The Origin of Life

[DOTR]

for the chemical reaction to be successful the reaction would require the appropriate metaphysical forces / axioms to be equally applied for a successful conclusion to create life.

That's untestable nonsense not required to explain anything.

So you want us to limit ourselves to only "testable" ideas? You sure?

 

[DOTR]

I read that there are about 400 billion stars in our galaxy. So there might be 10 other Earths.

And that is just in our galaxy! The Hubble Ultra Deep Field photo shows about 5500 galaxies in an area of the sky less than two arc-minutes square...that is about the size of a grain of sand held at arms length.

You can see the full image at this link.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/22/Hubble_Extreme_Deep_Field_(full_resolution).png

Also..."On November 4, 2013, astronomers reported...that there could be as many as 40 billion Earth-sized planets orbiting in the habitable zones of Sun-like stars and red dwarf stars within the Milky Way galaxy. 11 billion of these estimated planets may be orbiting Sun-like stars. The nearest such planet may be 12 light-years away." wikipedia

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

we have only DNA (or RNA in some cases) based life in evidence.

..and we can't even pretend to have done an exhaustive search of the evidence, nor could we. What you have in your hands is evidence that life occurred at least once on our planet, and at least once in our universe. You do NOT have evidence that it did NOT occur at least twice, in either case.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

So you want us to limit ourselves to only "testable" ideas? You sure?

Yep, absolutely sure of that one.

 

[Flash]

Rare Earth hypothesis - Wikipedia

The Rare Earth hypothesis argues that the evolution of biological complexity requires a host of fortuitous circumstances, such as a galactic habitable zone, a central star and planetary system having the requisite character, the circumstellar habitable zone, a right sized terrestrial planet, the advantage of a gas giant guardian like Jupiter and a large natural satellite, conditions needed to ensure the planet has a magnetosphere and plate tectonics, the chemistry of the lithosphere, atmosphere, and oceans, the role of "evolutionary pumps" such as massive glaciation and rare bolide impacts, and whatever led to the appearance of the eukaryote cell, sexual reproduction and the Cambrian explosion of animal, plant, and fungi phyla. The evolution of human intelligence may have required yet further events, which are extremely unlikely to have happened were it not for the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event 66 million years ago which saw the decline of dinosaurs as the dominant terrestrial vertebrates.

In order for a small rocky planet to support complex life, Ward and Brownlee argue, the values of several variables must fall within narrow ranges. The universe is so vast that it could contain many Earth-like planets. But if such planets exist, they are likely to be separated from each other by many thousands of light years. Such distances may preclude communication among any intelligent species evolving on such planets, which would solve the Fermi paradox: "If extraterrestrial aliens are common, why aren't they obvious?"[1]

The Fermi paradox crushes the Drake Equation without the unlikely existence of some common filter which occurs AFTER advanced civilization develops. (one suggestion is that AI inevitably wipes out intelligence)

It is Carl Sagan who is responsible for the Argument from Mediocrity...and the crew of atheists who have followed him. They took great pleasure in it.

Ward and Brownlee sound interesting. Ill read them.

We all would like to think that the worlds we see in science fiction exist because we have been brainwashed all our lives with it. We want to see Captain Kirk trekking across the universe screwing pretty green alien women and kicking Klingon ass and want to believe in the Empire in a galaxy far far away but that is not the reality. The reality is that we see life on earth but everything else that we can observed is sterile.

The other reality is that the universe may be teeming with life but we humans will never see it because we will never get out of our solar system. All we have now is chemical energy for propulsion and that is not going to get us very far. There may (or may not) be some other viable propulsion technology (like"warp drive") but we haven't seen it yet. Physics is working against us ever being interstellar or galactic space explorers. Economics is also a bummer when it comes to space exploration. We can't even afford to return to the Moon after 50 years no less send a human to Mars.

I suspect humans will die out as a species before we will know if life exist elsewhere. I also suspect that under the best of all circumstance the most distance a human will ever travel from earth will be to Mars.

 

[Flash]

It is undeniable that life started once on Earth. Only once. A one time event never repeated.
What are the implications of that fact?

The odds are about forty billion to one, according to the latest estimates.

I read that there are about 400 billion stars in our galaxy. So there might be 10 other Earths.

...or not. Statistics doesn't create life. A very specific combination of chemistry and environmental conditions must happen before life is created.

As far as we know there is a finite universe. In any finite model unique things can exist. For all we know life is unique to earth and may not exist elsewhere.

We can't even create life in controlled laboratories. If life was easy to create then by now, with our tremendous knowledge of chemistry and biology, we could create it, but we can't.

None of us know and we probably never will know. However, what we do know is that everything that we see outside of earth seems to be sterile.

 

[ding]

A single celled organism is an incredibly complex thing in itself.

So is a snowflake. So is metamorphic rock. "Complex" is relative and is a human construct, created by finite brains.

No, it's not. Only a moron would deny the reality that matter has complexified since its inception. It is not a human construct. The degree of complexification is relative to it's initial state which was sub-atomic particles.

 

[ding]

Keep in mind, odds and probabilities are only predictions. You could pick up a penny and flip it a hundred times and get heads a hundred times. There is nothing to say an event needs billions of instances to produce something. One may have been enough, or fifty. It is most likely there were pools with trillions of amino acids floating around, which are produced naturally in the universe, where countless interactions could have occurred to produce self-replicating life.

But the point is it could have happened with the first interaction as easily as the trillionth. It may have taken one day or a million years of chemical reactions, bonds, broken bonds, reformed bonds, over and over. It may have happened and that life died the same day. The reactions continued until it happened again. All is possible. The only thing we know is at least one of the events led to a never ending self-replicating single prokaryote cell with no nucleus, just chemicals in an enclosed reaction that replicates itself.

The folding sequence is not like flipping a coin.

 

[ding]

We struggle to understand how life arose on Earth, because our puny brains cannot handle huge numbers, like 4 billion years, gazillions of chemical transactions, and the possibilities of a complex environment.
So we cling to a god invented by ignorant goat-herders, who did not understand simple physics.

No. Not even close. I have probably forgotten more science than you ever knew. Try again.

 

[ding]

It is undeniable that life started once on Earth. Only once. A one time event never repeated.
What are the implications of that fact?

The odds are about forty billion to one, according to the latest estimates.

I read that there are about 400 billion stars in our galaxy. So there might be 10 other Earths.

...or not. Statistics doesn't create life. A very specific combination of chemistry and environmental conditions must happen before life is created.

As far as we know there is a finite universe. In any finite model unique things can exist. For all we know life is unique to earth and may not exist elsewhere.

We can't even create life in controlled laboratories. If life was easy to create then by now, with our tremendous knowledge of chemistry and biology, we could create it, but we can't.

None of us know and we probably never will know. However, what we do know is that everything that we see outside of earth seems to be sterile.

As a rule, the universe is not very hospitable for life.

 

[ding]

Maybe this is the minimum level of simplicity

The Simplest Living Organism Ever Has 437 Genes and Was Made in a Laboratory

The work, published Thursday in Science, describes a self-replicating bacterium invented by Venter and his team that contains just 437 genes, a "genome smaller than that of any autonomously replicating cell found in nature," according to the paper. The work sheds light on the function of the individual genes necessary to have life, and it also shows us just how little we actually know about specific gene functions.

The Simplest Living Organism Ever Has 437 Genes and Was Made in a Laboratory

And it is difficult to imagine something that complex could arise spontaneously. But I am still a believer that life arose here on earth and was not the creation of a supreme being .

And I gotta depart

"When it comes to the origin of life, we have only two possibilities as to how life arose. One is spontaneous generation arising to evolution; the other is a supernatural creative act of God. There is no third possibility...Spontaneous generation was scientifically disproved one hundred years ago by Louis Pasteur, Spellanzani, Reddy and others. That leads us scientifically to only one possible conclusion -- that life arose as a supernatural creative act of God...I will not accept that philosophically because I do not want to believe in God. Therefore, I choose to believe in that which I know is scientifically impossible, spontaneous generation arising to evolution." - George Wald, Scientific American, August, 1954.

