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Chemist James Tour calls time out on implausible origin of life theories

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Professor James Tour.jpg

James Tour (CC0)

Origin of life is up there with why the space aliens haven’t landed and many people are getting tired of that.

It is time for a temporary time out. Why not admit what we cannot yet explain: the mass transfer of starting materials to the molecules needed for life; the origin of life’s code; the combinatorial complexities present in any living system; and the precise non-regular assembly of cellular components?

It would be helpful if leading researchers, among them very sophisticated synthetic chemists, were to step back, pause, and join forces. If the origins of life remain a mystery, two goals are within reach: an agreement about the rational standards by which OOL research should be judged, and a candid acknowledgment of the problems that remain to be overcome. A statement of this sort would be reassuring in its candor.

James Tour, “Time Out” at Inference Review

See also: The Science Fictions series at your fingertips – origin of life What we do and don’t know.

and

A world-famous chemist tells the truth: There’s No Scientist Alive Today Who Understands Macroevolution

Note:If you think you’ve heard of Inference Review, you might have heard of this story in passing:

Inference Review did NOT set out to make a fool of Adam Becker

Also: At Inference review: Language is so much more than a system of signals

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Comments
No one needed to call a timeout in the field of alchemy. It became clear that it was a dead end, young natural philosophers quit pursuing it, and it died off one funeral at a time.jstanley01
September 13, 2019
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@pavelU #4 In response to this statement - “Materialists will NEVER be able to explain life in materialistic terms because it is an impossibility”, Pavel U says this: "Are you sure? There are many OOL explanations available in the scientific literature and more are being added quite often." Pavel, "explanations", or to be more accurate, "hypotheses" are great, but there is absolutely no guarantee that any of them are correct. Pointing to the existence of lots of different "explanations", really is not very reassuring. What it shows is that there is not much of a consensus whatsoever. And given the extent of the problem, how much are you willing to bet that any of these explanations/hypotheses are correct and accurately explain the problem? Would you get on a rocket and take off for the moon based on the accuracy of any of these "explanations"? In other words, would you bet your life on the accuracy of any of them? No way. Which shows the problem with historical science as opposed to experimental science where we can test our hypotheses and verify/falsify them. You speak as if the evolution/emergence of life from dead molecules is a given - a fact, but it isn't. It is simply what you believe happened. Good luck with that belief! This is one of the deductions that results from your worldview. You have to believe in abiogenesis by chance if you are going to hold that worldview. Again, it's a free world and you are welcome to believe whatever you want, but there is no guarantee that your belief is correct.tjguy
July 22, 2019
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^^^^^ ?????bornagain77
July 21, 2019
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Here you have a very unscientific ID paper publicly trashed: Following publication of the article, readers raised a number of concerns about aspects of this work, particularly those relating to the phylogenetic tree and the divergence times based on synonymous substitution rates. The PLOS ONE Editors have consulted with two members of the Editorial Board who have conducted an independent re-evaluation of the paper, which found concerns regarding the study design, methodology, and interpretation of the data, such that the results of the study were determined to be unreliable https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5951559/PavelU
July 21, 2019
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Yes, thank you ET. Scientists most certainly are trying to bridge the innumerable gaps by trying to form the "building blocks", membranes, etc., in the laboratory. (I overstepped by saying "create life"; they're not trying to do it all in one experiment.)EDTA
July 20, 2019
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Brother Brian:
Even if scientists were trying to create life, which they aren’t, why would you expect scientist, using a few kilograms of raw materials to be able to do in a few decades what took nature millions of years to do with 5.972 × 10^24 kg of raw material?
Nature couldn't do it if it had infinity to work with. And we would expect scientists to be able to do it because A) they are smarter than nature, B) they are trying to do it and C) they know what it takes to be a living organism. Nature can't even produce a Stonehenge. Why would anyone think it could produce a living organism?ET
July 20, 2019
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EDTA
If scientists can’t generate life in the laboratory using appropriately/realistically impure chemicals by 2050 (pick your own date), we need agree that we will give up on it having spontaneously happened.
