Abiogenesis

[StarStuff]

ABIOGENESIS: The hypothesis that life arose from non-living matter.

Kaleb (or anybody else), if you wish to argue against abiogenesis, please do so here, and I will by happy to debate with you.

[EqualAtheist]

No argument here. Just curious what the evidence for Abiogenesis might be. This, like creation, was not taught to me in school, and until a few years ago, I had never heard of it.

[Hombre]

Kaleb is just getting his equipment ready.

[Zoe Doidge]

Equal, there is no direct evidence that I'm aware of because we've found no fossils of the earliest life forms. That said various experiments have shown the ways that some of the basic building blocks of life could naturally have arisen.

The Miller-Urey experiment showed how amino acids could form, and later similar experiments showed that they could still form with various atmospheres (although the types and amount obviously varied).

Later on, Sidney Fox showed that Proteinoids (your basic protein chains) could form from amino acids, if you had enough heat or less heat and a catalyst (I think I’m right in saying he used phosphoric acid).

Get a bunch of Proteinoids in water and they naturally form protocells, which are pretty much cells with no genetic material. There’s an important gap here though, we’re not sure how nucleic acids formed or how they could become part of protocells.

Protobionts are the next logical step, which can replicate and metabolise, and pass on RNA. Get to that point and evolution starts.

[rocketboy9000]

They also found amino acids in some interstellar gas clouds.

[Huitaca]

Without googling, what I remember of abiogenesis is that the process was possible at the time. Beyond that it is not known if it happened that way or not.

[kevlar]

The production of alcohol in it's many and varied forms is possible.............THE END................hic.

[kaleb]

(10-22-2011 02:36 PM)EqualAtheist Wrote:  No argument here. Just curious what the evidence for Abiogenesis might be.(That makes 2 of us.) This, like creation, was not taught to me in school, and until a few years ago, I had never heard of it.

You probably remember it as spontaneous generation.

Here is my specific questions for this particular topic.

Millers 1953 experiment showed that "SOME" amino acids could be produced by discharging electricity into a preset mixture of gases, however the same can not be said of RNA.

RNA is required to make proteins, yet Proteins are involved in the production of RNA.
So, HOW could either one arise by chance, let alone both of them?

If the creation of complex molecules in a lab requires the skill of a trained intelligent scientist, how could the far more complex molecules in a cell arise undirected, and by chance?

[StarStuff]

(10-23-2011 02:07 AM)kaleb Wrote:  

(10-22-2011 02:36 PM)EqualAtheist Wrote:  No argument here. Just curious what the evidence for Abiogenesis might be.(That makes 2 of us.) This, like creation, was not taught to me in school, and until a few years ago, I had never heard of it.

You probably remember it as spontaneous generation.

Here is my specific questions for this particular topic.

Millers 1953 experiment showed that "SOME" amino acids could be produced by discharging electricity into a preset mixture of gases, however the same can not be said of RNA.

RNA is required to make proteins, yet Proteins are involved in the production of RNA.
So, HOW could either one arise by chance, let alone both of them?

If the creation of complex molecules in a lab requires the skill of a trained intelligent scientist, how could the far more complex molecules in a cell arise undirected, and by chance?

Simple:

When you have these compounds in enormous numbers, bashing into each other and combining at random, sooner or later a combination will form that can self-replicate. There are a nearly-infinite number of possible self-replicating molecules, but only one has to form in order for life to arise.

We don't know the specifics of how abiogenesis occurred -- there are multiple competing hypotheses about the process.

[kaleb]

(10-23-2011 04:33 AM)Geoffrey Taucer Wrote:  

(10-23-2011 02:07 AM)kaleb Wrote:  

(10-22-2011 02:36 PM)EqualAtheist Wrote:  No argument here. Just curious what the evidence for Abiogenesis might be.(That makes 2 of us.) This, like creation, was not taught to me in school, and until a few years ago, I had never heard of it.

You probably remember it as spontaneous generation.

Here is my specific questions for this particular topic.

Millers 1953 experiment showed that "SOME" amino acids could be produced by discharging electricity into a preset mixture of gases, however the same can not be said of RNA.

RNA is required to make proteins, yet Proteins are involved in the production of RNA.
So, HOW could either one arise by chance, let alone both of them?

If the creation of complex molecules in a lab requires the skill of a trained intelligent scientist, how could the far more complex molecules in a cell arise undirected, and by chance?

Simple:

When you have these compounds in enormous numbers, bashing into each other and combining at random, sooner or later a combination will form that can self-replicate. There are a nearly-infinite number of possible self-replicating molecules, but only one has to form in order for life to arise.

We don't know the specifics of how abiogenesis occurred -- there are multiple competing hypotheses about the process.

Well GT, perhaps you can show some evidence of credible scientist who actually can back up what you have said, because I see a few flaws with your reasoning.

1 Many assert that because of Miller 1953 experiment, it proves that all the basic building blocks of life could easily be produced by chance.

However, according to Robert Shapiro, professor emeritus of chemistry at New York University, he states: "some writers have presumed that all life’s building blocks could be formed with ease in Miller-type experiments and were present in meteorites. This is not the case."

Hence the reason I mention RNA.

It is constructed of nucleotides. A nucleotide is a different molecule from an amino acid and is somewhat more complex. Shapiro says that "no nucleotides of any kind have been reported as products of spark-discharge experiments or in studies of meteorites." He further states that the probability of a self-replicating RNA molecule randomly assembling from a pool of chemical building blocks "is so vanishingly small that its happening even once anywhere in the visible universe would count as a piece of exceptional good luck."-Scientific American, June 2007, pg 47, 49, 50.

So it seems to me when you state GT: "When you have these compounds in enormous numbers, bashing into each other and combining at random, sooner or later a combination will form that can self-replicate" that in fact, it is no way near as simple as you wish it to sound.

Again the FACTS are:
1 RNA is required to make proteins
2 yet Proteins are involved in the production of RNA.

So, HOW could either one arise by chance, let alone both of them?

As the professor Shaprio explained, a self-replicating RNA molecule doesn't just magic itself into existence.

Perhaps you can elaborate a little further your position.