Post by Martin HarranPost by MarkEPost by Martin HarranPost by MarkEPost by Martin Harran[…]
Post by MarkE"simple self replicators" is an oxymoron.
So what? Even if your argument is valid, how does that take us closer
to God which is surely the only thing that matters for a religious
believer?
I asked you a number of similar questions in another thread but you
walked away from them The answers to those specific questions don't
really matter - they were just my attempt at being Socratic. What is
really important, and what I think you should think long and hard
about, is why you find them so hard to answer.
In some ways, you remind me of myself when I came to TO about 15 or so
years ago. At that time I was a committed religious believer who knew
nothing about evolution or OOL. I came here on the recommendation of a
friend who was the first person I heard to hear use the expression
"God of the Gaps" and tried to convince me that science shows my Faith
is badly founded. I had no qualms about my Faith but I regard myself
as a rational person and didn't like to think that I might be
believing stuff that science had shown to be nonsense, so I decided to
explore this further.
Initially, I did find it a struggle. I never had too much bother
reconciling evolution with my beliefs but OOL did seem to pose a major
problem for me. I always, however, try to make sure I study all sides
of an argument. My early reading was mostly on the pure science side
of the fence but then I discovered writers like Teilhard de Chardin
writing a hundred years ago or more recent authors like Ken Miller,
Francis Collins and John Polkinghorne. These were highly qualified,
highly regarded scientists who had no problem reconciling their
scientific knowledge with their religious beliefs. The more I studied
it, the more I came to understand that there is no inherent conflict
between science and religion, is manufactured by people on both sides
who persist with a narrow viewpoint, often with very extreme views.
Fifteen or so years later, I can honestly say that my exploration of
science has made my religious belief even more intense and committed.
I seriously advise you not to get hung up on areas where science has
no answers or answers are incomplete. You will only tie yourself up in
endless knots and you are on a proverbial hiding to nothing if you try
to justify your beliefs by proving other people wrong where they have
tangible evidence and you don't. You will gain far more by taking what
science does tell us and figuring out how that fits in with your
religious beliefs, how you can use what science tells us to deepen
your religious understanding of God.
Btw, thanks for this summary of your personal journey.
Like you, I don't believe there's a conflict between science and
Christian faith. And my own faith does not depend on science.
I believe though that there is for many an a priori commitment to the
faith of metaphysical naturalism, and this leads to a misuse of
scientific evidence
There are likely just as many who have an a priori commitment to a
faith based on a literal reading of scripture and who reject out of
hand any scientific evidence that they think contradicts it. Opposite
sides of the same coin.
Post by MarkE--as per my thought experiment of say 10,000 years of
OoL research failure etc.
The problem with your thought experiment was that it assumes there is
a finite time period after which research should be discarded.
I took great care to not limit options to "research should be
If after 10,000 years of concerted OoL research (say), all known
natural explanations and pathways have been deemed implausible (say),
1. Keep looking for natural causes only, or
2. Give up looking, or
3. Keep looking for natural causes, but consider supernatural agency
No 3 is more or less [1] where I am now and you haven't offered
anything to make me think I should change my position. How long it has
taken to figure something out or not figure it out is totally
irrelevant to my thinking. As I've pointed out already, I see nothing
significant in your 10,000 years as it has taken us millions of years
to figure out stuff we've only learned in last 100 years or less.
==========
[1] 'Less' because I don't consider 'agency' in the sense of something
directly interfering with things as you and your fellow ID travellers
seem to think it does; I consider how the identified natural causes
fit in with my understanding of God and whether I can use them to
deepen that relationship with him.
Okay, you've conceded that much, notwithstanding qualifications [1].
If only I could offer you anything to make you think you should change
your position...
________________________________________________
Remaining challenges that remain for abiogenists to explain
• the environment has no sense of sequencing reactions needed for
synthesis. Any organic chemist knows that the correct order of addition
of each reagent is absolutely essential to have any hope of producing a
purified adequate “yield.”
•
Highly impure reagents dominate in prebiotic environments. These
impurities ruin synthetic organic chemistry.
•
Prebiotic environments cannot purify reactants, or achieve their
delicate quantities needed for synthetic chemistry.
