. We're long past that point in abiogenic research.

 

[exchemist]

Watch this lecture series. The first two or three may be skipped if you want an explanation of the actual dynamics.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDQWFZPqXPRBNQJO-uoskk0zL_beqhkt7

Got anything I can read? I haven't the patience for videos. Actually, just the names of researchers I can look up would be good. I stress it is synthetic replicating systems, simulating primordial Earth conditions, that I am after, not just a general resumé of abiogenesis.

 

[exchemist]

Aaargh! I can't get access to this article from my institution.

Me too, it's just the abstract I was referring to.

But even that is a nice overview, highlighting as it does the unresolved challenge of integrating the triad of replication, metabolisim and compartmentalisation (membranes and such).

 

[Valjean]

Got anything I can read? I haven't the patience for videos. Actually, just the names of researchers I can look up would be good. I stress it is synthetic replicating systems, simulating primordial Earth conditions, that I am after, not just a general resumé of abiogenesis.

Sorry. Don't know if there's a transcript. Most people don't have the patience to read long articles or scholarly PDFs.

 

[exchemist]

Sorry. Don't know if there's a transcript. Most people don't have the patience to read long articles or scholarly PDFs.

I can get through those in a tenth of the time it takes to watch most videos and come out far better informed. And I can stop, go back and re-read anything I don't grasp on the first pass. Videos are a poor way to impart information, especially if, as so often, they are tailored to the needs of their least well informed viewers. They nearly always drive me crazy with impatience.

 

[Sargonski]

Can you supply a reference please?

Sure thing

Like other would-be nucleotide synthesizers, Sutherland's team included phosphate in their mix, but rather than adding it to sugars and nucleobases, they started with an array of even simpler molecules that were probably also in Earth's primordial ooze.

They mixed the molecules in water, heated the solution, then allowed it to evaporate, leaving behind a residue of hybrid, half-sugar, half-nucleobase molecules. To this residue they again added water, heated it, allowed it evaporate, and then irradiated it.

At each stage of the cycle, the resulting molecules were more complex. At the final stage, Sutherland's team added phosphate. "Remarkably, it transformed into the ribonucleotide!

Life's First Spark Re-Created in the Laboratory

A fundamental but elusive step in the early evolution of life on Earth has been replicated in a laboratory. Researchers synthesized the basic ingredients of RNA, a molecule from which the simplest self-replicating structures are made. Until now, they couldn’t explain how these ingredients might...

www.wired.com

 

[exchemist]

Sure thing

Life's First Spark Re-Created in the Laboratory

A fundamental but elusive step in the early evolution of life on Earth has been replicated in a laboratory. Researchers synthesized the basic ingredients of RNA, a molecule from which the simplest self-replicating structures are made. Until now, they couldn’t explain how these ingredients might...

www.wired.com

Ah but that is quite different from what you said. This is the discovery of a natural pathway to synthesise RNA nucleotides, the monomer units that comprise RNA. This was in fact discussed on this forum back in 2016, as part of a highly informative thread posted by @sayak83 . Here is the relevant part of that thread: Science of Abiogenesis:- By popular demand

What you were saying, which I was questioning, is that how replicating systems arose has been shown in the lab, under conditions similar to those of the primordial Earth. Showing how nucleotides could be created is a very long way short of that. There is the whole business of what the rest of the replicating system would consist of, how it would be enclosed in a membrane (assuming it would be) , how the nucleotides would be assembled into actual strands of RNA, how the energy to maintain the process would be supplied i.e. the metabolism, etc.

That research was a huge step forward, but all it did was give us a route to one of the major building blocks needed for a recognisable replicating system based on RNA. So it overcame one of the puzzles that had stumped the chemists, that's all.

 

[sayak83]

Ah but that is quite different from what you said. This is the discovery of a natural pathway to synthesise RNA nucleotides, the monomer units that comprise RNA. This was in fact discussed on this forum back in 2016, as part of a highly informative thread posted by @sayak83 . Here is the relevant part of that thread: Science of Abiogenesis:- By popular demand

What you were saying, which I was questioning, is that how replicating systems arose has been shown in the lab, under conditions similar to those of the primordial Earth. Showing how nucleotides could be created is a very long way short of that. There is the whole business of what the rest of the replicating system would consist of, how it would be enclosed in a membrane (assuming it would be) , how the nucleotides would be assembled into actual strands of RNA, how the energy to maintain the process would be supplied i.e. the metabolism, etc.

That research was a huge step forward, but all it did was give us a route to one of the major building blocks needed for a recognisable replicating system based on RNA. So it overcame one of the puzzles that had stumped the chemists, that's all.

All the nice figures in my old threads no longer render.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Ah but that is quite different from what you said. This is the discovery of a natural pathway to synthesise RNA nucleotides, the monomer units that comprise RNA. This was in fact discussed on this forum back in 2016, as part of a highly informative thread posted by @sayak83 . Here is the relevant part of that thread: Science of Abiogenesis:- By popular demand

What you were saying, which I was questioning, is that how replicating systems arose has been shown in the lab, under conditions similar to those of the primordial Earth. Showing how nucleotides could be created is a very long way short of that. There is the whole business of what the rest of the replicating system would consist of, how it would be enclosed in a membrane (assuming it would be) , how the nucleotides would be assembled into actual strands of RNA, how the energy to maintain the process would be supplied i.e. the metabolism, etc.

That research was a huge step forward, but all it did was give us a route to one of the major building blocks needed for a recognisable replicating system based on RNA. So it overcame one of the puzzles that had stumped the chemists, that's all.

At least it is better than "the Miller-Urey experiment proves abiogenesis". How naturally arising RNA could have formed is one of the two or three remaining big problems of abiogenesis. How a metabolism started is also not well understood if I remember correctly and there could be others. Self replicating RNA has been made in the lab, but that is not the same as finding a natural way of making it. But it definitely helps with the research.

I do like to point out that both creationists and those that accept evolution both believe in an abiogenesis event. What they disagree about strongly are the cause and the degree of development of that first life.

 

[exchemist]

All the nice figures in my old threads no longer render.

Oh really? I can still see them.

I had a quick read through that thread before answering this. It was, and remains, very informative - at least to someone familiar with structural formulae. It might have put off a few people I suppose, esp. the creationists.

 

[exchemist]

At least it is better than "the Miller-Urey experiment proves abiogenesis". How naturally arising RNA could have formed is one of the two or three remaining big problems of abiogenesis. How a metabolism started is also not well understood if I remember correctly and there could be others. Self replicating RNA has been made in the lab, but that is not the same as finding a natural way of making it. But it definitely helps with the research.

I do like to point out that both creationists and those that accept evolution both believe in an abiogenesis event. What they disagree about strongly are the cause and the degree of development of that first life.

Yes the Nature abstract I linked to in post 803 has a nice summary of the problem, which highlights the triad of issues: replication, metabolism (to maintain a system out of chemical equilibrium with its surroundings) and enclosure or compartmentalisation to keep it all together. There's a handy diagram: