Abiogenesis - The Impossible Theoretical Miracle

a reply to: cooperton

Of course they’re human. In Anthropology any member of the genus Homo is technically a human. Are you now going to try to convince me that H. Habilis is likewise just a minor morphological difference between them and modern HSS?

The bottom line though is that the European Heidelbergensis evolved into Meanserthal and Denisov. In fact, currently we refer to Heidelbergensis in europe as Proto-Neanderthal because there are in fact distinct morphological changes as well as genetic changes that differentiate them from all African Homos.

Your real issue seems to be more in how we define the various organisms. If it makes you feel
Better, I tend to look at the differentiations in members of our genus as a descriptor of the organism within the context of its geographical locus and its geological time frame. It doesn’t mean the organisms are the same as us, doesn’t mean they haven’t evolved though.

Do you have a citation for. Heidelbergensis crnial Capacity being 1250 cc? Because that’s new information for me and it doesn’t take away fro that fact that you straight out lied by including Denisovan CC as within certain ranges when we don’t have a single crania for comparison. That was intellectually dishonest at best.

Regardless of your Opinion, the genetic and morphological data shows that there is clear transition from Heidelbergensis to both Neanderthal and Denisovan

originally posted by: cooperton
according to "Homo heidelbergensis - Key physical features" (2017) the cranial capacity of the supposed H. Heidelbergensis is 1250 cubic centimeters - this falls in the range of 1200-1450 of the cranial capacity of an average human. The evidence speaks for itself, this thing was human.

Yes, hominids are considered HUMAN (that's what the homo genus means). They are humans, but aren't homo sapiens, though. Nice try.

They were all DIRECT quotes from the paper. But thanks for the excuses, as predicted.

Again, nothing in that paper did anything to refute abiogenesis or evolution. You guys completely cherry picked it and misrepresented it. The paper proved nothing about your position whatsoever. Look at the conclusion.

originally posted by: Barcs

They were all DIRECT quotes from the paper. But thanks for the excuses, as predicted.

Again, nothing in that paper did anything to refute abiogenesis or evolution. You guys completely cherry picked it and misrepresented it. The paper proved nothing about your position whatsoever. Look at the conclusion.

All statements within it are valid, otherwise they would have been removed during the peer-review process. Nothing was misrepresented. You simply don't like it, and you are the one cherry picking what is convenient in order to dismiss the rest of what is clearly written in the paper.

a reply to: Blue_Jay33

This analogy.
Is definitely a very bad one.
As most are.

Not that I have a horse in this particular race.
I think both sides are more arguing their preconceptions instead of any insight gained.

a reply to: vasaga

Could you kindly post the link to this paper again. I’d love to see what it is you find so compelling. Unless of course you’re attempting to swindle a deal from a straw man by utilizing the paper regarding the lead up to and potential cosmic or terrestrial causes of the Cambrian Explosion in lieu of actually discussing abiogenesis.

a reply to: vasaga

Reading through your posts, it looks like you're a classic example of people who understand zip about how science works.

First, the article is a general opinion article not backed by any particular experimental evidence. That doesn't invalidate the article. It only says that possibly new ideas and new opportunities will be taken into consideration which EXTEND the current knowledge, not necessarily INVALIDATE it. Astrobiology (as the article points out) is a case in point.

Second, much of the reference material cited in the article, which total over 100, contain experimental evidence upon which the current models are developed. Nowhere in the article do the authors refute hard evidence. What they suggest is that NEW EVIDENCE, based on NEW DISCOVERIES may alter the current models to reflect that new knowledge.

Third, and most important, the article is a very good example as to how new discoveries are made. First, there's an idea. Then, there's the experimental design. At the end of the process, the new evidence either confirms a previous model with additional evidence, refutes a previous model with contradicting evidence, or changes nothing at all.

This article is speculative. It's suggesting new lines of research still to be done.

The gang of 3 or 4 on this board who insist on the all-or-nothing model of science, have failed miserably to prove their points. they pick and choose that which suits their agenda, ignoring the big picture.

Science is discovery and evidence. That's it. There's nothing else to it. Either you have evidence or your don't. It builds on previous experimental evidence and takes remarkable turns along the way.

BTW, you failed to mention Appendix C in the paper - and no wonder, because it contradicts all your interpretations of the information therein. Let's take a look at it:

Appendix C.