•
Instead of using sequentially produced in-lab reagents in successive
steps, extrinsically supplied homochiral populations of moieties must be
ordered and used from Sigma-Adrich-like chemical plants. To produce a
pure moiety, the engineered products themselves require
homochiral seeding. No such seeding or processes were available in
prebiotic environments.
•
Spontaneous reactions cannot do chemistry of mass mixtures because they
gum up the works into worse than useless tars.
• Carbon forms strong bonds that do not hydrolyze easily, but can
remodel with enzymes. Where did the highly specific functional enzymes
come from in an inanimate environment?
•
Hypothesized Silicon Life chemically dead-ends. The bonds are too rigid.
•
Purely physicalistic abiogenic reactions in plausible prebiotic
environments don’t know how or when to stop.
•
Highly intelligent chemists must keep separating out from ongoing
reactions what is wanted and needed to prevent the inevitable tar
end-product.
•
It is very difficult to undo unhelpful reactions. Reactions cannot back
up and do retakes with different moieties.
•
Molecules form innumerable unwanted cross-reactions.
•
“Helpful” molecules degrade almost as fast as they form.
The half-life of Ribose is only five hours. All ribose
would have been gone, even if it had formed, within two days in a
magnesium rich early earth crust.
• Eschenmoser spent a lifetime trying to make functional
RNA. He couldn’t even produce five-carbon-sugar ribose
naturalistically.
• The yield is often only 1-2% of most organic syntheses, creating a
mass transfer crisis. This problem arises with any net movement of mass
from one location or phase to another. Mass Transfer is involved in
evaporation, drying, precipitation, absorption, membrane filtration,
distillation, etc. With such low yields, even in carefully controlled
synthetic chemistry labs, any environment soon runs out of resources.
•
Aqueous environments prevent dehydration synthesis.
•
Polypeptides cannot form in the presence of sugars or aldehydes.
•
Amino acids and sugars cross react, resulting in insoluble polymers.
Molecules oxidize. Ammonia in a reducing environment is anything but
helpful. A reducing environment is even more degrading. As of 2011,
papers in such journals as Nature began presenting evidence and
concluded that early earth’s atmosphere was NOT reducing [251]. It does
not really matter, however, whether it was a reducing or oxidizing
environment. The necessary chemistry would not have spontaneously
proceeded in either environment.
Amino acid mixes are not just of the 20 classic needed amino acids. Many
other poisonous amino acids are mixed in that would have jammed
abiogenesis.
Four fundamental kinds of molecules are needed for abiogenesis, not just
proteins. Lipids, polysaccharides and nucleotides are also essential.
All of these players present tremendous engineering problems to produce.
Even then, they are only racemic.
The possible permutations of polysaccharides and lipids alone that can
form is mind-boggling. Abiogenesis is not just a protein or
nucleoside-formation problem. Selection of only the correct moieties is
statistically prohibitive. Every published model of abiogenesis thus far
can be shown to measure out with a Universal Plausibility Metric of .
equaling <1.0. This requires peer-review rejection of that model and
manuscript for reason of scientific implausibility (The Universal
Plausibility Principle) [252-254].
How many ways can 60 D-glucoses be linked together to make Starch?
Just six repeated units of D-glucose can form one trillion
different branching and stereochemically distinct hexa
saccharides. Novice abiogenists don’t appreciate the number of
permutations from which the correct one must be isolated and used.
Nobody has ever made a self-purifying starch necessary for life in a
relatively useful stereochemical form in a prebiotic-like environment.
This doesn’t even address a purely homochiral right-handed only ribose.
Prebiotically plausible ribose generation models are all racemic and in
such a mixture one could never find R-ribose exclusively.
Carbohydrate polymerization is statistically prohibitive
without highly specific enzymesthat were simply not present
in a pre-biotic environment.
Polysaccharides have vast numbers of carbohydrate appendages. They have
highly unique assemblies and important functional three-dimensional
structures, the same as proteins. Polysaccharides (carbohydrates),
therefore, contain enormous opportunity for information retention, which
life fully uses.
Even when one already has D-glucose, it can have a large number of other
possible forms mixed in as pollutants that terminate any hope of
abiogenesis.
5-Carbon Carbohydrate is the hardest component of life to explain.
Eshenmoser spent most of his career trying to make 5-carbon ribose so
that he could start to make RNA. All he could make was 6-membered sugars
rather than the five-membered sugars. So he tried to make an analog of
ribose. He failed in the 70’s and early 80’s. Synthetic chemists have
done better since, but only by literal chemical engineering, not by
“natural process,” and especially not by prebiotic natural process.
