Probabilities and the Genesis of Life

_{Gil Dodgen

December 13, 2009

Intelligent Design}

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The important thing to keep in mind concerning probabilities and the origin of life is that proteins, and everything else in a living cell, are manufactured by machinery which is controlled by an abstract-representation digital coding system. Proteins not only don’t self-assemble, they cannot self-assemble, because basic chemistry drives the process in the opposite direction.

Once this is taken into consideration all arguments that assert, “But it could have happened by chance,” are rendered ludicrous on their face.

By way of analogy, the basic Darwinian argument for the origin of life goes something like this:

1) Clay occurs naturally.
2) Bricks are made of clay.
3) Therefore, there is some (given enough time) probability that houses made of clay bricks came about by stochastic processes and the chemistry of clay.

This is the way I see it, and so do most people with common sense. Apparently, one needs a Ph.D. in Darwinian Speculation (or sufficient indoctrination in this academic, “scientific” specialty) not to recognize the obvious.

Comments

Dave Wisker Thanks for the correction. If you want to know how I obtained the quote, I did a Google search on the phrase "prebiological natural selection" and looked for a Website with the source of the quote. What happened next is most instructive. The first match that came up was on http://creation.com and had I gone there, I would have obtained the entire quote, properly sourced and attributed, set in the context of the paper by Schramm, which Dobzhansky was commenting on, as you correctly pointed out in your post (#17). Instead of checking out the link, I passed it over. Why? Because I'd read so many complaints about the inaccuracy of scientific quotes on leading creationist Websites by proponents of Neo-Darwinian Evolution on Websites like TalkOrigins and Panda's Thumb that I automatically assumed that the quote would be erroneous. How wrong I was! Instead I checked out another source, which supplied what looked like proper documentation, but gave the quote with no ellipsis and didn't mention Schramm at all. My apology. As I value accuracy, I'd like to ask: is there any good online source of scientific quotes which you'd care to recommend? In the meantime, chalk up one to http://creation.com . Give credit where credit is due, I say. By the way, are you an RNA world fan?vjtorley_{December 13, 2009
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Mr Jerry, Direct templating of amino acids on RNA would be an example.Nakashima_{December 13, 2009
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"Are you seriously this ignorant of cosmology?" Hmmm....dont make a fool of yourself Kev. Perhaps you need to reread vjtorley's post..hopefully this time it wont go completely over your head. Let me give you a clue "Intellectually speaking, the hypothesis that the universe is eternal, and that life is eternal as well, requires far less in the way of mental gymnastics than the outlandish, speculative hypothesis that life originated by undirected processes acting on simple organic compounds" Vividvividbleau_{December 13, 2009
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You can't say that you have solved a non-linear differential equation until you have specified the initial conditions. The statement that evolution does not care about how life originated is absurd. Name me a single person in the Darwinian camp who says. "Ok, I admit that not only is it improbable that the cell originated by chance, but the fact that DNA contains a robust information code that replicates itself and the machinery to replicate itself indicates it must have had an intelligent designer. After this was in place, then it was all Darwinian evolution." The reason they can't is a central pillar of Darwinian theory is the theory of unguided natural selection. Anything that set the initial conditions a certain way is frontloading. Therefore Darwinian evolution must insist on life starting by chance. Population genetics arguments are complicated and make too many assumptions. It is in the impossibility of OOL scenarios with no intelligent input that Darwinian theory meets its match. If you continue to believe in the improbable, your reason to believe is not scientific, it is religious.JDH_{December 13, 2009
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Biped, Your question is a non-sequitur. If you follow my points with respect to NS's function, I was rejecting Oramus' assertion that the environment did not exert any selective pressures over the early cells. See post 8 in this thread. As well, reread post 12, my question was with respect to the early cells. That said, if drive to survive means 'tendency to reproduce under certain conditions' then proteins, and other self-replicating molecules satisfy those conditions. It's pretty analogous to the 'drive to survive' of a single-plant-celled organism, or that of a virus. What drive to survive does the single plant cell have that the peptide chain lacks?kevlar_{December 13, 2009
