The origin of life problem is forever on the verge of being solved

_{Denyse O'Leary

February 16, 2021

Intelligent Design, Origin Of Life}

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And yet always just as far off:

In 2006, in a debate with Stephen Meyer, evolutionary paleontologist Peter Ward observed that, “Harvard University just put a hundred million dollars into a center for the origin of life,” and predicted that because origin of life research is “one of the hottest scientific areas in the world we will have artificial life I predict in a decade.” Ten years later, in 2016, also in a debate with Steve Meyer (and Denis Lamoureux), physicist Lawrence Krauss promised “We’re coming very close” to explaining the origin of life via chemical evolutionary models. We’re now 15 years out from the Meyer-Ward debate and nearly five years past the Meyer-Krauss-Lamoureux event. How are these promises of origin-of-life research faring?
At the end of last year, an article in Nature titled “The Water Paradox and the Origins of Life” admitted that there are still major problems facing some of the most basic steps in the origin of life: explaining how the first biomolecules arose in a prebiotic world. The article begins with the tagline: “Water is essential for life, but it breaks down DNA and other key molecules. So how did the first cells deal with such a necessary and dangerous substance?” The article then recounts origin of life theorists on different sides of a debate: some believe that life originated in an ocean, and others believe that life formed at the surface of the earth. What comes through clearly is that the field can’t even agree on the environment where life originated, a disagreement that stems directly from deep problems facing each proposal.
Casey Luskin, “Nature Article Admits Unanswered Origin-of-Life Questions, Exposing Broken Promises of ID Critics” at Evolution News and Science Today

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

Comments

Bornagain77, Good quotes, but I'm afraid it doesn't make a dent to Darwinian fundamentalists. Take the quote:
The idea that information is “encoded” in a material system has been disproved by the evidence: there is no “matter” upon or within which information can be “encoded.”
Here's yet another completely clueless assertion without any references. Gosh, and to think that I'm relying on information encoded magnetically as "bits" on my hard drive. And my body is grown, maintained, and repaired by information encoded as base pairs in my DNA, not to mention the overlapping codes present as epigenetic data. All this has supposedly been "disproven." Really? By whom and when? If this is an appeal to QM, then information is encoded in the patterns of wavefunctions. What physicists working in the field have concluded is that information and conscious observation is a substrate to material reality. It doesn't mean that material reality doesn't exist or that information cannot be encoded in it. -QQuerius_{February 19, 2021
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Well WJM what I wrote means pretty much exactly what I intended for it to mean. Counterintuitive to what we would presuppose, and although information is immaterial, it is, none-the-less, shown to be 'physical', i.e. to be 'real', in the sense that it is shown to have 'top-down' casual effects upon material substrates. In my post, I cited the recent experimental work that confirmed the Maxwell demon thought experiment down to the atomic/quantum level. Work that has now shown that immaterial information has a quote unquote 'thermodynamic content',,, but, in order to get my point about the immaterial, yet physical, nature of information across more easily, I could have just as easily cited George Ellis's paper recognizing the 'top-down causation' of software, i.e. immaterial information, on the computer hardware, i.e. on the material substrates.
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 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/ Demonic device converts information to energy - 2010 Excerpt: "This is a beautiful experimental demonstration that information has a thermodynamic content," says Christopher Jarzynski, a statistical chemist at the University of Maryland in College Park. In 1997, Jarzynski formulated an equation to define the amount of energy that could theoretically be converted from a unit of information2; the work by Sano and his team has now confirmed this equation. "This tells us something new about how the laws of thermodynamics work on the microscopic scale," says Jarzynski. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=demonic-device-converts-inform Recognising Top-Down Causation - George Ellis Excerpt: Causation: The nature of causation is highly contested territory, and I will take a pragmatic view:? Definition 1: Causal Effect If making a change in a quantity X results in a reliable demonstrable change in a quantity Y in a given context, then X has a causal effect on Y. Example: I press the key labelled “A” on my computer keyboard; the letter “A” appears on my computer screen.,,, Definition 2: Existence If Y is a physical entity made up of ordinary matter, and X is some kind of entity that has a demonstrable causal effect on Y as per Definition 1, then we must acknowledge that X also exists (even if it is not made up of such matter). This is clearly a sensible and testable criterion; in the example above, it leads to the conclusion that both the data and the relevant software exist. If we do not adopt this definition, we will have instances of uncaused changes in the world; I presume we wish to avoid that situation.,,, Excerpt: page 5: A: Both the program and the data are non-physical entities, indeed so is all software. A program is not a physical thing you can point to, but by Definition 2 it certainly exists. You can point to a CD or flashdrive where it is stored, but that is not the thing in itself: it is a medium in which it is stored. The program itself is an abstract entity, shaped by abstract logic. Is the software “nothing but” its realisation through a specific set of stored electronic states in the computer memory banks? No it is not because it is the precise pattern in those states that matters: a higher level relation that is not apparent at the scale of the electrons themselves. It’s a relational thing (and if you get the relations between the symbols wrong, so you have a syntax error, it will all come to a grinding halt). This abstract nature of software is realised in the concept of virtual machines, which occur at every level in the computer hierarchy except the bottom one [17]. But this tower of virtual machines causes physical effects in the real world, for example when a computer controls a robot in an assembly line to create physical artefacts.,,, The mind is not a physical entity, but it certainly is causally effective: proof is the existence of the computer on which you are reading this text. It could not exist if it had not been designed and manufactured according to someone’s plans, thereby proving the causal efficacy of thoughts, which like computer programs and data are not physical entities. http://fqxi.org/data/essay-contest-files/Ellis_FQXI_Essay_Ellis_2012.pdf ?
