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Originally Posted by Fibrosa
This isn't actually your argument, is it? I mean, you might have written it out yourself and what not, but you didn't actually come up with it did you?
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Actually, I *did* come up with it myself. Well, not the ribose part, that I knew from my biochemistry classes. But figuring out how ribose could be synthesized, that I thought of myself.
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Originally Posted by Fibrosa
I ask because I encountered a very similar argument a few weeks ago, on another board and I remember thinking at the time that these numbers would have been too astounding for the supporters of abiogenesis to ignore. I then realized that you are skipping a bunch of steps in assuming that you just jump from non-life to a more complex type of life required.
Then I went on to talkorigins and found this: which I think is very relevant to the discussion.
In any event, I have to agree with the author's conclusion:
Tell me what you think about the article. |
The article does seem to poke holes in many of my large arguments, but it does make some exaggerated claims.
One thing I noticed was the self-replicating protein sequences that they mentioned were only marginally "self replicating". The Ghadiri protein is really only capable of catalyzing a reaction to bind together two 16 peptide chains that are already existant in a sequence that resembles itself, so it is not capable of real replication.
I do accept that as a way to increase the concentration of that kind of protein once it exists, since it'll just take the random 16-chains resembling itself and putting them together. However, the lack of calculations of how these amino acids are synthesized and the statements of "a fair number of efficent peptide ligases (about 1 x 10^31) could be produced in a under a year" definitely raised my eyebrow, since synthesis of peptide bonds is not particularly favorable in an aqueous environment without catalysts.
This led me to search out other articles, and I came across this one:
http://origins.swau.edu/papers/life/...k/default.html
Which brings up a variety of points that I had not previously considered.
Some of the major points it brings up include: the probably lack of a reducing atmosphere for the earth, which prevents the formation of amino acids and other organic compounds; the actual equilibrium constant for peptide bond formation under the conditions far more favorable than those thought to exist by evolutionary biologists in the primordial soup (it is so unfavorable that 100-amino acid chains would exist at a concentration of 10^-338; chains of length 32 would have a concentration of less than 1 molecule per universe); and the problems of L-amino and R-amino acids in a mix producing non-funtional proteins; and the debunking of various experiments.
Tell me what you think of the site that I found.