Explain abiogenesis to me.

I deleted my bookmark for this forum because I was spending too many late nights arguing with people who don't understand the subject matter, or how to debate logically. Starts to grate on you after a while. I drop back in every month or two to see the newest few large threads, and I'm happy to see a few new faces around here taking up the charge of the scientifically literate.

Plus, I only discovered the Ignore List last night, so I daresay I might be around a little more often now that I don't have to wade through at least 4 peoples crap posts anymore :)

I seems to me that hundreds of years ago, people just could not understand
how or why we are here. There had to be an explanation. So they got one.
Now that there is a perfectly normal scientific explanation, people just cant let go
of the old one. It also took people a long damned time to stop believing in
witches as well. Which was just another way religion controlled any hapless
person who went against the grain. :|

I think its interesting that no one has answered the posters question

how does inorganic material suddenly become alive? suddenly fear death? suggesting some sort of awareness of its own existence and death?

to escape death by replicating itself? inspiring DNA, the need to replicate DNA? then to overcome challenging obstacles inspiring evolution, by means of altering its DNA?

but no one can answer the first question. how can science answer the first question if it doesn't even consider bacteria self aware.

Do you see the problem? Its our own point of view. Here we are saying these inorganic materails, that is NON-LIVING. Suddenly rearranges into a LIVING thing. But that even this living thing is as dead and as conscious-less as a rock??

I mean, is that even logical?? But this is what science teaches.

What is so damn funny is, if you even question the illogical conclusion that science has given us - suddenly it means you are suggesting a magical process called God that can not be explained by science. But to say "YOU JUST WANT US TO SAY GOD DID IT!" is an ignorant excuse to not question and find the truth

science has not found the answer as to how a non-living thing suddenly becomes living. its perfectly okay to pressure science why it hasn't been able to answer this question. and its perfectly okay to suggest that maybe the problem is our MAN-MADE definition of life.

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how does inorganic material suddenly become alive?

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It doesn't. Life is made from organic molecules and elements (H, C, N, O, etc). Inorganics are silicates, crystals and most heavy metals (Fe, Al, U, Hg, He, etc). Learn your terms before you attempt to formulate an argument against something you don't understand, or else you look foolish.

The first chain of nucleotides that formed together was probably less than 20 bases long, and a primitive RNA molecule. This molecule is not self aware. It is a naturally occurring string of nucleotides that make a peptide. DNA did not have to 'consciously' develop a way to replicate itself, it just did. Because that's what happens when you put a line of jigsaw pieces in a soup of other jigsaw pieces, and wait for bit with similar shapes to randomly bump into it. Eventually, some stick.

I think your hang up here seems to be with the common representation of how a DNA molecule replicates. It doesn't 'know' to replicate, and the base pairs don't 'know' to pair up on the molecule. They are randomly bumping around at 'high speeds' (relative to their size) until the right shape flies into the right 'gap'.

Of course bacteria aren't self-aware. To be aware of ones self requires a nervous system with sense organs attached to it. Bacteria have neither sense organs nor a brain to process any such signals they might get from them. Now if you meant that bacteria aren't considered alive, then I'd say you're dead wrong. They are definitely alive, in the most basic sense of the word. They eat, shit, breed and die. They are definitely alive, and so is a virus.

Drawing the line between life and un-life can be tricky, and it comes somewhere between a DNA molecule and a single-celled bacteria. It is possible that life is mearly an extension of an intrinsic property of matter, like gravity is a extension of the property of mass. We'll know in time.

Science hasn't found the (whole) answer, but that doesn't mean it doesn't stop looking. Science is asking questions and getting answers every day. Science isn't so lazy as to just slap the word 'God' down as an answer and pretend like it's solved the great mystery.

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Do you see the problem? Its our own point of view. Here we are saying these inorganic materails, that is NON-LIVING. Suddenly rearranges into a LIVING thing. But that even this living thing is as dead and as conscious-less as a rock??

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The only problem is in your own severely poor understanding of biology.

The term living is not an absolute, and it is not sharply defined. We only use it because it's useful to be able to have a word for some things which are clearly different from others, like animals and plants from rocks. It makes conversations easier, that's all it does. The term 'living' does not have any actual meaning in reality.

There is no point at which we say something suddenly became living instantaneously, because living is quite a vague term. What actually happened is some chemical reactions turned into some more complicated reactions which steadily became more and more complicated, and hence we came to the set of chemical reactions known as a human being. Do you have a problem with that?

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Originally Posted by Xei

The only problem is in your own severely poor understanding of biology.

The term living is not an absolute, and it is not sharply defined. We only use it because it's useful to be able to have a word for some things which are clearly different from others, like animals and plants from rocks. It makes conversations easier, that's all it does. The term 'living' does not have any actual meaning in reality.

There is no point at which we say something suddenly became living instantaneously, because living is quite a vague term. What actually happened is some chemical reactions turned into some more complicated reactions which steadily became more and more complicated, and hence we came to the set of chemical reactions known as a human being. Do you have a problem with that?