Another way to clearly, and perhaps more easily, demonstrate that immaterial information is its own distinctive physical entity that, although being immaterial, can still physically interact in a top-down manner with material substrates is with quantum teleportation: As the following article states, ",,, it is only the information that gets teleported from one place to another."
Quantum Teleportation Enters the Real World - September 19, 2016 Excerpt: Two separate teams of scientists have taken quantum teleportation from the lab into the real world. Researchers working in Calgary, Canada and Hefei, China, used existing fiber optics networks to transmit small units of information across cities via quantum entanglement — Einstein’s “spooky action at a distance.”,,, This isn’t teleportation in the “Star Trek” sense — the photons aren’t disappearing from one place and appearing in another. Instead, it’s the information that’s being teleported through quantum entanglement.,,, ,,, it is only the information that gets teleported from one place to another. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2016/09/19/quantum-teleportation-enters-real-world/#.V-HqWNEoDtR
And as the following article states. “,,, information,,, is transferred from one place to another, but without traveling through any physical medium.”
First Teleportation Between Distant Atoms – 2009 Excerpt: For the first time, scientists have successfully teleported information between two separate atoms in unconnected enclosures a meter apart – a significant milestone in the global quest for practical quantum information processing. Teleportation may be nature’s most mysterious form of transport: Quantum information, such as the spin of a particle or the polarization of a photon, is transferred from one place to another, but without traveling through any physical medium. It has previously been achieved between photons over very large distances, between photons and ensembles of atoms, and between two nearby atoms through the intermediary action of a third. None of those, however, provides a feasible means of holding and managing quantum information over long distances. Now a team from the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) at the University of Maryland (UMD) and the University of Michigan has succeeded in teleporting a quantum state directly from one atom to another over a substantial distance https://jqi.umd.edu/news/first-teleportation-between-distant-atoms
Thus WJM, what I wrote means pretty much exactly what I intended for it to mean. "immaterial information, particularly ‘positional quantum information’, is now experimentally shown to be its own distinct physical entity that is a product of an ‘observer who describes the system’." i.e. Immaterial information, although being immaterial, is, none-the-less, now experimentally shown, (all the way down to the atomic/quantum level), to be physically real in that it now shown to have 'top-down' causal effects upon material substrates. To repeat George Ellis's definitions of 'causal effect' and 'existence'
Definition 1: Causal Effect If making a change in a quantity X results in a reliable demonstrable change in a quantity Y in a given context, then X has a causal effect on Y. Definition 2: Existence If Y is a physical entity made up of ordinary matter, and X is some kind of entity that has a demonstrable causal effect on Y as per Definition 1, then we must acknowledge that X also exists (even if it is not made up of such matter). This is clearly a sensible and testable criterion; in the example above, it leads to the conclusion that both the data and the relevant software exist. If we do not adopt this definition, we will have instances of uncaused changes in the world; I presume we wish to avoid that situation.,,,
bornagain77_{February 19, 2021
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The idea that information is "encoded" in a material system has been disproved by the evidence: there is no "matter" upon or within which information can be "encoded." Physical objects can only be experiential representations of arrangements of information which can only be experienced by an observer. Depending on the observer, the available information in what we call the physical representation can (and has been) experienced not only differently from observer to observe, but as a contradictory experience between observers. Not only is entropy determined by the observer, that is also where the principle of non-contradiction ultimately lies: in the experience of the individual observer. The origin of life is not different from the existence of life, at least not in terms of a biological framework. AS IF the "origin" of biological life is somehow more a significant or mysterious event than the fact that our biological bodies maintain "life" at any moment. Where is that information coming from? What is directing it? DNA is not nearly enough, not by a long shot. The processing power and informational reserves to maintain a moment of what we call biological life is, for all intents and purposes, unimaginable. It takes enormous energy and computing power just to generate a CGI facsimile of a living creature; imagine what it takes to actually compute and process an entire 3D living being with tens of trillions of cells each with virtually countless highly organized, functioning, interdependent parts? Each of those sub-cellular parts are themselves, at the quantum level, organized representations of information being processed into an experience by the observer - even at the entropic level. Even at the "physical law" or "chemical interaction" level. We now know these are all observer-collapsed representations of information. How can the necessary information for a thing be encoded in the thing itself if the thing doesn't even exist as such until an observer looks at it? What is the observer "looking at?" If matter doesn't exist outside of an observational experience, what are we "encoding" when we put music on a CD? The only rational and scientific answer is: we are encoding our own experiences in mind. That is the only place information can exist. That is the only place "encoding" can occur, which is the process of using one set of information to structure another set of information. That is the only place that experiences of such information can occur.William J Murray_{February 19, 2021
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BA77 said:
In other words, directly contrary to Darwinian presuppositions, immaterial information, particularly ‘positional quantum information’, is now experimentally shown to be its own distinct physical entity that is a product of an ‘observer who describes the system’.