DNA tripartite needs ribose. Ribose is only one of the building blocks
of the building blocks!
Virtually none of the building block precursors form spontaneously,
especially not with enantiomeric excess. Homochirality of sugars and
amino acids needs to be 100% for electron spin up or down to make life
work.
Only two of the twenty amino acids can crystalize
spontaneously to get only the L-optical isomer. Artificially
manufactured L-amino acids are needed to crystalize additional L-amino
acids. But even then, the yield is only around 1-2%. A 100% homochiral
yield is needed.
Prebiotic reactions had no control over critically-needed stereochemistry.
Sophisticated enzymes not only make reactions possible, but speed them
up by many orders of magnitude. Abiogenesis could never have occurred at
the ridiculously slow pace of reactions apart from sophisticated
enzymes. Early enzyme-like moieties would have been totally inadequate.
Enzymes check things out to make sure the reaction sequence is what is
needed. Thus reaction rate does not constitute the only need for enzymes.
But enzymes, along with the other three essential classes of molecules
needed for abiogenesis, cannot be made themselves without other enzymes,
and without nucleosides.
Enzymes are even needed for polysaccharide and proper active transport
lipids.
Dehydration synthesis of peptides and proteins cannot occur in an
aqueous environment without very creatively designed and engineered
enzymes.
All components must be purely enantiomeric for the required
stereochemistry.
A pre-biotic environment can’t generate homochirality.
Amino acids don’t just have an A and a B prong. Half of the amino acids
also have a C prong that winds up getting in the way. They couple in the
main chain. Enzymes were needed from the very beginning of the process
to make proper folding possible.
If you had a mixture of amino acids and sugars in the same place and
time trying to make sugars, the amino acids have the same alcohol groups
that would compete. The amine groups would compete in the same types of
reaction and would preclude sugar formation.
The needed Electron Spin Selectivity (ESS)
• All living systems have chiral-induced electron spin selectivity
critical for such function as active transport through membranes. That
is why the best synthetic chemists’ yields are so pathetic, while
subcellular life produces yields of 99.99999% purity.
•
Electron spin polarization spins up or spins down. Homochirality only
allows one electron spin to go through membrane channels, and not the
other.
•
Life can take two HO groups and produce either HOOH or O2 + 2 H+
•
Chiral-induced electron spin selectivity permits selection of the
correct option needed for abiogenesis.
•
CISS correlates the electron spin with the homochiral twist direction.
•
One surface is parallel, the other is anti-parallel. No such correlation
existed in an inanimate environment to achieve needed function.
Folding of primary structures into functional secondary and tertiary
structures
• Nobody has ever explained higher order structuring (engineering). Mere
Gibbs-free energy minimization alone does not explain what needs to be
explained for functional shapes to be produced.
The Levinthal 1.0 paradox asks how nature could have formed the needed
sequencing of monomers in a linear chain of nucleosides or amino acids
(primary structure) and have it wind up folding into the needed
three-dimensional shape (secondary > tertiary structure) to become the
needed specific enzyme [255,256].
Foldamers and chaperones are additional enzymes needed to assist the
proper folding into the needed three-dimensional shape. But, how were
they produced in a prebiotic environment?
Translational pausing is critical to protein folding [245,257-260].
Translational pausing is controlled, not constrained, by superimposed,
multi-layered coding in the mRNA [245].
Alignment is not just a covalent bond problem, but a non-covalent
spatial interaction problem also. The Levinthal
2.0 paradox addresses astronomical possibilities from which only a very
few are usable. In many cases, this is where the Universal Plausibility
Metric of life-origin models measures
out to less than a . of < 1.0. The Universal Plausibility
Principle is thus violated [254], requiring peer-review rejection of the
model for lack of scientific plausibility. Mere possibility does not
make a model scientifically plausible.
Coded Prescriptive Information is not just metaphorical.
• Nobody has solved the code problem for the sequencing of nucleotides.
No instructions (Prescriptive Information, PI)
[21,7173,156,158,231,241] exists in an inanimate, prebiotic
environment. What was steering and controlling all this chemistry to
avoid tar production?