Pasteur may have disproved "spontaneous generation" but that was a very simple short term laboratory experiment. It in no way could replicate the billions of possible chemical experiments taking place over thousands and thousand of years around thermal vents and in tide pools and elsewhere. Mr. Wald compares apples and oranges.

Given the fact that all life is programmed to survive and reproduce, you don't think it is odd that life randomly assembled itself?

Think about it. The greatest engineering marvel in the history of the universe with complexity unrivaled by anything in the universe just randomly assembled itself?

 

[Flash]

[QUO

Given the fact that all life is programmed to survive and reproduce, you don't think it is odd that life randomly assembled itself?

Think about it. The greatest engineering marvel in the history of the universe with complexity unrivaled by anything in the universe just randomly assembled itself?

It is not only life but the universe itself.

To reject the concept of intelligent design is to think that the universe magically created itself out of nothing. That defies all human and scientific logic in addition to the Laws of Physics.

 

[The Irish Ram]

Keep in mind, odds and probabilities are only predictions. You could pick up a penny and flip it a hundred times and get heads a hundred times. There is nothing to say an event needs billions of instances to produce something. One may have been enough, or fifty. It is most likely there were pools with trillions of amino acids floating around, which are produced naturally in the universe, where countless interactions could have occurred to produce self-replicating life.

But the point is it could have happened with the first interaction as easily as the trillionth. It may have taken one day or a million years of chemical reactions, bonds, broken bonds, reformed bonds, over and over. It may have happened and that life died the same day. The reactions continued until it happened again. All is possible. The only thing we know is at least one of the events led to a never ending self-replicating single prokaryote cell with no nucleus, just chemicals in an enclosed reaction that replicates itself.

DNA says you need billions of instances to produce something other than what is coded. DNA would have to make a mistake, and not self correct as it is coded to do, and then make the exact same mistake consistently, for millions of years to create new species. We would be walking on the bones of so many transitional missing links...
If you think DNA happened by chance then you don't understand the complexity of DNA. It is not that there are amino acids floating around, it is that they find the precise left handed one that the code tells it to attach to, that you are leaving out of the scenario. There is no random or chance to it. All is not possible. DNA is specific. How would an amino acid know if it was right or left handed without a code to follow?

Take a working eye. Millions of optic nerves head from the brain toward the eye. Millions of optic nerves head from the eye, through the flesh to the optic center in the brain, where each one has to find it's match for the eye to see. Without a code for them to follow, sight would be a rare crap shoot.
And here is the icing on the evolution cake:

"To suppose that the eye with all it's inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to difference distances, for admitting different amounts of light, AND for the CORRECTION of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by chance, seems, I freely confess, ABSURD IN THE HIGHEST DEGREE." ~ Charles Darwin

The hearing ear, and the seeing eye, the Lord hath made even both of them. Proverbs 20:12

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

However, what we do know is that everything that we see outside of earth seems to be sterile.

The rational, honest person then admits this statement is rather meaningless, given the near zero percentage of the universe we have actually "looked at", which is limited to two other planetary bodies.

 

[IsaacNewton]

Keep in mind, odds and probabilities are only predictions. You could pick up a penny and flip it a hundred times and get heads a hundred times. There is nothing to say an event needs billions of instances to produce something. One may have been enough, or fifty. It is most likely there were pools with trillions of amino acids floating around, which are produced naturally in the universe, where countless interactions could have occurred to produce self-replicating life.

But the point is it could have happened with the first interaction as easily as the trillionth. It may have taken one day or a million years of chemical reactions, bonds, broken bonds, reformed bonds, over and over. It may have happened and that life died the same day. The reactions continued until it happened again. All is possible. The only thing we know is at least one of the events led to a never ending self-replicating single prokaryote cell with no nucleus, just chemicals in an enclosed reaction that replicates itself.

