Phases from self-replicator to LUCA?

[MarkE]

Would anyone like to check this for me? It’s an attempt to establish some clarification and agreement on a starting point for debate. It’s my deduction/summary of the current leading Origin of Life hypotheses. Thanks in advance.

One paper identifies these two milestones: “The evolution of complex cellular life involved two major transitions: the encapsulation of self-replicating genetic entities into cellular units and the aggregation of individual genes into a collectively replicating genome.” [1]

I would include a third: “The origin of the translation system is, arguably, the central and the hardest problem in the study of the origin of life, and one of the hardest in all evolutionary biology. The problem has a clear catch-22 aspect: high translation fidelity hardly can be achieved without a complex, highly evolved set of RNAs and proteins but an elaborate protein machinery could not evolve without an accurate translation system.” [2]

At what point is encapsulation needed? There are multiple interrelated factors contributing to this, but an estimate could be based on consideration of Eigen’s Paradox: “Without error correction enzymes, the maximum size of a replicating molecule is about 100 base pairs. For a replicating molecule to encode error correction enzymes, it must be substantially larger than 100 bases.” [3]. It is difficult to imagine a non-encapsulated genetic ensemble with error-correction enzymes (although some hypercycle hypotheses may leave room for this). In any case, it seems reasonable to assume that compartmentalisation was needed at around 100 polymer units (or multiples of this if a family of chemically co-evolved polymers were present at the transition point). I'll conservatively assume error-correction was needed by 1000 units.

The smallest genome for a viable free-living organism is currently known to be about 500 genes and 500,000 base pairs. A current estimate for the average protein length is around 300 residues for prokaryotes. LUCA was presumably smaller; an order of magnitude smaller is a cell with 50 genes and 50,000 nucleotides.

I’ll take a stab and propose the following transitions/phases:

Phase 1 - MOLECULAR REPLICATION - 0-100 polymer units; estimated limit for sustainable replication of naked polymer(s).

Phase 2 - PROTOCELL ENCAPSULATION - 100-1000 polymer units; basic protocell membrane and contents replication.

Phase 3 - ERROR-CORRECTION - 1000+ genome; error-correction enzymes permit polymer growth beyond 1000 units.

Phase 4 - GENOME AGGREGATION - 1000+ genome; aggregation of individual genes into a collectively replicating genome.

Phase 5 - METABOLISM - 5000+ genome; metabolic capacity, e.g. self-synthesis of activated nucleotides, amino acids, etc.

Phase 6 - TRANSLATION SYSTEM - 5000+ genome; RNA/DNA to protein translation machinery; overlapping with previous phase.

Phase 7 - LUCA - 50,000+ genome; arrival of LUCA.

----------

[1] A PDE Model for Protocell Evolution and the Origin of Chromosomes via Multilevel Selection (2021)
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2109.09357.pdf

[2] On the origin of the translation system and the genetic code in the RNA world by means of natural selection, exaptation, and subfunctionalization (2007)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1894784/

[3] Error Threshold - Eigen's Paradox
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error_threshold_(evolution)

[Öö Tiib]

There are plenty of open questions that it is quite likely impossible to figure in newsgroup discussion.
Your assumptions about orders of magnitude of needed complexities might be correct. "RNA world"
is just a word; no real representatives of that world have been synthesized. The steps you envision
may be such or may be some others.

Science is not set of dogmas, it is instrument of producing knowledge with observations and experiments.
What experiments and or observations you propose? One hypothesis is that hydrothermal vents played a role.
Conditions in early earth hydrothermal vents are expensive to simulate in laboratory. Virgin (in sense without
life) vents might be present at Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's moon Enceladus. Or there might be life.
It is also expensive to travel there and to investigate. So what you propose?

[jillery]

Some thoughts inspired by your comments above:

Origin of Life aka OOL research faces two daunting separate
challenges:

1) To identify a possible system of processes which possibly could
have self-organized in an environment which possibly existed
approximately 4 billion years ago.

2) To identify and demonstrate a specific system of processes that
actually creates a cell that works identically to extant single-celled
organisms, with sufficient detail and precision that refutes the most
intransigent pseudoskeptics, while at the same time *not* inspiring a
claim that said system is intelligently design.

I leave as an exercise which challenge is more daunting.

Some people presume LUCA and "first-life" mean the same thing. This
is incorrect. LUCA does not refer to the first cell ever to exist.
Just as mitochondria Eve and Y-chromosome Adam were not the first
humans, LUCA was just one cell among millions of others, that was
ancestral to all extant life on Earth.

The current hypothesis is that first life started from abiotic
processes, perhaps similar to those found in deep sea thermal vents,
and those abiotic processes were replaced gradually over time with
biochemical processes that enabled an encapsulated system to exist
beyond its abiotic nursery.

Szostak et al have demonstrated abiotic encapsulation which uses a
property of phospholipids to self-assemble into polymer strings and
micelles which encapsulate surrounding chemicals during wet-dry
cycles.

Although LUCA required metabolism and duplication, error-correction
and repair could have evolved independently over time in different
lineages. Any cellular systems that copied themselves at all, however
inaccurately, would be sufficient at first. However, one of those
inaccurate copies would by chance eventually make a copy that copied
itself more accurately than other copies did. And that copy would
ultimately replace those which copied themselves less accurately.
That's how evolution works.



--
You're entitled to your own opinions.
You're not entitled to your own facts.

[broger...@gmail.com]

You refuse to read references summarizing the current state of the field that various people here have given you on multiple occasions, on the grounds that someone wrote a negative Amazon review about them. If you won't trust recommendations for relevant sources from folks here, why would you trust anything we would say about your current post?

[RonO]

On 1/25/2022 10:54 PM, MarkE wrote:
> Would anyone like to check this for me? It’s an attempt to establish some clarification and agreement on a starting point for debate. It’s my deduction/summary of the current leading Origin of Life hypotheses. Thanks in advance.

Before anyone takes the time to do that you should demonstrate that you
are willing to use whatever comes out of the usual denial to better
understand your own alternative. You have run from stating how your
god-of-the-gaps denial works with your alternative before. You should
be able to state why you think your god can fit into the gap, and how
that god is supposed to fit into the gap, or there is no reason to
discuss the gap. You are obviously trying to support some creationist
alternative, so what is it?

Once that is established anyone interested can more effectively make
comments. Denial for denial purposes hasn't amounted to anything in
centuries, so you ought to be open to doing something more than that.

Ron Okimoto

[MarkE]

On Wednesday, January 26, 2022 at 5:40:35 PM UTC+9:30, jillery wrote:
> On Tue, 25 Jan 2022 20:54:06 -0800 (PST), MarkE

No question it is a daunting task. And fair enough, there are "intransigent pseudoskeptics".

But it cuts both ways: there are also intransigent pseudoskeptics against the possibility of intelligent design. Namely, those with an priori commitment to materialism.

> Some people presume LUCA and "first-life" mean the same thing. This
> is incorrect. LUCA does not refer to the first cell ever to exist.
> Just as mitochondria Eve and Y-chromosome Adam were not the first
> humans, LUCA was just one cell among millions of others, that was
> ancestral to all extant life on Earth.

"LUCA is not thought to be the first life on Earth, but rather the latest that is ancestral to all current existing life."

> The current hypothesis is that first life started from abiotic
> processes, perhaps similar to those found in deep sea thermal vents,
> and those abiotic processes were replaced gradually over time with
> biochemical processes that enabled an encapsulated system to exist
> beyond its abiotic nursery.
>
> Szostak et al have demonstrated abiotic encapsulation which uses a
> property of phospholipids to self-assemble into polymer strings and
> micelles which encapsulate surrounding chemicals during wet-dry
> cycles.
>
> Although LUCA required metabolism and duplication, error-correction
> and repair could have evolved independently over time in different
> lineages. Any cellular systems that copied themselves at all, however
> inaccurately, would be sufficient at first. However, one of those
> inaccurate copies would by chance eventually make a copy that copied
> itself more accurately than other copies did. And that copy would
> ultimately replace those which copied themselves less accurately.
> That's how evolution works.

Examination of the first few phases that I've defined allows a focused assessment of these hypothesised developments. It tests broad brush story-telling and has the potential to identify unsolved fundamental problems and lurking catch-22s.

[MarkE]

I'm sorry you feel that way. It's true that I don't chase down every reference suggested, based on any number of reasons. We all do that, don't we.

I maintain that my post demonstrates significant engagement with the literature, along with original thought and application. Sure, my motive is primarily to critique current materialistic explanations of origins, but I'm committed to doing so with careful use of the research (as much as I'm able) and playing by the rules.

[MarkE]

I'll move to raising issues if we can establish some tentative starting points, as proposed.

Are there any particular concerns you have with analysis and the phases I've defined?

[Öö Tiib]

What felt good: Basically it had to start from simple molecules (as rather
complex systems do not arrange out of blue), that is correct and LUCA
was quite sophisticated (considering major similarities found in all life)
that is also correct.

What felt questionable: The steps between felt arbitrary as felt their order
and count. Everything listed (and notable goal-posts not listed) had to
start from simple. All are also subjects of gradual change from generation
to generation to this day so clear steps felt odd.

Major concern is: How to produce any experiments and observations to
verify whatever of it? By palaeontology we see pieces of biogenic graphite
and then we see oxygen absorbed by environment half billion years later.
That does not help much.

[broger...@gmail.com]

It's not a game. Either you are interested in the science, in which case it makes no sense to refuse to read a book length summary of the latest work in the field up to about 2018 (Deamer's Assembling Life) simply because some guy on Amazon wrote a negative review, or you are not. It's not a question of chasing down every reference, but of ignoring a professional summary book that is written at a general enough level that if you've had basic science course in college you can follow it.

[broger...@gmail.com]

On Tuesday, January 25, 2022 at 11:55:35 PM UTC-5, MarkE wrote:

I'd say that your scheme treats the precursors of modern biological processes as though they developed independently as smaller versions of the modern things and came together sequentially. I think that it is more likely that many things happen in parallel.

For example, it seem entirely unlikely that naked polymers would replicate in solution. It seems unlikely that polymers would even form in solution in the first place. I suspect you'd need multiple cycles of concentration/drying/rehydration even to form short polymers in the first place. But then, once they are formed, there's no reason that proteins, lipids and nucleic acids would stay separate until they reached some arbitrary polymer size. Mixtures of polypetide chains will form into microspheres as the concentration increases when they begin to dry out. No reason short nucleic acid polymers cannot get caught inside. Then imagine you get et again and you have monomers floating around - their concentration equilibrates across the surface of the microsphere. Then, if they get stuck to any of the globs of protein or nucleic acid, they are more likely to condense into a polymer at the next drying cycle - that reduces the concentration of free monomer inside, so more diffuses in from outside. This would be polymerization happening much, much more slowly than with modern enzymes, but still much faster than analogous reactions free in solution (which would, in fact, go towards hydrolysis rather than condensation). There would be weak selections for stickier polypetides and for short polynucleotides with secondary structures that favored binding to the sticky polypeptides. Ligation could be catalyzed just by base pair bonding of bases complementary to an existing sequence - it would, again, be far less efficient than modern replicases, but then there'd be no modern competition around either. So you'd have, right from the start mixtures of polypeptides, lipids, and nucleic acids, interacting. Everything they were doing would be far less efficient than modern replication and translation, but the germs of everything - replicases, transcriptases, even tRNAs and ribosomes would be in there. In short, my suggestion is, don't think of basically modern biochemical functions acting on smaller, simpler polymers, think about complicated chemical and physical interactions between several different kinds of polymers under conditions of multiple cycles of concentration and dilution.

If you'd like to read more about all the steps that go into this and the experimental evidence that the steps are plausible, well...you know where to look.

[jillery]

You assert a false equivalence. There is no a priori commitment to
materialism. Intelligent Design, the presumption that life was
purposefully designed by an intelligent agent, is a pseudoskeptic's
claim.

>> Some people presume LUCA and "first-life" mean the same thing. This
>> is incorrect. LUCA does not refer to the first cell ever to exist.
>> Just as mitochondria Eve and Y-chromosome Adam were not the first
>> humans, LUCA was just one cell among millions of others, that was
>> ancestral to all extant life on Earth.
>
>"LUCA is not thought to be the first life on Earth, but rather the latest that is ancestral to all current existing life."

I agree. Do you think your quote contradicts what I wrote?

>> The current hypothesis is that first life started from abiotic
>> processes, perhaps similar to those found in deep sea thermal vents,
>> and those abiotic processes were replaced gradually over time with
>> biochemical processes that enabled an encapsulated system to exist
>> beyond its abiotic nursery.
>>
>> Szostak et al have demonstrated abiotic encapsulation which uses a
>> property of phospholipids to self-assemble into polymer strings and
>> micelles which encapsulate surrounding chemicals during wet-dry
>> cycles.
>>
>> Although LUCA required metabolism and duplication, error-correction
>> and repair could have evolved independently over time in different
>> lineages. Any cellular systems that copied themselves at all, however
>> inaccurately, would be sufficient at first. However, one of those
>> inaccurate copies would by chance eventually make a copy that copied
>> itself more accurately than other copies did. And that copy would
>> ultimately replace those which copied themselves less accurately.
>> That's how evolution works.
>
>Examination of the first few phases that I've defined allows a focused assessment of these hypothesised developments. It tests broad brush story-telling and has the potential to identify unsolved fundamental problems and lurking catch-22s.

Such as?

[MarkE]

On Thursday, January 27, 2022 at 2:15:36 AM UTC+9:30, jillery wrote:
> On Wed, 26 Jan 2022 04:46:18 -0800 (PST), MarkE

But there is, in many cases. Stated or below the waterline.

There's a false characterisation of this issue as science (aka "rational enquiry") vs religion (aka "blind faith").

What does this a priori commitment to materialism look like? This: in OOL papers every so often I've seen a point where the author momentarily acknowledges the magnitude of a particular problem and the lack of any plausible explanation, but dismisses it with, "well, we're here now so there must have been a [materialistic] way." If that's not an a priori commitment, what is?

