The Law of Biogenesis

[OldEnglishSheepdog]

The only one who can accomplish biogenesis is God Himself.....what's so hard to understand about this?

The concept is simple, but not everyone agrees the statement is true. If I make a claim that only aliens could have seeded life on Earth, it isn't a hard concept to understand but it is quite a pill to swallow as correct.

I'm actually finding it crazy how many people seem to be subscribing to the panspermia theory lately. Hawkings seemed to be pretty interested in the whole aliens coming here deal, and I've read a number of other comments that seem to be flirting with the idea, which would have been rejected outright just a few years ago.

The strangest thing is, or course, it would not only raise the question of where the aliens came from, but also what evidence is there that such was the case. Dismissing God as speculative despite the arguments that theism puts forth, and electing instead something which lacks the powerful explanitory power theism offers sure seems like a fool's gambit to me, but while we may disagree it looks to me like it may not be too long before people find it easier to swallow that pill than you suggest.

I have been out of the loop for some weeks now, so I cannot confirm wether Hawking or Dawkins are into panspermia recently. If this is the case, I can only agree with you that this is an unacceptable explanation for the origin of life.

Hey viole,

I didn't actually say Hawking was expressly advocating panspermia, but he's making some pretty enthusiastic comments about aliens that, if accepted, would make panspermia seem like a pretty reasonable idea, and I didn't mention Dawkins. His comments on the matter are a bit odd, but he does acknowledge that it wouldn't actually solve anything.

[OldEnglishSheepdog]

The theory of evolution is usually thought of as being applicable only to things that are already alive.

Popularizers like Dawkins disagree. Are you familiar with his Weasel program? It attempts to demonstrate the origin of life using natural selection on abiotic matter.

I would agree that it's senseless to pretend that such could be the case, but it's not some kind of Creationist misunderstanding to address the application of evolution on non-living material.

However, I think it is true to say that many ideas in the scientific literature about the origin of life itself rely on selection processes akin to natural selection.

Natural selection only works through reproduction. NS selects from what's available among living organisms, cutting out organisms that are less adapted for certain environments. Without life there is no pressure from selection, i.e. nothing from which to select. The process fundamentally requires living organisms that can reproduce, otherwise it would have to be a physical force, physically moving abiotic matter around, and selecting not for survival advantage but deliberating for future potential advantage... and an immaterial force acting physically to assemble something with deliberation would simply be a description of God or some kind of ghost or whatever.

Actually, my comments in the earlier post probably owe their origin to having read some of Dawkins's books.

I think the Weasel program first sees the light of day in the chapter entitled "accumulating small change" in Dawkins's "Blind Watchmaker". The purpose of the chapter is not to discuss the origin of life, but to demonstrate the power of cumulative selection, because "Chance is a minor ingredient in the Darwinian recipe [i.e. natural selection], but the most important ingredient is cumulative selection which is quintessentially nonrandom". The weasel program is indeed used in the context of a discussion on life's origin, but that discussion is solely within the framework of natural selection.

If you read the chapter, I hope you would accept that my post sits comfortably within Dawkins's view.

I'm not sure I'm following you here when you say the discussion is solely within the framework of natural selection, but I think this blogger put it well "Probably the most obvious flaw in Dawkins line of reasoning is that the Weasel Program must be supplied with information to generate information. In fact, the only information it can generate is the information that was put in to it. If you put nonsense into the Weasel Program you get nonsense out, not information. The Weasel Program is just a conversion algorithm. Dawkins’ argument assumes that you can start with something that automatically has the ability to reproduce itself. I thought the idea here was that life was represented by a meaningful sentence. Shouldn’t nonsense be considered dead an unable to reproduce? Dawkins’ argument assumes that all the selected intermediate strings can reproduce even though he acknowledges that there are vastly more was of being dead than alive. If we were to enforce some rule for what is considered to be alive, like requiring the character string be composed of only properly spelled words, the Weasel Program wouldn’t be able to find a path to its expected output. To say that “there are vastly more ways of being dead than alive” would be a gross understatement because there would be easily billions of more ways of being “dead” than “alive”" (source: http://randystimpson.blogspot.com/2010/04/interactive-weasel-program.html).

