Darwin Unhinged: The Bugs in Evolution

Sometimes scaffolding is amusing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQJtV_YLuNE

~~ Paul

It is quite 'interesting' that with a straight face they are willing to propose a creature whose like has never been seen - one whose interests are wholly aligned with ours, with both all-encompassing and sub-microscopic vision and reach, and with exquisite presentience - but find the idea of pre-life isolation of chemical processes too ridiculous to conceive.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/in-warm-g...-20160317/
https://www.nature.com/articles/317792a0

"Then a miracle occurs" indeed.

Linda

First link is to research by David Deamer. Here's a response and this time, not from the ID community.

https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/arti...141/534203

In a hypothetical RNA world that may have predated the DNA protein world, RNA is posited to serve a dual role as both enzyme and genetic transmitter. If a few ribozymes are regarded as precursors to all life, one could attempt to make an estimate of the probability of the assembly of a simple ribozyme composed of 300 bases, as is done on page 216 of the book. This probability turns out to be 1 in 4^300, which is equivalent to 1 in 10^180, which, as Deamer admits, can hardly be supposed to happen even once in the entire 13.7-billion-year history of the universe.

Deamer describes his ambitious laboratory setup to attempt a simulation of the origin of life by making trillions of half-micron-size cellular compartments by adding water to dry lipids in a flask. To this, he adds a solution of small peptides and nucleic acids in the hope that, among the trillion or so cellular compartments and a vast array of biological monomer combinations, a proto-living system will be found. The failure to witness any trend whatsoever toward the emergence of a living system is attributed to the infinitesimal scale of the laboratory system when it is compared with the terrestrial setting in which life is thought to have arisen. Yet, if we move from the laboratory flask to the oceans of the Earth, we gain in volume only a factor of about 10^20, and in time, from weeks in the laboratory to half a billion years, the gain is an additional factor of 10^10. In the probability calculation for the single ribozyme, we therefore gain a factor of 10^30 in all, which reduces the improbability factor given by Deamer from 1 in 10^180 to 1 in 10^150.

On this basis, it is very difficult to avoid the conclusion that the emergence of the first evolvable cellular life form was a unique event in the cosmos. If this did indeed happen on Earth for the first time, it must be regarded as a near-miraculous event that could not be repeated elsewhere, let alone in any laboratory simulation of the process.

"Then a miracle occurs" indeed.

First link is to research by David Deamer. Here's a response and this time, not from the ID community.

https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/arti...141/534203


"Then a miracle occurs" indeed.

A post of mine from an earlier thread seems relevant here. Evolutionary molecular biologist Eugene Koonin recognized years ago the virtual impossibility probablistically of any of the spontaneous abiotic chemical hypotheses for the origin of life, given the laws of physics in a single, finite universe. 

Instead Koonin ingeniously proposes that at least one of these hypotheses, maybe the RNA world one, is actually quite probable (maybe inevitable), if the cosmological model of eternal inflation and an infinite multiverse is the truth. With the eternal inflation hypothesis, all macroscopic histories permitted by laws of physics are repeated an infinite number of times in an infinite multiverse. In other words, Koonin invokes the anthropic selection principle in an infinite multiverse to explain the origin of life itself. He believes that the reason why we see life evolve in this universe is because, if there are an infinite number of universes, then no matter how beyond vanishingly improbable it is in any one universe, at least some of these universes will spontaneously by chance evolve life eventually able to reason about the evolution of life. 

So Koonin admits that the odds of life evolving are vanishingly small. He then invokes an infinite multiverse of different universes to explain it. 

Of course such multiverse concepts are basically unscientific, unverifiable, unfalsifiable and against the Occam's Razor principle of parsimony. A last resort materialist approach to dealing with some rather intractable problems, like the origin of life. 

A post of mine from an earlier thread seems relevant here. Evolutionary molecular biologist Eugene Koonin recognized years ago the virtual impossibility probablistically of any of the spontaneous abiotic chemical hypotheses for the origin of life, given the laws of physics in a single, finite universe. 

Yes, there's no argument against infinite possibilities - that's why they like it so much. Abiogenesis: Multiverse - no problem. Fine tuning: Multiverse - no problem. Quantum weirdness: Many Worlds - no problem. No evidence - no problem.

First link is to research by David Deamer. Here's a response and this time, not from the ID community.

https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/arti...141/534203


"Then a miracle occurs" indeed.

Well, he was just putting in a plug for his pet theory - panspermia - as a way to increase the theatre over which this supposed event occurred. Include a universe of worlds in that calculation and it starts to become inevitable.

No mention by him of "this makes entirely fictional characters likely", though.

Linda

First link is to research by David Deamer. Here's a response and this time, not from the ID community.

    https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/arti...141/534203

So perhaps we can infer from this that the model that Deamer tested is not the correct one.

~~ Paul

A post of mine from an earlier thread seems relevant here. Evolutionary molecular biologist Eugene Koonin recognized years ago the virtual impossibility probablistically of any of the spontaneous abiotic chemical hypotheses for the origin of life, given the laws of physics in a single, finite universe. 

Here is Moran's take on some of Koonin's ideas. No insults are thrown.

http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2007/10/eug...-bang.html

~~ Paul

Yes, there's no argument against infinite possibilities - that's why they like it so much. Abiogenesis: Multiverse - no problem. Fine tuning: Multiverse - no problem. Quantum weirdness: Many Worlds - no problem. No evidence - no problem.

Except, of course, that scientists are working to find evidence for these things. And when that search is not fruitful (e.g., M-theory), then other scientists laugh at them.