Even if scientists were trying to create life, which they aren’t, why would you expect scientist, using a few kilograms of raw materials to be able to do in a few decades what took nature millions of years to do with 5.972 × 10^24 kg of raw material?Brother Brian
July 20, 2019
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Pavel, >There are many OOL explanations available in the scientific literature and more are being added quite often. It is interesting that the more hypotheses they come up with, the more convinced people seem to be that we have "somehow" explained OOL. This despite the fact that nobody can say with more than rhetorical certainty which of the hypotheses is actually the one that supposedly happened. (Of course each researcher will staunchly defend their own idea, upon pain of not getting more funding next time.) If scientists can't generate life in the laboratory using appropriately/realistically impure chemicals by 2050 (pick your own date), we need agree that we will give up on it having spontaneously happened.EDTA
July 20, 2019
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I don't think BA77 is observing Tour's call for a timeout,Seversky
July 20, 2019
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Moreover, as the following study found, the greater the number of particles in a quantum hypergraph state, (which is exactly the type of quantum coherence that we have with protein, DNA, and other molecules), the more strongly it violates local realism, with the strength increasing exponentially with the number of particles.
Physicists find extreme violation of local realism in quantum hypergraph states - Lisa Zyga - March 4, 2016 Excerpt: Many quantum technologies rely on quantum states that violate local realism, which means that they either violate locality (such as when entangled particles influence each other from far away) or realism (the assumption that quantum states have well-defined properties, independent of measurement), or possibly both. Violation of local realism is one of the many counterintuitive, yet experimentally supported, characteristics of the quantum world. Determining whether or not multiparticle quantum states violate local realism can be challenging. Now in a new paper, physicists have shown that a large family of multiparticle quantum states called hypergraph states violates local realism in many ways. The results suggest that these states may serve as useful resources for quantum technologies, such as quantum computers and detecting gravitational waves.,,, The physicists also showed that the greater the number of particles in a quantum hypergraph state, the more strongly it violates local realism, with the strength increasing exponentially with the number of particles. In addition, even if a quantum hypergraph state loses one of its particles, it continues to violate local realism. This robustness to particle loss is in stark contrast to other types of quantum states, which no longer violate local realism if they lose a particle. This property is particularly appealing for applications, since it might allow for more noise in experiments. http://phys.org/news/2016-03-physicists-extreme-violation-local-realism.html
Moreover, experimental realization of the Maxwell’s demon thought experiment has now proven that, in quantum information theory, entropy is a property of an observer who describes a system. Here are a couple of videos that touch upon this line of evidence.
How Quantum Mechanics and Consciousness Correlate – video (how quantum information theory and molecular biology correlate – 27 minute mark) https://youtu.be/4f0hL3Nrdas?t=1634 Darwinian Materialism vs. Quantum Biology – Part II - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSig2CsjKbg
As the following 2017 article states: James Clerk Maxwell (said), “The idea of dissipation of energy depends on the extent of our knowledge.”,,, quantum information theory,,, describes the spread of information through quantum systems.,,, Fifteen years ago, “we thought of entropy as a property of a thermodynamic system,” he said. “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,,
The Quantum Thermodynamics Revolution – May 2017 Excerpt: the 19th-century physicist James Clerk Maxwell put it, “The idea of dissipation of energy depends on the extent of our knowledge.” In recent years, a revolutionary understanding of thermodynamics has emerged that explains this subjectivity using quantum information theory — “a toddler among physical theories,” as del Rio and co-authors put it, that describes the spread of information through quantum systems. Just as thermodynamics initially grew out of trying to improve steam engines, today’s thermodynamicists are mulling over the workings of quantum machines. Shrinking technology — a single-ion engine and three-atom fridge were both experimentally realized for the first time within the past year — is forcing them to extend thermodynamics to the quantum realm, where notions like temperature and work lose their usual meanings, and the classical laws don’t necessarily apply. They’ve found new, quantum versions of the laws that scale up to the originals. Rewriting the theory from the bottom up has led experts to recast its basic concepts in terms of its subjective nature, and to unravel the deep and often surprising relationship between energy and information — the abstract 1s and 0s by which physical states are distinguished and knowledge is measured.,,, Renato Renner, a professor at ETH Zurich in Switzerland, described this as a radical shift in perspective. Fifteen years ago, “we thought of entropy as a property of a thermodynamic system,” he said. “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,, https://www.quantamagazine.org/quantum-thermodynamics-revolution/
