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Serious Discussion / Abiogenesis - "The origins of life"

What are the origins of life?

  1. EssenceOfLife
    Date: Thu, Jan 7 2010 19:25:01

    QUOTE (Dark Angel-REX @ Jan 7 2010, 06:09 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
    no mathematics aren't 100% neither.


    but I would probably believe evolution more than "god created humans", only because it's more logical

    I don't really think evolution deals with the creation of life and the human condition, just the building blocks of humans and what makes use grow the way we do and just like genes....


    You can still believe in evolution and believe God created humans, which I think is MUCH more logical than, nothing ...


    And Math is just another way that we understand the world as we know it, it's just how we think, it could be all 100 percent false and just figments of our imagination and us TRYING to grasp understanding out of the world, we would never know and couldn't ever know... (idk if this is what you said Sadistic, or something along those lines.... = \)

  2. Sadistic
    Date: Thu, Jan 7 2010 23:01:11

    QUOTE (EssenceOfLife @ Jan 7 2010, 02:25 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
    I don't really think evolution deals with the creation of life and the human condition, just the building blocks of humans and what makes use grow the way we do and just like genes....


    No evolution does not deal with the creation of life, and descriptions of the "human condition" vary so much I couldn't address this without more specifics, but uhhhh inevitability? Sure.

    If we're going to describe things in a washed-up/semantical sort of way, I would say Evolution deals with the how we develop, and natural selection deals with the why.

    QUOTE (EssenceOfLife @ Jan 7 2010, 02:25 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
    You can still believe in evolution and believe God created humans, which I think is MUCH more logical than, nothing ...


    I would like to know why you think this.
    -Why would god insert endogenous retrovirus sequences into our DNA if they "appear to be defective, containing nonsense mutations or major deletions, and cannot produce infectious virus particles". Why would god create a different species that seems to be split between homo sapiens and chimpanzees (that is, Neanderthals). Why would god fuse our DNA to appear perfectly as though it was the fusion of primate chromosomes? Why would god plant fossil evidence of so many hominids that share huge resemblances with humans yet are clearly not of the same species? Why would god use evolution to create every organism on the planet we see today, and yet not do so for humans?

    QUOTE (EssenceOfLife @ Jan 7 2010, 02:25 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
    And Math is just another way that we understand the world as we know it, it's just how we think, it could be all 100 percent false and just figments of our imagination and us TRYING to grasp understanding out of the world, we would never know and couldn't ever know... (idk if this is what you said Sadistic, or something along those lines.... = \)


    As Zombo said, math can exist outside the confines of reality, it doesn't need substance to be correct. Logical axioms ARE 100% correct, because any exception to the rules of the axioms means that the object that made the exception did not fit the original parameters.

    QUOTE (Penwish @ Jan 7 2010, 03:36 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
    which country believes in evolution chart

    Evolution chart


    Ive seen some with the US more accepting of it and some with it less, but it often depends upon the phrasing of the question when doing polling. This chart seems fairly moderate on it.

  3. hoiboy
    Date: Thu, Jan 7 2010 23:33:17

    Well, I believe in theistic evolution.

    I think of life too intricate and complex to have just been an accident, I believe there was a Creator that created the first life forms and had a hand in shaping them to "evolve" into humans.

    On another, less non-religious level, saying that we are the results of accidents and luck degrades us to mere animals.

  4. Sadistic
    Date: Thu, Jan 7 2010 23:44:58

    QUOTE (hoiboy @ Jan 7 2010, 07:33 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
    Well, I believe in theistic evolution.

    I think of life too intricate and complex to have just been an accident, I believe there was a Creator that created the first life forms and had a hand in shaping them to "evolve" into humans.

    On another, less non-religious level, saying that we are the results of accidents and luck degrades us to mere animals.

    1) We are animals
    2) This is not a discussion upon abiogenesis, nor upon god.
    3) Making the claim that we arose from "accidents and luck" doesn't show an accurate representation of evolution or natural selection, and if your implying it is, you don't understand natural selection. DNA combines itself in randomized shuffling patterns and will often have random mutations, but the selection of these random mutations for positive attributes is by no means random.

  5. yxTay
    Date: Fri, Jan 8 2010 00:16:59

    We are going off-topic with the discussion on God and Theism.

