Abiogenesis and Probabilities

[DrNoGods]

I'm creating a new thread here to continue debate on a post made by EarthScience guy on another thread (Science and Religion > Artificial life: can it be created?, post 17). This post challenged probability calculations in an old Talkorigins article that I had linked in that thread:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/abioprob.html

Are the arguments (on creationist views) and probabilities presented reasonable in the Talkorigins article? If not, why not?

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to DrNoGods in post #0]

And we know that is most definitely not how it happened. So not sure what this comment is meant to support.

That is your opinion but you have yet to show how abiogenesis could have happened. Because even if your argument that 20 amino acids should be used instead of the 500. Ian said that the amino acids would have to be replicating and that means that you would have to have enzymes. The smallest enzyme is like a chain of 68 amino acids. That would mean the odds would jump up to 1 in 20^100 or 1 in E130. You should have stayed with the 500.

If you think accretion can happen in a constantly accelerating environment then why are the chunks in Saturn rings getting smaller instead of larger?

The particles that make up Saturn's rings are in orbit around Saturn, so their acceleration (towards the planet) is perpendicular to their velocity which stays constant (for a circular orbit). What do you think would happen if some of the particles clumped together to make a large enough body that its own gravity could attract other particles (ie. accretion)? Saturn has several "shepard moons" including Prometheus, Daphnis, Pan, Janus and Epimetheus, as do other planets. If the particles are all orbiting at a roughly constant velocity (as they are for Saturn's rings), then accretion is certainly possible. Come back in a few hundred million years and see if they look like they do now.

You evaded the question but that is alright your article tells us.

Could a time-traveling astronomer have seen the rings 100 million years ago? One indicator for the age of the rings is their dustiness. Objects exposed to the dust permeating our solar system for long periods of time grow dustier and darker.

They would get dustier. Meaning smaller particles not coming together. But if you can figure out how to make chunks of rock to cling together in an accelerating environment, you can write that up and maybe get a Noble Prize. No are you not glad you talked to the Earth Science guy.

Volcanic activity gives off mostly H2O. Without an ozone layer, the H2O would have been quickly turned into hydrogen and oxygen. I am not sure where you are getting elemental nitrogen from not from volcanoes.
"Mostly" H2O, but they also belch out significant amounts of CO2, SO2, H2S, NH3 and a slew of other gases. Photodissociation of H2O in the atmosphere is mainly at UV wavelengths between 175 - 200 nm, and produces mostly H + OH, not O2 (the Lyman Alpha wavelength at 121.6 nm produces H2 + O). You can run an electrical discharge through liquid H2O and make H2 and O2, but that is a different mechanism. The Sun is not going to dissociate all of the H2O from volcanoes whether an ozone layer is present or not. In fact, it is O2 and not O3, that absorbs stronger below 200 nm where H2O is photodissociated (see Fig. 1):

I do not even get your point. You just agreed with me that UV light dissociates water. But that is not the only problem you have with your theory. UV light also dissociates CO2 into elemental oxygen. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1257156

I didn't say elemental nitrogen (N), but N2 (gas phase stable nitrogen), and it didn't have to come directly from volcanoes. Photodissociation of NH3 can make N2:

No you did not say that the Argonne paper you cited said that N2 had to be present. So are you trying to tell me that NH3 is going to photodissociate faster than oxygen when there is more water and carbon dioxide released during a volcanic eruption than ammonia? Can you explain to me the mechanism on how that would be the case?

https://www.universetoday.com/26659/ear ... tmosphere/
Although life formed just a few hundred million years later, it wasn’t until the evolution of bacteria 3.3 billion years ago that really changed the early Earth atmosphere into the one we know today.

So your self-replicating polypeptide and the enzymes that are needed to self replicate. In which the smallest is around 68 and the ones that actually are used for self-replication like ligase are a chain of 487 amino acids. So that means the odds would be 1/20^(487+32 = 519) or 1 in 1E675. Really ludicrous does not even do justice to odds like that.

and since N2 is chemically stable it will hang around and eventually accumulate over long periods of time.

Yeah, but there would be a whole lot more O2 being produced.

But plenty of N2. Those are obviously estimates with no decimal points, and there are sources for O2 that aren't volcanic.

I am assuming you mean N2 not O2. What would those sources be.

And when did these "shields" form relative to when the atmosphere was oxygenated? When, exactly, did the Canadian shield form? Was it less than 2.5 billion years ago?

The Canadian Shield contains some of the oldest rocks on Earth. In 2008, researchers estimated rock found on the northern shore of Hudson Bay, 40 km south of Inukjuak, to be 4.28 billion years old. Its age means the rock was created approximately 300million years after the formation of Earth. Previously, the oldest rocks in the world were thought to be southeast of Great Bear Lake, in the Northwest Territories. These rocks were estimated to be 4 billion years old. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/ ... cle/shield

His theory is always supported when discoveries are made.

