DNA Was Designed By A Mind

Setanta wrote:

Brandon9000 wrote:
If you're saying that God exists if enough people think he does, then I would say that's nonsense.

It also constitutes the argumentum ad numerum fallacy, and if it is also alleged that the idea has merit because of the social or intellectual credentials of adherents, that would include the argumentum ad populum fallacy. Logical fallacies, are, however, essential to the silly arguments of the god squad, precisely because they have nothing more sound, nothing more well-founded to offer.

Brandon9000 wrote:
As with evolution or any other theory of any other purported fact, it would be unreasonable to believe that it's true without some decent evidence for it. You have simultaneously demanded that we meet a very high standard in demonstrating that evolution is the correct explanation, while supporting a rival theory and refusing absolutely to provide any evidence that it's correct.

You can't hope to see anything else from those whose only recourse is shabby rhetorical tricks, and diversion of the discussion. If there were any basis upon which a theist could hope to reasonably found an assertion of the validity of scripture, it would have been spread broadcast through the community of theists long ago. Therefore, the recourse is to constantly demand proof from those with whom the theists disagree, and to move the "goalposts" of that proof constantly. The other popular tactic is diversion, constantly calling for proof from those with whom the theists disagree, while as constantly avoiding any discussion of the basis upon which the theist makes his or her assertions.

It's the only hope of the imaginary friend crowd, because if they were to allow themselves to be backed into the corner into which they always attempt to back those whom they see as their opponents, they'd be forced to admit they haven't an evidentiary or logical leg to stand on.

You'll never get anything else out of this crowd, Brandon.

Thanks. As you say, one of their primary debating techniques is to try to divert attention from any argument they can't win. I guess my strategy is that every time they try to avoid uncomfortable logic, I try to bring it up again.

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I am really curious about what RL believes is the formational equilibria for xNA ? Since xNA/DNA works in concert with enzymes, ATP etc , it seems that it has to have some relationship with life no? RL seems to be disputing someones claim against DNA forming in open water. Did anybody even say that?

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It's somewhat implied that a predecessor to DNA may have arisen in the ocean by statements like these:

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First of all, it just doesn't seem implausible to me that after billions of years of random chemical reactions, in a planetfull of oceans, one single self-replicating molecule would form.

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We're suggesting that after billions of years, in a planetful of oceans, a simple self-replicating molecule formed by chance after an immense number of chemical reactions.

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It's likely that a planetful of self-replicating objects (life as it exists now on Earth), which we already believe evolved from simpler objects, had their origins in a first self-replicating molecule, which occurred by chance in random chemical reactions after a planetful of oceans had existed for billions of years.

Then of course this simpler replicator must somehow 'evolve' into dna at SOME point.

But what I've said does not focus so much on the concept of 'open water' as it does water itself.

Dr Shapiro noted that water and oxygen are corrosive agents to a fragile molecule like DNA. Some of the compounds necessary PRIOR to dna formation would be destroyed by water as well.

It seems unlikely that DNA could form in an open environment of any description (even as a successor to a much simpler replicator) if water were present without the specially derived substances that the cell uses to protect DNA from damage.

Shapiro and others have also good reason for looking to a sheltered environment for DNA to 'evolve' in.

He has focused on DNA evolving within an already living organism, which presents its own problems. How does the critter reproduce without replicative ability?

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You can guage your own seriousness Brandon by whether or not you took the trouble to highlight in blue the expression Materialist Theory of Mind, right clicking, selecting search Google and reading the top entry and taking enough interest to open it out from there.

I hope you don't think that as significant a man as Walter Pater wrestled with this subject all his life for no particular reason.

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Either life on Earth was created by a supernatural being or it wasn't. Either it was started by the chance formation of a simple replicating molecule followed by natural selection or it wasn't. There actually is a truth to this matter. In order for it to be reasonable to believe that a purported fact is true, there has to be enough evidence that it's true to justify belief. You have attacked the theory of evolution on exactly this basis. However, the theory that a supernatural being created life on Earth may also be true or false. As with evolution or any other theory of any other purported fact, it would be unreasonable to believe that it's true without some decent evidence for it. You have simultaneously demanded that we meet a very high standard in demonstrating that evolution is the correct explanation, while supporting a rival theory and refusing absolutely to provide any.

From that, the only thing I can deduce is that you don't understand what I've been saying. If that's my fault then that's all there is to it. I accept that your side have no faults.

Evolution theory, which I have never attacked, proves nothing substantial.

It is a very easy theory to understand and if people wish to think that they are being scientific with so little effort and that they can build careers and departments on it good luck to them.

I was in science from leaving school and for twenty years. It was long enough for me to discover that real science is not for people who allow other more mundane activities to distract them from its pursuit.

