Paul Nelson discusses origins at Trinity College, Florida

Matspirit @1 Quote from the article:

We cannot know for sure what happened four billion years ago. "Even if you made a reactor and out pops E. coli on the other side… you still can't prove that we arose that way," says Martin. The best we can ever do is to draw up a story that is consistent with all the evidence: with experiments in chemistry, with what we know about the early Earth, and with what biology reveals about the oldest forms of life. Finally, after a century of fractious effort, that story is coming into view. That means we are approaching one of the great divides in human history: the divide between those who know the story of life's beginning, and those who never could. [But I thought he just said that we can NEVER know! ?????] Some of the people alive today will become the first in history who can honestly say they know where they came from. [But I thought he just said that we can NEVER know! - ?????] Every single person who died before Darwin published Origin of Species in 1859 was ignorant of humanity's origins, because they knew nothing of evolution. But everyone alive now, barring isolated groups, can know the truth about our kinship with other animals. Similarly, everyone born after Yuri Gagarin orbited the Earth in 1961 has lived in a society that can travel to other worlds. Even if we never go ourselves, space travel is a reality. These facts change our worldview in subtle ways. Arguably, they make us wiser. Evolution teaches us to treasure every other living thing, for they are our cousins. Space travel allows us to see our world from a distance, revealing how unique and fragile it is. [Subtle ways? I'd argue that they change it 180 degrees!] Some of the people alive today will become the first in history who can honestly say they know where they came from. They will know what their ultimate ancestor was like and where it lived. This knowledge will change us. On a purely scientific level, it will tell us about how likely life is to form in the Universe, and where to look for it. And it will tell us something about life's essential nature. But beyond that, we cannot yet know the wisdom the origin of life will reveal.

Oh my, this article is so full of Maybe this, probably that, perhaps this, could haves, might haves, are thought to haves, etc. etc. And yet they call this science? In order to take their claims/beliefs seriously, first you have to make the leap of faith that life evolved all on it's own. No one KNOWS that, in spite of what he claims. tjguy

As to the rest of Mat's golly gee whiz article on the OOL problem, the following leading Chemist in the world is far more honest as to the true state of OOL research than the article was:

“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 Origin of Life: An Inside Story - Professor James Tour – May 1, 2016 Excerpt: “All right, now let’s assemble the Dream Team. We’ve got good professors here, so let’s assemble the Dream Team. Let’s further assume that the world’s top 100 synthetic chemists, top 100 biochemists and top 100 evolutionary biologists combined forces into a limitlessly funded Dream Team. The Dream Team has all the carbohydrates, lipids, amino acids and nucleic acids stored in freezers in their laboratories… All of them are in 100% enantiomer purity. [Let’s] even give the team all the reagents they wish, the most advanced laboratories, and the analytical facilities, and complete scientific literature, and synthetic and natural non-living coupling agents. Mobilize the Dream Team to assemble the building blocks into a living system – nothing complex, just a single cell. The members scratch their heads and walk away, frustrated… So let’s help the Dream Team out by providing the polymerized forms: polypeptides, all the enzymes they desire, the polysaccharides, DNA and RNA in any sequence they desire, cleanly assembled. The level of sophistication in even the simplest of possible living cells is so chemically complex that we are even more clueless now than with anything discussed regarding prebiotic chemistry or macroevolution. The Dream Team will not know where to start. Moving all this off Earth does not solve the problem, because our physical laws are universal. You see the problem for the chemists? Welcome to my world. This is what I’m confronted with, every day.“ James Tour – leading Chemist https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/origin-of-life-professor-james-tour-points-the-way-forward-for-intelligent-design/

In the following article, Tour notes that "Reckless general claims are a characteristic of the (OOL) field"

Two Experiments in Abiogenesis - James Tour - Sept. 2016 Excerpt: The work by Carell and his colleagues illustrates another frustrating problem in prebiotic chemistry. One group publishes their results reporting products in low yields and unusable gross mixtures. Another group then uses those products, in their pure and abundant form, as their starting materials. Carell’s group used homochiral ribose, claiming that, “Ribose is generated from glycoaldehyde and formaldehyde, formed from an early atmosphere containing humid CO2.”3 This reaction provides only ribose traces in unusable mixtures. Carell and his coworkers assumed ribose as a given. They also used purified aminopyrimidines, relying on research that generated them from small molecules, such as guanidine and hydrogen cyanide. The published protocols on which they rely report equally troubling mixtures of products. No overall bookkeeping standards are maintained from one published work to another. The shortcomings of past generations are subsumed in current work without ever being acknowledged. “It is assumed,” Carell and his colleagues remark, “that life originated from a simple set of small molecules.”4 His work dispels any such illusions. Reckless general claims are a characteristic of the field.,,, http://inference-review.com/article/two-experiments-in-abiogenesis

bornagain77

As to this quote from Mat's OOL propagandist article:

"Vitalism was often bound up with cherished religious beliefs. The Bible says that God used "the breath of life" to animate the first humans, and the immortal soul is a form of vitalism. There is just one problem. Vitalism is plain wrong."

The death of man's soul, much like Twain's death, is greatly exaggerated by evolutionary materialists.

