Do you object that I call it a myth? It is a myth. It is not science, it is not even scientific to believe in spontaneous creation of life from non life. Science is based on rational deduction from observations and predictions to confirm the deductions. Here, no observer saw or even has seen life emerge from non life. It cannot even be done deliberately, much less blindly by an natural process. If it were a natural process, we would see it going on around us at all times.
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Sorry John. Calling it abiogenesis myth would be stupid of you. Deductions and predictions are being made constantly and science is slowly coming closer to the truth. Of course we don't see it happening now, the earth is not the same as it was 4.5 bn years ago, one of the reasons why it is so hard - we just aren't sure of the exact state of things from that long ago.
Now - if you want to call something a myth - try Genesis - now there's a whopper for you. You know, we have piles of dirt and ribs all over the place, but I have yet to see Dog poof a new human into existence, have you? From your own lips, "no observer saw or even has seen life emerge from non life. " Non-life - like a pile of dust?
Some time ago we reached a point where it was obvious that there is a continuum between living and non-living systems. While there are many things which are unique to life they are not completely unprecedented in the abiotic world and do not require any special pleading on the part of chemistry or physics to explain.
Therefore it is no longer a question of whether life emerged from non-life, merely how. There is nothing in physics or chemistry which says natural processes have to be ubiquitous or repeated.
Attempts to create self-sustaining 'living' systems have not been particularly successful so far, so much as I am aware, but that doesn't mean they cannot be done. Indeed the degree to which we can explain every aspect of living things by chemistry and physics makes it somewhat obtuse to suggest that it cannot be done.
Actually, its an interesting point - we live on a planet with flowing water, why don't we see life still developing all the time? I assume its something to do with the conditions. Time to do some googling, unless someone else can explain?
This sentence ” Science is based on rational deduction from observations and predictions to confirm the deductions.” doesn’t really fit with the next one: “Here, no observer saw or even has seen life emerge from non life.” If you use deductions and predictions, you don’t have a need for any direct observer.
That’s how most of science works.
@Warren:
I always assumed that any organic compounds that could start a second abiogenesis are being consumed by the already living organisms. But I admit, I have never really looked it up.
Maybe because it took the best part of a billion years for the accident to occur. Only once it's started is there no going back.
Hell - I have enough problems trying to re-create bugs in relatively simple computer systems.
All the gaps filled by the evidentce . As opposed to fairytales in a book that has infinitely less credibility than "2001: A Space Odyssey", or "The Odyssey" by Homer: a Greek myth.
Do you object that I call your fairytale a mythter , o John Thee...:
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[/Biggus Dickus] X3
@Warren McIntosh
Actually, its an interesting point - we live on a planet with flowing water, why don't we see life still developing all the time? I assume its something to do with the conditions. Time to do some googling, unless someone else can explain?
Actually, how do we know that it's not happening? How do we know that abiogenesis hasn't occurred more than once on this planet? We will probably never know how many different strains of bacteria exist in the world, and scientists are always discovering new ones. How do we know that some of them didn't spontaneously appear instead of evolving from other bacteria? Of course this is just a hypothesis, but just because we don't constantly observe it happening doesn't mean it can't. Of course, any new life has to compete with already existing, older, and evolved life, so it may disappear as quickly as it appears.
Science starts with observations. Here are two for you.
Observation #1 - Life exists today.
Conclusion #1 - Sometime between the formation of the Earth and today life must have come into existence.
Observation #3 - The fossil record shows a long slow process of evolution from primitive life forms to the more complex life forms we see today.
Conclusion #2 - The first life was the simplest of all.
Now the only question is HOW did this simple life come into existence.
If it were a natural process, we would see it going on around us at all times.
Why? It took a billion and a half years to get to anything beyond bacteria, so maybe it is going on today. But how would you see it? Do you have Superman's microscopic vision?
it is not even scientific to believe in spontaneous creation of life from non life
No one claims to know where the first life came from except the various religions who have a thousand different stories. We don't know exactly what gravity is or why some light reflects from a window while the rest passes through. Should we stop looking like they did in the Middle Ages, throw up our hands and say "I guess God did it by magic"?
The Late Heavy Bombardment period ended 4.1 billion years ago. Before then complex chemistry would not have been possible because having lots of space rocks falling on your face doesn't do well for stable chemical bonds.
The first evidence of life in the fossil record appears at 3.8 billion years ago. So that means it took 300 million years for abiogenesis to occur in whatever form it did.
So all you have to do John is find a place where environmental conditions are similar to what they were on Earth at that time, and hang out for 300 million years and report back to us about seeing life start. Better get packing, time's wasting after all.
@Doubting Thomas
All the living things that have been discovered so far have some amount of cellular/chemical structure in common, enough that they probably derive from the same ancestor (or group of ancestors, because there was probably a lot of lateral gene transfer going on). I think, but I'm not sure, that that even applies to viruses, which don't have all the traditional traits of living things.
On the other hand, viruses and the malformed proteins called prions both blur the boundaries between life and inert collections of chemicals, so abiogenesis isn't as implausible as it might look at first.
If John C Wright actually looked up abiogenesis, he would have found about the MillerUrey experiment, in which amino acids, the building blocks of protein, can be formed by exposing various organic molecules to water and electricity, mimicking early Earth conditions of violent lightning and ocean.
@smartz118
He may have done so. Wright is a science-fiction writer, after all, and I'd expect him to be better informed than your garden-variety Bible belt know-nothing. Though the remark that "if it was a natural process, we would see it going on around us at all times" does not inspire confidence that he realizes what the Earth was like 4 billion years ago.
The standard response among the more knowledgeable fundies when somebody brings up the Miller-Urey experiment is that nobody has reproduced abiogenesis in the lab in all the decades since the experiment, therefore abiogenesis is impossible without God's help. Although I don't find the arguments against abiogenesis particularly strong, denying abiogenesis in itself isn't on the same level of utter stupidity as young-earth creationism.
1) That's abiogenesis, not evolution.
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