Visualizing the causes and drivers of the history of life on earth implied by this paper (By co-author John A Schuster, Historian and Philosopher of Science, an authority on Descartes and the Copernican Revolution who did his PhD under Thomas S Kuhn).

“The foregoing paper implies a radical challenge to the present scientific consensus about the causes that are taken to explain the history of life on Earth.The presently accepted Darwinian mechanisms, related to best practice geological history of the Earth, are not questioned. They are, however, placed in a new set of relations to a wider theoretical nexus, grounded, on the one hand, in developments in astrophysics, then astrobiology since the original and ongoing contributions of Fred Hoyle and N. Chandra Wickramasinghe and their colleagues, and on the other hand, in the developments in virology and molecular biology, including, most importantly, the ongoing improvements in neo-Lamarckian models in molecular immunology developed by Edward J. Steele and various colleagues over the past forty years.

One may initially envision the nature and scope of the new synthesis on analogy to how differential equations describing known laws interact with the boundary conditions that need to be fed into them to produce concrete solutions. We may say that the normally agreed Darwinian processes, along with Steele's neo-Lamarckian ones, always operate on Earth. They are analogous to the routine equations or algorithms employed to describe a system. As to the boundary conditions applied to the equations in order to produce concrete solutions, we now have a radical new vision. There are shifting, unpredictable and, in geological terms, sudden astrobiological inputs. It is as though someone were insisting on changing the boundary conditions randomly from time to time.

The history of life on Earth becomes the temporal record of the outputs of the underlying Darwinian/neo Lamarckian mechanisms or equations as they have worked over time upon a concatenation of randomly timed, quickly and radically altered boundary conditions. At the time of a new astrobiological input, the state of life on Earth will have been the product of all previous workings of the fundamental mechanisms upon and through the sequence of previous astrobiological inputs. With a new input, the system will further evolve, based on the input, the mechanisms and the previously achieved state.

As the paper argues, the causal elements taken to be involved in biological evolution need to radically modified beyond the neo-Darwinian consensus.This is achieved by grasping and conceptually articulating to each other findings and models in previously widely disparate domains such as astrobiology and molecular immunology. The new synthesis suggests that the concrete history of life on Earth will necessarily reveal facts about, and mappings amongst, biological groupings significantly different from those imposed by reading the evidence solely in the light of Neo-Darwinism.

edit on 13-1-2019 by Phantom423 because: (no reason given)

Con't next post

edit on 13-1-2019 by Phantom423 because: (no reason given)

edit on 13-1-2019 by Phantom423 because: (no reason given)

edit on 13-1-2019 by Phantom423 because: (no reason given)

The last paragraph of Appendix C says it all:

Just as the promise of Nicholas Copernicus' first proposal in 1543 was only fully realized several generations later on the basis of Kepler's adducing of laws and possible causal mechanisms for planetary motion and Galileo's discovery of dramatic confirmatory empirical evidence, so the Hoyle-Wickramasinghe panspermia model can now be fleshed out and articulated by means of two generations of findings in astrobiology and molecular biology. In each case the initial claims were potentially revolutionary and quite brilliantly executed in themselves.

But in each case it was necessary for wider and deeper empirical and theoretical foundations to be laid under the original claim—foundations making use of factual and theoretical materials not necessarily available at the time of the founders' inaugural claims. Finally, let us take an even wider view and speculate about the kinds of challenges the new synthesis poses to a range of political, cultural and religious beliefs.

Revolutionary theories almost always have such a penumbra of wider consequences. The paper hints at this, without of course being able to enter into any detail. For example, amongst the wider scientifically literate public, the dominant popular versions of neo-Darwinism are threatened, along with the many cultural, philosophical and public policy claims that have been leveraged from it. For religious believers of all stripes, the new synthesis, even more than orthodox Darwinism, demystifies the history of life on Earth and embeds it in a history of cosmic events, that is, the history of the Universe at large.

