An issue with the origin of life

[CosmicJoghurt]

Greetings.

I recently had a slight argument with an user on Youtube in the comments section of a video, regarding the origin of life. I'll just paste into here what we said and then comment:

Please note the weird engrish he uses... Don't be frightened...

He said: "ok so u want, to explain every other life form but not the, first, cell...there is some logic..Homochirality proves evolution can, never happen..but this is now, separate from there lies..evolutionists would rather believe in some chemistry, unknown to science than intelligence,,thats some faith..and nothing more than assumptions"

I told him that Evolution deals with what happens after the first life form arises, not before, so his point about evolutionists was wrong, and that for a reference to the origin of life he could google the Miller-urey experiment. Here's what he said:

"Abiogenesis and, evolution are very much connected...Tell an architect to build a skyscraper using no foundation, no, base.just have the building float in thin air..let me me know what they will tell you..and how and when this great feat of engineering can be done..you need life to start in order for it to evolve....its nothing more than stubborn logic by evolutionists"

"You have a energy information problem..lets say you have all necessary proteins DNA RNA.enzymes..the paradox is..In order, for digital code to be precise,and information to be processed correctly..you need the molecular machines,the factories inside the cell.assembling information..these systems are the very things..that live inside, the cell.they harness the energy..its an uphill? struggle.I dont think you understand..no natural process can achieve this."

"Even with all the Proteins, and DNA and RNA ...What would you do with it??..from there you have zero molecular machines, zero assembly instructions...all this stuff, would just float away in some primordial soup and break down..and it would be the same thing in a test tube."

"If evolutionists had optically pure DNA, RNA, and amino acids, and they still would have nothing. In fact, the energy needed to form the bonds to make the macromolecules necessary for a cell, will destroy any DNA, RNA, and, amino acids that are outside of a cell."

"RNA has been copied using templates and, bases..and without digital information and DNA..this RNA world is going no where..you also still have the major problem of Homochirality..Inserting bases into molecules is not creating anything..its copying.. you..Please tell me the next step lets what you make next lets say you thousands of pairs, of RNA..You have ZERO molecular machines..for assembly instructions...RNA molecules floating around is life?..LOL"

"Miller failed Moron..he a Toxic mess of amino acids..that could not be used to make anything...to try to get amino acids to self assemble is impossible..there is no natural process.to make a cell evolve ..it would be easier to build a the space shuttle..blindfolded while riding a unicycle...and drug resistant bacteria ..use pre existing information..they, dont become any new form of bacteria...its still a bacteria cell..and, well removed from the drug..they are the same type of cell"


I know it's a mess, his sentences are confusing, but you get his point. I've been thinking about this issue. What I was going to answer was that any simple primitive form of a self-replicating molecular structure could eventually lead to actual life, but first, I need some info from you guys, because, of course, you know more about this subject than me...


What problems are there in his reasoning, or mine?


Cheers!

 

[RichardMNixon]

Most of it is just an overextended metaphor, the architect thing is garbage. Ask him if conception is the same thing as aging, after all, a person can't age before he's conceived right? Sure aging requires conception, but it's not the same process and they occur independently. Evolution did require life to begin, yes, but the theory only describes what happened after. It doesn't matter if abiogensis occurred in the primordial soup, if cells fell onto Earth from a comet, or if god created a strand of DNA. It does not matter. Evolution took over after that, whatever it was.

they, dont become any new form of bacteria...its still a bacteria cell..and, well removed from the drug..they are the same type of cell"

I kind of want to call this the AronRa fallacy owing to the palm-shaped dent in his face from having to debunk it so many times. Nothing ever stops being itself. Evolution diversifies, it doesn't have tiers like pokemon such that something can leave itself and move up a notch. If you have a duck, every offspring of every offspring of every offspring that duck's line will ever have will still be a duck. They may diversify into millions of different kinds of ducks, and some of these ducks may develop intelligence and become a sentient race of duck people with computers and machines designed for wings and webbed feet. They may form a duck government and join the UN. That doesn't make them men, they will still be ducks.

Also, Miller-Urey was in like 1954. There's been a lot of progress since then including polypeptide synthesis and possibly ribosomes? Someone else could probably cite better sources than me off-hand though.

 

[Inferno]

What problems are there in his reasoning, or mine?

Well I haven't seen anything from you, so I take it that you mean "his", right?

"Abiogenesis and, evolution are very much connected...Tell an architect to build a skyscraper using no foundation, no, base.just have the building float in thin air..let me me know what they will tell you..and how and when this great feat of engineering can be done..you need life to start in order for it to evolve....its nothing more than stubborn logic by evolutionists"

Absolutely faulty analogy, because even if we didn't know anything about the first occurrence of life, we'd still know as a fact that life has evolved since.
So a proper analogy would be: Tell a lawyer that he can't make a living as a lawyer because he doesn't know who his dad and mom were.