> >> Some people presume LUCA and "first-life" mean the same thing. This
> >> is incorrect. LUCA does not refer to the first cell ever to exist.
> >> Just as mitochondria Eve and Y-chromosome Adam were not the first
> >> humans, LUCA was just one cell among millions of others, that was
> >> ancestral to all extant life on Earth.
> >
> >"LUCA is not thought to be the first life on Earth, but rather the latest that is ancestral to all current existing life."
> I agree. Do you think your quote contradicts what I wrote?

Agreeing.

> >> The current hypothesis is that first life started from abiotic
> >> processes, perhaps similar to those found in deep sea thermal vents,
> >> and those abiotic processes were replaced gradually over time with
> >> biochemical processes that enabled an encapsulated system to exist
> >> beyond its abiotic nursery.
> >>
> >> Szostak et al have demonstrated abiotic encapsulation which uses a
> >> property of phospholipids to self-assemble into polymer strings and
> >> micelles which encapsulate surrounding chemicals during wet-dry
> >> cycles.
> >>
> >> Although LUCA required metabolism and duplication, error-correction
> >> and repair could have evolved independently over time in different
> >> lineages. Any cellular systems that copied themselves at all, however
> >> inaccurately, would be sufficient at first. However, one of those
> >> inaccurate copies would by chance eventually make a copy that copied
> >> itself more accurately than other copies did. And that copy would
> >> ultimately replace those which copied themselves less accurately.
> >> That's how evolution works.
> >
> >Examination of the first few phases that I've defined allows a focused assessment of these hypothesised developments. It tests broad brush story-telling and has the potential to identify unsolved fundamental problems and lurking catch-22s.
> Such as?

I'll come to that after establishing some provisional terms of reference.

[jillery]

You don't say what you mean by "materialism", and you don't cite any
source for your paraphrased quote, so I have no idea if it's accurate
and made by someone who's regarded as an OOL authority.

My experience is, when faced with large unknowns, as is the case with
OOL, researchers make starting assumptions which provide falsifiable
"if...then" hypotheses, specifically for the purpose of constraining
the unknowns.

If you accept the definition of "materialism" from:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism>

then materialism is a good starting point for hypotheses which can be
falsified using scientific methods. Materialism is isn't assumed true
because it's assumed necessarily true, but because it has utility.
That makes it not "a priori"

Contrast the above with assuming ID as applied to OOL. To what
scientifically falsifiable tests does it lead? What constraints does
assuming an unknown and unknowable Designer provide? And how could
they be tested scientifically? To the best of my knowledge, I know of
none, and I know of no one who knows of any. Do you?

>> >> Some people presume LUCA and "first-life" mean the same thing. This
>> >> is incorrect. LUCA does not refer to the first cell ever to exist.
>> >> Just as mitochondria Eve and Y-chromosome Adam were not the first
>> >> humans, LUCA was just one cell among millions of others, that was
>> >> ancestral to all extant life on Earth.
>> >
>> >"LUCA is not thought to be the first life on Earth, but rather the latest that is ancestral to all current existing life."
>> I agree. Do you think your quote contradicts what I wrote?
>
>Agreeing.

Ok.

>> >> The current hypothesis is that first life started from abiotic
>> >> processes, perhaps similar to those found in deep sea thermal vents,
>> >> and those abiotic processes were replaced gradually over time with
>> >> biochemical processes that enabled an encapsulated system to exist
>> >> beyond its abiotic nursery.
>> >>
>> >> Szostak et al have demonstrated abiotic encapsulation which uses a
>> >> property of phospholipids to self-assemble into polymer strings and
>> >> micelles which encapsulate surrounding chemicals during wet-dry
>> >> cycles.
>> >>
>> >> Although LUCA required metabolism and duplication, error-correction
>> >> and repair could have evolved independently over time in different
>> >> lineages. Any cellular systems that copied themselves at all, however
>> >> inaccurately, would be sufficient at first. However, one of those
>> >> inaccurate copies would by chance eventually make a copy that copied
>> >> itself more accurately than other copies did. And that copy would
>> >> ultimately replace those which copied themselves less accurately.
>> >> That's how evolution works.
>> >
>> >Examination of the first few phases that I've defined allows a focused assessment of these hypothesised developments. It tests broad brush story-telling and has the potential to identify unsolved fundamental problems and lurking catch-22s.
>> Such as?
>
>I'll come to that after establishing some provisional terms of reference.

ISTM specifying what you think are "fundamental problems and lurking
catch-22s" would be useful terms of reference to establish. But
perhaps it's just me.

[RonO]

There isn't any good reason for you to be doing any criticism of
something that happened nearly 4 billion years ago under conditions that
you don't want to understand.

You really do need to come to grips with why you have no intention of
understanding the issue because you don't want to believe in the
designer responsible. In order to counter the reality of your empty
denial, all you have to do is come up with some sound reason why
understanding what your designer did around 4 billion years ago in order
to create life has any support for the religious beliefs that you want
to support.

Just putting up denial does nothing for you if you do not want to
understand the denial because you don't have any intention of using it
to better understand your own beliefs.

You know that is the issue with the Top Six and the origin of life is #3
of the Top Six. The ID perps have told you that they are in their order
of occurrence. Over 13 billion years ago the Big Bang happened. There
was some fine tuning before or during the Big Bang. There was another
round of fine tuning when our solar system was formed out of the
remnants of generations of dying stars and the earth was made out of
elements that it had taken 8 billion years to create. Life originated
on this planet possibly 3.8 billion years ago under conditions that are
very unlike what they are now, and that life has been evolving ever
since. The "IC" flagellum likely evolved over a billion years ago, and
it took over 2 billion years for multicellular animals to evolve, and
there wasn't a noticeable radiation until just half a billion years ago
with the Cambrian explosion where many different lineages are first
found in the fossil record within a 25 million year period. The gaps in
the fossil record that keep getting filled, creating 2 gaps where there
was once one, occurred within the last 8 million years.

The majority of IDiots only use the Top Six for denial purposes. You
need to do better or your arguments will never amount to anything worth
discussing. This has been true for centuries and was just as true when
the Scientific creationists resorted to this type of denial. It isn't
science, and it will not amount to anything that you want to believe.

Ron Okimoto

[MarkE]

On Thursday, January 27, 2022 at 1:55:36 AM UTC+9:30, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Tuesday, January 25, 2022 at 11:55:35 PM UTC-5, MarkE wrote:
> > Would anyone like to check this for me? It’s an attempt to establish some clarification and agreement on a starting point for debate. It’s my deduction/summary of the current leading Origin of Life hypotheses. Thanks in advance.
> >
> > One paper identifies these two milestones: “The evolution of complex cellular life involved two major transitions: the encapsulation of self-replicating genetic entities into cellular units and the aggregation of individual genes into a collectively replicating genome.” [1]
> >
> > I would include a third: “The origin of the translation system is, arguably, the central and the hardest problem in the study of the origin of life, and one of the hardest in all evolutionary biology. The problem has a clear catch-22 aspect: high translation fidelity hardly can be achieved without a complex, highly evolved set of RNAs and proteins but an elaborate protein machinery could not evolve without an accurate translation system.” [2]
> >
> > At what point is encapsulation needed? There are multiple interrelated factors contributing to this, but an estimate could be based on consideration of Eigen’s Paradox: “Without error correction enzymes, the maximum size of a replicating molecule is about 100 base pairs. For a replicating molecule to encode error correction enzymes, it must be substantially larger than 100 bases.” [3]. It is difficult to imagine a non-encapsulated genetic ensemble with error-correction enzymes (although some hypercycle hypotheses may leave room for this). In any case, it seems reasonable to assume that compartmentalisation was needed at around 100 polymer units (or multiples of this if a family of chemically co-evolved polymers were present at the transition point). I'll conservatively assume error-correction was needed by 1000 units.
> >
> > The smallest genome for a viable free-living organism is currently known to be about 500 genes and 500,000 base pairs. A current estimate for the average protein length is around 300 residues for prokaryotes. LUCA was presumably smaller; an order of magnitude smaller is a cell with 50 genes and 50,000 nucleotides.
> >
> > I’ll take a stab and propose the following transitions/phases:
> >
> > Phase 1 - MOLECULAR REPLICATION - 0-100 polymer units; estimated limit for sustainable replication of naked polymer(s).
> >
> > Phase 2 - PROTOCELL ENCAPSULATION - 100-1000 polymer units; basic protocell membrane and contents replication.
> >
> > Phase 3 - ERROR-CORRECTION - 1000+ genome; error-correction enzymes permit polymer growth beyond 1000 units.
> >
> > Phase 4 - GENOME AGGREGATION - 1000+ genome; aggregation of individual genes into a collectively replicating genome.
> >
> > Phase 5 - METABOLISM - 5000+ genome; metabolic capacity, e.g. self-synthesis of activated nucleotides, amino acids, etc.
> >
> > Phase 6 - TRANSLATION SYSTEM - 5000+ genome; RNA/DNA to protein translation machinery; overlapping with previous phase.
> >
> > Phase 7 - LUCA - 50,000+ genome; arrival of LUCA.
> >
> > ----------
> >
> > [1] A PDE Model for Protocell Evolution and the Origin of Chromosomes via Multilevel Selection (2021)
> > https://arxiv.org/pdf/2109.09357.pdf
> >
> > [2] On the origin of the translation system and the genetic code in the RNA world by means of natural selection, exaptation, and subfunctionalization (2007)
> > https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1894784/
> >
> > [3] Error Threshold - Eigen's Paradox
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error_threshold_(evolution)
> I'd say that your scheme treats the precursors of modern biological processes as though they developed independently as smaller versions of the modern things and came together sequentially. I think that it is more likely that many things happen in parallel.
>
> For example, it seem entirely unlikely that naked polymers would replicate in solution. It seems unlikely that polymers would even form in solution in the first place. I suspect you'd need multiple cycles of concentration/drying/rehydration even to form short polymers in the first place.

OOL researchers disagree. A common RNA world scenario is the formation and replication of self in solution prior to encapsulation. For example:

"Since RNA can both act as genetic molecules and functional molecules, it is natural to think that RNA may have evolved initially just in a naked way, at the molecular level. It is usually supposed that some RNA, catalyzing the template-directed copying of RNA, may have favored its own replication (often referred to as an “RNA replicase”) and spread in a prebiotic pool. It is popular to assume that this ribozyme emerged first, perhaps mainly because of those early laboratory studies showing the inefficiency of the non-enzymatic template-directed RNA copying."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5745562/

[MarkE]

Ron, I'm curious. Why these generic, cut and paste rants every time?

[MarkE]

On Thursday, January 27, 2022 at 10:10:36 AM UTC+9:30, jillery wrote:
> On Wed, 26 Jan 2022 15:26:48 -0800 (PST), MarkE

Consider again my paraphrased researcher statement: "Well, we're here now so there must have been a [materialistic] way." The author assumes, in advance, that materialistic explanations alone are sufficient. Would you agree?

That's an a priori commitment *by definition*.

[MarkE]

Yes, the phases I've defined are provisional starting point for analysis. I've given some basic initial justification for them, but this would certainly need much more work. And other variations and overlapping of phases are also real possibilities.

[broger...@gmail.com]

..................

> OOL researchers disagree. A common RNA world scenario is the formation and replication of self in solution prior to encapsulation. For example:

.............

*Some* OOL researchers disagree, that's true; that's how science works when the answer is not obvious. Although, even the article you cite describes counterarguments against the "naked first" scenarios. This is exactly the problem with trawling through an article looking for prose that seems congenial to your ideas, and it's why discussions with you tend to go nowhere.

In any case, I gave you an alternative way to think about your list of phases. I think you need to spread a wider net than you have for a problem this difficult.

[jillery]

If you really expect your paraphrased quote to be considered again or
even at all, you really, really need to cite an example of some
recognized OOL authority saying it. Otherwise it comes across as just
another made-up fact.

>That's an a priori commitment *by definition*.

Consider again my previous comments. Your "that's" not an "a priori"
commitment, by any reasonable definition, because your "that's" not
assumed to be either true or sufficient. I clearly disagree with your
baseless and factually incorrect claims.

If you continue to have so much trouble comprehending written English,
it's going to take a long time before you establish some provisional
terms of reference, nevermind identify unsolved fundamental problems

[Mark Isaak]

On 1/26/22 3:26 PM, MarkE wrote:
> On Thursday, January 27, 2022 at 2:15:36 AM UTC+9:30, jillery wrote:
>> On Wed, 26 Jan 2022 04:46:18 -0800 (PST), MarkE
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On Wednesday, January 26, 2022 at 5:40:35 PM UTC+9:30, jillery wrote:
>>>> On Tue, 25 Jan 2022 20:54:06 -0800 (PST), MarkE
>>>> wrote:

>>> [...]

>>> But it cuts both ways: there are also intransigent pseudoskeptics against the possibility of intelligent design. Namely, those with an priori commitment to materialism.

>> You assert a false equivalence. There is no a priori commitment to
>> materialism. Intelligent Design, the presumption that life was
>> purposefully designed by an intelligent agent, is a pseudoskeptic's
>> claim.
>
> But there is, in many cases. Stated or below the waterline.
>
> There's a false characterisation of this issue as science (aka "rational enquiry") vs religion (aka "blind faith").
>
> What does this a priori commitment to materialism look like? This: in OOL papers every so often I've seen a point where the author momentarily acknowledges the magnitude of a particular problem and the lack of any plausible explanation, but dismisses it with, "well, we're here now so there must have been a [materialistic] way." If that's not an a priori commitment, what is?

It is not an _a priori_ commitment; it is an _a posteriori_ commitment.
Throughout history, supernatural explanations have been proposed for
all sorts of things, and they always, without exception, have proved
scientifically worthless at best. This is hardly surprising, because it
is impossible for supernatural "explanations" to have any explanatory
value. (You cannot derive information from the lack of it.)
Supernatural explanations are also morally inferior. Saying instead, "I
don't know the cause" is honest and more humble.

I would dispute that intelligent design is a rejection of materialism in
the first place. Rather, it is an attempt to redefine God (or at least
His creative actions) in materialistic terms.

