Masterclass

[MarkE]

David Deamer, an elder statesman of OoL I believe, concludes an article relating to OoL as follows:

“I will close with a quote from Freeman Dyson, a theoretical physicist at Princeton University who also enjoys thinking about the origin of life:

‘You had what I call the garbage bag model. The early cells were just little bags of some kind of cell membrane, which might have been oily or it might have been a metal oxide. And inside you had a more or less random collection of organic molecules, with the characteristic that small molecules could diffuse in through the membrane, but big molecules could not diffuse out. By converting small molecules into big molecules, you could concentrate the organic contents on the inside, so the cells would become more concentrated and the chemistry would gradually become more efficient. So these things could evolve without any kind of replication. It's a simple statistical inheritance. When a cell became so big that it got cut in half, or shaken in half, by some rainstorm or environmental disturbance, it would then produce two cells which would be its daughters, which would inherit, more or less, but only statistically, the chemical machinery inside. Evolution could work under those conditions.’”
https://www.science20.com/stars_planets_life/calculating_odds_life_could_begin_chance

(Note: I’m not commenting on the content of the article itself.)

THE IRONY

A scientist from an unrelated field rattles off a just-so story on how life might have originated – and a leader in OoL quotes him approvingly.

A scientist accomplished in an overlapping field with highly relevant expertise (James Tour) launches a serious, sustained, specific, coherent critique of OoL research progress and claims -- and is dismissed as unqualified to comment.

THE COMPLETE IRONY

The analogy of “a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747” is dismissed as invalid.

The analogy of a tornado in a molecular junkyard is offered as a satisfactory summary of how life may have begun: “...cut in half, or shaken in half, by some rainstorm or environmental disturbance” (the tornado, in case you missed it), acting on “the garbage bag model…little bags of some kind of cell membrane…inside you had a more or less random collection of organic molecules” (you get the idea).

To be clear, swollen bags of garbage divided, resealed, and injected with more garbage produce…only more garbage. AKA, garbage in, garbage out.

The claim that “these things could evolve without any kind of replication. It's a simple statistical inheritance...” is a masterclass in sleight-of-hand. Either that or belief in real magic.

[broger...@gmail.com]

On Wednesday, August 30, 2023 at 7:50:20 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
> David Deamer, an elder statesman of OoL I believe, concludes an article relating to OoL as follows:
>
> “I will close with a quote from Freeman Dyson, a theoretical physicist at Princeton University who also enjoys thinking about the origin of life:
>
> ‘You had what I call the garbage bag model. The early cells were just little bags of some kind of cell membrane, which might have been oily or it might have been a metal oxide. And inside you had a more or less random collection of organic molecules, with the characteristic that small molecules could diffuse in through the membrane, but big molecules could not diffuse out. By converting small molecules into big molecules, you could concentrate the organic contents on the inside, so the cells would become more concentrated and the chemistry would gradually become more efficient. So these things could evolve without any kind of replication. It's a simple statistical inheritance. When a cell became so big that it got cut in half, or shaken in half, by some rainstorm or environmental disturbance, it would then produce two cells which would be its daughters, which would inherit, more or less, but only statistically, the chemical machinery inside. Evolution could work under those conditions.’”
> https://www.science20.com/stars_planets_life/calculating_odds_life_could_begin_chance
>
> (Note: I’m not commenting on the content of the article itself.)

Yes, I noticed that your comments actually ignore everything that Deamer wrote. And, indeed, this blog post is in no way a summary of current thought on OoL, simply an attempt to refute one of the ID movements arguments that OoL is impossible in principle. If you are interested in learning about the science in the field, you're stuck reading an actual book.

>
> THE IRONY
>
> A scientist from an unrelated field rattles off a just-so story on how life might have originated – and a leader in OoL quotes him approvingly.
>
> A scientist accomplished in an overlapping field with highly relevant expertise (James Tour) launches a serious, sustained, specific, coherent critique of OoL research progress and claims -- and is dismissed as unqualified to comment.
>
> THE COMPLETE IRONY
>
> The analogy of “a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747” is dismissed as invalid.
>
> The analogy of a tornado in a molecular junkyard is offered as a satisfactory summary of how life may have begun: “...cut in half, or shaken in half, by some rainstorm or environmental disturbance” (the tornado, in case you missed it), acting on “the garbage bag model…little bags of some kind of cell membrane…inside you had a more or less random collection of organic molecules” (you get the idea).
>
> To be clear, swollen bags of garbage divided, resealed, and injected with more garbage produce…only more garbage. AKA, garbage in, garbage out.
>
> The claim that “these things could evolve without any kind of replication. It's a simple statistical inheritance...” is a masterclass in sleight-of-hand. Either that or belief in real magic.

Perhaps you missed the point of the Dyson quote. It is not offered as a "satisfactory summary of how life may have begun." It is offered as an explanation of how macromolecules could get concentrated within membranes. It is an informed guess about one of the earliest steps in a possible pathway towards life, not a summary of how life began.

[Mark]

No. Rather, "how macromolecules could get concentrated within membranes" is offered as a satisfactory explanation of how life may have begun*.

* My lawyers advised me to further qualify this as, "_begun_, referring to an early, though not necessarily first, step, not to imply the immediate and subsequent appearance of _life_, in and of itself, though neither to implicitly nor expressly exclude such a possibility, and notwithstanding several and varied definitions thereof provided forthwith..."

[Mark]

On Wednesday, August 30, 2023 at 10:05:20 PM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:

> On Wednesday, August 30, 2023 at 7:50:20 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
> > David Deamer, an elder statesman of OoL I believe, concludes an article relating to OoL as follows:
> >
> > “I will close with a quote from Freeman Dyson, a theoretical physicist at Princeton University who also enjoys thinking about the origin of life:
> >
> > ‘You had what I call the garbage bag model. The early cells were just little bags of some kind of cell membrane, which might have been oily or it might have been a metal oxide. And inside you had a more or less random collection of organic molecules, with the characteristic that small molecules could diffuse in through the membrane, but big molecules could not diffuse out. By converting small molecules into big molecules, you could concentrate the organic contents on the inside, so the cells would become more concentrated and the chemistry would gradually become more efficient. So these things could evolve without any kind of replication. It's a simple statistical inheritance. When a cell became so big that it got cut in half, or shaken in half, by some rainstorm or environmental disturbance, it would then produce two cells which would be its daughters, which would inherit, more or less, but only statistically, the chemical machinery inside. Evolution could work under those conditions.’”
> > https://www.science20.com/stars_planets_life/calculating_odds_life_could_begin_chance
> >
> > (Note: I’m not commenting on the content of the article itself.)
> Yes, I noticed that your comments actually ignore everything that Deamer wrote. And, indeed, this blog post is in no way a summary of current thought on OoL, simply an attempt to refute one of the ID movements arguments that OoL is impossible in principle. If you are interested in learning about the science in the field, you're stuck reading an actual book.

It's entirely my prerogative to not address the body of Deamer's article -- I clearly have a separate, demonstrated purpose in referencing it. Suggesting that *not* addressing amounts to dishonesty or avoidance is a cheap attempt at casting aspersions.

And relax, I'll get to addressing Deamer's book in good time.

[broger...@gmail.com]

Sure, explaining how macromolecules can get concentrated is an attempt to explain one, of many, necessary early steps. It also does suggest a way in which evolution can happen without replication, at least without accurate replication. To be explicit, these protoprotocells would reproduce better if they accumulated those monomers most likely to polymerize when concentrated. To be more explicit, the monomers equilibrate across the membrane, the polymers are two big to do so. The polymers, however, create an osmotic gradient which draws water in. As long as lipids are around to insert into the membrane, the protoprotocells will grow and divide. There will be a selection for those containing the most readily polymerizable monomers. That's a form of chemical evolution, without genes. If it turns out that one of the polymers that works well is RNA or something like it, then you are at the start of a pathway leading to genetics.

