Self replicating and evolving RNA molecule created

Nobody understands it. Much less how a self-defining DNA system could have evolved.

Darwinism is hand-waving. It's just another anti-faith faith.

Youtube has some astounding animations of cell division. DNA programs thousands of insanely complex, wildly unlikely machines that support and copy DNA.

That last sentence describes RNA World.

There is no theory, much less proof, about how DNA-based cellular life could have evolved. "Random mutation and selection" liberates people from thinking.

With absurdly low calculated probabilities. RNA World has become an ironclad defense against even considering anything else. Biochemical cancel culture.

People who already know everything don't need to be bothered with ideas.

You need to have more faith in people and science.

Once upon a time nobody could predict comets' appearances.

You are, we presume, thinking of creationists and young-earthers, and their equivalent in other cultures.

It's hard to do both simultaneously.

And Darwinists.

You seem to be viewing this all as a binary all-or-nothing thing. It is not.

We have some good ideas of how an RNA World might have come about, how it might have progressed, and how it might have led to the biological processes and organisms that we know exist. There's lots we don't know

- that's the nature of science, and why we keep doing scientific research. In this particular case, there's plenty that we don't know yet.

But that should not stop you being able to understand what the hypothesis is about.

Darwinism is solid scientific theory. It's as much "faith" as gravity.

Yes, it is wonderful. But only an arrogant fool would look at that all and declare that it could /not/ have arisen naturally from pre-biotic chemicals and processes. Only an ignorant fool would declare that it must have been "designed" in some way, by some being. Only a coward would throw his hands in the air and say "I can't understand it. It must have been made by God". Or by robots or aliens, if you won't admit to your anti-science religion.

Have you ever looked at animations of the Mandelbrot set? It has amazing intricacies and patterns - details that change and repeat indefinitely. And yet it all comes from one very simple equation. Have you ever played the game "Go"? It has very simple pieces, a very simple board, very simple rules - and yet Go masters regularly learn tens of thousands of opening sequences before the real game even begins. Have you looked at a snowflake? Complex things develop by patterns and combinations of simple things - that is the nature of nature.

The hypothesis is falsifiable - if evidence is discovered that shows RNA is not a sufficient basis for abiogenesis, we know the hypothesis is false. It is testable - we can do experiments with various combinations of starting chemicals and environments, and see if it produces active replicating RNA. (That's what the linked article was about.) It is questionable - that's what the scientists are doing all the time, questioning.

As I said, you have no understanding of what this is all about. None. Not a glimmer. It's not just a matter of failing to see the big picture

- you have your eyes tightly closed, fingers in your ears, and you are shouting "la, la, la, I'm not listening".

Perhaps I'm crazy - apparently Einstein said madness was doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results. But let me correct you /again/.

The "RNA World" /hypothesis/ is a /hypothesis/ - it is not a scientific theory. It is not trying to find out how life on earth started. It is trying to determine if complex RNA can develop from pre-biotic chemicals known to be found on the early earth, using environmental conditions that are realistic, and thus demonstrate that RNA is a plausible path for abiogenesis.

The "RNA World" hypothesis does not cover the step to DNA, though I think any biochemist will agree that when you have first achieved cellular metabolising, replicating RNA-based lifeforms then the path to DNA is relatively reasonable.

Evolution is how life has moved from its earliest beginnings to what we have now. It is a well-established scientific theory based on vast quantities of evidence, theoretical work, study, experiments, predictions, attempts at falsification, and all the rest of the usual scientific process. There are plenty of details to study in the mechanisms found in practice, but evolution is as much "fact" as anything else in science - like the electromagnetic theories that underlie your work.

Claiming "it liberates people from thing" merely demonstrates your extraordinary wilful ignorance in the face of countless attempts to educate you.

Ah, there we have it. The broken record again. You really are pathetically predictable.

I never said it couldn't happen by Darwinian mechanisms, or that life must have been designed. You invent fake quotes because your real motivation is to fling insults, and to show how much smarter you are than me.

What I have conjectured is that our life form might have evolved by something other than RNA World followed by random mutation and linear-descent selection.

I guess any other ideas, even speculations, are forbidden in your world.

So why won't you?

Right - so when you say "Darwinism is hand-waving. It's just another anti-faith faith", you weren't actually dismissing it?

I wish you would have the guts to stop pissing around, and admit that you have no regard for science or evidence, but find the world so confusing and beyond your personal comprehension that you think it was all made by some supernatural being just for you. After all, if the great genius John Larkin can't understand it, clearly nobody can - so all these scientists are making stuff up, or just acting on faith.

(Yes, I know I am paraphrasing.)

And again - every time you open your mouth you demonstrate how little you comprehend, and how little you even bother trying to read. If you had the faintest clue about the RNA World hypothesis, or had made even a rudimentary attempt at reading my posts, you'd know the RNA World hypothesis is not saying that it explains how life on earth came about. And you'd know the difference between abiogenesis and evolution.

Informed, thoughtful and rational ideas are welcome - as speculative as you like. Pointless idiocy that has been corrected countless times already is not so interesting.