From Walts Book:

Why Do Comets have so Much Carbon Dioxide?
Carbon dioxide (CO2), normally a gas, becomes a solid, called dry ice, when its temperature drops below -109°F. (-78.5°C.). Most of us have been fascinated watching vapor clouds of CO2 gas billowing off dry ice when its surface temperature is warmer than -109°F. Comet material not in the direct sunlight is much colder, so almost all cometary CO2 is dry ice. What little is exposed to direct sunlight, especially near perihelion, quickly vaporizes (sublimates) into the emptiness of space, as we see with clouds of CO2 gas still billowing off Comet Hartley 2 in Figure 191 on page 348. Obviously, Comet Hartley 2 is young; it cannot be billions of years old. That raises several questions, “Why do comets have volatile dry ice on their surfaces,49 and what is the source of all that CO2?” Gases disperse in the vacuum of outer space; they do not migrate into comets.

We have shown in “The Origin of Limestone” chapter on pages 258– 265 that when limestone precipitated in the subterranean water chamber, CO2 gas was given off. So for centuries before the flood, more and more CO2 was dissolved in the subterranean waters that were later launched from Earth by the fountains of the great deep as the flood began. Today, some of that CO2 is still dissolved in the ice that makes up most of a comet. However, as that ice evaporates when the comet is near perihelion, CO2 is released into the comet’s atmosphere (its coma). Some CO2 drifts into the shadows and onto the comet’s nighttime side, where it quickly freezes and settles back onto the comet’s surface as dry ice. Mysteries solved.

From space.com

The nucleus is the solid core of a comet consisting of frozen molecules including water, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, methane and ammonia as well as other inorganic and organic molecules — dust.

We have already shown that UV light dissociation all of these compounds so how are they in a comet.

Those are ages are for those that believe in deep time. Deep time theory states that granite should not be formed according to your articles.
You're misinterpreting the articles.

How would I be misinterpreting the article? Care to share.

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to EarthScienceguy in post #41]

That is your opinion but you have yet to show how abiogenesis could have happened.

Then we're even ... you've yet to show that gods exist or that the biblical creation story is anything but fiction. However, we do know that Earth (or any of the other planets in our solar system) did not start out as balls of H2O. Humphreys tried to use that for his crazy planetary magnetic field "theory", but it is nonsense.

But if you can figure out how to make chunks of rock to cling together in an accelerating environment, you can write that up and maybe get a Noble Prize.

Did you miss the part about the acceleration vector pointing towards the planet while the ring particles are moving perpendicular to that vector at roughly constant velocity? I may win a "Noble" Prize one day, but certainly not a Nobel Prize, because a group of particles within a ring are not accelerating relative to each other. They can easily clump together if the conditions were right, without any consideration of their acceleration vector as they are all moving at similar (constant) velocities in a direction perpendicular to their acceleration vector.

I do not even get your point. You just agreed with me that UV light dissociates water. But that is not the only problem you have with your theory. UV light also dissociates CO2 into elemental oxygen.

Wavelengths matter. Below 200 nm (where H2O photodissociates) light is absorbed srtongly by O2 even if no O3 were present. You had commented that UV light would dissociate all of the H2O without an ozone (O3) layer present. This is not the case. What UV wavelengths photodissociate CO2?

No you did not say that the Argonne paper you cited said that N2 had to be present. So are you trying to tell me that NH3 is going to photodissociate faster than oxygen when there is more water and carbon dioxide released during a volcanic eruption than ammonia? Can you explain to me the mechanism on how that would be the case?

You cited an article giving 97% CO2 and 3% N2, and I was referring that that N2. I didn't say NH3 would photodissociate faster than O2, but that it can and does photodissociate and form stable N2 which will accumulate over time. We have lots of O2 and H2O in the atmosphere now at all altitudes. We have very little NH3 in the atmosphere. Why is that? Here's a good primer on photochemistry in the atmosphere:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/ea ... ssociation

Yeah, but there would be a whole lot more O2 being produced.

But look at the present composition of the atmosphere (about 78% N2 and 21% O2, with H2O, CO2, Ar, etc. making the balance). Are you arguing that there was a lot of O2 in the Earth's atmosphere prior to 2.5 billion years ago? If so, where did it come from?

https://scijinks.gov/atmosphere-formation/

We have already shown that UV light dissociation all of these compounds so how are they in a comet.

You tell me. Photodissociation isn't an all-or-nothing process, and it depends heavily on wavelength. "UV" covers a pretty wide range and you have to be specific as to which wavelengths apply to which molecules. Amino acids have, in fact, been found in comets and meteorites:

https://www.space.com/33011-life-buildi ... comet.html

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/50- ... uter-space

They clearly were not destroyed by UV light.

