Re: Eternity

Kendall K Down wrote:

Visit the Duke University website and see what the latest opinion is
of the famous experiment.

Ken, you should know better than to try your usual tricks on
material that's publicly available. Here's *how* the article
"refers to" those things:

| In trying to explain how life began on Earth, scientists have
| attempted to formulate theories to account for how the first
| self-replicating molecule came into existence. One of the earliest
| theories was the "primordial soup", where simple molecules mixed
| together in a broth that was regularly energised by ultraviolet
| light and electric storms.

Is selective quoting one of my usual tricks? No, I give the quotes in
full.

When it suits you to do so.

It appears to be your speciality, though. I also attempt to use
the part of a quote that is relevant to what is being talked about. I
referred to the website to "see what the latest opinion is". Telling
us that the website talks about "one of the earliest theories" is not
relevant to my comment but it is a nicely dishonest attempt to make it
appear that I have been misquoting.

I did not say that you have been misquoting. I said (or rather implied)
that you have been misreporting, which you have. You wrote as if the
article endorses the "primordial soup" idea, and as if that's the same
thing as the Miller-Urey experiment, and as if that has been discredited;
whereas (1) the article doesn't endorse primordial soup it but merely
mentions it as one early idea that scientists had, (2) it doesn't even
mention Miller-Urey, and (3) the page you offer to "see what the latest
opinion is" simply points out that conditions at the start of life on
earth weren't the same as those in the Miller-Urey experiment, which
is true enough but not relevant unless someone is claiming that they
were. (Which, so far as I can see, no one is.)

Anyway: The key point of the Miller-Urey experiment, for me,
is that it shows that any argument of the form "obviously there's
no way that ordinary natural processes could have taken the simple
molecules that existed on the earth's surface right from the start,
and turned them into more complicated molecules" is bogus: it might
turn out that they *didn't*, but the Miller-Urey mechanism is an
example of a way for simple natural processes to act on simple
molecules and produce the building blocks of life. Even if, as
seems likely, that particular mechanism wasn't how it happened
on earth.

Simple natural processes, Gareth? Selective quoting led you to omit
the statement on the website (URL above) that the primitive atmosphere
was not as Miller-Urey imagined it, nor was lightning as frequent as
they imagined. In other words, they showed that amino acids could be
made under *un*-natural conditions and using *un*-natural processes.

Please read the last sentence of my paragraph again. For the
avoidance of doubt, by "simple natural processes" I mean "simple
processes that don't involve miracles", not "exactly the same
processes as actually happened at the origin of life on earth".

Still, I don't suppose a true believer like yourself will be bothered
by actual scientific evidence.

Oh, do give your tiresome and stupid insults a rest, there's
a good chap.

You are, not for the first time, confused. Most of the amino
acids (or anything else) in a warm puddle are nowhere near
close enough to the material the puddle's in to be "bound"
to it; and of course puddles can form in plenty of materials
other than clay.

Whereas you, perhaps, are unaware that puddles are not static objects
but are subject to circulation.

You're seriously suggesting that if you take a solution of
amino acids and make a puddle of it in clay, then all the
amino acids will end up adhering to the clay somehow? That
would be interesting, if true.

"The cherished idea, first suggested by Charles Darwin, that life on
Earth emerged billions of years ago from a warm prebiotic soup may not
be correct after all. Scientists at a meeting of the Royal Socity in
London on Tuesday said that when DNA molecules and amino acids form in
warm volcanic puddles, they bind strongly to clay particles and can
take no further part in reactions."
New Scientist, 18 February 2006 p. 7

Interesting. So, I looked to see if Google could find me that article.
What it actually turned up was two letters in the following issue of
"New Scientist", which seem worth reproducing here.

| You say that scientists attending the recent Royal Society meeting
| in London concluded that, because DNA and amino acids that form in
| warm volcanic puddles bind to clay particles and become unavailable
| for further reaction, Darwin's suggestion that life originated in a
| warm prebiotic soup may be wrong (18 February, p 7).
|
| However, if they had read the previous week's New Scientist, they
| would have learned that "before life spread on land, physical
| weathering broke down rocks, but the particles were not fine enough
| to form clay" (11 February, p 15).
|
| From Boyd Williamson

| You write that Darwin's idea, that life emerged in the primordial
| soup in warm volcanic puddles, has been scuppered by recent
| experiments showing that any reactive molecules were immediately
| bound to clay particles in the puddles. But clay particles are
| formed by bacterial action, so how did clay arrive in prebiotic
| puddles?
|
| North Queensferry, Fife, UK

But compare and contrast, e.g., this:

http://elements.geoscienceworld.org/cgi/content/abstract/1/3/145

| Montmorillonite, a clay mineral formed by the weathering of
| volcanic ash, may have played a central role in the evolution of
| life. Because of its structure, montmorillonite tends to adsorb
| organic compounds and this contributes to its ability to catalyze
| a variety of organic reactions critical to scenarios of life's
| origins. We have shown experimentally that RNA molecules bind
| efficiently to clays and that montmorillonite can catalyze the
| formation of longer molecules (oligomers), thus lending support
| to the RNA world hypothesis. This theory proposes that life based
| on RNA preceded current life, which is based on DNA and protein.

So. We have one set of people saying (at least according to the
notoriously unreliable "New Scientist") that amino acids in clay
puddles would have bound strongly to the clay and been unavailable
for further reaction. We have another set saying that at the relevant
time there wouldn't have been any clay. We have another saying that
there would have been clay, RNA bases bind to it, and that's a *good*
thing for the origin of life because the clay can catalyse important
organic reactions.

Someone interested in the actual state of scientific thought
on this would have found all that, and much more. (I just did
a quick web search.) Someone interested only in cherry-picking
anything that looks like it might be tactically useful for
advocating creationism would notice the bit that supposedly
makes trouble for abiogenesis and quote it.

May I recommend a subscription to New Scientist to you, Gareth? You
have rejected the Bible, so perhaps God's other book will persuade
you.

"New Scientist" is full of shoddy sensationalistic semi-scientific
journalism. I need a subscription to NS like I need an extra hole
in my head. Of course, those same characteristics make it an, er,
godsend to creationists and other advocates of pseudoscience.

--
Gareth McCaughan
sig under construc


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Eternity
    ... | In trying to explain how life began on Earth, scientists have ... molecules that existed on the earth's surface right from the start, ... molecules and produce the building blocks of life. ... Whereas you, perhaps, are unaware that puddles are not static objects ...
    (uk.religion.christian)
  • Re: Honest Creationists Argument wanted
    ... "spark of life" which separates living from non-living things. ... It's only a blurred line to scientists who keep changing the ... as the only replication system for life on this planet. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Honest Creationists Argument wanted
    ... "spark of life" which separates living from non-living things. ... It's only a blurred line to scientists who keep changing the ... alone supported your calculations in any way with evidence. ... how could the first DNA replication system come about if not by ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: funny creationsist
    ... But there ISN'T any direct evidence - not one single scrap/ Care to ... itself or came into existence without a cause. ... is the supposed effect on other bodies, an effect for which scientists ... Your never having had a supernatural event occur in your life has no ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Making money from Java
    ... to believe the scientific community that tells me they know how life formed, ... >> precision of design. ... that many scientists mistake for evolution when they see it in other ... give God an honest test. ...
    (comp.lang.cobol)