>SJ>I find it interesting that scientific research into a naturalistic
>>origin of life has been unsuccessful for 83 years and not 43 years as
>>I originally thought! This must be worthy for an entry in the Guiness
>>Book of Records, for the longest unsuccessful pursuit of a scientific
>>idea? Much has been written about how admirable it is for naturalists
>>to not give up easily. But when does dogged persistence become
>>obsessive folly? 43 years? 83 years? 103 years? :-)
>
>BH>Hmm... Inquiries into the supernaturalistic origins of life,
>>how long have they been going on and with what success? :-).
>
>What "inquiries"? The "supernaturalistic origins of life" is a
>revealed truth of the Bible (Jn 5:26).
Sorry, I thought for some reason that we were talking about
scientific evidence.
Are we in agreement that the supernaturalistic origins of life
cannot be verified by scientific methods?
[...]
SJ:====================================================
>Once it is
>admitted that the "origin of life" did not happen by "chance", then
>there is no justification for believe that it was "evolution" that
>"began after the origin of life". It could just as easily have been
>progressive creation, ie. an Intelligent Designer guiding and
>controlling an "evolutionary" process in furtherance of a purpose.
>
Sorry, I don't understand this line of reasoning at all.
[...]
>
>BH>After having said this, I think its also worthwhile to point out
>>that it is Miller himself who has driven both these nails into
>>soup theory. Not only did he perform the experiments showing
>>that the vents would be continuously destroying and prebiotic
>>precursors that might be forming in the oceans, he also did most
>>of the work showing that neutral atmospheres produce low yields
>>of amino acids. For this reason, I have come to have a tremendous
>>respect for Miller and I tend to get fidgity if someone questions
>>his integrity. Here he is doing research that undermines his own
>>pet theory for the origin of life and then publishing the results
>>for all the world to see. Not exactly a cover up.
>
SJ:
>I was quite careful in what I said. I said "IF THIS IS IGNORED, AND
>LOEB NOT GIVEN HIS RIGHTFUL PRIORITY", then it would seem to indicate
>that here we have a case of paradigm blindness at best and fraudulent
>cover up at worst?".
With the above, my intent really was to move from the specifics of the
Loeb incident to a more general comment, namely that the various
difficulties with origin of life research are openly admitted in
the literature. Also the "not exactly a cover up" was not aimed
specifically at you. I take responsibility for this misunderstanding
since I did not indicate my intentions clearly.
SJ:==
>IOW, my point was not about Miller's honest
>mistake in translating Loeb's German, but the continued refusal to
>publicly acknowledge Loeb's priority, even after Yockey pointed it
>out.
>
Perhaps there was a misunderstanding. I think this is a recent
discovery on Yockey's part. I found no mention of it in his two
recent articles in <BioEssays> and <J Theor Biol.> On p. 231 of
his book he writes:
That Gly can be synthesized by corona discharge in an atmosphere
of CO, NH3 and H2O had been reported by Loeb (1913),
as Miller (1955) pointed out.
Note CO instead of CO2, so Yockey was apparently unaware of the
mis-translation at the time his book was written.
This further illustrates my point about how a mistake in the literature
tends to get perpetuated. The really amazing thing to me is that
Yockey actually did go to the trouble of reading the original Loeb
material in German.
In any event, I don't think Yockey is accusing anyone of impropriety
here. This is not to say that he doesn't make such accusations in
other areas :). For example, he is appalled at the way popularizations
present the prebiotic soup story as if it were an established fact.
He also accuses Oparin of not giving proper credit to Loeb for
some of his ideas.
Yockey's main goal in all of this seems to me to be the undermining
of dialectical materialism. He wants to show that not only does the
dialectical materialist's dogma fail, their ideas were not even
original.
One of Yockey's favorite examples of this is the character
Pooh-Bah. The following is copied from one of the posts I
submitted, something like it appearing in several of Yockey's
papers as well as in his book:
Sir William Gilbert (1836-1911), in his famous comic opera
The Mikado has Pooh-Bah, a comic, greedy and conceited
character whose degrading (sic) duty it was to serve in
all the posts of Titipu except Lord High Executioner say:
"I am in point of fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive
person, of pre-Adamite ancestral descent. You will understand
this when I tell you that I can trace my ancestry back to a
protoplasmal primordial atomic globule. Consequently, my
family pride is something inconceivable. I can't help it.
I was born sneering." Pooh-Bah The Mikado, Act 1, W. S. Gilbert.
(1887)
Of course these words in the mouth of Pooh-Bah would not
have been funny or understood by the audience if they had
not been familiar with "protoplasmal primordial globules".
This is a recognition that the conditions for the emergence
of Pooh-Bah's most ancient ancestors were being discussed by
scientists and theologians and were familiar to Hooker and to
the public. The proposal that life emerged from colloids and
coacervates was not due to Oparin and/or Haldane, neither of
whom was born at the time.
So, you can apparently change your 83 years to 110+ years if you
want :-).
>BH>But the hydrothermal vent scenario is not dead yet. Since Yockey's
>>book was published, an interesting "dialogue" has developed in the
>>literature between Miller and various proponents of vent theory. I
>>don't remember the details here or even the players, I just recall that
>>Miller's experimental results have been challenged. It will be
>>interesting to see how it turns out.
>
>All these naturalistic theories are IMHO "dead"! As TB&O point out,
>even if a naturalistic scenario could be imagined that could show how
>a self-replicating molecular system might have begun, that is only
>half the battle. The same theory must also show how the system
>possessed or acquired specified complexity, ie. *meaningful
>information*:
>
A minor point, the term "meaningful information" has no meaning
in information theory :). The terminology I prefer is organized
complexity. In any event I would tend to agree that the generation
of organized complexity is most likely the biggest hurdle to overcome
in origin of life research. Interesting work is being done in this
area by Stuart Kauffman and others.
What I find interesting is that Yockey actually goes much further
than Bradley et al in saying that the generation of the information
content required for life by a gradual process of chemical evolution
is impossible. Impossible is very strong :). One of his analogies
is classical versus quantum mechanics, i.e. the gap between nonliving
chemicals and life is like the gap between classical and quantum
mechanics.
This is one of the things that I find most interesting about Yockey.
He concludes that there is a gap beteen nonliving and living matter
that is impossible to be filled in by a gradual process of chemical
evolution. If ever there were a place where one might conclude that
intelligent design is required surely this must be it (assuming, of
course that Yockey's conclusion is correct). Yet Yockey does not
conclude intelligent design. Why? An interesting question.
========================
Brian Harper |
Associate Professor | "It is not certain that all is uncertain,
Applied Mechanics | to the glory of skepticism" -- Pascal
Ohio State University |
========================