DNA says you need billions of instances to produce something other than what is coded. DNA would have to make a mistake, and not self correct as it is coded to do, and then make the exact same mistake consistently, for millions of years to create new species. We would be walking on the bones of so many transitional missing links...
If you think DNA happened by chance then you don't understand the complexity of DNA. It is not that there are amino acids floating around, it is that they find the exact left handed ones that the code tells it to attach to, that you are leaving out of the scenario. All is not possible. DNA is specific. How would an amino acid know if it was right or left handed without a code to follow?

Take a working eye. Millions of optic nerves head from the brain toward the eye. Millions of optic nerves head from the eye, through the flesh to the optic center in the brain, where each one has to find it's match for the eye to see. Without a code for them to follow, sight would be a rare crap shoot.
And here is the icing on the evolution cake:

"To suppose that the eye with all it's inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to difference distances, for admitting different amounts of light, AND for the CORRECTION of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by chance, seems, I freely confess, ABSURD IN THE HIGHEST DEGREE." ~ Charles Darwin

.

The hearing ear, and the seeing eye, the Lord hath made even both of them. Proverbs 20:12

First off you are talking about evolution, not how life started. DNA doesn't have to continually mutate. One mutation that produces a benefit to the organism is all that is needed for it to change permentantly. And a simple search online will produce endless examples of how organisms radically changed over time and we have fossils documenting the change.

And arguing from the end is a classical fallacy. When things began they were far simpler. And you fail to grasp what I said. If you have trillions of amino acids in a water matrix and they interact they are likely to form bonds and break bonds at astronomical levels. But it could have been that the very first bonding created a viable life form. Odds and probabilities are only rough predictors. They are not even close to laws. You can drop a basketball from a helicopter and try to put it through a hoop 500 times before you do it. Or it could happen the first time.

As for the ridiculous eye theory we have abundant fossil progression from simple lumps of cells more sensitive to light than others that progress to more complex forms over millions of years.

Honestly people you need to get a degree or at least read something other than the Watch Tower or listen to Pat Robertson to get a real grasp on evidence for evolution and the origin of life.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

That defies all human and scientific logic in addition to the Laws of Physics.

It defies none of those things. In fact, intelligent design defies the laws of physics.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

As far as we know there is a finite universe. In any finite model unique things can exist.

And a person could technically run blindfolded across a shooting range or a busy interstate at rush hour and not get hurt. But it would be stupid to believe that would be the case, wouldn't it?

 

[IsaacNewton]

As far as we know there is a finite universe. In any finite model unique things can exist.

And a person could technically run blindfolded across a shooting range or a busy interstate at rush hour and not get hurt. But it would be stupid to believe that would be the case, wouldn't it?

Bizarre how people make statements like this "As far as we know there is a finite universe. In any finite model unique things can exist."

Drive down the road and see if you can find any two wheel designs that are the same.

 

[Flash]

However, what we do know is that everything that we see outside of earth seems to be sterile.

The rational, honest person then admits this statement is rather meaningless, given the near zero percentage of the universe we have actually "looked at", which is limited to two other planetary bodies.

When (if ever) we look at more then we may have a different opinion. Until then we only know what we know and right now we only know that there is life on earth.

 

[Flash]

As far as we know there is a finite universe. In any finite model unique things can exist.

And a person could technically run blindfolded across a shooting range or a busy interstate at rush hour and not get hurt. But it would be stupid to believe that would be the case, wouldn't it?

Statistics doesn't produce life, does it? Something else does. Right now we have no real idea what that is. We don't even know if the chemical and environmental conditions for life exist anywhere else in the universe besides earth.

We have been so brainwashed with science fiction that we automatically assume life is elsewhere although our science has yet to produce it.

In a finite universe unique things do exist. Earth could be the most unique planet in the entire universe for all we know.

I don't why people are so concerned about it. Unless there is some science out there that we have yet to discover we are never going to get out of our solar system to go star trekking across the universe. Probably not any further than Mars.

Space exploration is about economics as much as it is science. As long as we are concerned about welfare for soon to be 10 billion people on earth we are not going to have the resources to do much more than send some unmanned flights here and there. That worthless incompetent asshole Obama put the richest country on earth $10 trillion in additional debt so it will be a long time before we can spare the money to send people either back to the Moon or on to Mars, won't it?