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Rolloffle
2007-06-29, 08:48
So to all you atheists:

Why do you believe that life was spontaniously created from unliving matter, despite the fact that this has never been observed or done in a lab? :rolleyes:

Real.PUA
2007-06-29, 10:53
Because it is a plausible explanation.

---Beany---
2007-06-29, 11:37
Because it is a plausible explanation.

You forgot to say what the explanation was.

CatharticWeek
2007-06-29, 12:03
Life is a reaction that uses energy stored as matter.
I think of it as a pile of kindling lighting when exposed to enough heat.
Simply put. Just because we don't understand the conditions that spark life doesn't mean that it is impossible.

Martini
2007-06-29, 14:33
Atheism is a lack of belief in god. This lack of belief says nothing of life coming from non-life. Abiogenisis is being studied by some of the worlds best bio-chemists, but because we do not have a definite answer does not mean "god" automatically becomes the correct answer.

Even if atheism weren't true, life would still have to come from non-life. The nature of the information continuum forces abiogenesis upon us. If God snapped his fingers and created the proto cells which started evolution ex nihilo, that is still life from non life.

---Beany---, if you want explanations of how abiogenesis would work, check out the link below.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis

The Miller-Urey experiment is quite compelling.

The experiment used water (H2O), methane (CH4), ammonia (NH3) and hydrogen (H2). The chemicals were all sealed inside a sterile array of glass tubes and flasks connected together in a loop, with one flask half-full of liquid water and another flask containing a pair of electrodes. The liquid water was heated to induce evaporation, sparks were fired between the electrodes to simulate lightning through the atmosphere and water vapor, and then the atmosphere was cooled again so that the water could condense and trickle back into the first flask in a continuous cycle

At the end of one week of continuous operation Miller and Urey observed that as much as 10-15% of the carbon within the system was now in the form of organic compounds. Two percent of the carbon had formed amino acids, including 13 of the 22 that are used to make proteins in living cells, with glycine as the most abundant. Sugars, lipids, and some of the building blocks for nucleic acids were also formed. Nucleic acids (DNA, RNA) themselves were not formed. As observed in all consequent experiments, both left-handed (L) and right-handed (D) optical isomers were created in a racemic mixture.

The molecules produced were simple organic molecules, far from a complete living biochemical system, but the experiment established that the hypothetical processes could produce some building blocks of life without requiring life to synthesize them first.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller-Urey_experiment

Does anything I quoted prove that that God/gods aren't responsible? Of course not. But as Real.PUA stated, it is a plausible explanation and IMHO is infinitely better than deciding that if we can't create complex life in a lab with our limited knowledge, "God did it" is a reasonable explanation. People have been using that explanation for millennium to describe how rain water dries up and disappears and "new" rain water is created, how the Sun goes across our seemingly flat Earth from the East and does so again the next morning without going back across in the opposite direction, etc. There's a pattern of things with seemingly miraculous explanations actually having scientific, non-miraculous explanations. Rolloffle probably would have rolled his eyes a short time ago at those who didn't believe in God when they couldn't explain the rain cycle.

Graemy
2007-06-29, 15:32
because, we've got very close to taking pictures of it

http://tinyurl.com/yps8a2

there was even a Nobel prize given out in 2006 for the first baby picture of the universe.

countdown2chaos
2007-06-29, 19:59
zomg, why are you people so dumb? why cant you jsut believe that even though if you find out how everything was created, why cant that just be God who created it that way? who the fuck tells God how to create something? but no, when we think we're smart and figure something out in science, that just totally knocks off God? doesnt make anysense, like why do believe that because of evolution there isnt god? umm, maybe it was Gods plan to have us evolve so we know how and why things works...it's not like he's keeping science a secret, we just havent done everything yet, science isnt suppost to push us away from God. i just find science as proof of God, seeing how nothing cant come from nothing and something had to come up w/ this idea of life. therfore. GOD.

niohex
2007-06-29, 20:05
zomg, why are you people so dumb? why cant you jsut believe that even though if you find out how everything was created, why cant that just be God who created it that way? who the fuck tells God how to create something? but no, when we think we're smart and figure something out in science, that just totally knocks off God? doesnt make anysense, like why do believe that because of evolution there isnt god? umm, maybe it was Gods plan to have us evolve so we know how and why things works...it's not like he's keeping science a secret, we just havent done everything yet, science isnt suppost to push us away from God. i just find science as proof of God, seeing how nothing cant come from nothing and something had to come up w/ this idea of life. therfore. GOD.