You can gauge Settin' Aah-aah's idea of pursuit from the fact that the post above could just as easily have been written three years ago under his name and, I have little doubt, there being no evidence to the contrary, a post on the matter written three years from now. Or ten.

I think he knows what he is trying to avoid. But I'm not sure.

Recourse to reason and rationality in a world characterised by unreason and irrationality is essentially a cop-out. And in two respects.

Objective, rational facts stifle the imagination which is, as with mutations in nature, an adaptive mechanism. The more emphatic and fierce the stifling the stronger the motive must be to achieve that.

One can never be wrong using just the facts. One is beyond criticism. One is safe.

Imagination can be wrong just like mutations can be mal-adaptive. Maybe mostly are. We only see the winners. If the play of imagination has led to punishment in early life, as it often does, a motive to stifle it exists as a conditioned response. And if recourse to objective facts has led to reward, also a conditioning agent, as it has with all these spokespersons for reliance on nothing else, then another motive exists. If both are combined the motive is powerful.

This leads them into focussing their attention onto what others see as facts contained in the Bible and never onto the imaginative aspects of the book which they, like the Fundamentalists, don't recognise. Won't recognise.

Secondly, there is a singularly noticeable absence of what Western society would be like from those who promote recourse to objectivity and rationality as the sole means of going forwards. And who would run it and how would it be run given that humans are irrational and unreasoning by nature, and they rule Nature, or are trying to, and no fully reasoning rational beings could be found to run it.

A double cop-out.

I think you might have tried dealing with my previous post.

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farmerman wrote:

RL seems to be disputing someones claim against DNA forming in open water. Did anybody even say that?

No, no one has said anything of the kind. That is why he has been hammering on it, because it's as close to a plausible argument as he can come. We all know that it doesn't matter that no one said it, it's his m.o. to pick a talking point and stick to it, come Hell or high water.

It is also why i asked him several times if he understood precisely why Shapiro's thesis involves small molecules in relation to lipid spheres. If he actually knew anything about chemistry, anything about lipids, that would have been a clue to him right away. His silence on the subject is not surprising.

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real life wrote:

It's somewhat implied that a predecessor to DNA may have arisen in the ocean by statements like these:

Quote:
First of all, it just doesn't seem implausible to me that after billions of years of random chemical reactions, in a planetfull of oceans, one single self-replicating molecule would form.

Quote:
We're suggesting that after billions of years, in a planetful of oceans, a simple self-replicating molecule formed by chance after an immense number of chemical reactions.

Quote:
It's likely that a planetful of self-replicating objects (life as it exists now on Earth), which we already believe evolved from simpler objects, had their origins in a first self-replicating molecule, which occurred by chance in random chemical reactions after a planetful of oceans had existed for billions of years.

Absolutely none of these statements state or imply that DNA (or RNA, or any xNA) formed in open water. Once again, if you understood the chemistry behind Shapiro's thesis about small molecules in relation to lipid spheres, you would understand why references to water, open or otherwise, constitutes a brainless argument.

You don't understand the chemistry at all, do you?

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Setanta wrote:

why does Shapiro insist on a small molecule hypothesis (?)

Are you guessing at reasons other than the reasons he states?

Setanta wrote:

especially with reference to lipid spheres?

Well, as you know his idea is not limited to only lipid spheres. In fact in the early stages, it may not include them at all.

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No, i'm not guessing at reasons, i know the reason, because i paid attention in chemistry class when i was in university. Chemistry is the one science at which i excelled, and i happen to have done well in organic chemistry. So, i know the reason--and obviously you don't.

Lipid membranes are composed of a series of molecules, the outer edge of which is hydrophilic, and the inner edge of which is hydrophobic. That means that just about any small molecule can pass the outer surface of the membrane, but water cannot pass the inner surface of the membrane. Therefore, any small molecule which is solute and can survive losing it's water molecule or molecules, or any small molecule which is simply in aqueous suspension can pass the lipid membrane, but the water cannot. And that is why the small molecule thesis in combination with lipids is significant. I am amused, though, to see you furiously back-peddling to claim that Shapiro doesn't include lipid spheres in a certain stage of his hypothesis, after brow-beating people about the significance of Shapiro's statement that RNA and DNA cannot survive exposure to water, continually ranting that they could not have arisen in "open water."

Since small molecules entering a lipid sphere are leaving the water environment, and leaving water behind--there is no basis to object to the "self-assembly" of an xNA replicator based on the damaging effects of exposure to water, if it forms within a lipid sphere. Shapiro, as an "award-winning" chemist knows this, but sadly for you, he didn't bother to explain this in his article, because he reasonably assumes that other competent chemists know this.

