TRANSCENDENT PHILOSOPHY:
For those who think abiogenesis is absurd (i.e. life built itself through chaotic processes), please answer the following questions.
INTERLOCUTOR:
There are several presumptions here that, by definition, already defeat the idea of formation by abiogenisis.
1. Letters are already complex structures by, well, design. A more accurate starting point would be to use dots and dashes as the starting material (dots are elemental/inorganic compounds, dashes are simple organics) found in this oceanic soup.
2. Chemical bonds and reactions are much more complex than simple "magnetized conditions." In fact, magnetized conditions defeats the premise already, as the letters could clump in every way in the 2D plane, but also in the 3D as well.
3. Tidal waves are fine, though simple oceanic turbulent currents would've done the trick. Less violent energy interactions.
4. I don't even know what to do with the English sharks. Where did they come from? How did they form? What drove them to appear? Are they made of the same letters as what's in the soup? You need to give more justification of how the English shark appeared randomly.
5. I don't understand the reproduction part. Proteins and their basic building blocks, amino acids and other functional organics, don't reproduce themselves. They are created by biochemical processes cutting up existing proteins, and recombining with either other cut up proteins or adding amnio acids and other functional groups for the desired effect. In essence, other proteins make more proteins with more proteins. We haven't discovered how to make proteins without proteins, and according to our current understanding of thermodynamics, it's actually impossible to do spontaneously (aka abiogensis).
Even with your presumptions, every answer is no. You need to assume English sharks exist to force the design of English words, with no explanation of where they came from. You also need to assume that the words will combine in 2D space, left-to-right only by a Tidal wave of magnetism to ensure the mixing and allowance for constant interaction. Even with all of this, books and dictionaries my never form. Why not have a bunch of I's, And's, The's floating around bumping into each other while the sharks ignore them because they're English words. What's the driving force to form complexity? Think of the spatial requirements to form "I see the red dog." It is made of only 3 or less words, yet by forming that sentence alone, it is extremely complex. It is also constantly being bombarded by other words and forces, so there's a possibility of it falling apart back to it's simple individual words. These are just some of the many issues with your thought experiment.
Frankly, for an atheistic world to exist and have formed, one must ignore the complexities and many of our understandings of how the universe functions. It is simplistic, presumptive, and technically unknowable due to how chaos works (chaos can produce something that's unreproduciable, and is therefore unknowable). Intelligent design on the other hand, means something is learnable because it follows order and reproducibility. The universe can be as complex as is needed, and can one day be understood through all the different tools available to mankind. It gets even better as a theist due to the relationship of that intelligent design with us, His offspring. The atheist must simplify and ignore how the universe really works to try and justify his world view, and ultimately comes up with really bad thought experiments.
TRANSCENDENT PHILOSOPHY:
1. Letters are fundamental building blocks in this universe (i.e. not complex).
2. Perhaps the sharks would eat 3D objects since they are not formulated in valid English. This would create a filtration effect for 2D objects. Not an important point. The point is how randomness can create "specified complexity" - how order can emerge from "nothing".
3. You are confusing tidal waves with tsunamis.
4. The English sharks are analogous to entropy - a fundamental law of this universe.
5. RNA reproduces itself by bonding with an opposite pair then then bonds with an identical pair. These English sequences could do something similar. Again - you are getting hung up on details and missing the point.
6. The "I"s and "And"s will not stop their evolutionary trajectories because the tidal waves are bumping new letters into them. These new letters will bond and hence, they can't stop their progression.
INTERLOCUTOR:
Wait, the sharks are analogous to entropy? How in the world did you get that conclusion that's how entropy works?
Entropy is the description of disorder, and was described in the search for a perpetual motion machine (or the reason why we can't make one, aka carnot cycle). Entropy only cares about one thing, and that's the fact that disorder is more favored than order. Which destroys your whole thought experiment because if the sharks do exist, they won't go after non-english words, they will go after anything that's more complex, aka ordered, than before. In fact, non english, random gobbledygook vs english words are more favored according to entropy. Simple words are also, more favored over complex ones. I could go on, but the point is that entropy is working against you, not with you.
There's alot I could go further into (such as RNA (a protein) still needs proteins to make more protein, which is MUCH more complex than a letter/element), but frankly the misunderstanding of entropy already destroys the thought experiment. Figure that out, then come try again to prove a naturalistic formation of the universe from chaos/nothing.
TRANSCENDENT PHILOSOPHY:
Wow, way to massively misunderstand the point!
Entropy is the obstacle that all life has to face. Entropy destroys all structures that are not ordered in a negentropic way (non-English). Only negentropic structures survive entropy (English). Hence, you get a telos towards increased negentropy.