Again to repeat that last sentence,“Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,, The reductive materialism of current OOL research, and the reductive materialistic foundation of Darwinian evolution in general, is simply at a complete loss to explain such ubiquitous beyond space-time, matter-energy, effects within molecular biology. Much less do reductive materialists have a clue as to “Who” this beyond space-time, matter-energy ‘observer’ might be who is ‘describing’ these biological systems which are far, far, away from being in thermodynamic equilibrium.
The information content that is found to be in a simple one cell bacterium, when working from the thermodynamic perspective, is found to be around 10 to the 12 bits,,, Biophysics – Information theory. Relation between information and entropy: - Setlow-Pollard, Ed. Addison Wesley Excerpt: Linschitz gave the figure 9.3 x 10^12 cal/deg or 9.3 x 10^12 x 4.2 joules/deg for the entropy of a bacterial cell. Using the relation H = S/(k In 2), we find that the information content is 4 x 10^12 bits. Morowitz' deduction from the work of Bayne-Jones and Rhees gives the lower value of 5.6 x 10^11 bits, which is still in the neighborhood of 10^12 bits. Thus two quite different approaches give rather concordant figures. http://www.astroscu.unam.mx/~angel/tsb/molecular.htm MOVING ‘FAR FROM EQUILIBRIUM’ IN A PREBIOTIC ENVIRONMENT: The role of Maxwell’s Demon in life origin - DAVID L. ABEL Abstract: Can we falsify the following null hypothesis? “A kinetic energy potential cannot be generated by Maxwell’s Demon from an ideal gas equilibrium without purposeful choices of when to open and close the partition’s trap door.” If we can falsify this null hypothesis with an observable naturalistic mechanism, we have moved a long way towards modeling the spontaneous molecular evolution of life. Falsification is essential to discount teleology. But life requires a particular version of “far from equilibrium” that explains formal organization, not just physicodynamic self-ordering as seen in Prigogine’s dissipative structures. Life is controlled and regulated, not just constrained. Life follows arbitrary rules of behavior, not just invariant physical laws. To explain life’s origin and regulation naturalistically, we must first explain the more fundamental question, “How can hotter, faster moving, ideal gas molecules be dichotomized from cooler, slower moving, ideal gas molecules without the Demon’s choice contingency operating the trap door?” https://www.academia.edu/9963341/MOVING_FAR_FROM_EQUILIBRIUM_IN_A_PREBIOTIC_ENVIRONMENT_The_role_of_Maxwell_s_Demon_in_life_origin
Whereas again, the Christian Theist readily has a beyond space-time, matter-energy, cause, (more specifically, the Christian has a beyond space-time, matter-energy, ‘observer’), that he can appeal in order to be able to explain this quantum information in life and also explain why life became, and why it stays, so far out of thermodynamic equilibrium.:
John 1:1-4 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. Hebrews 4:13 And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.
One final note, it is also important to realize that quantum information is conserved. As the following article states, In the classical world, information can be copied and deleted at will. In the quantum world, however, the conservation of quantum information means that information cannot be created nor destroyed.
Quantum no-hiding theorem experimentally confirmed for first time - 2011 Excerpt: In the classical world, information can be copied and deleted at will. In the quantum world, however, the conservation of quantum information means that information cannot be created nor destroyed. This concept stems from two fundamental theorems of quantum mechanics: the no-cloning theorem and the no-deleting theorem. A third and related theorem, called the no-hiding theorem, addresses information loss in the quantum world. According to the no-hiding theorem, if information is missing from one system (which may happen when the system interacts with the environment), then the information is simply residing somewhere else in the Universe; in other words, the missing information cannot be hidden in the correlations between a system and its environment. http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-03-quantum-no-hiding-theorem-experimentally.html
The implication of finding 'non-local', beyond space and time, and ‘conserved’, quantum information in molecular biology on such a massive scale, in every important biomolecule in our bodies, is fairly, and pleasantly, obvious. That pleasant implication, of course, being the fact that we now have very strong empirical evidence suggesting that we do indeed have an eternal soul that is capable of living beyond the death of our material bodies. As Stuart Hameroff states in the following video, the quantum information,,, isn’t destroyed. It can’t be destroyed.,,, it's possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body. Perhaps indefinitely as a soul.”