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By the way, lipids do a lot more than just form membranes, Einstein. One of their crucial functions in a living cell is as a messenger molecule:

[url=http://www.lipidlibrary.co.uk/Lipids/whatdo/index.htm][b]The Lipid Library-dot-co-dot-UK[/b][/url] wrote:

All multi-cellular organisms, use chemical messengers to send information between organelles and to other cells and as relatively small hydrophobic molecules, lipids are excellent candidates for signalling purposes. The fatty acid constituents have well-defined structural features, such as cis-double bonds in particular positions, which can carry information by binding selectively to specific receptors. In esterified form, they can infiltrate membranes or be translocated across them to carry signals to other cells. During transport, they are usually bound to proteins so their effective solution concentrations are very low, and they are can be considered to be inactive until they reach the site of action and encounter the appropriate receptor.

So, once you have small molecules reacting energetically, reacting metabolically within a lipid sphere, all kinds of wild and crazy things can happen. It is not only plausible that an xNA replicator could form within a lipid sphere, it is highly probable that as soon as one forms, its functions will be enhanced and facilitated by the presence of lipids.

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Setanta wrote:

real life wrote:
It's somewhat implied that a predecessor to DNA may have arisen in the ocean by statements like these:

You don't understand the chemistry at all, do you?

He doesn't even understand the basic concepts of evolution so there's no way he's gonna be able to handle chemistry. Smile

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Setanta wrote:

real life wrote:
Well, as you know his idea is not limited to only lipid spheres. In fact in the early stages, it may not include them at all.
I am amused, though, to see you furiously back-peddling to claim that Shapiro doesn't include lipid spheres in a certain stage of his hypothesis

As you know, I didn't say doesn't , I said may not. Shapiro wasn't dogmatic about the composition of the membrane necessarily being lipid in the early stage of life.

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The boundary maintains this division of the world into pockets of life and the nonliving environment in which they must sustain themselves.

Today, sophisticated double-layered cell membranes, made of chemicals classified as lipids, separate living cells from their environment. When life began, some natural feature probably served the same purpose. [/i][/u][/size]David W. Deamer of the University of California, Santa Cruz, has observed membrane-like structures in meteorites. Other proposals have suggested natural boundaries not used by life today, such as iron sulfide membranes, mineral surfaces (in which electrostatic interactions segregate selected molecules from their environment), small ponds and aerosols.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-simpler-origin-for-life emphasis mine

In fact his reference to lipid membranes as 'sophisticated' implies that they wouldn't be present early. But again, he wasn't dogmatic on this point , as you seem to be.

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You know, Roswell, a week or ten days ago, i was reading some of his tripe, and i said to myself: "This clown doesn't know a damn thing about chemistry." At that point, the nickel dropped for me (i actually feel kind of stupid for not seeing this much, much sooner), and i realized that since he doesn't know anything about chemistry, the significance of lipid spheres in Shapiro's hypothesis would have shot right over his head.

Prokaryotic cells have no organelles--and very likely a chloroplast and a mitochondrion were originally freely existing prokaryotes which formed symbiotic relationships with each other, or other organelles, and from there, eukaryotes formed. It always seemed obvious to me that Shapiro was on about not just the implausibility of an xNA replicator forming in "open water" (as "real life" likes to go on about), but was insistent about small molecules and lipid spheres because the way you would get a successful life form (such as prokaryote) which had no organelles would be from the passage of the lipid membrane by small molecules which might, in certain combinations, be successful metabolic agents. In the ancestors of a chloroplast or a mitochondrion, you would have had a prokaryote which had successful metabolic functions, and which was therefore a candidate for the life form in which an xNA replicator assembles itself, which is what Shapiro is saying would have had to have happened, given that he rejects the RNA world hypothesis.

As i say, at the time that i realized that "real life" was playing with a deck which was several cards short, and realized that his deck had no chemistry cards in it, i felt rather sheepish not to have known right away that he would not know the significance of lipid spheres. Not only do they form membranes which would protect the contents from exposure to "real life's" favorite boogey man, "open water," but lipids act as chemical messengers within cells and between cells--and crucially, act as chemical messengers between organelles within a eurkaryote. All of this is news to "real life," so, basically, he brought a knife (his brain, and a dull one at that) to a gun fight.

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real life's source wrote:

Today, sophisticated double-layered cell membranes, made of chemicals classified as lipids, separate living cells from their environment.

At no time did i state or imply that the lipid spheres had a double-layered lipid membrane. Once again, you know nothing about chemistry, so you are clutching at straws. The property of a lipid molecule which is hydrophilic at one end, and hydrophobic at the other end, is functional in that manner in a single layer--there is no reason to infer that either Shapiro or i am saying that the first lipid spheres had a double-layered membrane.

But keep clutching at straws, "real life," it increases the entertainment value.

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By the way, "real life," the portion you quote substantiates Parados' remarks about surfaces in which living organisms could have arisen, and in which small molecules could have collected to form metabolic chemical groupings, when it speaks of: " . . . such as iron sulfide membranes, mineral surfaces (in which electrostatic interactions segregate selected molecules from their environment), small ponds and aerosols." That is the reason i brought up clay substrates early on in this discussion.

