The Digital Demise Of Darwinism

[Qdogsman]

What I meant was that if this went off topic we could transfer the relevant posts to a new thread, if that seemed appropriate.

 

You seem to be caught up in a problem of your own making. If the subjects being discussed fall outside some bound you have established, or if some title does not match your expectations, then by all means tell me how I can comply to help mitigate the problem. But until you give me that kind of direction, I will focus my attention on the subjects of the conversation as it unfolds.

 

I am in strong partial agreement with you. I have no desire to avoid discussion of abiogenesis. I just object to it being conflated and confused with evolution. Obviously the two are related, intimately one might say, but they do remain distinct and evolutionary theory really has nothing to say about the origin of life.

 

This seems to me to be an arbitrary, and problematic, categorization of topics. Is it only the origin of life (and I presume the origin of the genetic code, which is the topic under discussion here) that you would move out of the category of Modern Synthesis, or would you exclude all other origin-related mysteries? For example would you exclude the origin of consciousness? How about the origin of body types which seemingly miraculously appeared during the Cambrian explosion? If we sweep all the hard questions into another bucket, then we severely reduce the explanatory power of Modern Synthesis.

 

And if we likewise exclude the question of the origin of species, then we definitely have diminished the theory of evolution by disqualifying a very title chosen by C. Darwin himself.

 

And, beyond origin-type questions, there are a host of hard questions related to consciousness, such as the periodic loss of consciousness due to sleep that I mentioned earlier. Are we to exclude these as well?

 

Your categorization scheme is not at all clear to me, so as I said, I won't pay too much attention to it unless prodded by you and I will concentrate on interesting dialog on interesting questions.

 

I think it makes very little difference to biology since it happened such a long time ago. And there I am being deliberately trite to make a point. Once life had arisen, by whatever means, evolutionary mechanisms took over and determined the future expression of biology.

 

That seems to be a reasonable position if you are breeding dogs. But if you are interested in understanding life and how it came to be what we see, then I think you have to tackle the hard problems as well as the easy ones.

 

So the difficulty here has arisen through the choice of thread title and the intial 'attack' on Darwinism for failing to address abiogenesis.

 

That may be a difficulty for you, but as I said it doesn't matter too much to me.

 

Now that it seems clear that you wish to address the origin of the genetic code, which I see as being pretty close - probably - to being the origin of life, then we can proceed. But lets now leave Darwinism, the Modern Synthesis, or any other name for accepted evolutionary mechanisms to one side, since they are irrelevant to the topic.

 

Ummm. OK. If that is your wish, I'll try never to mention those two terms again in this thread.

 

Which means I need to re-read your thoughts on it and do some revision of current thinking on the issue.

 

As always, I am grateful for, and thank you in advance for, any time and attention you pay to my ideas.

 

Don't be concerned if I fail to post on the subject for several days. It will not indicate a lack of interest.

 

Not to worry. I am out of town from Tuesday through Thursday every week and I have not yet caught up with the thread as a result of my last absence. My delays in responding do not indicate a lack of interest either.

 

(Though an absence of posting for several weeks could indicate an inconvenient death.)

 

I just hate those inconvenient deaths.

 

An open mind is more about accepting nothing, than about accepting everything.

 

I think an open mind is accepting nothing and being open to investigating everything.

[Moontanman]

 

Most true. I look forward to the day when scientific researchers do the investigation necessary to arrive at the conclusion that a non-human mind was necessary for the origination of life, not to mention the observable universe itself.

 

 

I have to ask, what would empirical testable evidence of your assert be? What would it look like? Simply saying something is impossible so it must have been a creator is not logical, a creator is not the default position, If indeed it was shown that chemistry could not bring about evolution why would you assume a supernatural origin? Where did that mind come from? Where did it's source come from? All you are doing is adding an unnecessary layer of mystery to the problem...

[Qdogsman]

But no one categorically rejects the possibility of a creator, it is just not supportable by the available evidence. We can spin scenarios about what is possible forever, only that which is supported by evidence can really be debated...