There is a difference between God and God's will....If you want to say God wanted us to evolve or he created the big bang, then fine. :)

But that rules out most popular religion.

countdown2chaos
2007-06-29, 20:16
There is a difference between God and God's will....If you want to say God wanted us to evolve or he created the big bang, then fine. :)

But that rules out most popular religion.

yeah? i dont that. i just call it ignorance and arrogance to both atheisist and deep religious believers. the bible n qur'ran n torah never specifically say how anything was done, just that it was.

Martini
2007-06-29, 20:20
zomg, why are you people so dumb?
Because God made us that way?

why cant you jsut believe that even though if you find out how everything was created, why cant that just be God who created it that way?
Why can't you just believe that we are all an experiment by Xenu? Why can't you just believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster?


who the fuck tells God how to create something? but no, when we think we're smart and figure something out in science, that just totally knocks off God?
We don't need to figure out how to do anything or figure out how anything happened to be without belief in God/gods. Most atheists in my experience are without belief because there is zero evidence for such a being, just as you are probably without a belief in flying pigs for the same reason.


doesnt make anysense, like why do believe that because of evolution there isnt god?
See above.

umm, maybe it was Gods plan to have us evolve so we know how and why things works...it's not like he's keeping science a secret, we just havent done everything yet,
Umm, or maybe it works the same way without your invisible sky fairy?


science isnt suppost to push us away from God.
Science is supposed to have us believe in things for rational reasons and believe in extraordinary things only when backed by extraordinary evidence. There is none for God.

i just find science as proof of God, seeing how nothing cant come from nothing and something had to come up w/ this idea of life. therfore. GOD.
Doesn't sound like you understand much about science at all.

countdown2chaos
2007-06-29, 20:25
because everything comes from something? that's a fact, then maybe its YOU who doesnt know much about science.

Badger of Doom
2007-06-29, 20:28
because everything comes from something? that's a fact, then maybe its YOU who doesnt know much about science.

Where did God come from?

Martini
2007-06-29, 20:32
Like I said, you don't know much about science. Prior to the Big Bang, everything (not nothing) was centered at one point, including space and time. Singularity rapidly expanded (or, everything exploded). Time and space are constants, and neither could exist without the other. If you feel otherwise, prove it. If you have some groundbreaking research that disproves this fact, publish it. Your religious stupidity won't get you anywhere, at least not where science is concerned. If something existed prior to time, it can't be proven by science, and will not have any observable effects in the universe as we know it now. Therefore, your childish argument for your imaginary sky fairy utterly fails. Science does not prove God's existence regardless of how much you misunderstand of what science really says.

Rolloffle
2007-06-29, 20:55
Life is a reaction that uses energy stored as matter.
I think of it as a pile of kindling lighting when exposed to enough heat.
Simply put. Just because we don't understand the conditions that spark life doesn't mean that it is impossible.

Sure, but...

It's a bit far fetched to believe that something occured by chance in nature despite being unobservable and unreplicable.

Cytosine
2007-06-29, 20:59
Sure, but...

It's a bit far fetched to believe that something occured by chance in nature despite being unobservable and unreplicable.

And it's NOT far fetched to believe that an invisible sky fairy who is empirically unobservable created the cosmos and all life through an act of will?

Rolloffle
2007-06-29, 20:59
Where did God come from?

The Bible says God exists outside of time, has always been, and always will be.

Rolloffle
2007-06-29, 21:00
And it's NOT far fetched to believe that an invisible sky fairy who is empirically unobservable created the cosmos and all life through an act of will?