Why don't I do what? Question the hypothesis? Of course I do. I want to know what chemical soups they are starting with, and how they justify their choices. I want to know the environment and the basis for that. I want to know the results. I want to know if their experiments have been repeated, by the same group and others, and how the results vary. I want to know about alternative hypotheses - from the same group, and others. I want to know how well it all fits with the known evidence from the early earth.

You are trying to create a straw man that the RNA World hypothesis is "science's unquestioned answer to how life on earth started", combined with completely unjustified claims of "the maths is against it". You think that means you can fill the gap with your "God did it" explanation. But actually it merely shows how little you know, and how little you care about how little you know.

We are a simulation, as revealed in The Matrix, which was inspired[1] by Hofstadter's "Godel Escher Bach".

You've certainly asserted that life as we know it couldn't have evolved in in the time available.

He didn't invent a fake quote. He just took what you had posted at face value

You seemed to be wanting to postulate some other life-form, based on a non-RNA/DNA chemistry that intelligently designed ours.

They aren't forbidden, but truly stupid and ill-informed speculations do get jeered at.

Probably because he doesn't know enough to ask any kind of useful question, and knows it. You are at least equally ignorant - almost certainly as lot more ignorant - and waste our time by posting thoroughly useless speculations.

On a sunny day (Mon, 21 Mar 2022 16:01:32 -0700) it happened John Larkin <jlarkin@highland_atwork_technology.com> wrote in snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Apart from all the fights, It is an interesting science. Sure, maybe A.Lien designed us in his Walmart "Make Your Own Dino kit" somewhere in this universe or an other one. But it has been pointed out that that leads to the question: "Who designed 'A.Lien?" (circular loop), Darwinism makes sense - DNA is modified very fast over short lifespans

Bit like you tinkering with cooling fans etc .. little pieces of matter linking up.. all matter is conscious.

Definition of 'God' in 'God did it?' "All we do not know was done by God?" That is a LOT :-)

That's a meaningless phrase and concept.

It is as vacuous as the concept we saw as kid, that the key living part of the cell is "protoplasm".

You should have more faith in mankind's intellect.

I read books authored by biochemists. Their numbers look reasonable.

A protein is a string of amino acids, typically a chain of 30 or more. There are 20 available amino acids used to build proteins.

A cell needs thousands of proteins to work and reproduce. Many have no conceivable incremental evolutionary path to work; subsections are useless.

Do the math.

And you also

When probabilities get down to 1e-150, one might be willing to consider alternatives.

You are all personality, all combat, all insult.

That is a good defense against thinking and considering possibilities.

An excellent defense against designing.

It says and means exactly that a mechanism is complex and simpler subsets don't work. It's a common concept.

If you know of a cell replication mechanism that is simpler than the one we have, please tell us about it. I especially like that 10,000 RPM DNA unwinder thing, and the bit that copies one strand in segmemts in reverse. And the funny things that walk around carrying things.

You should be more polite.

We've had landers on Luna, Mars, Venus, so it could also be called 25%.

And, there's amino acids produced in sparks-and-gasses mixtures, which is definitely organic chemistry, so we could also deny the 'inorganic world' status for any and all known examples.

The question would be more interesting, if it were less ambiguous.

Ah. You mean the cellular reproduction mechanism is irreducibly complex.

You should have more faith in mankind's intellect. It exceeds yours (and mine).

Zero probability for WHAT, exactly? Can you give a citation?

If it's zero probability for the particular random mix of lifeforms extant today, and/or for the slightly different random mix of lifeforms of a century ago (or a century in the future), then... it's a meaningless calculation.

Thermodynamics of an ideal gas tells us that the not-quite-infinite possibilities of a liter of air are such that any ACTUAL breath you take is.... of zero probability. That doesn't mean you don't breathe. Those astronomical statistical numerations don't limit possibilities, like breathing your next breath, and getting some oxygen in, CO2 out...

That too.

There may be things that we will never understand. The origin of the universe. The origin of life. Where consciousness comes from.

Certainly nobody understands them now, so reasonable open-mindedness is not a failing to be mocked.

But does ignore the fact that more complex mechanisms have been known to evolve from simpler ones. Looking at what we have now doesn't give us direct access to what it might have evolved from.

It seems unlikely that these refinements are strictly necessary to the process of self-replication in the simplest possible cell that can self-replicate.

Probably not. People who pontificate about stuff the don't actually understand need to recognise that they need to learn more. My experience is that you do have to be pretty direct to get them to recognise that they do need to learn more - polite formulations don't get their attention.

John Larkin does seem to be remarkably resistant to any suggestion that he doesn't know as much as he ought to - he does interpret them as threats to his vanity and self-esteem.

Saying "God created it", or anything equivalent, is not understanding. It is avoiding understanding.

Consciousness is probably an emergent property.

Nowhere in the specification/description of a grain of sand is there anything that hints that a pile of sand will be a cone with a half-angle of ~35 degrees.

I expect consciousness will be similar.

True.

But it /is/ reasonable and valid to mock:

- /repeatedly/ failing to do research and understand current knowledge

- presuming that if I don't understand something then nobody else /can/ understand it

But vacuous gullibility is definitely a failing, as is claiming that people who put forward half-baked ideas out of ignorance should be treated politely.

They do need to be motivated to learn more and think harder. This is a bit hard on people who aren't all that bright to start with, but listening to them waffling on is hard on people who can do better.