 

Good point, Moontanman. I have been a little sloppy in my description of the problem. You are right that scientists don't necessarily reject the possibility or a creator. And it's not even so much of a problem that some scientists deride those who entertain the possibility. The problem is the prohibition that science places on its membership of including the notion of a creator in any published work.

 

(I hope our moderators will allow a short anecdote.)

 

I had the occasion to work closely with a group of high-powered scientists helping them apply as much computer power, as was then possible, to their quantum chemistry problems. I worked among them for several weeks and got to know some of them quite well. I once asked some of them whether or not there were any express or implied prohibitions against subjects they could discuss in their formal work.

 

Dr. Detrich looked up at me from his desk, slowly opened a file drawer and pulled out a sheet of paper. He said to me, "Yes, I keep a running list of them to make sure I don't slip and accidently get myself into trouble." I didn't read the list in detail but I happened to notice that FTL travel was on the list. At the mention of this, Prof. Roothan chimed in and said something like, "Oh pooh. That's baloney. I published a paper myself discussing FTL travel."

 

Then Detrich, or someone else asked him, "Have you published anything since?"

 

Roothan, paused, looked up, then down, and then as if surprised, said, "Well, no." But then he quickly added, "But that was about the time I switched my interest from chemistry to computers." A few people murmured, "Mmmm hmmmm."

 

The point is that constraints of this type tend to move science dangerously close to becoming a religion. I'm afraid it's already happened in the area of climatology.

 

What do you think the discovery of life on other planets would say about the idea of a creator?

 

Good question. I suppose it would depend on whether or not the life-chemistry was carbon based and if so, whether it utilized DNA, and of course if so whether the genetic code was the same as ours, and if any of the body types resembled ours. What we would have would be a huge amount of new information that might suggest answers to some of our current questions and raise completely new ones. It would be very exciting. But as for the idea of a creator, I think it would be a huge mistake to try to make sense of all that new information without considering the possibility of a creator or creators.

[clinkernace]

That's actually an interesting point, one that I think proves my point: It's taken our humble species less than 200 years to develop models that explain how much of the microbiology of life works. We don't have it all worked out, but there's certainly a lot of work with "artificial life" going on, and most of what's stopping us is not that we *can't* do it but that it may cause all sorts of nasty side-effects if we do it without thinking it through.

IMO you have exaggerated human accomplishments in the field of microbiology. If one focuses upon what has been discovered, well, that is plenty enough to impress the rubes. When one looks at the remaining mysteries, especially those involved in the abiogenesis problem, we appear to have a long way to go.

 

Then, suppose that a team of brilliant scientists gang up and invent a great machine, the Miller experiment gone government-sponsored. They dump samples of the imagined primeval gorp into a hopper up top, inject it with their best version of what the primeval gasses were, hook it up to a dozen nuclear power plants and supercomputers, and turn the crank. In ten years the control computer shuts down the system and lights up a sign reading, "EXPERIMENT COMPLETE." The President (who voted to be present for a photo-op) opens a hatch, and out walk a few million little green men armed with tiny evaporator guns, which they immediately turn upon their creators.

 

When everyone in the entire building is killed except three, the Chief Scientist, the President, and some nitwit philosopher who claims to provide the spiritual underpinning for the project, a somewhat larger LGM wearing grey robes and a propeller-beanie colored fluorescent cerise, steps out and declares, "This incubator sucks! It really sucks! Our lives are miserable. Why did you do this to us? Why did you create us into this life of mostly misery? You are the quintessential arrogant jerk!!" His soldiers raise their guns. "Fire away!"

 

Now, what does this experiment prove? It does not prove that life evolved naturally from the primeval soup of planet earth. It proves only that it is possible for quasi-intelligent beings to manipulate the raw material and natural forces of the universe, so as to create life.

 

And you're saying an intelligence capable of getting a universe off the ground took 3 billion years to do it? That seems like an awfully long time! Especially when you consider the fact that this designer could be doing these experiments on trillions of earth-like planets in the universe, and had 9 billion years before the earth was even formed.

 

As I point out elsewhere, people tend to think of an intelligent designer, or creator, as an omnipotent being. Even those who can tone that notion down to a being with limited intelligence, tend to assume super-intelligence. Why not assume that the intelligence was similar to the forms we find among ourselves--- a bell-curve distribution of the few very bright, a central mass of ordinary, and a tailing of useless drones? Compare the results to the work of human automotive engineers, as seen in the forms of their results--- Ferraris, Fords, and Yugos.