INTERLOCUTOR:
I get that you're pretty smart, but you've vastly misunderstood what entropy and negentropy are. Philosophic machinations don't change how the real world operates, and the thought experiment only works if it can explain and use such phenomenon correctly.
Negentropic phenomenon are not movements of reverse entropy, but rather reduced entropy. They have also never been observed to happen spontaneously (aka naturally) and remain stable. Now we do negentropic work all the time non-spontaneously, and we can even maintain a meta-stability as another thing to factor is kinetics. However, entropy is still acting on these phenomenon. In the words of your analogy, the sharks don't ignore the English words, they just might not eat them as quickly as the other things, but they will eat them eventually. In fact, they will eat them long before you can create a sentence. Why? Because long term meta-stability has only been observed for non-natural phenomenon, for natural phenomenon the event happens for a blip, then returns back to it's favored state.
Now you may say that we have spontaneous negentropic phenomenon with examples such as our solar system formation and life appearing from the rocks, which is the point you're trying to convey with your thought experiment. Those are based on presumptions though, and actually go against uniformitarianism as we have no modern observation or evidences that such things can form naturally. In fact, modern thermodynamics say it's impossible. The only reason why they are entertained is due to the ideological need for a naturalistic explanation, which as I've said before, relies on simplifying, obfuscation, misrepresentation, and outright ignoring of how the current modern universe works.
TRANSCENDENT PHILOSOPHY:
We have proven that almost every step of abiogenesis occurs spontaneously and naturally. It is simply a theistic lie that these phenomenon are impossible.
INTERLOCUTOR:
Really now? So we've seen been able to create life from inorganic material? No, that would've been really big news. Ooh, did we solve the chirality problem of synthetic amino acids and sugars? No, chirality is still there, darn racemic systems. Speaking of which, the voltage used to create synthetic amino acids is significantly less than what the natural source of electricity tends to provide (lightning), and they're not even close (100k vs 3M). What about peptides, actually, we know where this is going. You keep claiming there's proof, but I'm not seeing the evidence for that. There have been cut corners, assumptions, presuppositions, poor interpretation of the data, and a whole lot of faith in abiogenisis. In short, nothings been proven, only postulated. Interestingly, all of these supposed proofs are highly ordered, designed, isolated experiments to somehow prove abiogenisis. In other words, order somehow proves chaos. Get some philosopher to chew on that one.
Oh, BTW, what you call a theistic lie, everyone else refers to as thermodynamics. Maybe the atheists need to quite trying to prove abiogenisis and all the other chaos based doctrines to realize how much of science they've discard in their pursuit to prove their worldview.
TRANSCENDENT PHILOSOPHY:
In 2010, an experiment by Robert Root-Bernstein shows that "two D-RNA-oligonucleotides having inverse base sequences (D-CGUA and D-AUGC) and their corresponding L-RNA-oligonucleotides (L-CGUA and L-AUGC) were synthesized and their affinity determined for Gly and eleven pairs of L- and D-amino acids". This suggests that homochirality, including codon directionality, might have "emerged as a function of the origin of the genetic code".
The theistic lie is that order can never arise naturally, which is completely fallacious. Don't you think it is evil to lie about science to protect a harmful ancient worldview?
"We used to think that there were a lot of difficult steps in the process, but now we are realizing that a lot of the steps are easy" - Jack W. Szostak, Nobel Prize Winning Harvard Abiogenesis Researcher
"I think we are close to having a coherent pathway for how things could have happened"
- Jack W. Szostak, Nobel Prize Winning Harvard Abiogenesis Researcher
INTERLOCUTOR:
if you consider research like this paper as "proof," you know very little about the science you rever. Which explains much of the attitudes and viewpoints you have towards this topic and science in general. You approach is one of faith. Your attempt to hide behind rational as you view faith as something to be scorned and mocked while practicing the same veneer towards naturalism is quite hypocritical.
This is an awful paper. It was published in a small special journal that was a collection of research done on "Symmetry and Homochirality." Small special journals aren't necessarily bad, when done properly it's to highlight a field that's burgeoning and a forefront. It can done badly, and that's when it's trying to prove a preconceived conclusion and using "science" to do so, like this one. Papers that wouldn't be accepted anywhere else can all of the sudden be published under "peer-review," and while any scientist worth their salt would heavily scrutinize the conclusions drawn, for non-scientists it works wonders in providing confirmation biase. Think of science done to prove the young earth theory, small journals that publish specials and bad data interpretation (which I'll get to later). You would (and rightfully so) call that bad science. Now throw off the biased lens and realize you just shared a paper that falls into the same category.
The proof is that this paper is just bad. Horrendous technical writing: "I" should never appear in a scientific paper, "we" should show as little as possible, qualifiers should be used sparingly, and your error analysis MUST be shown. There is no error analysis, which can make the data presented mean nothing, especially if the values are close (which they are in this paper). I looked closely at the data, and I have no idea how he came to the conclusion that he did. My experience with UV-Vis shows that all of his values where within error of each other, which means statistically they are all the same value. If he had error values, they may be different, but we don't know because he didn't put any reference to them, which is really bad science.