[broger...@gmail.com]

On Wednesday, August 30, 2023 at 8:35:20 AM UTC-4, Mark wrote:
> On Wednesday, August 30, 2023 at 10:05:20 PM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Wednesday, August 30, 2023 at 7:50:20 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
> > > David Deamer, an elder statesman of OoL I believe, concludes an article relating to OoL as follows:
> > >
> > > “I will close with a quote from Freeman Dyson, a theoretical physicist at Princeton University who also enjoys thinking about the origin of life:
> > >
> > > ‘You had what I call the garbage bag model. The early cells were just little bags of some kind of cell membrane, which might have been oily or it might have been a metal oxide. And inside you had a more or less random collection of organic molecules, with the characteristic that small molecules could diffuse in through the membrane, but big molecules could not diffuse out. By converting small molecules into big molecules, you could concentrate the organic contents on the inside, so the cells would become more concentrated and the chemistry would gradually become more efficient. So these things could evolve without any kind of replication. It's a simple statistical inheritance. When a cell became so big that it got cut in half, or shaken in half, by some rainstorm or environmental disturbance, it would then produce two cells which would be its daughters, which would inherit, more or less, but only statistically, the chemical machinery inside. Evolution could work under those conditions.’”
> > > https://www.science20.com/stars_planets_life/calculating_odds_life_could_begin_chance
> > >
> > > (Note: I’m not commenting on the content of the article itself.)
> > Yes, I noticed that your comments actually ignore everything that Deamer wrote. And, indeed, this blog post is in no way a summary of current thought on OoL, simply an attempt to refute one of the ID movements arguments that OoL is impossible in principle. If you are interested in learning about the science in the field, you're stuck reading an actual book.
> It's entirely my prerogative to not address the body of Deamer's article -- I clearly have a separate, demonstrated purpose in referencing it. Suggesting that *not* addressing amounts to dishonesty or avoidance is a cheap attempt at casting aspersions.

Of course, you can talk about whatever you like. It is though, I think, less than totally forthright to accuse Deamer of "sleight-of-hand" for including Dyson's quote without making any attempt to deal with the point Deamer was making. And, as I said, I don't think you quite got Dyson's point. It is a long way from proposing a model of a single early step in the origin of life to a tornado in a junkyard.

>
> And relax, I'll get to addressing Deamer's book in good time.

I've already read it, I'm in no hurry. Just as I'm not in the least concerned about whether James Tour takes down his Youtube videos.

[Mark Isaak]

On 8/30/23 4:49 AM, MarkE wrote:
> David Deamer, an elder statesman of OoL I believe, concludes an article relating to OoL as follows:
>
> “I will close with a quote from Freeman Dyson, a theoretical physicist at Princeton University who also enjoys thinking about the origin of life:
>
> ‘You had what I call the garbage bag model. The early cells were just little bags of some kind of cell membrane, which might have been oily or it might have been a metal oxide. And inside you had a more or less random collection of organic molecules, with the characteristic that small molecules could diffuse in through the membrane, but big molecules could not diffuse out. By converting small molecules into big molecules, you could concentrate the organic contents on the inside, so the cells would become more concentrated and the chemistry would gradually become more efficient. So these things could evolve without any kind of replication. It's a simple statistical inheritance. When a cell became so big that it got cut in half, or shaken in half, by some rainstorm or environmental disturbance, it would then produce two cells which would be its daughters, which would inherit, more or less, but only statistically, the chemical machinery inside. Evolution could work under those conditions.’”
> https://www.science20.com/stars_planets_life/calculating_odds_life_could_begin_chance
>
> (Note: I’m not commenting on the content of the article itself.)
>
> THE IRONY
>
> A scientist from an unrelated field rattles off a just-so story on how life might have originated – and a leader in OoL quotes him approvingly.
>
> A scientist accomplished in an overlapping field with highly relevant expertise (James Tour) launches a serious, sustained, specific, coherent critique of OoL research progress and claims -- and is dismissed as unqualified to comment.

The two are not really comparable. Dyson was offering speculation on a
single step which might be involved in the origins of life. His
knowledge of thermodynamics qualifies him in that area. Tour was not
speaking about the origin of life at all, but about the *state of
research* in the origin of life. He has no experience in that area.

> THE COMPLETE IRONY
>
> The analogy of “a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747” is dismissed as invalid.
>
> The analogy of a tornado in a molecular junkyard is offered as a satisfactory summary of how life may have begun: “...cut in half, or shaken in half, by some rainstorm or environmental disturbance” (the tornado, in case you missed it), acting on “the garbage bag model…little bags of some kind of cell membrane…inside you had a more or less random collection of organic molecules” (you get the idea).
>
> To be clear, swollen bags of garbage divided, resealed, and injected with more garbage produce…only more garbage. AKA, garbage in, garbage out.
>
> The claim that “these things could evolve without any kind of replication. It's a simple statistical inheritance...” is a masterclass in sleight-of-hand. Either that or belief in real magic.

You really, REALLY need to learn the theory of evolution.

The problem with the tornado in a junkyard is not that messy occurrences
such as that do not occur in evolution, but that they are not the *only*
thing that occurs in evolution. Evolution also has inheritance and
selection, or what you call magic.

--
Mark Isaak
"Wisdom begins when you discover the difference between 'That
doesn't make sense' and 'I don't understand.'" - Mary Doria Russell

[Gary Hurd]

On Wednesday, August 30, 2023 at 5:05:20 AM UTC-7, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Wednesday, August 30, 2023 at 7:50:20 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
> > David Deamer, an elder statesman of OoL I believe, concludes an article relating to OoL as follows:
> >

"Calculating The Odds That Life Could Begin By Chance"
By Dave Deamer | April 30th 2009 01:00 AM
https://www.science20.com/stars_planets_life/calculating_odds_life_could_begin_chance

Read it again. Start with the publication date 0ver 14 Years Ago.

[Mark]

Not relevant, as per my comment to Bill: https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/Ki5fLxziHos/m/lTHwD434AQAJ

[Mark]

Think about what's happening in this scenario. Random polymers are forming using racemic monomers, with cross-linkages, interfering products, etc: i.e., garbage. The result is the most successful tar concentrators consume available building blocks at an increasing rate. A wave of the selection wand won't help here.

[Mark]

Random polymers are forming using racemic monomers, with cross-linkages, interfering products, etc: i.e., garbage. The result is the most successful tar concentrators consume available building blocks at an increasing rate.

Steven Benner on the Asphalt Paradox (quoted in an EN article):

"An enormous amount of empirical data have established, as a rule, that organic systems, given energy and left to themselves, devolve to give uselessly complex mixtures, “asphalts”… Further, chemical theories, including the second law of thermodynamics, bonding theory that describes the “space” accessible to sets of atoms, and structure theory requiring that replication systems occupy only tiny fractions of that space, suggest that it is impossible for any non-living chemical system to escape devolution to enter into the Darwinian world of the “living.” ... Such statements of impossibility apply even to macromolecules not assumed to be necessary for RIRI [replication involving replicable imperfections] evolution. Again richly supported by empirical observation, material escapes from known metabolic cycles that might be viewed as models for a “metabolism first” origin of life, making such cycles short-lived. Lipids that provide tidy compartments under the close supervision of a graduate student (supporting a protocell-first model for origins) are quite non-robust with respect to small environmental perturbations, such as a change in the salt concentration, the introduction of organic solvents, or a change in temperature…"
https://evolutionnews.org/2023/05/hello-professor-dave-james-tours-criticisms-of-ool-research-echo-those-of-other-experts/

[broger...@gmail.com]

There's no way for me to evaluate that without references to the "enormous amounts of empirical data," and the "richly supported by empirical observation." I'll be around whenever you get around to reading Deamer's book.

[RonO]

The origin of life is one of the weakest of any scientific endeavor.
Currently about the only thing that we can expect is to figure out the
most likely scenario of how life came to be, but everyone knows that, it
would only be the most likely scenario, and that since it only seems to
have happened once, it could obviously have occurred in some less
probable manner. What you have to deal with is what is around the gap,
but you run from doing that. Life arose somehow, and that is what you
have to deal with. You can claim that your designer did it, but is that
the designer that you want to believe in? For the vast majority of
anti-evolution biblical creationists the god responsible for the origin
of life on earth is not the Biblical god. End of story. Until that
changes the Top Six best evidences for IDiocy that killed IDiocy on TO
(the origin of life is #3 of the Top Six) just means that you and most
other bibilcal creationists are just out of luck. Science denial isn't
going to do you any good when it is what is around the gaps that you
really can't deal with.

Ron Okimoto

[Mark]

In terms likelihood of arriving at an accepted theory? Yes, possibly.

But one of the strongest for questioning the adequacy of natural causes alone, because by definition it excludes natural selection. Which is the main point of my OP.

"You can claim that your designer did it, but is that the designer that you want to believe in?

What sort of designer do you believe is implied/demonstrated by this claim?