 

Super-beings did not engineer this planet's life forms. That job fell to a bunch of barely conscious beginners. They may even have been the equivalent of prisoners making license plates and doing their own laundry, or convicted criminals banished to another continent, like the Australians. When the biological record is studied from the perspective of BioEngineering 203, there is plenty of inferential evidence for intelligent engineering in the process of biological development, but zero evidence for omniscience. Wart hogs and butterflies speak out for a diverse group of engineers.

 

Remember that as large-scale engineering projects proceed, some designers get better. Others stay the same, and if they are the project managers, the project dead-ends.

 

You have a wide-ranging intellect, and will have looked into the complex interactions required to make an ecosystem work. New critters must be carefully introduced into an environment, integrating themselves over time. Complex life forms have longer life-cycles than simple forms. Check out the cane toad problem in Australia, the pythons in Florida, fire ants in Texas, and the Japanese beetle, among thousands of other negative examples of biological meddling. Getting any given ecosystem to work requires an intricate mix of raw material, environment, flora and fauna. (You spoke of the side-effects, and are right-on with that.) There must be balance between predator and prey. Humans tried creating such a ecosystem with the Arizona Biosphere project, which was an abject failure for lack of predators and prey-- i.e. nothing there to eat the people.

 

Then, one must account for combinations of planetary disasters (e.g. the little fly with a saw-like proboscis that might have done in the dinosaurs, or the massive meteor oft-credited with the same job). When intelligence of any sort is involved, the possibility of a change in management style, or corporate goals must also be considered. (Introducing intelligence into the evolutionary scheme is not necessarily a simplifying assumption, as atheists so often dismiss it.) One of my favorite theories, for example, is that the introduction of human intelligence was entirely an afterthought, a decision made from sheer desperation.

[Moontanman]

Good point, Moontanman. I have been a little sloppy in my description of the problem. You are right that scientists don't necessarily reject the possibility or a creator. And it's not even so much of a problem that some scientists deride those who entertain the possibility. The problem is the prohibition that science places on its membership of including the notion of a creator in any published work.

 

(I hope our moderators will allow a short anecdote.)

 

I had the occasion to work closely with a group of high-powered scientists helping them apply as much computer power, as was then possible, to their quantum chemistry problems. I worked among them for several weeks and got to know some of them quite well. I once asked some of them whether or not there were any express or implied prohibitions against subjects they could discuss in their formal work.

 

Dr. Detrich looked up at me from his desk, slowly opened a file drawer and pulled out a sheet of paper. He said to me, "Yes, I keep a running list of them to make sure I don't slip and accidently get myself into trouble." I didn't read the list in detail but I happened to notice that FTL travel was on the list. At the mention of this, Prof. Roothan chimed in and said something like, "Oh pooh. That's baloney. I published a paper myself discussing FTL travel."

 

Then Detrich, or someone else asked him, "Have you published anything since?"

 

Roothan, paused, looked up, then down, and then as if surprised, said, "Well, no." But then he quickly added, "But that was about the time I switched my interest from chemistry to computers." A few people murmured, "Mmmm hmmmm."

 

The point is that constraints of this type tend to move science dangerously close to becoming a religion. I'm afraid it's already happened in the area of climatology.

 

Horse feathers, i mean seriously, you are saying you actually had this exchange, yourself? You are not quoting something you read some place else or someone else said or something some one told you? Respect goes both ways dude, this is horse feathers...

 

 

 

Good question. I suppose it would depend on whether or not the life-chemistry was carbon based and if so, whether it utilized DNA, and of course if so whether the genetic code was the same as ours, and if any of the body types resembled ours. What we would have would be a huge amount of new information that might suggest answers to some of our current questions and raise completely new ones. It would be very exciting. But as for the idea of a creator, I think it would be a huge mistake to try to make sense of all that new information without considering the possibility of a creator or creators.