You're not a chemist, nor do I beleive that you're a scientist. You're a philosopher, who's smart, but that doesn't mean you can interpret the data that was put forth because you don't actually know science. Which probably explains why you read the abstract (and maybe the conclusion) and took it at face value that what was presented was good science. Well, it's a Saturday morning, so perhaps I will school you (as a chemist) on some chemistry so you can spare yourself future embarrassment on sharing bad, biased, and poorly written journals.
In chemistry, there is a function known as the equilibrium constant (usually denoted as K). It's the ratio of products over reactants, and has many sub groups and titles that all explain different, yet similar phenomenon (ex: solubility, ligand formation, lattice crystal growth, etc.). There is a numerical value that all chemists understand with anything related to K; values greater than 1 are thermodynamicaly favored, values less than 1 are not. In this paper, K is called the binding constant, and the ratio is the on:off for the amino acids binding to the codons. The values found in the data sheet are 10^-5 to 10^-7, which means the amino acids are very unlikely to bond to the codon. There was also very little variance in regard to an individual amino acid bonding to the different codons, meaning little specificity. This is why knowing the error analysis is so important. With how tight the data is, the error analysis is crucial to prove that there is significant difference (even small), otherwise statistically speaking, the values are all the same. In fact, by looking at the data with no preconceived biases (actually take away what the species even are) just keep that it's a racemic mixture, I would say that the ligand formation is not thermodynamically favored, and that there is no stereo-selectivity. So would any other chemist worth their salt.
The science proving abiogenesis all come from the same cloth either in research quality or the conclusions drawn from the data. That is why the general consensus is that there is no proof for abiogenesis, it does not reach the standard. In fact, the demand of proof for God is higher than for abiogenisis (double ironically is the fact that both are unfalsifiable as well). Now, you can beleive in abiogenisis, have faith that is how the universe and life formed, but acknowledge that is all it is. Which, personally, I have no issue with. No theist does. It's your own standard, made of your own arrogance and pride, that gets you. That is the lie truly told, and has done more harm in the 20th century than any theistism has ever done.
INTERLOCUTOR:
Oh, I forgot to mention, anyone who says chemicals evolve is IMMEDIATELY dismissed as an idiot. I asked my fellow scientists and chemists if they believe chemicals evolve, and they either laughed or looked at me incredulously. Even the atheist ones. It's only the atheistic philosophers who beleive such a claim. IF chemicals are to evolve, it would be towards simplicity and disorder, not towards complexity and order. There is no survival of the fittest for an atom or molecule. It will continue existing no matter what happens. A carbon atom is a carbon atom, whether it's as graphite, in DNA, as CO2, or even as a diamond, and as long as it's at the lowest energy it can be (or is on the way to it) it's as happy as it can be.
TRANSCENDENT PHILOSOPHY:
You are right I am not a chemist! I appreciate the "smart" compliment. I also appreciate your little lecture here. Please help me understand why Dave Farina seems to think homochirality is an extremely benign issue because we have already discovered so many possible explanations for this! Additionally, please explain why the creationist chemist James Tour completely grants Dave this point? I don't need to have faith in Dave, nor the science community. Valid explanations will due to change my mind - a marker for rationality (the opposite of faith).
TRANSCENDENT PHILOSOPHY:
Also, if the concept of chemical evolution is a marker for idiots, I am very curious as to your explanation for why the American Chemical Society (ACS) has more than 3000 publications on the topic of "chemical evolution".
TRANSCENDENT PHILOSOPHY:
Is this research about chemical evolution fraudulent?
INTERLOCUTOR:
it's not the words itself, but the context behind the word that leads to dismissal. There are two different definitions of chemical evolution. The first (and most common for the majority view of scientists) is the definition of how certain chemical reactions got from point a to b. You could replace evolution with pathways, process, synthesis, reactions, etc., and it would mean the same thing. There is no presupposed end or reason other than "How is/did this happen(ing)?" An example is acetic acid (the acid in vinegar) reacting with sodium bicarbonate (baking soda). I mix the two, gas evolves (I picked this example for a reason, more later), and by controlling certain variables I can further understand the exact process. This knowledge of how that might have happened could be then applied to encourage it, prevent it, or apply it to other, similar phenomenon. It is a mechanical description in the base sense for the word evolution, with no presuppositions attached to it.
The second definition that you describe it as, is the "survival of the fittest" evolutionary pathway for abiogenisis to occur. There is a presupposes applied natural selection pressure for these chemicals to "evolve." It's not a mechanical definition, but an ideological one that is being used supported a determined conclusion, rather than let the process define iteself.