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"If we didn’t know that templates to assist protein self assembly existed in nature, your point that proteins can’t self assemble would have more force." Do you have the reference for protein assembly. We are all familiar with the transcription/translation process but what others are there in nature that have nothing to do with life.jerry_{December 13, 2009
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Mr. Nakashima Thank you for your response. In response to my proposed default scientific hypothesis that life of some sort has always existed, you write:
Since the surface temperature of the Earth rises above several hundred degrees centigrade as we go back past 4 billion years, I think this alternative needs further detail, which may render it less probable. If you appeal to life originating in space, and arriving on Earth via cometary bombardment, please be explicit.
The notion that life arrived from outer space is scientifically tenable. Some bacteria, lichens, spores, and even one animal (Tardigrades) recently survived a 12-day orbital mission followed by a fiery reentry througfh the Earth's atmosphere (the Foton M-3 unmanned satellite voyage in September 2007). As yet, we do not know if life can survive longer periods in deep space, but bacteria are thought to be capable of surviving inside rocks. The umbrella term panspermia embraces a variety of scientific hypotheses. For instance, Earth may have been seeded by aliens, or life could have arrived via a meteorite impact. But I suppose you will object that even if life on Earth originated in outer space, or on some other planet, the universe didn't always exist, so abiogenesis must have taken place at some time in the past. Now, even if I were a scientific and/or philosophical naturalist, I would not argue along those lines. Indeed, I would prefer to argue that life had always existed in an eternal universe, than to argue for the plausibility of abiogenesis. Think of it this way. Suppose that our astronomical observations suggest that there's a 99% chance that the Big Bang theory is true. (99% is a rather generous estimate, in my opinion, given the scientific problems attending the theory.) That means there's a 1% chance that it's false, in the light of what we know. Suppose also that the likelihood of cellular life forms originating somewhere in the universe over a period of ten billion years (the time from the Big Bang to the first life on Earth) as a result of undirected natural processes appears to be far less than 1% - say 0.000001%. Anyone can do the math. 1% is 6 orders of magnitude larger than 0.000001%. And if Dr. Stephen Meyer's Signature in the Cell is anything to go by, 0.000001% is over 100 orders of magnitude too generous. Faced with such evidence, if I were a philosophical or scientific naturalist, I would be inclined to discount the Big Bang theory, and posit an eternal universe. I would then propose that life on Earth migrated here from another planet, and so on back in time, ad infinitum. That would be a more defensible position, in my opinion. This would involve an infinite regress, but it would not be a philosophically vicious one. You can have an infinite regress of conditions (A wouldn't have occurred unless B did, and B wouldn't have occurred unless C did, and so on). What you cannot have, as Aquinas recognized, is an infinite regress of explanations - or per se causes, in Scholastic terminology. Sooner or later, explanations have to come to a stop, or they don't explain anything. Intellectually speaking, the hypothesis that the universe is eternal, and that life is eternal as well, requires far less in the way of mental gymnastics than the outlandish, speculative hypothesis that life originated by undirected processes acting on simple organic compounds. All it requires one to acknowledge is that we haven't yet managed to come up with a good explanation of the large-scale features of the universe, which is compatible with the hypothesis of an eternal universe. That I could live with, if I were a naturalist. In response to Dobzhansky's point about the impossibility of prebiological natural selection, you write:
Chemical or molecular evolution assumes that molecules are reproducing at different rates and levels of error, and that they crowd each other out of feedstock resources. We have already seen this in lab settings.
I'm not a chemist, or even a scientist, so you're probably asking the wrong person here. However, if you're talking about self-reproducing molecules, I take it that you are proposing an RNA world hypothesis or something like it:
The RNA World hypothesis is supported by RNA's ability to store, transmit, and duplicate genetic information, as DNA does. RNA can also act as a ribozyme, a special type of enzyme. Because it can reproduce on its own, performing the tasks of both DNA and proteins (enzymes), RNA is believed to have once been capable of independent life. Further, while nucleotides were not found in Miller-Urey's origins of life experiments, they were found by others' simulations; the purine base known as adenine is merely a pentamer of hydrogen cyanide.
Two brief points in reply. (1) Dr. Stephen Meyer's Signature in the Cell contains a detailed refutation of the RNA world hypothesis. I haven't read it yet, but if I were you, that's the first place I'd go. In the meantime, for a brief overview of Dr. Meyer's key points, you might like to have a look at this essay entitled, DNA and the Origin of Life: Information, Specification and Explanation, which Dr. Meyer wrote in 2007, and which appeared in the peer-reviewed volume Darwinism, Design, and Public Education, published with Michigan State University Press. Here's the address: http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=download&id=1026 See pages 260-262 for a discussion of the RNA world hypothesis. (2) One sentence from the Wikipedia article (cited above) reveals the problem with the RNA world hypothesis:
The properties of RNA make the idea of the RNA world hypothesis conceptually possible, although its plausibility as an explanation for the origin of life is debated. (Italics mine - VJT.)
"Conceptually." That's a word that a philosopher might use, but not a scientist. Real scientists like hard numbers. If the proponents of an RNA world hypothesis can't specify either and upper or a lower probability bound for their model of how life is supposed to have originated, then they can hardly expect to be taken seriously in scientific circles.vjtorley_{December 13, 2009
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vjtorley, Your quote from Dobzhansky was not exactly accurate. First of all, he was not the author of the article you cited--that was Gerhard Schramm. Dobzhansky was actually commenting on Schramm's paper. Here is what he actually wrote, with the emphasis on what was left out (I happen to have that book):
Natural Selection is sometimes described as a mechanism capable of realizing the highest degree of improbability, as Dr Schramm has quite correctly pointed out. I would like, however, to express the belief that the words “Natural selection” must be used carefully. Dr Schramm has so used them. In reading some other literature on the origin of life, I am afraid that not all authors have used the term carefully. Natural selection is differential reproduction, organism perpetuation. In order to have natural selection, you have to have self-reproduction or self-replication and at least two distinct self-replicating units or entities. Now, I realize that when you speak of origin of life, you wish to discuss the probable embryonic stages, so to speak, of natural selection. What those embryonic stages will be are for you to decide. I would like to plead with you, simply, please realize you cannot use the term “natural selection” loosely.Prebiological natural selection is a contradiction in terms.
Dave Wisker_{December 13, 2009
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Mr Vjtorley, That’s easy. The more probable alternative is that life of some sort always existed. Since the surface temperature of the Earth rises above several hundred degrees centigrade as we go back past 4 billion years, I think this alternative needs further detail, which may render it less probable. If you appeal to life originating in space, and arriving on Earth via cometary bombardment, please be explicit. Prebiological natural selection is a contradiction in terms. A quote from 1965 is hardly dispositive, even from Dobzhansky. Today we would focus more on his insistence that selection depends on self reproduction from the previous sentence. Chemical or molecular evolution assumes that molecules are reproducing at different rates and levels of error, and that they crowd each other out of feedstock resources. We have already seen this in lab settings.Nakashima_{December 13, 2009
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Mr Dodgen, Proteins not only don’t self-assemble, they cannot self-assemble, because basic chemistry drives the process in the opposite direction. I think this is the principle reason that OOL theorizing now focuses on far from equilibrium chemical dynamics, and whether these dynamics allow reaction products to accumulate faster than they break down, and whether the scenarios are plausible in terms of the surface of the planet 3.5-4 billion years ago. An example of this is the famous Miller-Urey experiment. This experiment did not fail because nothing was produced. It is not true that basic chemistry caused all the products to degrade back into simple chemical feedstocks. The opposite is true. The experiment produced results that reacted and combined together and survived - too well! If we didn't know that templates to assist protein self assembly existed in nature, your point that proteins can't self assemble would have more force.Nakashima_{December 13, 2009
