Video: Unknown origin of life

_{Denyse O'Leary

April 6, 2011

Origin Of Life}

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Here, well-known physicist author Paul Davies acknowledges that we have no idea how life began.

However, the TalkOrigins forces of certainty are ever at work, stomping on reasonable doubt.

Of course, rubes doubt the TalkOrigins “donut hole” explanations. But that just proves they are rubes.

Rubes never realize that the hole is the very best part of the donut, full of nutritional value.

They keep wanting the stuff on the outside of the hole, for no good reason.

Comments

Every religion needs an origin story and atheism is no exception. Atheism chose evolution by natural selection working on random mutations as its origins story. Since this story did not originate from divine revelation or historic eyewitness accounts they picked “science” and misused it to justify their wishful thinking. Now that real science has proven the utter impossibility of their origins story they do what any false religion does: they dig their heels, become dogmatic and anathematize all those who question their belief.aedgar_{April 6, 2011
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Mrs O'Leary: The key issue in life as we observe it is that it is based in the main on cells that use Carbon chemistry, and integrate metabolic machinery and processes with a self-replicating facility similar to the von Neumann kinematic self-replicator. And, the vNKSR not only replicates itself based on stored codes and associated implementing machinery, but in so doing it replicates the whole metabolising entity. The implication is that stored code, algorithm implementing machinery joined to other chemical nano-machinery capable of drawing in materials from the environment and transforming them into cellular materials, machines, and energy sources, have to be accounted for. And, they are thus found in an irreducibly complex system. All of which originated in an unobserved, unobservable past. So, at most we try to infer to a best explanation on evidence and plausible models in the present; this in a context where too often there is an a priori imposition as Lewontin described, that locks up the thought in a question-begging materialistic circle. No wonder Dr Davies noted that Darwin ducked the origin of life question in his Origin of Species, and that there has not been a great deal of progress since then. Talk Origins begs and ducks the serious question right from the outset of their article (setting up a handy "Creationist" strawman to be pummelled):
Even the simplest currently living cells contain hundreds of proteins most of which are essential to their functioning. Yet such complexity cannot have stood at the origin of life. Based on research in the field it is proposed here how, once a self-replicating genetic molecule existed, life might have started and gradual evolution of complexity was made possible – in contrast to the sudden appearance of complexity that creationists claim to have been necessary at the beginning of life . . .
By acknowledging that the complexity of the observed cell is a challenge, they actually admit the point, before they duck and side-slip into a world of empirically ill-supported speculation on hypothetical simpler life forms. What is the observed evidence for "a self-replicating genetic molecule" on which "life might have started and gradual evolution of complexity was made possible"? NIL, or it would be trumpeted triumphantly to the heavens. All, is speculation in an a priori materialistic circle. Further to this, Sir Fred Hoyle was no strawman creationist. The cogency of his tornado in a junkyard forming a 747 by blind chance and necessity challenge is admitted to be well posed by the first part of the cite: "such complexity cannot have stood at the origin of life." But, what TO is unwilling to acknowledge in their haste to dismiss, is that the Hoylean challenge begins to bite long before we get to the level of sophistication of a Jumbo jet. For, just 1,000 bits or 125 bytes of functionally specific, complex information specifies so many possible configurations, that the search resources of the observable cosmos could not even begin to scratch the surface across the lifespan of the cosmos, some 50 million times longer than the time often said to have elapsed since the big bang. TO is admitting then ducking, begging, and strawmannising the question. It does so by rushing off tot he genes first speculation, neatly ducking the mutually destructive exchange by Orgel and Shapiro, cf here as well as the related cluster of issues discussed here. If instead we face it squarely, it becomes quite evident that the origin of the sort of information processing based, algorithmic, code based self-replicating life we see -- as opposed to the imaginary self replicating autocatalytic molecular world we do not see -- is best explained on design. GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{April 6, 2011
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