Whereas the first definition is a mechanical context that could be described by a plethora of synonyms accurately, the 2nd is an ideological context that only the word evolution can be applied for. In the example of acetic acid and bicarbonate, note how I used the phrase "gas evolution." Which definition best describes that phenomenon? A mechanical process following thermodynamics to understand and explain why carbon dioxide is produced, or natural selection and survival of the fittest? That is the reason most scientists (especially chemists) find the phrase "chemical evolution" ridiculous. The only ones that don't are those trying to prove abiogenisis. Which, side note, is not how science works. Science is where you come up with a hypothesis, and then you try to disprove (falsify) it. Tangent question, how would you falsify abiogensis? If the opposite of abiogensis is intelligent design, which is claimed to be unfalsifiable, then does that mean abiogensis is also unfalsifiable? Food for thought. Anyways, the answer is the first definition. If you use the second, you'll get alot of raised eyebrows and credulous scorn. Only the abiogenisis group holds to that, and they aren't taken too seriously due to the question posted above, and the fact there hasn't been any natural, spontaneous observation of the phenomenon known as abiogenisis. All the supposed "evidence" has come from highly controlled, isolated, designed systems. We've never observed in nature any of the steps of abiogensis, which seems to argue more in favor of intelligent design than abiogenisis.
Another small thing thing to note is that scientists are trying really hard to have novel titles/descriptions for their papers to get more reads which may lead to more citations. More citations, more prestige. More prestige, more funding. Hence why they may use the word evolution in the context not of abiogenisis, even when another synonym would be better. We're not literary scholars, and sometimes the pursuit of novelty means we use words that aren't as suited as they should be.
INTERLOCUTOR:
Also, I just finished watching the entire debate you shared, and while I knew of Dr. Tour for his work in nano materials, I actually had no idea about his views in general. I must say, I enjoyed his conversation with Lee Cronin, but the debate with Dave was...very difficult to watch. Dr. Tour proved his mastery of chemistry and science in the debate, but he was an awful debater. A person's ability to debate does not change the truth and rightness of the topics and sides, but it sure made it difficult to watch. His opponent was awful though, both in mannerisms and scientific knowhow. Dave was a hypocritical jackass, I would've stopped the debate after his opening remarks and called out his bad faith BS. If he kept making the snide remarks, constant interruptions, and "translations" with me, I would've ended the debate and told him to come back when he's ready to debate science, not be a petulant man-child. Especially because that was his whole premise, to try and debase Dr. Tour instead of argue his own side. Also, Dave kept bringing up Dr. Tour's faith as a disqualifying parameter for his competence as a scientist. I never once heard Dr. Tour ever use his faith to validate any of his viewpoints, it was pure science. Now, you could argue that Dr. Tour's biases into the debate caused by his faith are the disqualifying statements, but frankly Dave's own philosophical preconceived biases would disqualify himself as well. In fact, I say they did because he just couldn't let it go. Just bad really. Still, it was enlightening to the general abiogenisis atheistic worldview.
First, I'm assuming Dr. Tour gave the benefit of homochirality for the reason that homochirality is the biggest nail in the coffin for abiogenisis. Achieving pure enantiomers is very, VERY difficult, even for labs to do today. It's the biggest roadblock for abiogenisis, so it doesn't matter if you can make all the later stuff happen if you can't achieve homochirality. It's the low hanging fruit for Dr. Tour, and he wanted to focus on other needed components for abiogenisis.
As for why Dave didn't care, it's because his literature review was piss poor. There's no technical term for what he did other than biased, lazy research, and if a graduate student tried to pull what he did he'd be reamed by his committee. If your PI (advisor for those who never went to graduate school) asks you to defend your thesis by showing them the process, you can use literature as a reference and supplement, but you better get up there and show you know it as Dr. Tour kept asking for. If you make a claim about something, they will ask how you know this. If you reference a paper, they will ask for the recovery, error analysis, significance to your case, etc, aka the data and how that's useful to your thesis. Just because the abstract and conclusion SAYS something happened doesn't mean the data proves it. I know someone who got reamed for that because they referenced a paper and claimed a conclusion it didn't have. From the title and abstract, you could probably agree with their reasoning. The data didn't support the reasoning for the reference though, and the professor knew that because they helped to edit it before it was submitted (former graduate student's postdoc work). Double whammy was the fact that the student claimed a yield that the paper didn't substantiate (in fact, the paper just said its process could technically happen, just not at an economically or resource viable why). That really pissed off the advisor, and it was a learning experience to fully read AND understand what the paper was saying, not just what the title and abstract put forthe from that. In my opinion, that's why Dave didn't care. He knows enough to be dangerous, but not enough to really understand what the data actually is or means. So he's a dangerous fool who didn't really know what was in the papers he was touting, he just kept appealing to authority and ironically, having an immense amount of faith in the papers conclusions. Which in my opinion explains why he was such an arrogant ignoramus. He couldn't argue the science, but he could try to defame a very well rewarded and renown scientist instead to defend his belief structure.