"You have a energy information problem..lets say you have all necessary proteins DNA RNA.enzymes..the paradox is..In order, for digital code to be precise,and information to be processed correctly..you need the molecular machines,the factories inside the cell.assembling information..these systems are the very things..that live inside, the cell.they harness the energy..its an uphill? struggle.I dont think you understand..no natural process can achieve this."

No you don't. Most of the early functions happen by simple chemical processes. For example, the first cell formed because of the polarity of the individual particles when interacting with water. They spontaneously form a sort of proto-cell. Same for lots of the individual components.
As to "no natural process can achieve this": Argument from ignorance.

"Even with all the Proteins, and DNA and RNA ...What would you do with it??..from there you have zero molecular machines, zero assembly instructions...all this stuff, would just float away in some primordial soup and break down..and it would be the same thing in a test tube."

Again, laws of chemistry.
In any case, here are a few links:

Life's First Spark Re-Created in the Laboratory
Forgotten Experiment May Explain Origins of Life
Organism Sets Mutation Speed Record, May Explain Life's Origins
Proof That Meteors Could Have Sparked Life on Earth
A Theory of Evolution for Evolution
Thanks to AronRa for finding those links.

It's all a matter of this guy not understanding chemistry.

 

[RigelKentaurusA]

He's overlooking the fact that chemistry can, on its own, produce complex molecules under the right conditions. Chemistry is the foundation for that skyscraper of abiogenesis. These complex molecules, in combination with the right environments, can build up the building blocks of life until primitive cells form.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8nYTJf62sE&feature=related

I think if he realised that life was just a complex set of chemical reaction in itself, he'd not have made his arguments.

 

[CosmicJoghurt]

Most of it is just an overextended metaphor, the architect thing is garbage. Ask him if conception is the same thing as aging, after all, a person can't age before he's conceived right? Sure aging requires conception, but it's not the same process and they occur independently. Evolution did require life to begin, yes, but the theory only describes what happened after. It doesn't matter if abiogensis occurred in the primordial soup, if cells fell onto Earth from a comet, or if god created a strand of DNA. It does not matter. Evolution took over after that, whatever it was.

they, dont become any new form of bacteria...its still a bacteria cell..and, well removed from the drug..they are the same type of cell"

I kind of want to call this the AronRa fallacy owing to the palm-shaped dent in his face from having to debunk it so many times. Nothing ever stops being itself. Evolution diversifies, it doesn't have tiers like pokemon such that something can leave itself and move up a notch. If you have a duck, every offspring of every offspring of every offspring that duck's line will ever have will still be a duck. They may diversify into millions of different kinds of ducks, and some of these ducks may develop intelligence and become a sentient race of duck people with computers and machines designed for wings and webbed feet. They may form a duck government and join the UN. That doesn't make them men, they will still be ducks.

Also, Miller-Urey was in like 1954. There's been a lot of progress since then including polypeptide synthesis and possibly ribosomes? Someone else could probably cite better sources than me off-hand though.

Hmm... I thought that over millions of years, subjected to environmental pressures, those ducks could "change" a little bit, and over more millions, we maybe couldn't call them ducks anymore.

So I don't see how one species can eventually lead to a different one if part of it has moved into an isolated different environment with different pressures. Could you explain it to me, please?

 

[ExeFBM]

His basic issue is that he's insisting you have to have a complete modern cell in order for it to be considered a cell. You don't need molecular machinery to copy RNA. RNA can be self-replicating. It's not going to be as fast as with the enzymes, but it will still happen. More efficient mechanisms will come along later. His analogy to a skyscraper is ridiculous, and I imagine only chosen because, there's the implication of a great architect behind it all. I'd probably counter with Beethoven may be the best pianist throughout all of history, but that doesn't mean he can build a piano. Or you could stick with the architect and argue that abiogenesis is the architects qualifications.

The RNA world hypothesis involves huge combinations of random RNA that largely do nothing, until one of the sequences does something that increases it's ability to replicate, and then dominates the population, and a huge number of combinations can then arise from that as a base step.

The chirality is far less of an issue than he's making out also. There are many natural catalysts that can produce amino acids, and some of them will favour the R form, and some the S. There are even autocatalytic systems that can vastly amplify the ratios. Wikipedia's page on homochirality is quite good. Pretty much everything else he says is beyond retarded.

 

[lrkun]

Hmm... I thought that over millions of years, subjected to environmental pressures, those ducks could "change" a little bit, and over more millions, we maybe couldn't call them ducks anymore.