[Dexter]

----------------------------------

The search for the origin of life does exclude natural selection. It also
excludes the germ theory of disease, the theory of gravity, and the
reason men can't stand to see women cry.

While the religious have been stuffing god into gaps for millenia,
many of those gaps have been eliminated, one by one, using science.
Yet many still remain.

Origin of life research merely highlights yet one more gap into which
to shoehorn god. There's nothing particularly special about that gap.

Scientists admit they don't know the answer but are studying it and
creationists assert the problem is solved but present no evidence.
So, what else is new?


--
The Lord works in ways indistinguishable from the null hypothesis.

[Mark]

My point wasn't clear: the particular appeal with OoL is that removing NS from the equation takes out of the discussion the presumption that NS can do anything, will do anything, QED. (The question of the veracity of NS is a separate discussion).

>
> While the religious have been stuffing god into gaps for millenia,
> many of those gaps have been eliminated, one by one, using science.
> Yet many still remain.
>
> Origin of life research merely highlights yet one more gap into which
> to shoehorn god. There's nothing particularly special about that gap.
>
> Scientists admit they don't know the answer but are studying it and
> creationists assert the problem is solved but present no evidence.
> So, what else is new?

The contention is this is not a case of the god-of-the-gaps, but growing research results (i.e. lack of) revealing a God-of-the-widening-gulf.

James Tour stumbled into this with sufficient related expertise to say, hang on a minute, you guys are blowing smoke. You could show that you're not also blowing smoke by addressing my argument:

Deamer endorses Dyson: “When a cell became so big that it got cut in half, or shaken in half, by some rainstorm or environmental disturbance” acting on “the garbage bag model…little bags of some kind of cell membrane…inside you had a more or less random collection of organic molecules”.

Swollen bags of garbage cut in two, resealed, and injected with more garbage produce…only more garbage. AKA, garbage in, garbage out. NS can't help you here, though nice try to appeal to NS-lite ("these things could evolve without any kind of replication. It's a simple statistical inheritance.")

Random polymers are forming using racemic monomers, producing cross-linkages, interfering products, etc: i.e., garbage. The result is the most successful tar concentrators consume available building blocks at an increasing rate.

Over to you.

[Mark Isaak]

And what makes you think that is the only scenario? Organic chemistry
is very good at doing non-random.

[Öö Tiib]

It is just plain statistics. Likelihood of auto- and cross-catalytic polymer
sets forming in such tar garbage bag is very low. But. Once formed in any
the presence is gradually becoming higher by spreading to other containers.
Whatever other polymers just form and decay randomly. So those lack
sustainability. The auto- and cross-catalytic reactions have sustainability.

[RonO]

This is your major problem. Science denial isn't going to do you any
good in this case because you do not want your god to fill this gap.
Science has obvious limits. You have to deal with what science can do
within those limits. Have you read the Origin of Spcies? Natural
selection can happen once you have a lifeform that replicates
imperfectly. Natural selection is a fact of nature. No one should deny
that it exists in nature at this very moment. There is no reason to
deny natural selection when it has been occurring for over 3 billion
years since the origin of the first lifeforms.

What you want to deny is materialism. Science is stuck with the fact
that it can only deal with things that exist. The ID perps claimed that
they could do the same science as everyone else and demonstrate the
existence of their god. In order to do that, the ID perps needed to use
the same functional materialism that science has to use in order to
work. Science just can't deal with things until you can demonstrate in
some way that it exists.

It is stupid to use the origin of life in order to deny the science that
you need to deny because the designer of the origin of life on earth is
not your Biblical designer. That is what finally killed IDiocy on TO.
Most of the existing IDiots on this planet do not want to believe in the
designer responsible for the Top Six god-of-the-gaps IDiotic evidence.
The god that fills those gaps is not Biblical enough for most Biblical
creationists.

>
> "You can claim that your designer did it, but is that the designer that you want to believe in?
>
> What sort of designer do you believe is implied/demonstrated by this claim?
>

All I claim is that the God that I believe in is responsible for the
creation. The Bible is obviously not anything that can be used to
understand the creation. Science is just the best means for
understanding nature that we have come up with. Whatever we eventually
find out is what the creation is likely to be. Saint Augustine pointed
out that it was stupid to use the Bible in order to deny things that we
could obviously figure out about nature by ourselves. Your type of
denial has been known to be stupid for millennia. The Bible was written
by young earth creationists. They had adopted the flat earth geocentric
cosmology of their neighbors who had been civilized for a longer period
of time. Just imagine what the description of the creation would be
like if the Bible were written today. Even if we wrote the Bible today
we could be wrong about a lot of what might be put into it due to
incomplete knowledge and the authors ignorance of what the creation
actually is.

Humans wrote the Bible. "Inspired" is the term that you need to
acknowledge as it is applied to what is written in the Bible.

Ron Okimoto

[Mark]

Do you mean that nucleotides spontaneously forming a polymer have chemical affinities which influence their ordering, thus making the sequence non-random?

[Mark]

My point wasn't clear: the particular appeal with OoL is that removing NS from the equation takes out of the discussion the presumption that NS can do anything, will do anything, QED. The question of the veracity and scope of NS is a separate discussion. I'm not questioning the mechanism per se, but rather its limitations. I've written computer simulations modeling mutation and selection evolve "bugs", quite fun to watch on the screen, and a demonstration of bounded adaptation, aka microevolution. As for science denial--I'm appealing to science and its discoveries about the mechanisms and complexities of life, alongside science's demonstrations of how this cannot be reproduced or explained. Science? I'm a fan--and prepared to go where the evidence leads.

Swollen bags of garbage cut in two, resealed, and injected with more garbage produce…only more garbage. AKA, garbage in, garbage out. NS can't help you here, though nice try to appeal to NS-lite ("these things could evolve without any kind of replication. It's a simple statistical inheritance.")

Random polymers are forming using racemic monomers, producing cross-linkages, interfering products, etc: i.e., garbage. The result is the most successful tar concentrators consume available building blocks at an increasing rate.

Feel free to address my argument if you're able.

[Öö Tiib]

I already did above, you just can't read.

[Mark]

Good grief, there's more to Dyson's flight of fancy, which Deamer no doubt read. Imagine the apoplexy if a creationist offered the following kind of "explanation" (emphasis is mine):

“Yes. Which we do know exist. That's stage one of life, this garbage bag stage, where evolution is happening, but only on a statistical basis. I think it's right to call it pre-Darwinian, because Darwin himself did not use the word evolution; he was primarily interested in species, not in evolution as such.

“Well then, what happened next? Stage two is when you have parasitic RNA, when RNA happens to occur in some of these cells. THERE'S A LINKAGE, PERHAPS, BETWEEN METABOLISM AND REPLICATION IN THE MOLECULE ATP [in a garbage bag!]. We know ATP has a dual function. It is very important for metabolism, but it also is essentially a nucleotide. You only have to add two phosphates and it becomes a nucleotide. So it gives you a link between the two systems. PERHAPS ONE OF THESE GARBAGE BAGS HAPPENED TO DEVELOP ATP BY A RANDOM PROCESS. ATP is very helpful to the metabolism, so these cells multiplied and became very numerous and made large quantities of ATP. Then by chance this ATP formed the adenine nucleotide, which polymerized into RNA. You had then parasitic RNA inside these cells, forming a separate form of life, which was pure replication without metabolism. RNA COULD REPLICATE ITSELF. IT COULDN'T METABOLIZE, BUT IT COULD GROW QUITE NICELY.”

“Then the RNA invented viruses. RNA found a way to package itself in a little piece of cell membrane, and travel around freely and independently. Stage two of life has the GARBAGE BAGS STILL UNORGANIZED AND CHEMICALLY RANDOM, BUT WITH RNA ZOOMING AROUND in little packages we call viruses carrying genetic information from one cell to another. That is my version of the RNA world. It corresponds to what Manfred Eigen considered to be the beginning of life, which I regard as stage two. You have RNA living independently, replicating, traveling around, sharing genetic information between all kinds of cells. Then stage three, which I would say is the most mysterious, began when these two systems started to collaborate. IT BEGAN WHEN THE INVENTION OF THE RIBOSOME, WHICH TO ME IS THE CENTRAL MYSTERY. There’s a tremendous lot to be done with investigating the archaeology of the ribosome. I hope some of you people will do it.”