 

What would the effect of knowing there is a creator have on science? Hows does it help further human understanding by saying a creator did it? Of what use would such information be? The idea of a creator, supernatural or otherwise has never helped us know anything, in fact that answer has ever always been a hindrance to knowing. Questions cannot be answered by the assertion goddidit....

 

http://questionall.tumblr.com/post/31556173381/in-the-whole-of-human-history-there-has-never

 

In the whole of human history, there has never been a single case when the supernatural explanation turned out to be the right one. Betting on science, when it conflicts with religious belief, is a pretty sure bet.

 

I would go further and say no "supernatural explanation" has turned out to be the right one...

[clinkernace]

Don't be so hasty Eclogite,

 

From a pure mathematical perspective you can build some very simple but extremely complex encryption systems from Very Large Scale Finite State Cellular Automata. With 3 simple variables, Alphabet length, number of cycles and a translation table you can scramble a simple message so much that you can only get it back if you know how to decode it. It's just pure discrete math.

 

http://en.wikipedia....lular_automaton

http://en.wikipedia....lowfish_(cipher)

http://en.wikipedia..../Enigma_machine

 

The first reference note from the Cellular Automaton wiki leads to http://en.wikipedia...._Dangerous_Idea

 

 

For the record, I dislike Dennett. He is another atheist who claims to depend upon empirical data, and then dismisses all data and all experiments which point to or even prove the reality of a non-material component of mind. That makes him no better than the bible scholar who denies the evidence of evolution--- just another simple minded dogmatist with a large vocabulary and a good memory for data, with nothing original to offer. IMO he is the quintessential perfesser.

 

Why introduce the beliefs of any dogmatist, an authority on old ideas, into an honest discussion of new ideas? Are you trying to sandbag the conversation?

 

BTW, at least one Miracle must be accepted--- That anything at all exists.

[Qdogsman]

lets look at the problem from the other side then. those of us who see more sense in the natural / random appearance of life (for want of a better term) have offered all sorts of theories and hypotheses from the fields of mathematics, chemistry, biology and physics that support the claims.

 

I am not well-read on this subject (I don't read peer-reviewed journals), but I am not aware of "all sorts of theories and hypotheses" that purport to explain how those DNA sequences coding for the tRNA molecules originated. If you know of any, please inform those of us who don't.

 

the fact that greylorn and qdogsman have rejected these theories is by the by.

 

I have not, and do not, reject any theories. I think all theories should be considered and scientists should investigate each one in the attempt to confirm it or deny it. What I object to is scientists refusing to consider any theory that includes a mind that is instrumental in the origins of life, the universe, species, etc. etc.

 

however, the alternative they both offer is that there has been some kind of mind or creator or intelligence that put together the building blocks for life. fair enough. how about we get to hear some theories about how that actually happened. by what mechanisms do you propose that life was intelligently and mindfully created? just continually stating that it happened is not enough.

 

That's a fair enough criticism. The closest I think I came so far was simply to declare that it would be easy to explain.

 

By that I mean that we have ample examples of human minds creating all sorts of artifacts so I think it would be (relatively) easy to explain if life were created in a similar mindful way. And we know pretty much how the creation of artifacts happens with us humans.

 

Some parts of it, like the sudden inspirations are still mysterious, but the brute work of taking a set of requirements and designing a solution, building a prototype, proving the concept, inventing the jigs and fixtures, or whatever other supporting apparatus is necessary, setting up the fabrication and assembly facilities, running the raw materials in, and catching the artifacts as they drop out the other end is fairly well known and understood.

 

And in all of this, from end to end, there is a huge amount of symbolic information that is used at all stages from the first glimmer of an idea to the final distribution and maintenance of the final product. I was told that the documentation necessary to build a Boeing jetliner far outweighs the airplane. And the paperwork doesn't include the myriad conversations, phone calls, emails, and other symbolic communication that is instrumental to completing a creation process.

 

So knowing this, and assuming that the creators do not have a magic wand and can no more create artifacts out of nothing simply by an act of will than we can, it is reasonable to assume that the creators need to use similar methods to what we humans use.

 

I will stop here hoping that that much satisfies your request, blamski, but at the risk of running afoul of the moderators, I will briefly sketch out some personally held views on additional details that I suspect are involved.