Nucleic acid prescriptions have to be programmed with representational
code. That instructional code then has to be instantiated into a
replicable physical matrix in order to generate repeated production in
the future. This is especially true for any newly needed enzyme. How
did inanimate nature accomplish all this?
Gene editing (e.g., Crispr) is engineering, not natural science. How
were genes edited into useful prescriptions prebiotically?
Production of the needed fatty acids, glycerol ethanolamine and lipids
are all directed and engineered by coded Prescriptive Information [72,73].
Non-covalent interactions have to all be aligned because Prescriptive
Information travels down these channels by electrostatic potentials.
Membranes
• A huge number of highly specific transmembrane proteins
are needed.
• Glycoproteins, transport proteins, cholesterol, glycolipid,
peripheral protein, internal protein, filaments of
cytoskeleton, integral protein, surface protein, Alpha-helix protein,
hydrophobic tails, hydrophilic heads,
phospholipids, and highly specific carbohydrates are all
needed.
•
Lipase and many other enzymes are needed to make a real cell membrane.
No enzymes of any kind are present in a micelle or vesicle environment.
Not even enough functional peptides are there yet.
•
The building blocks of lipids are fatty acids, phosphate, glycerol and
ethanolamine. Very few of the incredible number of possible
three-dimensional steric lipid
formations fit the required bill for any conceivable
active transport membrane or form of life to arise. Cell membranes have
highly selective pores that allow only certain metabolites in, and
preclude others from getting in. Then, there are critical excretory and
secretory pumps.
•
A bilipid layer micelle is a cartoon of an active transport membrane
with highly selective pores. Not just osmotic gradients are required,
but an incredible array of essential homeostatic requirements is
maintained by cellular membranes in the simplest uni-cellular organisms.
•
Outside lipids are different from inside lipids. Very
complex layers of lipids exist even in organelles. They are highly
organized with undeniably orchestrated functions, not just self-ordered
by law or constraint.
• Ionophore pores are highly selective. What exactly does selective
mean? The answer to this question is not explainable by any law,
constraint or the four known forces of physics. Selection has to be
active, not passive, for a proto-cell to even faintly resemble life. A
cell membrane
requires thousands of different lipids and protein-lipid
complexes.
• Monoacyl lipids are a catastrophe. Different diacyl lipids
are required on the inside from the outside to perform the required
proton gradient and pumps.
• Nobody knows how natural law could prebiotically make
the outside of the cell membrane different from the inside
in a functional sense. An inanimate environment sees no need to arrange
the tails and heads so as to achieve function.
Lynn Margulis’ model’s [261-264] just presupposes organelles rather than
explaining their origin. Membranes are critical to organelle function,
too.
How are monoacyl lipids avoided in a prebiotic environment?
How were all the highly specific protein-lipid complexes
made for selective transport.
How were nutrient ingestion, waste excretion, and secretion channels in
the supposed “protocell” developed to make it even resemble a protocell
rather than a pathetic vesicle or micelle.
A proton gradient is needed. How did prebiotic nature achieve that?
Protocells cannot be organized and engineered into existence by mere
laws and constraints
• Bioengineers have clearly defined the minimum
requirements for the simplest protocell to come to life. Of the 15
minimal essential components, absolutely none has been made in a
prebiotically relevant environment!
•
Chemists haven’t even made pure yields of the four basic classes of
molecules prebiotically, let alone the compounds of those basic classes.
•
The protein-protein interactions alone in a simple yeast cell have
1079,000,000,000 possibilities. There are only 1090 elemental particles
in the cosmos!
The needed manufacturing plant
•
Inanimate nature must have had all 20 amino acids (or possibly 22), and
only those amino acids, available in the same place at the same time to
make most ANY enzyme.
•
Even if you have all 20 at the same place and time, how
is the cross-linking problem solved caused by half of all amino acids
having a C prong? Enzymes are required to keep that from happening. But
in order for those enzymes to form, they themselves had the exact same
problem.
•
2’5’ dinucleotide contamination prevails. 2’5’ dinucleotides cannot code
for protein! 3’5’ dinucleotides are essential for abiogenesis.
•
Yet spontaneously formed RNA yields a mixture of 7585% 2’-5’
dinucleotides. This would have precluded naturalistic abiogenesis, If
only 1% were 2’5’, NO peptides can be instructed or constructed.
•
Each amino acid has to have three nucleotides coding for it. If one out
of three has a 2’5’, no amino acid is coded.