“Once the ribosome was invented, then the two systems, THE RNA WORLD AND THE METABOLIC WORLD, ARE COUPLED TOGETHER AND YOU GET MODERN CELLS. That's stage three, but still with the genetic information being shared, mostly by viruses traveling from cell to cell, so it is open source heredity. As Carl Woese described it, evolution could be very fast.”

https://www.edge.org/conversation/freeman_dyson-freeman-dyson-life-what-a-concept

[Lawyer Daggett]

On Wednesday, August 30, 2023 at 7:50:20 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:

First, I repeat a prior request. Please stop with the run-on line length.
Hit the return key every 60 or so characters. Otherwise, the quoting and
indentation mechanism screws up replies and things become quite
unreadable very quickly. It isn't just me. Usenet has had this standard
for decades. Please put in this minimal effort to improve communication.

Next, your point here seems to be to draw some contrast between those
who have pointed out that Tour lacks solid bona fides regarding OoL
research and Deamer citing someone else who doesn't have solid bona
fides in OoL research. Context is not your friend.

In your other thread, you reference Tour and you asserted that he has
expertise that is especially relevant to OoL research. Based on that
assertion of your, others responded that he actually doesn't have
especially relevant expertise in that field in as much as he has not
published in that specific field. It's a fair retort to your initial assertion,
and it's being made by people with arguably better qualifications than
Tour who nevertheless disclaim that their own expertise makes them
"experts" in OoL research.

You, and one insistent other, tried to paint refutations of your assertion
about the relevance of Tour's expertise as intellectual snobbery.
Nonsense. It was a refutation of your specific assertion. It is necessary
to ignore the context of your claim to paint their words the way you
do.

Further, you misrepresent the point of the above quote by Dyson. Deamer
isn't citing Dyson as an authority on OoL research. Rather, he is citing a
particular line of reasoning that contradicts an assertion that you and
others like to make. Specifically, you try to claim that there can be no
cases of the mechanism of natural selection prior to the emergence of
the first recognizable living cell. The author of the piece isn't the point,
so your claims about irony misfire. The point, which you really ought to
consider, is that the mechanism of natural selection can have a role in
changing the "odds" of a seemingly daunting combination of events.

There are many other scenarios relevant to possible steps in OoL that
can also involve differential reproductive success. And these can possibly
happen for stages prior to what most would consider to be the emergence
of the first recognizable living cell. I happen to think that the other lines
I have in mind are better, and think that Dyson's example is misleading
even though possibly involved in a modified way. Regardless, it succeeds
at illustrating the falsity of proclamations that NS can't happen prior
to the emergence of life.

[Mark]

You said:

"Likelihood of auto- and cross-catalytic polymer sets forming in such tar garbage bag is very low."

The opposite is true. The vast majority or reaction products in this random, messy mixture of chemicals will be anything but the necessary chains without branching or 2'-5' linkage.

[Mark]

On Friday, September 1, 2023 at 10:40:22 PM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
> On Wednesday, August 30, 2023 at 7:50:20 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
> > David Deamer, an elder statesman of OoL I believe, concludes an article relating to OoL as follows:
> >
> > “I will close with a quote from Freeman Dyson, a theoretical physicist at Princeton University who also enjoys thinking about the origin of life:
> >
> > ‘You had what I call the garbage bag model. The early cells were just little bags of some kind of cell membrane, which might have been oily or it might have been a metal oxide. And inside you had a more or less random collection of organic molecules, with the characteristic that small molecules could diffuse in through the membrane, but big molecules could not diffuse out. By converting small molecules into big molecules, you could concentrate the organic contents on the inside, so the cells would become more concentrated and the chemistry would gradually become more efficient. So these things could evolve without any kind of replication. It's a simple statistical inheritance. When a cell became so big that it got cut in half, or shaken in half, by some rainstorm or environmental disturbance, it would then produce two cells which would be its daughters, which would inherit, more or less, but only statistically, the chemical machinery inside. Evolution could work under those conditions.’”
> > https://www.science20.com/stars_planets_life/calculating_odds_life_could_begin_chance
> >
> > (Note: I’m not commenting on the content of the article itself.)
> >
> > THE IRONY
> >
> > A scientist from an unrelated field rattles off a just-so story on how life might have originated – and a leader in OoL quotes him approvingly.
> >
> > A scientist accomplished in an overlapping field with highly relevant expertise (James Tour) launches a serious, sustained, specific, coherent critique of OoL research progress and claims -- and is dismissed as unqualified to comment.
> >
> > THE COMPLETE IRONY
> >
> > The analogy of “a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747” is dismissed as invalid.
> >
> > The analogy of a tornado in a molecular junkyard is offered as a satisfactory summary of how life may have begun: “...cut in half, or shaken in half, by some rainstorm or environmental disturbance” (the tornado, in case you missed it), acting on “the garbage bag model…little bags of some kind of cell membrane…inside you had a more or less random collection of organic molecules” (you get the idea).
> >
> > To be clear, swollen bags of garbage divided, resealed, and injected with more garbage produce…only more garbage. AKA, garbage in, garbage out.
> >
> > The claim that “these things could evolve without any kind of replication. It's a simple statistical inheritance...” is a masterclass in sleight-of-hand. Either that or belief in real magic.
> First, I repeat a prior request. Please stop with the run-on line length.
> Hit the return key every 60 or so characters. Otherwise, the quoting and
> indentation mechanism screws up replies and things become quite
> unreadable very quickly. It isn't just me. Usenet has had this standard
> for decades. Please put in this minimal effort to improve communication.

I've not particularly noticed this using google groups on a laptop, but like many
of google group's shortcomings I've possibly unconsciously learnt to ignore it.

>
> Next, your point here seems to be to draw some contrast between those
> who have pointed out that Tour lacks solid bona fides regarding OoL
> research and Deamer citing someone else who doesn't have solid bona
> fides in OoL research. Context is not your friend.
>
> In your other thread, you reference Tour and you asserted that he has
> expertise that is especially relevant to OoL research. Based on that
> assertion of your, others responded that he actually doesn't have
> especially relevant expertise in that field in as much as he has not
> published in that specific field. It's a fair retort to your initial assertion,
> and it's being made by people with arguably better qualifications than
> Tour who nevertheless disclaim that their own expertise makes them
> "experts" in OoL research.

I'm asserting (and it is only my assertion) that Tour's expertise is based not
on his being published in the field, but by his demonstrated (published) knowledge
of synthetic organic chemistry. This is particularly relevant, because he not
only understands the chemistry, but his work has been to do it himself, thus
giving him an acute understanding of what does and doesn't work, or at least
a keen sense of relative difficulty.

>
> You, and one insistent other, tried to paint refutations of your assertion
> about the relevance of Tour's expertise as intellectual snobbery.
> Nonsense. It was a refutation of your specific assertion. It is necessary
> to ignore the context of your claim to paint their words the way you
> do.
>
> Further, you misrepresent the point of the above quote by Dyson. Deamer
> isn't citing Dyson as an authority on OoL research. Rather, he is citing a
> particular line of reasoning that contradicts an assertion that you and
> others like to make. Specifically, you try to claim that there can be no
> cases of the mechanism of natural selection prior to the emergence of
> the first recognizable living cell. The author of the piece isn't the point,
> so your claims about irony misfire. The point, which you really ought to
> consider, is that the mechanism of natural selection can have a role in
> changing the "odds" of a seemingly daunting combination of events.

No reasonable person would claim Deamer to be citing Dyson as an authority
on OoL research. If I didn't explicitly make that qualification, it was because
I assumed it to be obvious.

Nor do I claim that "there can be no cases of the mechanism of natural selection
prior to the emergence of the first recognizable living cell." Rather, I'm saying that
in this "garbage bag world" scenario, natural selection is not operating. Dyson
agrees: "So these things could evolve without any kind of replication. It's a simple
statistical inheritance."

Thinking about this some more, there's a subtle but important distinction here.
First, "so the cells would become more concentrated" - okay, granted due to
osmotic pressure. Second, "and the chemistry would gradually become
more efficient" - greater "efficiency" of what? Stuffing garbage in at a higher rate?
Okay, I'll grant that.

The distinction then? Dyson's "statistical inheritance" produces increased
concentrations of random polymers (branched, tangled, 2'-5' linked, etc, i.e., garbage).
What is missing is _optimisation_. Natural section is not at work, and so we do
not have evolution leading to greater complexity or function. What we actually have
is merely the growth garbage concentrators, gobbling up monomers at an
accelarating rate. Dyson uses the word "evolution", but on closer examination it
means only change, but not improvement or the accrual of information.