 

I think there are probably some imperfect, limited beings who exist in some sort of hierarchy of higher-dimensional space who have technology as different from ours as a GPS equipped smart phone is from a Conestoga wagon. Using this, they figured out how to get the universe and life going. I'd be happy to provide more details, but that should suffice for now.

 

I might add that greylorn has done a lot more work developing his ideas than I have. I should (and will) let him speak for himself if he wants. If you really want to learn about his ideas, buy and read his book. Or, to get a brief glimpse, read my review of his book on Amazon.com. And if you get that far, follow the link to see all of my reviews and spin down to my review of Pinker's "How the Mind Works" and read that to get a better idea of what and how I think. If you do that, make sure you follow the comment thread on that review.

 

And, of course, if you want me to explain anything else about my beliefs and ideas, just ask right here.

[Qdogsman]

Sorry this is late. For some reason it didn't take the first time I posted it - Paul

 

 

So some clarifications on these examples:

 

 

Thank you for taking the time to explain neural nets, although it was quite unnecessary for this discussion for the reasons I hope I have made clear in this post.

 

In the case of the Mandelbrot set, here's the equation that produces all those pretty pictures you've seen:

 

 

 

 

Buffy, Buffy, Buffy! If you had only said that you are familiar with the Mandelbrot Set, I would have taken you at your word. But when you present an erroneous formula and claim that it produces the pretty pictures, I have to wonder.

 

The correct formula is

 

z_n+1 = z_n² + C

 

This is an iterative formula, as you may or may not know, and C is a constant for each iteration. Each iteration, for a given C, determines whether or not C is in the M'set or not, by its convergent/divergent behavior. If it converges, C is in the set. If not, then the rapidity with which it diverges is used to place it in a band and assigned a color on the resulting diagram.

 

One such iteration produces the color for one, and only one, pixel on the final picture. C must be changed to cover the entire picture, most easily done in a raster pattern, and the iterative process performed in each case to produce the pixel color.

 

So even the correct formula does not produce the picture. It takes a lot of computation using that formula and some artistic choices for the demarcation of the bands and the choice of colors in order to produce a pretty picture.

 

. . . .

 

My wife wants me to walk around the lake with her so I'm going to speed through the rest of this.

 

Yes, but I'll point out that by continuing to use the term "codebook" you miss the point I'm making which is that as far as the physical system is concerned it is *not* a "codebook".

 

No, I have agreed with that. But from the design standpoint, it is a codebook. And the whole system makes much more sense interpreting it that way.

 

You are probably as mystified by my conclusion in this respect as I am that "getting all 60 of those right...without a mind seems impossible" to you.

 

Probably so.

 

And you're saying an intelligence capable of getting a universe off the ground took 3 billion years to do it? That seems like an awfully long time! Especially when you consider the fact that this designer could be doing these experiments on trillions of earth-like planets in the universe, and had 9 billion years before the earth was even formed.

 

I won't comment on possible conclusions from that.

 

OK. I will. I conclude that the designers were far from perfect or omnipotent.

 

But basically your complaint here is simply that "a designer could have done it and it's closed-minded not to consider the possibility."

 

Yes. That's my complaint.

 

The problem with this is that since we don't--and if you listen to most philosophers, *can't*--know about any sort of "outside of the physical laws of the universe designer," the scientific method has always eschewed appeals to a designer as a basic precept.

 

That has been a good strategy for a long time. Science also eschewed anything they couldn't observe so they kept Democritus' idea of atoms religiously pushed aside until people like Thompson and Rutherford pushed their noses into it and forced them to accept the reality of something they couldn't see. The time is ripening for the same sort of extension to the scope of science so that it takes on the interesting problems involving mind, consciousness, and other mysteries of life like its origins.

 

It's just really not a good idea, and most people ask "why would you *want* to appeal to a designer?"

 

How about, because it is an obvious and comprehensible idea?

 

Gotta go. Thanks for your thoughts.

[Moontanman]

How about, because it is an obvious and comprehensible idea?