  6. hoiboy
    Date: Fri, Jan 8 2010 00:44:14

    QUOTE (hoiboy @ Jan 7 2010, 03:33 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
    Well, I believe in theistic evolution.

    I think of life too intricate and complex to have just been an accident, I believe there was a Creator that created the first life forms and had a hand in shaping them to "evolve" into humans.

    On another, less non-religious level, saying that we are the results of accidents and luck degrades us to mere animals.


    whoops, wrong thread >.<

    i thought this was your thread sadi

  7. CDN-izedAZN
    Date: Fri, Jan 8 2010 00:57:28

    Ehh... the universe is so large that light takes up to millions or even billions of years to travel across it. so ya sure, it possible that life on Earth is purely coincidental, but considering just how vast the universe is, its safe to assume that if Earth wasn't the planet to harvest life, some other planet would.

  8. Sadistic
    Date: Fri, Jan 8 2010 01:35:56

    QUOTE (hoiboy @ Jan 7 2010, 08:44 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
    whoops, wrong thread >.<

    i thought this was your thread sadi


    When you posted it, it was in my thread....

    QUOTE (CDN-izedAZN @ Jan 7 2010, 08:57 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
    Ehh... the universe is so large that light takes up to millions or even billions of years to travel across it. so ya sure, it possible that life on Earth is purely coincidental, but considering just how vast the universe is, its safe to assume that if Earth wasn't the planet to harvest life, some other planet would.


    -No scientist could claim that life from non-living matter was from coincidence.
    -How can you make said assumption without assessing the probability of the creation of life? In order for life to form through abiogenesis a very large number of chemical resources need to be available. With no knowledge of any other planets sharing even remotely similar qualities to those of earth, there is no reason to assume there would be one.

    Here is a video on one of the most highly recognized theories of how life could have originated (NOT by coincidence):

  9. hoiboy
    Date: Fri, Jan 8 2010 03:58:29

    wait whhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat

    now i'm severely confused on where i posted

  10. Sadistic
    Date: Fri, Jan 8 2010 06:13:24

    QUOTE (hoiboy @ Jan 7 2010, 10:58 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
    wait whhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat

    now i'm severely confused on where i posted



    The first 4 posts were posts that were originally in my thread (evolution), then Zombo created this thread and moved them here (Abiogenesis) because he realized that the evolution topic was shooting off towards the origin-of-life direction too often.

  11. lobster
    Date: Fri, Jan 8 2010 06:39:13

    Watched the video

    Quite intriguing. Based on my advanced biology class im in currently (10th grade), it seems feasible, the logic is there.

    I think its nicer to think that a god started life off, and that there is something more after life, rather than some random chemicals forming at just the right time.

    and who knows, maybe God was a chemist =)

  12. Dark Angel-REX
    Date: Fri, Jan 8 2010 08:19:05

    QUOTE (EssenceOfLife @ Jan 8 2010, 04:25 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
    You can still believe in evolution and believe God created humans, which I think is MUCH more logical than, nothing ...


    No you aren't quite getting what I meant. If you are deeply into philosophy, you would understand that there are 2 types of Gods: Religious Gods and non-Religious God.

    The former, is a God in religion. Allah, Vishnu, and those kinda God(s). The Latter is completely isolated from religion, and just a "god" that "exists" for the universe (so probably way different that the former God). So faith in former and no faith in latter. When people usually say "god", they are talking about the former. And therefore I was talking about the former.

    The God you mentioned in the quote above, is the latter God. So then you are right. It is "logical" in a sense. But the God I mentioned was former God. So I was logical in my post.

    Former is the one I could say to be non-existent. On the other hand, Latter is the one I cannot (although I still don't think it exists). Though i'm not gonna discuss that here or i'll get banned. If you want to, you'll have to pm me.





    Mathematics are not 100%. There was an argument about whether 0.9999............. is 1 or not. There are many mathematical ways to prove this. But in fact, 0.999999....... in the real world may be something different. Moreover the definition of Calculus is also very Subjective. Infinity as well. There are tons of things we don't know. What is "beyond" infinity is another question. Then Mathematics becomes highly philosophical, and as mentioned by many people, we can't prove for 100% that certain philosophy is correct.