So I don't see how one species can eventually lead to a different one if part of it has moved into an isolated different environment with different pressures. Could you explain it to me, please?

D.E.

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[RichardMNixon]

Hmm... I thought that over millions of years, subjected to environmental pressures, those ducks could "change" a little bit, and over more millions, we maybe couldn't call them ducks anymore.

So I don't see how one species can eventually lead to a different one if part of it has moved into an isolated different environment with different pressures. Could you explain it to me, please?

Species is an arbitrary thing we assign. Cladistics is a way to think of evolution that's more consistent with reality.



You need to consider time as a dimension for this tree. Duck B and Duck C are different species now relative to each other, but they're still both ducks descendant from a duck ancestor A and for that matter they're both still dinosaurs. We never stopped being a eukaryote, or a mammal, or a primate. It's why we still have tails, whales have legs, and emu's have claws on their wings. It's why ducks are dinosaurs.

The other part of it is that the more specialized something is, the harder it is to change or get rid of. Ducks have features that hummingbirds don't because those features developed after those populations split; however, every feature that ducks and dinosaurs both have are also in hummingbirds because those features developed before the split. Every physiological, genetic or whatever else criterion you could use to distinguish a duck from a seagull will still apply to any offspring that string of ducks will ever have. Thus, they will still be ducks.

 

[CosmicJoghurt]

You need to consider time as a dimension for this tree. Duck B and Duck C are different species now relative to each other, but they're still both ducks descendant from a duck ancestor A and for that matter they're both still dinosaurs. We never stopped being a eukaryote, or a mammal, or a primate. It's why we still have tails, whales have legs, and emu's have claws on their wings. It's why ducks are dinosaurs.

The other part of it is that the more specialized something is, the harder it is to change or get rid of. Ducks have features that hummingbirds don't because those features developed after those populations split; however, every feature that ducks and dinosaurs both have are also in hummingbirds because those features developed before the split. Every physiological, genetic or whatever else criterion you could use to distinguish a duck from a seagull will still apply to any offspring that string of ducks will ever have. Thus, they will still be ducks.

Oh, I thought you had said ducks would always be ducks, and I interpreted that as "ducks will never change into something else, they will always be the same = ducks). Just a mis-understanding, sorry m8.

BTW thanks for the info.

 

[RichardMNixon]

Oh, I thought you had said ducks would always be ducks, and I interpreted that as "ducks will never change into something else, they will always be the same = ducks). Just a mis-understanding, sorry m8.

Ahh, ok. This is probably something that could be expanded on. I think we see the word "duck" as applying to a very specific organism that's around right now. It's at the outside of the tree of life, a narrow branch with a few very fine branches coming off of it and that's where the confusion is. The time scale of evolution really is hard to comprehend. That's just the way we see the tree now though, at one point "amphibians" were the same way, a very narrow and specialized branch extending off the great limb of fish, but that was millions of years ago and we now see that the once tiny branch has become a mighty limb with even other limbs coming off of it. So while ducks are a tiny branch now, in millions of years there could be a mighty duck limb with Duck ZZ, Darkwing Duck, and Megaduck all branching off at different points. Megaduck will still be a eukaryote, an animal, a dinosaur, a bird, a duck, and a greatduck (ancestor of megaduck and gigaduck), but no one will think he's a gigaduck any more than they think I'm a neanderthal.

 

[Inferno]

Species is an arbitrary thing we assign.

If we're talking about asexually reproducing creatures, you're right. If we're talking about sexually reducing ones, then a correction is needed.
"Species" is the only biologically significant "level" in biology because it's the only one we can assign while speciation is happening.
There are still problems with the definition, I'll grant you that, but "species" is not arbitrary.

I take it that you were talking about genus/phylum/etc? If that's the case, you're correct.

 

[RichardMNixon]

Species is an arbitrary thing we assign.

If we're talking about asexually reproducing creatures, you're right. If we're talking about sexually reducing ones, then a correction is needed.
"Species" is the only biologically significant "level" in biology because it's the only one we can assign while speciation is happening.
There are still problems with the definition, I'll grant you that, but "species" is not arbitrary.

I take it that you were talking about genus/phylum/etc? If that's the case, you're correct.

You're right, I was thinking more like "duck" is arbitrary and just because we think of a Mallard as a duck and a T-Rex as a dinosaur, doesn't mean a Mallard isn't a dinosaur. I explained that part poorly.

What worries me about species though is that you're locking something in place. Species is based on whether or not the two things can mate, yes? So what happens in 200 years when Chihuahuas and German Shepherds can't biologically mate? Do they suddenly stop being the same species? Or will subspecies become the only significant level?

