Talk:Origin of life

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Misleading

"However, in all of these experiments that attempted to produce life's building blocks, molecular oxygen was absent. The earth possesses an oxygen rich atmosphere, and even the oldest rocks contain oxides which is evidence they were formed in the presence of oxygen."

Misleading - the earth possesses an oxygen rich atmosphere now, but there are indications it did not always do so. The oldest rocks do contain evidence they were formed in the presence of oxygen, but that evidence - in the form of oxides that are not forming in rocks today - shows that they were not formed in an oxygen rich atmosphere.

Criticising these experiments for attempting to emulate prebiotic atmospheres rather than using current atmospheric proportions is unfair.

Could you perhaps give an example of these rocks which don't show any oxides? Scorpionman 22:23, 6 February 2007 (EST)

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"Spontaneous generation was the original theory that proposed life could originate from nonliving matter."

It's worth mentioning that the theory that Pasteur refuted involved the spontaneous generation of modern life-forms from non-living matter, e.g. maggots in meat or mice in solied linen, and hence is completely unrelated to recent abiogenesis research.

Actually this is completely untrue. Take the First Law of Biogenesis, it has only been tested on Earth under a relatively short period of time (if you believe the earth to be 4.5 billion years old, then the amount of time we would be able to tested this law is very short). It would be unscientific to say that it does not apply on Mars, even though we have never tested it on Mars. Scientific laws are assumed true for all time and space until they are proven wrong. The statement of "life can only come from life" makes no claim about the type of life. Beyond this, the law of biogenesis has been tested by many scientists who were trying to make life from no life. These scientists were only able to make amino acids, if you have any idea about what is required to make life, you would know that amino acids are only a small step. These unsuccessful experiments to create life validate the Law of Biogenesis, just as the experiments to try to create energy validate the First Law of Thermodynamics.

Further, the law of biogenesis is entirely falsifiable. This is why it stands as a scientific law. If you can create life from nonliving material one time, you will have proven it incorrect. The idea of abiogenesis, however, is not falsifiable at all. You need only show that under one type of circumstance, life can arise from non-living material. This has never been done. It truly shows the how biased the scientists are though. If a scientist were to claim that they did not beleive the First Law of Thermodynamics was true on Mars and gave some just-so story about how it could be possible, but never provided proof, he would be ridiculed by the scientific community. Instead of this occurring, we actually teach our children this nonsense of abiogenesis. Why do you think that is? I understand the scientific communities view of trying to keep God out of science, but should they do so in an unscientific manner?JDstats 13:06, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Scorpionman, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090324131458.htm is a link to proof that early earth was oxygen-rich. We are not criticizing the scientists for trying to make the environment of early earth, we (as well as many other scientists) are saying that Miller did not make anything but an artificial lab environment. It is known that methane and ammonia were not present in early earth, but oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen were. The reason that this is important is that scientists have been completely unsuccessful in even making amino acids under the conditions of early earth. It is therefore misleading to say that scientists have been able to create amino acids using the environment of early earth when in fact they were only able to make amino acids in an artificial lab environment.

Herein lies the problem. We are taught in school that the basic building blocks of life were formed using the early environment of Earth. What we are not taught is that: 1) The environment of early earth was not used 2) There are are countless more steps to create life than this, none of which have been accounted for, some are even believed to be impossible 3) this whole idea goes against the Law of biogenesis and in science a law is always believed over a hypothesis or a theory. Teaching lies because those lies are unbiased with respect to religion is still teaching lies.

If you have some scientifically based reasons for believing in abiogenesis, please feel free to present them so that we may discuss them. If you have no reasons, then I hope that you would consider the alternative with an open heart.JDstats 13:48, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Hubert P. Yockey

It would also be nice to show what evolutionist Hubert Yockey says about abiogenesis. The following are posts that I have posted on evowiki :

The following is copied from wikipedia: Research on the origin of life seems to be unique in that the conclusion has already been authoritatively accepted … . What remains to be done is to find the scenarios which describe the detailed mechanisms and processes by which this happened. One must conclude that, contrary to the established and current wisdom a scenario describing the genesis of life on earth by chance and natural causes which can be accepted on the basis of fact and not faith has not yet been written. (Yockey, 1977. A calculation of the probability of spontaneous biogenesis by information theory, Journal of Theoretical Biology 67:377–398, quotes from pp. 379, 396.) In a book he wrote 15 years later, Yockey argued that the idea of abiogenesis from a primordial soup is a failed paradigm: Although at the beginning the paradigm was worth consideration, now the entire effort in the primeval soup paradigm is self-deception on the ideology of its champions. … The history of science shows that a paradigm, once it has achieved the status of acceptance (and is incorporated in textbooks) and regardless of its failures, is declared invalid only when a new paradigm is available to replace it. Nevertheless, in order to make progress in science, it is necessary to clear the decks, so to speak, of failed paradigms. This must be done even if this leaves the decks entirely clear and no paradigms survive. It is a characteristic of the true believer in religion, philosophy and ideology that he must have a set of beliefs, come what may (Hoffer, 1951). Belief in a primeval soup on the grounds that no other paradigm is available is an example of the logical fallacy of the false alternative. In science it is a virtue to acknowledge ignorance. This has been universally the case in the history of science as Kuhn (1970) has discussed in detail. There is no reason that this should be different in the research on the origin of life. (Yockey, 1992. Information Theory and Molecular Biology, p. 336, Cambridge University Press, UK, ISBN 0-521-80293-8). It should be noted that Yockey, in general, possesses a highly critical attitude toward people who give credence toward natural origins of life, often invoking words like "faith" and "ideology". Yockey's publications have become favorites to quote among creationists, though he is not a creationist himself (as noted in this 1995 email[1] (http://www.asa3.org/archive/evolution/199602/0125.html)).