  13. PillarsOfValhalla
    Date: Fri, Jan 8 2010 08:27:26

    Quick things off the top of my head.

    In that video:

    -Regarding the disprovement (I don't care if that's not a word) regarding abiogenesis.
    "Way to keep current" It hasn't been proved possible by today's science. When it has been performed, please, please let me know.
    and "there is one book that says life came from dirt", yes but not on its own

    /small, unorganized, spur-of-the-moment rant


    edit: chemical reactions can make the nucliec acids and proteins, but what turns that into a living cell?

  14. Sadistic
    Date: Fri, Jan 8 2010 09:05:49

    QUOTE (PillarsOfValhalla @ Jan 8 2010, 04:27 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
    Quick things off the top of my head.

    In that video:

    -Regarding the disprovement (I don't care if that's not a word) regarding abiogenesis.
    "Way to keep current" It hasn't been proved possible by today's science. When it has been performed, please, please let me know.
    and "there is one book that says life came from dirt", yes but not on its own

    /small, unorganized, spur-of-the-moment rant


    edit: chemical reactions can make the nucliec acids and proteins, but what turns that into a living cell?


    Going from proteins to cells is a very large jump, there are many chemical processes that organic materials would need to undertake before they could becomes life. Some of those processes, if even possible, would take incredibly large sums of time.

    btw - Abiogenesis presents no position on god, and as for the pantheistic ideals (as far as I could tell) that Dark-Angel mentioned, god would still exist in this sense even if we did discover that abiogenesis created life on earth.

  15. yxTay
    Date: Fri, Jan 8 2010 10:16:32

    Regarding the video, I understand the entire part regarding the fatty acids and vesicles part and how that resembles life we know today. The video also sufficiently explain how nucleotides can spontaneously form and extend polymers, resembling genetic material.

    However, it started to skip a lot after that. All factors being equal, the polymers will more likely form outside the vesicles than inside (since the space is larger, the frequency of collision is higher). So how does the polymer-inside-vesicle structures start dominating the environment? Perhaps, there are some comparative advantage of the structures compared to naked polymers that the video prefers to skip due to complexity. It could be more stable as the polymers are protected, albeit minimally, by the vesicles, whereas the naked polymers are exposed to the mechanical forces mentioned in the video.

    Another point that doesn't make sense is how the video extend the way the vesicles replicate through division by mechanical forces to the more complex structures. That the vesicles not lose any fatty acids during division is understandable, but can the same be said about the polymers? Some (perhaps, lots) of the polymers will probably break off to minuscule pieces and not be contained within a vesicle after division. The whole process will have to restart if the polymers don't stay within the vesicles. Again, this doesn't help these structures to dominate the environment.

    Also, the explanation that convection currents help build up the polymers in the vesicles don't really hold. That the high temperatures destablise the polymers and increase permeability of the vesicle works both ways. Why should the nucleotides necessarily move into the vesicle? The nucleotide polymers within the vesicles may break up and then flow out as monomers.

    I don't claim to be an expert. Perhaps the producer chose not to include the explanation for these because it's out of the grasp of the typical viewer and that time limits what can be shown.

    QUOTE (Dark Angel-REX @ Jan 8 2010, 04:19 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
    The former, is a God in religion. Allah, Vishnu, and those kinda God(s). The Latter is completely isolated from religion, and just a "god" that "exists" for the universe (so probably way different that the former God). So faith in former and no faith in latter. When people usually say "god", they are talking about the former. And therefore I was talking about the former.
    I.E. theistic God and pantheistic God.

    QUOTE (PillarsOfValhalla @ Jan 8 2010, 04:27 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
    edit: chemical reactions can make the nucliec acids and proteins, but what turns that into a living cell?
    We may want to give a definition to 'life' first. How is self-replicating chemical compounds different from life forms? What are the characteristics that make life different?

  16. o.0dsrp
    Date: Sat, Jan 9 2010 02:06:24

    QUOTE (EssenceOfLife @ Jan 7 2010, 02:25 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
    I don't really think evolution deals with the creation of life and the human condition, just the building blocks of humans and what makes use grow the way we do and just like genes....