Also, to claim that there are so many different ways for homochirality to POSSIBLY happen must mean that homochirality happened, is just bad science. Premises don't lead to results or truth, in fact they rarely do. That's what the scientific method is for, you have a premise (hypothesis) based on an educated guess and/or previous work, and then you further investigate to see if the premise is true. From the sounds of those papers, especially the homochirality ones, what was proven was a technical "We showed specific enantiomer selection from a racemic mixture," but the question is, how specific, what was the yield, the kinetics of the process (aka, can you form stereospecific solutions fast enough before the aminos decay), environment, isolation and so many more comparisons some papers acknowledge they don't have that confidence or reliable information, but they still make their claims because they know their funders read the abstract, conclusion, and maybe the introduction. Hence why the data, not the claim is important. When novel research is conducted on a process where the end result is known, it's just a question of how, there are many premises that are plausible at the beginning. One may say there are many different ways to prove the concept. Except after more research is done, most of those premises get tossed out until there's only a few left, and then it's debated for years on end with no clear decision of which is correct. This isn't a perfect comparison though, because we haven't achieved the homochirality of life in any of our experiments. So we have an end result (current life), the assumption is made that abiogenisis is the cause (the what happened), and now we're trying to find the how via research. And we've found many possible how's, and that somehow proves the what happened? No, the proof is the one that actually works, not the many that might work.
As for why homochirality is important, that's hard to put succinctly in a facebook comment. In short, life functions with homochirality, and it's very specific. We struggle, especially with larger organics, to create pure enantiomers, and we usually have to use highly structure materials to force steric separation. Chemistry doesn't work because chemically, enantiomers are the same. They're just different handed. So how does that happen spontaneously? If we are to go with uniformitarinism (which is one of the current naturalistic explanations for how the universe operates BTW) reasoning, it doesn't. Even using conditions of slightly unequal racemic mixtures doesn't mean one will dominate the other, at best you'd get a new equilibrium of say, 40/60 as an example. Billions of years doesn't change that equilibrium. No, a process must be found that's essentially 99.99% effective that COULD happen naturally. Because we do have methods that get at least 99% pure, but no one would ever assume that is how nature would do it, because they're a highly structured, organized, non-spontaneous processes that are quite clearly designed by something intelligence.
TRANSCENDENT PHILOSOPHY:
Let me see if I can summarize your take on these issues:
1. Chemical evolution has a dumb interpretation and a valid metaphoric interpretation. "Chemical evolution" as a term is also used to make a paper sound more interesting.
2. Dave is wrong in saying that we have many possible ways for homochirality to occur and the research he is citing doesn't say what he claims it says. James wasn't granting this, but rather being magnanimous.
Please let me know if the above is correct.
I would be very interested to understand your perspective on a valid metaphoric interpretation of chemical evolution. Would you be able to outline the steps?
I attempted to model the steps of chemical evolution, but my model is probably laughably wrong in the eyes of someone with actual expertise in chemistry.
INTERLOCUTOR:
1. Yes to the term of making a paper more interesting. If you go back to ACS and search chemical evolution, some will talk about abiogenisis, most will talk mechanical, chemical pathways from point a to b, c, d, etc. Also, could you clarify which definition is the dumb vs valid for you? I'm assuming metaphoric is the second, survival of the fittest, but I want to make sure.
2. In short, yes with a little no. The papers Dave was sighting had technical viable proof to force unequal racemic mixtures, but there's a huge difference between, say, 40/60 and 1/99. Those scientists aren't bold face liars, they created unequal racemic mixtures, but that alone doesn't prove homochirality is possible. Dr. Tour was being magnanimous.
As for your model, there are indeed some glaring simplicities and incorrect assumptions. It's difficult to simply explain why, to fully understand would require taking chemistry. I'll try to explain shortly, but know there's a lot of detail I have to leave out because this is a fb comment chain.
1. Random atoms bump into each other with the right orientation and energy to form molecules spontaneously IF the resulting reaction is exergonic (lowest free energy, usually exothermic (heat releasing) and an increase to entropt). If endergonic (higher free energy, usually endothermic and a decrease to energy), work must be provided to force the reaction to happen (heat, pressure, concentration, isolation, purity, magnetism, etc.).
2 & 3. The same is true for molecules, except most reactions are not combinations, but substitutions or eliminations (trade vs take). Other possible reactions are decompositions if the formation was endergonic, may decompose into original reactants, maybe not.