Finally, as intellectual historians and historians of science have long recognized, there is a central question that has energized both biological and socio-political theorizing since the early 19th century; that is, even before Darwin. That question concerns ‘Man's place in nature’- where ‘nature’ meant ‘the immediate terrestrial environment’. The new synthesis re-invents and extends that question: We will now be inquiring about humankind's place in, and relations to, the entire cosmos, and, in particular, we will be viewing humankind's situation as the result of a concatenation of cosmic processes and events that have impacted the Earth in a decidedly ruptural and randomly causative manner. “ (Note: The Evolutionary Physiologist Denis Noble of Oxford has also used the argument from boundary and initial conditions (Chapter 6 of Dance to the Tune of Life (2017) and was first used first used in Noble (2011).

originally posted by: vasaga

originally posted by: Barcs

They were all DIRECT quotes from the paper. But thanks for the excuses, as predicted.

Again, nothing in that paper did anything to refute abiogenesis or evolution. You guys completely cherry picked it and misrepresented it. The paper proved nothing about your position whatsoever. Look at the conclusion.

All statements within it are valid, otherwise they would have been removed during the peer-review process. Nothing was misrepresented. You simply don't like it, and you are the one cherry picking what is convenient in order to dismiss the rest of what is clearly written in the paper.

Hilariously hypocritical considering I gave you that talkorigins link and it was completely ignored.

originally posted by: vasaga

originally posted by: Barcs

They were all DIRECT quotes from the paper. But thanks for the excuses, as predicted.

Again, nothing in that paper did anything to refute abiogenesis or evolution. You guys completely cherry picked it and misrepresented it. The paper proved nothing about your position whatsoever. Look at the conclusion.

All statements within it are valid, otherwise they would have been removed during the peer-review process. Nothing was misrepresented. You simply don't like it, and you are the one cherry picking what is convenient in order to dismiss the rest of what is clearly written in the paper.

I think they are saying that YOU are misrepresenting (or maybe misunderstanding) what the paper says by ignoring the context of the whole paper.

That is, the overall paper does not support your argument refuting evolution or abiogenesis.

originally posted by: peter vlar
a reply to: cooperton

the genetic and morphological data shows that there is clear transition from Heidelbergensis to both Neanderthal and Denisovan

Please listen to this appeal to logic. The half-life of DNA in bones is 521 years. This means that in less than 3,674 years, the DNA fragments will be less than 1% of the original DNA left from the organism. So this seems silly that there is substantial genetic data on these samples if they are older than 3,674 years old. The intuitive truth is that these samples are less than 3,674 years old, considering the amount of DNA retrievable from their remains.

"Here we determine an almost complete mitochondrial genome sequence of a hominin from Sima de los Huesos"
(Source - Nature 2014)

Do you have a citation for. Heidelbergensis crnial Capacity being 1250 cc?

The source was:
"Homo heidelbergensis - Key physical features". (2017) Australian Museum.

originally posted by: Box of Rain

originally posted by: vasaga

originally posted by: Barcs

They were all DIRECT quotes from the paper. But thanks for the excuses, as predicted.

Again, nothing in that paper did anything to refute abiogenesis or evolution. You guys completely cherry picked it and misrepresented it. The paper proved nothing about your position whatsoever. Look at the conclusion.

All statements within it are valid, otherwise they would have been removed during the peer-review process. Nothing was misrepresented. You simply don't like it, and you are the one cherry picking what is convenient in order to dismiss the rest of what is clearly written in the paper.

I think they are saying that YOU are misrepresenting (or maybe misunderstanding) what the paper says by ignoring the context of the whole paper.

That is, the overall paper does not support your argument refuting evolution or abiogenesis.

Oh really? I know what the point of paper is. They are saying abiogenesis is a failure, and basically that space bacteria and viruses are both the origin of life here on earth, and drivers of evolution here on earth. Here's a quote from the abstract;

life may have been seeded here on Earth by life-bearing comets as soon as conditions on Earth allowed it to flourish (about or just before 4.1 Billion years ago); and living organisms such as space-resistant and space-hardy bacteria, viruses, more complex eukaryotic cells, fertilised ova and seeds have been continuously delivered ever since to Earth so being one important driver of further terrestrial evolution which has resulted in considerable genetic diversity and which has led to the emergence of mankind.

In other words, abiogenesis is a failure in explaining the origin of life here on earth, and the current evolutionary perspective is also a failure in explaining the emergence of mankind.

Also note that I am capable of explaining things in my own words, rather than repeating mantras with nice fancy words to pretend that I know what I'm talking about. But for the record, I will re-quote the relevant parts of the paper regarding abiogenesis. I am not misrepresenting anything.