> There are many other scenarios relevant to possible steps in OoL that
> can also involve differential reproductive success. And these can possibly
> happen for stages prior to what most would consider to be the emergence
> of the first recognizable living cell. I happen to think that the other lines
> I have in mind are better, and think that Dyson's example is misleading
> even though possibly involved in a modified way. Regardless, it succeeds
> at illustrating the falsity of proclamations that NS can't happen prior
> to the emergence of life.

And that is precisely what Tour is asking: show me, I mean actually show me,
the "many other scenarios relevant to possible steps in OoL".

[Mark Isaak]

On 9/1/23 4:32 AM, Mark wrote:
> On Friday, September 1, 2023 at 2:45:22 PM UTC+10, Mark Isaak wrote:
>> On 8/30/23 3:42 PM, Mark wrote:
>>> On Thursday, August 31, 2023 at 1:20:22 AM UTC+10, Mark Isaak wrote:

>>>> [...]

>>>> The problem with the tornado in a junkyard is not that messy occurrences
>>>> such as that do not occur in evolution, but that they are not the *only*
>>>> thing that occurs in evolution. Evolution also has inheritance and
>>>> selection, or what you call magic.
>>>
>>> Think about what's happening in this scenario. Random polymers are forming using racemic monomers, with cross-linkages, interfering products, etc: i.e., garbage. The result is the most successful tar concentrators consume available building blocks at an increasing rate. A wave of the selection wand won't help here.
>> And what makes you think that is the only scenario? Organic chemistry
>> is very good at doing non-random.
>
> Do you mean that nucleotides spontaneously forming a polymer have chemical affinities which influence their ordering, thus making the sequence non-random?

I'm saying, first, organic chemistry forms lots more than polymers.
Second, polymers it forms can take many different forms, including some
that don't readily form cross-linkages. Third, random is never a
warranted assumption in chemistry. It happens, of course, but you need
to establish that it is happening before you claim it.

[jillery]

On Friday, September 1, 2023 at 9:25:22 AM UTC-4, Mark wrote:
> On Friday, September 1, 2023 at 10:40:22 PM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
> > On Wednesday, August 30, 2023 at 7:50:20 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
> > > David Deamer, an elder statesman of OoL I believe, concludes an article relating to OoL as follows:
> > >
> > > “I will close with a quote from Freeman Dyson, a theoretical physicist at Princeton University who also enjoys thinking about the origin of life:
> > >
> > > ‘You had what I call the garbage bag model. The early cells were just little bags of some kind of cell membrane, which might have been oily or it might have been a metal oxide. And inside you had a more or less random collection of organic molecules, with the characteristic that small molecules could diffuse in through the membrane, but big molecules could not diffuse out. By converting small molecules into big molecules, you could concentrate the organic contents on the inside, so the cells would become more concentrated and the chemistry would gradually become more efficient. So these things could evolve without any kind of replication. It's a simple statistical inheritance. When a cell became so big that it got cut in half, or shaken in half, by some rainstorm or environmental disturbance, it would then produce two cells which would be its daughters, which would inherit, more or less, but only statistically, the chemical machinery inside. Evolution could work under those conditions.’”
> > > https://www.science20.com/stars_planets_life/calculating_odds_life_could_begin_chance
> > >
> > > (Note: I’m not commenting on the content of the article itself.)
> > >
> > > THE IRONY
> > >
> > > A scientist from an unrelated field rattles off a just-so story on how life might have originated – and a leader in OoL quotes him approvingly.
> > >
> > > A scientist accomplished in an overlapping field with highly relevant expertise (James Tour) launches a serious, sustained, specific, coherent critique of OoL research progress and claims -- and is dismissed as unqualified to comment.
> > >
> > > THE COMPLETE IRONY
> > >
> > > The analogy of “a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747” is dismissed as invalid.
> > >
> > > The analogy of a tornado in a molecular junkyard is offered as a satisfactory summary of how life may have begun: “...cut in half, or shaken in half, by some rainstorm or environmental disturbance” (the tornado, in case you missed it), acting on “the garbage bag model…little bags of some kind of cell membrane…inside you had a more or less random collection of organic molecules” (you get the idea).
> > >
> > > To be clear, swollen bags of garbage divided, resealed, and injected with more garbage produce…only more garbage. AKA, garbage in, garbage out.
> > >
> > > The claim that “these things could evolve without any kind of replication. It's a simple statistical inheritance...” is a masterclass in sleight-of-hand. Either that or belief in real magic.
> > First, I repeat a prior request. Please stop with the run-on line length.
> > Hit the return key every 60 or so characters. Otherwise, the quoting and
> > indentation mechanism screws up replies and things become quite
> > unreadable very quickly. It isn't just me. Usenet has had this standard
> > for decades. Please put in this minimal effort to improve communication.
> I've not particularly noticed this using google groups on a laptop, but like many
> of google group's shortcomings I've possibly unconsciously learnt to ignore it.

This is a common problem with the posts from several GG users, not just yours. A solution might be to change the GG window from full screen to something narrower than 70 characters or so, as I did here. That way GG automatically wraps the text. Whether the text appears that way in Usenet readers should be determined by this test post

There is a prebiotic analogue called chemical evolution, where different environmental conditions encourage different chemical processes and products.
<https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18160077/>

There is also the case where different self-reproducing molecules compete for raw materials.

[jillery]

On Fri, 1 Sep 2023 08:30:05 -0700 (PDT), jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>
wrote:

>On Friday, September 1, 2023 at 9:25:22?AM UTC-4, Mark wrote:
>> On Friday, September 1, 2023 at 10:40:22?PM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:

>> > On Wednesday, August 30, 2023 at 7:50:20?AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
>> > > David Deamer, an elder statesman of OoL I believe, concludes an article relating to OoL as follows:
>> > >
>> > > “I will close with a quote from Freeman Dyson, a theoretical physicist at Princeton University who also enjoys thinking about the origin of life:
>> > >
>> > > ‘You had what I call the garbage bag model. The early cells were just little bags of some kind of cell membrane, which might have been oily or it might have been a metal oxide. And inside you had a more or less random collection of organic molecules, with the characteristic that small molecules could diffuse in through the membrane, but big molecules could not diffuse out. By converting small molecules into big molecules, you could concentrate the organic contents on the inside, so the cells would become more concentrated and the chemistry would gradually become more efficient. So these things could evolve without any kind of replication. It's a simple statistical inheritance. When a cell became so big that it got cut in half, or shaken in half, by some rainstorm or environmental disturbance, it would then produce two cells which would be its daughters, which would inherit, more or less, but only statistically, the chemical machinery inside. Evolution could work under those
>conditions.’”
>> > > https://www.science20.com/stars_planets_life/calculating_odds_life_could_begin_chance
>> > >
>> > > (Note: I’m not commenting on the content of the article itself.)
>> > >
>> > > THE IRONY
>> > >
>> > > A scientist from an unrelated field rattles off a just-so story on how life might have originated – and a leader in OoL quotes him approvingly.
>> > >
>> > > A scientist accomplished in an overlapping field with highly relevant expertise (James Tour) launches a serious, sustained, specific, coherent critique of OoL research progress and claims -- and is dismissed as unqualified to comment.
>> > >
>> > > THE COMPLETE IRONY
>> > >
>> > > The analogy of “a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747” is dismissed as invalid.
>> > >
>> > > The analogy of a tornado in a molecular junkyard is offered as a satisfactory summary of how life may have begun: “...cut in half, or shaken in half, by some rainstorm or environmental disturbance” (the tornado, in case you missed it), acting on “the garbage bag model…little bags of some kind of cell membrane…inside you had a more or less random collection of organic molecules” (you get the idea).
>> > >
>> > > To be clear, swollen bags of garbage divided, resealed, and injected with more garbage produce…only more garbage. AKA, garbage in, garbage out.
>> > >
>> > > The claim that “these things could evolve without any kind of replication. It's a simple statistical inheritance...” is a masterclass in sleight-of-hand. Either that or belief in real magic.
>> > First, I repeat a prior request. Please stop with the run-on line length.
>> > Hit the return key every 60 or so characters. Otherwise, the quoting and
>> > indentation mechanism screws up replies and things become quite
>> > unreadable very quickly. It isn't just me. Usenet has had this standard
>> > for decades. Please put in this minimal effort to improve communication.
>> I've not particularly noticed this using google groups on a laptop, but like many
>> of google group's shortcomings I've possibly unconsciously learnt to ignore it.
>
>

>This is a common problem with the posts from several GG users, not just yours. A solution might be to change the GG window from full screen to something narrower than 70 characters or so, as I did here. That way GG automatically wraps the text. Whether the text appears that way in Usenet readers should be determined by this test post.