Leading Scientists Say Consciousness Cannot Die It Goes Back To The Universe - Oct. 19, 2017 - Spiritual Excerpt: “Let’s say the heart stops beating. The blood stops flowing. The microtubules lose their quantum state. But the quantum information, which is in the microtubules, isn’t destroyed. It can’t be destroyed. It just distributes and dissipates to the universe at large. If a patient is resuscitated, revived, this quantum information can go back into the microtubules and the patient says, “I had a near death experience. I saw a white light. I saw a tunnel. I saw my dead relatives.,,” Now if they’re not revived and the patient dies, then it's possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body. Perhaps indefinitely as a soul.” - Stuart Hameroff - Quantum Entangled Consciousness - Life After Death - video (5:00 minute mark) https://www.disclose.tv/leading-scientists-say-consciousness-cannot-die-it-goes-back-to-the-universe-315604
Verse:
Mark 8:37 Is anything worth more than your soul?
bornagain77
July 20, 2019
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Moreover, besides the fact that the math itself now proves that life itself requires a cause that is beyond all the space-time, matter-energy probabilistic resources of the entire universe, (and besides the fact that it is now also proven, via Godel’s incompleteness theorem, that math itself requires a cause that is beyond all the space-time, matter-energy, of the entire universe), advances in quantum biology have now also empirically proven that life requires a cause that is beyond all the space-time, matter-energy, of the entire universe. First it is important to note that Quantum non-locality, i.e. ‘spooky action at a distance’ as Einstein termed it, is one of the most enigmatic, and yet one of the most verified, aspects of Quantum Mechanics.
"I cannot seriously believe in it because the theory cannot be reconciled with the idea that physics should represent a reality in time and space, free from spooky actions at a distance." Einstein – (The Born-Einstein Letters, p.155) Godel proved mathematics is incomplete,,, Secularists cannot make God dispensible Looking beyond space and time to cope with quantum theory – 29 October 2012 Excerpt: “Our result gives weight to the idea that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them,” http://www.quantumlah.org/highlight/121029_hidden_influences.php Einstein vs quantum mechanics, and why he'd be a convert today - June 13, 2014 Excerpt: In a nutshell, experimentalists John Clauser, Alain Aspect, Anton Zeilinger, Paul Kwiat and colleagues have performed the Bell proposal for a test of Einstein's hidden variable theories. All results so far support quantum mechanics. It seems that when two particles undergo entanglement, whatever happens to one of the particles can instantly affect the other, even if the particles are separated! http://phys.org/news/2014-06-einstein-quantum-mechanics-hed-today.html Einstein wouldn't like it: New test proves universe is "spooky" - Oct 21, 2015 Excerpt: Eighty years after the physicist (Einstein) dismissed as "spooky" the idea that simply observing one particle could instantly change another far-away object, Dutch scientists said on Wednesday they had proved decisively that the effect was real. Writing in the journal Nature, researchers detailed an experiment showing how two electrons at separate locations 1.3 km (0.8 mile) apart on the Delft University of Technology campus demonstrated a clear, invisible and instantaneous connection. Importantly, the new study closed loopholes in earlier tests that had left some doubt as to whether the eerie connection predicted by quantum theory was real or not. Einstein famously insisted in a 1935 scientific paper that what he called "spooky action at a distance" had to be wrong and there must be undiscovered properties of particles to explain such counter-intuitive behavior. The idea certainly confounds our day-to-day experience of the world, where change only appears to occur through local interactions. But in recent decades scientific evidence has been building that particles can indeed become "entangled", so that no matter how far apart they are, they will always be connected. The Delft experiment is conclusive because, for the first time, scientists have closed two potential loopholes at once. The first suggests that particles could somehow synchronize behavior ahead of time, while the second implies that testing might detect only a subset of prepared entangled pairs. To prove their case, the team led by Delft professor Ronald Hanson used two diamonds containing tiny traps for electrons with a magnetic property called spin and measured all entangled pairs across 1.3 km separating two laboratories. The experiment effectively closes a chapter in an 80-year scientific debate, http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/21/us-science-universe-einstein-idUSKCN0SF2GQ20151021
And while atheistic materialists are at a complete loss to explain how particles can be instantly correlated,,,
