CREATING life in the primordial soup may have been easier than we thought. Two essential elements of RNA have finally been made from scratch, under conditions similar to those that likely prevailed during the dawn of life.
The question of how a molecule capable of storing genetic information – even DNA’s simpler cousin RNA – could ever have arisen spontaneously in the primordial cooking pot has perplexed scientists for decades. RNA consists of a long chain composed of four different types of ribonucleotides, which each consist of a nitrogenous base, a sugar and a phosphate.
Most people assumed that these three components first formed separately, and then combined to make the ribonucleotides. The only trouble was that it seemed impossible that two of the four bases with particularly unwieldy chemistry ever reacted spontaneously with the sugar.
To tackle this problem, John Sutherland from the University of Manchester, UK, tried to work out a new recipe for RNA that gets by without forcing isolated bases and sugar molecules to react. His team experimented by cooking up ribonucleotides from five small molecules thought to be present in the primordial soup. “We started with the same building blocks as others, but take a different route,” Sutherland says.
Found by Misanthropic Scott on Cage Match.
To claim that atheism requires faith is just dumb. To say “I don’t know” doesn’t require any blind beliefs.
We already create life and have been for thousands of years.
Its called sex. And its a hell of lot more fun than exposing slop to UV!
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Yes, atheism does require faith. Get up out of bed and going to work requires faith, at the very least for the most unaware and uneducated individual they have to have faith at they can get to work – or in your case the welfare office – safely.
Faith is simply belief without something having been proven, that’s it. It’s the same with evolution, there is some evidence but it’s not proven. Nothing to date has changed and adapted, even on a micro scale it hasn’t.
An atheist believes there is no God, they also believe it’s dumb to believe in a God which in my opinion is dumb. They can’t prove it, they have no evidence to prove God doesn’t exist, nor can we prove to them that God does exist. Faith isn’t blind, it’s usually based on some facts and evidence, but it’s up to the individual as to whether or not it’s acceptable fact or something that isn’t.
It can be related to Willy Clinton parsing the meaning of ‘is’, you can twist things in many different ways. Another example is when talking to a liberal no matter what facts you present they either say it’s ‘right-wing extremist propaganda’ or they feel it’s right or as a last desperate act they say ‘well I don’t know that’ ( which is self-evident if you telling them something, but to their minds dissolves any further discussion towards their point of view – it’s similar to talking to a wall or peeing in the wind).
Whatever……………
Traaxx
#7 – Benjamin,
Scientists “create” life. How does this disprove creation?
Well, that depends. For those who believed, probably right up until this experiment, that the fact that this hadn’t been done proved the existence of a god-of-the-gaps, another gap has closed.
#9 – Kahless,
RNA != life. RNA is just the basic molecules needed to transmit information between cells.
Incorrect. Read up a bit on RNA viruses.
http://tinyurl.com/q8xs46
And remember, once a replicator is formed, evolution can work its slow and steady way from there to every living being that ever was or will be.
And, even if it is possible for RNA to spontaneously happen, the chances of it happening is still astronomical. Which doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen that way.
So, what do you consider more likely? Spontaneous magical instantiation of a supernatural being capable of creating universes at the rate of one a week?
Do you know anything about time? There has been rather a lot of it. As I often find myself explaining to younger computer programmers, if something only happens once in a million times … and you execute the loop ten million times a day, your system will crash or have an error ten times a day for your failure to account for the condition. The point is that the very unlikely happens a lot given enough time and repetition.
Also, this interesting tidbit: “His team experimented by cooking up ribonucleotides from five small molecules thought to be present in the primordial soup.” How do we know what was present in the primordial soup?
Well, this is a lengthy thing to explain in detail. However, we know the composition of earth. We know what we find in meteorites and comets that are in the same state they were in when many of them coalesced into the early earth. I think we can make some highly educated guesses as to the composition of the primordial soup.
What’s your solution for how to gain knowledge? Pray for it? That has worked far less well than scientific experimentation.
I’m not going to sit here and demand that everyone believe some sort of omnipotent creator created the universe and everything in it, but surely that’s just as plausible an explanation as things randomly creating themselves, especially when numerous other tenets of science have proven that systems generally devolve into chaos rather than evolve into order, right?
How is it so plausible? Do you have some mechanism that has been scientifically shown to work for creating omnipotent creators from the pre-universal void? I think not. I think the idea of a creator is far harder to swallow than the science put forth thus far. How did your god randomly or non-randomly create itself?
No. I find the idea of a creator far less plausible. Tell me how you see it otherwise.
# 68 Misanthropic Scott said, “Incorrect. Read up a bit on RNA viruses.”
Correct. However, nothing these guys created was actually alive much less a virus. So, nothing to even argue about.
#14 – Alfred1,
You can’t prove a builder doesn’t exist by building another building…indeed, you then document it requires a builder for a building to exist.
