In article < This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it Deaddog < This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it writes: [Abiogenesis from raw chemicals couldn't have happened because I don't know how to form ribose from those chemicals, and no one else seems to know, either; therefore, God did it.] Even if I grant the non sequitur, how is saying God did it an improvement over saying, I don't know how it was done ?    Actually, it seemed to me that he was complaining not that he didn't know how to do it, but that he only knew a way with a mere 1% efficiency.  This might be a problem for DuPont and Faberwerke, but with a whole planet with which to play and no need to maximize profit per unit input?    What's the total biomass on the entire planet?  What percentage of the total weight of the earth is that?  Does that mean living things don't exist?

Actually, it seemed to me that he was complaining not that he didn't know how to do it, but that he only knew a way with a mere 1% efficiency.  This might be a problem for DuPont and Faberwerke, but with a whole planet with which to play and no need to maximize profit per unit input? No, no, no.   Look, here's a really bad analogy.  In Cat's Cradle, all the water on Earth turns to a high-melting variant called Ice Nine.  One of the protagonists finds a surviving ant colony in which the ants mass around a small hunk of ice, using their collective heat to melt a drop or two that the survivors can use.  Of course, most of the ants croak in the process, and this is clearly not a good way to replicate many generations of ants. Similarly, let's say that by chance you make a ribo-oligomeric 12-mer. The odds are against you from the start, but you do it.  Hooray.  Now, try to replicate yourself: (a) There's nothing much around for you to work with in the way of raw materials.  You can only use 1 out of every 10,000 things you run into (I'm being extremely charitable, by the way). (b) The other 9,999 things that are around that aren't 'your type' (i.e., are enantiomerically different) screw up your replication.  You're hosed from the word go.  It's like saying, well, here we have 10,000 beakers of liquid, one of which contains water and the rest poison.  Drink.  Of course, you must carry out this process not just once, but for every addition of every _base_ in every generation (so, for the hypothetical 12-mer described above, we're talking 12 steps or so).  Agreed, there may be some Universe in which you astoundingly make all the right choices every time you get thirsty.  But I'd rather place my money on Indiana Jones, Divine Intervention, and Nazis whose faces melt. But we're not talking here about well, life must have occurred in some continuum, given the universe of odds to play with, we're talking about practical problems of chemical reproduction.  You can have the mass of the galaxy for all I care, it doesn't necessarily make prebiotic replication a viable process. Actually, Mark Isaac is perfectly correct in pointing out that grumping about lack of knowledge does not necessarily equal proof of Divine Intervention.  But, then again, you knew that. Non-woof

Similarly, let's say that by chance you make a ribo-oligomeric 12-mer. The odds are against you from the start, but you do it.  Hooray.  Now, try to replicate yourself: (a) There's nothing much around for you to work with in the way of raw materials.  You can only use 1 out of every 10,000 things you run into (I'm being extremely charitable, by the way). (b) The other 9,999 things that are around that aren't 'your type' (i.e., are enantiomerically different) screw up your replication.  You're hosed from the word go. Is there a hidden assumption here that the 1 out of every 10,000 things are evenly spread?   Perhaps there are niches where the chance is much better than that, and life reproduces there until a biological mechanism for replication emerges, whereupon it can break out. jon.

Actually, Mark Isaac is perfectly correct in pointing out that grumping about lack of knowledge does not necessarily equal proof of Divine Intervention.  But, then again, you knew that. Yeah, I knew that.

In article < This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it (L. Drew Davis) writes: *   What's the total biomass on the entire planet?  What percentage *of the total weight of the earth is that?  Does that mean living *things don't exist? If you ask any statistician, he'll tell you that if something makes up less that 0.5% of a sample, than it doesn't exist.

In article < This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it (L. Drew Davis) writes: *   What's the total biomass on the entire planet?  What percentage *of the total weight of the earth is that?  Does that mean living *things don't exist? If you ask any statistician, he'll tell you that if something makes up less that 0.5% of a sample, than it doesn't exist. Quite right, at least if you pay him enough to say it.  And for an additional twenty five cents he will prove it with statistics.