[__ Science __ ] WHO IS DEAD? GOD OR DARWIN?

[TMal3]

So far, we know that amino acids, nucleic acids, and cell membranes can form abiotically. So it's looking more and more that God had it right when He said the earth brought forth living things.

We know that amino acids can form in nature. And rare traces of diamino acids, sugars, and nucleobases. But we do not see abiotic formation of nucleic acids, or even nucleotides. Lipids can also form, and lipid type "membrane" vessicles and micelles. But nothing on the order and complexity of a "cell membrane."

Read the work of Pier Luisi, who has summarized a lot of the research on membranes (and amino acids, and "RNA first," etc.). Origin of life researcher Luisi also happens to be an acquaintance of mine. He's kept me in the loop on the latest research in the OOL field. He is also not religious, so he does not have a bias against abiogenesis. He believes life did arise by abiogenesis. But as a scientist he acknowledges the evidence for abiogenesis is simply not there. Maybe it will in the future. But not currently. Abiogenesis is the working assumption in science and assumed to be true. And there is nothing wrong with that. That's how science works. As long as we don't forget that it's a working hypothesis, not a confirmed one.

*Put another way, we can state that biological evolution is an established scientific fact. Abiogenesis, however, is not an established scientific fact. It is assumed to be "fact," but it has not been demonstrated the way evolution has.

*Here is an excellent summary of the current state of origin of life research by Pier Luisi: "The Prebiotic Experiment." Luisi concludes:

"So, this is the point: not only the experiments with our tanks do not work, despite all possible ingenious variation of two generations of brilliant chemists – but we do not have a conceivable theoretical scheme on paper, on how the origin of life may have come about.

We have to recognize this hard fact. Maybe tomorrow some splendid bio-Einstein will discover the solution – nevertheless, for the moment, we simply don’t have the slightest idea on how life originated from non-life. Which, again, does not mean that we have to give up the research and resign to the existence of a mystery (a mystery is a problem that by definition has no solution). However, it is important to have an honest basis of departure."

 

[TMal3]

One can through all the building blocks together and still no life will be the outcome.

This is a valid point. Consider a cell the instant it dies. It literally has all the parts needed for life and yet no one believes it can reanimate. Instead, we can *empirically* predict that the cell will decompose into its component parts. So, if we don't expect life to result from a cell that has all needed parts that just died a split second earlier, than how much more a fortiori should we not expect life to emerge from a handful of amino acids, sugars, and nucleobases.

Pier Luisi makes a similar point in "The Prebiotic Experiment" article I linked above:

"If it is so easy, let us do a simple experiment. Let us take a 100-liter water tank, under strict sterile conditions, and add all prebiotic chemical compounds we know of, amino acids, nucleotides, sugars, fatty acids, hydrocarbons, with all salts, and metal ions and all what our terrestrial crust may have possessed. We can add a thermostat, to change the temperature every week or so.

There is the problem of concentration. Our solutions may be too diluted, then let’s make the experiments in double, and in each one of them, let’s evaporate the water periodically, so as to achieve the situation of a lagoon which became dry, producing a very high local concentration of the compounds....

[Experiments] conceptually similar to those indicated above, have been conducted by chemists in the last fifty-seventy years in the best university laboratories of the world, utilizing all the ingenuity of modern chemistry knowledge – but to no avail. Self-reproducing protocells, or even protocells in a simple homeostatic regime, have never been obtained. If making life would have been an easy process, scientists would have produced it many times in the laboratory. It never happened.

And the question is then: why not? Why did life not form spontaneously, considering that we have given in the reaction thanks all what Earth had to offer in prebiotic times? The most straightforward explanation is simply that the formation of life is not a thermodynamic spontaneous process. In other terms, we can simply say that the origin of life is not deterministic."

 

[Barbarian]

But nothing on the order and complexity of a "cell membrane."

A cell membrane is a phospholipid bilayer. That can form vesicles spontaneously. A modern cell would require movement of larger molecules like glucose across the membrane, something that would require a flippase. Would there be a biology that utilized only smaller, charged molecules capable of diffusion across the membrane?

No one seems to know for sure.