--
Mark Isaak eciton (at) curioustaxonomy (dot) net
"The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred
to the presence of those who think they've found it." - Terry Pratchett

[RonO]

They are not cut and paste. They are repetitive because you keep doing
the same stupid things, and the reason that what you are doing is stupid
never changes. So why do you keep doing something that you know you do
not want to understand? What is the point in demonstrating that a gap
exists when you don't want to know what is actually in the gap?
Demonstrate otherwise. Tell us what you hope is in the gap and why.
Then explain how that relates to what we know about what is around the gap.

It is just a fact that the basic reason that the ID perp's Top Six
failed to gain any honest interest among the rubes was due to the fact
that the vast majority of IDiots are like you and don't want to believe
in the designer that fills those gaps. Telling the rubes like you that
they are in their order of occurrence makes lying to themselves too
obvious even for IDiots like Glenn.

Did you view the Meyer/Shermer discussion on the God Hypothesis. The ID
perps claim that the top six are in the book, but Meyer only discussed a
few of them, but what did Meyer admit to? He admitted that he had no
intention of developing nor understanding a coherant God Hypothesis.
All he was doing was using each bit of denial as some disembodied part
that he had no intention of relating to his religious beliefs that he
was supporting by putting them up.

https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/PJsqZMUiYCo/m/CHP6mmE9BQAJ

Meyer admitted to doing just what you keep doing.

How did the new gene denial stupidity go for you? Why couldn't you deal
with how nearly all the new genes that the ID perps were in denial about
evolved before the Cambrian explosion? Not only that, but they had an
order to their evolution and what lineages were affected. All you
wanted out of it was the denial, but what should you have learned from
it? Why didn't you want your designer to be responsible for the new genes?

Ron Okimoto

[MarkE]

I'm surprised you have such a definite opinion against the prominent paradigm of naked polymers first, though I share your scepticism.

“Some scientists, including Gerald Joyce, suggest that life might have started outside cells, with free-floating molecules encountering each other and forming bonds that would allow them to act like life.” On the other hand, leading researcher and Nobel laureate Jack Szostak, “argues that the cell membrane was necessary, in part because it would keep beneficial genetic molecules together and prevent the useful metabolites made by genetically coded ribozymes from floating away in surrounding water or being snagged by other passing protocells.”
https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2019/07/origin-life-earth

The two main camps are metabolism first (e.g. autocatalytic sets, hypercycles) and genetic polymers first (e.g. autocatalytic RNA). And there are hybrids of these. A problem with the former is heritability. A problem with the latter is sustainability, hence Szostak’s argument for compartmentalisation early on.

Lipid membrane permeability has this factor to deal with: “Membranes composed of fatty acids are in fact reasonably permeable to small polar molecules and even to charged species such as ions and nucleotides (Mansy et al. 2008). This appears to be largely a result of the ability of fatty acids to form transient defect structures and/or transient complexes with charged solutes, which facilitate transport across the membrane.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2926753/

Whatever the case, very soon you need a mechanism to build and preserve functional complexity, i.e. some form of chemical evolution, which points to a genetic model early, though possibly/probably co-evolving with other molecules.

What’s your preferred scenario?

[MarkE]

On Friday, January 28, 2022 at 12:35:39 AM UTC+9:30, jillery wrote:
> On Thu, 27 Jan 2022 05:11:40 -0800 (PST), MarkE

Just to clarify this definition, take the statement in question as a hypothetical. Would you then agree that it demonstrates an a priori position?

[Öö Tiib]

That is the issue. There is very large set of possibilities of events over period
of half billions years on territory with size of our planet. We can not achieve
any clarity in it with just a discussion. Need army of scientists and who
will pay them?

> > Major concern is: How to produce any experiments and observations to
> > verify whatever of it? By palaeontology we see pieces of biogenic graphite
> > and then we see oxygen absorbed by environment half billion years later.
> > That does not help much.

I mean Eoarchean era 4000 mya until 3500 mya where we see evidence of
something like cyanobacteria. What happened there? Period is about as
long as from worm-like multicellular creatures of Cambrian 500 mya to
current days.
Was it same designer who orchestrated those half billions years ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devonian#/media/File:Fish_evolution.png
... and getting photosynthesis reliably going also with half billions years?
Ron O. is correct that you avoid studying your designer and that is not
fault of our science or gaps of knowledge in it. Where is your alternative
story? What you suppose that actually happened?

[MarkE]

Actually, the Meyer/Shermer discussion is a breath of fresh air. Despite fundamentally opposing viewpoints, a good amount mutual respect and willingness to consider and explore each others arguments produced a far deeper and more interesting dialogue than is so often the case.

Would you agree?

[MarkE]

A key point here: it is entirely valid to attempt to disprove a theory without offering an alternative.

Indeed, science often progresses when someone finds empirical evidence which contradicts a prevailing theory. They simply report the result, with no obligation to provide a better theory at the same time. It's this counter-evidence that provokes others in the pursuit of knowledge.

Would you agree?

[jillery]

If by "the statement in question" you mean your paraphrased quote, you
previously claimed it was based on things you read in "OOL papers".
Now you want to treat it as a hypothetical. Either way, you need to
show it's more that something you just made up aka a strawman.

If you really want to clarify your POV, you really, really need to
answer the questions I asked you. To refresh your convenient amnesia:
*********************************************

Contrast the above with assuming ID as applied to OOL. To what
scientifically falsifiable tests does it lead? What constraints does
assuming an unknown and unknowable Designer provide? And how could
they be tested scientifically? To the best of my knowledge, I know of
none, and I know of no one who knows of any. Do you

********************************************

[MarkE]

In the statement (hypothetical if you like, for the purpose of argument) "well, we're here now so there must have been a [materialistic] way", the assertion that there must be a materialistic solution is not based _a posteriori_ on empirical evidence. Rather, it is an affirmation of an unknown materialistic solution, without previous empirical evidence (in relation to the particular problem at hand; not the veracity of science and biology generally).

That is, the author doesn't say, "materialistic explanations have worked for similar problems"; rather, they're saying, "I don't know how, but it MUST have happened by some natural means." That's an _a priori_ position. It has ruled out any supernatural explanation ahead of time.

>
> I would dispute that intelligent design is a rejection of materialism in
> the first place. Rather, it is an attempt to redefine God (or at least
> His creative actions) in materialistic terms.

ID posits a designer who transcends the material universe. In doing so, ID rejects materialism defined thus:

"a philosophical system which regards matter as the only reality in the world…denies the existence of God and the soul."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism#:~:text=Materialism%20is%20a%20form%20of,are%20results%20of%20material%20interactions.&text=Materialism%20is%20closely%20related%20to,that%20exists%20is%20ultimately%20physical.

[Öö Tiib]

Disproving is possible only about concrete claim like that "proteins
formed wildly in primordial sea". That does not disprove theory as
proteins are optimization that is unneeded in first steps. All what
can happen with work of army of scientists is that more and more
of ways how simple replicating systems could arrange into more
complex will be discovered.

> Indeed, science often progresses when someone finds empirical
> evidence which contradicts a prevailing theory. They simply
> report the result, with no obligation to provide a better theory
> at the same time. It's this counter-evidence that provokes others
> in the pursuit of knowledge.
>
> Would you agree?

Sure. That is the essence of "major concern" you haven't replied to.
How to produce any experiments and observations to verify or
overrule whatever of it? There are literal walls of papers about
potential processes already and only more and more are produced.
So without alternative ... all that is left is ... just uneducated denial.

[MarkE]

On Friday, January 28, 2022 at 2:30:36 PM UTC+9:30, jillery wrote:
> On Thu, 27 Jan 2022 20:20:21 -0800 (PST), MarkE

I remember being surprised reading this in a scientific paper (or article), but unfortunately though understandably can't locate it. You're entitled to be question it without a citation though.

But regardless, take the statement as a hypothetical so we can reach a conclusion here: "Well, we're here now so there must have been a [materialistic] way."

Would you agree that this would be a demonstration of an _a priori_ position?

[Öö Tiib]

Most people have position that they don't know how life appeared
on earth. Most people agree that it is tautology that there had to
be a way. So if some [unidentified] scientist wrote that redundant
truth in [unidentified] work then what you complain? It is not
hypothesis ... it is fact. Life is here so it had to get here somehow.

[MarkE]

PS

The following requirement is daunting: chemically, the random bonding of that many nucleotides; and informationally, chancing upon a functional polymer in the huge sequence space.

"A key quantity is the minimum RNA length required to show a self-replicating ability. RNA molecules shorter than 25 nucleotides (nt) do not show a specified function, but there is a reasonable hope to find a functioning replicase ribozyme longer than 40–60 nt. RNA polymerase ribozymes produced by in vitro experiments so far have a length longer than 100 nt."
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-58060-0

[Öö Tiib]

So that it is unlikely? Hard to buy. Millions of years on territory of earth
gives lot of chances while self-replicating sets can spontaneously form even in inorganic
materials: https://www.pnas.org/content/117/20/10699

[Burkhard]

It is valid to find counter evidence against a theory without having an
alternative - just expect as a reaction: "that's interesting, well
maybe it will sort itself out later". That's especially the case for
theories that are well confirmed and integrated with other well
confirmed theories we have.

Scientific progress typically happens when you have both, the old
theory has accumulated lots and lots of these anomalies, and the new
theory explains all the data the old theory explained, and either a) has
fewer of its anomalies and/or b) explains additional data the original
theory could not.

[broger...@gmail.com]

I gave you a brief synopsis - wet/dry cycles (as in tidal or volcanic pools) acting on mixtures of monomers and short polymers of nucleic acids and polypeptides and lipids together. I gave you some idea of how selections might happen in such a scenario and how a genetic system could emerge slowly and pointed you many times to where you can read about recent data supporting the model as well as a much more detailed explanation of the model itself.

But that's only my preferred scenario, there's not enough evidence yet (nor is there ever likely to be) to nail down in much detail exactly what happened billions of years ago. All that's possible, I think, is to keep refining the understanding of the chemistry of complex mixtures of different classes of polymers and trying to rule out some of the hypothetical mechanisms.

[RonO]

Denial is so ingrained that you really can't deal with reality. Did
Meyer ever try to produce a coherent God hypothesis? Why did he admit
that he didn't want to do that? What good is the disembodied Denial if
you do not want to build anything out of it? It is just like you and
the New genes and your origin of life denial. Denial is just denial.
It doesn't amount to anything more than that. I don't know why Shermer
let him get away with that because the discussion was about a book that
Meyer's lied about in the title, claiming that it was about the God
hypothesis, not about all the disembodied god hypotheses. Shermer even
acknowledged that it looked like there were multiple designers and he
let Meyer prevaricate about the issue. It is obvious that Meyer was
supporting his religious beliefs because he admitted that he believed in
the Christian designer, but he also claimed that he had no intention of
applying his denial arguments to better understand that alternative.
All the denial was about was denial. All the disembodied parts of
denial in the God Hypothesis were not meant to accomplish anything more,
and Shermer let him get away with that for some unknown reason.

If you think that there is a good reason for what Meyer admitted to
doing, what is that good reason?

What is your reason for not wanting to understand what your designer did
around 4 billion years ago to create life on earth? Why is the denial
good enough?

Look at Behe and Denton. They have less denial about reality, but their
denial got dropped out of the Top Six. All Denton needed was to have
the Big Bang occur and he claimed everything all could have unfolded
into what we have. Behe mostly agrees, but he claims that his designer
tweeked things along the way after the Big Bang. The director of
research (Brian Miller) and Sewell (a recently added ID perp) dropped
the Big Bang and Behe's IC out of the Top Six. For them those involved
too much denial to be sensible. The majority of IDiots do not want to
understand anything about a designer that did something over 13 billion
years ago, and they don't want to know what a designer did to evolve the
flagellum over a billion years ago. You don't want to know what
happened to create life around 3.8 billion years ago.

Demonstrate otherwise. Just describe what you hope to gain in terms of
support for your alternative, and what it would mean to your
alternative. What would it mean to your alternative if you were able to
establish that your designer did something 3.8 billion years ago to
create life when you have to deal with everything between all the gaps
to the present. The Top Six gaps have known positions in what we
understand, and it is the understanding around the gaps that you don't
want to deal with.

Right now you are trying to define the gap, but what good is that going
to do for you? We do not understand everything. Just the fact that you
think that you can better define the gap destroys your intentions.

Ron Okimoto

[Mark Isaak]

You, on the other hand, prefer the (equally hypothetical) statement, "We
can never know how life originated, so scientists had best give up, and
explanations must be provided by fantasizing."

> That is, the author doesn't say, "materialistic explanations have worked for similar problems"; rather, they're saying, "I don't know how, but it MUST have happened by some natural means." That's an _a priori_ position. It has ruled out any supernatural explanation ahead of time.

I vehemently disagree. *All* of science is steeped in the knowledge
that science works. And the only thing that *anybody* has available to
work with are natural means, history, and fantasy. The last two, pretty
obviously, are not capable of uncovering new knowledge. A reliance on
natural means is a logical conclusion, supported by centuries of experience.

Note that the supernatural does not appear on the list of things
available to work with. That's because it is impossible to work with
it. You can believe it, but you cannot work with it.

>> I would dispute that intelligent design is a rejection of materialism in
>> the first place. Rather, it is an attempt to redefine God (or at least
>> His creative actions) in materialistic terms.
>
> ID posits a designer who transcends the material universe. In doing so, ID rejects materialism defined thus:
>
> "a philosophical system which regards matter as the only reality in the world…denies the existence of God and the soul."
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism

Agreed; "intelligent design" is still not wholly materialistic. But it
is a large step in that direction.

[jillery]

>> show it's more than something you just made up aka a strawman.

>
>I remember being surprised reading this in a scientific paper (or article), but unfortunately though understandably can't locate it. You're entitled to be question it without a citation though.

I question your citation not just because you don't cite any examples,
but also because to the best of my recollection, I have never read any
authoritative source on OOL which said what you say. This is not to
say you didn't read something like it somewhere from somebody, but
instead is to say a more likely inference is that you misremember what
you read. Or you can stay with leaving the less charitable impression
that you just made it up.