Perhaps reword this? What does it mean for something immaterial to be it's own distinct physical entity?William J Murray_{February 19, 2021
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Thanks, Martin. At least some scientists are interested in facts and science.
It has come to our attention that THE THIRD WAY web site is wrongly being referenced by proponents of Intelligent Design and creationist ideas as support for their arguments. We intend to make it clear that the website and scientists listed on the web site do not support or subscribe to any proposals that resort to inscrutable divine forces or supernatural intervention, whether they are called Creationism, Intelligent Design, or anything else.
Intelligent Design doesn't require the supernatural. ID just requires TELIC processes.ET_{February 19, 2021
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ET @11 you have mention natural selection. I assume, you have heard of the movement of mainstream scientists called 'The third way of evolution'. Look what they say about natural selection (from their official website): "... Moreover, some Neo-Darwinists have elevated Natural Selection into a unique creative force that solves all the difficult evolutionary problems without a real empirical basis." :)))) funny, to hear something like that from mainstream scientists... they have a disclaimer on their index page: "We intend to make it clear that the website and scientists listed on the web site do not support or subscribe to any proposals that resort to inscrutable divine forces or supernatural intervention, whether they are called Creationism, Intelligent Design, or anything else. " Here it is source of the quote (in the red text area): https://thethirdwayofevolution.com/martin_r_{February 19, 2021
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Chuck,
#14 I have no idea what you are talking about.
I assume this comment was directed to me. You asked (from a design perspective) “what happened” at the origin of life. I answered your question. The abbreviated description I gave was originally predicted from logic, and ultimately confirmed by experimental result. The key observations involved are fundamental to the origin of any open-ended self-replicator (i.e. life/evolution). Consequently, they are all well-documented in the literature, and are not even controversial. The details are both accessible and coherent. However, if these things make no immediate sense to you, then perhaps you should stay silent until you can get a handle on the matter. If you would like, I can give you a brief rundown on the scientists, dates, and discoveries involved.Upright BiPed_{February 19, 2021
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Living cells can overcome the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics because they exist in an open system where outside energy is available. This outside energy is a "necessary condition" for life. However this only works if there also is a mechanism that can capture and harness the outside energy. As an analogy, a manufacturing plant can reduce local entropy using electricity to power machinery to produce finished products. The machinery is a mechanism to harness and use energy. If a large bomb is detonated in the manufacturing plant, it will increase entropy (disorder) because there is no mechanism to capture and harness that energy. Therefore although outside energy is a necessary condition, it is not a sufficient condition. Which leads to a quandary: before the advent of life, how did the quite complex mechanisms to capture and harness energy come into existence in contradiction to the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics?Ralph Dave Westfall_{February 18, 2021
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Dr Tour's next lecture tonight is on Homochirality, which is certainly NOT a small problem for naturalistic OOL scenarios Episode 4/13: Homochirality // A Course on Abiogenesis by Dr. James Tour https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqbpd3CmBgEbornagain77_{February 18, 2021
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Bornagain77, Thanks for the references in 8 and 9. I didn't know about "quantum cooling" and "quantum no-hiding" being experimentally confirmed. Also, it looks like I'll need to back off any statements about if our bodies were democratic, we'd be considered a bacteria colony that evolved our bodies as a sort of exoskeleton. ;-) CD, Have you even looked into how much shielding hemoglobin provides against background radiation? The idea is absurd to anyone who was taken any classes in radiation safety. Plus, the bones themselves are radioactive. The presence of significant amounts of C-14 also indicates that the dinosaur tissue is much younger than previously imagined: https://www.newgeology.us/presentation48.html
Researchers have found a reason for the puzzling survival of soft tissue and DNA fragments in dinosaur bones - the bones are younger than anyone ever guessed. Carbon-14 (C-14) dating of multiple samples of bone from 8 dinosaurs found in Texas, Alaska, Colorado, and Montana revealed that they are only 22,000 to 39,000 years old. Members of the Paleochronology group presented their findings at the 2012 Western Pacific Geophysics Meeting in Singapore, August 13-17, a conference of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and the Asia Oceania Geosciences Society (AOGS).