•
Small interfering RNA (siRNA) is formed from 2’5’ RNA: siRNA stops
translation. In RNA, the 2’5’ linkages (30 to 70%) act like siRNA
•
Chemists have to store reagents at -112 degrees F (!) to make 3’-5’
dinucleotides
•
Nucleobases need protection. The phosphate needs activation.
•
To make nucleotides in the lab, glassware must be washed with 3% H2O2 .
Then, the glasswork requires ten washes with RNAse free water. This
could never have happened on early earth.
•
Primed RNA has never duplicated more than 10% of itself.
A hands-off, spontaneous formose reaction is an implausible source of a
pure dextro-ribose and RNA. Many of the chemical species generated in
controlled laboratory conditions are nothing more than carboxylic acids
[265]. To any qualified chemist, a spontaneous formose reaction is not
the explanation hoped for.
You cannot get the moieties needed to do any sort of synthetic chemistry
work needed for life to form even when the world’s finest synthetic
chemists are controlling the all of the many needed processes.
Dipyranose’s interactome has 1079 billion potential combinations. There
are only 1090 elementary particles in the cosmos! Where is this
objective reality in the minds of naïve, simplistic thinkers when they
argue, “The life-origin problem has largely been solved”?
Even if you have all 20 amino acids, they must be separated and isolated.
The smartest micelle-vesicle researchers cannot design and engineer even
an adequate active transport membrane, let alone a real protocell. Any
progress in that direction is always proven by Materials and Methods to
be teleological (which, of course, we euphemistically try to reduce to
“teleonomy.”)
All of these papers defeat the very purpose for which they were written:
to demonstrate the capabilities of naturalistic physicalism. What is
demonstrated instead is humanistic creationism. No human agency, . . .
no experimental success!.
Heritability
•
Inorganic abiogenic Metabolism-First models have no heritability and no
way to sustain any accidental “successes,” not that a prebiotic
environment would have known what a “success” was.
•
How would an inorganic or organic composomal reaction sequence have been
preferentially preserved, and by what means?
Eons of time
There’s not enough time in 14 billion years, and not enough elementary
particles in the cosmos, to overcome relevant probability bounds [266].
Inanimate nature could not have collected in piecemeal fashion all
components through long periods of time. There would be no basis for
secondary, passive selection without a superior final product to
differentially survive. Organisms first have to be alive to
differentially survive best.
Eons of time is not the savior of abiogenesis theory. Eons of time is
it’s greatest enemy.
The contention that “Cells were simpler back then.”
•
How simple were they, asks synthetic chemist Prof Tour [250]?
•
The simplest holistically “living” cell would have had to manifest right
from the beginning:
•
DNA replication, repair; restriction, modification
•
basic transcription machinery
•
Amino-acyl tRNA synthesis:
•
t-RNA maturation and modification
•
Tremendously conceptually complex Ribosomes
•
Ribosomal proteins and their organization and orchestration
•
Ribosome function, maturation and modification
•
Translation factors
•
Controlled RNA degradation
•
Protein processing, folding and secretion
•
Superimposed, multilayered coding (Superimposed codes of Ontological
Prescriptive Information (PIo) [73,246] purposely slows or speeds up the
translation-decoding process within the ribosome. Variable translation
rates
help prescribe functional folding of the nascent protein [245]. Protein
folding would have been critical right from the start.)
•
Cellular replication is highly prescribed and controlled. It is not just
“cell division.”
•
Intra-cellular molecular transport
•
Glycolysis
•
Proton motive force generation
•
Pentose phosphate pathway
•
Lipid metabolism
•
Biosynthesis of nucleotides and cofactors
•
Minimization of heat release. The need to mitigate chiral-induced spin
selectivity to prevent cellular heat stroke. Homochirality had to be
there from the beginning. Homochirality could not have been developed
through time. Any protocell would have burned up without chirality.
•
Membrane transport is highly selective and exquisitely tailored to
cellular needs.
•
Micellar, vesicle and proto-cellular concepts are not immune to such
requirements.
•
Excretion of waste, ingestion of nutrients, secretion— all mediated by a
true cell membrane that thoroughly embarrasses any lipid bilayer
micelle/vesicle of a supposed protocell.
