Aren't scientists rather arrogant and elitist in abiogenetic theories?

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The most popular theories are that life arose ONCE from a chemical soup and thrived basically on earth and nowhere else. But given that life exists, not only on land but in basically every crevice we look in, isn't it more likely that life is an inevitable consequence of matter and energy and that given enough time it will appear pretty much anywhere that conditions allow? I'm suspecting for instance that in the early days of earth, life probably arose thousands of times. Some died out, others appeared, and the various kingdoms of life may well have evolved from separate chemical pools.

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@Banana Breath,

Banana Breath wrote:

life is an inevitable consequence of matter and energy and that given enough time it will appear pretty much anywhere that conditions allow?

that's pretty much what I was taught in university 35 years ago

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@Banana Breath,

Banana Breath wrote:

The most popular theories are that life arose ONCE from a chemical soup and thrived basically on earth and nowhere else.

I don't think that's an accurate summary of the most popular theories. The earth is a big place and I suspect chemical replicators were probably occurring in a lot of places over a long period of time. Eventually, those that were based on DNA came to dominate the global population and pushed anything else which may have existed out.

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@rosborne979,

I agree, Rosborne.

This seems like a premise that is more a straw man...than a fact.

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@ehBeth,

Quote:

that's pretty much what I was taught in university 35 years ago

Hi ehBeth...
This isn't what I see in the biology texts nor in Wikipedia. Instead it reads like this:
"All organisms on Earth are descended from a common ancestor or ancestral gene pool" where even in the "ancestral gene pool" they're thinking of a linear progression from a single cell to life today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution#Origin_of_life

Penny D, Poole A (1999). "The nature of the last universal common ancestor". Current Opinion in Genetics & Development 9 (6): 672–77.

Theobald, DL. (2010). "A formal test of the theory of universal common ancestry". Nature 465 (7295): 219–22. Bibcode:2010Natur.465..219T.

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@rosborne979,

Quote:

those that were based on DNA came to dominate the global population and pushed anything else which may have existed out.

They didn't push out viruses. Nor did they push out red blood cells, which might at one point have been an independent species.

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@Banana Breath,

Banana Breath wrote:

They didn't push out viruses.

Good point. But I think those are RNA based and closely related to DNA.

Banana Breath wrote:

Nor did they push out red blood cells, which might at one point have been an independent species.

I'm not sure Red Blood cells are considered independent reproductive organisms, are they?

I know that mitochondria were once independent organisms and were incorporated into cells and that mitochondria have their own genes (DNA).

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@Banana Breath,

Put earth aside.

What is defined as life here may not define life elsewhere.

Gotta think bigger eh!

______

your OP referenced elsewhere, then you pull back to earth in your later discussion

if you're gonna be earth-centric, it'll be the same old discussion (not by you - on the board)

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@Banana Breath,

Banana Breath wrote:

I'm suspecting for instance that in the early days of earth, life probably arose thousands of times. Some died out, others appeared, and the various kingdoms of life may well have evolved from separate chemical pools.

I should also clarify that I actually agree with the paragraph above. But I suspect that this is the basic understanding of most biological scientists (and not as you implied in the first sentence of your first post).

To me the phrase "warm pond" is simply an analogy for a set of conditions which were conducive to replicative molecules. The "pond" was probably more accurately a series of tidal zones on the shore of a very large ocean. And things which developed in those zones probably interacted enough due to ocean movement to homogenize the molecules which were becoming dominant.

It's possible that there were pockets of molecular uniqueness which led to viruses or otherwise. But it's also possible that over only a few million years the replicative molecules had homogenized into a single form which then branched out into RNA (viral) forms or other things.

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@Banana Breath,

Banana Breath wrote:

The most popular theories are that life arose ONCE from a chemical soup and thrived basically on earth and nowhere else. But given that life exists, not only on land but in basically every crevice we look in, isn't it more likely that life is an inevitable consequence of matter and energy and that given enough time it will appear pretty much anywhere that conditions allow? I'm suspecting for instance that in the early days of earth, life probably arose thousands of times. Some died out, others appeared, and the various kingdoms of life may well have evolved from separate chemical pools.

Scientists are arrogant with ALL THEIR THEORIES because they and their colleagues stick together like glue - against all opposition, against deniers, against non-scientists.

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@rosborne979,

Quote:

I suspect that this is the basic understanding of most biological scientists (and not as you implied in the first sentence of your first post).

The existence of groups like SETI assume that "maybe, just maybe" there's life out there in one of the billions of other planets. It's QUITE a different perspective to ASSUME that there is life on any other planet that's neither frozen solid nor molten metal (Goldilocks planets). Again, life may be an inevitable consequence of matter and energy.

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@Banana Breath,

Banana Breath wrote:

Quote:
I suspect that this is the basic understanding of most biological scientists (and not as you implied in the first sentence of your first post).

The existence of groups like SETI assume that "maybe, just maybe" there's life out there in one of the billions of other planets. It's QUITE a different perspective to ASSUME that there is life on any other planet that's neither frozen solid nor molten metal (Goldilocks planets). Again, life may be an inevitable consequence of matter and energy.

Or life has always been here in ever-changing forms, going all the way back to when we were part of the sun.

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@ehBeth,

It's also nonsense, as 35 years ago, no one knew how complicated DNA was, or that the DNA helix could be used to hold binary computer code, which basically didn't exist yet, at least not in it's present form. 35 years later, none of the professors, who believe this nonsense, has managed to create life in a warm pond anywhere, and never will..................

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@DNA Thumbs drive,

Good god you're funny. Leaving outside your obsession that anything that can store binary code must have been designed by 'God' - you can't even get the most basic facts right.

The modern binary number system, the basis for binary code, was discovered by Gottfried Leibniz in 1679 and appears in his article Explication de l'Arithmétique Binaire.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_code#History_of_binary_code

01011001 01101111 01110101 00100111 01110010 01100101 00100000 01101110 01101111 01110100 00100000 01110001 01110101 01101001 01110100 01100101 00100000 01110010 01101001 01100111 01101000 01110100 00100000 01101001 01101110 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01101000 01100101 01100001 01100100 00100000 01100001 01110010 01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00111111

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@hingehead,

Dude, binary computer code was certainly not in operation, in it's present form until after the need for it, which does not predate computers.

PS. Binary code was not discovered either, it was created, by an intelligent designer. Argue all you want.

http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/6170/Zuse-Z1-built-by-Konrad-Zuse/

Sheesh

Next

0 Replies

@hingehead,

I find Thumbsy to be rather ignorant of history of development and "connections".
Linotyping and Boolean algebra mapping all predate digital processing.
Additive Circuit switching based on Boolean logic preceded the tool used for early data processing.

1 Reply

@farmerman,

But modern digital code, has no meaning, until it is processed, by a processor.

1 Reply

@DNA Thumbs drive,

then linotype machines don't work? or Morse Code?
If youre so enamoured at DNA and its massively parallel data storage, why not go all the way an convince the scientists working on it to use Quternary or Hexadecimal math (DNA is quaternary, not binary), and DNA/RNA is hexadecimal

1 Reply

@farmerman,

Binary computer code is being stored on DNA, the process was invented at Harvard. Get with it already, this is old news. http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/134672-harvard-cracks-dna-storage-crams-700-terabytes-of-data-into-a-single-gram

http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/coding-decoding-dna-storage.jpg

Next......

1 Reply

@DNA Thumbs drive,

actually dna preceded hahvad by a few years, you seem to be all over the place, make a point or leave on your broom.

0 Replies

Aren't scientists rather arrogant and elitist in abiogenetic theories?

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