That depends on the technique by which you build. If all you do is set things up as we believe they were on the early earth and just wait and the building appears, it makes a pretty strong case that it can happen at random.
In fact, the conditions set were what we believe the early earth was like. But, no one helped it along after that. The RNA just formed in the primordial soup replica in the same or a similar way to the way it may have in the real primordial soup.
BTW, how’s your experiment going with creating life in a test tube by praying to god for there to be life in your test tube? If that is so much more likely than
realitythe method by which science is trying, you should be very far along the way in your Christian Science Laboratory.#15 – nonee,
The Big Bang needed a “Big Banger”. You can’t get around that without throwing out logic.
Actually, you need to do a little reading about quantum mechanics. The early universe was in a quantum state. At the quantum level, particles pop in and out of existence at random all the time. Those who do not account for these particles get the wrong answers to the equations, as proven by them not matching experimentation. Accounting for the virtual particles popping in and out of existence makes everything agree with reality.
Quantum mechanics is one of our most tried and proven theories, along with relativity and natural selection. You use it when you read this blog. The semiconductors in your computer work because people know how to use quantum mechanics.
Don’t believe in quantum mechanics? Turn off your computer.
Also, if you believe a big bang necessitates a big banger then you need a big banger banger to create your big banger and a big banger banger banger, etc. That’s an infinite amount of banging you’ve got going on. Sounds like fun, but not like science.
#18 – Greg Allen,
Seriously, this doesn’t threaten my religion at all. Only some expressions of religion are tied to a literal creation story. Mine isn’t.
Yes. Intelligent religious individuals and leaders eschew the god-of-the-gaps mentality, partly because you and they are intelligent enough to see that the bible may not be literally true and partly because god-of-the-gaps takes an ever shrinking role in the universe as science learns more and more about reality.
This study hits hard at the god-of-the-gaps variety of religious induhviduals who have been screaming for years at the top of their lungs about abiogenesis and how it proves the existence of god because science can’t explain it.
Well, now we’re a lot closer to explaining it.
#25 – Waltersobchack,
You guys need to work on your crotch-grabber titles.
Should read: Science creates life, religion takes it.
I love it!! Excellent. I wonder if it’s bad form to update my cagematch headline.
#26 – Greg Allen,
Either you believe God or a god-like quantity of energy came outta nowhere.
The difference is that science (and the technology you are using to read this) show that matter-energy does indeed come outta nowhere all the time.
Quantum mechanics is making the semiconductors in your computer do their job as you read this. What’s god doing for you?
46. Perhaps he means a moo point. Its like a cows opinion – It doesnt matter.
#27 – Patrick,
You still have the elephants standing on turtles problem with Q.M…
Please explain. How so?
#32 – Gary,
I wonder if the scientists who eventually create life will claim the right to torture it at will. I don’t know which way to bet on that one.
Perhaps they’ll follow existing precedent 😉
ROFL!! Perhaps we’ll see if we can be more god-like than a non-existence god. Given how we treat life we didn’t create though, it seems likely that we won’t treat human-made life any better than evolved wildlife.
“Don’t believe in quantum mechanics? Turn off your computer.”
Wow, I kind of hope my computer doesn’t run on quantum mechanics. I like my silica electronics nice and where I can manipulate them.
That should be “silica electrons” up there.
#35 – deowll,
You’ve got a lot of interesting points there. One more to add to the list. We’re mostly doing SETI by searching for radio waves.
Flight has evolved on this planet independently at least 4 or 5 times (birds, bats, insects, pterosaurs, and humans if we count).
Radio waves have evolved on this planet just once.
The lack of convergent evolution of transmitters and receivers, not even so much as a 5 milliwatt transmitter in any other species, may mean that radio is simply not strongly selected for as flight is.
Space flight may be similar. Or, it may just take too long for meat to travel in meat containers over the necessary distances.
If the generation that gets there has only ever known life in a space ship, they may be agoraphobic to the point of being too fearful to ever want to leave the ship. They may choose to avoid solar systems.
Who knows?
I think life is probably plentiful. Life with our brand of “intelligence” for lack of a better term may be highly uncommon, or perhaps just uncommon enough to not be able to meet up (meat up?) in space and time.
http://tinyurl.com/5w5c6
Good side conversation though.
Alex, I like the layout of your site. Nice and clean.
#65 – Traaxx,
Yes, atheism does require faith.
Atheism is an assertion about quality of evidence not about the existence of god. Since there is no evidence of fire-breathing dragons despite the existence of much lore on the subject, I believe they do not exist. Ditto for god(s) for exactly the same reason.
Get up out of bed and going to work requires faith, at the very least for the most unaware and uneducated individual they have to have faith at they can get to work – or in your case the welfare office – safely.