4 & 5. Kinetics is very important to all of this. Something may be thermo favored, but if the kinetics are so slow it may not form at all or something with faster kinetics, less thermo favored, may form. Chain step reactions are hindered by the rate limiting step, aka the slowest, least likely to form. Entire processes can be stopped by this step, forcing the reaction to end or not happen. Energy can be released in both formation and decay of a species. Usually the energy is very small (there's a reason we use kJ/mole, you need alot (a mole is 10^23 atoms/molecules) to get anything out of it), and the kinetics is important. To much energy too fast, surrounding species bonds can be broken. Enough but too slow, not enough energy to form new bonds. They'll just wiggle and rotate. Ex. Chicken fat releases more energy than gasoline, but it's very slow. Something to note, if X energy was put into form a bond, I will not get 100% X back. Some is lost to the surroundings, and some was lost in the reaction. This means reactions can't happen forever with what's in the system, it will always lead to something known as equilibrium.
All of these steps are moving towards something known as equilibrium, a state where the energy of the entire system is the same, chemically speaking where the forward and backward reaction rates equal each other. Think of it as coexistence harmony. Chemistry doesn't compete due to equilibrium, the chemicals are very content to stay in that state forever. An outside force must be applied to change the equilibrium. What comes out of the changed is usually favored towards exergonic equilibrium. Simple, disordered thermo, with faster kinetics. Sometimes it does favor endergonic processes, but such systems are by nature unstable. Once the outside force is removed, equilibrium will pull towards exergonic again.
Now in a technical sense, endergonic reactions happen all the time. In a mole of particles, there will be some that will behave against convention and defy thermodynamics. However, not enough do. What is 10 out of 10^23? 100? 1000? A million? A trillion? Compared to 10^23 such numbers are meaningless. Now expand that to 1000s of moles. A significant amount is very important in chemistry. Let's say I get something 99.999% pure (which is only really possible for inorganic chemistry. 99% is difficult for organic chemistry), how many impurities do I have in a mole? 10^18. That is considered insufficient chemically speaking, and we can't comprehend what 10^18 even means, other than it's a huge number.
Autocatalyst is a bit of a weird one. We've proven it can happen, and does happen for things outside of biochemistry. However, the conditions are highly specific, and there is very little variance outside of biochemistry. An autocatalyst isn't replication, it's a continuation of the reaction from the product. Sometimes that replication, other times it's the formation of something new that continues the reaction for one step then ends. It's something we don't understand very well, other than the environmental conditions are very specific for autocatalyst to happen. When factoring in thermo, kinetics, sufficiency, environmental factors seem to be the driving force for autocatalyst, which makes sense as RNA works in a highly specialized environment known as biochemical conditions.
Finally, oxygen really messes everything up. We use it to live, but it's really good at destroying organics over time, especially unstable intermediates that are a natural consequence of intermediates.
INTERLOCUTOR:
For your model to be representative and viable, you have to create one that accounts for thermo, kinetics, equilibrium, sufficient amounts, and environmental conditions. Not just for a few steps, but millions, maybe billions. If I was to try and steel man, this is what the model would look like.
1. Atoms bond and react to form thermo stable molecular base compounds at equilibrium.
2. Conditions change that drive endergonic processes. Equilibrium shifts towards more complex, thermo unfavored organics in tight environmental conditions to force a significant amount of species to form, the kinetics of formation is significantly higher than the kinetics of decay.
3. Conditions change again to favor further endergonic processes. Conditions are once again tight and previous synthesis stops. Most of the organics must react with each other and some base molecules in sufficient amounts to reach this higher complexity. Multistep reactions are possible. Kinetics is similar. Equilibrium is reached that is product favored in sufficient amounts.
4. Conditions change again. All unreacted species either decay to base molecules or reach a meta-stability by reacting with surrounding, unrelated chemicals. Previous synthesis stops. Same process occurs in favor of endergonic equilibrium in sufficient amounts.
5. As the process goes on, more and more specificity is needed to remove contaminants. This means tighter conditions while still maintaining formation kinetics and amounts of compounds for suffiency at each step of equilibrium.
6. Process continues, with enough time to allow synthesis, but not too much time to allow for molecular decay as entropy is still an important factor. Conditions were tight and correct enough to allow for things like homochirality, the 20 amninos, peptide formation, sugars, RNA coding, DNA, cellular membrane formation, energy sources to fuel cellular metabolism, enzymatic activity, all have reached equilibrium where the rate of life is higher than the rate of death. Previous synthesis is stopped, and sufficient material made it through for life to flourish.
This is all assuming no rate limiting steps, ideal kinetics, no unfavorable conditions appearing (oxygen, halogens, inorganic oxidizers, strong acids or bases, significant simple organics, no massive temperature fluctuation, and perfect energy contributions), and that a suffiency of material made it through each step. This also assumes homochirality, peptide formation, enzymes, sugars, RNA coding, energy sources (aka food), cellular membrane, all just happened in the needed step by step process from external condition changes, all randomly.