 

A flat Earth was an obvious and comprehensible idea as well but it was still WRONG! Assuming a flat Earth added nothing to the sum of human knowledge and in fact retarded human knowledge. Appealing to the idea of a creator to explain anything in fact adds nothing and retards the growth of human knowledge...

[Qdogsman]

A flat Earth was an obvious and comprehensible idea as well but it was still WRONG!

 

True enough.

 

Assuming a flat Earth added nothing to the sum of human knowledge

 

I disagree. That assumption was the basis for Euclid adopting his 5th postulate. The resulting Euclidean geometry that he developed probably added more to the sum of human knowledge than any other single contribution by anyone.

 

and in fact retarded human knowledge

 

Could you be more specific and cite a case in which that assumption retarded human knowledge? I am unaware of any such cases.

 

. Appealing to the idea of a creator to explain anything in fact adds nothing and retards the growth of human knowledge...

 

I am surprised at how categorical you are in your pre-judgment. I am tempted to make a pre-judgment on how open or closed your mind is, but I won't.

 

Thanks for your thoughts.

[Moontanman]

True enough.

 

 

 

I disagree. That assumption was the basis for Euclid adopting his 5th postulate. The resulting Euclidean geometry that he developed probably added more to the sum of human knowledge than any other single contribution by anyone.

 

Please show some evidence that Euclid's 5th postulate was based on the earth being believed to be flat...

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Could you be more specific and cite a case in which that assumption retarded human knowledge? I am unaware of any such cases.

 

The idea that disease is caused by demons or god's wrath... The idea that pi is equal to 3 (god said it so it must be true) There are others but you only asked for one and one is all it takes to show i am correct...

 

Oh... one good one, lightning was once thought to be the wrath of god and not only impossible to prevent but wrong to try... lightning rods...  B)  

 

I am surprised at how categorical you are in your pre-judgment. I am tempted to make a pre-judgment on how open or closed your mind is, but I won't.

 

 

 

Thanks for your thoughts.

 

Being open minded doesn't mean accepting anything as true or possible. Now how about you showing how the idea that goddidit has helped advance human knowledge in any way?

Edited February 17, 2013 by Moontanman

[Qdogsman]

i'll do my best...

 

I'm not sure the moderators will approve of this departure from the topic in following up on Moontanman's question about attractors, but since you mentioned "the appearance of tRNA" in your response I need to set a couple things straight.

 

an attractor is a mathematical concept and is defined as something towards which a variable evolves over time. it can be a point, a set of points or even a curve and if it involves fractals it becomes a strange attractor. wiki

 

The Wikian you quoted took some liberties in simplifying the explanation which are not quite correct. An attractor is not a mathematical concept in the sense of mathematics. That is, it is not a primitive concept, nor a defined concept, nor a postulate, nor any other formal concept. Instead it is an informal name given to an observation that looks interesting.

 

In plotting the solutions to various differential equations on a diagram representing a vector space, there are cases where the solutions form the patterns that blamski described. Humans, when looking at these patterns, liken them to the behavior of particles drawn to some "attractor" such as a magnet or a gravitating body. Thus the name for the observed feature.

 

This reminds me of the criticism I have been recently addressing, that my description of tRNA as being a "codebook" is simply a name humans have given to some chemical configurations which react strictly according to the laws of physics and have nothing to do with "codes". I have agreed with this criticism from the standpoint of an outside observer after the mechanism of life is in full swing. But I remain adamant in my position that tRNA is indeed a codebook if it was deliberately designed by a mind. And, in fact, it does look an awfully lot like a code, and is considered so by molecular biologists. But that's all grist for the on-going debate.

 

 

the parallel i see with the appearance of life is that a certain factor becomes more attractive to other factors and accretion begins to take place.

 

Here you might be jumping into waters a little over your head. I have no doubt that you see a parallel, but beware of illusions. Let's look closely at what you say is a parallel.

 

First, on the mathematical side, as I mentioned, there is no "factor" involved that causes anything like an attraction. There is only the pattern of curves on a plot that happen to converge in a pattern that suggests a vortex, or other pattern that looks like something is pulling the curve. This would be like looking at the plot of a parabola with the opening to the top and observing that it looks like it is full of some fluid that is making it sag downward. To make a parallel similar to yours, we could define a "heavy fluid" as something that seems to make that parabola sag.

