Darwin re-visited

[Biochemist]

You seem to be stuck in the mindset of life naturally develops from simple to complex and that complex equals multicellular life forms. common bacteria are very complex compared to the first life forms.

Hang on here. We are (for the sake of discussion) characterizing higher phyla as "more complex". No one is picking on on bacteria. And I am a little surprised to hear you suggest that bacteria are significantly more complex than early life forms, or that they are just as evolved as humans. Isn't that a minority position? Is there evidence of evolutionary history of bacteria?

Indeed it is possible that the Earth and it's complex life is a very rare occurrence, possibly one of only a handful of planets with complex life in our galaxy. If this is true, then extinction takes on a whole new meaning and becomes a horror of much greater magnitude than we know.

Why? If we are just another example of elegant, complex chemistry, why does this matter?

[Moontanman]

I think I read you correctly. You said (and I think you are correct) that there is no evidence of other trees. My suggestion was that the lack of evidence is probably indicative that there are no other trees (as least not that lead to higher phyla). This suggests that the one successful tree was somehow favored.

 

It doesn't suggest that to me, to me it only suggests that conditions on the Earth became conductive to complex life after life was well developed. If conditions hadn't settled down to what we see then complex life would not have come about.

 

 

And I was the one that brought up the "quadrillions" point. If the early oceans were the original "breeding grounds" (if you will pardon the metaphor) for biogenetic precursors, the nucleotides would (reasonably presumably) have been broadly distributed. If we assume (for example) that there were 1000 seminal macromolecules in each milliliter of the top 30 feet of ocean (to give access to sunlight, again assuming that UV or heat was necessary) that would be approximately 3.3 x10^21 seminal molecules. "Quadrillions" in this context is pretty conservative. You are suggesting that the lateral transfer mechanism "merged all life" together. You have to admit that this is a pretty long way from a sure thing.Courtesy,

 

Transfer of information, gene based or other wise, was how working cells formed, lateral gene transfer was how life adapted to it's envionment, akin to sexual reproduction of complex life forms. Lateral gene transfer goes on today in microbes in rare cases even in complex life forms, virus's help this process.

 

Gene trasfer would have not only given those organisms able to transfer genes with each other an advantage it would have pretty much merged all life into an amalgam of traits shared more or less in some degree with all others. In an environment like the oceans numbers would have only sped up the process.

 

As organisms become more complex gene transfer was generally limited to closely related organisms. Eventually this became what we see as sexual reproduction. Even to day lateral gene transfer still occures occasionally between widely disimilar microbes, often it's how resuistence to antibiotics is passed from one type of organism to another.

 

Moon.This is a bit of a faith statement. It might go unnoticed, but there are certainly categories that we would have noticed (aberrant DNA or amino acids, for example)Agreed. If the RNA precursor model holds up, these end up being more likely as post-host refinements of the tree (e.g., mammalian viruses occurred after mammals arrived).Sure, but it is reasonable in this discussion to define "success" as developoment of higher phyla.This is certainly worthwhile conjecture, but it is certainly conjecture.

 

No faith needed, when humans only had their eyes to see we were completely unaware of the rest of the electromagnetic spectrum, once we developed ways to detect other waves then we began to see the wider world. At this time when tests are done to detect DNA in other organisms the test is indeed blind to anything other than specifically what it looks for.

 

Success is not complexity, I see no reason to assume it to be so.

[Biochemist]

In Bi's case, the absurd conclusion we are all expected to reject is that the improbable is impossible. Since however we are alive, it is possible & the argument is moot. :steering:

I lost your point, T. My argument is that you either have to accept that the one tree is significantly more likely than the others, or that there really should be lots of trees. Why is this absurd?

[Moontanman]

Hang on here. We are (for the sake of discussion) characterizing higher phyla as "more complex". No one is picking on on bacteria. And I am a little surprised to hear you suggest that bacteria are significantly more complex than early life forms, or that they are just as evolved as humans. Isn't that a minority position? Is there evidence of evolutionary history of bacteria?Why?

 

Bacteria are far more complex than he original life forms on this planet, bacteria, and I use the word loosely since there are vastly different types of bacteria. bacteria are for more complex than they need to be just to survive, bacteria have been taken apart on the gene level to reveal how much of their genome is necessary for them to survive. They are very complex organisms and did not just arise at their current level of complexity out of nothing. No it is not a minority position, modern bacteria are far more complex than the first cells.

