>
>On Fri, 18 Aug 2000 09:58:38 -0700, Tedd Hadley wrote:
>
>[...]
>
> >SJ>1) do we know that these "putrefactive bacteria" have always been around
> >>from the beginning cleaning up any "amino and nucleic acids" produced?
>
>TH>We know bacteria are among the oldest life forms known, so its
> >a pretty good assumption.
>
>So it is only an "assumption"? We don't *know* (i.e. there is no
>actual *evidence* that "putrefactive bacteria" have always been around?
>
> >SJ>2) are they anerobic, since there was presumably little or no
> >>oxygen around for the first billion years? and
>
>TH>Very likely, most (all?) putrefactive bacteria are anerobic.
>
>If "putrefactive bacteria are anerobic" how do they live in the gut which has
>air in it?
>
> >SJ>3) since there were no "intestines" around for the first billion
> >>years or so, do these "putrefactive bacteria break down amino
> >>and nucleic acids" out in the *outside world* in a completely
> >>abiotic setting?
>
>TH>First, the putrefactive bacteria are pretty much everywhere,
> >not just in the human intestinal tract, since decaying plant or
> >animal matter is found pretty much everywhere.
>
>What is the evidence that *modern day* bacteria consume raw amino and
>nucleic acids that are produced *non-biologically*?
>
>I would have thought that 4 billion years later, with such a vast quantity of
>"decaying plant or animal matter" available, bacteria might have specialised
>to only go after "decaying plant or animal matter", not the small quantities
>of amino or nucleic acids produced abiotically?
>
>I should point out that this bacteria question is not a major issue with me,
>but I am still interested in seeing the answers.
>
>TH>However, four
> >billion years ago, who knows? Maybe the first life form
> >thrived on a soup of life precursors.
>
>What "soup" would that be exactly?:
>
> "And then what of the 'primitive soup' required for Chemical
> Evolution? If such an environment ever existed on Planet Earth for
> any appreciable time, it would require relatively large
> quantities of
> nitrogen-containing organic compounds (amino-acids, nucleic acid
> bases and so on).
Chris
Why? This would be true if the first forms of life required these things,
but, otherwise, why would it? I'm not saying they weren't present, mind
you; only that this seems to be, as you might put it, *only* an assumption.
> It is likely that such nitrogen-rich soups would
> have given significant quantities of ' nitrogenous cokes',
> trapped in
> various PreCambrian sediments. (The formation of such 'cokes' is
> the normal result obtained by heating organic matter rich in
> nitrogenous substances.) No such nitrogen-rich materials have yet
> been found in early PreCambrian rocks on this planet In fact the
> opposite seems to be true: the nitrogen content of early
> PreCambrian organic matter is relatively low (less than 0.15%).
> From this we can be reasonably certain that: * there never was any
> substantial amount of 'primitive soup' on Earth when ancient
> PreCambrian sediments were formed; * if such a 'soup' ever existed
> it was only for a brief period of time. Subtract from the basic
> concept of the Chemical Evolution Theory the ideas of substantial
> amounts of 'primitive soup' and a long period of time, and there is
> very little left." (Brooks J., "Origins of Life," Lion: Tring,
> Hertfordshire UK, 1985, p.118)
Chris
This is bad arithmetic, since there is not necessarily any need for either
large amounts or long periods of time, though, again, there may have been
large amounts and long periods of time, depending on *what* the "soup" (if
any) consisted of.
The big mistake that this quote seems to make is that early life would
*necessarily* be based on exactly the same molecules that modern life is
based on. I see no reason whatever to make such an assumption. And it *is*
only an assumption.
><snip to get to the chase>
>
>But in the case of the origin of life, the problem is not that we don't know
>enough, but that we now know *too much*:
>
> "Notice, however, that the sharp edge of this critique is not what
> we *do not* know, but what we *do* know. Many facts have
> come to light in the past three decades of experimental inquiry into
> life's beginning. With each passing year the criticism has gotten
> stronger. The advance of science itself is what is challenging the
> nation that life arose on earth by spontaneous (in a thermodynamic
> sense) chemical reactions.Over the years a slowly emerging line or
> boundary has appeared which shows observationally the limits of
> what can be expected from matter and energy left to themselves,
> and what can be accomplished only through what Michael Polanyi
> has called "a profoundly informative intervention." When it is
> acknowledged that most so-called prebiotic simulation experiments
> actually owe their success to the crucial but *illegitimate* role of
> the investigator, a new and fresh phase of the experimental
> approach to life's origin can then be entered. Until then however,
> the literature of chemical evolution will probably continue to be
> dominated by reports of experiments in which the investigator, like
> a metabolizing Maxwell Demon, will have performed work on the
> system through intelligent, exogenous intervention. Such work
> establishes experimental boundary conditions, and imposes
> intelligent influence/control over a supposedly "prebiotic"
> earth. As
> long as this informative interference of the investigator is
> ignored,
> the illusion of prebiotic simulation will be fostered. We would
> predict that this practice will prove to be a barrier to solving the
> mystery of life's origin." (Thaxton C.B., Bradley W.L. & Olsen
> R.L., "The Mystery of Life's Origin," 1992, Second Printing, p.185.
> Emphasis in original).
Chris
I'm not sure why Jones thought this was a good passage to quote from
Thaxton. Like the quote from Johnson a while back, this one shows that
Thaxton is no great intellectual guru of ID theory, but is really just a
hack, like Dembski and Johnson.
Evolution is the evolution of information. In the case of DNA-based
evolution, it is the evolution of the information in the DNA itself, via
trillions upon trillions of trials of various accidental variations. That
is, the "randomness" of the various factors at work introduces new
information (relative to parent genomes) into offspring genomes. If a
cosmic ray causes the offspring genome to be different from the parent
genome, then that cosmic ray has introduced new information into it. Heat,
cold, the intrusion of unusual molecules, and so on can all introduce new
information into the genome.
Why do organisms look so "design-like," then? Why don't they look random?
Because random DNA cannot generate a body for us to look at, and because,
if it did, such bodies would get selected *out.* As I said the other day,
given the physics of the known Universe, given the range and variety and
yet fair stability of environments on Earth, it would not even be
*possible* to evolve organisms that did *not* look "designed."
The "profound informative intervention," in reality, is not a single event
but trillions of them, most of which are not replicated. The few that *are*
replicated get to have yet more variations. It is not even true that most
of the "design-like" genomes/organisms are allowed to replicate; only those
from this subset that are suited to their environments are. What's left
from that massive, constant river of new information from the environment
(ultimately) into the DNA is those few in which the new information
happened to be either neutral or beneficial, because it was not only
"design-like," but viable and suited to its particular environment.
Thaxton, Johnson, et al, do not generally even *attempt* to understand
evolution in this way or at this level of detail, because understanding,
from all appearances, is not their goal. Persuading others to reject it
(regardless of its scientific merit) in favor of their mystical ID theory
is their goal.
As I also pointed out in a prior post, it would be fairly easy to set up an
evolutionary model that depended on "random" cosmic rays for both variation
and selection, and that the result would *still* contain complex
design-like structures of information. That is, *all* possible reasonable
interventions of human or other intelligence could easily be excluded, and
yet the process would still generate some design-like results (along with
much that was *not* design-like at all).
I challenge the ID theorists to start creating (and *publishing* for open
examination) computer programs of this type, and let them just *try* to
design one that a) *accurately* models the essential principles of
naturalistic evolutionary theory and that b) does *not* produce among its
results instances of seeming design. I don't currently have the time to do
this, but I'd bet that some ID theorists *do* have time to do this.
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