Dear Friends,

This is a simple case. No I am not saying that you should jump to the belief in Creation, but please take a closer look. The Stanley experiment with the early atmosphere was a perfect way to prove the impossibility of life occuring randomly in the atmosphere that we propose was the early atmosphere. Amino Acids, the simple units that make up protiens and almost all other things in the life of all cells and thus the life in all beings, are essential. There are 20 amino acids, 8 of which are essential. Now these amino acids must have certain chemicals present in order to be formed. The chemicals that were present in the young earth were good enough to give us some amino acids, but only about 10 of the essentials. Then there is the complicated process of making protiens, the smallest of which would need about 100 amino acids and this amount as well as the type of amino acids, were not present. Then stacked on top of all this is the creation of DNA. Which is highly improbable seeing as how nucleic acids were a little lacking. But even with this if the first cell came together it would die before it evolved the process of mitosis. Comment away, if clarification is needed simply ask.

"Macroevolution" does not equal abiogenesis, which is what you're describing.

If you don't even know what "macroevolution" is, you're hardly in a position to call it a fallacy.



[This message has been edited by Rust (edited 12-16-2006).]

Did you happen to be reading a book called," a case for a creator"?

That book was absolute dribble.

quote:Originally posted by Truth is all:

There are 20 amino acids, 8 of which are essential...but only about 10 of the essentials.

Hmm, I see a problem. How can you have only 10 essential when there are 8?

quote:Originally posted by Truth is all:

Comment away, if clarification is needed simply ask.

Where are you getting your information? Does he have a PHD in Jeebus?

quote:Originally posted by Truth is all:

The chemicals that were present in the young earth were good enough to give us some amino acids, but only about 10 of the essentials.

I'm going to take it that you mean 10 of the amino acids overall - and even this would be wrong. They managed to create 13 different amino acids during the Miller-Urey experiment

A few problems with his post, just in case he decides to continue arguing it even though he already got "macroevolution" confused right off the bat.

1. The Miller-Urey experiment (what he calls "the Stanley experiment") did anything but prove that abiogenesis was impossible. It showed how organic compounds can be generated from one possible form of the earliest atmosphere in Earth, which then shows how abiogenesis is entirely possible.

2. He cannot know what is "essential" and what is not. To decide what is "essential" based on what we see now (highly evolved organisms) is absurd. The earliest "life" may not have needed the same amount of proteins and/or amino-acids; we have every reason to believe that it didn't.

3. Claiming that the first cell would die before it developed mitosis is quite simple unsubstantiated and ignores that the formation of the earliest form of life (which don't even have to be cells/bacteria) was happening continuously in many different attempts, thus many of the would be forming; not just one.

4. Nobody is saying that abiogenesis is an easy process or a sure thing; what scientists say is that it is most definitely possible - which it is. That is nothing close to a fallacy.

Dear Friends,

I am sorry I did not clarify. I made too much of a leap in my assumptions. For me macroevolution is impossible without abiogenesis and it was because of this that I said macroevolution, but you are of course right. Forgive my error in terminology and the few slips of the tongue that I have let loose.

Creating a few organic compounds however is far from proving abiogenesis to be possible. This whole schpeel of "we dont know the earliest life form" is not going to cut it. Even the simplest cells we know now are indeed made up of chemicals, which make up amino acids, which make up the substances needed for life. Yes I am sure there was chemical activity on the young earth but that means nothing. Chemical activity is far from equaling life. I can show you the process of a cell and what components are needed for the process. But I am not going to claim that there is some other cell that we dont know of yet but somehow it became the cell we know now. There is no basis for that. Even if there was an earlier form how did IT evolve? Speculating on imagination is not a hard thing to do and if that is what abiogenesis has come to then I guess I can not argue it for it stretches as far as the imagination can fathom.