    You can still believe in evolution and believe God created humans, which I think is MUCH more logical than, nothing ...


    And Math is just another way that we understand the world as we know it, it's just how we think, it could be all 100 percent false and just figments of our imagination and us TRYING to grasp understanding out of the world, we would never know and couldn't ever know... (idk if this is what you said Sadistic, or something along those lines.... = \)

    Sir, are you high?
    > 'And Math is just another way that we understand the world as we know it, it's just how we think, it could be all 100 percent false and just figments of our imagination and us TRYING to grasp understanding out of the world, we would never know and couldn't ever know"
    If math is false, then we are false. Our world is false, just another figment of imagination. For all you know, we do not exist. We could all be mental apparitions within your spiritual being. The only thing you know is real is yourself. o.0

  17. Dark Angel-REX
    Date: Sat, Jan 9 2010 04:39:08

    QUOTE (yxTay @ Jan 8 2010, 07:16 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
    I.E. theistic God and pantheistic God.


    thanx for clearing it out for me. I didn't know how to explain it in words so i just made it up.




    QUOTE
    If math is false, then we are false. Our world is false, just another figment of imagination. For all you know, we do not exist. We could all be mental apparitions within your spiritual being. The only thing you know is real is yourself.

    Yea, Mathematics are not "false". However, our mathematics may be "false". I pointed out in the post above, but I was talking about how WE do the mathematics could be false. Although we have found that several things are definitely not false, but once again, when Mathematics goes further, it becomes more philosophical.


    If the only thing you know is real is yourself, then I know I am real. And you say you know you are real. Then we are all real. Then we exist.

  18. Sadistic
    Date: Sun, Jan 10 2010 20:00:45

    QUOTE (yxTay @ Jan 8 2010, 06:16 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
    Regarding the video, I understand the entire part regarding the fatty acids and vesicles part and how that resembles life we know today. The video also sufficiently explain how nucleotides can spontaneously form and extend polymers, resembling genetic material.

    However, it started to skip a lot after that. All factors being equal, the polymers will more likely form outside the vesicles than inside (since the space is larger, the frequency of collision is higher). So how does the polymer-inside-vesicle structures start dominating the environment? Perhaps, there are some comparative advantage of the structures compared to naked polymers that the video prefers to skip due to complexity. It could be more stable as the polymers are protected, albeit minimally, by the vesicles, whereas the naked polymers are exposed to the mechanical forces mentioned in the video.

    Another point that doesn't make sense is how the video extend the way the vesicles replicate through division by mechanical forces to the more complex structures. That the vesicles not lose any fatty acids during division is understandable, but can the same be said about the polymers? Some (perhaps, lots) of the polymers will probably break off to minuscule pieces and not be contained within a vesicle after division. The whole process will have to restart if the polymers don't stay within the vesicles. Again, this doesn't help these structures to dominate the environment.

    Also, the explanation that convection currents help build up the polymers in the vesicles don't really hold. That the high temperatures destablise the polymers and increase permeability of the vesicle works both ways. Why should the nucleotides necessarily move into the vesicle? The nucleotide polymers within the vesicles may break up and then flow out as monomers.

    I don't claim to be an expert. Perhaps the producer chose not to include the explanation for these because it's out of the grasp of the typical viewer and that time limits what can be shown.


    Just remember that this video was a summary of a very large piece of work, if your interested in this you may want to consider buying a book upon RNA theory. As you were saying, no doubt the time limits of youtube videos would restrict further explanation on many of these subjects. Personally I am not very familiar with abiogenesis as it seems to deverge much more into chemistry.

  19. TheOnion
    Date: Fri, Jan 15 2010 15:44:06

    Found a really fascinating video on the subject. Great as kind of an introduction to it.


    Really exciting with the prospect, that they might, within a decade or less, find a way that self-replicating organic molecules could have been first made.

    Also got this lecture course taught by the speaker in the video, going more into detail. (You may find as a torrent.)

  20. moldyricefrenzy
    Date: Sat, Jan 16 2010 05:17:07

    I agree with sadistic on the incompatibility of God(personal creator- not pantheistic sense) and evolutionary theory. However, this in no way means people cannot believe in God and believe in evolution. I just think that either one, or both of those beliefs will be understood inconsistently.