Quantum correlations do not imply instant causation – August 12, 2016 Excerpt: A research team led by a Heriot-Watt scientist has shown that the universe is even weirder than had previously been thought. In 2015 the universe was officially proven to be weird. After many decades of research, a series of experiments showed that distant, entangled objects can seemingly interact with each other through what Albert Einstein famously dismissed as “Spooky action at a distance”. A new experiment by an international team led by Heriot-Watt’s Dr Alessandro Fedrizzi has now found that the universe is even weirder than that: entangled objects do not cause each other to behave the way they do. http://phys.org/news/2016-08-quantum-imply-instant-causation.html Experimental test of nonlocal causality – August 10, 2016 DISCUSSION Previous work on causal explanations beyond local hidden-variable models focused on testing Leggett’s crypto-nonlocality (7, 42, 43), a class of models with a very specific choice of hidden variable that is unrelated to Bell’s local causality (44). In contrast, we make no assumptions on the form of the hidden variable and test all models ,,, Our results demonstrate that a causal influence from one measurement outcome to the other, which may be subluminal, superluminal, or even instantaneous, cannot explain the observed correlations.,,, http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/8/e1600162.full
,,, And while atheistic materialists are at a complete loss to explain how particles can be instantly correlated, on the other hand Christian Theists readily have a beyond space-time, matter-energy, cause that they can appeal to in order to explain quantum non-locality:
Colossians 1:17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
And this ‘spooky action at a distance’ of ‘non-local’ quantum entanglement, which requires a cause which is beyond space-time, matter-energy, in order to explain its existence, is now found to be ubiquitous within molecular biology:
"What happens is this classical information (of DNA) is embedded, sandwiched, into the quantum information (of DNA). And most likely this classical information is never accessed because it is inside all the quantum information. You can only access the quantum information or the electron clouds and the protons. So mathematically you can describe that as a quantum/classical state." Elisabeth Rieper – Classical and Quantum Information in DNA – video (Longitudinal Quantum Information resides along the entire length of DNA discussed at the 19:30 minute mark; at 24:00 minute mark Dr Rieper remarks that practically the whole DNA molecule can be viewed as quantum information with classical information embedded within it) https://youtu.be/2nqHOnVTxJE?t=1176 Classical and Quantum Information Channels in Protein Chain - Dj. Koruga, A. Tomi?, Z. Ratkaj, L. Matija - 2006 Abstract: Investigation of the properties of peptide plane in protein chain from both classical and quantum approach is presented. We calculated interatomic force constants for peptide plane and hydrogen bonds between peptide planes in protein chain. On the basis of force constants, displacements of each atom in peptide plane, and time of action we found that the value of the peptide plane action is close to the Planck constant. This indicates that peptide plane from the energy viewpoint possesses synergetic classical/quantum properties. Consideration of peptide planes in protein chain from information viewpoint also shows that protein chain possesses classical and quantum properties. So, it appears that protein chain behaves as a triple dual system: (1) structural - amino acids and peptide planes, (2) energy - classical and quantum state, and (3) information - classical and quantum coding. Based on experimental facts of protein chain, we proposed from the structure-energy-information viewpoint its synergetic code system. http://www.scientific.net/MSF.518.491 Quantum criticality in a wide range of important biomolecules – Mar. 6, 2015 Excerpt: “Most of the molecules taking part actively in biochemical processes are tuned exactly to the transition point and are critical conductors,” they say. That’s a discovery that is as important as it is unexpected. “These findings suggest an entirely new and universal mechanism of conductance in biology very different from the one used in electrical circuits.” The permutations of possible energy levels of biomolecules is huge so the possibility of finding even one (biomolecule) that is in the quantum critical state by accident is mind-bogglingly small and, to all intents and purposes, impossible.,, of the order of 10^-50 of possible small biomolecules and even less for proteins,”,,, “what exactly is the advantage that criticality confers?” https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/the-origin-of-life-and-the-hidden-role-of-quantum-criticality-ca4707924552
bornagain77
July 20, 2019
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According to this rare honest comment from atheistic OOL (origin of life) researchers, the main problem for OOL researchers require overcoming an information hurdle of superastronomical proportions, an event that could not have happened within the time frame of the Earth except, we believe, as a miracle.