The continuing antagonism to the panspermic implications of Pasteur's dictum led the way to the emergence of the dominant biological paradigm - abiogenesis in a primordial soup. The latter idea was developed at a time when the earliest living cells were considered to be exceedingly simple structures that could subsequently evolve in a Darwinian way. These ideas should of course have been critically examined and rejected after the discovery of the exceedingly complex molecular structures involved in proteins and in DNA. But this did not happen. Modern ideas of abiogenesis in hydrothermal vents or elsewhere on the primitive Earth have developed into sophisticated conjectures with little or no evidential support.

Even if we concede that the dominant neo-Darwinian paradigm of natural selection can explain aspects of the evolutionary history of life once life gets started, independent abiogenesis on the cosmologically diminutive scale of oceans, lakes or hydrothermal vents remains a hypothesis with no empirical support and is moreover unnecessary and redundant.

A facile criticism that is often leveled against the cosmic life theory is that it does not solve the problem of life's origin, but merely transfers it elsewhere (Appendix A). Whilst this may be true in the strictest sense, the importance of knowing whether or not life originated, or could have done so de novo, in the most minuscule of cosmic environments (here on Earth) as against the cosmos as a whole is a scientific question of paramount importance and one that needs to be addressed. The cosmic theory of life that extends the interactive biosphere of all life to encompass a cosmological volume connecting all habitable niches in the Universe has profound ramifications within evolutionary biology itself. Some of these ramifications will emerge in other sections of this article, and see the further extended discussion of view-points on the origin of life per se in the Universe in the supplementary information, Appendix A.

The transformation of an ensemble of appropriately chosen biological monomers (e.g. amino acids, nucleotides) into a primitive living cell capable of further evolution appears to require overcoming an information hurdle of superastronomical proportions (Appendix A), an event that could not have happened within the time frame of the Earth except, we believe, as a miracle (Hoyle and Wickramasinghe, 1981, 1982, 2000). All laboratory experiments attempting to simulate such an event have so far led to dismal failure (Deamer, 2011; Walker and Wickramasinghe, 2015).

At this stage of our scientific understanding we need to place on hold the issue of life's actual biochemical origins - where, when and how may be too difficult to solve on the current evidence. The current paper is focused on the evidence for an all pervasive Cosmic Biology and its effects on the emergence of life on Earth and its further evolution. Certainly all attempts at abiogenesis in the laboratory on Earth have been unsuccessful. It is many orders of magnitude more likely that it emerged in one of the trillions of comet-like incubators or water-bearing planets (cosmic-wide versions of Darwin's 'warm little ponds') at a very early time in the growth of this Universe, perhaps 12 Billion years ago (Wickramasinghe, 2015a) which then went on to infect via knock-on effects other life-favourable sites (planets, moons, comets) throughout that Galaxy and then in an interconnected and interactive way throughout the Cosmos as the Universe expanded.

With the rapidly increasing number of exoplanets that have been discovered in the habitable zones of long-lived red dwarf stars (Gillon et al., 2016), the prospects for genetic exchanges between life-bearing Earth-like planets cannot be ignored. In our view the idea of life emerging de novo in multiple locations through a process of in situ abiogenesis appears far-fetched and merely compounds the difficulty of a single origination on the Earth.

Source:
www.sciencedirect.com...

That people still cling unto abiogenesis is their business. It is a failed hypothesis.

Anyone here, ask yourself. Are you capable of being honest with yourself, or will you hold on dearly to outdated beliefs? This paper is from August 2018.

originally posted by: Phantom423
*stuff*

You know what's funny? How the likes of you are constantly hammering on everyone else that abiogenesis and evolution are two completely different things that should not be confused. The paper is obviously criticizing abiogenesis, what this thread is actually about, and you are spamming quotes regarding evolution.

Hypocrisy at its best. Apparently that's what gets people stars on here.

originally posted by: Barcs

originally posted by: vasaga

originally posted by: Barcs

They were all DIRECT quotes from the paper. But thanks for the excuses, as predicted.

Again, nothing in that paper did anything to refute abiogenesis or evolution. You guys completely cherry picked it and misrepresented it. The paper proved nothing about your position whatsoever. Look at the conclusion.

All statements within it are valid, otherwise they would have been removed during the peer-review process. Nothing was misrepresented. You simply don't like it, and you are the one cherry picking what is convenient in order to dismiss the rest of what is clearly written in the paper.