~~ Paul

Particles in charged solution form clusters that reproduce

Credit: Molecular Physics

Dr Martin Sweatman from the University of Edinburgh's School of Engineering has discovered a simple physical principle that might explain how life started on Earth. He has shown that particles that become charged in solution, like many biological molecules, can form giant clusters that can reproduce. Reproduction is shown to be driven by simple physics—a balance of forces between short-range attraction and long-range repulsion. Once cluster reproductionbegins, he suggests chemical evolution of clusters could follow, leading eventually to life.

Now a certain few might be asking what's the point. The point is scientists are doing basic research to find the answer to how life began. ID'ers claim intelligence explains it and stop there. However, such a claim explains nothing.

Except, of course, that scientists are working to find evidence for these things. And when that search is not fruitful (e.g., M-theory), then other scientists laugh at them.

~~ Paul

https://cosmosmagazine.com/physics/a-uni...g-and-life

While this is a scientific article, we cannot ignore the fact that to many, the fact that the universe is finely tuned for intelligent life shows the hand of the creator who set the dials. But this answer, of course, leads to another question: who created the creator? Let’s see what alternatives science can offer.

...

Could our finely tuned universe be a simulation?  
~ Ultimately this is just another version of a creator theory. Replace the fatherly white-haired being with a multi-dimensional personage or robot, with their hands (or tentacles) on the keyboard of a super-powerful computer. If so, we’d better hope that some multi-dimensional cleaner doesn’t turn off this computer to plug in their multi-dimensional vacuum cleaner!
...

Many great minds still struggle to bridge this gulf, hoping to ultimately unify all of physics within a “Theory of Everything”. (Superstring theory with its 11 dimensions, mentioned above, is one of the contenders.) If science can reach this ultimate goal, perhaps no fundamental constants will remain – they will all be unified within a mathematical description.

If this comes to pass, and the universe could not have been any other way, the question of fine-tuning would become: why does the mathematical structure underlying the universe allow life to arise? At this point, many may throw up their hands and say, “that’s just the way it is”, but others – such as me – will still be troubled by the question: “why?”

...

But the multiverse seems so wasteful, producing so many dead, empty universes for each one that could potentially host life. And why did it produce any life-bearing universes at all when it would have been easy for them all to be sterile? The question of fine-tuning seems to have been pushed to a higher level.

To some, the picture of the multiverse is comforting, naturally explaining the puzzle of our own fine-tuning. But at present, we have no idea whether this immense sea of universes exists, and they may always be beyond the reach of experiment and observation; if this is the case, is the multiverse more philosophical musing than robust science?

The fine-tuning of our universe for life represents a true mystery of science, a mystery that appears to point to something profound lying at the heart of science. We may never find out why we are living in a “just right” universe, but if we ever do, the universe, and our place in it, will be changed forever.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...on.comment

The multiverse theory certainly cuts the ground from beneath intelligent design, but it falls short of a complete explanation of existence. For a start, there has to be a physical mechanism to make all those universes and allocate bylaws to them. This process demands its own laws, or meta-laws. Where do they come from? The problem has simply been shifted up a level from the laws of the universe to the meta-laws of the multiverse.

The root cause of all the difficulty can be traced to the fact that both religion and science appeal to some agency outside the universe to explain its law-like order. Dumping the problem in the lap of a pre-existing designer is no explanation at all, as it merely begs the question of who designed the designer. But appealing to a host of unseen universes and a set of unexplained meta-laws is scarcely any better.

https://www.scientificexploration.org/fo...ine-tuning

So Brian Greene sums it all up by saying that (speculative) String Theory and (speculative) Inflation equals a (speculative) Multiverse and we live in THE one Goldilocks Universe because it has just the right amount of (speculative) Dark Energy. The only 'proof' he suggests is that maybe one day extremely subtle temperature variations in the (actually detected) Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation might give the game away in favour of his endlessly speculating about our fine-tuning via his Multiverse concept.

Discussion: Even if these is a Multiverse, whether via the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics; String Theory landscapes; or Eternal Inflation, that's no absolute guarantee that there will be differing laws, principles and relationships in the physics of each and every one. Each possible universe is a speculative Multiverse might be a Type-42 universe because only a Type-42 universe is ever possible. If each universe in the Multiverse is a standard Type-42 universe, then the whole Multiverse concept as an attempt to explain fine-tuning is null-and-void. The Multiverse is just another moot point in a cosmological sea of moot points.

However, even the concept of a Multiverse is pure pie-in-the-sky conjecture with no observational evidence in support. By that criteria, especially the criteria sworn to by many scientists that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, the UFO extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) is light-years ahead of the Multiverse concept in terms of validity, if validity is according to the evidence.

http://discovermagazine.com/2008/dec/10-...nt-creator

If the multiverse is the final stage of the Copernican revolution, with our universe but a speck in an infinite megacosmos, where does humanity fit in? If the life-friendly fine-tuning of our universe is just a chance occurrence, something that inevitably arises in an endless array of universes, is there any need for a fine-tuner—for a god?

“I don’t think that the multiverse idea destroys the possibility of an intelligent, benevolent creator,” Weinberg says. “What it does is remove one of the arguments for it, just as Darwin’s theory of evolution made it unnecessary to appeal to a benevolent designer to understand how life developed with such remarkable abilities to survive and breed.”

On the other hand, if there is no multiverse, where does that leave physicists? “If there is only one universe,” Carr says, “you might have to have a fine-tuner. If you don’t want God, you’d better have a multiverse.”

Of course, I feel I need to repeat myself: all of this speculation is rendered moot if idealism is correct. If so, then the physical universe is a manifestation of mind: it is a mental entity with the appearance of being physical to those of us who experience it; who are within the illusion. What that mind is and how it came to be is beyond my ken and likely to remain so but perhaps the eastern religions got it right in saying that it is the eternal "uncreated". So the question of "who created the creator" is also moot.