Re: DNA Was Designed By A Mind
gungasnake wrote:Nonetheless when you get to some sort of a period a few thousand or a couple of tens of thousands of years back more or less, the engineering and re-engineering of complex life forms on this planet had become some sort of a cottage industry with more than one pair of hands involved.
There is, for instance, no reasonable way to picture a well-intentioned and supposedly omnipotent God creating ticks, mosquitoes, biting flies, disease organisms, and the sundry creatures of Pandora's box. Whoever created those things is not anybody we need to worship.
Can you describe who/what you are suggesting a bit more clearly? I love sci-fi and aliens. I hope you've got something really creative for us to think about.
gunga wrote-
Quote:There is, for instance, no reasonable way to picture a well-intentioned and supposedly omnipotent God creating ticks, mosquitoes, biting flies, disease organisms, and the sundry creatures of Pandora's box. Whoever created those things is not anybody we need to worship.
There's no way I could ever have written that.
Quote:There is, for instance, no reasonable way to picture a well-intentioned and supposedly omnipotent God creating ticks, mosquitoes, biting flies, disease organisms, and the sundry creatures of Pandora's box. Whoever created those things is not anybody we need to worship
yET, THESE SAME BIOLOGICAL FACTTS, WHEN VIEWED FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION, MAKE PERFECT SENSE, AND NO GODS NEED APPLY.
Everything in organic evolution makes perfect sense. How could it be otherwise?
This is one of those occasions when I feel I must apply a little polite reticence.
oops, then you and gunga have a dispute, since youve agreed with me, I cannot argue your last post there spendi.
Interesting articles FM.
With the Clay hypothesis, what does Cairns-Smith mean by this:
Quote:LIVING CLAYS
And then we come to the extraordinary vision of Glasgow-based Graham Cairns-Smith, who proposes that the emergence of life was not just promoted by a mineral, but that the first lifeform was perhaps a clay mineral itself. Even the most chauvinistic geoscientist might balk at such a claim, but Cairns-Smith's ideas have been taken very seriously by the origin-of-life community, and his almost four decades of provocative publications are among the most widely cited in the field. In elegant and persuasive prose, he suggests that clay minerals carry a kind of genetic information in their complex sequences of point defects, layer orientations, and metal cation substitutions. Clays themselves undergo natural selection and evolution as they dissolve and precipitate, he says. The most "fit" sequences win in this Darwinian struggle for survival. For Cairns-Smith, clay minerals were indeed the first lifeforms on Earth.
What does that last part mean: "Clays themselves undergo natural selection and evolution as they dissolve and precipitate, he says. The most "fit" sequences win in this Darwinian struggle for survival."
I don't understand how clay can undergo selection (since it isn't reproducing). I assume Cairns-Smith is using those terms loosely?
youre right, cairns smith didnt say that (I think), Some publication writer did. Clays undergo various layer reactions called double layer collapse and surface hydrolysis . They also provide a linear substrate onto which the organic polymers can attach and subdivide. Clays dont undergo any naturals selection since Ive never thought that phrase used for anything but living organisms.
Theres a foto in the magazine articles that show a micrograph of montmorillonite clay. This stuff is a breakdown and a precipitate (can be both) from alkalic feldspars that were dunked in sea water. Avery good substrate and cradle.
Jeeze . . . you guys accuse (justifiably) "real life" of not reading and understanding people's posts. Did all of you just decide to ignore the posts i made about substrate clays and the links i provided . . . several pages ago?
Setanta wrote:Jeeze . . . you guys accuse (justifiably) "real life" of not reading and understanding people's posts. Did all of you just decide to ignore the posts i made about substrate clays and the links i provided . . . several pages ago?
I remember seeing the posts, but I don't remember seeing anything about Clay "evolving", which is what I didn't understand. Maybe I didn't follow all the links you provided.
Nobody reads your posts Settin'
They all have the same subject. It isn't a sub-text to me.
I'm regularly accused of the same thing but our styles are different. I'm the type Dr.Huff has on his avvie and you're the pompous, puffed up prig of a presbyterian pooch provider type.
I remember introducing the conscept a few years ago when we were busting RL's chops about his cyclic mantra of "You werent there so you dont know what happened". I was only refreshing rl's crapolla with one of my trade journals.
