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?

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to BeHereNow in post #90]

One of these beliefs is that all things are possible.
Science must share this belief.
If in the dogma of science there were a belief that many things were impossible, that would be a conflict, that does not exist.

Why must science share a belief that all things are possible? It is currently accepted (by science) that nothing having a nonzero rest mass can travel at, or above, the (vacuum) speed of light. That is, this is impossible based on the current understanding of physics (reaching the speed of light for anything with mass would require an infinite amount of energy). This is a "belief" of science that is supported by observations.

For example, we can experimentally determine that it does take increasing amounts of energy to move something a given increment in velocity, and this quantitatively agrees with Special (and General) Relativity and all of the many experiments done in high energy particle colliders which can accelerate tiny particles to 99.9999991% of the speed of light:

https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/articl ... n-collider

The energy density that it takes to get tiny protons (mass only 1.67e-27 kg) to those speeds is tremendous, and is quantitatively consistent with Special Relativity developed by Einstein in 1905. In the 116 years since, it still stands. I doubt there are any real scientists who currently believe the speed of light can be exceeded by anything having a rest mass, but if in the future that is proven to be wrong, science will have to adapt. This is just one example of many where there is no conflict if science "believes" something to be impossible.

[BeHereNow]

[Replying to benchwarmer in post #90]
This happens to express my claim very well.

Source – Waking Times

by Elva Thompson, February 10th, 2020

The 10 dogmas (of science) are:

1. The assumption that Nature is mechanical, or machine-like. Animals are machines, plants are machines and we are machines, our brains being the equivalent of genetically programmed computers.

2. Matter is unconscious. The Universe, Nature, our bodies, are all made of unconscious matter. For some strange reason our brains became conscious, and that is a major problem for materialist science. Consciousness should not exist.

3. The laws of Nature are fixed, from the Big Bang (the first explosion!) until the end of time when all dissolves back into nothing.

4. Nature is purposeless. There are no purposes in animals, in plants and in Life as a whole.

The entire evolutionary process has no purpose, other than self-increase and survival. It has all come about by blind chance.

5. The total amount of matter and energy is always the same. Again, ever since the Big Bang until the end of time.

6. Biological inheritance is only material, it is all genetic or epigenetic.

7. Memories are stored as material traces inside the brain. All your memories are inside your head, stored in nerve endings or phosphor related proteins. No-one knows how, but the assumption is that they are all in the brain.

8. Your mind is inside your head, it is only an aspect of the electrical activity of the brain.

9. All psychic phenomena is illusory. It appears to exist, but it doesn’t. The mind is inside the head and cannot have any effect on the outside world.

10. Mechanistic medicine is the only kind that truly works. Alternative and complementary therapies may appear to work, but that’s only because people have got well anyway, or it’s due to the placebo effect.

But these dogmas are not facts, though they are treated as such, they are merely assumptions. Also, they have only come about in the last 200 years. But they are accepted as real because of the seeming success of technology, and people are generally content to live by their rules as it appears to make their lives a lot easier and more comfortable. Plus, it generates vast amounts of revenue in this materialistic system. It is easier for people not to question, to leave that to the so-called experts, so they can get on with enjoying their toys and frivolous distractions.

[benchwarmer]

[Replying to benchwarmer in post #90]
This happens to express my claim very well.

Source – Waking Times

by Elva Thompson, February 10th, 2020

The 10 dogmas (of science) are:

Well, it may express your claim, but it does nothing to support it like I asked for.

So, you are getting the "dogmas of science" from what appears to be an anti-science rant site? This is like pointing to an anti-Christian site that claims to know the 'dogmas of Christianity'. I was asking for scientific sources. You know, "from the horses mouth" and all. Just like I would expect a Christian to pull from the Bible or church published doctrine. Hilarious.

Do you know what scientific peer review is? Do you know what it's for?

