Here, New Scientist proclaims the origin of life to the loyal readers. (Michael Marshall, “First life: The search for the first replicator,”15 August 2011):
The Gospel according to New Scientist:
This was the dawn of evolution. Once the first self-replicating entities appeared, natural selection kicked in, favouring any offspring with variations that made them better at replicating themselves. Soon the first simple cells appeared. The rest is prehistory.
The New Scientists really believe and cling to this stuff.
Gather round: “Life must have begun with a simple molecule that could reproduce itself – and now we think we know how to make one”:
So the evidence that there was once an RNA world is growing ever more convincing. Only a few dissenters remain. “The naysayers about the RNA world have lost a lot of ground,” says Donna Blackmond of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. But there is still one huge and obvious problem: where did the RNA come from in the first place?
The actual story is like this: That doesn’t really work, but nothing else could even possibly work.
The issue isn’t entirely solved yet. … Many questions remain, of course…. Another idea is that … maybe it all happened in ice. … Right now, there’s no way to choose between these options. …
When in doubt, reject the lot.
Way to leave out all the interesting stuff which indicates that RNA world is a hypothesis making progress in the traditional scientific way. Why, they even point out explicitly that the very problem that JonathanM raised the other day — how to get the sugar, base, and phosphate to join together — isn’t a such a problem once you realize that Nature isn’t obligated to use the subunits that we find convenient to classify in chemistry textbooks.
Dream on uncle Nick. You are a real man of faith. This RNA enzyme stuff is marginally interesting ID resaerch but there is a US$1,000,000 prize for a testable origin of life theory that has not been claimed for the past 10 years.
Richard Dawkins your great high priest says nobody has a clue how life started. You should inform him and claim the money.
It’s a nice story, but hardly believable. Yet people believe.
“RNA has four different nucleotides, and so far Sutherland has only produced two of them. However, he says he is “closing in” on the other two. If he succeeds, it will show that the spontaneous formation of an RNA replicator is not so improbable after all, and that the first replicator was most likely made of RNA.”
Let’s see. It takes Sutherland a lot of time, effort, and technology to intelligently and with purpose “produce” two RNA nucleotides and maybe all four and that is somehow proof that they could have spontaneously formed? What am I missing here????
Sutherland’s work solved a problem. In fact, it was a problem (how to get RNA when you have to synthesize the sugar and the base separately) that JonathanM and apparently many UD readers agreed was fatal just last week!
It didn’t solve all problems. But progressively solving problems = classic case of an advancing, successful scientific research program.
“…classic case of an advancing, successful scientific research program.”
The modern equivalent of chanting among the priests.
How do you know it’s advancing without knowing where it’s advancing to? You can’t claim that it’s advancing without already having the very knowledge you’re looking for.
If you don’t start with the assumption that you’re going to find what you think you’re going to find, then the search doesn’t look much like advancement at all.
Example: I’m looking for a monkey that rides a flying pink unicorn. I’m sure it’s out there.
Today I found a pink feather – advancement.
Today I saw a monkey – advancement.
Today I saw a bat, proof that mammals can fly – advancement.
And just yesterday you mocked me and said I’d never get anywhere. Who’s laughing now?
As you can see, my research into monkeys that ride pink flying unicorns is advancing steadily. Convincing, isn’t it?
You could say the same for absolutely any unsolved question in science. We don’t know the causes of Alzheimers, but we are making progress. But because of your pink flying unicorns argument, maybe Alzheimers is just unexplainable except by a miracle! Great argument.
Nick,
The same would apply to Alzheimer’s research or any other study if possible solutions were passed through baseless, fantastic assumptions and ideology.
Alzheimer’s research deals in reality with lives at stake, so they’re more inclined to follow the traditional method of drawing conclusions from the evidence rather than forming half-baked conclusions based on their own imaginations and then looking for evidence to support it.
That’s why I trust science more when it’s keeping airplanes in the air. OOL researchers get paid regardless of what science fiction they come up with.
1- There isn’t any evidence that the nucleotides can string themselves together to form a strand of RNA
2- Stones are the building blocks of Stonehenge- by Nick’s “logic” that means Stonehenge wasn’t designed because we know mother nature can produce stones
RNA nucleotides are not RNA, Nick. IOW Sutherland did not solve the problem of how to get RNA.
sigh, shrug
Thanks for “clearing” that up. I knew that, of course, and was hoping to get a reply from the Nickster. Fat chance of that. Very nice illustration though. I will steal that sometime, somewhere, I’m sure. 🙂