• No purified reagents, buffers, or catalysts were present in a
prebiotic environment. Everything had to be manufactured from the
simplest molecules: CH , NH
4 3, CO2, O2, H2S, sulphate, H2O, formaldehyde, carbonate, formate and
cyanide. Many of these needed molecules are lethal to life.
• No source of phospholipids or nucleosides existed in an inanimate
environment; no human-designed coupling agents or protecting groups; no
H2O2 and distilled-waterrinsed and dried flasks; no purified solvents;
no vacuum pumps or degassing steps; no ability to arrest or restart
reactions when needed; no method of transfer of reagents from one flask
to the next for critical sequential steps done in the required order, etc.
• The Materials and Methods in abiogenesis research papers are most
often not prebiotically relevant or plausible.
Code, Prescriptive Information (PI) and biosemiosis considerations
A common contention is that the instructions to organize and orchestrate
life came from a template, typically from
Table 1: Science seeks to optimize our epistemology of objective
reality. The following basic dichotomies/contrasts are repeatedly
observed within presumed objective reality
Forced regularities, laws and constraints vs. Opportunity for change
despite law
Monotony/Sameness vs. Contingency/ Possibilities
Noncreative automaticity vs. Originality/creativity/ usefulness
Zero perception of and indifference to utility vs. Awareness &
Valuation of utility
Zero effort toward achieving usefulness vs. Persistent pursuit of
usefulness
Spontaneous occurrences vs. Purposefully orchestrated events
Constraints vs. Controls/Steering toward utility
Physics “Work” vs. Functional formal work
Complexity vs. Conceptional Complexity
Isness/Whatever happens to exist vs. Means/Methods/“In order to’s . . .”
Physicodynamic Causation vs. Choice Causation
Natural science mechanisms vs. Engineering mechanisms
a ribozyme or other RNA analog (an auto-catalytic RNA-like precursor).
The question is, where did the templated instructions come from? Mere
Clay surface? Since when does mere clay (e.g., montmorillonite) contain
formal instructions to do anything sophisticated?
A short 200 mer protein has 20200 permutations. And that phase space
would be racemic. The number of permutations is way larger than 1050.
Only a very small percentage of these permutations fold into functional
tertiary structures [272]. Thus, most Protein-First models of
abiogenesis are statistically prohibitive. But the real questions are,
“How did inanimate nature sequence linear digital instructions out of
this phase space?” How did prebiotic nature assign formal code
assignments and meaning to those assignments? What were the scientific
mechanisms for achieving transcription and translation? These are not
chemical reaction problems. They are programming delegations. Coding
and translation from one language into another is not physico-chemical.
It is abstract. Biosemiosis can be instantiated into physical symbol
vehicles (tokens) within a Material Symbol System [159,164,273-276]. But
the coded instructions themselves are abstract, not physical.
Prescriptive Information (PI) [11,21,76-78,160,162,245,249,250,254]
cannot be reduced to physicality.
We have no explanation for the interactome’s conceptual complexity. To
instruct sophisticated function requires abstract concept. Concept is
formal, not physical. Concept can be instantiated into physicality
according to rules and arbitrary code assignments, but concept cannot be
mustered by the laws of motion or mere physico-dynamic constraints
[11,20,21,78,160-162,246,247,254]. Even a protometabolism would have
required controls rather than constraints [11,21,76,160,161,254].
Controls emanate from concept, not
fixed redundant law. They are choice contingent. Controls fall
into the fundamental category of Choice Causation (CC), not
Physicodynamic Causation (PC) [5,20,21,162,164,165,246248,277,278].
Materials and Methods invariably prove the opposite of what physicalist
abiogenists wanted to prove. Experimental design consistently betrays
“investigator involvement.” Every reactant is carefully and actively
selected. Reactions are steered to desired end-points. While the title
of the paper invokes the contention of “natural process,” the
experimental achievements are all invariably engineered by
agent-controlled lab techniques. Exact measurements, deliberate and
careful sequencing of reactions and critical removals of reactants at
the needed times from the reaction environment are the most common
features of agent-controlled experimental design. Neglect of these
details, and organic labs become tar factories every time.
Panspermia Considerations
Panspermia appeals to the possibility that life formed elsewhere in the
cosmos and was somehow transported to earth (e.g., on meteorites).
Panspermia was originally suggested by Hoyle and Wickramasinghe
[279,280]. It has been a hot topic of discussion ever since right up to
the present time [281-295].
Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evolution, distribution, and
future of life in the Universe, not just on earth [296-309].
Astrobiology encompasses panspermia.
Why is astrobiology so interested in the possibility of panspermia?
Models of abiogenesis on earth quickly incur gross violations of
relevant probability bounds. Worse yet, the Universal Plausibility
Metric often invokes the Universal Plausibility Principle, thereby
necessitating the rejection of most abiogenesis models on earth by peer
review (not that most editors abide by this well documented Principle!).
When statistical prohibitiveness becomes evident, a common appeal is to
the notion of panspermia. The larger-than-earth phase space increases
probability bounds and renders any seemingly statistically prohibitive
model more plausible. But does it?
One of the components in calculating the Universal Plausibility Metric
is time restriction since the Big Bang. The age of the earth is
believed to be 3.9 billion years. The age of the cosmos is believed to
be 14 billion years. Panspermia theory increases the odds of spontaneous
abiogenesis somewhere in the cosmos by a factor of around 3.5 compared
to abiogenesis hypotheses on earth. When the probability of abiogenesis
on earth is calculated to be one chance in 1090, or far worse, for
example, multiplying that statistically
prohibitive unlikelihood by a mere factor of 3.5 effectively
does nothing to overcome the statistical prohibitiveness of that model.
A little background might be helpful in understanding the time
probability bound inherent in the Universal Plausibility Metric
[257,259]. The shortest time any physico-dynamic transition requires
before a chemical reaction can take place is 10 femtoseconds [310-314].
A femtosecond is 1015 seconds. Complete chemical reactions, however,
rarely take place faster than the picosecond range (10-12 secs). Most
biochemical reactions, even with highly sophisticated enzymatic
catalysis, take place no faster than the nano (10-9) and usually the
micro (10-6) range. To be exceedingly generous (perhaps overly
permissive of the capabilities promoted by any chance hypothesis), the
Universal Plausibility Metric uses 100 femtoseconds as the shortest
chemical reaction time. This is mathematically converted to 1043
possible transactions per second as the fastest chemical reactions could
conceivably take place in the best of theoretical scenarios. Those
possible reactions per second are then multiplied by the 1017 second age
of the cosmos since the Big Bang. The result is a limit on even quantum
reaction possibilities with reference to time. This becomes a major
factor in the required rejection by peer review of implausible chance
hypotheses. Such models are defined quantitatively, not merely
subjectively, to be scientifically irresponsible by the Universal
Plausibility Principle [257,259].
The idea of panspermia is also highly controversial for chemical and
informational reasons, and thus fosters many other objections [315-318].
Digiulio seems to reject the notion of panspermia altogether [319].
Very sophisticated molecules are sometimes found on meteorites, but they
are not enantiomerically pure. Rarely, you can get up to 70%
enantiomeric excess, but still way too contaminated to spontaneously
contribute to life, which would require 100% enantiomeric excess.
Meteorites do not have the right chemical mixture to be relevant to life
origin. Nobody has shown that meteorites or interstellar space have the
right usable components to contribute to abiogenesis because they would
have been too inseparable in a prebiotic environment. Any organic
reactions would have produced TAR. Natural process cannot use such a
mixture of compounds. Only racemic compounds are found on meteorites.
These mixtures are simply not productive of anything relevant to life.
In short, neither panspermia nor the more general astrobiology have thus
far provided the missing clues, or solved the Universal Plausibility
Principle elimination of wild imaginations.
Discussion
One reason the abiogenesis problem is such a tough nut to crack is the
mind-boggling constellation of challenges. It would be bad enough if all
we had to address was the homochirality problem in a prebiotic
environment. But there are hundreds of more challenges of equal
perplexity, all requiring orchestration of a “Rachmaninoff piano
concerto” by inanimate nature.
We are literally just scratching the surface of the many outright
engineering requirements necessary for abiogenesis. When these
engineering requirements are swept under the rug, ignored or
fallaciously denied, what hope is there for abiogenesis research to
finally make any real progress?
All of these statistically prohibitive “natural” events are conveniently
converted into certainties by blind-belief, unsubstantiated concepts
such as “Emergence” and “Self-Organization.” We somehow manage to
forget that all of these individual statistically prohibitive
probabilities have to be multiplied together to predict the likelihood
of even a protocell. All probability bounds are grossly exceeded [271],
and certainly the Universal Plausibility Principle [257,259].