 

Secondly, on the biochemical side, let's look at what you say:

 

this attraction may be just a fleeting thing or it may become permanent. i'm sure there is a fixed terminology and set of equations for this in organic chemistry but i have no idea what they are or even how to begin looking for them

 

Admitting that neither of us can be sure of much at all, I am sure that there is *not* a set of equations for the explanation of the patterns of nucleotides in tRNA in organic chemistry. It would be an utter waste of time to begin looking for them.

 

What needs to be explained is the appearance of those two special sequences of nucleotides (the codon in the middle and the amino-acid bonding structure at the extreme end) in each of the 60-odd species of tRNA, each pair consistent with the genetic code assignment, separated by thousands (I'm not sure of the exact number, but it is many) of nucleotides, each such pair being exactly correct in each of the 60 or so sequences.

 

That is what you need to explain coming into existence without the aid of a mind.

 

it's closely tied in with this idea of the non random appearance of tRNA, genes and stuff that troubles greylorn so much.

 

This kind of hand-waving doesn't explain much.

 

its not that nature tried a combination, didn't like it and broke it apart to start over again every single time until it all came together by chance.

 

I agree with you that this explanation fails miserably. We need something else.

 

chemical bonds took place as they commonly do and these new compounds became attractors to others.

 

I agree that chemical bonds took place, as they commonly do. But claiming that they "became attractors" is appealing to a non-existent concept, as I explained above. There is nothing in the mathematical notion of "attractor" that can be used to explain how those tRNA sequences got established.

 

obviously there were a huge number of these bonds and compounds that were unsuccessful, or unstable, impermanent or whatever,

 

Now think about that for a minute. Let's say that there "were a huge number of these bonds and compounds" and that somehow each specific configuration were in a position to make a test so that we can judge whether or not it was "successful". I see two huge problems here.

 

First, we have to explain the formation of this "huge number" of bonds and compounds so that they are ready to make their respective "tests". In a laboratory we might set up arrays of test tubes, or of micro reaction chambers, or whatever. But out there in the soup of the ocean, there would only be the widely dispersed, randomly occurring, collections of chemicals to provide this testing apparatus. I suppose it is conceivable, but IMHO it takes a lot of stretching.

 

Secondly we have to explain how a test result is judged to be "successful". Let's say a particular test was close. Say that 59 of the tRNA sequences happened to be correct and the 60th one had an error in it somewhere. Well, we could easily judge this one to be unsuccessful because it couldn't participate in any successful protein synthesis. But that is not so much because of the error but because, putting the horse in front of the cart, the tRNA sequences must be established before the protein synthesis apparatus (ribosomes etc.) can operate.

 

But now what if the test were successful? That would mean that we had produced a string of 60 nucleotide sequences which correctly embodied the genetic code. So now how would it proceed? That genetic codebook is now ready for use by ribosomes. Did they already exist, floating around in the soup just waiting for the codebook to arrive so they could do something? Or does the successful codebook have to hang around waiting for ribosomes somehow to develop? It's hard for me to imagine any plausible scenario. I'll leave that for you or someone else to provide.

 

but eventually some of these became stable and pervasive enough to become the foundations of what we are made of.

 

With all due respect, the fact that there were a huge number of these tests and myriad organic chemicals floating around in the soup doesn't quite solve the problem.

 

Thanks for your thoughts and for your contributions to this thread.

[CraigD]

I am not well-read on this subject (I don't read peer-reviewed journals), but I am not aware of "all sorts of theories and hypotheses" that purport to explain how those DNA sequences coding for the tRNA molecules originated. If you know of any, please inform those of us who don't.

I'm only a casual reader of biology, and seem to have lost access to this 1999 paper on the evolution of the genes for tRNA and the aaRS enzymes important to them that I recall reading when I first became interested in the "replicator or metabolism first" question a few years ago, but was able to dig up a free access URL for On the origin of the translation system and the genetic code in the RNA world by means of natural selection, exaptation, and subfunctionalization (Yuri I Wolf and Eugene V Koonin, 31 May 2007 BiologyDirect). At a glance, this 25 page paper appears to address the subject well.