But I guess, you're not interested in "following the science" or are you? -QQuerius_{February 18, 2021
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CD claims: "that there is a remarkable continuity in the fossil record “that seem[s] to be leading” us to a deeper understanding of natural selection." HUH???? Forget scientifically correct, is that even grammatically correct?bornagain77_{February 18, 2021
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Natural selection is just a process of elimination. It is impotent with respect to universal common descent. In over 150 years since Darwin wrote his trope no one has been able to validate his claims. A deeper understanding of natural selection says it is nothing more than contingent serendipity. Continuity in the fossil record? Are you daft? The vast majority, >95%, of all fossils are of marine invertebrates. Yet in that vast majority there isn't any evidence for universal common descent.ET_{February 18, 2021
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#10 Whatever... #14 I have no idea what you are talking about.... #11 It's all about "telling" us what happened, i.e. is a hypothesis (a prediction about the world) supported or not supported by the data, be it relativity, natural selection, planetary formation, geotropism, etc. Or in some cases, like Dr. Schweitzer, something new and unexpected comes from the data which requires a re-thinking, rejection or modification of our hypotheses. Are paleontologists and evolutionary biologist all running to now claim that dinosaurs co-existed with man because some preserved collagen was found in a dinosaur femur (as some interpret Schweitzer's findings)? No, they are rethinking the preservation qualities of the site where the femur was found, i.e., that the environmental conditions where the bone was found is a more robust preservative than encountered before. This has happened before in findings of intact mammoths and other megafauna. And, analysis of the collagen shows (ala natural selection) that dinosaur bone anatomy and physiology is remarkably similar to that found in current fauna, particularly reptilian anatomy and physiology, exactly as one would hypothesize. The data "tells" us, if we care to listen, that there is a remarkable continuity in the fossil record "that seem[s] to be leading" us to a deeper understanding of natural selection.chuckdarwin_{February 18, 2021
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And at about the 41:00 minute mark of the following video, Dr. Jonathan Wells, (who specializes in embryology), using a branch of mathematics called category theory, demonstrates that, during embryological development, ‘positional information’ must somehow be coming into the developing embryo, ‘from the outside’, by some ‘non-material’ method, in order to explain the transdifferentiation of cells into their multiple different states during embryological development.
Design Beyond DNA: A Conversation with Dr. Jonathan Wells – video (41:00 minute mark) – January 2017 https://youtu.be/ASAaANVBoiE?t=2484
As well, the preceding finding that information must be coming into a developing embryo for the ‘outside’, fits, hand in glove, with William Dembski’s and Robert Marks’ previous work establishing the principle of ‘conservation of information’
“Information does not magically materialize. It can be created by intelligence or it can be shunted around by natural forces. But natural forces, and Darwinian processes in particular, do not create information.” – William Dembski
In order to establish that the Intelligent Designer who creates, and sustains, life must be God, it is first necessary to point out that “quantum information” is now found to be ubiquitous within life:
“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 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 Darwinian Materialism vs. Quantum Biology – Part II – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSig2CsjKbg
What is interesting about finding quantum information to be ubiquitous within life (and finding sequential information to be a subset of quantum information), is that quantum correlations are a ‘non-local’, i.e. beyond space and time, affair that requires a beyond space and time cause in order to explain its effect. As the following paper entitled “Looking beyond space and time to cope with quantum theory” stated, “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,”
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
As well, it is also important to realize that quantum information, unlike classical sequential information, is ‘physically’ 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 article, 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://radaronline.com/exclusives/2012/10/life-after-death-soul-science-morgan-freeman/
I have a question for ‘Professor Dave’ and other atheists,
Mark 8:37 Is anything worth more than your soul?
It is also very interesting to note how all of the preceding evidence fits, hand and glove, with John 1:1-4 in the New Testament:
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.
That John 1:1-4 should fit, hand and glove, with what was only recently discovered via our most advanced science, (i.e. via our advances in quantum information theory and quantum biology), is nothing short of completely amazing. To further drive the point home I offer this following quote,
“The most fundamental definition of reality is not matter or energy, but information–and it is the processing of information that lies at the root of all physical, biological, economic, and social phenomena.” Vlatko Vedral – Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford, and CQT (Centre for Quantum Technologies) at the National University of Singapore, and a Fellow of Wolfson College – a recognized leader in the field of quantum mechanics.
In a world where Christianity would be given a fair hearing from most scientists, (since Christianity did indeed give us modern science in the first place), this ‘prediction’ of John 1:1-4 about ‘information’ being foundational to life should count as a rather dramatic ‘scientific’ confirmation for the truth of Christianity. Namely, all of this evidence further drives the point home that Jesus, as demonstrated by His resurrection from the dead by God the Father, truly has life, (and more particularly for us personally, has the gift of ‘eternal life’), contained within Himself.