What I'd like to see is what issues do you see with this model (as there are several) besides the assumptions. There are some pretty big ones, and I'm curious to see if you can see them too. Steel man the steel man.
TRANSCENDENT PHILOSOPHY:
Wow! That was legendary. Great explanations and great model. So refreshing to converse with someone as intelligent and educated as you. You definitely tested the boundaries of my knowledge of chemistry and gave me a lot to think about. You painted a very strong picture of how these processes are very particular, nuanced, fickle, fragile, and volatile.
More to say coming up.
TRANSCENDENT PHILOSOPHY:
You mentioned something earlier - the falsifiability of abiogenesis. I definitely agree that falsifiability is a very important (if not essential) consideration for any scientific endeavor.
My thoughts on falsifiability: Chess analogy.
At the beginning of a chess game (t0), all the pieces originate in their proper positions - we can consider this the natural state. Each chess piece has a "law" that it abides by, governing its physical movements across the board over time. As time progresses, the state of the board changes with updated positions. If chess pieces were to become conscious entities at t5, they might try to understand their situation in the world of chess. They can see the position of all the chess pieces at t5. Based on their knowledge of t0 natural starting conditions, and their knowledge of the laws of physics for each piece, they could deduce if their current positions were due to the natural (chess physics) or supernatural (divine placement). If a pawn's laws of physics allow 1 movement per time increment, then at t5, they would have a maximum of 5 increments. If a pawn finds itself incremented 6 times, they can infer the supernatural. Similarly, bishops are destined to 1 square color, and there is naturally a 50% ratio between black square bishops and white square bishops. If two bishops (of the same team) find themselves both on black squares, then they could infer the supernatural.
So this analogy is trying to show that if abiogenesis definitely requires 2 billion years, but we only had 1 billion years, then perhaps the supernatural bridged the gap.
Similarly, with homochirality, perhaps the supernatural defied the natural 50% ratios.
Another type of falsifiability would be to look at a chess piece and calculate all of the possible chess pathways that could have led to it landing where it is. If you can identify obstructions in each of those possible pathways, then you might be able to infer supernatural placement.
The main problem with this analogy is the simplicity/complexity gap between chess physics and our laws of physics. So it is much harder to verify a 2 billion year requirement, or a 50% ratio requirement, or path obstructions for every possibility.
TRANSCENDENT PHILOSOPHY:
So, if abiogenesis can be proven to be super difficult, almost to the point of implying supernatural involvement, I am fully willing to grant that the existence of life is a strong argument in favor of the God hypothesis.
One issue I have is - why does Jack Szostak seem to be saying the opposite?
"I think we are close to having a coherent pathway for how things could have happened" - Jack W. Szostak
"We used to think that there were a lot of difficult steps in the process, but now we are realizing that a lot of the steps are easy" - Jack W. Szostak
I would be interested in seeing you debate someone of equal caliber but opposite perspective on this topic! Hopefully, a more good-faithed opponent than Dave! It seems like there is a large gap between your take and the Szostak take, so it would be good to hash out the difference!
TRANSCENDENT PHILOSOPHY:
So, back to the difficulty of falsifiability, two friendly bishops on black squares might conclude a deity helped them violate the natural 50/50 in favor of chess homochirality, yet later they discover "chess earthquake" physics that explains how they will sometimes random shift to a new colored square.
So, there are potential natural explanations that have yet to be discovered. In order to completely falsify natural processes, you have to have a high degree of confidence that no new explanations will be discovered. If there is a pattern of new explanations being discovered, that is evidence against the idea that you can just assume that former paradigms are complete enough to falsify natural processes.
For example, peptide-forming reactions were presumed to be impossible in water for a long time - a type of evidence that there was a fatal obstacle to a certain natural pathway, falsifying that pathway. Yet, in 2022 a mechanism for peptide-forming reactions to occur in water was discovered, reopening the natural pathway. This seems like evidence that we should be very hesitant to think we have debunked natural pathways.
TRANSCENDENT PHILOSOPHY:
So, now to your argument that I will call the "difficulty argument" - to say that something is difficult is not to say that it is impossible. Having 1000 dice all land on the number 6 is difficult but not impossible. In fact, selection bias often makes us confuse probabilities. 1000 dice all landing on 6 sounds absurd to most people, but what if you zoom out and the context is 1 BILLION dice? Among 1 billion dice, a pocket of 1000 dice all landing on 6 doesn't seem as impressive.
Similarly, in a chemistry lab with limited materials, limited space and limited time, it may seem very far fetched to achieve the conditions needed for abiogenesis, but when you zoom out and you have the entire earth as your testing ground and 1 billion years to keep rolling the dice, pockets of improbable behavior seem less absurd.
