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.
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.
Gary, the dangerous infidel,
It was blocked because of the following words or phrases:
- gerbil-faced
- git
- nipple nuts
- republican eunuch
- porous logic
That explains it, qb. I may have let it slip that I had a bowl of Post Nipple Nuts cereal for breakfast, and your comment just overloaded and crashed the filter, so now we’re free to talk
I am so disappointed. I can’t help but see similarities between Alfred1′s silence to builder proof to Hannity’s silence to questions about when he’s going to be waterboarded. Both are cowards.
# 65 Traaxx said,
“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…
Umm, you can’t prove a negative. Take some logic lessons.
#88,89 JimR & Thomas,
Thanks for the compliments.
#91 – John,
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).
Let’s talk a little about perfection. Ever since we knucklewalkers stood up, we’ve had to deal with back problems due to the curvature of our spines. We also have knee problems from a joint that really wasn’t intended to deal with the total weight of our bodies.
However, these things are not so obvious. So, let’s go inside our eyeballs. Our eyes are conveniently one of the things that wacko creationists think are too perfect to have evolved and would be useless if they were not perfect, never mind that many who need glasses survive just fine, even on days when they leave their glasses at home or take them off to look more attractive.
Now, let’s look at inside. We have rods and cones that face the back of the retina and receive a reflected image. Our brains must then correct for the fact that the image is backwards.
More important, since the rods and cones are all backwards, the nerves from each cell are in the middle of the eye and must somehow make a connection through to the brain for our eyes to have any use. So, there is a bundle of nerves in your eyes making a blind spot in each eye. Your brain must again fill in the details of the blind spot using the image from the other eye which has a blind spot in another spot.
So, the brain fills in the details missing from each eye. Nice kluge, but hardly something we can call designed.
Now, babies are able to eat and breath at the same time. Otherwise, we would likely choke to death at a very young age. However, in order to be able to speak, we must combine the tubes so that the air goes through the vocal chords during speech.
Because of this, we often choke on our food and drink as we forget momentarily and attempt to eat or drink while breathing. Most of us experience this every so often. It has to do with the same tube being used for two purposes. Again, it works well enough, but is hardly a perfect design.
Things that work well enough, but are actually just effective kluges are a major theme in nature. It need not be perfect, just good enough.
The panda’s “thumb” is another good one, made famous by Steven Jay Gould. Pandas need a thumb to strip the leaves from the bamboo they eat. They have a perfectly good thumb, but it happens to be fused to the other fingers, as with all bears, and similar animals. So, instead of unfusing the thumb, as a designer would, they evolved an enlarged wrist bone, the radial sessamoid, to perform the task of a thumb. Again, not perfect, but good enough.
So, too perfect to not have been designed? Or, too imperfect to have been designed? What do you think?
#93 – Gary,
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.
Despite the message not to repost, what I usually do is reduce the number of links or change <a href=”"> into a tinyurl. I often find the filter doesn’t like href but will accept tinyurl. I also find that more than two links per post is a nearly guaranteed to trigger the filter. Sometimes I have to break posts into two or three posts to avoid the filter. Yecch!