Jerry Smith

Jojo-sa:

in the old thread, you said:
Now, my post there was a very long explanation of the scientific alternative... But your question presumes too much, namely that creation by God is a possibility. Until you can prove that God exists, it cannot be held as certain that it is possible for God to have created life. If God is merely a construct of the human mind (as I believe), and not a supernatural all-powerful being, then God could NOT have created life, and therefore the ONLY possibilities about how it got here are the ones that do not include God.

So my question is: can you show that Divine intervention IS a possible explanation for the beginning of life?

The rest of your post consists of misunderstandings of different scientific fields of inquiry and some unsubstantiated claims.

I will ask, along with the rest of the folks here, that you take the time to find some references that support your claims and do a little bit of digging to learn about cosmology, geology & biology.. When you know something about these subjects you will be able to pose more interesting and meaningful questions.

MarcoPolo

(I didn't recognize the name in the quoted text above... sorry)

[ January 29, 2002: Message edited by: MarcoPolo ]</p>

MarcoPolo

Sounds good to me. Just so we all understand that it is just speculation without any proof.

Agreed.

Not me. I would love to find a manmade way of creating life from nothing. It would give me no greater pleasure than to know we could do what 'God' was only able to do.

Of course, where the 'pure atoms' come from will be the first creationist question.

Not doubting you. But is there some evidence of this?

In a lab? Sounds reasonable. Do we have any evidence to support that it can happen outside a lab without all the lab stuff?

Which are what exactly?

In other words, from this point forward, these cells eventually turned into every living thing on the planet. Evolved into giraffes, humans, bugs, flowers... not in that order of course.

I buy it. I mean, in the evolution model, anything can happen with time.

Jerry Smith

First, the 'pure atoms' came from jojo-sa's request that this be the 'starting point' for our discussion. I'm sure that scientists and creationists both will be startled to learn that this is where the 'pure atoms' came from...

This was on the contention that organic molecules were among those that were formed spontaneously by normal chemical reactions and existed on the primordial Earth.

As I stated, this is not all proven. The experiments carried out by Stanley Miller (not Stanley & Miller, as I mistakenly said in the first post) give support to the idea that organic molecules arose spontaneously from inorganic molecules on the primordial earth. (If you are not familiar with these experiments, any high school biology text-book will have information on them).

You said...
The materials and methodolgoy for Miller's (and others') research are recorded for inspection and replication of the work if you question their validity. Basically all he did was mix a bunch of inorganics together and apply a spark to them, and the organics formed.

Unless we have some good reason to believe that the chemical behavior of the inorganics in the presence of energy (such as lightning) wood be different in the field, the evidence that it would work in nature without the lab stuff is provided by the fact that it works in the lab with lab stuff.

[quote]
I said=&gt;...meets most current definitions of "alive".

You said=&gt;Which are what exactly?

Mainly, the ability to reproduce and grow, and to make use of energy from the environment. The various definitions of life are too numerous to mention, but usually these two are key: they exclude everything we normally consider as "non-alive" (rocks, crystals, air, etc..) and include most everything we consider alive (bacteria, kittens, rhinoceri).

Yes, my statement was "the rest is history".. I began from 'pure atoms' as jojo-sa requested. I hope he doesn't want me to trace every branch of every lineage of the evolutionary tree all the way up to modern times... We are talking about 3.5 billion years worth of evolution here... He will see many examples of the processes being discussed in this forum in detail, so I end my elaboration here...

[ January 29, 2002: Message edited by: Jerry Smith ]

[ January 29, 2002: Message edited by: Jerry Smith ]

I promise i was sober when I typed this... but just got off work, and i'm bushed!

[ January 29, 2002: Message edited by: Jerry Smith ]</p>

Quetzal

Hi MarcoPolo and Jojo-sa: Although I don't usually jump in to the middle of someone else's conversation, however:
MP, that's not entirely accurate. There are a number of hypotheses concerning abiogenesis (life from non-life). From my reading, three of these ideas stand head-and-shoulders above the others. The first, the Urey-Miller "alphabet" pre-biotic soup pathway, has the strongest experimental backbone and the best empirical evidence (which I'll get to in a bit), but suffers (oddly enough) from also having the most assumptions. The second, the Cairns-Smith "magic crystal" pathway, has strong support from geology and chemistry, but lacks empirical proof and has not been replicated in the lab (to the best of my knowledge). It also suffers from having the highest statistical improbability. The third pathway, Corliss's "geochemical battery", has the strongest inferential backbone, based on very solid analogies with (and investigation of) modern organisms. It suffers also from lack of experimental support, but appears (to me) to have the least assumptions. It also answers a lot of the questions about the destructive properties of ionizing radiation, for ex.