>But regardless, take the statement as a hypothetical so we can reach a conclusion here: "Well, we're here now so there must have been a [materialistic] way."
>
>Would you agree that this would be a demonstration of an _a priori_ position?

Since you insist, *IF* some OOL authority made an irrelevant point
about "materialistic" as you suggest, then yes, that would be an a
priori position. It would be equivalent to a DA saying "we know
people die, so that must mean people are murdered". But unless you
can show where some OOL authority said that, your hypothetical is a
baseless allusion.

So I answered your questions twice. That's two more times than you
have answered my questions.

>> If you really want to clarify your POV, you really, really need to
>> answer the questions I asked you. To refresh your convenient amnesia:
>> *********************************************
>> Contrast the above with assuming ID as applied to OOL. To what
>> scientifically falsifiable tests does it lead? What constraints does
>> assuming an unknown and unknowable Designer provide? And how could
>> they be tested scientifically? To the best of my knowledge, I know of
>> none, and I know of no one who knows of any. Do you
>> ********************************************

And *still* no response to my questions. I question your commitment
to clarity.

[Lawyer Daggett]

For what little it's worth (and it isn't worth that much), the cyclic dehydration scheme
no longer holds much appeal to me. It used to. Most of the key polymerizations
are dehydration reactions so there's a certain natural sensibility there.

However, it seems to me that there's a key prerequisite. There needs to be
a synthetic engine that is producing the monomers in the first place. And that
requires a potential energy gradient, likely driven by redox potentials, likely
from something like black smokers or other volcanic processes. And in consideration
of what exists, that has to dovetail with some process that is producing high
energy poly-phosphate moieties. That seems to be a key. And if we get that,
then polymerization can become a downhill (coupled) reaction.

This is a variant on the "metabolism first" school of thought.

If somehow a synthetic engine arises, then the thermodynamics works.
The entropy works. It essentially all comes together if there's the right source
of essential precursors venting into an environment that supports redox
potential gradients, You need the continued flux of precursors, some mode
of cycling between redox potentials, and some containment/concentration
mechanism. Not that such is necessarily sufficient, but it's got the
necessary elements to prime the pump.

I recognize that this is woefully generic. However, I've come to think
that the energetics is the key, or at least a key. And once it's satisfied,
it turns out that the chemistry generally works. Many folks who don't
understand organic chemistry tend to think that there's some major
difficulties in getting all of those atoms to bond in the structures they
do in biomolecules, as if it involved lucky random combinations. That's
wrong. Purines and Pyrimidines exist because they are innately stable
and probable structures. The same for the sugars we see, the amino
acids we see. Biopolymers aren't oddballs, they are chemically
probable outcomes --- provided there's a synthetic engine to power
the system.

Again, apologies for the extremely generic nature of this commentary
but it's part of the point. Chemical pathways exist. They aren't the big
mystery. The mystery is understanding what powered the synthetic engine.
There are multiple possibilities there but I have no idea which ones
are most likely, or which ones were mostly likely involved. Worse,
I'm not clear on how to figure out which were most likely.

[MarkE]

This is not the case for OOL. There is no theory of OOL, only conjecture. Elder statesman of OOL David Deamer: "Twain's insight strikes close to home when it comes to the origin of life: few facts and lots of conjecture."

Genome first, metabolism first, hybrid, etc? Encapsulation sooner or later? Hydrothermal vents, wetting/drying, saltwater, freshwater, panspermia...?

[MarkE]

On Saturday, January 29, 2022 at 4:50:37 AM UTC+9:30, jillery wrote:
> On Thu, 27 Jan 2022 21:22:00 -0800 (PST), MarkE

Thank you. I'm intrigued at your reluctance to concede this, even as a hypothetical. Look, you're not giving away the farm. It's a common position I think, on the basis that, as I said, I come across statements to this effect from time to time in the literature. And serendipitously, I came across another example last night as I was following up on something else:

"Here is the fundamental problem. There is only one actual fact known about the origin of life (OOL). It happened. We do not know where, when, or how."

William Bains (PhD with expertise in astrobiology) is implying that, despite the unknown "where, when, or how" of OOL, there must be a naturalistic explanation because, well, "it happened." No big deal. This is a widely held _a priori_ view, which is why the author states it without qualm or qualification. It's something of a given. (Great article btw; well worth a read.)

Ref: Getting Beyond the Toy Domain. Meditations on David Deamer’s “Assembling Life” - https://www.mdpi.com/2075-1729/10/2/18

[MarkE]

I think you'd enjoy this (if you haven't already seen it): Getting Beyond the Toy Domain. Meditations on David Deamer’s “Assembling Life” https://www.mdpi.com/2075-1729/10/2/18/htm

It's a thoughtful, informed and sympathetic assessment, as evidenced by the tone and content, and the acknowledgements : "I am grateful to Janusz Petkowski and Sukrit Ranjan, for helpful and constructive comments on earlier versions of this diatribe, to David Deamer for detailed commentary that put me right on a few points, and to Bruce Damer for similarly insightful input."

A few quick picks:

"Again, the term ‘Protocell’ is used to mean any liposome-like membrane encapsulating other molecules. In my opinion, a vesicle encapsulating random organic molecules is almost as far from life as the bulk “prebiotic soup” from which it was made. To draw “Protocells → Progenote” in a diagram [11] skips over everything about how that transition happens, i.e., how life originates!"

Sigh. Some one actually gets it.

"In my view, almost all the OOL chemistry that I see is Toy Domain chemistry. It is making single types of biochemicals in a controlled laboratory setting using pure chemicals that might, just might, have been present in trace amounts in a complex mixture of thousands of other chemicals at OOL, under conditions that might have existed and might have persisted long enough, and then stopping the reaction at exactly the right time to maximize the yield of what you want (See [44], especially Chapter 5). It neglects that many of the postulated starting materials are themselves unstable. It neglects that they will react with other chemicals present. It neglects that the intermediates will all react with each other, and with the products."

William Bains again: "Most researchers, even some working on such chemical schemes, understand that lab chemistry is only a tiny part of the whole problem. But that is not the primary issue. It is a tiny part solved in an unrealistic way. Only by a tiny, outside chance can lab reactions of specific reagents, even to give “messy” products, be part of a larger solution. The research does tell us something about chemistry. But it is not something that has much relevance to OOL, because if you carry out lab organic chemistry on anything approaching a plausible pre-biotic aqueous organic soup you never get life. You get tar [44]. Even if you do it in vesicles."

"You get tar." As you did in 1952 with the Miller–Urey experiment: "...the Primordial Soup that Miller and Urey produced from their experiment. Today’s “brilliant” scientists say that the soup, or sludge in my mind, was “Rich in amino acids”. Wrong again… fortunately (yes I said fortunately). The sludge they produce was only 85 percent tar, 13 percent carbolic acid, 1.05 percent glycine (an amino acid), and 0.85 percent alanine (another amino acid). HARDLY EVEN 2% OF THE SLUDGE WAS AMINO ACIDS! On top of that is the fact that only two out of the TWENTY amino acids required to create a single, living cell were produced. The interesting thing about tar and carbolic acid is that both are lethal to life. After a while, they would have killed the amino acids that were produced." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AMiller%E2%80%93Urey_experiment

William Bains: "In my view, almost all the OOL chemistry that I see is Toy Domain chemistry. It is making single types of biochemicals in a controlled laboratory setting using pure chemicals that might, just might, have been present in trace amounts in a complex mixture of thousands of other chemicals at OOL, under conditions that might have existed and might have persisted long enough, and then stopping the reaction at exactly the right time to maximize the yield of what you want (See [44], especially Chapter 5). It neglects that many of the postulated starting materials are themselves unstable. It neglects that they will react with other chemicals present. It neglects that the intermediates will all react with each other, and with the products."

James Tour offers this reflection: "Consider what has occurred in other fields in the past sixty-seven years since Miller-Urey performed their experiments: human space travel, satellite interconnectivity, unlocking DNA’s code and its precise genetic manipulation, biomedical imaging, automated peptide and nucleotide synthesis, molecular structure determination, silicon device fabrication, integrated circuits, and the internet, to name just a few. By comparison, origin-of-life research has not made any progress whatsoever in addressing the fundamental questions of life’s origin. Two-thirds of a century and all that has been generated are more suggestions on how life might have formed—suggestions that really show how life probably did not form. Nothing even resembling a synthetic cellular structure has arisen from its independent components, let alone a living cell. Not even close." https://www.discovery.org/m/securepdfs/2021/02/Tour-MeyerMOLO.pdf

Thanks for alerting me to Deamer's books btw.

[broger...@gmail.com]

..........

> Thanks for alerting me to Deamer's books btw.

Do try reading them.

The reason I find this discussion not very interesting is that this is an unsolved problem. There are lots of competing ideas. Therefore, you will always be able to find someone who says the other guy's idea is wrong. If all you're doing is looking for competing quotes from published papers, then in an unsettled field, you'll find them. Easily. There's nothing particularly interesting in that. The only way to resolve those sorts of things is to actually do experiments and then argue about the details of the results. It's not the sort of thing that can get worked out here.

The thing that can get worked out here, which does seem to be what you are more interested in, is the issue of prior commitments to materialism.

And yes, pretty much everyone doing work in the field looks for a materialistic explanation of OOL, because non-materialistic, supernatural accounts are inherently untestable. That does not mean non-materialistic, supernatural accounts might not be correct, only that, if they are correct, there's no way to know.

You also seem to take it as a given that finding a naturalistic explanation for the OoL would be a strike against God, so to speak. But why? If God created a world whose natural laws allow the naturalistic origin of life wouldn't He/She/It get the credit anyway? And certainly, not finding a naturalistic explanation of OoL does not strengthen the case for God's existence, it's just evidence of the limitations of what we can or have figured out, and there's lots of stuff other than the OoL that we've failed to figure out. Our ignorance is evidence of our ignorance, not of God.

And in practical terms, I really don't think anybody much loses their faith because they think life could get started without a divine poof. Dawkins may have said that Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist but

1. I think he's wrong about that, there were intellectually fulfilled atheists long before Darwin and

2. People I know who've lost their faith have by an large lost it because of distaste at the behavior of faith leaders or over questions of theodicy, not because of the RNA world.

3. I don't know a lot of folks who were YEC and lost faith - I suppose it's possible that reaction to the manifestly silly bits of YECism caused them to lose faith, but I still think it's a less common reason than theodicy or bad behavior on the part of faith leaders.

[jillery]

Your comments above prove you're not merely misremembering, but
instead are making up willfully stupid facts. Nowhere does your cite
show Bains or Deamer even mentions "materialism", nevermind declares
its presumption. Extending my analogy, the DA has explicitly stated
he doesn't know how some person died, and you stupidly jump to the
conclusion that proves the DA thinks the person was murdered.

You're so convinced of your presumptions, you can't even recognize
you're arguing a stupid strawman. This explains my so-called
"reluctance", and your continuing failure to answer my questions.

[jillery]

On Fri, 28 Jan 2022 13:08:38 -0800 (PST), Lawyer Daggett
<j.nobel...@gmail.com> wrote:

[...]

>For what little it's worth (and it isn't worth that much), the cyclic dehydration scheme
>no longer holds much appeal to me. It used to. Most of the key polymerizations
>are dehydration reactions so there's a certain natural sensibility there.
>
>However, it seems to me that there's a key prerequisite. There needs to be
>a synthetic engine that is producing the monomers in the first place. And that
>requires a potential energy gradient, likely driven by redox potentials, likely
>from something like black smokers or other volcanic processes. And in consideration
>of what exists, that has to dovetail with some process that is producing high
>energy poly-phosphate moieties. That seems to be a key. And if we get that,
>then polymerization can become a downhill (coupled) reaction.

The monomers of life to which you refer, are spectroscopically
detected in outer space, and assayed from comets and carbonaceous
meteorites. Various ambiphilic hydrocarbons appear in crude oil.
There are numerous abiotic processes that could have existed in nature
which form said monomers from atomic gasses. This suggests to me that
your monomer prerequisite is satisfied.

[Öö Tiib]

It is (contrary to MarkE's hopes) a fruitful discussion as the experiments are
expensive and it is not reasonable to ask money for experiments around weak
ideas that likely fail. It is lot better to gather opinions (without need to agree
with those) beforehand.

<
> The thing that can get worked out here, which does seem to be what you are more interested in, is the issue of prior commitments to materialism.
>
> And yes, pretty much everyone doing work in the field looks for a materialistic explanation of OOL, because non-materialistic, supernatural accounts are inherently untestable. That does not mean non-materialistic, supernatural accounts might not be correct, only that, if they are correct, there's no way to know.
<

That is not entirely true as plenty of research and experiments are (and have
been done for ages) about various alleged aspects of supernatural. Positive
results are disappointingly lacking or even more disappointingly shown to
be fake so there is nothing to publish and bad reputation of fraud. Rather rare
organization wants the fame of fools who funded experiments that involved
demon summoning or such. So it can be requirement from funding party that
the explanations that are tested have to be naturalistic.

<
> You also seem to take it as a given that finding a naturalistic explanation for the OoL would be a strike against God, so to speak. But why? If God created a world whose natural laws allow the naturalistic origin of life wouldn't He/She/It get the credit anyway? And certainly, not finding a naturalistic explanation of OoL does not strengthen the case for God's existence, it's just evidence of the limitations of what we can or have figured out, and there's lots of stuff other than the OoL that we've failed to figure out. Our ignorance is evidence of our ignorance, not of God.
<

That is nonsense I've never understood. God wants us to be ignorant and
mislead by various greedy tele-evangelists? What is the purpose of that?

