Yes, research shows life COULD start spontaneously (genesis, myth, bible)
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Well not quite spontaneously. It would need something to act as a catalyst to start the process originating the building blocks of life, amino acids. New research indicates that the combination of the right elements and heat and pressure that may have come from, it's crashing into the earth, may well be that process. Here is an article that relates to that research.
Well not quite spontaneously. It would need something to act as a catalyst to start the process originating the building blocks of life, amino acids. New research indicates that the combination of the right elements and heat and pressure that may have come from, it's crashing into the earth, may well be that process. Here is an article that relates to that research.
This reminds of the the classic experiment done in the 50's (I think we all learned about it in school at one time or another) which is stated in the article below. One can go round and round with these threads. Who created the catalyst to start the process? It's fascinating to me that one looks at a house or a skyscraper and would never think twice that someone built that structure. But many are skeptical that life, which is on an altogether different level of complexity, arose by means of a builder (albeit a divine builder).
This reminds of the the classic experiment done in the 50's (I think we all learned about it in school at one time or another) which is stated in the article below. One can go round and round with these threads. Who created the catalyst to start the process? It's fascinating to me that one looks at a house or a skyscraper and would never think twice that someone built that structure. But many are skeptical that life, which is on an altogether different level of complexity, arose by means of a builder (albeit a divine builder).
The Institute of Creation Research article on Chirality being evidence that abiogenesis of life from amino -acids is unlikely was at least arguable.
While this refute from talk origins is about the origins of 'left -handed' amino acids, it explains how it is not at all unlikely that life could have begun using right hand or no-hand amino acids.
Claim CB040:
The twenty amino acids used by life are all the left-handed variety. This is very unlikely to have occurred by chance.
Source:
Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. 1985. Life--How Did It Get Here? Brooklyn, NY, pg. 43
Response:
1. The amino acids that are used in life, like most other aspects of living things, are very likely not the product of chance. Instead, they likely resulted from a selection process. A simple peptide replicator can amplify the proportion of a single handedness in an initially random mixture of left- and right-handed fragments (Saghatelian et al. 2001; TSRI 2001). Self-assemblies on two-dimensional surfaces can also amplify a single handedness (Zepik et al. 2002). Serine forms stable clusters of a single handedness which can select other amino acids of like handedness by subtituting them for serine; these clusters also incorporate other biologically important molecules such as glyceraldehyde, glucose, and phosphoric acid (Takats et al. 2003). An excess of handedness in one kind of amino acid catalyzes the handedness of other organic products, such as threose, which may have figured prominently in proto-life (Pizzarello and Weber 2004).
2. Amino acids found in meteorites from space, which must have formed abiotically, also show significantly more of the left-handed variety, perhaps from circularly polarized UV light in the early solar system (Engel and Macko 1997; Cronin and Pizzarello 1999). The weak nuclear force, responsible for beta decay, produces only electrons with left-handed spin, and chemicals exposed to these electrons are far more likely to form left-handed crystals (Service 1999). Such mechanisms might also have been responsible for the prevalence of left-handed amino acids on earth.
3. The first self-replicator may have had eight or fewer types of amino acids (Cavalier-Smith 2001). It is not all that unlikely that the same handedness might occur so few times by chance, especially if one of the amino acids was glycine, which has no handedness.
4. Some bacteria use right-handed amino acids, too (McCarthy et al. 1998).
The Institute of Creation Research article on Chirality being evidence that abiogenesis of life from amino -acids is unlikely was at least arguable.
Claim CB040:
The twenty amino acids used by life are all the left-handed variety. This is very unlikely to have occurred by chance.
Source:
Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. 1985. Life--How Did It Get Here? Brooklyn, NY, pg. 43
Response:
1. The amino acids that are used in life, like most other aspects of living things, are very likely not the product of chance. Instead, they likely resulted from a selection process. A simple peptide replicator can amplify the proportion of a single handedness in an initially random mixture of left- and right-handed fragments (Saghatelian et al. 2001; TSRI 2001). Self-assemblies on two-dimensional surfaces can also amplify a single handedness (Zepik et al. 2002). Serine forms stable clusters of a single handedness which can select other amino acids of like handedness by subtituting them for serine; these clusters also incorporate other biologically important molecules such as glyceraldehyde, glucose, and phosphoric acid (Takats et al. 2003). An excess of handedness in one kind of amino acid catalyzes the handedness of other organic products, such as threose, which may have figured prominently in proto-life (Pizzarello and Weber 2004).
2. Amino acids found in meteorites from space, which must have formed abiotically, also show significantly more of the left-handed variety, perhaps from circularly polarized UV light in the early solar system (Engel and Macko 1997; Cronin and Pizzarello 1999). The weak nuclear force, responsible for beta decay, produces only electrons with left-handed spin, and chemicals exposed to these electrons are far more likely to form left-handed crystals (Service 1999). Such mechanisms might also have been responsible for the prevalence of left-handed amino acids on earth.
3. The first self-replicator may have had eight or fewer types of amino acids (Cavalier-Smith 2001). It is not all that unlikely that the same handedness might occur so few times by chance, especially if one of the amino acids was glycine, which has no handedness.
4. Some bacteria use right-handed amino acids, too (McCarthy et al. 1998).
P.s further reading on this 'Chirality disproved abiogenesis' argument in this snippit from yahoo answers.
"...And this brings us to the third point. Which is that new research is actually coming up with some pretty good explanations for homochirality ... i.e. features of physics that tend to not only slightly favor left-handed amino acids, and D-sugars ... but reasons why a slight imbalance between two types would be amplified over time to a complete imbalance.
While admitting the validity of TO's rsponse it seems to be arguing an analogy of right and left -hand cars implying that right and left hand amino acids implies a Manufacturer. I have to say that DOES strike me a rather stupid argument.