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I recently emailed Yockey and asked him to give an example of one failure of the primordial soup aside from the complete lack of evidence, Yockey responded with the following:

"To: Daniel  photek_8_@hotmail.com From: Hubert P Yockey  hpyockey@AOL.com Subject: Primordial soup? Dear Daniel: The primordial soup was suggested by Haeckel in 1866, not by Oparin who was not born then. Louis Pasteur in 1822 showed that all life is of one handedness. The primeval soup would have been racemic. The sulfur bearing amino acids methionine and cysteine do not appear in spark discharge experiments. Finally, and most important, no genetic code exists between proteins and RNA and DNA. This is the Central Dogma. Therfore the origin of life by “proteins first” is impossible, not just unlikely.

All these matters and many more are discussed in my book: Information Theory, Evolution and the Origin of Life. It may be ordered from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or from your local book store.

Thank you for your interest in my book.

Sincerely Hubert P. Yockey" PhoteK 19:47, 30 Jun 2005 (GMT)

Ooh, that's just sick and biased!! Scorpionman 20:32, 14 April 2008 (PDT)

Improvements

Please don't take this as criticism because I like what you have done so far, but the idea of abiogenesis has many more problems that have not been addressed here.

One fact is that even evolutionists have admitted the probability being somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 in 10^10,000. Now you have partially addressed this, but a mathematician has made a comparison of this to finding the probability of a specific gin hand after you have already been dealt the cards. Luckily, this mathematician also misunderstands probability, because while he is correct that one would not find the probability of a gin hand after the hand has been dealt, this is a comparison of apples to oranges. He assumes that all the gin hands are the same, while I would say that if you recieved an ace through king of clubs from the deal, you would be concerned that either the cards were not shuffled or someone was cheating. If you received this hand twice, you would know someone was cheating. It is the pattern on which you place the probability, not the sum of individual cards. As 1 in 10^10,000 was determined by finding what was needed to make the sufficient pattern (not the details of the arrangement of each part), it is entirely valid. In fact, the entire judiciary process works off of this premise, yet they only look for a probability of 1 in 20 to convict.

An idea of what this probability actually means to the layperson might also be in order. I think this number has already accounted for the time the universe has existed and the amount of materials in all possible premordial soups, but if not, this can be taken into account which would only reduce the number to 1 in 10^9900 at the most (giving very generous estimates to the evolutionists). Nonetheless, this would be like one person playing the lottery 110 times with only one ticket each time and winning every single one.

In the creation of the first cell, there is another factor not mentioned. In order for the RNA and DNA to form, the peptide bonds must be formed outside of an aqueous solution (as peptide bond form water as a byproduct). This of course would be impossible as the rest of the cell has to be formed inside an aqueous solution, including the proteins needed in the peptide bonds.

The method that Miller used to seperate out the amino acids prior to being destroyed by the electric spark was called "cold trapping." This, of course, would only be seen in a lab, certainly not in nature.

I also think a reference to the Law of Biogenesis is in order as well. Evolutionists have argued that the Law only applies to macro-organisms, but this is silly as they have been trying unsuccessfully to make single-celled organisms for a very long time. This is also not how Laws of science traditionally work. You would not say that since the First law of Thermodynamics has only been tested on Earth, energy can be created or destroyed on Mars.

There is a theory of infinite universes, that has been used to explain away the probability, but this falls under the worst type of science imaginable. There are people who have religious experiences all of the time, it is part of the human condition, thus the idea of God is foundd in observations of nature. Infinite universes, however, is complete unfounded, unscientific, and it truly shows a great amount of dishonesty among the scientists to consider this idea, and dismiss the idea of God.

Finding life outside also leads to another proof of ID. If life can be determined by finding a simple code, then how would a scientists not see that the code within DNA is much more complex, and thus would necessitate an intelligent designer.

I would like to add what I have mentioned above to the article with proper references. Please let me know if it would be stepping on anyones toes to do so?JDstats 18:47, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

The two users who have worked on this article the most are Mr. Ashcraft and myself. My work has been limited to producing a French translation.

I doubt that Mr. Ashcraft would take offense, so long as you have the references. I certainly will not.

Please use the MLA style for all references, so that our articles will look as professional as possible. If you need help with that, please do not hesitate to ask me.--Temlakos^Talk 19:32, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Help

I guess this phrase is incorrect, but I am not sure because I am not an Native English Speaker: "a key point of distinction between and between the". I think there are two words between and only one is needed. Can an English Native Speaker check this out? Thank you in advance. Luiz Alexandre Silva 04:41, 13 December 2012 (PST)

In English, we use the "within" prepositions only once. So we say, "Within A." Or, "Between A and B." Or, "Among A, B, and C."

Thank you! Another word I am not sure in this article (I saw only today while I was translating to portuguese): "In constast," I guess that this would be "In contrast", but making a google search there is some links that use "In constast". So I ask you help me one more time. I will not change a text if I am not absolutely sure that is an error. Thank you in advance! Luiz Alexandre Silva 03:08, 14 December 2012 (PST)

Good catch. I just corrected that.

By the way: your work on the Portuguese site is excellent. Please let me know if I can help you in any way, and don't hesitate to write original content on a subject you feel CW should address, but doesn't. We never intend all information to flow from the English version to the second-language versions only. Sometimes it can flow the other way.--Temlakos^Talk 05:45, 14 December 2012 (PST)