John 3:16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
Supplemental note:
January 2021 Whereas atheists have no observational evidence that the Multiverses that they postulated to ‘explain. away’ the fine tuning of the universe are real, (nor do Atheists have any evidence that the ‘parallel universes’ that they postulated to ‘explain away’ quantum wave collapse are real), Christians, on the other hand, can appeal directly to Special Relativity, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics, (i.e. our most precisely tested theories ever in the history of science), to support their belief that God really does uphold this universe in its continual existence, as well as to support their belief in the reality of a heavenly dimension and in a hellish dimension.” https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/closer-to-truth-are-there-really-extra-dimensions/#comment-722947
bornagain77_{February 18, 2021
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Moreover, classical sequential information, (such as is encoded on DNA), is shown to be a subset of quantum, (i.e. positional), information by the following method. In the following 2011 paper, “researchers ,,, show that when the bits (in a computer) to be deleted are quantum-mechanically entangled with the state of an observer, then the observer could even withdraw heat from the system while deleting the bits. Entanglement links the observer’s state to that of the computer in such a way that they know more about the memory than is possible in classical physics.,,, In measuring entropy, one should bear in mind that (in quantum information theory) an object does not have a certain amount of entropy per se, instead an object’s entropy is always dependent on the observer.”
Quantum knowledge cools computers: New understanding of entropy – June 1, 2011 Excerpt: Recent research by a team of physicists,,, describe,,, how the deletion of data, under certain conditions, can create a cooling effect instead of generating heat. The cooling effect appears when the strange quantum phenomenon of entanglement is invoked.,,, The new study revisits Landauer’s principle for cases when the values of the bits to be deleted may be known. When the memory content is known, it should be possible to delete the bits in such a manner that it is theoretically possible to re-create them. It has previously been shown that such reversible deletion would generate no heat. In the new paper, the researchers go a step further. They show that when the bits to be deleted are quantum-mechanically entangled with the state of an observer, then the observer could even withdraw heat from the system while deleting the bits. Entanglement links the observer’s state to that of the computer in such a way that they know more about the memory than is possible in classical physics.,,, In measuring entropy, one should bear in mind that an object does not have a certain amount of entropy per se, instead an object’s entropy is always dependent on the observer. Applied to the example of deleting data, this means that if two individuals delete data in a memory and one has more knowledge of this data, she perceives the memory to have lower entropy and can then delete the memory using less energy.,,, No heat, even a cooling effect; In the case of perfect classical knowledge of a computer memory (zero entropy), deletion of the data requires in theory no energy at all. The researchers prove that “more than complete knowledge” from quantum entanglement with the memory (negative entropy) leads to deletion of the data being accompanied by removal of heat from the computer and its release as usable energy. This is the physical meaning of negative entropy. Renner emphasizes, however, “This doesn’t mean that we can develop a perpetual motion machine.” The data can only be deleted once, so there is no possibility to continue to generate energy. The process also destroys the entanglement, and it would take an input of energy to reset the system to its starting state. The equations are consistent with what’s known as the second law of thermodynamics: the idea that the entropy of the universe can never decrease. Vedral says “We’re working on the edge of the second law. If you go any further, you will break it.” http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110601134300.htm
As well, and 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/
These experiments go to the heart of the Darwinism vs. Intelligent Design debate and completely blow the reductive materialistic presuppositions of Darwinists, (presuppositions about immaterial information being merely ’emergent’ from some material basis), out of the water. In other words, directly contrary to Darwinian presuppositions, immaterial information, particularly ‘positional quantum information’, is now experimentally shown to be its own distinct physical entity that is a product of an ‘observer who describes the system’. And although it can interact with matter and energy, (interact in a ‘top-down’ manner; see George Ellis ‘Recognizing Top Down Causation’), it is still shown to be its own independent entity that is separate from matter and energy and, moreover, this immaterial information has a quote unquote ‘thermodynamic content’ that can be physically measured. In other words, Intelligent Design, and a semi-direct inference to Intelligence that is necessary in order to explain why life is so far out of thermodynamic equilibrium, has, for all intents and purposes, achieved experimental confirmation via these recent experimental realizations of the Maxwell demon thought experiment. And just how much information is required to be imparted into ‘nature’, via an Intelligence, in order to explain why a living cell is so far our of thermodynamic equilibrium, is touched upon in the following article. 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
,,, Which is the equivalent of about 100 million pages of Encyclopedia Britannica. ‘In comparison,,, the largest libraries in the world,, have about 10 million volumes or 10^12 bits.”
“a one-celled bacterium, e. coli, is estimated to contain the equivalent of 100 million pages of Encyclopedia Britannica. Expressed in information in science jargon, this would be the same as 10^12 bits of information. In comparison, the total writings from classical Greek Civilization is only 10^9 bits, and the largest libraries in the world – The British Museum, Oxford Bodleian Library, New York Public Library, Harvard Widenier Library, and the Moscow Lenin Library – have about 10 million volumes or 10^12 bits.” – R. C. Wysong – The Creation-evolution Controversy ‘The information content of a simple cell has been estimated as around 10^12 bits, comparable to about a hundred million pages of the Encyclopedia Britannica.” Carl Sagan, “Life” in Encyclopedia Britannica: Macropaedia (1974 ed.), pp. 893-894
Thus since Bacterial cells are about 10 times smaller than most plant and animal cells.