Not any more far fetched than believing that a process which is empirically unobservable created the cosmos and all life through blind chance.

All I'm saying is you evolutionist-atheists should stop pushing your beliefs on others.

Martini
2007-06-29, 21:43
Sure, but...

It's a bit far fetched to believe that something occured by chance in nature despite being unobservable and unreplicable.
Whether something occurs in nature has nothing to do with whether it's also observable and replicable by modern humans in labs. If you do have a point, or a coherent question, please fetch it out and we'll take a look at it.

How is it unobservable and unreplicable? Do you mean that there was no one there to see it? That's not the same as unobservable. Do you mean that it didn't happen again? How do you know that it didn't?

And please define "something". There are a lot of things happening by chance. I assume that "in nature" means in this universe. Perhaps in means on Earth.

Not any more far fetched than believing that a process which is empirically unobservable created the cosmos and all life through blind chance.
Depending on what you mean by "far-fetched".

Is not a god existing outside of the universe and time yet able to create it and all life within it a more far-fetched assumption than mere chemicals combining, which happens every day?

It's not far-fetched to believe that aliens at one point have observed us from within the solar system (actually landing, OTOH is another story.) It's not far-fetched to believe that more than one person was involved in the JFK event in Dallas. It's just there is no evidence of these actually happening, and the same thing goes for supernatural abiogenesis.

It's just that the default assumption is to avoid unnecessary multiplication of entities.

Which is more far-fetched, that in the trillions upon trillions of carbon-based interactions that happened in the first billion or so years of the earth's existence, that the thousand or fewer atoms that needed to be arranged got arranged the right way* (see the Miller-Urey_experiment that I linked to earlier), or a supernatural entity arranged the stuff, evidence for which has been conspicuously absent for the past 4 or so billion years?

So supernatural abiogenesis is on par with the Third Shooter or Aliens Kidnapped by Baby theories: might sound plausible but introduce a completely new agent unnecessarily.

*not to mention the possibility of intermediate steps between raw organic material and self-replicating material.


All I'm saying is you evolutionist-atheists should stop pushing your beliefs on others.
That's not what you're saying at all. Actually, you started this thread and asked for atheist opinions. Now you're claiming that we're doing the pushing?

xray
2007-06-29, 22:11
Sure, but...

It's a bit far fetched to believe that something occured by chance in nature despite being unobservable and unreplicable.

It didn't happen by blind chance ( molecules combine according to rules, and many tend to self-organize into complex forms ), and while we haven't seen life spontaneously appear in a lab due to time and space constraints, we've seen many of the precursors of life appear.

Not any more far fetched than believing that a process which is empirically unobservable created the cosmos and all life through blind chance.

Incredibly, ridiculously more far fetched. We already know that molecules exists and self organize, and no new physical laws are needed to explain abiogenesis. There is zero evidence for any gods, and a god as typically portrayed would violate various laws of physics; going by the evidence we have now the odds of a god even existing are less than the chance of my body spontaneously turning to gold and exploding ( which is merely highly improbable ).

Meanwhile, I think it is reasonable to believe that abiogenesis occurred by chance. It’s a long shot, but life is undeniably here, so *something* happened.

You do need to be careful with that phrase “blind chance”. Events that are randomly initiated aren’t necessarily “blind”, in that are some outcomes can be helped (selected for) by the environment and by the nature of the participants where others are not. This gives a *much* higher chance of a very complex outcome being generated in small steps by a series of events, even where any single event is triggered by a random input.

I’m guessing you think it’s more reasonable to believe that God (or some other entity) created life deliberately than it is to suppose a long chain of events with no intelligent guidance. I disagree, because then we have to deal with the God entity. Where did it come from? How did it exist before “life”? etc.

Martini
2007-06-30, 14:21
If you, Rolloffle, are operating under the impression (popular in some comic books) that science proposes that there was simply a happy confluence of just the right chemicals lying in a puddle or clumped in an ocean and a fortuitous lightning strike just happened to bring them to "life" like some sort of miniature prehistoric Frankenstein's monster, we may want to address the fact that no one in science proposes that scenario.