The modern cell membrane is composed of a number of different types of lipids. Those lipids with one or more hydrophobic “tails” have tails that typically range from 16 to 20 carbons in length. The earliest membranes, however, were likely to have been composed of similar, but simpler molecules with shorter hydrophobic chains. Based on the properties of lipids, we can map out a plausible sequence for the appearance of membranes. Lipids with very short hydrophobic chains, from 2 to 4 carbons in length, can dissolve in water (can you explain why?) As the lengths of the hydrophobic chains increases, the molecules begin to self-assemble into micelles. By the time the hydrophobic chains reach ~10 carbons in length, it becomes increasingly more difficult to fit the hydrocarbon chains into the interior of the micelle without making larger and larger spaces between the hydrophilic heads. Water molecules can begin to move through these spaces and interact with the hydrocarbon tails. At this point, the hydrocarbon-chain lipid molecules begin to associate into semi-stable bilayers. One interesting feature of these bilayers is that the length of the hydrocarbon chain is no longer limiting in the same way that it was limiting in a micelle. One problem, though, are the edges of the bilayer, where the hydrocarbon region of the lipid would come in contact with water, a thermodynamically unfavorable situation. This problem is avoided by linking edges of the bilayer to one another, forming a balloon-like structure. Such bilayers can capture regions of solvent, that is water and any solutes dissolved within it.

Bilayer stability increases further as hydrophobic chain length increases. At the same time, membrane permeability decreases. It is a reasonable assumption that the earliest biological systems used shorter chain lipids to build their "proto-membranes" and that these membranes were relatively leaky171. The appearance of more complex lipids, capable of forming more impermeable membranes, must therefore have depended upon the appearance of mechanisms that enabled hydrophilic molecules to pass through membranes. The process of interdependence of change is known as co-evolution. Co-evolutionary processes were apparently common enough to make the establishment of living systems possible.

6.2: The origin of biological membranes

bio.libretexts.org

It would be interesting to see the structure of giant virus membranes. They weren't known when I was doing microbiology, so I don't know, and a quick look doesn't turn up anything. Artificial self-replicating chemical systems exist, but to date, no artificial cellular self-replicating chemical systems have been produced.

 

[TMal3]

See, "Origins of building blocks of life: a review (2018)."

"Modern cell membranes are composed primarily of double-chain amphiphiles, particularly glycerol phosphate phospholipids (Fig. 10; Lombard et al., 2012). Because of their geometry, phospholipid membranes lack the dynamic properties required for membrane growth and division, as well as for the uptake of charged compounds by passive diffusion (e.g., the permeability of K+ is in the range of 10−10 to 10−12 s/cm; Paula et al., 1996). Modern cells control these functions with complex biochemical machinery incorporated into the membrane structures. However, because such biochemical machinery cannot be expected to exist as a component of primitive protocells, phospholipids are not a good candidate for the first membrane component....For these reasons and others, fatty acids have been recognized as the most appropriate building blocks for the membranes of early cells."

 

[TMal3]

Getting back to peptides, the problem is that people think abiogenesis is just a matter of rolling the dice enough times and then the right combination of the 20 amino acids will connect together. But that's not reality. There is no known environment where all 20 amino acids are reactive. They react at different temps and pH and so on. This is how people thinks it works...

But that's not reality. This is reality (and under ideal conditions in labs, I might add)...We can usually only get 1-3 different types of amino acids to connect in the lab and only short length chains... (these are the types of peptide polymers formed in labs; they're not numerous nor diverse)

And the first on the left (the diamino acid ●-●) is the type of thing we find in the Murchison. Diglycine (gly--gly). Biologically relevant proteins can't be formed from such material.

We have no evidence that nature is playing combinatorial chemistry with the 20 amino acids (or even 10 of the 20), combining them in random combinations. In natural laboratories like the Murchison meteorite, we see nature connecting two amino acids together, and it's usually the same amino acid glycine joined to another glycine. Biologically relevant proteins can't be made from 1-2 types of amino acids.

Conclusion: even if abiogenesis was just a simple matter of rolling the dice enough times (which it's not), you can't win the lottery if you don't buy a lottery ticket. And we have no evidence that nature is rolling the dice. It's not even at the table. Rolling the dice with 1-2 different types of amino acids won't get you anywhere.

 

[Barbarian]

Getting back to peptides, the problem is that people think abiogenesis is just a matter of rolling the dice enough times and then the right combination of the 20 amino acids will connect together.

Never saw that in the literature. I don't see how a random process would do it. It seems the universe is front-loaded to produce life. I suppose it's possible that Darwin was right, and God just made the first living things. My question is why He'd do it in such a way as to make it look like nature did it for Him.

 

[Tenchi]

Truth is a stronger thing than provability. It's still possible that the earth didn't bring forth living things. But we have all that evidence and God's word saying that it did.