<
> And in practical terms, I really don't think anybody much loses their faith because they think life could get started without a divine poof. Dawkins may have said that Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist but
>
> 1. I think he's wrong about that, there were intellectually fulfilled atheists long before Darwin and
>
> 2. People I know who've lost their faith have by an large lost it because of distaste at the behavior of faith leaders or over questions of theodicy, not because of the RNA world.
>
> 3. I don't know a lot of folks who were YEC and lost faith - I suppose it's possible that reaction to the manifestly silly bits of YECism caused them to lose faith, but I still think it's a less common reason than theodicy or bad behavior on the part of faith leaders.
<

It is impossible to figure who lost or gained faith for what reason (if they
ever had it) and to what extent. One is what they say, but people rarely
say what is pure truth.
<
Have they read their scripture? It is completely impossible to take it as a
story about origins of our universe, galaxy, sun and planets, earth, life,
microbes and rainbow after rain. Most are not mentioned or like brief
cultural reference to more likely some fairy tale that we have forgotten.
About like Genesis 6:4 ... is it about neanderthals? Quite a stretch to say
so.
<
So why some theists bash science for things that their scripture does not
address or arguably mentions dimly and briefly in half a sentence?
Maybe it is to avoid conversing what the scripture clearly repeatedly expresses
in depth? IMHO major such topic is destructive to our kind (and potentially
all life) wickedness, weakness and unreliability of our psyche. Our science
is doing notable efforts of being free of it. But these morons bash it instead
of helping. Sad.

[broger...@gmail.com]

I don't think it's particularly fruitful *here*. Of course it's fruitful for scientists to bounce around conflicting ideas among themselves. It's not fruitful for someone who lacks knowledge of the details to trawl around their publications for sentences advocating or rejecting one view or another.

> <
> > The thing that can get worked out here, which does seem to be what you are more interested in, is the issue of prior commitments to materialism.
> >
> > And yes, pretty much everyone doing work in the field looks for a materialistic explanation of OOL, because non-materialistic, supernatural accounts are inherently untestable. That does not mean non-materialistic, supernatural accounts might not be correct, only that, if they are correct, there's no way to know.
> <
> That is not entirely true as plenty of research and experiments are (and have
> been done for ages) about various alleged aspects of supernatural. Positive
> results are disappointingly lacking or even more disappointingly shown to
> be fake so there is nothing to publish and bad reputation of fraud. Rather rare
> organization wants the fame of fools who funded experiments that involved
> demon summoning or such. So it can be requirement from funding party that
> the explanations that are tested have to be naturalistic.

I was speaking about OoL research. As far as I know there are not a lot of supernatural hypotheses about OoL being experimentally tested.

> <
> > You also seem to take it as a given that finding a naturalistic explanation for the OoL would be a strike against God, so to speak. But why? If God created a world whose natural laws allow the naturalistic origin of life wouldn't He/She/It get the credit anyway? And certainly, not finding a naturalistic explanation of OoL does not strengthen the case for God's existence, it's just evidence of the limitations of what we can or have figured out, and there's lots of stuff other than the OoL that we've failed to figure out. Our ignorance is evidence of our ignorance, not of God.
> <
> That is nonsense I've never understood. God wants us to be ignorant and
> mislead by various greedy tele-evangelists? What is the purpose of that?
> <
> > And in practical terms, I really don't think anybody much loses their faith because they think life could get started without a divine poof. Dawkins may have said that Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist but
> >
> > 1. I think he's wrong about that, there were intellectually fulfilled atheists long before Darwin and
> >
> > 2. People I know who've lost their faith have by an large lost it because of distaste at the behavior of faith leaders or over questions of theodicy, not because of the RNA world.
> >
> > 3. I don't know a lot of folks who were YEC and lost faith - I suppose it's possible that reaction to the manifestly silly bits of YECism caused them to lose faith, but I still think it's a less common reason than theodicy or bad behavior on the part of faith leaders.
> <
> It is impossible to figure who lost or gained faith for what reason (if they
> ever had it) and to what extent. One is what they say, but people rarely
> say what is pure truth.

Yes, people may not tell the whole truth or they may not even know the truth about their own motivations, but if you don't start by giving them the benefit of the doubt, you might as well give up talking with them.

> <
> Have they read their scripture? It is completely impossible to take it as a
> story about origins of our universe, galaxy, sun and planets, earth, life,
> microbes and rainbow after rain. Most are not mentioned or like brief
> cultural reference to more likely some fairy tale that we have forgotten.
> About like Genesis 6:4 ... is it about neanderthals? Quite a stretch to say
> so.

Huh? Sure I've read "their" scripture. There are reasonable and unreasonable ways to read it and react to it. Perhaps I seem inadequately hostile to it to you.

> <
> So why some theists bash science for things that their scripture does not
> address or arguably mentions dimly and briefly in half a sentence?
> Maybe it is to avoid conversing what the scripture clearly repeatedly expresses
> in depth? IMHO major such topic is destructive to our kind (and potentially
> all life) wickedness, weakness and unreliability of our psyche. Our science
> is doing notable efforts of being free of it. But these morons bash it instead
> of helping. Sad.

I am an atheist but I don't have the same desire to bash theists as you seem to. In any case, this has diverged a long way from OoL.

[Mark Isaak]

On 1/29/22 12:30 AM, MarkE wrote:
> On Saturday, January 29, 2022 at 4:50:37 AM UTC+9:30, jillery wrote:
>> On Thu, 27 Jan 2022 21:22:00 -0800 (PST), MarkE
>> wrote:

>> [...]

>>> But regardless, take the statement as a hypothetical so we can reach a conclusion here: "Well, we're here now so there must have been a [materialistic] way."
>>>
>>> Would you agree that this would be a demonstration of an _a priori_ position?
>> Since you insist, *IF* some OOL authority made an irrelevant point
>> about "materialistic" as you suggest, then yes, that would be an a
>> priori position. It would be equivalent to a DA saying "we know
>> people die, so that must mean people are murdered". But unless you
>> can show where some OOL authority said that, your hypothetical is a
>> baseless allusion.
>
> Thank you. I'm intrigued at your reluctance to concede this, even as a hypothetical. Look, you're not giving away the farm. It's a common position I think, on the basis that, as I said, I come across statements to this effect from time to time in the literature. And serendipitously, I came across another example last night as I was following up on something else:
>
> "Here is the fundamental problem. There is only one actual fact known about the origin of life (OOL). It happened. We do not know where, when, or how."
>
> William Bains (PhD with expertise in astrobiology) is implying that, despite the unknown "where, when, or how" of OOL, there must be a naturalistic explanation because, well, "it happened." No big deal. This is a widely held _a priori_ view, which is why the author states it without qualm or qualification. It's something of a given. (Great article btw; well worth a read.)

From your quote, one may plainly see that Bains is *not* implying that
an explanation must be naturalistic. Reflect on the fact that "it
happened" is the position expressed in very nearly all mythic and
religious views of life. (The only exception being some Jains, who
propose that life has always existed throughout an infinite past.)
Clearly, the one making an a priori assumption is you.

[Öö Tiib]

It is fruitful here too as the more the creationists read it the more they hopefully
realize that strength of science is not being built on set of dogmas.

<
> > <
> > > The thing that can get worked out here, which does seem to be what you are more interested in, is the issue of prior commitments to materialism.
> > >
> > > And yes, pretty much everyone doing work in the field looks for a materialistic explanation of OOL, because non-materialistic, supernatural accounts are inherently untestable. That does not mean non-materialistic, supernatural accounts might not be correct, only that, if they are correct, there's no way to know.
> > <
> > That is not entirely true as plenty of research and experiments are (and have
> > been done for ages) about various alleged aspects of supernatural. Positive
> > results are disappointingly lacking or even more disappointingly shown to
> > be fake so there is nothing to publish and bad reputation of fraud. Rather rare
> > organization wants the fame of fools who funded experiments that involved
> > demon summoning or such. So it can be requirement from funding party that
> > the explanations that are tested have to be naturalistic.

> I was speaking about OoL research. As far as I know there are not a lot of supernatural hypotheses about OoL being experimentally tested.
<

That does not make those not knowable or beyond experimentation. Summon
a demon, force it to turn a stone into frog, banish demon, done. Supernatural
origin of piece of life shown.

<
> > <
> > > You also seem to take it as a given that finding a naturalistic explanation for the OoL would be a strike against God, so to speak. But why? If God created a world whose natural laws allow the naturalistic origin of life wouldn't He/She/It get the credit anyway? And certainly, not finding a naturalistic explanation of OoL does not strengthen the case for God's existence, it's just evidence of the limitations of what we can or have figured out, and there's lots of stuff other than the OoL that we've failed to figure out. Our ignorance is evidence of our ignorance, not of God.
> > <
> > That is nonsense I've never understood. God wants us to be ignorant and
> > mislead by various greedy tele-evangelists? What is the purpose of that?
> > <
> > > And in practical terms, I really don't think anybody much loses their faith because they think life could get started without a divine poof. Dawkins may have said that Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist but
> > >
> > > 1. I think he's wrong about that, there were intellectually fulfilled atheists long before Darwin and
> > >
> > > 2. People I know who've lost their faith have by an large lost it because of distaste at the behavior of faith leaders or over questions of theodicy, not because of the RNA world.
> > >
> > > 3. I don't know a lot of folks who were YEC and lost faith - I suppose it's possible that reaction to the manifestly silly bits of YECism caused them to lose faith, but I still think it's a less common reason than theodicy or bad behavior on the part of faith leaders.
> > <
> > It is impossible to figure who lost or gained faith for what reason (if they
> > ever had it) and to what extent. One is what they say, but people rarely
> > say what is pure truth.
> Yes, people may not tell the whole truth or they may not even know the truth about their own motivations, but if you don't start by giving them the benefit of the doubt, you might as well give up talking with them.
<

Indeed, for example people have lost way to give benefit of doubt to Nando
so no one replies to him.

> > <
> > Have they read their scripture? It is completely impossible to take it as a
> > story about origins of our universe, galaxy, sun and planets, earth, life,
> > microbes and rainbow after rain. Most are not mentioned or like brief
> > cultural reference to more likely some fairy tale that we have forgotten.
> > About like Genesis 6:4 ... is it about neanderthals? Quite a stretch to say
> > so.
> Huh? Sure I've read "their" scripture. There are reasonable and unreasonable ways to read it and react to it. Perhaps I seem inadequately hostile to it to you.
<

For me Bible is quite good book. Perhaps I read it in unreasonable way as
a collection of folklore. Existence of unicellular life wasn't addressed,
nothing to talk of origins of it. No wonder from my viewpoint as cells were
discovered 357 years ago. So how can any science contradict with it?

<
> > <
> > So why some theists bash science for things that their scripture does not
> > address or arguably mentions dimly and briefly in half a sentence?
> > Maybe it is to avoid conversing what the scripture clearly repeatedly expresses
> > in depth? IMHO major such topic is destructive to our kind (and potentially
> > all life) wickedness, weakness and unreliability of our psyche. Our science
> > is doing notable efforts of being free of it. But these morons bash it instead
> > of helping. Sad.
> I am an atheist but I don't have the same desire to bash theists as you seem to. In any case, this has diverged a long way from OoL.
<

For me it is always about trust. Note that it was about *some* theists and
their bashing of OOL research that contradicts with zero passages in their
scripture.

[MarkE]

On Saturday, January 29, 2022 at 11:25:37 PM UTC+9:30, jillery wrote:
> On Sat, 29 Jan 2022 00:30:30 -0800 (PST), MarkE

Okay. You conceded that in my paraphrased researcher statement, taken as a hypothetical, that the author assumes, in advance, that materialistic explanations alone are sufficient: "Well, we're here now so there must have been a [materialistic] way." My insertion of "materialistic" in square brackets is, by common convention, me making explicit my inference from the phrasing, "Well, we're here now so there must have been a way." You made no objection to this. The inference is reasonable. But now that I have located a demonstrably authoritative quote in essentially the same form, you protest that the author does not explicitly mention "materialism". Which is inconsistent.

The statement now in question is, "Here is the fundamental problem. There is only one actual fact known about the origin of life (OOL). It happened. We do not know where, when, or how."

I can think of only two ways this could be taken:

1. "Here is the fundamental problem. There is only one actual fact known about the origin of life (OOL). It happened. We do not know [the materialistic mechanisms of] where, when, or how."

2. "Here is the fundamental problem. There is only one actual fact known about the origin of life (OOL). It happened. We do not know [the materialistic mechanisms or supernatural intervention of] where, when, or how."

I took the author's intent to be the first one. How do you read this? Or, share your inference if you have another.

[MarkE]

Bains' primary criticism is not that "there are lots of competing ideas", some of which are wrong. His point is much more interesting: "almost all the OOL chemistry that I see is Toy Domain chemistry". He's saying, guys, it's nice that you are all playing around in the lab with experiments to support your hypotheses, but the test conditions are so contrived and controlled, and desired products so small and lost the overall soup that you're not proving anything":

"It is making single types of biochemicals in a controlled laboratory setting using pure chemicals that might, just might, have been present in trace amounts in a complex mixture of thousands of other chemicals at OOL, under conditions that might have existed and might have persisted long enough, and then stopping the reaction at exactly the right time to maximize the yield of what you want (See [44], especially Chapter 5). It neglects that many of the postulated starting materials are themselves unstable. It neglects that they will react with other chemicals present. It neglects that the intermediates will all react with each other, and with the products."

That's a very, very interesting problem.

>
> The thing that can get worked out here, which does seem to be what you are more interested in, is the issue of prior commitments to materialism.
>
> And yes, pretty much everyone doing work in the field looks for a materialistic explanation of OOL, because non-materialistic, supernatural accounts are inherently untestable. That does not mean non-materialistic, supernatural accounts might not be correct, only that, if they are correct, there's no way to know.
>
> You also seem to take it as a given that finding a naturalistic explanation for the OoL would be a strike against God, so to speak. But why? If God created a world whose natural laws allow the naturalistic origin of life wouldn't He/She/It get the credit anyway? And certainly, not finding a naturalistic explanation of OoL does not strengthen the case for God's existence, it's just evidence of the limitations of what we can or have figured out, and there's lots of stuff other than the OoL that we've failed to figure out. Our ignorance is evidence of our ignorance, not of God.
>
> And in practical terms, I really don't think anybody much loses their faith because they think life could get started without a divine poof. Dawkins may have said that Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist but
>
> 1. I think he's wrong about that, there were intellectually fulfilled atheists long before Darwin and
>
> 2. People I know who've lost their faith have by an large lost it because of distaste at the behavior of faith leaders or over questions of theodicy, not because of the RNA world.
>
> 3. I don't know a lot of folks who were YEC and lost faith - I suppose it's possible that reaction to the manifestly silly bits of YECism caused them to lose faith, but I still think it's a less common reason than theodicy or bad behavior on the part of faith leaders.