Time Out - James Tour - July 2019 Excerpt: In a 2018 article for Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology, Edward Steele et al. concede the following. "The transformation of an ensemble of appropriately chosen biological monomers (e.g. amino acids, nucleotides) into a primitive living cell capable of further evolution appears to require overcoming an information hurdle of superastronomical proportions, an event that could not have happened within the time frame of the Earth except, we believe, as a miracle. All laboratory experiments attempting to simulate such an event have so far led to dismal failure. “At this stage of our scientific understanding,” they write, “we need to place on hold the issue of life’s actual biochemical origins—where, when and how may be too difficult to solve on the current evidence.”25 All is not lost. If life on earth did not arise on earth, “[i]t would thus seem reasonable,” Steele et al. remark, “to go to the biggest available ‘venue’ in relation to space and time. A cosmological origin of life thus appears plausible and overwhelmingly likely.” Why chemical reactions that are unlikely on the earth should prove likely somewhere else, Steele et al. do not say. https://inference-review.com/article/time-out
As you can see, their solution for overcoming this "information hurdle of superastronomical proportions" is to increase their probabilistic resources and to move the OOL problem off the earth and appeal to the universe as a whole. Couple of small problems. Number 1, the universe as a whole, and all the probabilistic resources contained therein, are still no where near enough probabilistic resources for atheists to appeal to in order to overcome this "information hurdle of superastronomical proportions". The probabilistic resources needed just to explain the ribosome itself vastly outstrip the probabilistic resources available in the entire universe:
Unanswered Mathematical and Computational Challenges facing Neo-Darwinism as a Theory of Origins Excerpt: Consider the makeup of our universe: • Approximately 10^17 seconds have elapsed since the big bang. • Quantum physics limits the maximum number of states an atom can go through to 10^43 per second (the inverse of Planck time, i.e. the smallest physically meaningful unit of time) • The visible universe contains about 10^80 atoms. It seems reasonable to conclude that no more than 10^140 chemical reactions have occurred in the visible universe since the big bang (i.e. 10^17+43+80) Following from this evolution needs to be theoretically demonstrable within 10^140 molecular state transitions. (For comparative purposes see Seth Lloyd's "Computational Capacity of the Universe" [r62], reviewed by the Economist [r70]. Lloyd comes up with a value of 10^120). ,, In particular, 10^140 / 10^1,477 suggests that since the start of the universe all stochastic models would have been able to explore a maximum of just 1 in 10^-1337 of the solution space in search of the correct configuration for a 2,000 atom Ribosome. http://www.darwinsmaths.com/
Going beyond just the ribosome and trying to explain the OOL itself just makes the "information hurdle of superastronomical proportions" all that much worse for atheists.
Signature in the Cell - Book Review - Ken Peterson Excerpt: If we assume some minimally complex cell requires 250 different proteins then the probability of this arrangement happening purely by chance is one in 10 to the 164th multiplied by itself 250 times or one in 10 to the 41,000th power. http://www.spectrummagazine.org/reviews/book_reviews/2009/10/06/signature_cell
Professor Harold Morowitz shows the Origin of Life 'problem' escalates dramatically over this 1 in 10^40,000 figure when working from a thermodynamic perspective:
"The probability for the chance of formation of the smallest, simplest form of living organism known is 1 in 10^340,000,000. This number is 10 to the 340 millionth power! The size of this figure is truly staggering since there is only supposed to be approximately 10^80 (10 to the 80th power) electrons in the whole universe!" (Professor Harold Morowitz, Energy Flow In Biology pg. 99, Biophysicist of George Mason University) http://books.google.com/books?id=tiFvAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA43&lpg=PA43#v=onepage&q&f=false
Thus according to the math, we need to appeal to a cause that is beyond all of the space-time, matter-energy, of the entire universe. Of related note, Math itself, since math itself exists in some type of beyond space and time 'Platonic' realm, also requires a beyond space-time, matter-energy, cause in order to explain its own existence, i.e. Godel's incompleteness,
What Does It Mean to Say That Science & Religion Conflict? – M. Anthony Mills – April 16, 2018 Excerpt: In fact, more problematic for the materialist than the non-existence of persons is the existence of mathematics. Why? Although a committed materialist might be perfectly willing to accept that you do not really exist, he will have a harder time accepting that numbers do not exist. The trouble is that numbers — along with other mathematical entities such as classes, sets, and functions — are indispensable for modern science. And yet — here’s the rub — these “abstract objects” are not material. Thus, one cannot take science as the only sure guide to reality and at the same time discount disbelief in all immaterial realities. https://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2018/04/16/what_does_it_mean_to_say_that_science_and_religion_conflict.html Taking God Out of the Equation - Biblical Worldview - by Ron Tagliapietra - January 1, 2012 Excerpt: Kurt Gödel (1906–1978) proved that no logical systems (if they include the counting numbers) can have all three of the following properties. 