Re: Irony

On 27/12/2024 9:36 am, RonO wrote:

On 12/16/2024 12:10 AM, MarkE wrote:

I've raised Steven Benner's "tar paradox" in a recent post; it subsequently occurred to me that the Miller-Urey experiment is, ironically, a demonstration of this (I've mentioned this in a another thread, but thought it deserved a separate post). Miller-Urey produced only unusable small/trace amounts of amino acids in a "tar" mixture:
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Breakdown of products:
* Carboxylic Acids (e.g., formic acid, acetic acid, and succinic acid): These dominated the product mix, typically making up 80-90% of the total organic compounds.
* Hydroxy Acids (e.g., lactic acid and glycolic acid): Accounted for 5-10% of the total.
* Amino Acids: Typically contributed about 1-2% of the total organic product yield.
* Other Organic Molecules: Small amounts of urea, nitriles, aldehydes, and hydrocarbons were also formed, constituting the remainder of the products.
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Relative concentrations of amino acids produced:
- Glycine: Approximately 2.1% of the total yield
- Alanine: Around 1.7%
- β-Alanine: About 0.76%
- Aspartic Acid: Approximately 0.024%
- Glutamic Acid: Around 0.051%
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 You should be aware that no one knows what the first self replicating molecules were made of.  We definitely do not know that they were linear polymers of anything that you can name.  Researchers have put up possible mineral components.  We already know that amino acids are created in space, but they are not the only components of the first self replicators.
 About the only thing that you can conclude from what what is known about the initial chemical conditions is that the Biblical scenario has been falsified.  Life was not created as depicted in the Bible.  That has been understood for a very long time.  That is why you have creationists like Denton that just believe that his designer got the ball rolling with the Big Bang and everything unfolded from there.  You still have tweekers like Behe that claim that their designer had to have something to do with the evolution of life on earth, but guys like Behe have also given up on the Biblical scenario.  There is simply no justification for the origin of life denial because no matter how it happened it would not be Biblical, so you shouldn't care how it came to be.  No matter how it comes out it would not support your other biblical beliefs.
 Ron Okimoto
 

I am aware that no one knows what the first self replicating molecules were made of. However, the only serious viable candidate for an information-bearing molecule capable of prebiotic replication is a linear sequence of nucleotides. Regardless, if RNA wasn't first, then you have the additional problem of how whatever preceded it transitioned to it. And vague speculation of "metabolism first" and "messy world" seem unconvincing.