It didn't work :-(

--
To know less than we don't know is the nature of most knowledge

[RonO]

Your point was clear, you are just wrong about natural selection in
terms of the origin of life. What you are likely claiming about natural
selection is likely just materialistic mechanisms. The materialistic
mechanisms that were needed for the origin of life do not need to
involve natural selection, just natural chemical properties of matter.

As I stated natural selection starts being a factor once you have self
replication with imperfect replication. If the first self replicators
produced identical copies of themselves there would be nothing for
natural selection to work with. Natural selection requires variation,
and differential replication of the variants under the existing
environmental conditions.

What you are describing is natural selection after the origin of life.
In order to evolve bugs, you first need bugs, and you need genetic
variation among the bugs.

>
> Swollen bags of garbage cut in two, resealed, and injected with more garbage produce…only more garbage. AKA, garbage in, garbage out. NS can't help you here, though nice try to appeal to NS-lite ("these things could evolve without any kind of replication. It's a simple statistical inheritance.")
>

It likely wasn't just swoillen bags of garbage. What this requires is a
mechanism to stuff the bags with things. The example was macromolecules
that could not defuse out of the membrane enclosure. You need something
making the macromolecules inside the bag. It would be something making
the same macromolecules. These macromolecules might be used to make
other types of macromolecules. The bag would fill up with
macromolecules while the components used to make the macromolecules
would be defusing in and out of the bag. The proposal was that these
membrane bubbles could break up and form daughter bubbles filled with a
portion of what was in the original bubble.

It is a crude model as to how a really primative self replicator could
get started. It might not even be a self replicator because the
original macromolecule that made other macromolecules may never make a
copy of itself, but it may make more macromolecules that can make other
macromolecules.

My guess is that membranes were not involved in producing the first self
replicators. There are plenty of spaces in sedimentary matrix that
could temporarily confine macromolecules. Currents or flooding could
mix things up once in a while.

> Random polymers are forming using racemic monomers, producing cross-linkages, interfering products, etc: i.e., garbage. The result is the most successful tar concentrators consume available building blocks at an increasing rate.
>
> Feel free to address my argument if you're able.

Beats me why this would matter. I don't think that the bags are
necessary, but the model has a mechanism of getting rid of products that
can choke the system. As the bags divide you can obviously lose things,
and this happens over and over as the bags fill up with the
macromolecules and split with a portion of the contents lost to one
daughter bag or the other. The components to make the macromolecules
can defuse in and out, and some of the macromolecule contents are lost
each division.

Ron Okimoto

[Dexter]

Mark wrote:

------| snip ludicrous garbage bag analogy |-----------

> Over to you.
>
----------------------------------

Back atcha.

[Öö Tiib]

I do not understand how it is opposite.

[Glenn]

On Wednesday, August 30, 2023 at 5:35:20 AM UTC-7, Mark wrote:
> On Wednesday, August 30, 2023 at 10:05:20 PM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:

> > On Wednesday, August 30, 2023 at 7:50:20 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
> > > David Deamer, an elder statesman of OoL I believe, concludes an article relating to OoL as follows:
> > >
> > > “I will close with a quote from Freeman Dyson, a theoretical physicist at Princeton University who also enjoys thinking about the origin of life:
> > >
> > > ‘You had what I call the garbage bag model. The early cells were just little bags of some kind of cell membrane, which might have been oily or it might have been a metal oxide. And inside you had a more or less random collection of organic molecules, with the characteristic that small molecules could diffuse in through the membrane, but big molecules could not diffuse out. By converting small molecules into big molecules, you could concentrate the organic contents on the inside, so the cells would become more concentrated and the chemistry would gradually become more efficient. So these things could evolve without any kind of replication. It's a simple statistical inheritance. When a cell became so big that it got cut in half, or shaken in half, by some rainstorm or environmental disturbance, it would then produce two cells which would be its daughters, which would inherit, more or less, but only statistically, the chemical machinery inside. Evolution could work under those conditions.’”
> > > https://www.science20.com/stars_planets_life/calculating_odds_life_could_begin_chance
> > >
> > > (Note: I’m not commenting on the content of the article itself.)

> > Yes, I noticed that your comments actually ignore everything that Deamer wrote. And, indeed, this blog post is in no way a summary of current thought on OoL, simply an attempt to refute one of the ID movements arguments that OoL is impossible in principle. If you are interested in learning about the science in the field, you're stuck reading an actual book.

> It's entirely my prerogative to not address the body of Deamer's article -- I clearly have a separate, demonstrated purpose in referencing it. Suggesting that *not* addressing amounts to dishonesty or avoidance is a cheap attempt at casting aspersions.
>
> And relax, I'll get to addressing Deamer's book in good time.

> > >
> > > THE IRONY
> > >
> > > A scientist from an unrelated field rattles off a just-so story on how life might have originated – and a leader in OoL quotes him approvingly.
> > >
> > > A scientist accomplished in an overlapping field with highly relevant expertise (James Tour) launches a serious, sustained, specific, coherent critique of OoL research progress and claims -- and is dismissed as unqualified to comment.
> > >
> > > THE COMPLETE IRONY
> > >
> > > The analogy of “a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747” is dismissed as invalid.
> > >
> > > The analogy of a tornado in a molecular junkyard is offered as a satisfactory summary of how life may have begun: “...cut in half, or shaken in half, by some rainstorm or environmental disturbance” (the tornado, in case you missed it), acting on “the garbage bag model…little bags of some kind of cell membrane…inside you had a more or less random collection of organic molecules” (you get the idea).
> > >
> > > To be clear, swollen bags of garbage divided, resealed, and injected with more garbage produce…only more garbage. AKA, garbage in, garbage out.
> > >
> > > The claim that “these things could evolve without any kind of replication. It's a simple statistical inheritance...” is a masterclass in sleight-of-hand. Either that or belief in real magic.

> > Perhaps you missed the point of the Dyson quote. It is not offered as a "satisfactory summary of how life may have begun." It is offered as an explanation of how macromolecules could get concentrated within membranes. It is an informed guess about one of the earliest steps in a possible pathway towards life, not a summary of how life began.

I'd be interested to see the evidence of "one of the ID movements arguments that OoL is impossible in principle."

[Glenn]

On Wednesday, August 30, 2023 at 5:50:20 AM UTC-7, broger...@gmail.com wrote:

> On Wednesday, August 30, 2023 at 8:30:20 AM UTC-4, Mark wrote:
> > On Wednesday, August 30, 2023 at 10:05:20 PM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > On Wednesday, August 30, 2023 at 7:50:20 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
> > > > David Deamer, an elder statesman of OoL I believe, concludes an article relating to OoL as follows:
> > > >
> > > > “I will close with a quote from Freeman Dyson, a theoretical physicist at Princeton University who also enjoys thinking about the origin of life:
> > > >
> > > > ‘You had what I call the garbage bag model. The early cells were just little bags of some kind of cell membrane, which might have been oily or it might have been a metal oxide. And inside you had a more or less random collection of organic molecules, with the characteristic that small molecules could diffuse in through the membrane, but big molecules could not diffuse out. By converting small molecules into big molecules, you could concentrate the organic contents on the inside, so the cells would become more concentrated and the chemistry would gradually become more efficient. So these things could evolve without any kind of replication. It's a simple statistical inheritance. When a cell became so big that it got cut in half, or shaken in half, by some rainstorm or environmental disturbance, it would then produce two cells which would be its daughters, which would inherit, more or less, but only statistically, the chemical machinery inside. Evolution could work under those conditions.’”
> > > > https://www.science20.com/stars_planets_life/calculating_odds_life_could_begin_chance
> > > >
> > > > (Note: I’m not commenting on the content of the article itself.)
> > > Yes, I noticed that your comments actually ignore everything that Deamer wrote. And, indeed, this blog post is in no way a summary of current thought on OoL, simply an attempt to refute one of the ID movements arguments that OoL is impossible in principle. If you are interested in learning about the science in the field, you're stuck reading an actual book.
> > > >