All these false analogies mean very little like looking at a building, looking at a car inferring a designer. Mankind didn't suddenly discover cement, concrete, steel etc that goes into buildings, oil, steel, aluminium etc. that goes into cars. All of these discoveries came over a vast amount of time and is only the ingenuity of humans that leads to what we term a "designed thing"
The basics of civil engineering may look to the layman as all the same thing and likewise a car of the modern era little different to a 1920 Model T Ford or the motorised tricycle of Mercedes way back when. Both these analogies make a better case for evolution than for creation.
Would the architect actually know the intricacies of rebar manufacture or does he simply use technical charts with his calculations to design a stressed floor? He probably does not even know the math behind the stressed floor and will simply cite a spec that someone down the line will actually know how to implement.
Concept cars and buildings all start off with the imagining aspect and the "designer" is merely one that envisages what the outcome would look like, reduces that to paper or nowadays 3D images. Technicians and engineers make that vision a reality.
Back in the 20s and 30s folk built multi story buildings with brick an mortar and nowadays it is all steel and concrete. In both there are a lineage of little discoveries just like there is in evolution, a lineage.
Applying this same analogy to the biological fields aka life, it is pretty much the same. The problem with creationists is, they make the building/car analogy and expect science to be able to apply exactly that and create life in the lab. We WILL get there one day as far as humans go, remember Dolly the sheep? Perhaps in time we shall be able to make a hybrid that removes all the defective genes and incorporates useful ones from other critters.
That is the one argument.
Let us assume there is a creator/designer. Why would it need to be worshipped or even venerated? Throwing the building and car analogy back in your face, would a designer of a car or building even car if you knew he existed? Probably not. His/her accomplishment would speak for itself.
All these false analogies mean very little like looking at a building, looking at a car inferring a designer. Mankind didn't suddenly discover cement, concrete, steel etc that goes into buildings, oil, steel, aluminium etc. that goes into cars. All of these discoveries came over a vast amount of time and is only the ingenuity of humans that leads to what we term a "designed thing"
.
You think that these cars and building just came to be by chance? Your post supports the idea of a designer. Why is the analogy false?
Who designed and built the designer? Claiming God did it, does not provide an answer, as something as complex as God MUST - by this argument - have been designed. God could not come about by chance. Unfortunately, this unleashes an infinite series of ever greater Gods (of which the one so many humans worship is the least of them), so the question becomes meaningless.
If you say God always existed, I say the universe always existed in some form. I just eliminated a superfluous middleman.
All complex things evolved from simpler things. Even those marvelous designed human inventions evolved from lesser, simpler designs, as people built on earlier versions. So with life, and so with complex physical and chemical systems that developed from more basic, simple processes, given the laws of physics.
This reminds of the the classic experiment done in the 50's (I think we all learned about it in school at one time or another) which is stated in the article below. One can go round and round with these threads. Who created the catalyst to start the process? It's fascinating to me that one looks at a house or a skyscraper and would never think twice that someone built that structure. But many are skeptical that life, which is on an altogether different level of complexity, arose by means of a builder (albeit a divine builder).
Thing is, hd4, natural life-inducing reactions are based on several vastly different paradigms than, say, designing a skyscraper with specific ideas and goals in mind.
The skyscraper's components are not available to float about, banging, gazh'zillions of times per hour, into welding machines, and then proclaim "this latest weld-up fabrication helps my end-game, yessiree!"
That is quite simply not how it works,. also, the vacuously specious argument that leaving all the bits for 747 in a junkyard and then saying "therefore life could not have risen in this manner! I has to have had a Designer, just like a 747 does!" is the product of either a v. uneducated perspective or one with a stubborn objective and agenda.
You really need to take or read up on the well-established biochemistry facts of simple interactions in the right conditions, plus the resulting durability of such join-ups. All easily demo' in the lab. And thus not "impossible" and necessitating an ancient mythical deity.
As well, despite the observed vast complexity of any living organism, it's also observable to be nothing more than a constant evolution (small e) of an existing design. After all, this...
But in nature, a "useful" molecule can hold it's own, esp. when it's being replicated by the uncountable numbers to then press on in other possibilities!
The v. simple molecules all floated around back 200 million years ago, and still do float around today in a nice warm primordial ocean. Plus that when they naturally interacted to form slightly more advanced molecules, is hardly akin to any such agenda of an engineer's intent on improving the 747 into the 777 or 787.
No it does not support the idea of a designer, are you dense? Designers use the stuff that evolved over time. Even in its rawest form, a god could only envisage a completed product so in fact the analogy is far closer to supporting evolution. Of course evolution is not that simple but I am trying to break it down and diminish that argument.
Chance, as you put it, over billions of years makes more sense than an instapoof alternative. Using the building and a car, you would expect the "designer" to invent cement, steel fabrication and so on at the same time to support your premise. When you break down all the little bits that goes into the final product, which we all know happens over time, steel was here long before cars or rebar were, concrete discovered eons ago and a natural progression from building with mud and sticks. If you go back even further with the raw elements, science explains how it all got here and your godunnit version does not.
In the building trade myself, I would hardly spec what the clay a brick is made from nor its various points of manufacture which would include coal for curing and so on. I simply make my selection that best serves the needs of the final product whether it will be face or plastered. I would not spec the exact extraction of gypsum for cement production, which again includes coal or the silica products found in the mix. I am of course aware and select the best cement for a particular application.
When you drill down into these so called aspects of design, the architect probably know less than I do of raw materials and the correct way to mix them to get the desired outcome. And guess what? In the process of erecting a building, you often go against the architects design as there is invariably a more economical way of achieving the end result.
This is WHY the analogy fails.
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