??? God's word says that God brought forth Man from the dust of the earth; it doesn't say the earth itself as some sort of causal agent brought forth Man.

Genesis 2:7-8 (ESV)
7 then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.

As the exposure of the bankruptcy of abiogenesis research to date by Dr. Tour (and others) illustrates, we have no idea how non-life produced life. Those committed to the ToE often resort to "just-so" stories, extrapolations from facts to fiction, to assert their ideas, which is particularly the case in abiogenesis research.

I appreciate in this video how Dr. Craig points out that Dr. Tour's deep skepticism toward abiogenesis research thus far is well within the mainstream of the secular, scientific view of abiogenesis research.

 

[TMal3]

Never saw that in the literature. I don't see how a random process would do it. It seems the universe is front-loaded to produce life. I suppose it's possible that Darwin was right, and God just made the first living things. My question is why He'd do it in such a way as to make it look like nature did it for Him.

I agree, a random process wouldn't do it, and scientists rightly reject chance. Chance "luck" is not a scientific explanation, but an appeal to miracles itself. I agree and I'm with you on that. But it still seems impossible to avoid. There's no known natural process that creates *ordered* sequences of amino acids or nucleotides. Only random sequences can be made. As we both know, the chemical bonds are indistinguishable (peptide bonds in proteins; phosphodiester bonds in nucleic acids), so there's no known way for nature to "select." It seems only random sequences can be made, makes it a dice-rolling game again (which, I agree, doesn't work, and scientists reject this, but I can't see how to avoid it).

Given that and other problems, I would argue that it doesn't look like nature made life or can make life. Again, as we both know, chemical reactions run towards equilibrium, while living systems are maintained at far from equilibrium, and fight their whole life to maintain that (or else they die). But it doesn't seem like life could be the result of chance "luck," either; and fluke accidents of nature aren't very *natural.*

So, I don't see that God made it look like nature created life. However, I do think your same argument *does* apply to the age of the earth/universe & biological evolution. If the earth is young and evolution is not true (as young earth creationists argue), then why would God make it look like evolution is true and the earth/universe is old? That would make God a deceiver. So, I'm with you on that one.

Abigoenesis is not an established scientific fact, but the old age of the earth/universe, biological evolution, speciation, common ancestry, etc. are established facts. Young earth creationist attempts to make the fossil record the result of Noah's Flood don't work (I should know. I tried for years to get it to work! I was unsuccessful).

Best

 

[Barbarian]

There's no known natural process that creates *ordered* sequences of amino acids or nucleotides. Only random sequences can be made. As we both know, the chemical bonds are indistinguishable (peptide bonds in proteins; phosphodiester bonds in nucleic acids), so there's no known way for nature to "select." It seems only random sequences can be made, makes it a dice-rolling game again (which, I agree, doesn't work, and scientists reject this, but I can't see how to avoid it).

We see random changes to amino acid sequences constantly, via mutations. And some of those changes have selective value. Which affects the ratio of different sequences in subsequent generations.

nature
Published: 04 January 2016

Diversification of self-replicating molecules​

Self-replicating molecules provide a simple model that allows us to capture the fundamental processes that occur in species formation. We have been able to monitor in real time and at a molecular level the diversification of self-replicating molecules into two distinct sets that compete for two different building blocks (‘food’) and so capture an important aspect of the process by which species may arise. The results show that the second replicator set is a descendant of the first and that both sets are kinetic products that oppose the thermodynamic preference of the system. The sets occupy related but complementary food niches. As diversification into sets takes place on the timescale of weeks and can be investigated at the molecular level, this work opens up new opportunities for experimentally investigating the process through which species arise both in real time and with enhanced detail.

It seems natural selection is bigger than biological evolution.

My take on this:
Observed evidence is a fact. So gravity and evolution are indeed facts. The age of the universe is not a fact, but a theory, a conclusion based on overwhelming evidence. It would seem that no rational person aware of the evidence would deny it, but I am aware of honest and informed YE creationists who deny the age of the universe, based on religious belief. Common descent of living things on Earth is a theory, again based on overwhelming evidence, but it's not an observed fact.

 

[Barbarian]

??? God's word says that God brought forth Man from the dust of the earth; it doesn't say the earth itself as some sort of causal agent brought forth Man.

Right. God is the a priori cause of all things. He just uses nature to do most things in this world. So the earth is the efficient cause, the means by which it happened, and God is the final cause, the maker of nature to do things according to His will.