As for the insults, keep them to a minimum and simply ask questions. All of the information here is second hand and I am sure not too many doctors get on and argue in these forums and even if they do I doubt you are one of them. So spare me.

quote:Originally posted by Truth is all:

Dear Friends,

I am sorry I did not clarify. I made too much of a leap in my assumptions. For me macroevolution is impossible without abiogenesis and it was because of this that I said macroevolution, but you are of course right. Forgive my error in terminology and the few slips of the tongue that I have let loose.

Wrong. A god could have easily created the first, most simplest forms of life and then evolution would have taken place after that; that's an example of how "macroevolution" can exist without abiogenesis.

The two can exist without the other. To claim that "macroevolution" is impossible without abiogenesis is to not understand what "macroevolution" is to begin with.

quote:

Creating a few organic compounds however is far from proving abiogenesis to be possible.

It's even farther from claiming that the Stanley experiment showed how it was impossible, as you said! http://www.totse.com/bbs/rolleyes.gif (http://www.totse.com/bbs/rolleyes.gif)

If it showed anything, it's that it's possible; period. How any reasonable human being can claim that an experiment that showed how the building blocks of life could have easily been formed in the early Earth atmosphere somehow shows how abiogenesis is impossible (as you managed to claim) is beyond me.

quote:

This whole schpeel of "we dont know the earliest life form" is not going to cut it. Even the simplest cells we know now are indeed made up of chemicals, which make up amino acids, which make up the substances needed for life.

Nobody said that the earliest forms of life wouldn't use amino-acids or proteins, only that your claim that "8" (or "10", it seems to change across your post) are essential is pure conjecture on your part since you have no clue what was essential for the earliest forms of life. You cannot base yourself on what we see now because we have every reason in the world to believe that the earliest forms of life were even more primitive than what we see now.

quote:Speculating on imagination is not a hard thing to do and if that is what abiogenesis has come to then I guess I can not argue it for it stretches as far as the imagination can fathom.

Are you being deliberately ironic? You were speculating on what the "essential" number of amino-acids for life is! You simply have no clue at all what the number is, and where providing pure speculation. So please, don't claim someone else is providing speculation when that is all that you've provided in this thread.

I'm a science fan, not a scientist or mathematician so I can't work out the exact figures, but I have no problem imagining how abiogenesis might come about. If you look into it, it's pretty unrealistic to assume it isn't a completely natural thing which happens all over the universe all the time.

Let's first look at the odds, if you have a hundred million things happen every second, then every second will see one hundred separate million-to-one chance events. This is simply the way the universe works, one-in-a-trillion chance events happening trillions of times a second isn't unreasonable if you've got enough chances. How many molecules of water are there in a pint, and how many nanoseconds in a billion years? That's the kind of numbers we're talking about here, so it doesn't matter how improbable something is, if there's a chance it's gonna happen eventually.

Nobody claims life started as cells, cells are pretty damn advanced forms of life. It starts as replicating molecules.

You've got a sea, filled with countless building blocks that are being washed around and sticking together in an unimaginable number of random patterns. Say one of these patterns is a self-replicating shape, for the sake of this post I'll imagine a spiral which rolls around picking up bits on each end until it gets too long and breaks in the middle, causing two spirals, then 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024 and so on until there's billions of billions of them- perhaps even enough to fill a small thimble.

Once the sea is filled with spirals, there's no building blocks left to make any more, but they break down through friction anyway so there's still plenty of movement and recycling. Eventually the same thing happens again, another shape is formed which is good at breaking up spirals, say a ball for example. the balls rule the world until the only spirals which are left are the trillion trillion trillion ones which are too tough to break up, and luckily (sic) just one of those can break down balls as it replicates.

Natural selection has started, and the cycle of life on earth has begun. Over the next few billion years, the replicators will become more advanced (dna/rna), will 'learn' how to enclose themselves inside bodies (cells), harness light from the sun, colonies of cells will live together and form multi-celled plants and even animals. within four and a half billion years, vast complex self-aware colonies of nerve cells will be sat here on teh internets contemplating the meaning of existence.

The bible's version is like a children's story in comparison, it lacks depth, and it undermines the elagancy of the universe.