1. Validity ... all conclusions are reached by valid reasoning. 2. Consistency ... no conclusions contradict any other conclusions. 3. Completeness ... all statements made in the system are either true or false. The details filled a book, but the basic concept was simple and elegant. He (Godel) summed it up this way: “Anything you can draw a circle around cannot explain itself without referring to something outside the circle—something you have to assume but cannot prove.” For this reason, his proof is also called the Incompleteness Theorem. Kurt Gödel had dropped a bomb on the foundations of mathematics. Math could not play the role of God as infinite and autonomous. It was shocking, though, that logic could prove that mathematics could not be its own ultimate foundation. Christians should not have been surprised. The first two conditions are true about math: it is valid and consistent. But only God fulfills the third condition. Only He is complete and therefore self-dependent (autonomous). God alone is “all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28), “the beginning and the end” (Revelation 22:13). God is the ultimate authority (Hebrews 6:13), and in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Colossians 2:3). http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v7/n1/equation# A BIBLICAL VIEW OF MATHEMATICS Vern Poythress - Doctorate in theology, PhD in Mathematics (Harvard) 15. Implications of Gödel’s proof B. Metaphysical problems of anti-theistic mathematics: unity and plurality Excerpt: Because of the above difficulties, anti-theistic philosophy of mathematics is condemned to oscillate, much as we have done in our argument, between the poles of a priori knowledge and a posteriori knowledge. Why? It will not acknowledge the true God, wise Creator of both the human mind with its mathematical intuition and the external world with its mathematical properties. In sections 22-23 we shall see how the Biblical view furnishes us with a real solution to the problem of “knowing” that 2 + 2 = 4 and knowing that S is true. http://www.frame-poythress.org/a-biblical-view-of-mathematics/ The mathematical world - James Franklin - 7 April 2014 Excerpt: the intellect (is) immaterial and immortal. If today’s naturalists do not wish to agree with that, there is a challenge for them. ‘Don’t tell me, show me’: build an artificial intelligence system that imitates genuine mathematical insight. There seem to be no promising plans on the drawing board.,,, - James Franklin is professor of mathematics at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. http://aeon.co/magazine/world-views/what-is-left-for-mathematics-to-be-about/ An Interview with David Berlinski - Jonathan Witt Berlinski: There is no argument against religion that is not also an argument against mathematics. Mathematicians are capable of grasping a world of objects that lies beyond space and time…. Interviewer:… Come again(?) … Berlinski: No need to come again: I got to where I was going the first time. The number four, after all, did not come into existence at a particular time, and it is not going to go out of existence at another time. It is neither here nor there. Nonetheless we are in some sense able to grasp the number by a faculty of our minds. Mathematical intuition is utterly mysterious. So for that matter is the fact that mathematical objects such as a Lie Group or a differentiable manifold have the power to interact with elementary particles or accelerating forces. But these are precisely the claims that theologians have always made as well – that human beings are capable by an exercise of their devotional abilities to come to some understanding of the deity; and the deity, although beyond space and time, is capable of interacting with material objects. http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/10/found-upon-web-and-reprinted-here.html
bornagain77
July 20, 2019
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Yes, PavelU, I am sure. The only thing "they" have is that nature can produce some of the building blocks of life. But hey, nature can produce stones, too. But nature cannot produce something as simple as Stonehenge. And you want us to believe that nature can produce a living organism without even trying. They can take all of the required building blocks, add energy an they still won't produce a living organism.ET
July 20, 2019
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ET, “Materialists will NEVER be able to explain life in materialistic terms because it is an impossibility” Are you sure? There are many OOL explanations available in the scientific literature and more are being added quite often.PavelU
July 20, 2019
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Temporary time out? Materialists will NEVER be able to explain life in materialistic terms because it is an impossibility. Scientists would have an easier time showing how nature produced Stonehenge,ET
July 20, 2019
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EG
Well, if a time out has been called, who am I to question it. ????
Damn. You beat me to it. :) :)Brother Brian
July 19, 2019
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Chemist James Tour Calls Time Out On Implausible Origin Of Life Theories
Well, if a time out has been called, who am I to question it. :)Ed George
July 19, 2019
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