How would I be misinterpreting the article? Care to share.

That comment related to granite being formed (or not) long ago. You claimed that it should not form, but there is plenty of evidence that it did form and lots of it.

https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Granite

https://sites.williams.edu/geos101/new- ... e-history/

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to Bradskii in post #0]

What? No, it's 100 changes per generation. I only used 'changes per year' to show you how that converts to a timeline of 3.5 million years. There's no such thing as a 'change per year'. You only get changes per generation.

You are the one the said 10 per year. But it really does not matter.

Evolutionists actually do express the number of nucleotide site changes per year because of Kimura's Neutral Theory of Evolution like Wen-Hsing and Graur did in their text The Fundamentals of Molecular Evolution 1991 pg 84. "Comparing the DNA of humans and Chimpanzees shows that on average the differences would require 1.3E-9 substitutions per site per year." This substitution rate would require 4.55 neutral mutations per year. A progeny receives all the mutations from the sperm and the egg so it would experience 9.1 neutral mutations per year if we assume that all the mutations are neutral. Therefore in a human-like species with a 20 year generation time, each progeny would receive over 182 new mutations. Kimura in his book The Neutral Theory of Molecular Evolution pg. 199, 210, 212, 296 and 321, and King and Jukes in an article they wrote for Science magazine entitled "Non-Darwinian Evolution" science vol 164 p 788-798 and Bradskii all say that deleterious mutations are more numerous than non deleterious mutations. Kimura, King, and Jukes say that deleterious mutations are ten times more likely to be definitely harmful than neutral. I am not sure what Bradskii says. So that means that either every generation 164 deleterious mutations were added to the genetic load or 1638 deleterious mutations were added to the genetic load every generation. However, it is you want to look at it.

And they are random. And mostly deleterious. A few are neutral and a very few are advantageous. And that's where natural selection comes in. And we're not talking about a single line of descent. We are talking of hundreds of thousands. So even small changes will propagate through any given population if the conditions are right. And any extant species (such as us) will have obviously experienced suitable conditions.

Yes, you are quoting "Neutral theory". Kimura was the maker of neutral theory and that is why they express the substitution rate in the units that they do and 90% of those substitutions are going to be deleterious.

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to DrNoGods in post #0]

Then we're even ...

I am good with even. Faith in whatever it is you believe in is what tips the scales one way or the other.

Did you miss the part about the acceleration vector pointing towards the planet while the ring particles are moving perpendicular to that vector at roughly constant velocity? I may win a "Noble" Prize one day, but certainly not a Nobel Prize, because a group of particles within a ring are not accelerating relative to each other. They can easily clump together if the conditions were right, without any consideration of their acceleration vector as they are all moving at similar (constant) velocities in a direction perpendicular to their acceleration vector.

F=ma If you have an acceleration vector that means there is a force being applied on all the particles that the acceleration vector is affecting. Now in the case of particles in orbit, the force is causing the particles to move in a circular orbit around the planet. There can be a change in velocity if there is a change in magnitude or direction. Now in the case of particles in orbit, they are constantly changing direction because of the circular orbit they are in. So by definition, an object in orbit around a body has to be accelerating around the body.

Wavelengths matter. Below 200 nm (where H2O photodissociates) light is absorbed strongly by O2 even if no O3 were present. You had commented that UV light would dissociate all of the H2O without an ozone (O3) layer present. This is not the case. What UV wavelengths photodissociate CO2?

So UV light would dissociate water with or without an ozone layer present. The sun gives off the entire electromagnetic spectrum so it really does not matter what wavelengths of light dissociates CO2 because the sun is going to admit it and there is going to be nothing in the earth's atmosphere to stop it.

You cited an article giving 97% CO2 and 3% N2, and I was referring that that N2. I didn't say NH3 would photodissociate faster than O2, but that it can and does photodissociate and form stable N2 which will accumulate over time. We have lots of O2 and H2O in the atmosphere now at all altitudes. We have very little NH3 in the atmosphere. Why is that? Here's a good primer on photochemistry in the atmosphere:

Because volcanoes emit very little if any ammonia today.

But look at the present composition of the atmosphere (about 78% N2 and 21% O2, with H2O, CO2, Ar, etc. making the balance). Are you arguing that there was a lot of O2 in the Earth's atmosphere prior to 2.5 billion years ago? If so, where did it come from?

Then we're even ...

I am good with even. Faith in whatever it is you believe in is what tips the scales one way or the other.

Depends on what you believe.