As we've discussed here before, I'm not concerned that "naturalistic explanation for the OoL would be a strike against God". Rather, I'm saying that ongoing intractability of this problem is evidence for a designer.

[jillery]

To the contrary, that is the very point to which I objected. You
continue to misrepresent what I wrote.


> The inference is reasonable.


Your inference, that your hypothetical implies materialism is
presumed, is utterly baseless.

>But now that I have located a demonstrably authoritative quote in essentially the same form,

Since it lacks the very word you explicitly added, your cited quote is
an entirely different form from your hypothetical. You continue to
misrepresent the facts.

>you protest that the author does not explicitly mention "materialism". Which is inconsistent.

You explicitly embed [materialistic] in you hypothetical.
You quote someone who doesn't even mention the word.
How is that consistent?
How is my protest inconsistent?

>The statement now in question is, "Here is the fundamental problem. There is only one actual fact known about the origin of life (OOL). It happened. We do not know where, when, or how."
>
>I can think of only two ways this could be taken:
>
>1. "Here is the fundamental problem. There is only one actual fact known about the origin of life (OOL). It happened. We do not know [the materialistic mechanisms of] where, when, or how."
>
>2. "Here is the fundamental problem. There is only one actual fact known about the origin of life (OOL). It happened. We do not know [the materialistic mechanisms or supernatural intervention of] where, when, or how."
>
>I took the author's intent to be the first one. How do you read this? Or, share your inference if you have another.

Since you asked, I infer you lack a commitment to clarity. You're
welcome.

>> >> So I answered your questions twice. That's two more times than you
>> >> have answered my questions.
>> >> >> If you really want to clarify your POV, you really, really need to
>> >> >> answer the questions I asked you. To refresh your convenient amnesia:
>> >> >> *********************************************
>> >> >> Contrast the above with assuming ID as applied to OOL. To what
>> >> >> scientifically falsifiable tests does it lead? What constraints does
>> >> >> assuming an unknown and unknowable Designer provide? And how could
>> >> >> they be tested scientifically? To the best of my knowledge, I know of
>> >> >> none, and I know of no one who knows of any. Do you
>> >> >> ********************************************
>> >> And *still* no response to my questions. I question your commitment
>> >> to clarity.

And *still* no response to my questions. Why should I bother
answering your questions, especially when you misrepresent my answers?

[jillery]

On Sat, 29 Jan 2022 22:29:47 -0800 (PST), MarkE
<mark.w.e...@gmail.com> wrote:

>As we've discussed here before, I'm not concerned that "naturalistic explanation for the OoL would be a strike against God". Rather, I'm saying that ongoing intractability of this problem is evidence for a designer.

How do you infer design from intractability?

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

Why indeed? Surely it is obvious by now that MarkE isn't interested in
discussing things in an honest way, preferring to rely on made-up
quotations and misrepresentations of what you and others have said.


--
Athel -- French and British, living mainly in England until 1987.

[MarkE]

On Sunday, January 30, 2022 at 7:50:37 PM UTC+9:30, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
> On 2022-01-30 09:26:54 +0000, jillery said:
>
> > On Sat, 29 Jan 2022 21:53:50 -0800 (PST), MarkE

I really am interested in discussing things in an honest way. I've provided a reference to this quote (very good article btw):

"Here is the fundamental problem. There is only one actual fact known about the origin of life (OOL). It happened. We do not know where, when, or how."

Would you read it as 1, 2 or 3?

1. "Here is the fundamental problem. There is only one actual fact known about the origin of life (OOL). It happened. We do not know [the materialistic mechanisms of] where, when, or how."

2. "Here is the fundamental problem. There is only one actual fact known about the origin of life (OOL). It happened. We do not know [the materialistic mechanisms or supernatural intervention of] where, when, or how."

3. Other wording

[MarkE]

On Sunday, January 30, 2022 at 7:00:37 PM UTC+9:30, jillery wrote:
> On Sat, 29 Jan 2022 21:53:50 -0800 (PST), MarkE

My apology if I misrepresented you, not my intention.

Before I address your questions, could we clear up the question of interpretation of this quote: "Here is the fundamental problem. There is only one actual fact known about the origin of life (OOL). It happened. We do not know where, when, or how."

Would you read this as 1, 2 or 3?

1. "Here is the fundamental problem. There is only one actual fact known about the origin of life (OOL). It happened. We do not know [the materialistic mechanisms of] where, when, or how."

2. "Here is the fundamental problem. There is only one actual fact known about the origin of life (OOL). It happened. We do not know [the materialistic mechanisms or supernatural intervention of] where, when, or how."

3. Other wording

[broger...@gmail.com]

.........

> As we've discussed here before, I'm not concerned that "naturalistic explanation for the OoL would be a strike against God". Rather, I'm saying that ongoing intractability of this problem is evidence for a designer.

And that is where you show your own a priori assumptions. Why on earth would our failure to solve a problem be evidence one way or the other about the existence of God? Why do you reject the obvious possibility that we find the problem intractable because it's too hard for us to figure out?

[MarkE]

My statement "...is evidence for a designer" was not intended to imply rejection of the possibility of "too hard for us to figure out". Rather, we then have to choose between unsolvable and a designer.

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

The only difference between 1 and 2 concerns the bits you made up that
are not part of the original. Why should I or anyone else be interested
in these?

[broger...@gmail.com]

On Sunday, January 30, 2022 at 1:30:37 AM UTC-5, MarkE wrote:
<out with the old>
...............

> As we've discussed here before, I'm not concerned that "naturalistic explanation for the OoL would be a strike against God". Rather, I'm saying that ongoing intractability of this problem is evidence for a designer.

I think I've told you before that the two points are equivalent. If failure to find a naturalistic explanation for the OoL is evidence for God, then finding such an explanation would be evidence against God. If finding a naturalistic explanation would NOT be evidence AGAINST God, then the failure to find one cannot be evidence FOR God.

That's just the way evidence works.

I personally disagree with the claim, however it is phrased - I don't think the finding or non-finding a naturalistic explanation of OoL has any bearing at all on the existence of God.

PS - you can substitute "Designer" for God if you like. Clearly, though, the "designer" would have to be supernatural - if it were natural all you'd be doing would be pushing back the question to the naturalistic origin of the natural designer.


<out with the old>

[broger...@gmail.com]

On Sunday, January 30, 2022 at 6:40:36 AM UTC-5, MarkE wrote:
<snip>

> > And that is where you show your own a priori assumptions. Why on earth would our failure to solve a problem be evidence one way or the other about the existence of God? Why do you reject the obvious possibility that we find the problem intractable because it's too hard for us to figure out?
> My statement "...is evidence for a designer" was not intended to imply rejection of the possibility of "too hard for us to figure out". Rather, we then have to choose between unsolvable and a designer.

I still think that limits the choices unnecessarily. The simplest statement is simply "we don't know yet" We don't know the mechanism for OoL, and we also don't know whether the problem is ultimately unsolvable or not, although there will almost certainly be a level of historical detail about exactly what, where, and when it happened that will be impossible to figure out.

<snip>

[MarkE]

Beam me up, Scotty.

[MarkE]

If the problem is generally agreed to be increasingly intractable as knowledge advances, the choice between "we don't know yet" and a designer increasing becomes a personal preference in metaphysics (e.g. materialist or theist).

[broger...@gmail.com]

It's always fine and honest to say "We don't know." If learning more about the problem eventually makes it obvious that it will likely exceed our technical ability to figure it out in the foreseeable future, then I'd say that the correct response is "Damn, we may never figure this out."

You have yet to make your case as to why the problem's intractability would be evidence for God. There is a hidden assumption in your argument that all problems either (1) are soluble by human intelligence in a reasonable amount of time or (2) require a supernatural explanation. What makes you think that? Why would it be the case that humans have the capacity to solve every possible scientific problem? Why would failure to solve such a problem not simply be evidence of human limitations?

I don't think there's a need to choose. The question of whether God exists is completely independent of whether a naturalistic explanation of OoL is found. Finding one would NOT be evidence against God, so not finding one cannot be evidence for God.

[MarkE]

We've discussed this at length previously. For now, I'll leave it at an agreement to disagree.

[jillery]

Your comment above is a false dichotomy typical of those who have an a
priori commitment to ID. "we don't know yet" is a legitimate claim of
ignorance. Neither ignorance nor intractability in any way
demonstrate design. That's just another one of your made-up facts.

[Mark Isaak]

On 1/29/22 10:29 PM, MarkE wrote:
>
> [...] Rather, I'm saying that ongoing intractability of this problem is evidence for a designer.

How does that follow?

Is it true of all intractable problems (for example, the causes of
autism and schizophrenia)?

Does the existence of solved problem therefore qualify as evidence
*against* a designer? Why or why not?

[Bob Casanova]

On Sun, 30 Jan 2022 03:49:32 -0800 (PST), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by "broger...@gmail.com"
<broger...@gmail.com>:

>On Sunday, January 30, 2022 at 1:30:37 AM UTC-5, MarkE wrote:
><out with the old>
>...............
>> As we've discussed here before, I'm not concerned that "naturalistic explanation for the OoL would be a strike against God". Rather, I'm saying that ongoing intractability of this problem is evidence for a designer.
>
>I think I've told you before that the two points are equivalent. If failure to find a naturalistic explanation for the OoL is evidence for God, then finding such an explanation would be evidence against God. If finding a naturalistic explanation would NOT be evidence AGAINST God, then the failure to find one cannot be evidence FOR God.
>
>That's just the way evidence works.
>

Yep.

>
>I personally disagree with the claim, however it is phrased - I don't think the finding or non-finding a naturalistic explanation of OoL has any bearing at all on the existence of God.
>

Good luck getting that repeatedly-made point accepted, by
*either* side.

>
>PS - you can substitute "Designer" for God if you like. Clearly, though, the "designer" would have to be supernatural - if it were natural all you'd be doing would be pushing back the question to the naturalistic origin of the natural designer.
>
>
><out with the old>

--

Bob C.

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science,
the one that heralds new discoveries, is not
'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'"

- Isaac Asimov

[broger...@gmail.com]

That's fine. I'd say though, that it's kind of pointless to start threads designed to show that the OoL question is definitively intractable, until you've successfully shown that its intractability, if you could demonstrate it, would make a difference to the likelihood of a designer.

[jillery]

On Sun, 30 Jan 2022 09:19:26 -0700, Bob Casanova <nos...@buzz.off>
wrote:

>On Sun, 30 Jan 2022 03:49:32 -0800 (PST), the following
>appeared in talk.origins, posted by "broger...@gmail.com"
><broger...@gmail.com>:
>
>>On Sunday, January 30, 2022 at 1:30:37 AM UTC-5, MarkE wrote:
>><out with the old>
>>...............
>>> As we've discussed here before, I'm not concerned that "naturalistic explanation for the OoL would be a strike against God". Rather, I'm saying that ongoing intractability of this problem is evidence for a designer.
>>
>>I think I've told you before that the two points are equivalent. If failure to find a naturalistic explanation for the OoL is evidence for God, then finding such an explanation would be evidence against God. If finding a naturalistic explanation would NOT be evidence AGAINST God, then the failure to find one cannot be evidence FOR God.
>>
>>That's just the way evidence works.
>>
>Yep.
>>
>>I personally disagree with the claim, however it is phrased - I don't think the finding or non-finding a naturalistic explanation of OoL has any bearing at all on the existence of God.
>>
>Good luck getting that repeatedly-made point accepted, by
>*either* side.

To the best of my recollection, I know of no authoritative source who
claims a naturalistic explanation of OOL is evidence against God. If
my recollection is correct, that means the "point" has only one side,
that OOL is evidence for God, and a baselessly asserted strawman
argument, both raised by cdesign proponentsists.

>>PS - you can substitute "Designer" for God if you like. Clearly, though, the "designer" would have to be supernatural - if it were natural all you'd be doing would be pushing back the question to the naturalistic origin of the natural designer.
>>
>>
>><out with the old>

--

[jillery]

There's a old joke, perhaps older than you, and so you might have
heard it before. A comely lady walks into a rough bar and starts
chatting up the patrons.

A particularly drunk patron asks the lady, "If I gave you a million
dollars, would you sleep with me?"

The lady replies, "I suppose I would."

The patron then asks, If I gave you ten dollars, would you sleep with
me?"

Insulted, the lady retorts, "Of course not. What kind of lady do you
think I am?"

The patron quips. "You already established what you are. I'm just
negotiating the price."

By rough analogy, MarkE has already established what he is. I'm just
finding out how far he will whore himself to serve a higher purpose.