 

[Tenchi]

Right. God is the a priori cause of all things. He just uses nature to do most things in this world. So the earth is the efficient cause, the means by which it happened, and God is the final cause, the maker of nature to do things according to His will.

As Dr. Tour has shown, this isn't what abiogenesis research has managed to establish at all. At this point, you're entirely assuming the just-so story of abiogenesis advocates over and above the a plain, straightforward reading of Scripture that positions God as the direct shaper and "quickener" of Man, not a prebiotic soup.

 

[Barbarian]

As Dr. Tour has shown, this isn't what abiogenesis research has managed to establish at all.

As you have seen, Dr. Tour's "just-so" stories don't account for all the evidence which indicates that God was correct when He said the Earth brought forth life.

Scripture that positions God as the direct shaper and "quickener" of Man, not a prebiotic soup.

True. The issue is that you don't approve of the way He did it.

 

[Tenchi]

As you have seen, Dr. Tour's "just-so" stories don't account for all the evidence which indicates that God was correct when He said the Earth brought forth life.

The verse I quote to you from Genesis 2 explicitly stated that God formed Man from the dust of the ground, not by a mechanical process of chemistry. How this translates into abiogenesis - especially in light of how bankrupt the research into abiogenesis is - remains entirely obscure to me. But, then, I don't have your investment in the ToE.

It's...interesting that when Dr. Tour points out that "the emperor has no clothes" when it comes to abiogenesis research, which is a simple statement of fact, not imaginative extrapolation, you want to call it a just-so story. This false equivocation between the just-so stories of abiogenesis researchers and the statements of fact about their success in establishing abiogenesis by Dr. Tour, exposes a disconcerting willingness on your part to prejudicial distortion.

True. The issue is that you don't approve of the way He did it.

Nope. I don't approve of the way you want to believe He did it.

 

[TMal3]

We see random changes to amino acid sequences constantly, via mutations. And some of those changes have selective value. Which affects the ratio of different sequences in subsequent generations.

nature
Published: 04 January 2016

Diversification of self-replicating molecules​

Self-replicating molecules provide a simple model that allows us to capture the fundamental processes that occur in species formation. We have been able to monitor in real time and at a molecular level the diversification of self-replicating molecules into two distinct sets that compete for two different building blocks (‘food’) and so capture an important aspect of the process by which species may arise. The results show that the second replicator set is a descendant of the first and that both sets are kinetic products that oppose the thermodynamic preference of the system. The sets occupy related but complementary food niches. As diversification into sets takes place on the timescale of weeks and can be investigated at the molecular level, this work opens up new opportunities for experimentally investigating the process through which species arise both in real time and with enhanced detail.

It seems natural selection is bigger than biological evolution.

My take on this:
Observed evidence is a fact. So gravity and evolution are indeed facts. The age of the universe is not a fact, but a theory, a conclusion based on overwhelming evidence. It would seem that no rational person aware of the evidence would deny it, but I am aware of honest and informed YE creationists who deny the age of the universe, based on religious belief. Common descent of living things on Earth is a theory, again based on overwhelming evidence, but it's not an observed fact.

We seem to have different definitions of what scientific "facts" and "theories" are. The age of the earth and universe are facts established on the basis of observational evidence. So is common ancestry. These are established beyond a reasonable doubt. Abiogenesis is not.

Regarding the article, yes, I've seen and reviewed this article before. Changes to amino acid sequences (during evolution) is not the problem. Getting those sequences in the first place (abiotically) is the problem.

It's an interesting study, but another "proof of concept" type experiment, and in this study they're just using it as a model. They designed self-replicators to begin with. And these are not sequences of amino acids, but macrocycles ("discs") containing amino acids that "connect" via thiol oxidation to form disulfide bridges. The "sequencing" is artificial via disulfide bridges, not peptide bonds and requires oxidation (*which is a no-go for abiogeness, which requires reducing to neutral conditions). The "sequencing" has no relationship to amino acid sequences in polypeptides linked by peptide bonds. They did a similar experiment before this one where they "sequenced" peptide-nucleobase hybrid macrocycle ("discs") without covalent bonding at all, but held together by weak hydrogen bonding between macrocycle "discs." Instead of covalent links like in a chain, these are like lifesaver candy discs stacked on top of one another (in a "sequence") and "held" together by static attraction. These are not *informational* sequences. They are two fixed macrocycle "sequences" (red & blue below) forming an A-B-A-B-type "sequence" pattern.

