Show Me Life Arising From Non Life!

[sadhatter]

So a claim i hear quite a bit is " show my life arising from non life." in the sense that this person wants to see a non biological thing turn into something biological. And then they usually extend this by saying if we cannot show this, then obviously this type of thing does not occur. Completely ignoring the nature of sample sizes. I hope to clear up this misconception using a simple example.

Step one is to find a small container, about the size of a shot glass. Now have someone at random fill it up with dirt.

Now before seeing the dirt would anyone make a 400 dollar bet with me that it contained a dime? ( or other appropriate small change depending on country.)

Unless i do not know people at all, no one is going to make this bet. The chances of winning are incredibly small, almost impossible. Now the interesting thing is that the amount of dimes in an area is fairly high, but still, this sample has almost no chance of showing a dime.

Now let's assume that you have access to enough equipment to sift through all the dirt in your ( state, province, etc.). Would anyone not take this bet? Would there be a single person who would not bet on their being one dime in the entirety of the dirt in such a large area?

So what have we shown here? First that even things that are relatively common are hard to find if your not looking in the right place.

Second, that sample size greatly effects the accuracy of data. If we stopped at the shot glass, we would have reached the conclusion that dimes are never found in dirt.

Third, that even things that are next to impossible with a small sample size are almost a certainty with a large one.

What someone is doing when they state " show me one planet in which life can be seen coming from non life" is expecting us, with our shotglass full of dirt to show them a dime. They know it cannot be done, but what they do not realize is that it cannot be done due to technical limitations on what we can " see" from earth. The universe is a massive place compared to our little corner, and to think that because we cannot point to a planet on which this is happening at this moment means that it is not happening anywhere is simply absurd as my example has shown.

 

[Jonnyclueless]

I don't think the problem is sample size. What constitutes the beginning of a life? Is it a single cell? Is it 99.9% of a completed cell? More importantly, because we have existing life, anything that is partially built life would be consumed by existing life. If half a cell started to form, then it would be consumed by something living long before it could meet any kind of definite status of "life". The ONLY way life could arrises from non-life at this current time is in the lab. Anything else would be nearly impossible, but not because life cannot arrise from non-life, just that our environment won't allow it.

When the first life did arise (whatever that may be), there wasn't competition to destroy it before it could form.

 

[Simon39759]

The sample size is part of it.
More important, probably, is time. prebiotic systems did undergo a slow evolution and rise in complexity before the first real life form emerged.
Indeed, many possible steps of these prebiotic systems, spontaneous generation of nucleic and amino-acid chain, emergence of lipid bilayers, self replicating nucleotide chains... Have been replicated in the lab.

But, I think, the main problem, and I certainly believe it to be the case in the particular thread you are referring to, is that the person arguing is, often willfully, arguing from ignorance. It is a dishonest debating technique to begin with and what that makes quite clear that the person making the argument has not interest in being convinced. Once again, that is quite definitively a particularly egregious case of such dishonesty in this particular example.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

A better way to approach this is not to expect abiogenesis to be ongoing and all one needs is a big enough sample size. That makes sense only if you are looking for life to have started on a different planetary body or in a different solar system (which if we had the capability to look, we probably could find abiogenesis in progress somewhere in the Universe).

A better approach is to start by looking for where the current research on the topic is. Evolution theory deniers never seem interested in reviewing the scientific advances that have taken place in the field before they set out to claim science has no answer. It's so common to find these flat Earthers arguing with decades old science.

The current state of the science in the field of abiogenesis


And I just read this excellent summation of the current state of the evidence posted by Simon in another thread:

...The two popular answers to explain the origin of this first life that appeared before any others is, therefore, naturalistic abiogenesis or magic.

We have observed many of the steps that would take place during naturalistic abiogenesis, we still have no evidence that magic exists .....

__________________

 

[shadron]

Inasmuch as science seems to be to pursuit of naturalistic explanations for as many phenomena as possible, my view of abiogenesis is that there are essentially two experimental goals: to show that purely chemical and physical processes, which can reasonably be shown to be active in the primordial Earth, can produce something that scientists can agree has the qualities of life, and that simple cells can likewise be constructed. A bonus would be to have them demonstrably work together.