While noting that there is no single hypothesis, a really sketchy overview that covers several proposals without getting into the niggling details would go something like this: Different chemicals react, naturally. (Sodium and Chloride bond in ways that changes the overall nature of the two separate molecules.)
Over millions of years, some chemicals have come in contact with each other and have undergone reactions that produced new chemicals.
Various systems in nature appear to be "self-organizing".
We know from the Miller-Urey experiment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller-Urey_experiment) that it is possible for some simple chemical reactions to produce organic chemicals. (This does not "prove" life originated in this way; it demonstrates that producing organic chemicals from inorganic chemicals is a physical possibility.)
Once we have inorganic chemicals producing organic chemicals, we have a higher level of organization that makes it easier for organic compounds to undergo similar reactions and create ever more sophisticated organic compounds and systems.
At some point in this chain of ever more complex and sophisticated reactions, it is possible that the reactions, themselves, could become self-sustaining in a way that we would recognize as life. No one has found a barrier that would prevent that from occurring.

Odd claims about how "improbable" an event that "created" life might be miss the point that we have already seen some of the events that would be required and if we extrapolate those sort of events over the course of millions of years, the odds become a lot more favorable. The odds against a single lightning strike into a chemical soup creating a life form probably are unimaginably high. The odds against a series of successive chemical reactions--reactions we have already observed--slowly becoming more complex and self-sustaining over the course of millions of years are not nearly so improbable.

You might want to peruse this page on The Origin of Life (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/originoflife.html) and its links from TalkOrigins.org.

Ethanael
2007-06-30, 17:08
If you, Rolloffle, are operating under the impression (popular in some comic books) that science proposes that there was simply a happy confluence of just the right chemicals lying in a puddle or clumped in an ocean and a fortuitous lightning strike just happened to bring them to "life" like some sort of miniature prehistoric Frankenstein's monster, we may want to address the fact that no one in science proposes that scenario.

While noting that there is no single hypothesis, a really sketchy overview that covers several proposals without getting into the niggling details would go something like this: Different chemicals react, naturally. (Sodium and Chloride bond in ways that changes the overall nature of the two separate molecules.)
Over millions of years, some chemicals have come in contact with each other and have undergone reactions that produced new chemicals.
Various systems in nature appear to be "self-organizing".
We know from the Miller-Urey experiment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller-Urey_experiment) that it is possible for some simple chemical reactions to produce organic chemicals. (This does not "prove" life originated in this way; it demonstrates that producing organic chemicals from inorganic chemicals is a physical possibility.)
Once we have inorganic chemicals producing organic chemicals, we have a higher level of organization that makes it easier for organic compounds to undergo similar reactions and create ever more sophisticated organic compounds and systems.
At some point in this chain of ever more complex and sophisticated reactions, it is possible that the reactions, themselves, could become self-sustaining in a way that we would recognize as life. No one has found a barrier that would prevent that from occurring.

Odd claims about how "improbable" an event that "created" life might be miss the point that we have already seen some of the events that would be required and if we extrapolate those sort of events over the course of millions of years, the odds become a lot more favorable. The odds against a single lightning strike into a chemical soup creating a life form probably are unimaginably high. The odds against a series of successive chemical reactions--reactions we have already observed--slowly becoming more complex and self-sustaining over the course of millions of years are not nearly so improbable.

You might want to peruse this page on The Origin of Life (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/originoflife.html) and its links from TalkOrigins.org.

QFMFT.

Real.PUA
2007-07-05, 12:08
Not to mention that many of the fundamental building blocks of life have been found floating out there in space... These fundamental chemicals do form spontaneously.

KikoSanchez
2007-07-06, 02:31
Not any more far fetched than believing that a process which is empirically unobservable created the cosmos and all life through blind chance.

All I'm saying is you evolutionist-atheists should stop pushing your beliefs on others.

So everything that you don't understand or explain you just throw under the category of GOD. Just like the ancients that threw lightning, gravity, crops, flooding and just about everything else they couldn't wrap their heads around under GOD.