About the only 'dogma' of science there actually is, is that one must employ the scientific method such that others can reproduce your results (see peer review question above). Beyond that there is no 'dogma'. At any point if we observe something that doesn't fit your list of 'dogma' science will happily take the new information on board and adjust. Compare that to religious dogma that is fixed and unmovable (well, at least until a new denomination splits off and asserts a new dogma).

Though I rarely like to do the opposing side's homework, in this case I did find the following which is at least interesting. THIS is the kind of stuff I expect when I ask for scientific references.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Scientific Method
First published Fri Nov 13, 2015; substantive revision Tue Jun 1, 2021
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-method/

The above is an interesting study of the scientific method itself. If one wants to claim scientists 'follow' anything, it would behoove one to seek information from those involved in the process.

[Swami]

[Replying to benchwarmer in post #90]
This happens to express my claim very well.

Source – Waking Times

by Elva Thompson, February 10th, 2020

The 10 dogmas (of science) are:

1. The assumption that Nature is mechanical, or machine-like. Animals are machines, plants are machines and we are machines, our brains being the equivalent of genetically programmed computers.

2. Matter is unconscious. The Universe, Nature, our bodies, are all made of unconscious matter. For some strange reason our brains became conscious, and that is a major problem for materialist science. Consciousness should not exist.

3. The laws of Nature are fixed, from the Big Bang (the first explosion!) until the end of time when all dissolves back into nothing.

4. Nature is purposeless. There are no purposes in animals, in plants and in Life as a whole.

The entire evolutionary process has no purpose, other than self-increase and survival. It has all come about by blind chance.

5. The total amount of matter and energy is always the same. Again, ever since the Big Bang until the end of time.

6. Biological inheritance is only material, it is all genetic or epigenetic.

7. Memories are stored as material traces inside the brain. All your memories are inside your head, stored in nerve endings or phosphor related proteins. No-one knows how, but the assumption is that they are all in the brain.

8. Your mind is inside your head, it is only an aspect of the electrical activity of the brain.

9. All psychic phenomena is illusory. It appears to exist, but it doesn’t. The mind is inside the head and cannot have any effect on the outside world.

10. Mechanistic medicine is the only kind that truly works. Alternative and complementary therapies may appear to work, but that’s only because people have got well anyway, or it’s due to the placebo effect.

But these dogmas are not facts, though they are treated as such, they are merely assumptions. Also, they have only come about in the last 200 years. But they are accepted as real because of the seeming success of technology, and people are generally content to live by their rules as it appears to make their lives a lot easier and more comfortable. Plus, it generates vast amounts of revenue in this materialistic system. It is easier for people not to question, to leave that to the so-called experts, so they can get on with enjoying their toys and frivolous distractions.

Materialism emphasizes the objects of the Universe. It even tries to make the subject into the object. It says the subject is unreliable so it tries to use objects to probe other objects. Do these objects have a mind of their own? Where did the concept of materialism come from, if not a subject? How do we even know that objects exists beyond a subject?

The topic here is the origins of life.

I have spent decades looking to Western science to answer these questions and it has offered nothing. The problem is not a lack of knowledge but rather it is a problem of approach. Eastern philosophy shows that the answers to these questions do not start by looking out there. All of these questions can be answered by first discovering the nature of consciousness. Western science proceeds without answering this question and that is a fundamental error.

[BeHereNow]

[Replying to benchwarmer in post #93]

Thomas S Kuhn
The historical development of scientific development
Part IV
The function of dogma in scientific research

One need make neither resistance nor dogma a virtue to recognize that no mature science could exist without them.
https://classes.matthewjbrown.net/teach ... utions.pdf
~~