> > > > THE IRONY
> > > >
> > > > A scientist from an unrelated field rattles off a just-so story on how life might have originated – and a leader in OoL quotes him approvingly.
> > > >
> > > > A scientist accomplished in an overlapping field with highly relevant expertise (James Tour) launches a serious, sustained, specific, coherent critique of OoL research progress and claims -- and is dismissed as unqualified to comment.
> > > >
> > > > THE COMPLETE IRONY
> > > >
> > > > The analogy of “a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747” is dismissed as invalid.
> > > >
> > > > The analogy of a tornado in a molecular junkyard is offered as a satisfactory summary of how life may have begun: “...cut in half, or shaken in half, by some rainstorm or environmental disturbance” (the tornado, in case you missed it), acting on “the garbage bag model…little bags of some kind of cell membrane…inside you had a more or less random collection of organic molecules” (you get the idea).
> > > >
> > > > To be clear, swollen bags of garbage divided, resealed, and injected with more garbage produce…only more garbage. AKA, garbage in, garbage out.
> > > >
> > > > The claim that “these things could evolve without any kind of replication. It's a simple statistical inheritance...” is a masterclass in sleight-of-hand. Either that or belief in real magic.
> > > Perhaps you missed the point of the Dyson quote. It is not offered as a "satisfactory summary of how life may have begun." It is offered as an explanation of how macromolecules could get concentrated within membranes. It is an informed guess about one of the earliest steps in a possible pathway towards life, not a summary of how life began.

> > No. Rather, "how macromolecules could get concentrated within membranes" is offered as a satisfactory explanation of how life may have begun*.
> >
> > * My lawyers advised me to further qualify this as, "_begun_, referring to an early, though not necessarily first, step, not to imply the immediate and subsequent appearance of _life_, in and of itself, though neither to implicitly nor expressly exclude such a possibility, and notwithstanding several and varied definitions thereof provided forthwith..."
> Sure, explaining how macromolecules can get concentrated is an attempt to explain one, of many, necessary early steps.

No it is not, scientifically or otherwise. We concentrate macromolecules everyday, but that doesn't explain one step in abiogenesis. What macromolecules, and what is the scientific evidence for their origin? What membranes, and what is the scientific evidence that such membranes would be a step in the direction of self replication? These are just so stories, and more, unbelievable stories.

It also does suggest a way in which evolution can happen without replication, at least without accurate replication.

Horseshit.

To be explicit, these protoprotocells would reproduce better if they accumulated those monomers most likely to polymerize when concentrated. To be more explicit, the monomers equilibrate across the membrane, the polymers are two big to do so. The polymers, however, create an osmotic gradient which draws water in. As long as lipids are around to insert into the membrane, the protoprotocells will grow and divide. There will be a selection for those containing the most readily polymerizable monomers. That's a form of chemical evolution, without genes. If it turns out that one of the polymers that works well is RNA or something like it, then you are at the start of a pathway leading to genetics.

That is all pure fiction. None of it is science.
But it does make one wonder about why life has not already been created in the lab using modern techniques and materials, without regard for how it may have occurred naturally.

[Glenn]

These priests's bullshit, and what they tolerate from their own, is amazing.

"Such site/compound pairs are transmissible to the daughter vesicles leading to the emergence of distinct lineages of vesicles, which would have allowed natural selection."

"If such conditions were present on early Earth, then natural selection would favor the proliferation of such autocatalytic sets,"

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

By the way, the Wiki article made reference to interesting claims I wonder has actually been done...

"Nucleotides in a protocell in a hydrothermal vent can polymerise into random strings of RNA. Any that have even slight catalytic activity will favour the growth and replication of their protocells, a start to natural selection."

>
> As I stated natural selection starts being a factor once you have self
> replication with imperfect replication. If the first self replicators
> produced identical copies of themselves there would be nothing for
> natural selection to work with. Natural selection requires variation,
> and differential replication of the variants under the existing
> environmental conditions.
>
> What you are describing is natural selection after the origin of life.
> In order to evolve bugs, you first need bugs, and you need genetic
> variation among the bugs.

Bugs. Got it.

"Even today Darwinian supporters will downplay the subject of the origins of life as a matter extraneous to the subject of natural selection. It is not. It is absolutely foundational to the integrity of natural selection as a conceptually satisfactory theory, and evolutionary science cannot logically even approach the starting blocks of its conjectures without cracking this unsolved problem, as the late 19th-century German scientist Ludwig Buechner pointed out."

https://evolutionnews.org/2022/04/considering-abiogenesis-an-imaginary-term-in-science/

[RonO]

Why keep going back to the ID perps for IDiotic denial when you do not
want to believe in the designer that fills the origin of life gap?
Denial for denial purposes isn't building anything that you want to
support. Lying to yourself about reality is just stupid. It is just a
fact that no one has to understand how life originated on this planet to
understand how it has evolved on this planet for billions of years since
that event. Descent with modification has left physical evidence of
having occurred. It isn't just the fossils and the physical
morphological relationships between existing lifeforms, but you know we
have the genetic material, and it tells us the genetic relationship
between species and even extinct fossil species that we have been able
to extract DNA from.

When it is what is around the gaps that you can't deal with the Top Six
god-of-the-gaps denial stupidity is just more science that you have to deny.

Ask Kalk why he now considers the Top Six to not be of interest to him.
He was an IDiot for decades, and he knew that the Top Six was the best
evidence for IDiocy that the ID perps had, but now it is just more to deny.

It isn't what is not known about the origin of life that is the issue
for IDiots. The issue that you have to lie to yourself about is that
the designer of the first lifeforms on this planet is not the Biblical
designer, and has to be rejected by the majority of IDiots like
yourself. You could verify this for yourself if you stopped running
from the Top Six and dealt with them in an honest and straight forward
manner. What did your designer do to create life 3.8 billion years ago,
and what has the designer done for billions of years since then to
create the diversity of life we have on this planet.

Ron Okimoto

[Ron Dean]

What does "around the gaps" mean? It describes, for example: what is
unknown between dead matter _(?)__ and life: and within this gap is
where we find evolution - inventing scenarios in a vain attempt to fill
these gaps. The designer's finalized endeavor is _after_ the "gaps". In
this OoL case "after the gap", is where we find the finished labor of
the designer _life_ itself_!
>
> Ron Okimoto

[RonO]

The first time that you encountered the Top Six you could not figure out
why the other anti evolution creationists could not deal with them and
they quit the ID scam. You asked for assistance, but Glenn, Bill and
Kalkidas would not help you out. After a period of absence you again
encountered the Top Six, but you claimed to not remember the previous
encounter and how that turned out. You again asked for assistance from
the other creationists, but no one would help you out. After another
period of absence you again came back and claimed to not remember the
previous encounters with the Top Six, and again you failed to understand
why the other creationists could not deal with them in an honest and
straightforward manner. You have never understood why the others quit
supporting the ID scam and the Top Six.

Do you recall claiming that I was not refuting the Top Six, and that I
had to tell you that I had never been trying to refute the Top Six?

It is just a simple fact that all the other anti evolution creationists
who quit the ID scam did so because the ID perps shot themselves in the
head by presenting them in their logical order of occurrence as to how
they must have happened in this universe. The designer that fills the
Top Six god-of-the-gaps denial arguments is not the Biblical designer
for nearly all IDiotic type creationists in existence. The order of
creation is wrong, and a lot of it isn't even mentioned in the Bible.

The scientific creationists used the same Top Six gap denial arguments,
but just as the ID perps continued to do, they used them as fire and
forget bits of denial that the rubes were supposed to use to lie to
themselves just long enough to forget that gap and lie to themselves
about another. You obviously are a champion at forgetting what your
argument was, and it is why you are about the only anti evolution
creationist still posting on TO.

You can go to the Reason to Believe old earth creationist web site and
see how they can't deal with the Top Six. They use them for denial
purposes, but they then have to deny the denial because they need land
plants to be created before sea creatures, but the Cambrian explosion
occurred long before there were land plants in the ordovician, and the
angiosperms described in the Bible do not evolve until after dinosaurs
had evolved. Even though they use Meyer's claim that a 25 million year
period over half a billion years ago is too short of a time for the
diversification of bilateral animals to have occurred they want land
plants to be created before sea creature. Life had been evolving for
billions of years before the Cambrian explosion, and that fact isn't
mentioned in the Bible.