And back to what I said before, the original duck branch would have been one species while other species of ducks now exist that are a different species from the duck they evolved from. But cladistically how could they stop being that species?

 

[Inferno]

What worries me about species though is that you're locking something in place. Species is based on whether or not the two things can mate, yes? So what happens in 200 years when Chihuahuas and German Shepherds can't biologically mate? Do they suddenly stop being the same species? Or will subspecies become the only significant level?

Don't quote me on this but I'd say that yes, speciation would have taken place in that instance.
And no, subspecies can't carry that importance, because it's an arbitrarily assigned rank, if I understand correctly.

 

[borrofburi]

What worries me about species though is that you're locking something in place. Species is based on whether or not the two things can mate, yes? So what happens in 200 years when Chihuahuas and German Shepherds can't biologically mate? Do they suddenly stop being the same species? Or will subspecies become the only significant level?

I forgot the name, someone will be along to say it explicitly... But essentially there is only one rigid definition of species, and it's a population through which gene flow can occur at a specific time. You're right, you do have to fix something in place: time. Otherwise we're all the same species. Also this one has problems with bacteria...

 

[RichardMNixon]

I forgot the name, someone will be along to say it explicitly... But essentially there is only one rigid definition of species, and it's a population through which gene flow can occur at a specific time. You're right, you do have to fix something in place: time. Otherwise we're all the same species. Also this one has problems with bacteria...

So then what happens when dogs do speciate from wild wolves? Right now wolves and dogs are canis lupis. Will dogs get a new species or will lupus somehow get pushed back to genera with wolves on one species and domestic dogs on another? Then they're still linked through genus but not species any more. Or is the problem that I'm trying to mix taxonomy and cladistics?

 

[borrofburi]

I forgot the name, someone will be along to say it explicitly... But essentially there is only one rigid definition of species, and it's a population through which gene flow can occur at a specific time. You're right, you do have to fix something in place: time. Otherwise we're all the same species. Also this one has problems with bacteria...

So then what happens when dogs do speciate from wild wolves? Right now wolves and dogs are canis lupis. Will dogs get a new species or will lupus somehow get pushed back to genera with wolves on one species and domestic dogs on another? Then they're still linked through genus but not species any more. Or is the problem that I'm trying to mix taxonomy and cladistics?

I think you're trying to mix taxonomy and cladistics... In cladistics both wolf and dog will always be canis lupis.... They just might get an extra name or other differentiator...

 

[RichardMNixon]

They just might get an extra name or other differentiator...

Ok, there it is. I'm thinking of species as a name something has, not as a biological property of sorts. You're suggesting it could still be genus: canis; species: lupis; but regardless of the name it would be a different species?

 

[Undeath]

They just might get an extra name or other differentiator...

Ok, there it is. I'm thinking of species as a name something has, not as a biological property of sorts. You're suggesting it could still be genus: canis; species: lupis; but regardless of the name it would be a different species?

Rather, I think he's suggesting that the name Canis lupus is just as arbitrary as Mallard, or dinosaur. Whether you call it a wolf or a Canis lupus, all descendants will always be one of them, just as every bird is also a dinosaur. In reality, the Genera species naming convention is probably more of an artefact from taxonomy than anything else, and is only really useful for any single time-based cross-section of the biosphere, and non-comparable to other cross-sections. The point in time where wolves and dogs are no longer able to breed is different than the one where it makes sense to call them both Canis lupus, without anything else. (And as far as I know, dogs already have an extra differentiator, Canis lupus familiaris, denoting a subspecies.)

 

[Dragan Glas]

Greetings,

He said: "ok so u want, to explain every other life form but not the, first, cell...there is some logic..Homochirality proves evolution can, never happen..but this is now, separate from there lies..evolutionists would rather believe in some chemistry, unknown to science than intelligence,,thats some faith..and nothing more than assumptions"

I've never understood this argument against the origin of Life.

Biochemistry is a subset of chemistry.

It is inevitable that inorganic chemistry will give rise to organic chemistry, given the right conditions.

Kindest regards,

James

 

[Squawk]

Just a quick note, species is not defined by two organisms that can interbreed (are two human men the same species) but whether or not gene transfer can occur through the population.

The chiwawa and great dane probably can't mate, but a great dane can probably mate with a collie, which can probably mate with a chiwawa, hence not different species.

There is no line when specation occurs. Species is useful for defining a present state, can it occur now, but not so useful for determining when speciation takes place. Speciation, by its very nature, is a tricky thing to pin down. Extinction of intermediates in ring species would nail it down, but thats about it.

Species is an attempt to classify a continuous variable, to break it up into chunks.