 

[TMal3]

The verse I quote to you from Genesis 2 explicitly stated that God formed Man from the dust of the ground, not by a mechanical process of chemistry. How this translates into abiogenesis - especially in light of how bankrupt the research into abiogenesis is - remains entirely obscure to me. But, then, I don't have your investment in the ToE.

It's...interesting that when Dr. Tour points out that "the emperor has no clothes" when it comes to abiogenesis research, which is a simple statement of fact, not imaginative extrapolation, you want to call it a just-so story. This false equivocation between the just-so stories of abiogenesis researchers and the statements of fact about their success in establishing abiogenesis by Dr. Tour, exposes a disconcerting willingness on your part to prejudicial distortion.



Nope. I don't approve of the way you want to believe He did it.

Yeah, I'm with Tenchi on this one. Like I said Barbarian, you are anachronizing. You are reading modern ideas back into an ancient biblical text where they don't belong. That goes against basic Hermeneutics 101 principles of biblical interpretation. We have to interpret in the proper Ancient Near East historical context of the time. Like I said, in context, Genesis 1 is a theological polemic against Egyptian pagan creation myths. See, for example:

Johnston, Gordon H. "Genesis 1 and Ancient Egyptian creation myths." BIBLIOTHECA SACRA-DALLAS- 165.658 (2008): 178.

 

[Barbarian]

You are reading modern ideas back into an ancient biblical text where they don't belong.

I don't think this fits a figurative interpretation.

Genesis 1 is a theological polemic against Egyptian pagan creation myths.

But it's also inconsistent with Mesopotamian pagan creation myths.

Something new here, inconsistent with either source.

We seem to have different definitions of what scientific "facts" and "theories" are. The age of the earth and universe are facts established on the basis of observational evidence. So is common ancestry. These are established beyond a reasonable doubt. Abiogenesis is not.

Yes. We do disagree on that.

Fact​

When you drop a pencil, it falls to the ground."
This one is pretty straightforward, but it's got a big caveat. In science, a fact is an observation that's been confirmed so many times that scientists can, for all intents and purposes, accept it as "true."
...

Hypothesis​

"A pencil drops because there's a force pulling it down."
A hypothesis is a tentative explanation about an observation that can be tested. It's just a starting point for further investigation.
...

Theory​

"Mass and energy cause spacetime to curve, and the force of gravity arises from the curvature of spacetime."
A theory is an explanation of some aspect of the natural world that's well-substantiated by facts, tested hypotheses, and laws.

What's the Difference Between a Fact, a Hypothesis, a Theory, and a Law in Science?

Each word has a specific meaning and not interchangeable.

www.discovery.com

 

[TMal3]

Right. God is the a priori cause of all things. He just uses nature to do most things in this world. So the earth is the efficient cause, the means by which it happened, and God is the final cause, the maker of nature to do things according to His will.

I'm just as pro-science as you are, but this is not what Genesis 1 teaches. There is no creation "by nature" in Genesis 1. Only creation by God by fiat. God speaks and it happens by God's word. We cannot twist Scripture to fit science, nor twist science to fit Scripture.

 

[Barbarian]

The verse I quote to you from Genesis 2 explicitly stated that God formed Man from the dust of the ground, not by a mechanical process of chemistry....How this translates into abiogenesis - especially in light of how bankrupt the research into abiogenesis is - remains entirely obscure to me. But, then, I don't have your investment in the ToE.

You want this to be literal, (can't be, since chemistry is not mechanics) but when God literally says that the Earth brought forth living things, you won't accept His word.

 

[Barbarian]

There is no creation "by nature" in Genesis 1.

God says He uses nature to create living things. He doesn't poof them into being; He has other created things produce them.

 

[TMal3]

The whole "literal" vs "figurative" is a false dichotomy.

God says He uses nature to create living things. He doesn't poof them into being; He has other created things produce them.

I don't know what Bible you're reading. There was no such thing as "naturalism" vs "supernaturalism" in ancient biblical times. *Everything* had a supernatural cause behind it. You are reading modern ideas back into Scripture. There is not a single Old Testament scholar in the world who would agree with what you're saying that Genesis 1 teaches that "God used nature to create living things." All things that we call "natural" were believed in ancient times to be gods. If you lived back then and said, "no, Genesis 1 says the Earth brought forth life not God directly, and that "God used the Earth to do this," an Egyptian would think you were saying that Elohim used Geb (the Egyptian god of the Earth) to bring forth life. You are doing eisegesis, not exegesis.