It is to be understood that the chances that such life would be anything like ours would be practically zero, and in fact that any resemblance between our life and it probably means that there was contamination of the experiment.

 

[shadron]

Something that I learned only a little while back. In the 70 million years or so that preceded the Cambrian explosion, in the first 30 million years of that period, there was a "pre-explosion" of multi-cellular life now called the Vendobiota. These appear as disks and simple leaf shapes of various kinds which flourished through this period. At the end of it they vanished - completely disappeared from the fossil record, leaving no living descendants. After about 10 million years, the fossils record begins showing the start of the Cambrian fauna.

This early Vendobiota is represented by nothing in the record but some casts left in the Ediacarian deposits. It's not known how that life was connected with our own, or how it should be placed in the tree. One small thing, though. The Vendobiota had simple left-right symmetry, so the HOX genes and their compatriots were in place and doing their thing.

For a nice readable paper about all this, see here: http://cmbc.ucsd.edu/content/1/docs/Erwin_126.pdf: "The Origin of Animal Body Plans".

 

[sadhatter]

I don't think the problem is sample size. What constitutes the beginning of a life? Is it a single cell? Is it 99.9% of a completed cell? More importantly, because we have existing life, anything that is partially built life would be consumed by existing life. If half a cell started to form, then it would be consumed by something living long before it could meet any kind of definite status of "life". The ONLY way life could arrises from non-life at this current time is in the lab. Anything else would be nearly impossible, but not because life cannot arrise from non-life, just that our environment won't allow it.

When the first life did arise (whatever that may be), there wasn't competition to destroy it before it could form.

I agree , the problem is not just sample size, i just feel in my particular analogy that sample size is the strongest point.

I really like that you brought up the fact that on earth this not really happening right now. That is why i used the dirt in the analogy, versus saying something like " in a fistfull of change..." , because to find a new life form springing up on earth, well that would raise more questions than it would answer frankly. ( assuming said life form is not made in the lab.)

 

[Lukraak_Sisser]

What amazes me is that someone can insist upon being shown life arising from non life or else all theories regarding abiogenesis are wrong. Yet at the same time have no problem with never having seen an actual miracle and still find a religion based upon miracles as the one true faith that can never be doubted.

 

[MG1962]

The other problem we are going to have, unless we find one clear cut process for the rise of life, we really will never know

 

[TimCallahan]

Essentially, what creationists are arguing is this: Even though evolutionary theory only began about 160 years ago, and we didn't even know what the genes were made of until about 50 years ago, and the genetic code wasn't discovered until 45 years ago, and even though we still don't know the mechanism by which codons select the amino acids for which they code -- if scientists can't demonstrate abiogenesis in a test tube, right now, evolution if falsified.

Of course, if scientists were to do what the creationists demand, the creationists would call it a blasphemous, satanically inspired attempt to usurp divine prerogative.

 

[Marduk]

Its been done, life has been created from non life, it was announced in may this year.

Dr Craig Venter, a multi-millionaire pioneer in genetics, and his team have managed to make a completely new "synthetic" life form from a mix of chemicals.

They manufactured a new chromosome from artificial DNA in a test tube, then transferred it into an empty cell and watched it multiply – the very definition of being alive.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/...ratory-sparking-debate-about-playing-god.html

Of course, if scientists were to do what the creationists demand, the creationists would call it a blasphemous, satanically inspired attempt to usurp divine prerogative.

Winner,
a creationist reaction to this news was this headline

Jew Use White Scientist To Create Blasphemous Artificial Life As In The Days Of Noah

 

[Cavemonster]

To go back to sample size.
Imagine that every day, somewhere on this earth, a single celled creature magically poofed into existence. Forget even an actual slow process of self replicating chemical strands gradually improving, let's imagine the creationist strawman of a single celled organism, somewhere in an ocean, a desert, a forest or the bottom of my shoe. How would we detect such things? There are insect and even mammal and bird species that have never been catalogued. Even if a new single celled organism were to pop into existence out of rock every second of every day, somewhere in the world, we could very easily never see or measure one.