Hilariously hypocritical considering I gave you that talkorigins link and it was completely ignored.

The difference is that I quoted exactly what was relevant. You simply spam the same link without any reference point or context. I can also tell you, go read X book and prove one thing wrong. You're not going to do it, and your not doing it doesn't somehow invalidate your position. That is a shaming tactic, not an argument.

a reply to: vasaga

You never read the paper you cited. It's so obvious any idiot could see that. I responded to your "analysis" in another post. I'm sure you won't read that either.

originally posted by: Phantom423
a reply to: vasaga

You never read the paper you cited. It's so obvious any idiot could see that. I responded to your "analysis" in another post. I'm sure you won't read that either.

What kind of stupid accusation is that? If I didn't, how did I quote so many things? Stop grasping at straws in an attempt to shame. It's pathetic.

a reply to: vasaga

You only read that which represented your agenda. You failed to recognize the context and purpose of the article. That's why you did not read the article. Appendix C explains the context in detail. You didn't read it.

Lord help us if you did read it and failed to understand its intent. That would point to a degree of ignorance only superceded by a few on this board.

originally posted by: Phantom423
a reply to: vasaga

You only read that which represented your agenda. You failed to recognize the context and purpose of the article. That's why you did not read the article. Appendix C explains the context in detail. You didn't read it.

Lord help us if you did read it and failed to understand its intent. That would point to a degree of ignorance only superceded by a few on this board.

The purpose is to say that abiogenesis experiments failed and that we need to look at life on originating from outer space.

You simply refuse to admit that you had a huge blunder by quoting things from an appendix that basically says the paper does not tackle or challenge evolution theory. We are talking about abiogenesis here. You know, the two things you love to say are two different things. But now that it's convenient you want to smear them over each other to pretend they're the same thing in order to try and save face, and to pretend that I didn't do something that I obviously did.

But keep being hypocritical. It shows everyone here your true colors.

a reply to: vasaga

Certainly all attempts at abiogenesis in the laboratory on Earth have been unsuccessful

And let me say this about that comment: Because something hasn't happened yet doesn't mean that it will never happen. Leonardo da Vinci speculated and drew pictures of flying machines. Everyone thought he was nuts. That was then - this is now. As I said in a previous post, you haven't a clue how science works. But the next time you get on a commercial airplane remember: "And they said it couldn't be done!!"

No one thought that dinosaurs could fly. But low and behold we have birds that evolved from dinosaurs. I even have proof: Cooperton's pet dinosaur doesn't fly, but as I pointed out to him at Thanksgiving, at the market in the poultry department was clear evidence that dinosaurs can fly!




Of course, he was astounded and immediately admitted that dinosaurs can fly. I don't know what happened to his pet dinosaur though. I hope it didn't wind up in a market poultry department.

a reply to: vasaga

Wrong again. Read the Appendix in full. It says no such thing.

originally posted by: Phantom423
a reply to: vasaga

And let me say this about that comment: Because something hasn't happened yet doesn't mean that it will never happen.

Leonardo da Vinci speculated and drew pictures of flying machines. Everyone thought he was nuts. That was then - this is now. As I said in a previous post, you haven't a clue how science works. But the next time you get on a commercial airplane remember: "And they said it couldn't be done!!"

No one thought that dinosaurs could fly. But low and behold we have birds that evolved from dinosaurs. I even have proof: Cooperton's pet dinosaur doesn't fly, but as I pointed out to him at Thanksgiving, at the market in the poultry department was clear evidence that dinosaurs can fly!

Of course, he was astounded and immediately admitted that dinosaurs can fly. I don't know what happened to his pet dinosaur though. I hope it didn't wind up in a market poultry department.

Yeah, it doesn't mean that it will happen either. At this point it simply isn't there, so there is no reason to believe it. Isn't that the argument you love to use against a God? That there is no evidence and thus there's no reason to believe in it? What if I would tell you "Because something hasn't happened yet doesn't mean that it will never happen". Yeah I bet you'd love that argument being used against you for a God, right? You'd give it the exact same validity as you're giving that exact same sentence now in the different context, right? RIGHT?

originally posted by: Phantom423
a reply to: vasaga

Wrong again. Read the Appendix in full. It says no such thing.

Show me anything from the article saying that earthly abiogenesis is at least reasonable.