Set, Im sorry that I missed your post mit links. I often skip by entire pages that contain mostly back to back spendi run- on paragraphs. If your post was in a spendi spume, you have to realize that proximity to anything spendorous does render a high possibility that contiguous posts may run the risk of being overlooked. Would you recap by reposting, Im very interested in the hypothesis from any credible sources. I have a huge notebook of montmorillonite and smecktite surface chemistry and origins of the living state.
Do you remember Timbers contributions of the phospholipid association with the origins of the cell wall?
What's huge fm?
I hope you are not using the montmorillonite and smecktite surface chemistry and origins of the living state in order to identify yourself with a word like that.
Yes, i do, and i had read about the chemical affinities which lead to lipid spheres even in the absence of a living organism. Shapiro is simply arguing against the "RNA world" thesis, but he definitely sees the possibility (and as he is talking statistical significance, the probability) of chemical assemblages of small molecules within such a "cell." He argues from the point of view of the statistical probability of chemical assemblage, and "replication" in the sense of the shopping list metaphor to which he refers.
I have long thought that the substrate clays assembling peptides and polypeptides, with lipids forming spheres could be a very plausible way of getting "living organisms" in the sense of cells with energetic chemical chains enclosed. I mentioned to you several years ago reading about the substrate clays in an early 1970s issue of Scientific American.
rosborne979 wrote:Setanta wrote:Jeeze . . . you guys accuse (justifiably) "real life" of not reading and understanding people's posts. Did all of you just decide to ignore the posts i made about substrate clays and the links i provided . . . several pages ago?
I remember seeing the posts, but I don't remember seeing anything about Clay "evolving", which is what I didn't understand. Maybe I didn't follow all the links you provided.
Well, i wasn't referring to clay "evolving," and with FM, i suspect that was an imaginative elaboration of the news writer who prepared the article, rather than anything which Cairns-Smith proposed.
Setanta wrote:Well, i wasn't referring to clay "evolving," and with FM, i suspect that was an imaginative elaboration of the news writer who prepared the article, rather than anything which Cairns-Smith proposed.
I agree, probably a little loose-lingo from the reporter.
we seem to be in agreement that RL'spin on what Shapiro even was talking about was , once again, missing the entire barn. His reading comprehension skills need work or elkse(As I believe) he posts **** that is predigested from one of his AIG type sites wherein he doesnt even question what hes spooning out.
The cairns Smith story has been the "Sweet Crystal" hyp[othesis in which the surface striations of platy silicate clays act as reaction spots for assembly of the polysaccharide chains and the many classes of phosphate compounds.
Then , as rap said, the messenger xNA developed and this evolved along with the cell wall. But first "living" molecules were indeed NOT of the xNA fambly
One of the flaws in Shapiro's argument, as i saw it, was that he assumed that if there were not RNA prior to "living organisms," the only replicative process would have been statistical, as in his shopping list analogy. Also, although he points out that a group of small molecule chemicals can run energetic processes, he apparently doesn't see them as living organisms. Maybe the article was a toss off, but i think he ought to have made clear what he meant by living organisms, and whether there were some sort of "xNA" which was a precursor to RNA. I also pointed out a group discussion in which Shapiro participated, but was unable to link it. I'll go get the URL i had, which might be fixed up so that people can go view it. Warning, it's a pdf document, and the problem i had with linking it was in providing an HTML link.
Here we go:
"edge.org/documents/life/Life.pdf"
This is a document in which Robert Shapiro, Freeman Dyson (who originated the "garbage bag" analogy which "real life" incorrectly attributed to Shapiro) and several others discuss the problems of "origins." I suspect that if one were to put: "http://www. " before that text, you could find the article. Or, once could got to "edge-dot-org" and look for it. I read it in HTML after finding it during a web search, but i don't recall the search criterion is used. It is quite an interesting discussion, though.
Wow, got it in one!
http://www.edge.org/documents/life/life_index.html
I usually embed such a link, as being more attractive text, but i'm sure no one will mind. That page includes transcripts and streaming video.
Yes, interesting link Set, and interesting quote from Shapiro:
Robert Shapiro, Professor Emeritus and Senior Research Scientist in the Department of Chemistry at New York University wrote:
Especially when compared with this quote:
Quote:The member "real life" is asserting that replicating molecules could not have formed in the oceans. (And as usual, on no external authority, simply making a statement from authority, which is an authority we have no reason to assume he possesses.) However, it has long been known that certain clays, many of which form on the floors of oceans, both in inshore areas, and on continental shelf floors and on deep ocean floors, can bind prebiotic amino acids, and form peptide chains.