What you are posting to is MarkE's denial of reality. MarkE could not
give up on the Gap denial even though he, like the other anti evolution
creationists, could not deal with the Top Six in an honest and straight
forward manner. Instead he tried to keep wallowing in the denial of
each one separately. He spent a significant effort defining the origin
of life gap. In doing so, he had to demonstrate what was around the
gap. The Big Bang (#1) had happened over 13 billion years ago, and it
took around 8 billion years to produce the elements that our planet was
made from, as products of dying stars, to create that part of the fine
tuning argument (#2). Really, it took 8 billion years to produce the
elements that made it possible for life to be created on this planet
(#3). MarkE knew that the surface of the earth would have initially
been molten rock before cooling enough for there to be liquid water.
Once there was liquid water there could be the chemistry for abiogenesis
to occur, using the elements that it took 8 billion years to create. The
origin of life likely occurred over 3 billion years ago. This is not
mentioned in the Bible, nor are the billions of years when life was
evolving as microbial lifeforms. The flagellum (#4) evolved over a
billion years ago among the microbes that existed at that time, and it
looks like a flagellum (not identical) evolved independently in archaea
and eubacteria. The Cambrian explosion (#5) occurred within a 25
million year period over half a billion years ago, long before land
plants evolved, and the gaps in the human fossil record occurred within
the last 10 million years of the existence of life on this planet.

MarkE found that he did not want to believe in the god that filled his
origin of life gap. It is not the Biblical designer. He refused to
describe how his Biblical designer fit into that gap. In spite of this
realization he continued to lie to himself that gap denial was at all
useful in maintaining his religious beliefs.

You are just too incompetent to understand what you are doing when you
use the gap denial stupidity. The other anti evolution creationists
were not that incompetent. Did you see the post where Kalkidas claimed
that ID and the Top six were no longer worth thinking about even though
he had probably been an IDiot for decades? I should have saved that
post, but maybe someone else did. Kalkidas is still a Biblical
creationist, but he no longer wants to use the gap denial stupidity to
support his religious beliefs. The designer that fills those gaps in
their logical order of occurrence in this universe is not the Biblical
designer. It turned out that the ID perps never wanted to accomplish
any ID science because any success would have just been more science for
the Biblical creationists to deny. The majority of support for the ID
scam still comes from young earth Biblical "literalists". Even the old
earth Biblical "literalists" at Reason to Believe can't deal with the
Top Six in an honest and straightforward manner, and neither could a lot
of the old earth Biblical creationists that we had posting on TO.

Ron Okimoto

>>
>> Ron Okimoto
>

[Ron Dean]

Prior to your introducing them into TO, I had never heard of the Top Six
.. This caught me completely off guard.

>
> Do you recall claiming that I was not refuting the Top Six, and that I
> had to tell you that I had never been trying to refute the Top Six?
>

Of course, I do recall you saying you were not trying to refute the Top
Six. Yes, and I did not understand your fanatical obsession with these
"top six"....And really, I still don't! Furthermore and since, I had -
had nothing what-so- ever to do, at the time, with these "top six". I
had no desire to defend something I knew nothing about. But the issue
was forced with your persistent obsession.
Nevertheless, I did locate and read these "Top Six". There were some
points, evidences that I did
agreed with, but certain points and claims I did not. IE the Biblical
prospective. I never turned to the Bible for anything, nor did I _ever_
use anything from the Bible in support of my position. I completely
disagreed with the Biblical form of creation. Therefore, I thought your
aim was completely off target, and I still do.

Nothing here applied to me or my views regarding intelligent design.

>
> What you are posting to is MarkE's denial of reality.  MarkE could not
> give up on the Gap denial even though he, like the other anti evolution
> creationists, could not deal with the Top Six in an honest and straight
> forward manner.
>

You're going into all this horse sh_t, in denying the fact that it's
evolution that's in the gaps trying to find fossil evidence to shorten
these gaps, _not_ the designer!

Instead he tried to keep wallowing in the denial of
> each one separately.  He spent a significant effort defining the origin
> of life gap.  In doing so, he had to demonstrate what was around the
> gap.

Moe of the same.

The Big Bang (#1) had happened over 13 billion years ago, and it
> took around 8 billion years to produce the elements that our planet was
> made from, as products of dying stars, to create that part of the fine
> tuning argument (#2).  Really, it took 8 billion years to produce the
> elements that made it possible for life to be created on this planet
>

I agree totally with everything in this paragraph.

> (#3).  MarkE knew that the surface of the earth would have initially
> been molten rock before cooling enough for there to be liquid water.
> Once there was liquid water there could be the chemistry for abiogenesis
> to occur, using the elements that it took 8 billion years to create. The
> origin of life likely occurred over 3 billion years ago.  This is not
> mentioned in the Bible, nor are the billions of years when life was
> evolving as microbial lifeforms.
>

Here you go again with your insane obsession with Biblical Creationism.

The flagellum (#4) evolved over a
> billion years ago among the microbes that existed at that time, and it
> looks like a flagellum (not identical) evolved independently in archaea
> and eubacteria.  The Cambrian explosion (#5) occurred within a 25
> million year period over half a billion years ago, long before land
> plants evolved, and the gaps in the human fossil record occurred within
> the last 10 million years of the existence of life on this planet.
>
> MarkE found that he did not want to believe in the god that filled his
> origin of life gap.  It is not the Biblical designer.  He refused to
> describe how his Biblical designer fit into that gap.  In spite of this
> realization he continued to lie to himself that gap denial was at all
> useful in maintaining his religious beliefs.
>
> You are just too incompetent to understand what you are doing when you
> use the gap denial stupidity.  The other anti evolution creationists
> were not that incompetent.
>

Oh yes, I do understand the nature of the gaps. It's in the gaps, where
we find evolutionist desperately searching for supporting evidence
between supposed ancestors and decedents
and this fossil evidence is not really observed, rather what's claimed
is just an intrepretation
within the ovreaching evolutionary paradigm. . It's not IDest searching
the gaps for anything. The evidence for design is _observed_after_the
gaps. Unlike the observed evidence for ID after the gaps the evidence
between ancestor and decedent is unobserved.

So, you set yourself up as absolute authority, so when I disagreed with
you, it's your evidence of you arrogance, not my incompetency.

Did you see the post where Kalkidas claimed
> that ID and the Top six were no longer worth thinking about even though
> he had probably been an IDiot for decades?  I should have saved that
> post, but maybe someone else did.  Kalkidas is still a Biblical
> creationist, but he no longer wants to use the gap denial stupidity to
> support his religious beliefs.  The designer that fills those gaps in
> their logical order of occurrence in this universe is not the Biblical
> designer.  It turned out that the ID perps never wanted to accomplish
> any ID science because any success would have just been more science for
> the Biblical creationists to deny.  The majority of support for the ID
> scam still comes from young earth Biblical "literalists".  Even the old
> earth Biblical "literalists" at Reason to Believe can't deal with the
> Top Six in an honest and straightforward manner, and neither could a lot
> of the old earth Biblical creationists that we had posting on TO.
<

Like most of what you wrote, Absolutely nothing here applies to me!
>
> Ron Okimoto
>
>>>
>>> Ron Okimoto
>>
>

[RonO]

When the Top Six were first put out by the ID perps at the Discovery
Institute you started putting them up one at a time in individual
threads, just as they had previously been presented by the scientific
creationists, and then the ID perps that came later. You were not
dealing with them as related to each other. It turned out that almost
none of the IDiots still posting at that time could deal with them as
they related to each other. Nature is just not the Biblical creation.

>
>  Did you see the post where Kalkidas claimed
>> that ID and the Top six were no longer worth thinking about even
>> though he had probably been an IDiot for decades?  I should have saved
>> that post, but maybe someone else did.  Kalkidas is still a Biblical
>> creationist, but he no longer wants to use the gap denial stupidity to
>> support his religious beliefs.  The designer that fills those gaps in
>> their logical order of occurrence in this universe is not the Biblical
>> designer.  It turned out that the ID perps never wanted to accomplish
>> any ID science because any success would have just been more science
>> for the Biblical creationists to deny.  The majority of support for
>> the ID scam still comes from young earth Biblical "literalists".  Even
>> the old earth Biblical "literalists" at Reason to Believe can't deal
>> with the Top Six in an honest and straightforward manner, and neither
>> could a lot of the old earth Biblical creationists that we had posti