[Burkhard]

MarkE wrote:

> On Friday, January 28, 2022 at 7:15:36 PM UTC+9:30, Burkhard wrote:
>> MarkE wrote:

>>> On Friday, January 28, 2022 at 2:00:36 PM UTC+9:30, oot...@hot.ee wrote:
>>>> On Thursday, 27 January 2022 at 15:20:36 UTC+2, MarkE wrote:
>>>>> On Thursday, January 27, 2022 at 12:05:36 AM UTC+9:30, oot...@hot.ee wrote:
>>>>>> On Wednesday, 26 January 2022 at 14:55:36 UTC+2, MarkE wrote:
>>>>>>> On Wednesday, January 26, 2022 at 5:05:36 PM UTC+9:30, oot...@hot.ee wrote:

>>>>>>>> On Wednesday, 26 January 2022 at 06:55:35 UTC+2, MarkE wrote:
>>>>>>>>> Would anyone like to check this for me? It’s an attempt to establish some clarification and agreement on a starting point for debate. It’s my deduction/summary of the current leading Origin of Life hypotheses. Thanks in advance.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> One paper identifies these two milestones: “The evolution of complex cellular life involved two major transitions: the encapsulation of self-replicating genetic entities into cellular units and the aggregation of individual genes into a collectively replicating genome.” [1]
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> I would include a third: “The origin of the translation system is, arguably, the central and the hardest problem in the study of the origin of life, and one of the hardest in all evolutionary biology. The problem has a clear catch-22 aspect: high translation fidelity hardly can be achieved without a complex, highly evolved set of RNAs and proteins but an elaborate protein machinery could not evolve without an accurate translation system.” [2]
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> At what point is encapsulation needed? There are multiple interrelated factors contributing to this, but an estimate could be based on consideration of Eigen’s Paradox: “Without error correction enzymes, the maximum size of a replicating molecule is about 100 base pairs. For a replicating molecule to encode error correction enzymes, it must be substantially larger than 100 bases.” [3]. It is difficult to imagine a non-encapsulated genetic ensemble with error-correction enzymes (although some hypercycle hypotheses may leave room for this). In any case, it seems reasonable to assume that compartmentalisation was needed at around 100 polymer units (or multiples of this if a family of chemically co-evolved polymers were present at the transition point). I'll conservatively assume error-correction was needed by 1000 units.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> The smallest genome for a viable free-living organism is currently known to be about 500 genes and 500,000 base pairs. A current estimate for the average protein length is around 300 residues for prokaryotes. LUCA was presumably smaller; an order of magnitude smaller is a cell with 50 genes and 50,000 nucleotides.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> I’ll take a stab and propose the following transitions/phases:
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Phase 1 - MOLECULAR REPLICATION - 0-100 polymer units; estimated limit for sustainable replication of naked polymer(s).
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Phase 2 - PROTOCELL ENCAPSULATION - 100-1000 polymer units; basic protocell membrane and contents replication.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Phase 3 - ERROR-CORRECTION - 1000+ genome; error-correction enzymes permit polymer growth beyond 1000 units.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Phase 4 - GENOME AGGREGATION - 1000+ genome; aggregation of individual genes into a collectively replicating genome.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Phase 5 - METABOLISM - 5000+ genome; metabolic capacity, e.g. self-synthesis of activated nucleotides, amino acids, etc.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Phase 6 - TRANSLATION SYSTEM - 5000+ genome; RNA/DNA to protein translation machinery; overlapping with previous phase.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Phase 7 - LUCA - 50,000+ genome; arrival of LUCA.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> ----------
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> [1] A PDE Model for Protocell Evolution and the Origin of Chromosomes via Multilevel Selection (2021)
>>>>>>>>> https://arxiv.org/pdf/2109.09357.pdf
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> [2] On the origin of the translation system and the genetic code in the RNA world by means of natural selection, exaptation, and subfunctionalization (2007)
>>>>>>>>> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1894784/
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> [3] Error Threshold - Eigen's Paradox
>>>>>>>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error_threshold_(evolution)

>>>>>>>> There are plenty of open questions that it is quite likely impossible to figure in newsgroup discussion.
>>>>>>>> Your assumptions about orders of magnitude of needed complexities might be correct. "RNA world"
>>>>>>>> is just a word; no real representatives of that world have been synthesized. The steps you envision
>>>>>>>> may be such or may be some others.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Science is not set of dogmas, it is instrument of producing knowledge with observations and experiments.
>>>>>>>> What experiments and or observations you propose? One hypothesis is that hydrothermal vents played a role.
>>>>>>>> Conditions in early earth hydrothermal vents are expensive to simulate in laboratory. Virgin (in sense without
>>>>>>>> life) vents might be present at Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's moon Enceladus. Or there might be life.
>>>>>>>> It is also expensive to travel there and to investigate. So what you propose?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I'll move to raising issues if we can establish some tentative starting points, as proposed.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Are there any particular concerns you have with analysis and the phases I've defined?
>>>>>> What felt good: Basically it had to start from simple molecules (as rather
>>>>>> complex systems do not arrange out of blue), that is correct and LUCA
>>>>>> was quite sophisticated (considering major similarities found in all life)
>>>>>> that is also correct.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> What felt questionable: The steps between felt arbitrary as felt their order
>>>>>> and count. Everything listed (and notable goal-posts not listed) had to
>>>>>> start from simple. All are also subjects of gradual change from generation
>>>>>> to generation to this day so clear steps felt odd.
>>>>>
>>>>> Yes, the phases I've defined are provisional starting point for analysis.
>>>>> I've given some basic initial justification for them, but this would certainly
>>>>> need much more work. And other variations and overlapping of phases
>>>>> are also real possibilities.
>>>> That is the issue. There is very large set of possibilities of events over period
>>>> of half billions years on territory with size of our planet. We can not achieve
>>>> any clarity in it with just a discussion. Need army of scientists and who
>>>> will pay them?
>>>>>> Major concern is: How to produce any experiments and observations to
>>>>>> verify whatever of it? By palaeontology we see pieces of biogenic graphite
>>>>>> and then we see oxygen absorbed by environment half billion years later.
>>>>>> That does not help much.
>>>> I mean Eoarchean era 4000 mya until 3500 mya where we see evidence of
>>>> something like cyanobacteria. What happened there? Period is about as
>>>> long as from worm-like multicellular creatures of Cambrian 500 mya to
>>>> current days.
>>>> Was it same designer who orchestrated those half billions years ...
>>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devonian#/media/File:Fish_evolution.png
>>>> ... and getting photosynthesis reliably going also with half billions years?
>>>> Ron O. is correct that you avoid studying your designer and that is not
>>>> fault of our science or gaps of knowledge in it. Where is your alternative
>>>> story? What you suppose that actually happened?
>>>
>>> A key point here: it is entirely valid to attempt to disprove a theory without offering an alternative.
>>>
>>> Indeed, science often progresses when someone finds empirical evidence which contradicts a prevailing theory. They simply report the result, with no obligation to provide a better theory at the same time. It's this counter-evidence that provokes others in the pursuit of knowledge.
>>>
>>> Would you agree?
>>>
>> It is valid to find counter evidence against a theory without having an
>> alternative - just expect as a reaction: "that's interesting, well
>> maybe it will sort itself out later". That's especially the case for
>> theories that are well confirmed and integrated with other well
>> confirmed theories we have.
>
> This is not the case for OOL. There is no theory of OOL, only conjecture. Elder statesman of OOL David Deamer: "Twain's insight strikes close to home when it comes to the origin of life: few facts and lots of conjecture."

You've got a bit of a problem here. You try to argue at the same time
that the theory is not developed enough for the normal comparative
testing, and at the same time that the various hypothesis contradict
other things we know. It can only be one or the other.

I'd say the first. That is what testing means, it is always theory
against theory. That is the experiments that we carry out to test these
hypothesis all assume that some other "chemical, physical, historical
etc) theory is true, or better supported. This then creates local
inconsistencies, that can always be remedied in different ways - that is
why you need a second theory as comperator that does not have this
anomaly, and is also not in conflict with everything else we know etc


>
> Genome first, metabolism first, hybrid, etc? Encapsulation sooner or later? Hydrothermal vents, wetting/drying, saltwater, freshwater, panspermia...?

Atun, Allah, Nanabazho, Kamuy, Ranginui, Brahma, Pangu, Tagaloa.......
from clay, water, blood, bones....in an oven, as a seed, in an egg....

The supernatural explanation fares by htis standards considerably worse,
wouldn't you say?

>
>> Scientific progress typically happens when you have both, the old
>> theory has accumulated lots and lots of these anomalies, and the new
>> theory explains all the data the old theory explained, and either a) has
>> fewer of its anomalies and/or b) explains additional data the original
>> theory could not.
>

[Burkhard]

The Cashel Man, possibly the oldest mummified body we every found
(2000Bc) was possibly murdered. Despite considerable scientific
interest, we don;t know how exactly he died, nor who murdered him. The
latter in particular is likely to remain a mystery. Do you think that
means this failure is evidence to identify the human who killed him that
once upon a time, vengeful supernatural entities roamed the land killing
folks? If not why now?

[broger...@gmail.com]

I see your point, but I'm not sure it's that strong. Small, detailed questions like that, analogous to questions we can easily solve don't seem to me to create a big enough gap for an interesting God-of-the-Gaps to be stuffed into. For that, you really need a scientific question that is deep, interesting, and not easily analogous to some simple problem that has a clear solution (like who murdered somebody).

The gaps you can fit an interesting God into are big ones like "where did the earth come from?" (oops, that one's closed now), or "where did human beings come from?" (oops again) or "how did life get started" or "how did consciousness get started" or "how did the Big Bang get started?" I'm not sure whether "how can you reconcile general relativity and quantum mechanics" works well, even though it's been a poser since before the Miller-Urey experiment, maybe because it seems too obscure to most God-of-the-gaps folks.

I think we both like Bonhoffer's quote about not pushing God out to the limits of the known, but rather finding Him in the things that are well understood. God-of-the-gaps does not bother my current atheist self, but it sort of bugs my formerly Christian self since it seems to me to be an awful theology.

[Bob Casanova]

On Sun, 30 Jan 2022 11:50:46 -0500, the following appeared
in talk.origins, posted by jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>:

>On Sun, 30 Jan 2022 09:19:26 -0700, Bob Casanova <nos...@buzz.off>
>wrote:
>
>>On Sun, 30 Jan 2022 03:49:32 -0800 (PST), the following
>>appeared in talk.origins, posted by "broger...@gmail.com"
>><broger...@gmail.com>:
>>
>>>On Sunday, January 30, 2022 at 1:30:37 AM UTC-5, MarkE wrote:
>>><out with the old>
>>>...............
>>>> As we've discussed here before, I'm not concerned that "naturalistic explanation for the OoL would be a strike against God". Rather, I'm saying that ongoing intractability of this problem is evidence for a designer.
>>>
>>>I think I've told you before that the two points are equivalent. If failure to find a naturalistic explanation for the OoL is evidence for God, then finding such an explanation would be evidence against God. If finding a naturalistic explanation would NOT be evidence AGAINST God, then the failure to find one cannot be evidence FOR God.
>>>
>>>That's just the way evidence works.
>>>
>>Yep.
>>>
>>>I personally disagree with the claim, however it is phrased - I don't think the finding or non-finding a naturalistic explanation of OoL has any bearing at all on the existence of God.
>>>
>>Good luck getting that repeatedly-made point accepted, by
>>*either* side.
>
>To the best of my recollection, I know of no authoritative source who
>claims a naturalistic explanation of OOL is evidence against God.
>

Perhaps not, but since I wasn't referring to only
authoritative sources, and since I have seen that argument
made here by (presumably non-authoritative) sources on the
"naturalism side" (sorry, no cites, but it's happened fairly
frequently here), my point stands - there are those on both
sides who seem unwilling to accept that evidence (or its
lack) of a naturalistic origin of life has nothing to do
with the existence or nonexistence of God.

>
> If
>my recollection is correct, that means the "point" has only one side,
>that OOL is evidence for God, and a baselessly asserted strawman
>argument, both raised by cdesign proponentsists.
>
>
>>>PS - you can substitute "Designer" for God if you like. Clearly, though, the "designer" would have to be supernatural - if it were natural all you'd be doing would be pushing back the question to the naturalistic origin of the natural designer.
>>>
>>>
>>><out with the old>
--

[Burkhard]

broger...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Sunday, January 30, 2022 at 12:40:37 PM UTC-5, Burkhard wrote:
>> MarkE wrote:
>>> On Sunday, January 30, 2022 at 9:25:36 PM UTC+9:30, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>> On Sunday, January 30, 2022 at 6:40:36 AM UTC-5, MarkE wrote:
>>>> <snip>
>>>>>> And that is where you show your own a priori assumptions. Why on earth would our failure to solve a problem be evidence one way or the other about the existence of God? Why do you reject the obvious possibility that we find the problem intractable because it's too hard for us to figure out?
>>>>> My statement "...is evidence for a designer" was not intended to imply rejection of the possibility of "too hard for us to figure out". Rather, we then have to choose between unsolvable and a designer.
>>>> I still think that limits the choices unnecessarily. The simplest statement is simply "we don't know yet" We don't know the mechanism for OoL, and we also don't know whether the problem is ultimately unsolvable or not, although there will almost certainly be a level of historical detail about exactly what, where, and when it happened that will be impossible to figure out.
>>>>
>>>
>>> If the problem is generally agreed to be increasingly intractable as knowledge advances, the choice between "we don't know yet" and a designer increasing becomes a personal preference in metaphysics (e.g. materialist or theist).
>>>
>> The Cashel Man, possibly the oldest mummified body we every found
>> (2000Bc) was possibly murdered. Despite considerable scientific
>> interest, we don;t know how exactly he died, nor who murdered him. The
>> latter in particular is likely to remain a mystery. Do you think that
>> means this failure is evidence to identify the human who killed him that
>> once upon a time, vengeful supernatural entities roamed the land killing
>> folks? If not why now?
>
> I see your point, but I'm not sure it's that strong. Small, detailed questions like that, analogous to questions we can easily solve don't seem to me to create a big enough gap for an interesting God-of-the-Gaps to be stuffed into. For that, you really need a scientific question that is deep, interesting, and not easily analogous to some simple problem that has a clear solution (like who murdered somebody).

I take your point, but would argue in support of my example:

OOL, as understood in the discussion here, is about a single , past
event, and this makes it more similar to a historical murder
investigation than a difficulty with scientific theories of the type you
describe below. I could have chosen the Jack the Ripper murders to make
the same point maybe even more radically: even with events in living
memory, from a time where we have copious records etc, we often won't be
able to find out exactly what happened. Entire empires disappeared
leaving nary a trace - the Huns are be a great example, we know they
existed, and once controlled much of Europe, but we only have 5 words in
their language (each of them contested) and know next to nothing about
who they were, their culture etc etc . The further we go back in the
past, the more unlikely it becomes we will ever know what happened then,
so for me what OOL has been able to establish about event billions of
years ago is already massively remarkable and much more than one should
have expected at the beginning of that journey.