Whether or not you're considering this as a simulation to demonstrate the origin of life or the increasing of applicable sequencing to facilitate adaptation to a certain environment, either way, if nothing more than unguided forces are at work then the simulation fails to account for how the conversion algorithm (or genetic algorithm if the metaphor is to extend so far) was set up in the first place, and more importantly, how an organism could survive long enough to reproduce, and it's offspring could survive and so forth and so on for multiple generations, with DNA sequencing that's not set up to perform any valid function in its (or any other) environment. Such organisms would simply not live.

This necessitates that organisms in the simulation are not selected for survival advantage but for their potential suvival advantage according to some intelligently prescribed, desired future outcome, so the junk sequencing is safeguarded by nothing more than intelligent intention. If the match between sequencing and environmental funcationality is a prospective one, then Natural Selection (being and unguided natural force) kills off the organism, since unguided forces have no foresight and all you have in hand is something that's not adapted for survival in its environment.

If Natural Selection was properly represented, none of the sequences except the last one would have survived. To survive the sentence would have to pop into being all at once, fully formed and error free, or else it would not be sequenced to perform any function necessary to sustain life, and as such the organism would simply be naturally selected out.

Therefore, you have to start with valid sequencing that informs an environmentally useful function and, for that matter, an algorithm to select from changes in the sequencing, so the simulation is misleading at best, relying on prospective, intelligently safeguarded intention and preexisting intelligently designed criteria, and thus strongly disconfirms what it proports to support.

[LuftWaffle]

I have been out of the loop for some weeks now, so I cannot confirm wether Hawking or Dawkins are into panspermia recently. If this is the case, I can only agree with you that this is an unacceptable explanation for the origin of life.

Huh? What?

erm...

You're agreeing with something we said?

Who are you and why are you posting under Viole's username?

[LuftWaffle]

The theory of evolution is usually thought of as being applicable only to things that are already alive.

Popularizers like Dawkins disagree. Are you familiar with his Weasel program? It attempts to demonstrate the origin of life using natural selection on abiotic matter.

I would agree that it's senseless to pretend that such could be the case, but it's not some kind of Creationist misunderstanding to address the application of evolution on non-living material.

However, I think it is true to say that many ideas in the scientific literature about the origin of life itself rely on selection processes akin to natural selection.

Natural selection only works through reproduction. NS selects from what's available among living organisms, cutting out organisms that are less adapted for certain environments. Without life there is no pressure from selection, i.e. nothing from which to select. The process fundamentally requires living organisms that can reproduce, otherwise it would have to be a physical force, physically moving abiotic matter around, and selecting not for survival advantage but deliberating for future potential advantage... and an immaterial force acting physically to assemble something with deliberation would simply be a description of God or some kind of ghost or whatever.

Actually, my comments in the earlier post probably owe their origin to having read some of Dawkins's books.

I think the Weasel program first sees the light of day in the chapter entitled "accumulating small change" in Dawkins's "Blind Watchmaker". The purpose of the chapter is not to discuss the origin of life, but to demonstrate the power of cumulative selection, because "Chance is a minor ingredient in the Darwinian recipe [i.e. natural selection], but the most important ingredient is cumulative selection which is quintessentially nonrandom". The weasel program is indeed used in the context of a discussion on life's origin, but that discussion is solely within the framework of natural selection.

If you read the chapter, I hope you would accept that my post sits comfortably within Dawkins's view.