No. I know there are tremendous dangers along the way. I could be run over by a bus. I could get hit by a car on my bicycle. I could die of a heart attack at any time. We overcome such fears in order to have a decent life.
Faith is simply belief without something having been proven, that’s it. It’s the same with evolution, there is some evidence but it’s not proven. Nothing to date has changed and adapted, even on a micro scale it hasn’t.
This is wrong on so many levels. First, evolution is not natural selection. Natural selection is one of our most tried and proven scientific theories (not like theory in the rest of the English language). Natural selection however, is merely the explanation of the fact of evolution.
Many things do indeed prove that we are descended from other animals. For example, our DNA differs by less with closely related animals than with distantly related ones. We keep finding transitional fossils, just as evolution would predict. Our entire medical profession is founded on the science of evolution.
Should I go on? Neil Shubin wanted to find an intermediate fossil between fish with lobed fins and land animals with fully formed limbs. He knew we had fully formed limbs on animals from 365 million years ago (MYA) and lobed fins from 380 MYA. So, he looked for exposed sedimentary rock from 370 – 375 MYA that had not already been heavily explored by paleontologists and went to Ellesmere Island. There, he found Tiktaalik.
http://tinyurl.com/klfg4
This could not have been done if evolution were false. One could simply not make such a prediction about where to find specific types of fossils.
An atheist believes there is no God, they also believe it’s dumb to believe in a God which in my opinion is dumb. They can’t prove it, they have no evidence to prove God doesn’t exist, nor can we prove to them that God does exist. Faith isn’t blind, it’s usually based on some facts and evidence, but it’s up to the individual as to whether or not it’s acceptable fact or something that isn’t.
Since you are not an atheist, I would prefer that you did not claim to know my mind so intimately. This atheist asserts that there must be data to back up a claim. For an extraordinary claim, such as the existence of a supernatural creature capable of creating universes at the rate of one a week, we would need extraordinary evidence.
However, as yet, there is not even a single shred of ordinary evidence. Therefore, god does not exist. I’ll change that statement if anyone comes up with real hard evidence. Then, at least I would become an agnostic. As yet, there is no reason to consider the god hypothesis.
#69 – Patrick,
# 68 Misanthropic Scott said, “Incorrect. Read up a bit on RNA viruses.”
Correct. However, nothing these guys created was actually alive much less a virus. So, nothing to even argue about.
Please re-read post #43 by RR. He answered this already.
Please note also that all we need to get to is a simple replicator. It need not meet your definition of life.
#78 – Alex,
Even the wikipedia page on semiconductors has far more detailed quantum mechanics equations than I’m interested in following. I like concepts more than detailed mathematical computation.
http://tinyurl.com/f2sq2
Oh yeah … better turn off your cell phone too. And anything else that uses semiconductors. These days, that probably includes cars, GPS, and a wide variety of high tech items.
Q: Why is the universe here?
A: Where else would it be? – Arthur C. Clarke
What makes us different from animals is we don’t use our tongues to clean our own genitals. – Rimmer, Red Dwarf
Alfred1..So I can rephrase my question I’ve asked you, what, 4 times already? Can you please prove there is a builder who builds things?
Thanks very much, I know you’ll come through this time!
Alfie,
I’m even easier than right in #86 above. Just give me a single shred of credible evidence (evidence not faulty logic) that a creator exists and I’ll switch to agnostic immediately.
Good luck.
Misanthropic Scott, as usual you have slam-dunked the arguments from Traaxx, Alfred1, Patrick, mhii and others.
…and as usual there is no response to any of your proof that they don’t know what they are talking about, and/or don’t want to know. ALL the evidence we have points to natural occurring phenomena… ZERO evidence points to a god. If there were some evidence for both sides, the topic would take on a completely different atmosphere (climate change, cough)
I like your reference to dragons. I would be interested in knowing if Traaxx or Alfred1 believe that flying, fire-breathing dragons once roamed Earth, and if not… why.
Well, I was going to respond to Alfred1’s and Traaxx’s nonsensical argument against atheism but I could not have done it better than Misanthropic Scott. Excellent responses MS!
As we can see, a common source of arguments against atheism relate to a perversion of vocabulary to fit their view of the world. Again, excellent work MS.
Wow… they “designed” life. Go figure.
Sorry I don’t buy the primordial soup theory. If you study biology you’ll soon realize that things are a little too perfect to have happened by accident. Even the environment is evidence of this (we inhale oxygen and exhale CO2, plants “inhale” CO2 and “exhale” oxygen).
#91, John… so rather than educate yourself and find out that there are logical reasons why competing life forms survive by being different, you choose to believe in magic. What’s the matter? Is the truth too scary for you?
Well, I just posted a non-spam comment that was caught up in the spam filter. No one will see it for minutes or hours (last time, this took almost a full day). It would be especially fascinating to see why the comment was flagged as probable spam.