So, in order for the difficulty argument to be more impressive, it needs to show how the difficulty overwhelms the massive size and duration of the environment it exists within. Even better, show how the difficulty can rise to the level of impossibility.
TRANSCENDENT PHILOSOPHY:
his is my best attempt at identifying the problems in your more realistic model of chemical evolution.
Issues with Nuanced Model:
1. Transition from step 1 to 2 requires a newly imposed specific condition, hypothetically a low probability event [LPE].
2. Step 2 requires specific conditions [LPE].
3. Step 2 requires the possiblity of kinetics of formation being higher than the kinetics of decay (potentially falsifiable [F], depending on available conditions).
4. Transition from step 2 to 3 requires a newly imposed specific condition [LPE].
5. Step 3 requires the cessation of synthesis, potentially falsifiable [F].
6. Step 3 merely assumes that multistep reactions are possible, potentially falsifiable [F].
7. Step 3 requires specific conditions [LPE].
8. Transition from step 3 to 4 requires a newly imposed specific condition [LPE].
9. Step 4 requires all unreacted species to land in among specific end states [LPE][F].
10. Step 4 requires the cessation of synthesis, potentially falsifiable [F].
11. Step 5 requires the imposition of tighter conditions [LPE].
12. Step 5 has trade-off complexity: Tighter conditions without harming kinetics and availability of compounds [LPE].
13. Step 6 has trade-off complexity: Enough time for synthesis, not so much time that decay takes over [LPE].
14. Step 6 requires tight enough conditions to produce a large variety of specific required materials [LPE].
15. Step 6 requires rate of life being higher than the rate of death [LPE].
16. Requires no rate limiting steps [LPE][F].
17. Requires ideal kinetics [LPE][F].
18. Requires no unfavorable conditions [LPE][F].
19. Requires sufficient material [LPE][F].
20. Required materials all summoned themselves at the right times [LPE].
Lots of low probability events. Lots of falsifiable requirements.
But assuming the requirements are not falsified (prebiotic conditions not proven to be lacking needed requirements), a sequence of low probability events don't automatically seem strong enough to defeat the abiogenesis hypothesis.
INTERLOCUTOR:
Probability is an issue, but not the primary one. Statistics are useful, but can be misleading about reality, so that's not the best argument. One of the primary issues is that this entire process is operating through a funneling effect. Most people view synthesis as a column, there's no difference between the different steps to be taken, as well as the constraints put on the process by need of thermo and kinetics. Chemistry doesn't work that way though, especially in multistep processes. Let's assume that the destructive possibilities are all account for, each step is successful and the conditions are met. The only imposition is that the assay of the products is 90% efficient for each step. To make the math easy, let's assume I have in my system 100 grams, and it will take 100 steps to reach our end goal of life happening.
How much will we have at the end? The equations is:
x × %^(# of steps)
100 × 0.9^100 = 0.002656
Which interestingly is a 0.003% recovery.
Now, that was super simplified. In reality there are probably many more steps, and the efficiency is probably ranging from <0.1 -5%, and that's from abiogenisis papers on the subject. Remember, a sufficient amount of material needs to reach a critical mass to be substantial and of import. The proof of concept isn't just, could x form in y conditions. It's, does x form in y in sufficient numbers to be considered substantial. It's literally a numbers and mass issue. So if we have (essentially) unlimited time, how much material is needed for this to happen? Assuming no conditional issues, and the entire world as the reaction sight, is there even enough for it to happen spontaneously? If all the carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, sulfur, and phosphorus were available and not locked up in other bonds and reactions, would we have enough to get pass the funneling effect? It's a serious question I haven't seen anyone ask yet. We just assume there's enough material, but is there. Was there enough in prebiotic conditions? No one asks that question, they just ask could you make something in that system, but not could you make enough.
The other prime issue is the restriction of past processes as new ones begin. There is chemistry involved in the why, but there is also the fact that these processes are no longer happening today, and apparently they haven't happened since life began. It's a clue as to how the abiogenisis was restricted to forming, not as a collective but step wise. Now, for the chemistry aspect, chemicals never go from simple to complex in one step. Any organic chemist will laugh at you for suggesting that. There are many steps that need to take place, and it's quite common that once you start the next phase the previous one stops. In fact, sometimes it permanently prevents the previous reaction from ever happening again in that reaction cell. Another issue can arise when you don't have enough of your intermediate when you attempt to move onto the next phase. It can simply not happen, and because you pretty much stopped the previous reaction from happening anymore, your synthesis is done. The final note, is that it is very clear that each big step needs it's own set of conditions to be created. A general soup mixture starts falling apart, either aminos will form, or peptides. So on and so forth.