I'm not sure I'm following you here when you say the discussion is solely within the framework of natural selection, but I think this blogger put it well "Probably the most obvious flaw in Dawkins line of reasoning is that the Weasel Program must be supplied with information to generate information. In fact, the only information it can generate is the information that was put in to it. If you put nonsense into the Weasel Program you get nonsense out, not information. The Weasel Program is just a conversion algorithm. Dawkins’ argument assumes that you can start with something that automatically has the ability to reproduce itself. I thought the idea here was that life was represented by a meaningful sentence. Shouldn’t nonsense be considered dead an unable to reproduce? Dawkins’ argument assumes that all the selected intermediate strings can reproduce even though he acknowledges that there are vastly more was of being dead than alive. If we were to enforce some rule for what is considered to be alive, like requiring the character string be composed of only properly spelled words, the Weasel Program wouldn’t be able to find a path to its expected output. To say that “there are vastly more ways of being dead than alive” would be a gross understatement because there would be easily billions of more ways of being “dead” than “alive”" (source: http://randystimpson...el-program.html).

Whether or not you're considering this as a simulation to demonstrate the origin of life or the increasing of applicable sequencing to facilitate adaptation to a certain environment, if nothing more than unguided forces are at play then either way the simulation fails to account for how the conversion algorithm (or genetic algorithm if the metaphor is to extend so far) was set up in the first place, and more importantly, how anything could survive long enough to reproduce nested generations of sequencing that's not set up to perform any valid function. This necessitates that organisms are not selected for survival advantage but for their potential suvival advantage according to some intelligently prescribed, desired future outcome. If the match between sequencing and environmental funcationality is a prospective one, then Natural Selection kills off the organism, since unguided forces have no foresight and all you have is something that's not adapted for survival in its environment.

If Natural Selection were actually in effect, none of the sequences except the last one would have made the cut. To survive the sentence would have to pop into being all at once, fully formed and error free, or else it would be selected out, demonstrating that you have to start with information and an algorithm to select from changes in the sequencing, just to get started, and from there you'd have to account for variations that would come into being as complete and environmentally relevant sequences that do not come at the expense of the functionality of the rest of the sequence.

I think the Weasel Program bears testimony to how stupid Dawkins thinks the average reader of his books are...

[OldEnglishSheepdog]

I think the Weasel Program bears testimony to how stupid Dawkins thinks the average reader of his books are...

Honestly, I cannot understand how so many people thing rehashed old Hume and John Stewart Mill arguments are so devastating, so it leads me to wonder if the average readers of his books even pay any attention to what he's saying.

I'm pretty convinced a lot of his fans are following his intentions, not his arguments.

[LuftWaffle]

I think the Weasel Program bears testimony to how stupid Dawkins thinks the average reader of his books are...

Honestly, I cannot understand how so many people thing rehashed old Hume and John Stewart Mill arguments are so devastating, so it leads me to wonder if the average readers of his books even pay any attention to what he's saying.

I'm pretty convinced a lot of his fans are following his intentions, not his arguments.

Indeed, atheism sells and Dawkins is cashing in big time. It's cheap consumer goods for a hungry market. Nothing more, nothing less. Hawking has also jumped on the bandwagon with his latest controvertial offering, and you'll probably find more and more scientists trying to get a slice of the pie with forays into philosophy and theology.

Edited July 18, 2011 by LuftWaffle

[Guest shiloh357]

The theory of evolution is usually thought of as being applicable only to things that are already alive. However, I think it is true to say that many ideas in the scientific literature about the origin of life itself rely on selection processes akin to natural selection.

If natural selection has been expanded to include the origin of life, as well as its development, then Theistic Evolution cannot be considered plausible by anyone who supports Evolution. To attribute the origino of life to a wholly naturalistic process without any involvement of a Creator, would make atheisim the only logical alternative for a proponent of Evolution.

[Don Fanucci]

I disagree. It does matter, This is not a matter of an alternative. You see you need to manufacture life, the bottles of chemicals mixed, do not produce life, with out some outside force arranging them, using a supercomputer to plan it. This proves nothing, There is no life arising from nothing. This has not been proved.

All this proves is it takes intellegent life to produce life.

It really doesn't because if it did, then creating life out of buliding blocks would not be a doable experiment due to your disqualification of the role that the experimenter would play. This study is what it is. Taking abiotic starting materials (excluding the cell membrane) and making a functional living organism out of it. Presumably it will get more and more hands off, they will get there.

