Best origin of life quotes from 2015?

5 Replies to “Best origin of life quotes from 2015?”

1. 1
   Mung says:

   June 14, 2015 at 5:19 pm

   Hi News,

   Is he asking specifically for quotations regarding the origin of life?
2. 2
   bornagain77 says:

   June 14, 2015 at 6:06 pm

   Of interest:

   The Digital Code of DNA and the Unimagined Complexity of a ‘Simple’ Bacteria – Rabbi Moshe Averick – video
   https://vimeo.com/35730736
3. 3
   Mung says:

   June 14, 2015 at 7:19 pm

   The existence of linear and digital sequences in life is a fact, an experimental fact, and all biologists acknowledge it. It is equally a fact that linear and digital sequences that direct the synthesis of molecules do not exist in the inanimate world, so it is beyond dispute that a divide does exist between life and matter. It is the divide between the analogue world of chemistry and the digital world of life, and it is not a fiction. The problem is the origin of that divide, not it’s existence.

   – Marcello Barbieri, Code Biology: A New Science of Life, p 12.

   http://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319145341

   c.f.

   http://www.codebiology.org/
4. 4
   bornagain77 says:

   June 15, 2015 at 4:00 am

   OT: Dr. Giem has new video on ORFan genes:

   New Genes Are Essential 6-13-2015 by Paul Giem – video
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qgGPV1AO1E
   It has been noted that ORFan genes (genes that are not related to genes in other organisms) are common. Research on fruit flies shows that a substantial portion of those genes are essential for development, raising the question of how so many of those genes can evolve so rapidly.
5. 5
   tarmaras says:

   June 17, 2015 at 9:33 am

   From Ashish Dalela’s Is the Apple Really Red?: 10 Essays on Science and Religion, Chapter 5: Impersonalism, Voidism and Science.

   http://www.ashishdalela.com/bo.....eally-red/

   The book was published at the end of 2014, but it’s close.

   “The central difficulty in the philosophies of impersonalism and voidism
   is the inability to explain how the manifest world of forms is created
   from the formless. For instance, if the universe prior to creation
   is oneness, then how is that oneness divided into many parts? If the
   universe is emptiness prior to creation, then what converts that emptiness
   into objects? The scientific counterpart of these questions is: If
   space-time is the fundamental entity from which the universe springs,
   then what causes the random fluctuation in that space-time, which, in
   turn cause the manifest universe? Without such an explanation, the
   theory of nature is incomplete because it cannot explain the origin of
   form from the formless.”

   In recent times, there have been attempts to solve this problem by
   postulating consciousness as a transcendent entity that creates the
   forms. For instance, some New Age thinkers claim that nature is a
   quantum probability wavefunction that consciousness collapses into
   definite states out of its choices. This consciousness, the spiritualist
   claims, is an impersonal cosmic consciousness, the field of choices in
   which the world of experience is created. But this idea of a cosmic
   impersonal consciousness is a misnomer because the idea of choice
   and the idea of oneness are incompatible; choices imply individuality,
   and if consciousness can choose, then it must be an individual. Choices
   without individuality cannot exist. The idea of cosmic conscious
   choices thus leads to inconsistency. However, without the notion of
   a transcendent consciousness, there is no explanation for the emergence
   of form from the formless. In that scenario, the scientific explanation
   of nature is incomplete.

   Science is already being stalked by problems of incompleteness
   and inconsistency which spirituality is supposed to solve. For, if science
   was already complete and consistent, then there would be no
   need for a spiritual alternative. By adopting impersonal and voidistic
   approaches, however, we again inherit problems of inconsistency and
   incompleteness, this time from the spiritual notions.

   It has become customary in science to attribute anything that the
   scientific theory cannot explain to randomness. Thus space-time can
   randomly produce particles, and these randomly created particles
   can randomly combine to form complex molecules, which can randomly
   combine to produce living beings. By injecting the idea of randomness
   into a logical-empirical explanation of nature, such theories
   violate the fundamental goal in science which is to provide predictable
   cause-effect relationships. Those who propose randomness as an
   explanation of currently unexplained facts believe that they are proposing
   a unique scientific idea, but a closer look reveals that they are
   proposing infinitely many unique ideas.
   

   Most impersonalist and voidist religious philosophies ride on this
   dogmatic approach to science. Just as matter can ‘emerge’ from the
   collapse of the wavefunction or changes to the geometry of the spacetime
   in physical theories, impersonalism and voidism suggest that
   forms are created from something formless. While claiming to provide
   a ‘synthesis’ of science and religion, in so far as the problem about
   the conversion of formless to form is concerned, we would not have
   moved an inch in neither religion nor science.”