Our all-time most-read post here at Uncommon Descent was about renowned chemist James Tour: A world-famous chemist tells the truth: there’s no scientist alive today who understands macroevolution (visited 363,901 times, 66 visits today, 484 responses).
At Inference Review, he writes,
Cellular and organelle bilayers, which were once thought of as simple vesicles, are anything but. They are highly functional gatekeepers. By virtue of their glycans, lipid bilayers become enormous banks of stored, readable, and re-writable information. The sonication of a few random lipids, polysaccharides, and proteins in a lab will not yield cellular lipid bilayer membranes.
Mes frères, mes semblables, with these complexities in mind, how can we build the microsystem of a simple cell? Would we be able to build even the lipid bilayers? These diminutive cellular microsystems—which are, in turn, composed of thousands of nanosystems—are beyond our comprehension. Yet we are led to believe that 3.8 billion years ago the requisite compounds could be found in some cave, or undersea vent, and somehow or other they assembled themselves into the first cell.
Could time really have worked such magic?
Many of the molecular structures needed for life are not thermodynamically favored by their syntheses.More.
In its present state, origin of life is only a science topic out of deference to naturalism, not on account of its research success.
See also: Biophysicist: Order can arise from nothing! I have evidence! – Rob Sheldon replies
Is origin of life really a science problem?
and
What we know and don’t know about the origin of life
Yes. Cell membranes are nothing like the the simple things materialists imagine them to be.
They are not soap bubbles.
Sure, over “time” anything can happen. Or can it?
From the article…
Coordinated systems utilizing several hundred enzymes in
complex pathways…
the magic god of Darwinist = time…
Answer, no, Darwinist’s god Time, is it’s own enemy
according to some physicist(England)…
The obvious, materialist claims make no scientific sense…
15* See Jeremy England, “Statistical Physics of Self-Replication,” Journal of Chemical Physics 139 (2013), doi:10.1063/1.4818538; Paul Rosenberg, “God is on the Ropes: The Brilliant New Science That Has Creationists and the Christian Right terrified,” Salon January 3, 2015
Salon’s article is definitely a puff piece.
Dr Tour brings reality back to science.
found Dr. Tour’s other article.
Animadversions of a Synthetic Chemist… and the many steps and lessons of building nano vehicles
(assumptions)emphasis mine
“Nature does not perform retrosynthetic analyses.”
It’s fascinating reading by Dr. Tour. After listing just a small overview of steps getting to certain point building nano vehicles, he ask important questions…
no slam dunk in nature…
Far more complex than what is taught to the public…
what really happens?
Life Lessons for the Prebiotic Chemist
James Tour is always awesome. In everything he does – in the lab, in his public remarks, in his popular articles. I hope I get to meet him someday, because he is truly remarkable in his depth of knowledge and his ability to apply it.
His formidable disdain for “simple” tricks is something else that convinces me he is right. His attitude dares you to contradict him.
BTW, where did the politely dissenting interlocutors go?
Don’t they have any counterargument?
They seem so loud in the philosophical discussion threads, but what about the scientific chats like this?
Don’t they support science?
I don’t think it can get more scientific than Dr. Tour’s open letter.
Dr. Tour wrote:
The appearance of life on earth is a mystery. We are nowhere near solving this problem. The proposals offered thus far to explain life’s origin make no scientific sense.
Beyond our planet, all the others that have been probed are lifeless, a result in accord with our chemical expectations. The laws of physics and chemistry’s Periodic Table are universal, suggesting that life based upon amino acids, nucleotides, saccharides and lipids is an anomaly. Life should not exist anywhere in our universe. Life should not even exist on the surface of the earth.
Any objections?
🙂
DATCG,
Thanks for the comments.
In embryonic development, the fascinating morphogenesis seems like a process where molecular signaling profiles –aka morphogen gradients– are formed following a complex choreography that guarantees the correct interpretation by the receiving cells, thus determining their individual fate. The localization/delocalization of the morphogen sources, their secretion rate, the type of morphogen, their different modes of transportation, their degradation rate, all that affects the resulting organs or tissues. Complex functionally specified informational complexity on steroids.
When those of us who have spent years working on software development for complex engineering design projects, watch in awe the marvelous cellular and molecular choreographies orchestrated within the biological systems, we are humbled at the realization that the work we used to be so proud of suddenly looks like LEGO toys for toddlers.
Technology is defined as the result of the application of scientific knowledge for a purpose. James Tour’s open letter to his colleagues makes clear that life is the result of the application of knowledge that modern science does not possess and may not ever be possessed by mere mortals. And if science ever does come to possess such knowledge will it then assert that life came about mindlessly and accidentally? Not if it is rational.
The physical dimension of life is obviously technology that is light years beyond our own. It is the result of the application of whose scientific knowledge?
Dionisio,
Assuming I count as a PDI, my answer is simply that I don’t know enough about the subject to comment. And while I would like to be less ignorant of biology, I have other interests that I like even more.
daveS:
Time travel isn’t possible.
Thanks for that useful information, Mung.
Dionisio@6:
“They seem so loud in the philosophical discussion threads”
which they use as a basis for accusation that this site isn’t really about the science
“but what about the scientific chats like this?”
Or like Gpuccio’s post about interesting proteins, while constantly complaining that ID people never do science.
Who specifically do you think should be contributing to this conversation?
‘The physical dimension of life is obviously technology that is light years beyond our own. It is the result of the application of whose scientific knowledge?’ – Harry
Why, the scientific knowledge of ‘nothing’, of course, Harry ; the nothing that created everything, including the digital code in DNA strands.
es58 @15:
Exactly! Thanks.
Axel @17:
That’s right. You’ve got it. Nothing caused everything. That’s an irrefutable scientific fact. Isn’t it? 🙂
Hi RodW!
Please see gpuccio’s response to your request for clarification at post #298; thanks in advance for your reply!
at this path:
https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/interesting-proteins-dna-binding-proteins-satb1-and-satb2/
Thanks!
harry @11:
The knowledge behind creation is not scientific. It’s absolute knowledge and wisdom beyond our comprehension.
We can’t even look at it. Just have a glimpse of it and imagine what is unimaginable.
It’s so unbelievable, but it’s written in the Holy Scriptures so that those who have to believe it will do.
RodW @16:
Whoever is serious about it.
You know what that means, don’t you?