DNA Code...Proof of a Divine Creator?

bokonon said:
Your dog died last week. Its lifeless body is chock full of "the necessary chemicals for life" -- amino acids, triglycerides, DNA, RNA, ATP, glucose, water, the works. Why doesn't your dog jump and run around? It has membrane-enclosed cells with nuclei and mitochondria by the billions, but not one of those necessary structures packed with all the necessary chemicals is at this moment alive, nor will "billions of years" spark them into life.

Inevitable? Pffft. Life is a rare gift, unique to our planet as far as we know today. I don't understand how it started. You don't understand how it started. Unless she's being perversely coy, no one on earth understands how it started. Lots of very smart people are working on an explanation, but we don't have one yet.

For you to claim that something neither you nor anyone else understands is "inevitable" seems to me to be an unsupportable leap of faith.
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I didn't "cheapen" life by saying it was inevitable. Only type of person I know that would claim abiogenisis cheapens the gift of life is a fundagelical, your not one of those are you? If you are, don't bother to reply cause I have no desire to get into a debate with a fundie with no intellect.
 
noreligion said:
Do you care to list the relative abundance of the top few elements in the universe then explain how Hydrogen and Oxygen might not ever meet. I was not talking about a specific atom, maybe you are?
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I didn't say they won't ever meet. The example I offered (a billion molecules of H, a billion molecules of O, stoppered flask, one year) was intended as an analogue of your "O and H and H, a billion years". I'm asking how many molecules of water would you expect to find in that flask. I'm saying that just because hydrogen and oxygen rub up against each other (even confined within a flask, much less diffused in interstellar space), water is not inevitable.
 
bokonon said:
I didn't say they won't ever meet. The example I offered (a billion molecules of H, a billion molecules of O, stoppered flask, one year) was intended as an analogue of your "O and H and H, a billion years". I'm asking how many molecules of water would you expect to find in that flask. I'm saying that just because hydrogen and oxygen rub up against each other (even confined within a flask, much less diffused in interstellar space), water is not inevitable.
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Your first post quoted a question I asked another poster. I also asked you when I replied, are you going to answer? If yes please do. If no, go away.

Edit: Is there a difference between O and H as I wrote them and your idiotic 'comparison' with H2 and O2?
 
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noreligion said:
I didn't "cheapen" life by saying it was inevitable. Only type of person I know that would claim abiogenisis cheapens the gift of life is a fundagelical, your not one of those are you? If you are, don't bother to reply cause I have no desire to get into a debate with a fundie with no intellect.
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Where did this straw man come from? I didn't accuse you of cheapening life, merely of misrepresenting its evitability. Maybe you were confused by my use of the term "gift" and thought it implied a giftwrapper, but I assure you I intended no such implication.

Once again, I'm saying that "the necessary chemicals" for life don't inevitably produce life, just as the necessary elements for water don't inevitably produce water. The set of conditions required go way beyond bagging up atoms and setting the timer for infinity.
 
noreligion said:
Your first post quoted a question I asked another poster. I also asked you when I replied, are you going to answer? If yes please do. If no, go away.

Edit: Is there a difference between O and H as I wrote them and your idiotic 'comparison' with H2 and O2?
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Evasion noted. The proportion of elements necessary for life is higher in your dead dog's body than it is in the universe as a whole, so the answer I've already provided is a stronger refutation of your point than the one you requested.

And yes, there's a big difference between O and H as you wrote them and H2 and O2, just as there's a big difference between H2O and H2O2.
 
bokonon said:
Once again, I'm saying that "the necessary chemicals" for life don't inevitably produce life, just as the necessary elements for water don't inevitably produce water. The set of conditions required go way beyond bagging up atoms and setting the timer for infinity.
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Um, it is that the processes are not 'inevitable' but a question of 'how likely'?

If the precursors exist in molecular clouds and then amino acids form easily, the question is not about inevitability (a real dead end) but about likelyhood.
 
Dancing David said:
Um, it is that the processes are not 'inevitable' but a question of 'how likely'?

If the precursors exist in molecular clouds and then amino acids form easily, the question is not about inevitability (a real dead end) but about likelyhood.
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Okay, and I think the evidence at this point suggests "not very likely". As far as we know today, there is only one planet in the universe upon which life arose, and on that planet it only arose once.

Amino acids "form easily" in both right-handed and left-handed versions, yet in all the organisms we know about today, only left-handed amino acids are used. This suggests to me that Hokulele's speculation that perhaps life did arise more than once, but the ancestors of today's winners ate the ancestors of yesterday's losers, may not have firm support. If life on earth had begun in several independent lines, I'd expect some of those lines would have made use of right-handed amino acids. It seems to me that that would have been a splendid survival strategy -- left-handed AA critters would derive no benefit from eating right-handed AA critters, and vice versa. To me, the fact that all the life we know on earth makes use of DNA (which has its own handedness) and strictly left-handed amino acids and left-handed glucose is strong evidence that it only happened once, even on this fine ball of water and "precursors" in the Goldilocks zone with a big stabilizing moon.

If we ever find evidence of real life on another planet, we'll know it arose more than once in the universe. So far, the spectral signatures we've been able to read don't show the unmistakeable signs of life which can be seen when looking at the earth. Or, if we find life on this planet which doesn't use DNA, or which uses right-handed glucose for fuel, or which creates proteins from right-handed amino acids, then we'll know it arose more than one time on earth.

Until then, though, it may have happened only once. In a universe as big as ours, that's pretty rare.
 
tsig said:
A dead dog is full of life.
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On earth, sure: maggots, bacteria, and fungi are hard at work mining the unfortunate beastie for nutrients.

What it isn't full of is doggie life. Even though it contains billions of doggie cells which are packed with amino acids and DNA and rhibosomes and mitochondria -- all of the essential ingredients, and all the essential structures for life to be happening -- those doggie cells are not alive. They're a handy place for things that ARE alive to refuel, but the "essentials" are not sufficient (even with a bit of UV light, or lightning strike, or magic incantations) to make a single one of those cells come alive.
 
bokonon said:
On earth, sure: maggots, bacteria, and fungi are hard at work mining the unfortunate beastie for nutrients.

What it isn't full of is doggie life. Even though it contains billions of doggie cells which are packed with amino acids and DNA and rhibosomes and mitochondria -- all of the essential ingredients, and all the essential structures for life to be happening -- those doggie cells are not alive. They're a handy place for things that ARE alive to refuel, but the "essentials" are not sufficient (even with a bit of UV light, or lightning strike, or magic incantations) to make a single one of those cells come alive.
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That's why the dog is dead. Dead dogs prove god?
 
Amino acids "form easily" in both right-handed and left-handed versions, yet in all the organisms we know about today, only left-handed amino acids are used
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Are you absolutely sure about that? And so what?
 
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John Jones said:
Are you absolutely sure about that? And so what?
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You know, I went and checked, and it turns out this (only left-handed amino acids used by earth life) is almost true, but not quite. Some bacteria use right-handed amino acids in their cell walls, which apparently does just what I speculated it would do: helps protect them from being eaten by the stuff that's keyed to the left-handed variety.

And "so what" is what I already said: if life had started multiple times independently on earth, I'd expect that SOME of those independent beginnings would have gone down the right-handed amino acid path. The fact that that's not what we observe leads me to conclude that it probably only started once, even here on this planet where the conditions are seemingly favorable. Which leads me to conclude that life is not only not "inevitable", but is quite likely unlikely.
 
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