Size Comparisons of Bacteria, Amoeba, Animal & Plant Cells Excerpt: Bacterial cells are very small – about 10 times smaller than most plant and animal cells. https://education.seattlepi.com/size-comparisons-bacteria-amoeba-animal-plant-cells-4966.html
And since there are conservatively estimated to be around 30 trillion cells within the average human body,
Revised Estimates for the Number of Human and Bacteria Cells in the Body – 2016 Abstract: Reported values in the literature on the number of cells in the body differ by orders of magnitude and are very seldom supported by any measurements or calculations. Here, we integrate the most up-to-date information on the number of human and bacterial cells in the body. We estimate the total number of bacteria in the 70 kg “reference man” to be 3.8·10^13. For human cells, we identify the dominant role of the hematopoietic lineage to the total count (?90%) and revise past estimates to 3.0·10^13 human cells. Our analysis also updates the widely-cited 10:1 ratio, showing that the number of bacteria in the body is actually of the same order as the number of human cells, and their total mass is about 0.2 kg. https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1002533
Then that gives us a rough ballpark estimate of around 300 trillion times 100 million pages of Encyclopedia Britannica. Or about 300 trillion times the information content contained within all the books contained in all the largest libraries in the world. Needless to say, that is a massive amount of immaterial information that is present within our physical bodies. As the following article states, the information to build a human infant, atom by atom, would take up the equivalent of enough thumb drives to fill the Titanic, multiplied by 2,000.
In a TED Talk, (the Question You May Not Ask,,, Where did the information come from?) – November 29, 2017 Excerpt: Sabatini is charming.,,, he deploys some memorable images. He points out that the information to build a human infant, atom by atom, would take up the equivalent of enough thumb drives to fill the Titanic, multiplied by 2,000. Later he wheels out the entire genome, in printed form, of a human being,,,,: [F]or the first time in history, this is the genome of a specific human, printed page-by-page, letter-by-letter: 262,000 pages of information, 450 kilograms.,,, https://evolutionnews.org/2017/11/in-a-ted-talk-heres-the-question-you-may-not-ask/
As should be obvious to even the most metaphysically blinded Darwinist, it is impossible for the sequential information on DNA to account for this massive amount of ‘positional information’ that is somehow coming into a developing embryo and building ‘a human infant, atom by atom’. As Doug Axe states in the following video, “there are a quadrillion neural connections in the human brain, that’s vastly more neural connections in the human brain than there are bits (of information) in the human genome. So,,, there’s got to be something else going on that makes us what we are.”
“There is also a presumption, typically when we talk about our genome, (that the genome) is a blueprint for making us. And that is actually not a proven fact in biology. That is an assumption. And (one) that I question because I don’t think that 4 billion bases, which would be 8 billion bits of information, that you would actually have enough information to specify a human being. If you consider for example that there are a quadrillion neural connections in the human brain, that’s vastly more neural connections in the human brain than there are bits (of information) in the human genome. So,,, there’s got to be something else going on that makes us what we are.” Doug Axe – Intelligent Design 3.0 – Stephen C. Meyer – video (1 hour 16 minute mark) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvwBaD8-00w&t=4575s
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JVL cites Dr. Tour's article on Intelligent Design in which Dr. Tour states,
I have been labeled as an Intelligent Design (sometimes called “ID”) proponent. I am not. I do not know how to use science to prove intelligent design although some others might. I am sympathetic to the arguments and I find some of them intriguing, but I prefer to be free of that intelligent design label. As a modern-day scientist, I do not know how to prove intelligent design using my most sophisticated analytical tools— the canonical tools are, by their own admission, inadequate to answer the intelligent design question. I cannot lay the issue at the doorstep of a benevolent creator or even an impersonal intelligent designer. All I can presently say is that my chemical tools do not permit my assessment of intelligent design.