KikoSanchez
2007-07-06, 02:33
The Bible says God exists outside of time, has always been, and always will be.

Fallacy: Appeal to Authority

The bible says so...

why is the bible relevant?

it's God's infallible word

says who?

the bible.

Good game, sir.

Scraff
2007-07-06, 17:03
It's a bit far fetched to believe that something occured by chance in nature despite being unobservable and unreplicable.
It's a bit far-fetched to conclude the OJ Simpson killed his ex-wife since it's unobservable and unreplicatable.

http://www.squeakywheelsblog.com/creation

mvpena
2007-07-06, 20:27
Atheism is a lack of belief in god. This lack of belief says nothing of life coming from non-life. Abiogenisis is being studied by some of the worlds best bio-chemists, but because we do not have a definite answer does not mean "god" automatically becomes the correct answer.

The Miller-Urey experiment is quite compelling.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller-Urey_experiment



"World's best biochemists"? I'd like to hear some names because I happen to be within that community of scientific discipline. Anyway, even though electricity in the air creates the energy to create organic compounds, that is all it will do. In such an environment biochemical compounds will never link. They require carboxyl to hydroxide linkage. The very presence H2O will cause hydrolysis and, thus, the rate of reaction will favor the reverse.

I understand that people would like to think that a biochemist or molecular biologist would be able to figure out the origins of life. I mean, that is our job. To study the precise details of how life occurs. But the origins of our study is out of our realm. You would have to look towards a Physicist. We study life, they study the laws that dictate life.

Martini
2007-07-06, 21:35
You would have to look towards a Physicist. We study life, they study the laws that dictate life.
Sounds good. You would obviously know better than I would. :)

Real.PUA
2007-07-08, 23:39
"World's best biochemists"? I'd like to hear some names because I happen to be within that community of scientific discipline. Anyway, even though electricity in the air creates the energy to create organic compounds, that is all it will do. In such an environment biochemical compounds will never link. They require carboxyl to hydroxide linkage. The very presence H2O will cause hydrolysis and, thus, the rate of reaction will favor the reverse.

I understand that people would like to think that a biochemist or molecular biologist would be able to figure out the origins of life. I mean, that is our job. To study the precise details of how life occurs. But the origins of our study is out of our realm. You would have to look towards a Physicist. We study life, they study the laws that dictate life.

Life is chemistry. The origins of life fall right in with chemistry, not physics...the chemistry of life is precisely what biochemists study. Lot's of biochemists are real chemists. I don't see how physics plays a role in this at all other than to explain why the chemistry occurs, the chemistry is what explains how life occurs.

Anyways, the right conditions (like very cold temps and the right ions) will favor polymerization of nucleotides to form RNA which then could potentially have (auto)catalytic activity.

mvpena
2007-07-09, 18:51
Life is chemistry.

I've always seen Chemistry as a small portion of Physics. Especially when it comes to interactions. Thats when you get into energy quantification, quantum physics, and dualities. After all, chemicals doing nothing and just being inert are just chemicals. But when they interact, thats when stuff happens and that is the essence of what we know as life.

I seriously think to get into the origins of life, we would have to break the study down to the very core of everything in life, which is Physics. It's the laws of our existence and, as Albert Einstein has said, God's language.

mvpena
2007-07-09, 19:07
Anyways, the right conditions (like very cold temps and the right ions) will favor polymerization of nucleotides to form RNA which then could potentially have (auto)catalytic activity.


Polymerization would require warm temperatures (energy). The cold temperatures would be required for stability after polymerization. The Gibbs Free Energy for polymerization to occur spontaneously must be negative.

/\G = /\H - T/\S

/\H = all chain polymerizations are exothermic

T = must be positive

/\S = always negative for chain polymerization

There is a reason why Taq polymerase is the DNA polymerase of choice when doing PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction). It is a polymerase that can handle the 70-74 degree Celsius temperature of the 3rd step of PCR (elongation). The step when polymerization occurs off of the primers.