American Biologist Wins Nobel Prize in Chemistry for DNA Work
October 9, 2006
Last week, American biologist Roger Kornberg of Stanford University won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work explaining how cells use genetic information to make proteins. The central dogma of molecular biology is that DNA makes ribonucleic acid, or RNA, which then makes proteins. It is the proteins, which number in the millions, that help cells work and give them their unique characteristics, be they brain cells, kidney cells or heart cells.

~~~
Theories of the Earth and Universe: A History of Dogma in the Earth Sciences
Samuel Warren Carey
Stanford University Press, 1988 - Science - 413 pages

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to Swami in post #95]

All of these questions can be answered by first discovering the nature of consciousness. Western science proceeds without answering this question and that is a fundamental error.

"Western" science (whatever that means ... modern science is practiced worldwide and not just in western countries) has spent centuries trying to uncover the mechanism of consciousness, and slow progress has been made along the way. Just because science cannot yet provide a full explanation for the mechanism of consciousness does not mean it is ignoring the question or not trying to answer it. We just don't have that answer fully yet, just like we don't know exactly what dark matter and dark energy are, the mechanism for how life originated on this planet, how to cure cancer or prevent dimentia and other diseases, etc. etc. This does not mean we should stop trying to find the answers, so science marches on and tries to find the answers.

Science tries to answer these questions via the scientific method rather than through hope, prayer, meditation and things like that which have yet to cure a disease or answer unsolved science problems like those mentioned above. All observations suggest that consciousness is an emergent property of a working brain. Until someone can show that this is not the case, it remains the most likely explanation based on observations (eg. things without brains do not exhibit consciousness, and things with brains that have their brains severely damaged or destroyed can lose their consciousness). There's no evidence that consciousness is some magical "thing." There are many examples where a system has far more capability than its component parts, and the brain is one of these.

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to BeHereNow in post #96]

Last week, American biologist Roger Kornberg of Stanford University won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work explaining how cells use genetic information to make proteins. The central dogma of molecular biology is that DNA makes ribonucleic acid, or RNA, which then makes proteins.

Use of the word "dogma" was not as you are implying (emphasis mine):

From:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_d ... ar_biology

In his autobiography, What Mad Pursuit, Crick wrote about his choice of the word dogma and some of the problems it caused him:

"I called this idea the central dogma, for two reasons, I suspect. I had already used the obvious word hypothesis in the sequence hypothesis, and in addition I wanted to suggest that this new assumption was more central and more powerful. ... As it turned out, the use of the word dogma caused almost more trouble than it was worth. Many years later Jacques Monod pointed out to me that I did not appear to understand the correct use of the word dogma, which is a belief that cannot be doubted. I did apprehend this in a vague sort of way but since I thought that all religious beliefs were without foundation, I used the word the way I myself thought about it, not as most of the world does, and simply applied it to a grand hypothesis that, however plausible, had little direct experimental support."

Similarly, Horace Freeland Judson records in The Eighth Day of Creation:[19]

"My mind was, that a dogma was an idea for which there was no reasonable evidence. You see?!" And Crick gave a roar of delight. "I just didn't know what dogma meant. And I could just as well have called it the 'Central Hypothesis,' or — you know. Which is what I meant to say. Dogma was just a catch phrase."

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to DrNoGods in post #78]

This has no analogy to orbiting particles in an accretion disk clumping together over millions of years to form larger bodies like asteroids and planets. There are only 8 official planets in our entire solar system, 5 IAU-recognized "dwarf" planets, and nearly a couple of hundred moons among the 146 IAU-recognized moons in our solar system and those awaiting confirmation.

https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/file ... ograph.pdf

Why do you say that? Sand particles are close together, very close together so why don't static electicity and gravity hold together sand particles on the Earth then?

There are billions of rocks in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, so these larger bodies are relatively rare. There are several hypotheses for how planets formed, and most involve a mechanism of particles sticking together by some mechanism, even if not the standard core accretion model:

https://www.space.com/35526-solar-system-formation.html

All these theories start after they become 1 km in diameter. That is pretty big. How did they go from dust to 1 km.