You tell me. Photodissociation isn't an all-or-nothing process, and it depends heavily on wavelength. "UV" covers a pretty wide range and you have to be specific as to which wavelengths apply to which molecules. Amino acids have, in fact, been found in comets and meteorites:

I know that is exactly what Walt Brown predicted over 30 years ago.

They clearly were not destroyed by UV light.

No, they were not because they were recently put there during Noah's flood. Exactly like Walt Brown's theory predicted.

How would I be misinterpreting the article? Care to share.
That comment related to granite being formed (or not) long ago. You claimed that it should not form, but there is plenty of evidence that it did form and lots of it.

I was claiming that the granite was formed with oxygen at the very creation of the Earth.

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to Bradskii in post #0]

incidentally, the genetic differences between any two individual humans is already 0.1%. According to you, it seems there's a 3.5 million year difference between my wife and myself. I should maybe check her date of birth.

No ... a SNP is a mutation. It is just a change in one base (A, G, C or T) along DNA rather than multiple changes. But both are technically mutations.

And they are random. And mostly deleterious. A few are neutral and a very few are advantageous. And that's where natural selection comes in. And we're not talking about a single line of descent. We are talking of hundreds of thousands.

If you all want to have a SNP mutation as part of evolution then there are consequences for that. That means out of the 3.5 million differences 3.15 million would be deleterious or 31 million would be deleterious because 90% of all mutations are harmful. If this were true that would the genetic load would be tremendous. One of the reasons not to marry a cousin besides just being plain gross is the genetic load that it produces is too great and children end up with all kinds of genetic disorders like in the Amish community that does allow people to marry cousins. All kinds of studies are done in the Amish community because of this.

So even small changes will propagate through any given population if the conditions are right. And any extant species (such as us) will have obviously experienced suitable conditions

.

They will propagate through a population but it takes an average of 300 generations per gene substitution. (Brues, A.M Genetic Load and its Varieties," Science Vol 164; Crow and Kimura "An introduction to population Genetics Theory" Pg 244-252; Grant The Evolutionary process: A Critical Review of Evolutionary Theory: Merrell Ecological Genetics) It still means that human evolution from Ape to man would take 10 billion years. Evolution is a fairy tale.

[JoeyKnothead]

...
...
Evolution is a fairy tale.

It never fails to amuse me when a creationist calls evolution a "fairy tale".

The lack of self awareness wobbles the mind.

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to JoeyKnothead in post #46]

The lack of self awareness wobbles the mind

It seems like you believe that the fairy tale of evolution is true. Do you care to share what you are basing your belief in?

[Diagoras]

[Replying to DrNoGods in post #0]

Did you miss the part about the acceleration vector pointing towards the planet while the ring particles are moving perpendicular to that vector at roughly constant velocity? I may win a "Noble" Prize one day, but certainly not a Nobel Prize, because a group of particles within a ring are not accelerating relative to each other. They can easily clump together if the conditions were right, without any consideration of their acceleration vector as they are all moving at similar (constant) velocities in a direction perpendicular to their acceleration vector.

F=ma If you have an acceleration vector that means there is a force being applied on all the particles that the acceleration vector is affecting. Now in the case of particles in orbit, the force is causing the particles to move in a circular orbit around the planet. There can be a change in velocity if there is a change in magnitude or direction. Now in the case of particles in orbit, they are constantly changing direction because of the circular orbit they are in. So by definition, an object in orbit around a body has to be accelerating around the body.

<bolding mine>

They are not constantly changing direction to each other - I think that's the point that DrNoGods was making.

The real irony here is that you're bringing up 'constantly changing direction' as somehow relevant to a thread about 'Abiogenesis and Probabilities'!

[Miles]

[Replying to JoeyKnothead in post #46]

The lack of self awareness wobbles the mind

It seems like you believe that the fairy tale of evolution is true. Do you care to share what you are basing your belief in?

Unless you believe Noah had pretty much two of every species, M & F, aboard the ark, which would total around 17.4 million individuals, give or take 2.6 million*, there would have had to be a whole lot of evolution going on after he landed. And all within a couple thousand years or so. So, no matter how you cook the Bible's books you're left with explaining the currently enormous diversity of life on Earth. Either god again plopping down another 20,000,000 species on Earth around 2348 BC. Or evolution racing along at break-neck speed.

* and this is just counting the eukaryotes. It doesn't take into account the billions and perhaps even a trillion** microbial species that would have needed a berth aboard the boat.

** source


.

[JoeyKnothead]

[Replying to JoeyKnothead in post #46]

The lack of self awareness wobbles the mind

It seems like you believe that the fairy tale of evolution is true. Do you care to share what you are basing your belief in?

I believe when a creationist declares evolution a "fairy tale", as you do, that's amusing.
I believe the lack of self awareness there wobbles the mind.

Evolution's a fact, your protesting ain't gonna make that fact magically go away.