It may be my own bias in this issue because I actually do Biochem work, but I seriously think the origins of life is not within the scope of Biochemistry.

Real.PUA
2007-07-09, 20:47
Polymerization would require warm temperatures (energy). The cold temperatures would be required for stability after polymerization. The Gibbs Free Energy for polymerization to occur spontaneously must be negative.

/\G = /\H - T/\S

/\H = all chain polymerizations are exothermic

T = must be positive

/\S = always negative for chain polymerization

There is a reason why Taq polymerase is the DNA polymerase of choice when doing PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction). It is a polymerase that can handle the 70-74 degree Celsius temperature of the 3rd step of PCR (elongation). The step when polymerization occurs off of the primers.

It may be my own bias in this issue because I actually do Biochem work, but I seriously think the origins of life is not within the scope of Biochemistry.

I have a degree in biochem too. Have you ever read any of the papers hypothesizing about the origins of life? They are pure chemistry/biochemistry. Rarely you may find a physicist explaining how some chemical environments could occur like homochirality... but it's pretty much all biochem.

Here's a some what random example, an article given to me by one of my biochem profs:

Why Nature Chose Phosphates
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/235/4793/1173

Here's the one about freezing temps for the RNA world:

A new scenario for the early RNA world
http://www.biogeosciences-discuss.net/2/1719/2005/bgd-2-1719-2005.pdf

mvpena
2007-07-09, 21:33
This article had to be written by a Biologist. There is almost no discussion about conformation. Although, complexity is discussed in length, conformation seems to have never be taken into account. But I see what you are saying by the freezing temperatures experiment.

It would seem that the structure from water to ice positions nucleotides so that they may be in the right postures to ligate. I can understand that since H2O has the trait of becoming less dense at solid state due to its small structure and immense H-bonding. But what I don't get is how can so many small RNA chains form in liquid water and stay stable long enough for the water to freeze and position to where they can ligate to each other?

Although I see where an instance of ligation can occur during liquid to solid state transition, I do not see what will prevent the RNA strand from solid to liquid or just liquid before solid.

Interesting article, but it still doesn't sit right with me. In terms of diversity of smaller components to create complex larger components, I'm still a fan of the endophagocytosis theories. Being a Biochemist, I am biased in my view of this article because it seems that the author speaks of the RNA strands in secondary structures. Being in a medium, RNA almost never sustains secondary structures. Its almost imperative for macromolecules like RNA to assume tertiary and quatrinary structures.

With that in mind, the reactions discussed by the article are not so simple. At the very least of the tertiary structure, the backbones are usually facing inward away from the macromolecule's environment. I took a quick glimpse of the article, but this goes back to my question on how does it stay stable? The macromolecule would have to denature from its tertiary/quatrinary structure before being positions to ligate.

I don't know, maybe I am missing something.

+1 to you for being in the Biochem discipline. Especially for being a regular on totse with an interest in Biochemistry.

nothing special
2007-07-13, 08:35
guys, guys...


I have the biggest dick.

Townsend
2007-07-17, 05:15
guys, guys...


I have the biggest dick.

NO, I HAVE THE BIGGEST DICK!!!!! :rolleyes:

987royalman
2007-07-17, 05:40
NO, I HAVE THE BIGGEST DICK!!!!! :rolleyes:

Nope, I do (cause i'm black :D )

Anyways, to the thread starter, atheists don't necessarily believe that we were created from a non living state, nor does
it mean that without proof, God is the answer to this question.

To be honest, no one knows.

WritingANovel
2007-07-18, 18:14
So to all you atheists:

Why do you believe that life was spontaniously created from unliving matter, despite the fact that this has never been observed or done in a lab? :rolleyes:

Just because something is yet to be reproduced in labs it doesn't mean it's impossible. It could that given the current conditions on earth (and subsequently in the labs) we are unable to simulate the initial conditions under which life evolved.

You are an idiot. And get ready for some negative reps.

Also, I just found out that you are temp-banned till the 22nd. What a loser. Care to show me the thread/post which led to this decision? Loser troll.