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I don't know why you are lecturing over the definition of a living thing when obviously I am addressing that is a problem. To say the term living doesn't have any actual meaning is horse crap. Of course it has meaning. A living thing is ALIVE and has VALUE and MEANING.

We look at a rock and say, a rock can't die therefore it's okay to do whatever the hell we want with it.

We look at a bug and say it's living and should be respected, because it is alive. People do get angry if you kill a bug for no reason at all. Life to the human being, has more value than non-life. And in a age where we want to travel out into space and have alien contact, don't you think our limited definition of a living thing will get in the way? I mean, our definition is so screwy if something showed intelligence but doesn't eat or reproduce, we'd just say it was a non-living intelligence...!!

You may think the word is just for easier conversation. But science wants the truth. And it uses the word as truthfully as it can. Not for conversation, but for understanding the truth of what is life. As all real scientists are earnest in knowledge, not for easy conversation.

As if the first bacteria were just chemical reactions. Your own understanding of the process of life is boxed up materialistic dogma. And by understanding, I don't mean definitions of this or that. But real understanding of the whole picture.

scientists are not afraid to question WHY on earth does RNA and DNA does what it does. and not just blindly answers "it does what it does because it does what it does". To say "DNA just replicates because it replicates" is just as ignorant as saying God did it therefore it is that way.

scientists aren't afraid to ask those dangerous questions and seek out those answers - even if it defies everything we already know. DNA is the code of all living things as we know it. To just call it a mere chemical reaction replicating and becomming more complex for no reason at all, is mind-fuckin illogical. The entire history of evolution, the history of DNA says a very different story, that life itself has the objective to continuously evolve and change. And it all ties with DNA. Life didn't become more complex for no reason at all. Science doesn't answer 'no reason at all'. People create this boxed up answer because they don't want to know the reason. They don't want to question. They just want to be spoon fed answers.

But that is how ignorant people are. That they could look at something, that defends itself. Reproduces. Eats. Communicates with others of its kind, sharing information. Living in strategic communities for its own benefit. And changes its own DNA when its own DNA isn't good enough to survive a certain situation, and then to say "oh, its as conscious as a rock - just a chemical reaction that looks funny." Honestly, how is this even logical??? Yet we do this all the time.

So I am not going to ride on your definition of what is living and what isn't. You may be satisfied not asking 'why'. You may be satisfied not questioning the dogma that you have been fed. You may be satisfied not seeking a deeper understanding of the process life. But I am. That makes me, more of a scientific mind than you. As the true scientist knows that with every answer comes more QUESTIONS. It is a never ending search, not a boxed up system.

Look at you, and look at everyone else who gets so defensive when someone questions 'why'. You are no different than the catholic church telling early science they couldn't question 'why'.

In regards to the origins of life, science has only answered how. It can not even begin to ask why. Because the amazing thing about the question why, you can't even begin to question why without consciousness being involved.

There are people who live in the dark ages. Who don't want to consider a grander and bigger picture of consciousness. Who don't want to consider a grander and bigger picture of life, even if we were to adopt it it would actually solve our problems. Because if we were to consider the earth alive - then just like that bug vs a rock, we would respect the earth more than a non-living planet.

Science is here to serve man and enhance our lives. What good does it do to say you can not question something? That is not science.

http://www.ratical.org/LifeWeb/

The vast majority of that was rambling and pointless and completely unlinked to anything I said.

To try and keep on topic without veering all over the place like your above post: what you're opposed to is the idea that life can 'suddenly' come from non-life. What I just explained is that there is no problem because life never does suddenly come from non-life, because the term life has no exact grounding in physical reality. All that ever happened was that chemical reactions became steadily more complex. Biologists can argue as much as they like about where they should class a chemical reaction as life, but the fact is that the actual process was completely impassive to such definitions.

To try to keep this discussion manageable; what exactly is your opposition to the bolded text above?

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That is not science.

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Yeah that about sums up your post quite nicely. You just rambled for a few hundred words about evolution having a mind of its own, and rocks possessing consciousness.

You either didn't read a single word of what I wrote or you completely disregarded it without so much as thinking about it, because the answers to your questions are in my post. Abandon the Gaia Theory, it's a crock.

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A living thing is ALIVE and has VALUE and MEANING.

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Except for the fact that the definition of "alive" is arbitrary, and a label we use for convenience.

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Because the amazing thing about the question why, you can't even begin to question why without consciousness being involved.

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But you and everyone else can ask the question "how?" without consciousness being involved? Or is this merely a meaningless statement of no substance?

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that life itself has the objective to continuously evolve and change

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What are you talking about? Life doesn't have this objective at all. Life would 'like' to stay exactly the same if it could; read up on selfish gene theory. Evolution happens in spite of life's 'wishes'.

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So I am not going to ride on your definition of what is living and what isn't.

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But you're demanding an explanation for your (flawed) understanding that life is either a yes or no thing. Instead of say, something that is completely non-life at one end, comes very close to life without being life (such as replicators, like viruses), and at the other end is actually life.

I'll let cdk007 talk for me

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtmbcfb_rdc

And if you don't understand the content of this video, that doesn't mean it's wrong. It just means you don't understand it.