You're workin' without a net, Bubba, and you're headed for a fall.

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By the way, you're practicing deceit again--and no surprise there.

real life wrote:

In fact his reference to lipid membranes as 'sophisticated' implies that they wouldn't be present early. But again, he wasn't dogmatic on this point , as you seem to be.

Shapiro did not refer to lipid membranes as sophisticated. In particular, what he wrote was:

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Today, sophisticated double-layered cell membranes, made of chemicals classified as lipids, separate living cells from their environment.

Saying that the double layered cell membranes of today, comprised of lipids, are sophisticated, does not constitute a statement that all lipid membranes must necessarily be double-layered (they aren't) and therefore, "sophisticated."

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Thank you Settin',

I never knew that Prokaryotic cells have no organelles--and very likely a chloroplast and a mitochondrion were originally freely existing prokaryotes which formed symbiotic relationships with each other, or other organelles, and from there, eukaryotes formed.

I knew I had made an astute move when I chose the A2K pub.

I'll tell Vic tonight how eukaryotes (which seems suspiciously like a joke) were formed. I'll bet he doesn't know. If he tells two other people and they each tell two other people, and so on and so forth, you might become famous for the funniest ever sentence on the site.

And Prokaryotic is a bit priapic, and organelles needs no explaining to anybody with a Doctorate in French Literary History. Chloroplast is clinical and medicinal and mitochondrions farcical.

You didn't write that. It was intelligently designed by a Joycian. It's hard to believe it was an unfortunate statistical aberration.

What period of time do you think the symbiotic relationships from which formed the "you carry that load of oats" evolutionary branch lasted.

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I hope you realise Settin' that "very likely" is an unsuitable phrase, and an unsuitable concept too, on a science forum.

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real life wrote:

Well, now you're working very hard to show how water would be prevented from filling the microscopic pores of your mineral.

Something you claimed couldn't be true.. Rolling Eyes

Surface tension was the reality when I made my initial statement and it was the reality when you said it couldn't be true and it is still the reality.

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But don't work too hard because you do need water to carry the materials you need from one pore to another. So water needs to be in there anyway.

Water doesn't need to fill a pore to move something from the top of the pore. Remember this is a chemical process that is growing so it will eventually overflow the pore.

Surface tension holds the drop of water together. It rolls down an incline. Like a boulder rolling down a hill can dislodge small pebbles a drop of water can move molecules without absorbing them. When you roll a large boulder down a hill the small pebbles don't travel the same distance as the large boulder. They roll until they move out of the way or lodge against something else that doesn't stop the large boulder.

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Also you needed water to help your DNA mutate, isnt that what you said?

I don't need water. DNA mutates today without being immersed in water. I only pointed out based on what you stated about DNA in water, any DNA could be mutated if water destroys the end of the DNA chain. It becomes another way for DNA to mutate beyond the other ways it can mutate.

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But oooops, if water is there, DNA won't form anyway because some of the compounds necessary PRIOR to dna are also destroyed by water.

Water isn't in the pore. Your logic is impeccably flawed.
We only need to assume DNA can form in a pore without water. Then the chemical process in the pore fills the pore with molecules that spill out of the pore. Some of the molecules that are forced out are DNA. There is no water requirement in the forming of DNA or the mutation of DNA. Water only becomes an easy, simple and universal way to transfer molecules to another container.

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hmmmmm

Your microscopic orgs can't live with it, can't live without it. What are you going to do?

I am going to point out that you don't know what the hell you are talking about. You are just making stuff up hoping no one will notice you have your head so far up your ass you don't make any sense.

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Maybe, just maybe this isn't the way it's done. nah gotta be right parados said so.

Are you commenting on the way I described it or the way you bastardized it?

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Mulling this over all day long is gonna be troublin' parados.

Not for me it isn't. You still haven't produced anything that stands up to the scientific method. All you did was take statements out of context and pretended I said they were the only way something could happen.

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real life wrote:

He has focused on DNA evolving within an already living organism, which presents its own problems. How does the critter reproduce without replicative ability?

Shapiro describes how that happens and you ignore it.

Who should we believe real life? You or an award winning chemist?

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real life wrote:

Setanta wrote:
why does Shapiro insist on a small molecule hypothesis (?)

Are you guessing at reasons other than the reasons he states?

Setanta wrote:
especially with reference to lipid spheres?

Well, as you know his idea is not limited to only lipid spheres. In fact in the early stages, it may not include them at all.

That's interesting real life. You spent a couple of weeks refusing to even acknowledge that Shapiro ever mentioned anything other than lipid membranes as a possible container for life forms. Now you pretend you have never said anything different.

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