How could anything organize itself into existence? It would have to
already exist to organize itself into existence. “Self-organization” is
a tautology at best. But far worse, it is a logical impossibility.
“Self-organization” is an utterly self-contradictory nonsense term and
notion that has no place in scientific literature.
Spontaneous “emergence” of such highly integrated circuits and
biochemical pathways that yield usefulness only on the thirteenth step
(e.g., the Krebs cycle) is nothing more than a pipe dream. Nothing
exists in peer-reviewed literature that demonstrates spontaneous
emergence of sophisticated products, let alone life. Self-ordering can
spontaneously emerge (e.g., tornadoes), but not bona fide formal
organization. Whenever “emergence” is pontificated, the Materials and
Methods section of the paper exposes embarrassing extensive investigator
involvement in experimental design and execution that alone made any
supposed “emergence” possible.
Everything about life is steered and controlled toward “success.” And it
had to be that way from the start.
The only thing truly scientific we can say is to admit that we don’t
have a clue how life came into existence from the standpoint of natural
process alone. But we dare not admit that. That would threaten our
purely metaphysical worldview that “physicalism is sufficient.” That
would be “unscientific!” Never mind thatmathematics, logic and the
scientific method
themselves are all non-physical. What we repeatedly observe even in the
simplest-known
life forms is not just apparent engineering. We observe blatant,
undeniable, actual engineering. Life is computation.
Life is cybernetic processing of bona fide programming. Life
is controlled, not constrained [21]. Life originates only from the far
side of The Cybernetic Cut [254,320]. Life is not just complex. Life is
conceptually complex. Life’s molecular machines, transport molecules,
and nanocomputers put Turing machines and cell phones to shame. Life IS
engineering, whether we insist on putting on blind folds to the fact, or
not.
How far would we get explaining the origin of smart phones using nothing
but the laws of motion, the four known forces of physics, chemistry and
initial constraints? Would anyone in their right mind seriously expect
to be able to elucidate the origin of a smart phone limiting their
investigation to nothing but spontaneous physico-chemical interactions
alone? What would be the source of such idiocy? Certainly not anything
scientific or rational.
The simplest known life, such as an organism like Micoplasma genitalium,
which is not even free-living, puts to shame the latest smart phone in
its engineering. The same is true of just the ribosome, or any organelle.
Has any scientist ever observed a smart phone
spontaneously generate from “hands off” physics and
chemistry alone? Would there be some reason we would feel
justified in appealing to eons of time to explain the causation of smart
phones? Time is not a cause of any effect. The
prohibition is one of logic theory absolutes, not best-thusfar
induction. Law cannot generate engineering phenomena in any amount of
time. Multiverse notions are purely metaphysical constructs, not science.
Conclusion
Why is abiogenesis such a tough nut to crack? Because we tie our hands
behind our backs metaphysically before ever beginning any scientific
investigation. We proclaim by purely metaphysical faith that physicality
and natural law are alone sufficient. We philosophically deny the
reality of steering and control as opposed to mere law and constraint.
For kids, we sponsor “Science and Engineering Fairs.” Why the dichotomy?
We know full well that some phenomena can be addressed by natural
science; other phenomena can be addressed only by the field of
engineering. What’s the difference in subject matter? Engineering
involves Choice Causation rather than just Physico-Dynamic Causation
alone [5,11,20,21,76,78,159165,245,247-249,253,254,273,278,321].
We have no problem granting each domain of investigation, natural
science vs. engineering, its space and methodological route to
progress—until, that is, it comes to life origin science. Any
engineering realities are immediately disallowed no matter how obvious
and undeniable.
We spend all day long studying how much more conceptually complex, not
just complex, life is than smart phones. But for purely metaphysical
reasons, not scientific reasons, we refuse to admit the obvious, that
explaining life and life origin is an engineering problem, not just a
natural science problem.
As long as we disallow legitimate engineering questions
and answers relating to abiogenesis, the field is going nowhere
but into deeper frustration and disappointment!
We are slow learners indeed! Pure physicalism is a Kuhnian Paradigm Rut
[322] far worse than the one in Copernicus’ day!
From "Why is Abiogenesis Such a Tough Nut to Crack?"
by David Lynn Abel