Since JS has chosen to start with the alphabet soup hypothesis, I'd like to take a moment to discuss some of the empirical evidence for his statement.

The biotic soup hypothesis uses an ammonia-methane atmosphere as a starting point. This atmosphere is similar to that on the outer planets of the solar system. One major assumption is that the earth's surface has a fairly high concentration of organic chemicals. (Note, this is not “organic” in the sense of “living” or “coming from life”.) Organic in the chemical sense refers to various carbon compounds. Some of these compounds were formed on earth and some came from elsewhere: brought to us by the bombardments suffered by Hadean Earth over the previous 500 million years.

Spectroscopic analysis by astronomers has revealed that space is permeated by an extremely tenuous cloud of microscopic particles, called interstellar dust, containing a variety of combinations of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and, sometimes, sulfur or silicon. These are mostly highly reactive free atoms and small molecules that would hardly remain intact under conditions on earth, but in space could interact to form more stable, typical organic compounds, many of them similar to substances found in living organisms.

That such processes take place is demonstrated by the presence of amino acids and other biologically significant compounds on celestial bodies – for example, the meteorite that fell in 1969 in <a href="http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/AAO/local/www/jab/astrobiology/murchison.html" target="_blank"> Murchison, Australia,</a> <a href="http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/stardust/comets/giotto.html" target="_blank"> Comet Halley</a> (which was analyzed by the Giotto spacecraft during its 1985 passage), and Saturn's satellite <a href="http://www.seds.org/nineplanets/nineplanets/titan.html" target="_blank"> Titan,</a> the seas of which are believed to be made of hydrocarbons (based on the Voyager fly-bys) and which contains an atmosphere with significant organic compounds.

Although Miller's lab experiments can be questioned concerning the exact composition of his postulated atmosphere it's important to note that,<a href="http://www.chem.duke.edu/~jds/cruise_chem/Exobiology/miller.html" target="_blank">Miller</a>used simple electrical stimulation of a hydrogen-methane-ammonia atmosphere and – in just a few days – saw over 15% of the methane/carbon converted to amino acids: one of the key building blocks of proteins and hence life. The same amino acids in nearly the same proportions were discovered in the Murchison asteroid. Since Urey, besides amino acids and other organic acids, much more sophisticated experiments at UC San Diego (Miller's new home) have yielded sugars as well as purine and pyrimidine bases. In other words, significantly complex macromolecules necessary for life.

Although you're probably justified in the creationist's usual whine that "there's no proof" (i.e., life has not yet spontaneously erupted in a test tube), given the fact that the entire science is practically brand-new, and given the incredible strides that have been made in such a short time, I think scientists are justified in saying that "it will happen". And soon.

Let me know if you want to talk about the other two hypotheses.

Oolon Colluphid

And bear in mind that:

(a) With science, nothing is ever ‘proven’, in the mathematical sense. Because we’re dealing with all the evidence there is and any more we can gather, rather than defining the universe at the start (as with maths), we have to make do with the closest approximation we can achieve. This doesn’t mean that any old theory will do; it still has to be as accurate as we can manage, until it can be superseded by something that explains even more, and explains it as well or better. Newtonian mechanics was (and still is) a good approximation; quantum mechanics and relativity are better approximations at extremes of scale where the Newtonian framework was found to break down. Because of the way science works -- by attempting to knock down theories, and those that are left standing are most likely to be right -- it is incredibly unlikely that old, vastly discredited ideas (such as creation) will be able to fill this role.

(b) Of course events in the past are unobservable. But that does not mean we cannot find out about them. As with any other science, historical ones can still be hypothesised about, and the hypotheses tested. Unique, unrepeatable events don’t automatically make a hypotheses about them untestable. As someone has said, you can for instance know that the Second World War did happen without needing to watch Poland being invaded or asking Hitler why he did it. Of course we cannot observe things that happened millions of years ago, but we can observe the results of events in the past. Equally, by observing current trends and events, and the results of past events we already know of, we can derive general rules, which may then be used to extrapolate back and make testable predictions about what ought to be found.