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Kevlar Thank you for your posts. You ask:
So what's the more probable alternative to some sort of chemical abiogenesis?
That's easy. The more probable alternative is that life of some sort always existed. You also write:
Making the impossibility claim is a little bit bold. Care to demonstrate that, and care to take an analogy with something that is capable of self-replication, rather than bricks?
I'll answer that with a quote from an evolutionary biologist whose academic credentials are impeccable:
Natural selection is differential reproduction, organism perpetuation. In order to have natural selection, you have to have self-reproduction or self-replication and at least two distinct self-replicating units or entities. Prebiological natural selection is a contradiction in terms. — T. Dobzhansky, "Synthesis of Nucleosidase and Polynucleotide with Metaphosphate Esters," in The Origins of Prebiological Systems (1965), pp. 299, 310. (Emphasis mine - VJT.)
vjtorley_{December 13, 2009
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Kelvar, One of the most prominent features of living things is their very ubiquitous and observable tendacy to seek survival. You may call it whatever you wish, but you cannot deny that it is there. The idea of inanimate material coming to life proposes that at some point inanimate chemicals gained this tendacy. Given the extreme problems associated with abiogenesis under whatever view you wish to take of it, one might even reasonably conclude this rather tenacous feature of living things might have even been a necessity from the very start. So I may indeed be obsurd, but I am not assuming my conclusions. Now, do you have an answer for the question, or not?Upright BiPed_{December 13, 2009
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"Not wanting to simply assume our conclusions, do you have the chemical basis for a drive to survive?" What do you mean by drive to survive? Do you mean that members of the population require some sort of willing for NS to function? If so, then you're absurd, as I'd imagine you believe that influenza has a will, since NS functions on the influenza virus after all. Or do you mean some kind of tendency to reproduce? How did early cells lack the tendency to reproduce?kevlar_{December 13, 2009
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kevlar, Not wanting to simply assume our conclusions, do you have the chemical basis for a drive to survive?Upright BiPed_{December 13, 2009
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"But the kicker is how the heck can these evolutionary biologists assert that there was survival pressure 2.7 billion years ago??!!! I mean a 9th grade science student would follow the logic to this simple conclusion." How wasn't there survival pressure 2.7 billion years ago? There was still an environment, still reproducing organisms with heritable and varying traits... what's missing?kevlar_{December 13, 2009
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IrynaB Thank you for your post. Do you have a model to demonstrate that 4 billion years is too short a period of time for a house made of clay bricks to arise by stochastic processes? More to the point, wouldn't you agree that if someone were to assert that such a far-fetched scenario was indeed plausible, the onus probandi would lie entirely on them? Wouldn't you agree that it would be up to them (and not the skeptic) to put forward a step-by-step model, complete with probabilistic calculations, if they wanted their highly implausible claim to be taken seriously?vjtorley_{December 13, 2009
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Mr. Bond...James Bond, The question is what drove the beginning of life AND early life prior to it breaking some supposed threshold where evolutionary processes could kick in. After all, that is what TMS does- assumes the beginning of life and the early development stages and then starts at some arbitrary point, where it is speculated that survival and competitive pressures were present enough to allow NS to work. An example of an endosymbiosis event, where it is thought that the mitochondria organelle was produced by assimilating a prokaryote into a eukaryote genome. The explanations are a mixed bag of survival pressures where co-option, cooperation, and competition are the drivers. Now the first thing that comes to mind is why is this event not explained in terms of physics and chemistry. Why is intelligent design language used to describe a so-called non-teleological, non-directional process? But the kicker is how the heck can these evolutionary biologists assert that there was survival pressure 2.7 billion years ago??!!! I mean a 9th grade science student would follow the logic to this simple conclusion. Yet, here we are having to peruse loads of so-called scientific papers claiming its all been explained quite nicely thank you through survival pressures creating differentiation that NS can act on. Not only is abiogenesis IMOpurposefully disconnected to avoid heavy lifting, but early development (how the first single cell organism split into eubacteria, archbacteria, and eukaryotes) is ignored as well.Oramus_{December 13, 2009