Second, yes, asking for a specific "who did it" may seem unfair, but
then that is exactly the answer that MarkEs type of supernatural
explanation promises for OOL - within Christianity named AND address,
just remember your Lord's prayer (and I appreciate greatly that he
actually sticks to his guns and says he is talking about a supernatural
agent, not like the mealy mouthed IDlers

Third, yes, it is an arbitrarily chosen and very precise level of
detail, but that's the game IDlers play after all all the time: whenever
a new result in OOL research comes up, a more detailed, or differently
detailed answer gets demanded, so I thought fair's fair

>
> The gaps you can fit an interesting God into are big ones like "where did the earth come from?" (oops, that one's closed now), or "where did human beings come from?" (oops again) or "how did life get started" or "how did consciousness get started" or "how did the Big Bang get started?" I'm not sure whether "how can you reconcile general relativity and quantum mechanics" works well, even though it's been a poser since before the Miller-Urey experiment, maybe because it seems too obscure to most God-of-the-gaps folks.
>
> I think we both like Bonhoffer's quote about not pushing God out to the limits of the known, but rather finding Him in the things that are well understood. God-of-the-gaps does not bother my current atheist self, but it sort of bugs my formerly Christian self since it seems to me to be an awful theology.

Oh yes. That and Barth's annoyance with creationists who de-centre Christ
>

[broger...@gmail.com]

I would say that the difference is we know, in general, how murders are committed, we know, in general, how empires rise and fall, but we don't know how living things originate. So the ignorance of how a specific murder occurred or of the specific characteristics of a given empire is a different sort of ignorance than ignorance of how life formed. If we get to the point that we know of several clear pathways for the origin of life and if Mark then tried to complain that we didn't know which one was the actual pathway that happened on earth, then I'd think it fair to bring out the examples you bring out above.

[jillery]

On Sun, 30 Jan 2022 11:49:47 -0700, Bob Casanova <nos...@buzz.off>

It's almost certain somebody somewhere mindlessly claimed that a
naturalistic explanation of OOL is evidence against God, but that
would only show their mindlessness, and there's no accounting for
that.

OTOH if somebody did so recently enough for you to claim it as fact in
this thread, or if enough posters "here" did so as often as you
allude, then you should have no problem citing at least one example.
Instead you offer only a lame apology. It's almost certain your
baseless allusion is as mindless as those alleged claims.

>> If
>>my recollection is correct, that means the "point" has only one side,
>>that OOL is evidence for God, and a baselessly asserted strawman
>>argument, both raised by cdesign proponentsists.
>>
>>
>>>>PS - you can substitute "Designer" for God if you like. Clearly, though, the "designer" would have to be supernatural - if it were natural all you'd be doing would be pushing back the question to the naturalistic origin of the natural designer.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>><out with the old>

--

[jillery]

On Sun, 30 Jan 2022 10:30:27 -0800 (PST), "broger...@gmail.com"

I acknowledge big questions are easier to fit GOTG claims, but any
question will do as long as ignorance is involved. And even that
ignorance can be willful, ex. IC, CSI, and devolution. That's why
GOTG claims are so appealing to so many; just baselessly assert them,
like most made-up facts.

[Bob Casanova]

On Sun, 30 Jan 2022 20:54:42 -0500, the following appeared

Jillery in the usual mode; no surprise. Apparently something
can only be cited as a recollection ("I have seen") if it
was sufficiently recent (which is a bit vague) to pass the
"jillery sniff test". And no, I have no interest in
searching through Gurgle Gropes just to satisfy you; live
with the disappointment.

>
>>> If
>>>my recollection is correct, that means the "point" has only one side,
>>>that OOL is evidence for God, and a baselessly asserted strawman
>>>argument, both raised by cdesign proponentsists.
>>>
>>>
>>>>>PS - you can substitute "Designer" for God if you like. Clearly, though, the "designer" would have to be supernatural - if it were natural all you'd be doing would be pushing back the question to the naturalistic origin of the natural designer.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>><out with the old>
--

[MarkE]

Harsh. And untrue as far as I'm aware. What makes you say that?

[MarkE]

My criticism is primarily levelled at the lack of progress in this field over many decades, and the misrepresentation of this reality.

At least one authoritative OOL advocate agrees with me: https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/RwhAxtqls4A

>
> >
> > Genome first, metabolism first, hybrid, etc? Encapsulation sooner or later? Hydrothermal vents, wetting/drying, saltwater, freshwater, panspermia...?
>
> Atun, Allah, Nanabazho, Kamuy, Ranginui, Brahma, Pangu, Tagaloa.......
> from clay, water, blood, bones....in an oven, as a seed, in an egg....
>
> The supernatural explanation fares by htis standards considerably worse,
> wouldn't you say?

Cute, but the comparison is a category error I think.

[jillery]

On Sun, 30 Jan 2022 21:18:26 -0700, Bob Casanova <nos...@buzz.off>

Casanova in the usual mode; no surprise. Apparently any made-up fact
can be posted as long as Casanova posts it. But woe onto anybody who
posts anything Casanova denies, because it doesn't matter how much
documentation counters his denials, because he's infallible. This
sound so much like what Glenn claims so often, not sure if one or both
are sock puppets.

>>>> If
>>>>my recollection is correct, that means the "point" has only one side,
>>>>that OOL is evidence for God, and a baselessly asserted strawman
>>>>argument, both raised by cdesign proponentsists.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>>PS - you can substitute "Designer" for God if you like. Clearly, though, the "designer" would have to be supernatural - if it were natural all you'd be doing would be pushing back the question to the naturalistic origin of the natural designer.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>><out with the old>

--

[jillery]

>Harsh. And untrue as far as I'm aware. What makes you say that?

Yet more willfully stupid denial. There must be something in the air.
But since you asked, remind yourself that you repeatedly demanded that
I answer your nonsense question, even as I answered it multiple times
in good faith, while you repeatedly failed to answer my questions.
You're welcome.

[broger...@gmail.com]

...........

> My criticism is primarily levelled at the lack of progress in this field over many decades, and the misrepresentation of this reality.
>
> At least one authoritative OOL advocate agrees with me: https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/RwhAxtqls4A

But most disagree with you.

> >
> > >
> > > Genome first, metabolism first, hybrid, etc? Encapsulation sooner or later? Hydrothermal vents, wetting/drying, saltwater, freshwater, panspermia...?

.....................

> > Atun, Allah, Nanabazho, Kamuy, Ranginui, Brahma, Pangu, Tagaloa.......
> > from clay, water, blood, bones....in an oven, as a seed, in an egg....
> >
> > The supernatural explanation fares by htis standards considerably worse,
> > wouldn't you say?
> Cute, but the comparison is a category error I think.

If you think the comparison is a category error, then what you are saying, I think, is that supernatural explanations fall into a different category from natural ones. It seems you are saying something like this.........

Natural explanations for a phenomenon must explain the details of what happened mechanistically, there must be a method to distinguish among competing natural explanations, and natural explanations only become believable to the extent that they make correct predictions and withstand repeated attempts at falsification.

Supernatural explanations, on the other hand, are the default when a natural explanation remains unavailable for long enough, and the sustained lack of a natural explanation is positive evidence for a supernatural one. No details are required, no method is required to distinguish between different supernatural explanations, nor does the supernatural explanation admit of any possible falsification other than somebody finding a natural explanation someday.

It certainly looks to me that what you call a category error is simply Burkhard warning you, appropriately, against special pleading.

[jillery]

On Sun, 30 Jan 2022 21:42:04 -0800 (PST), MarkE
<mark.w.e...@gmail.com> wrote:

>My criticism is primarily levelled at the lack of progress in this field over many decades, and the misrepresentation of this reality.

You could say the same thing about lots of cutting-edge fields of
enquiry, ex. sustaining nuclear fusion, and teaching people to tell
the difference between coherent scientific theories and incoherent
made-up facts aka lies. I leave as an exercise which is more
important to our future.

[MarkE]

I don't have time to go down that rabbit hole right now.

I will though highlight an irony here. The books of David Deamer that you put up as a condition of entry have lead to a goldmine of confirmations of fundamental OOL problems by a qualified insider and Deamer admirer. In fact, they are striking affirmations of what I have been saying, and point-by-point of James Tour's scathing compilation.

It doesn't get much better than this to be honest.

Grant me the moment, and forgive me if I'm being ungracious or smug. You have consistently and substantially engaged with my repeated (and somewhat repetitious) missives. It may not always be apparent, but I do consider carefully your responses, recognising expertise, insight and effort, even if we remain in firm disagreement. Sincerely, thank you.

[MarkE]

In review, for the record:
1. Suspect disingenuous bait-and-switch
2. Deflect switches, stay on point
3. Obtain grudging partial concession
4. Reframe with the door locked
5. Checkmate: insult in lieu of argument

I confess though it's a hollow victory. And it doesn't have to be that way.

[broger...@gmail.com]

Too bad, though I understand that it is the rabbit hole where the weaknesses of your argument are apparent.

>
> I will though highlight an irony here. The books of David Deamer that you put up as a condition of entry have lead to a goldmine of confirmations of fundamental OOL problems by a qualified insider and Deamer admirer. In fact, they are striking affirmations of what I have been saying, and point-by-point of James Tour's scathing compilation.

Who has claimed that OoL was solved, or that there were not very difficult problems? In a difficult and developing field you will always find quotations by one scientist who disagrees with another. Since they are both in the field you can quote from both of them and say, look, all the ideas in the field are full of problems, as pointed out by people in the field. You may think that's surprising or a sign that the field is stuck. I don't. That's just how science works. You know a field is stuck not by what people say about it but by seeing an exodus of people from the field deciding to go work on more fruitful questions. You don't see that in OoL research because, in fact, the field is not stuck.

All of this, though, is somewhat secondary to the rabbit hole you want to avoid, which is the weakness of your argument that the intractability of some scientific questions is evidence for God.

>
> It doesn't get much better than this to be honest.
>
> Grant me the moment, and forgive me if I'm being ungracious or smug. You have consistently and substantially engaged with my repeated (and somewhat repetitious) missives. It may not always be apparent, but I do consider carefully your responses, recognising expertise, insight and effort, even if we remain in firm disagreement. Sincerely, thank you.

It's not that you are ungracious or smug it's that (1) the field is not stuck and (2) even if it were stuck, it's being stuck would not be evidence one way or the other about God.

I gave you the Deamer reference to show that the field has progressed since Urey-Miller, not to show that the problem had been solved (since it obviously hasn't been). For example, if no abiotic pathways to common amino acids or nucleosides had been found, the field would certainly be stuck. That the pathways yield mixtures or have low yields means we need to look for abiotic pathways for enriching for biologically relevant monomers, etc; it's not a sign of no progress. There is obviously lots of work to do, and even if it's done the answer may remain elusive.

[Bob Casanova]

On Mon, 31 Jan 2022 02:39:46 -0500, the following appeared

Off your meds again? *Something* seems to be interfering
with your grasp of reality.

But just to refresh your memory, the only thing I stated as
fact was that I remember such claims. Apparently your
mind-reading talents are sufficient to claim that I don't.

>
>>>>> If
>>>>>my recollection is correct, that means the "point" has only one side,
>>>>>that OOL is evidence for God, and a baselessly asserted strawman
>>>>>argument, both raised by cdesign proponentsists.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>>PS - you can substitute "Designer" for God if you like. Clearly, though, the "designer" would have to be supernatural - if it were natural all you'd be doing would be pushing back the question to the naturalistic origin of the natural designer.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>><out with the old>
--

[Glenn]

Yes, it is a sign of no progress. So what that abiotic "pathways" are hypothesized. Doesn't mean that is a "lead", or identify what researchers "need" to look for. And you're arguing a strawman.

"By comparison, origin-of-life research has not made any progress whatsoever in addressing the fundamental questions of life’s origin. Two-thirds of a century and all that has been generated are more suggestions on how life might have formed—suggestions that really show how life probably did not form. Nothing even resembling a synthetic cellular structure has arisen from its independent components, let alone a living cell. Not even close."
-Tour quote from above

[Glenn]

You and jillery are like two peas out of the same pod.
Neither of you like the other to practice their trade on the other.

[Mark Isaak]

On 1/30/22 7:59 AM, Mark Isaak wrote:
> On 1/29/22 10:29 PM, MarkE wrote:
>>
>> [...] Rather, I'm saying that ongoing intractability of this problem

>> is evidence for a designer.
>

> How does that follow?
>
> Is it true of all intractable problems (for example, the causes of
> autism and schizophrenia)?
>
> Does the existence of solved problem therefore qualify as evidence
> *against* a designer?  Why or why not?

I would appreciate answers to these questions.

--
Mark Isaak eciton (at) curioustaxonomy (dot) net
"The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred
to the presence of those who think they've found it." - Terry Pratchett

[MarkE]

I'd love to discuss this. I also choose where to invest my time and energy. I'm looking for engaged, rigorous, honest, nuanced, two-way dialogue; a willingness to genuinely consider the opposing viewpoint. A way to demonstrate that willingness is to present a brief summary of an opponent's argument, identifying key strengths and well as weaknesses. Would you be willing to do that?

[jillery]

On Mon, 31 Jan 2022 04:39:22 -0800 (PST), MarkE
<mark.w.e...@gmail.com> wrote:

>In review, for the record:

>1. Patiently play along with disingenuous bait-and-switch
>2. Politely deflect switches, stay on point

>3. Obtain grudging partial concession
>4. Reframe with the door locked
>5. Checkmate: insult in lieu of argument
>

>I confess though it's a hollow victory. It doesn't have to be that way.


If only any part of your review above was factually correct. Whether
you're self-deluded or willfully stupid doesn't change the incoherence
of your claims. And you *still* haven't answered any of my questions,
likely because they all directly challenge your a priori assumptions.
Declaring a victory by playing with yourself isn't just hollow, it's
pathetic.

[jillery]

On Mon, 31 Jan 2022 05:17:04 -0800 (PST), MarkE

>In review, for the record:
>1. Suspect disingenuous bait-and-switch
>2. Deflect switches, stay on point
>3. Obtain grudging partial concession
>4. Reframe with the door locked
>5. Checkmate: insult in lieu of argument
>
>I confess though it's a hollow victory. And it doesn't have to be that way.

Smug, ungracious and impatient is a common childish combination.
Perhaps someday you will grow out of it.

[Glenn]

If only you were ever factually correct.