If you want to follow the origins of life bit further, these sites show that it is not simply idle daydreaming...

<a href="http://www.resa.net/nasa/origins_life.htm" target="_blank">NASA’s origins of life site</a>

<a href="http://www.accessexcellence.org/WN/SUA03/RNA_origins_life.html" target="_blank">RNA and the origins of life </a>

<a href="http://www.gla.ac.uk/projects/originoflife/html/2001/menu.htm" target="_blank">University of Glasgow’s origins of life site</a>

<a href="http://www.origins.rpi.edu/chem.html#rna" target="_blank">The formation of the RNA world</a>

<a href="http://www.syslab.ceu.hu/corliss/Nature.html" target="_blank">The emergence of living systems
in Archaean submarine hot springs </a>

<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=115394 67&dopt=Abstract" target="_blank">Hydrogen cyanide polymerization</a>

<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=115413 37&dopt=Abstract" target="_blank">Hydrogen cyanide polymers</a>

Here are <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=PubMed&cmd=Display&dopt=pubmed_pubme d&from_uid=11539076" target="_blank">130 more PubMed articles</a>.

Those should keep you going!

TTFN, Oolon

[ January 30, 2002: Message edited by: Oolon Colluphid ]</p>

jojo-sa

OOLoo an others

thanks for replies. however no one answered my one question.

this was a request which i did for you. that is i picked one question.

I will rephrase it.

Where did all the laws of physics come from?

Many use these laws to explain things, but to date I dont know why they came about, how they came about? did they evolve out of the big bang?

What i know for sure is that if any law should change we would be gone. Eg if G changes in that it gets stronger stars would burn(fusion) much differently or might not even form if G was weaker.

So please some one answer my 1 Question....

Jerry Smith

jojo-sa

Hi again. I see that your 'one question' has changed. Originally, it was how did life evolve starting from 'pure atoms', now it is how did the laws of physics come to be.

Nevertheless, it is an honest question and deserves the best answer we can give.

Unfortunately your question edges us perilously close to the frontiers of scientific inquiry.
I could not begin to answer, being myself a layman, but <a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/cosmo.html" target="_blank">This Page from TalkOrigins.org</a> does a fantastic job of making overtures to the layman seeking an explanation - particularly that layman burdened with some creationist intellectual baggage.

I think that you will find that not only is your question answered, but your creationist objections to a naturally occurring universe are answered fairly handily there too.

You will find that even if we have no explanation at all for the existence of natural laws, the creationists arguments still do not hold. At the same time, you will find a good non-mathematical summary of what explanations do exist for the existence of natural laws.

I hope this helps you understand why cosmological arguments normally fail to convince the skeptic of the existence of God.
I also hope it starts to satisfy, and continues to encourage, your curiosity.

[ January 30, 2002: Message edited by: Jerry Smith ]</p>

Oolon Colluphid

Thanks Jerry! You've perhaps saved me sending this (or shifting the relevant par yet again) to the relevant forum.

Jojo-sa, if you want to pursue this further, please start a thread in Science and Skepticism. We'll happily chew evolution over with you here, but cosmology ain't nuffin to do with it!

Cheers, Oolon

jojo-sa

thanks jerry

I read article maybe my brain cant understand his ideas....

What I found is the author is just using another method of explaining the things we see around us.

Does not answer the question as to why did the socalled chaotic explosion result in what we see now. his expalantion seem to say that "hey thats how it happened accept it." it happened naturally.

what does this mean it happpened naturally?

this is basically another way of believing in a mystic force, a god called nature ? is it Not?

He says at the beginning of big bang there was zero energy and no order. indicating that one did not need inteligent creation to create order since at the start there was nothing no order.

I have no prob with this ie. at the start there was no enrgy and no order.

Problem is the author still fails to explain why things are like they are now.

also prob with author he does not talk about the time before since his definition of time do not comprehend it.so dismisses it.

Is it just by chance that the photons of energy formed into quarks and later atoms and late life???

why was energy anyway given off by the big bang?
how did the big bang anyway start. and why react in such a manner.

why are there not other things ( i cant say what cos my mind is limited. other things meaning why are there atoms, why energy, why does law of thermodynaics work etc.)

hope u all get what i try to say, and then please explain it too me.