Let's take Ray Comfort's peanut butter example. The world's single largest peanut butter factory alone churns out 91,250,000 jar of peanut butter a year. Let's say, that every day of the year, life spontaeneously form in one fo those jars. Well, consumers would likely never know, there are already many microorganisms in there, just as there are pretty much every where. The likelyhood that a randomly evolved one would be successfull enough to change the taste of the stuff, or harm a human host is functionally zero, so scientists would have to painstakingly check jars.

But even with life poofing into existence evry single day, in a peanut butter jar, from this one factory, and scientists rigorously combing for it, the odds are still 250,000 to one on any given jar. This means that to be reasonably certain of catching this event, we would need to spend tens of millions of dollars (if not hundreds of millions) and rigorously examine a significant percentage of the nation's peanut butter supply, and we still might miss it.

So forget the concept of all possible planets and billions of years of time. Creationists don't even understand the implications of their own strawmen.

 

[Taffer]

The only required response to that question is "define life".

 

[likelystory]

Or he isn't.

given the evidence, he isn't is a more likely case.

The OP says how difficult it would be to find life on another planet because of the size of the Universe. Yet he makes it clear that God doesn't exist in this large Universe because he just says so

 

[Sledge]

The OP says how difficult it would be to find life on another planet because of the size of the Universe. Yet he makes it clear that God doesn't exist in this large Universe because he just says so

The OP doesn't mention God.

 

[joobz]

The OP says how difficult it would be to find life on another planet because of the size of the Universe. Yet he makes it clear that God doesn't exist in this large Universe because he just says so

You are arguing against something that wasn't said.
There are better arguments against the OP.

Why not discuss the likelihood of finding a dime outside of earth? The dime being a designed object wouldn't exist elsewhere in the universe. If life is designed, there is no reason for it to exist elsewhere.

I'll let you consider the flaws in that argument.

 

[Mirrorglass]

The OP says how difficult it would be to find life on another planet because of the size of the Universe. Yet he makes it clear that God doesn't exist in this large Universe because he just says so

I believe it's quite possible that in a galaxy far, far away there exists a God, unfortunately undetectable from the Earth. I can't speak for the OP, but I would assume most skeptics would agree that this is at least possible.

But, do you agree that this is a possibility, likely?

 

[Wowbagger]

Whenever anyone brings up the subject of "life arising from non-life", I usually respond by saying: "Well, we might not have all the answers, yet. But, the pursuit of knowledge in the field continues to yield dividends in our understanding of how life could arise, and how it works. This is more than could be said for creationism. Show me God creating life. At least we are making progress in our endeavors."

And, if pressed further, I would bring up various abiogenesis studies, and how they are applied to answering various scientific problems.

Sometimes I might press them into trying to tell me: What is special about life? What parts or aspects of life could not be made through natural processes? Is it the "soul"? What is the soul made out of? How can we investigate that, empirically?

Then, I might get into discussions about essentialism, and how evolution basically dissolves that notion, in life forms.

Etc.

 

[Wowbagger]

Get a load of these casrtoon examples of fallacious reasoning.

I, for one, would like to point that I see these examples coming from folks, all the time! Even, sometimes, on this very forum. And, it does annoy me, nowadays! Although, I will admit that I engaged in some of these fallacies in my early years on the forum, too.

So, yes, those who argue on the side of Evolution are NOT immune from spewing fallacies. We can all learn some lessons from the Baloney Detector Dog. Even me.

It is important to note, however, that the scientific basis behind evolution is NOT based on any of these fallacies. It is based on empricial evidence that can be independently verified, and tested to be reliable.

The fallacies highlighted in the cartoons are only spewed in the course of everyday conversation.

I should also note that the very basis of Creationism and Intelligent Design is in analogy and fallacy. They do NOT have an empirical basis. So, they have it worse off. They can't even develop a testable hypothesis, yet.

 

[Tricky]

Most of this thread has been moved to AAH, mostly for being off-topic, but also for bickering and attacking the arguer.

I realize that these threads tend to drift toward religion vs. atheism, but this thread was essentially a question from another thread that was started as its own thread to avoid derailing that one. So let's not derail this one. There are plenty of threads that address the religion vs. atheism issues or the "God gives justice and morality" issues.

Thank you
Tricky
JREF Moderation Team

Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: Tricky