[Moontanman]

I know this is long but if you want to know the state of recent research you can't get the info across in 3 minute sound bites. This is very informative and cutting edge...

 

[Qdogsman]

That analogy was coined by Hoyle, he refused to believe that life could have come about by random chance but his analogy was fatally flawed. Life did not come about by random chance, Hoyle's argument that the the odds of a cell coming together is illustrated by a tornado sweeping through a junk yard and assemble a 747 is nonsense.

 

Chemistry and physics are not random, molecules do not come together by random chance, there are only certain possibilities that work and those possibilities only work in certain definable ways. Random chance has nothing to do with it qdogsman. You can ignore my argument and me if you want but all you are doing is making your self look uninformed.

 

There is yet another aspect to this as well, the chemical combinations didn't start from scratch each time but they build on what came before. And the earths oceans are quite capable to running billions of chemical combinations per second, the basic building blocks of life are easily made in what is thought to have been the conditions of the early earth, actually several different scenarios of what the early earth might have looked like still work.

 

And finally your argument equates the idea of a modern cell, most people who follow this line of argument use the formation of a fully functioning eukaryotic cell from random chance as their yard stick. But lets assume you are more reasonable and are only talking about the most simple of known life forms, the analogy still fails. The first cells were orders of magnitude simpler than even the most simple modern cell. Modern simple cells like bacteria are extremely complex and not representative of what the first reproducing chemicals were like.

 

I do have a few videos by scientists that illustrate this quite well, they do it far better than i can do it justice, and even though there are several competing hypothesis my personal take on this is that a synergy of three or more pathways resulted in the first cells.

 

These cells probably wouldn't have been recognized as living by us, division was done by physical processes instead of the biochemical processes that result in the division of cells now.

 

i will again state my assertion that DNA is not information, it is chemicals reacting governed by the laws of physics not random chance. Random chance has nothing to do with evolution or abiogenesis.

 

I suggest you read very carefully what Buffy is saying I am smart enough to know she is head and shoulders above me in education if not raw intelligence as well. i don't think I've ever won a debate with her, if she says something I listen (no buffy I'm not smooching, just stating the facts) You seem to think buffy can be trivially falsified... No, her arguments in this case are spot on...

 

 

 

 

 

This is just obfuscation of the issue, the main issue, the real gist of this argument is this "is DNA information", this applies to all the other aspects of the cell as well.

 

While abiogenesis theory is no where near as robust as Evolution it is well supported and many possible pathways to reproducing chemicals have been identified, you talk as though it is a complete mystery, this is not an honest appraisal of the science...

 

Show me why DNA is information and then you can go on with your assertions but with out showing DNA is information you are just spinning your wheels...

 

:edited for sp:

 

I don't know what to say, Moontanman. This post is not in character for you. It is so disjoint, rambling, off-topic, and non-sensical that I just don't know how to respond.

 

I could, I suppose go through it line by line and give you my impressions and questions. For example, I could explain that I have no intent of ignoring your argument, or you, and don't plan to. I believe I have responded in detail to all questions you have put to me. But this post of yours is something else again.

 

For example you seem to think that you and I are in a disagreement over whether or not DNA is information. I have never claimed that it was, nor have I ever claimed that it is not. I don't know where your indignation over the question comes from.

 

I think what I'll do is take the opening you presented to me. Since you admit that you defer to Buffy, and since all of my quotes that you included in your post were directed at her, I will continue the conversation with her. You are welcome to follow along if you like.

 

That does not mean that I am ignoring you or your posts. I have spent quite a bit of time trying to make sense of this one, and as I said, I am at a loss as to how to respond in a meaningful way.

 

But thanks for your interest and your comments just the same.

 

Paul

[Rade]

Simply put the source of evolutionary change, largely from mutations, is essentially random.

Yes, and for those species that reproduce sexually the recombination process during meiosis within gametes provides a much larger source of random genetic variation for reproduction of genotypes than mutations.

 

So, using the new definitions provided by P. Martin, the new title of this thread would be "The Symbolic Demise of Darwinism" ?

[Moontanman]

Symbolism... it's every where...