I suppose that by 'canonical tools' Dr. Tour is referring to scripture. And while I would disagree with Dr. Tour, (and others who are of the Theistic Evolution stripe), that the scriptures are ambiguous in this area, I would, instead of debating scripture, like to focus in on the science at hand. To repeat what Dr. Tour stated, "All I can presently say is that my chemical tools do not permit my assessment of intelligent design." And indeed Dr. Tour's focus is strictly on the chemistry at hand. And rightly so. That is his field of expertise by the way, where he is regarded as one of the top ten synthetic chemists in the world. And in regards to chemistry and the OOL, Dr. Tour is not nearly so cautious as he was to his overall scientific inference to Intelligent Design . In regards to the current state of OOL chemistry, Dr. Tour has stated,
“We have no idea how the molecules that compose living systems could have been devised such that they would work in concert to fulfill biology’s functions. We have no idea how the basic set of molecules, carbohydrates, nucleic acids, lipids, and proteins, were made and how they could have coupled into the proper sequences, and then transformed into the ordered assemblies until there was the construction of a complex biological system, and eventually to that first cell. Nobody has any idea how this was done when using our commonly understood mechanisms of chemical science. Those that say they understand are generally wholly uninformed regarding chemical synthesis. Those that say “Oh, this is well worked out,” they know nothing, nothing about chemical synthesis – Nothing! Further cluelessness – From a synthetic chemical perspective, neither I nor any of my colleagues can fathom a prebiotic molecular route to construction of a complex system. We cannot figure out the prebiotic routes to the basic building blocks of life: carbohydrates, nucleic acids, lipids, and proteins. Chemists are collectively bewildered. Hence I say that no chemist understands prebiotic synthesis of the requisite building blocks let alone their assembly into a complex system. That’s how clueless we are. I’ve asked all of my colleagues – National Academy members, Nobel Prize winners -I sit with them in offices; nobody understands this. So if your professors say it’s all worked out, your teachers say it’s all worked out, they don’t know what they’re talking about. It is not worked out. You cannot just refer this to somebody else; they don’t know what they’re talking about.” James Tour – one of the top ten leading chemists in the world The Origin of Life: An Inside Story - March 2016 Lecture with James Tour https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zQXgJ-dXM4
Needless to say, that is certainly NOT antagonistic to the overall scientific inference to Intelligent Design. But, as Dr. Tour points out, chemistry can only get you so far as to the inference to Intelligent Design, i.e. "my chemical tools do not permit my assessment of intelligent design." But I hold that our science, in areas other than chemistry, (such as in thermodynamics and quantum mechanics), does allow a much stronger inference to Intelligent Design than Dr. Tour is willing to make from chemistry alone. As Dr. Tour himself stated, "I do not know how to use science to prove intelligent design although some others might." And indeed, in Dr. Tour's preliminary video to the current lecture series he is doing, Dr. Tour mentioned all the topics that he would be discussing in his lecture series.
0 - Reasons for this Series: 1 - Introduction to Abiogenesis: 2 - Primordial Soup: 3 - Hype: 4 - Homochirality: 5 - Carbohydrates: 6 - Building Blocks of Building Blocks: 7 - Peptides: 8 - Nucleotides: 9 - Intermediate Summary & a Call to Colleagues: 10 - Lipids: 11 - Chiral-induced Spin Selectivity: 12 - Cell Construction & The Assembly Problem: 13 - Summary & Projections:
The one topic that Dr. Tour said he would NOT be discussing in his present lecture series was thermodynamics. For that topic he referenced his interview with Dr. Brian Miller, who has a Ph.D. in physics from Duke University.
Link to interview with Dr. Brian Miller: https://youtu.be/RJeUH7IhQHo?
In the preliminary video to the lecture series, Dr. Brian Miller also offered this critique of 'Professor Dave's' current take on thermodynamics and the OOL,
“‘Professor Dave’ argues that the origin of life does not face thermodynamic hurdles. He states that natural systems often spontaneously increase in order, such as water freezing or soap molecules forming micelles (e.g., spheres or bilayers), He is making the very common mistake that he fails to recognize that the formation of the cell represents both a dramatic decrease in entropy and an equally dramatic increase in energy. In contrast, water freezing represents both a decrease in entropy but also a decrease in energy. More specifically, the process of freezing releases heat that increases the entropy of the surrounding environment by an amount greater than the entropy decrease of the water molecule forming the rigid structure. Likewise, soap molecules coalescing into micelles represents a net increase of entropy since the surrounding water molecules significantly increase in their number of degrees of freedom. No system without assistance ever moves both toward lower entropy and higher energy which is required for the formation of a cell.” – Brian Miller, Ph. D. – MIT – Episode 0/13: Reasons // A Course on Abiogenesis by Dr. James Tour https://youtu.be/71dqAFUb-v0?t=1434
And, from the thermodynamics perspective, (not from the chemical perspective), and as Dr. Miller states in this fairly recent article, "The only plausible explanation for the origin of life is intelligent agency."
Thermodynamic Challenges to the Origin of Life - Brian Miller - March 27, 2020 Excerpt: The thermodynamic barriers to the origin of life have become decidedly more well defined since this book’s first publication. The initial challenges described in the original edition still stand. Namely, spontaneous natural processes always tend toward states of greater entropy, lower energy, or both. The change of entropy and energy are often combined into the change of free energy, and all spontaneous processes move toward lower free energy. However, the generation of a minimally functional cell on the ancient Earth required a local system of molecules to transition into a state of both lower entropy and higher energy. Therefore, it must move toward dramatically higher free energy. The chance of a system accomplishing this feat near equilibrium is astronomically small.,,, The only plausible explanation for the origin of life is intelligent agency. https://evolutionnews.org/2020/03/thermodynamic-challenges-to-the-origin-of-life/
But to make Dr. Miller's inference to Intelligent Design even stronger. To repeat what Dr. Miller stated in response to "Professor Dave", "No system without assistance ever moves both toward lower entropy and higher energy which is required for the formation of a cell.” So exactly how does ‘nature’, all by its lonesome, move toward lower entropy and higher energy in order to form a cell? Well it doesn't! It would clearly be a violation of the second law of thermodynamics if it ever did. And if you think the second law can be violated by nature, well, to put it mildly, you might as well believe in perpetual motion machines. it is only by an Intelligence imparting (positional) information into ‘nature’ that we are able to move toward lower entropy and higher energy at the same time in order to move towards what it would take to form a cell. As the following 2010 experimental realization of Maxwell’s demon thought experiment demonstrated, it is knowledge of a particle’s location and/or position that converts information into energy.