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"Evolution says nothing about anything, because evolution is not a person." So I take you reject sentences like "The theory of gravity says that two objects with mass exert a force on one another"? You have a very odd linguistic community. "Even given that this impossible event occurred." I thought it was just extremely unprobable. Making the impossibility claim is a little bit bold. Care to demonstrate that, and care to take an analogy with something that is capable of self-replication, rather than bricks?kevlar_{December 13, 2009
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GilDodgen:
Even given that this impossible event occurred, random errors filtered by natural selection is a preposterous hypothesis concerning the conversion of the first microbial cell into you in such a short probabilistic period of time.
You are of course entitled to your beliefs, but I see nothing here but entirely baseless assertions. Do you have a model to demonstrate that 4 billion years is too short a "probabilistic period of time"? Then we would cross our mathematical swords, so to speak. Now there is nothing to talk about.IrynaB_{December 13, 2009
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Evolution says nothing about the _origin_ of life. Dear James, Evolution says nothing about anything, because evolution is not a person. All of modern Darwinian theory is fundamentally based on the presupposition that the first living cell came about by stochastic chemical processes. Even given that this impossible event occurred, random errors filtered by natural selection is a preposterous hypothesis concerning the conversion of the first microbial cell into you in such a short probabilistic period of time. The origin of the information in the first living cell and the origin of the information that made you represent exactly the same problem. You were designed for a purpose. Get used to it.GilDodgen_{December 13, 2009
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So what's the more probable alternative to some sort of chemical abiogenesis?kevlar_{December 13, 2009
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James: There are two major connections betwwen OOL and "evolution". (a) I think the main problem ID people have with "evolution" (the term is used in a variety of ways, some of them deceptively) is the undirectedness assumed/demanded for the process. Exactly the same undirectedness is assumed/demanded for OOL, despite chemistry to date not providing anywhere near enough complexity. (b) While its true that Darwin's text dealt with the origin of species (not life), the atheistic worldview his theory so strongly supported requires an abiotic OOL. But even limiting it to the neo-Darwinian claim, in my opinion, the chemistry required for one species to become another is seriously lacking. The whole idea that random mutation/natural selection accounts for all varieties of life is based on a gross extrapolation of microevolution, or in other words, faith. It is deceptive to claim that "evolution" does not address OOL when most of the importance of "evolution" is centered around the idea that life, species and everything can "just happen". By the way, can you define evolution for me? Include every way you would use that word.Gage_{December 13, 2009
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What a ...bizarre post? I'm quite confused. Evolution says nothing about the _origin_ of life. Abiogenesis is the term which we use to refer to the origin of life. Evolution does not equal abiogenesis. Abiogenesis does not equal evolution. One would imagine that on a blog that champions a "scientific" or even "relevant" alternative to current academic consensus on evolution I wouldn't have to reiterate this distinction?JamesBond_{December 13, 2009
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Good analogy, even if the brick is waaaay to simple for comparison. But to go with this analogy, hardly any dirt of any type has ever been found, what has been found is the wrong color, and it has never been found to have any tendency to adhere into a clod much less a brick, even if some process to form bricks was known, but none are. A chemist I know backs that 100%. Even an atheist expert on origin of life chemistry who believes life-from-chemicals recently said he has "no idea" how life could have gotten started. http://pubs.acs.org/cen/coverstory/85/8513cover1.html and scroll down to "The origin of life" heading. So anyone who thinks they have some idea how life got started from chemicals either (a) knows more than this expert, or (b) is content to let imagination substitute for plausibility.Gage_{December 13, 2009
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