The Unbearable Wholeness of Beings - Stephen L. Talbott - 2010 Excerpt: Virtually the same collection of molecules exists in the canine cells during the moments immediately before and after death. But after the fateful transition no one will any longer think of genes as being regulated, nor will anyone refer to normal or proper chromosome functioning. No molecules will be said to guide other molecules to specific targets, and no molecules will be carrying signals, which is just as well because there will be no structures recognizing signals. Code, information, and communication, in their biological sense, will have disappeared from the scientist’s vocabulary. ,,, the question, rather, is why things don’t fall completely apart — as they do, in fact, at the moment of death. What power holds off that moment — precisely for a lifetime, and not a moment longer? Despite the countless processes going on in the cell, and despite the fact that each process might be expected to “go its own way” according to the myriad factors impinging on it from all directions, the actual result is quite different. Rather than becoming progressively disordered in their mutual relations (as indeed happens after death, when the whole dissolves into separate fragments), the processes hold together in a larger unity. http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-unbearable-wholeness-of-beings picture - What power holds off that moment — precisely for a lifetime, and not a moment longer? http://www.crystalinks.com/obe.lady.jpg Scientific evidence that we do indeed have an eternal soul (Elaboration on Talbott's question “What power holds off that moment — precisely for a lifetime, and not a moment longer?”)– video 2016 https://youtu.be/h2P45Obl4lQ Molecular Biology - 19th Century Materialism meets 21st Century Quantum Mechanics – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCs3WXHqOv8 “Now the world appears to be divided into two realms, described by two different sets of physical laws. The quantum (world),, which is immaterial, coexisting possibilities, non-local, unified, connected, has some ultimate truth although we don’t know what it is yet, deeper levels of reality, and in many senses ‘spirit-like’. The classical world, the (illusory) billiard ball universe that we (appear to) live in right now, but not so, is material, Newtonian, definite, macroscopic, local, predictable, disconnected, post-modern, and somewhat boring actually. Now, what is life? If you approach life from classical physics, you see that biology is a set of self-organizing functions. There is no secret to life. Brain activities are equivalent to computers, consciousness is a epi-phenomenal illusion with no causal power. That’s the party line in standard neuroscience and philosophy. Accordingly, Thomas Huxley said years ago, ‘We are merely conscious automaton,’ helpless spectators., That’s the story we get from classical physics approach to the brain. Now,, applying quantum physics to biology, first by Erwin Schrodinger,,, quantum features (of biology include), non-local entanglement, super-position, unity, quantum coherence, quantum information. A kind of quantum vitalism, may play key roles in biological function.,,,” Stuart Hameroff – Does Quantum Biology Support A Quantum Soul? – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIyEjh6ef_8 “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://youtu.be/jjpEc98o_Oo?t=300 LIFE AFTER DEATH: Shock claim of evidence showing consciousness may continue as a SOUL THE human conscious lives on after death, scientists have sensationally claimed. By Sean Martin - Sun, Nov 6, 2016 Excerpt: Sir Roger states if a person temporarily dies, this quantum information is released from the microtubules and into the universe. However, if they are resuscitated the quantum information is channeled back into the microtubules and that is what sparks a near death experience. Sir Roger added: “If they’re not revived, and the patient dies, it’s possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body, perhaps indefinitely, as a soul.” http://www.express.co.uk/news/science/728897/LIFE-AFTER-DEATH-consciousness-continue-SOUL

What Penrose and Hameroff are referring to is the fact that in quantum mechanics it is quantum information that is primarily conserved, and not necessarily energy and matter that are primarily conserved, as energy and matter are primarily conserved in classical mechanics: (November 2016) https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/philosopher-of-science-roger-penrose-thinks-soul-may-survive-death/#comment-620372 Moreover, unlike the imaginary multiverse which atheists invoke to try to get around the fine-tuning of the universe, for which they have no scientific evidence, Theists do have scientific evidence for an eternal higher heavenly dimension and for a hellish dimension. Moreover, this scientific evidence comes from two of our most verified theories in science. i.e. Special Relativity and General Relativity:

Special and General Relativity compared to Heavenly and Hellish Near Death Experiences - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbKELVHcvSI

supplemental note:

Near-Death Experiences: Putting a Darwinist's Evidentiary Standards to the Test - Dr. Michael Egnor - October 15, 2012 Excerpt: Indeed, about 20 percent of NDE's are corroborated, which means that there are independent ways of checking about the veracity of the experience. The patients knew of things that they could not have known except by extraordinary perception -- such as describing details of surgery that they watched while their heart was stopped, etc. Additionally, many NDE's have a vividness and a sense of intense reality that one does not generally encounter in dreams or hallucinations.,,, The most "parsimonious" explanation -- the simplest scientific explanation -- is that the (Near Death) experience was real. Tens of millions of people have had such experiences. That is tens of millions of more times than we have observed the origin of species , (or the origin of life, or the origin of a protein/gene, or a molecular machine), which is never.,,, The materialist reaction, in short, is unscientific and close-minded. NDE's show fellows like Coyne at their sneering unscientific irrational worst. Somebody finds a crushed fragment of a fossil and it's earth-shaking evidence. Tens of million of people have life-changing spiritual experiences and it's all a big yawn. Note: Dr. Egnor is professor and vice-chairman of neurosurgery at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. - per Evolution News and Views

bornagain77

Silver Asiatic: "Why doesn’t vjtorley post here any more?" That's what I was wondering, too... gpuccio

Why doesn't vjtorley post here any more? Silver Asiatic

For a modern, science based look at OOL, try this BBC article, courtesy of the much missed and lamented vjtorley: http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20161026-the-secret-of-how-life-on-earth-began MatSpirit