Your article link didn't produce a paper, but again, how to you propose the planets and other bodies in our solar system formed after the Sun formed? They do exist and had to form somehow. This article discusses several other ideas including aid from vortices formed within the accretion disk of the star. Exoplanets are plentiful as well, so whatever the exact mechanism of planet formation it is pretty common:

Planets are very common. And you know very well what I believe that God created the Earth on day one and the sun and the rest of the planets on day 4. But I can understand why you would want to try to pivot the conversation. Your theory of planet formation is not faring too well right now. But in the end, this is the question that everyone needs to answer for themselves is there a God in heaven. Was Jesus who he said that he was God? Because if Jesus was God, then everything else falls in place, but this discussion would be for the apologetics section not here.


But maybe I can turn the conversation a little bit more. And let's say that deep time and evolution are correct and millions of years from after all men have long since died off and now an intelligent breed of chickens develops. And they see a desk or a car and they wonder if this is a natural occurrence or if this was made by intelligent beings who lived long before them. How would they prove that it was not a chance occurrence but that intelligent beings made the object that we call a car? They might call it Chacar. The only way they could prove that it was not made by random chance was to prove that it could have been made no other way.

Did you not mention Walt Brown and his "Hydroplate" idea (post 29), and his idea that amino acids somehow got to asteroids and comets via Noah's flood? This is not peer-reviewed science. And I don't know of any peer-reviewed papers discussing "the great deep." You also referenced bible stories (eg. post 33) ... is that not a religious document?

I did not use Walt Brown to prove any point. I mentioned Walt Brown's theory simply as an example of how his theory based on the Bible was supported by scientific observation that you believe in.

It was your comment in post 33 from an article I had linked to that quoted 97% CO2 and 3% N2. Is your entire argument for a high O2 atmosphere on Earth 4 billion or so years ago is that it came from photodissociation of H2O? The very formation of lots of O2 would stop the process due to O2 (and O3) absorption below 200 nm, but photodissociation of H2S below 200 nm produces mainly H + OH.
There was a source of power the fountains of the deep which was supercritical water. A layer of supercritical water that used to be around 50 km below the surface of the earth.
Good thing you are sticking to peer-reviewed science papers only. Do you have a link to such an article so I can learn more about the "fountains of the deep"?

Again I am using peer-review papers to prove Walt Brown's theory. Walt Brown predicted large amounts of CO2 in the underground chambers.

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to Bradskii in post #84]

Exactly right.

So what is happening to over 3 million deleterious mutations that Kimura says there should be? If there is a 0.1% difference between you and your wife that means that either you or your wife has over 3 million deleterious mutations. According to Kimura.

[benchwarmer]

Now we're talking. Thank you.

[Replying to benchwarmer in post #93]

Thomas S Kuhn
The historical development of scientific development
Part IV
The function of dogma in scientific research

One need make neither resistance nor dogma a virtue to recognize that no mature science could exist without them.
https://classes.matthewjbrown.net/teach ... utions.pdf
~~

Interesting. However, this paper seems to be more about scientists holding dogma rather than science itself having dogma. As I already pointed out, if hard, reproducible evidence and methodology comes along and shows previous 'dogma' (as you defined it) wrong, then science moves forward, assimilates the new information and uses the latest consensus.

I think maybe you are conflating consensus with dogma.

From the paper above, even the author realizes science itself is not the problem, but fallible scientists:

To be scientific is, among other things, to be objective and open-minded.

Probably none of us believes that in practice the real-life scientist quite succeeds in fulfilling
this ideal.

American Biologist Wins Nobel Prize in Chemistry for DNA Work
October 9, 2006
Last week, American biologist Roger Kornberg of Stanford University won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work explaining how cells use genetic information to make proteins. The central dogma of molecular biology is that DNA makes ribonucleic acid, or RNA, which then makes proteins. It is the proteins, which number in the millions, that help cells work and give them their unique characteristics, be they brain cells, kidney cells or heart cells.

~~~
Theories of the Earth and Universe: A History of Dogma in the Earth Sciences
Samuel Warren Carey
Stanford University Press, 1988 - Science - 413 pages

Again, dogma here would be consensus, not unmovable tenets. If scientists discover there is more to the mechanism than first understood, the new consensus will eventually (if reproducible) prevail.

I do applaud you for providing good sources this time. Unfortunately, they don't support your original claim if one defines dogma as an unchangeable idea. If you meant dogma as current consensus then we are talking about something else.