Maxwell’s demon demonstration turns information into energy – November 2010 Excerpt: Scientists in Japan are the first to have succeeded in converting information into free energy in an experiment that verifies the “Maxwell demon” thought experiment devised in 1867.,,, In Maxwell’s thought experiment the demon creates a temperature difference simply from information about the gas molecule temperatures and without transferring any energy directly to them.,,, Until now, demonstrating the conversion of information to energy has been elusive, but University of Tokyo physicist Masaki Sano and colleagues have succeeded in demonstrating it in a nano-scale experiment. In a paper published in Nature Physics they describe how they coaxed a Brownian particle to travel upwards on a “spiral-staircase-like” potential energy created by an electric field solely on the basis of information on its location. As the particle traveled up the staircase it gained energy from moving to an area of higher potential, and the team was able to measure precisely how much energy had been converted from information. http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-11-maxwell-demon-energy.html
And as the following 2010 article stated about the preceding experiment, “This is a beautiful experimental demonstration that information has a thermodynamic content,”
Demonic device converts information to energy – 2010 Excerpt: “This is a beautiful experimental demonstration that information has a thermodynamic content,” says Christopher Jarzynski, a statistical chemist at the University of Maryland in College Park. In 1997, Jarzynski formulated an equation to define the amount of energy that could theoretically be converted from a unit of information2; the work by Sano and his team has now confirmed this equation. “This tells us something new about how the laws of thermodynamics work on the microscopic scale,” says Jarzynski. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=demonic-device-converts-inform
In short, it is immaterial information that is imparted by an Intelligence into nature that allows life to be in a state that is far from thermodynamic equilibrium, i.e. that allows life to be in a state of "lower entropy and higher energy” at the same time. As Andy McIntosh, professor of thermodynamics and combustion theory at the University of Leeds, stated, “Information has its definition outside the matter and energy on which it sits, and furthermore constrains it (the polymers of life) to operate in a highly non-equilibrium thermodynamic environment. This proposal resolves the thermodynamic issues and invokes the correct paradigm for understanding the vital area of thermodynamic/organisational interactions,”
Information and Thermodynamics in Living Systems – Andy C. McIntosh – 2013 Excerpt: ,,, information is in fact non-material and that the coded information systems (such as, but not restricted to the coding of DNA in all living systems) is not defined at all by the biochemistry or physics of the molecules used to store the data. Rather than matter and energy defining the information sitting on the polymers of life, this approach posits that the reverse is in fact the case. Information has its definition outside the matter and energy on which it sits, and furthermore constrains it to operate in a highly non-equilibrium thermodynamic environment. This proposal resolves the thermodynamic issues and invokes the correct paradigm for understanding the vital area of thermodynamic/organisational interactions, which despite the efforts from alternative paradigms has not given a satisfactory explanation of the way information in systems operates.,,, http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/9789814508728_0008 Andrew McIntosh (also known as Andy McIntosh) is professor of thermodynamics and combustion theory at the University of Leeds.
bornagain77_{February 18, 2021
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As to: "How could you be sure it was him?" Well, according to scripture, there will be no doubt,
Matthew 24:26-27 So if they tell you, ‘There He is in the wilderness,’ do not go out; or, ‘Here He is in the inner rooms,’ do not believe it. For just as the lightning comes from the east and flashes as far as the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.
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Martin_r: Lets imagine, that Jesus Christ returned to Earth. How could you be sure it was him?JVL_{February 18, 2021
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physicist Lawrence Krauss promised “We’re coming very close” to explaining the origin of life via chemical evolutionary models.
Promises, promises. I wouldn't accept a check as payment from that dude.Concealed Citizen_{February 18, 2021
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Querius @15 indeed, 3/13 Episode was brilliant! I liked the following part explaining how Darwinian OOL-researchers imagine prebiotic chemical synthesis: "...and the resultant solution degassed for 15 mins", Dr. Tour 's sarcastic reaction: "... how you going to degass on an early Earth ? To do degassing you need a vacuum pump ........ No vacuum pumps on early Earth" :))))) PS: this example perfectly illustrates how Darwinians oversimplifying things... they have been doing it for 150 years.... but every lie sounds convincing when you are an uneducated Darwinian layman :)))martin_r_{February 17, 2021
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Re: Dr. Tour's presentation, Episode 3: Absolutely brilliant! -QQuerius_{February 17, 2021
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Chuck at #9 I have no association with the Discovery folks, but I can read the relevant material. The literature clearly suggests that a set of constraints was organized to establish a medium, and that medium was used to describe both the set of constraints and the processes required to have them persist over time — otherwise, we would not be here to ask the question.Upright BiPed_{February 17, 2021
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