[LuftWaffle]

I disagree. It does matter, This is not a matter of an alternative. You see you need to manufacture life, the bottles of chemicals mixed, do not produce life, with out some outside force arranging them, using a supercomputer to plan it. This proves nothing, There is no life arising from nothing. This has not been proved.

All this proves is it takes intellegent life to produce life.

It really doesn't because if it did, then creating life out of buliding blocks would not be a doable experiment due to your disqualification of the role that the experimenter would play. This study is what it is. Taking abiotic starting materials (excluding the cell membrane) and making a functional living organism out of it. Presumably it will get more and more hands off, they will get there.

Hi Don,

The point Isaiah is making is that intelligence has been smuggled into the experiment. 4 bottles of chemicals + 1 computer doesn't produce life. The computer needs software which requires intelligence, and the chemicals need to be arranged in a very specific order in the correct amount, to duplicate what occurs in nature.

One might use the analogy of a painter. 1 Canvas + paint will not give you the Mona Lisa. A certain intelligent agent, Leonardo Dicaprio (just kidding) was required to mix the colours in a precise way and apply them to canvas in a precise way.

Suppose now a scientist doubts that DaVinci existed and sets out to show that the Mona Lisa occured by natural means. He uses a canvas and 4 bottles of paint (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black), mixes the paint using a computer and applies the paint in a very precise way to the canvas ending up with an exact duplicate of the Mona Lisa. Did he succeed in showing that art can come about by purely natural processes? Not at all. So why is that logic valid for the Venter experiment?

Secondly, Venter did not create life. Scientific American is quite correct in that he created a prosthetic genome and inserted it into an already living organism. Having genes does not imply being alive. Dead things can contain genes, but aren't alive. It's possible that scientists will one day be able to create a simple self-replicating organism in a lab, which depending on a certain definition of "life" can be construed as "alive", but what Craig Venter did, is nothing of the sort. Claiming that the SA journalist isn't a scientist seems to me that you place way too much faith in credentials. Credentials alone do not make truth.

[LuftWaffle]

Speaking of credentials. This seems to be one of many things that make evolution, and origins science in general, quite unique. Most sciences are freely accessible to laypersons, and in fact there's always been a push to get laypersons involved in operational sciences.

for instance TV shows like Mythbusters and Brainiacs are geared for just that. Making science accessible to all. Viewers get to interact with the investigators and comment on certain outcomes in terms of chemistry, physics regardless of their expertise in such fields. Comments are handled according to validity and not credentials.

This happens in our day to day life as well. I can go to a physician and tell them that I think I have the flu. They can diagnose me, and if I'm not satisfied with the diagnosis then I can question it or even get a second opinion.

Many people question the science behind dietary supplements, mass building producs or weight loss remedies, and those queries are addressed if they're valid, regardless of qualification.

Lay persons have insisted that Power Balance bracelets do not work and many people received refunds even though they're not medically or chemistry trained.

If an electrical engineer repaires my TV I can ask them what they did and question whether an expensive part really required replacing.

But where origins science is concerned, it seems one dare not to question the science unless one is qualified in a relevant field. Television shows on evolution tell us the conclusions, but for the most part the way those conclusions are reached are never mentioned, and, it seems, are offlimits to us.

Objections are summarily dismissed and validity is secondary to one's qualifications. As OES put it, there seems to be a cult mentality where origins science is concerned, where only those ordained by the cult get to speak on the cult.

If Mythbusters had to work like origins science, I can imagine it would go something like this:

"Hey viewers, we've got a fan letter today from John in Arizona writing that our "Pigs can fly" experiment wasn't valid because we used a styrofoam pig and a model aricraft engine. He says real pigs are heavier and do not have the luxury of propulsion. Unfortunately his complaint is invalid because he is not a aeronautical engineer, but a hotel receptionist. What does he know?

Anyway, welcome to today's show.

Today, we'll be testing the myth that a duck's quack doesn't echo.

This myth is Busted!

Why? Because we say so and we're the experts.

Goodbye!"

*roll credits*

There is a very distinct different in the way origins science deals with objections versus the way operational science deals with objections.

Edited July 19, 2011 by LuftWaffle