 

 

If we are just another example of elegant, complex chemistry, why does this matter?

 

It matters because of how rare complex is, if indeed complex life was common then the deletion of one organism would be sad but not horrendous, but if complex life is indeed extremely rare then becomes all the more valuable, to some people anyway and I am one of them.

[Biochemist]

It doesn't suggest that to me, to me it only suggests that conditions on the Earth became conductive to complex life after life was well developed. If conditions hadn't settled down to what we see then complex life would not have come about.

Well then, how about a softer position. How about the notion that one tree was favored is"plausible" given the evidence, and is in contrast to your position that multiple serial environments on the planets favored serial life architectures?

Transfer of information, gene based or other wise, was how working cells formed, lateral gene transfer was how life adapted to it's envionment, akin to sexual reproduction of complex life forms. Lateral gene transfer goes on today in microbes in rare cases even in complex life forms, virus's help this process.

Are you saying this definitively, or that this is the reigning paradigm?

Gene transfer would have not only given those organisms able to transfer genes with each other an advantage it would have pretty much merged all life into an amalgam of traits shared more or less in some degree with all others.

I assume you are aware the gene transfer in bacteria does the opposite. It creates diversity not homogeneity.

Even to day lateral gene transfer still occures occasionally between widely disimilar microbes, often it's how resistence to antibiotics is passed from one type of organism to another.

I am pretty familiar with episomal tranfer (I am a Doctor of Pharmacy). This process does distribute some genes across a heterogeneous population, but it certainly does not move the population toward homogeneity. The mechanism you described above where life "merged" does not have a biological example that I know of. Do you?

No faith needed, when humans only had their eyes to see we were completely unaware of the rest of the electromagnetic spectrum, once we developed ways to detect other waves then we began to see the wider world. At this time when tests are done to detect DNA in other organisms the test is indeed blind to anything other than specifically what it looks for.

Hebrews 11:1 defines faith as "evidence for things unseen". This seems to be a good fit.

[Biochemist]

They are very complex organisms and did not just arise at their current level of complexity out of nothing. No it is not a minority position, modern bacteria are far more complex than the first cells.

So all of the early single cell creatures are extinct, and have been replaced by more complex entities?

It matters because of how rare complex is, if indeed complex life was common then the deletion of one organism would be sad but not horrendous, but if complex life is indeed extremely rare then becomes all the more valuable, to some people anyway and I am one of them.

Again, so what? If we are just chemicals, there are lots of other chemicals extant in the universe. And lots of other unique things. Why should we care? And how could any of this have "value"? How could people have "value" for that matter?

[Turtle]

I lost your point, T. My argument is that you either have to accept that the one tree is significantly more likely than the others, or that there really should be lots of trees. Why is this absurd?

 

Yeah; sure ya lost me. You can hold all these complex chemical arguments together, but my straightforward point is suddenly too complex. Really?. Really!!?? My point is, all your objections ultimately lie on the reducto ad absurdum and they are all cherry picked to make your god belief a perfect fit once we accept , read, "don't object to", the implied absurd conclusion that life can arise spontaneously, which is to say without your god, or creator, intelligent designer or whatever dress you're hiding it behind today.

 

:steering:

[Moontanman]

I lost your point, T. My argument is that you either have to accept that the one tree is significantly more likely than the others, or that there really should be lots of trees. Why is this absurd?

 

It's absurd because of the timing, for there to be more than one tree of complex life such life would have had to start at almost precisely the same time and been able to compete exactly the same as the other complex life. I think this is highly unlikely, the first complex life would hog all resources available to complex life and suppress the possible development of any other complex life. On top of that is the fact that complex life didn't just jump up off the ocean floor from some random bacteria. complex life developed from a certain type of microbe called a Eukaryote, if this type of organism had not developed via fusion of two or more other organisms then complex life might still be "front loaded" as you call it and waiting to be down loaded.

[Moontanman]

Well then, how about a softer position. How about the notion that one tree was favored is"plausible" given the evidence, and is in contrast to your position that multiple serial environments on the planets favored serial life architectures?

 

There is no evidence one tree was favored or even if there was more than one tree. lateral gene transfer in early microbes homogenized life before it speciated into life forms too dissimilar to gene transfer with all other organisms.

 

 

Are you saying this definitively, or that this is the reigning paradigm?

 

 

Nothing about that far back can be completely definitive but it is a very strong paradigm.

 

 

I assume you are aware the gene transfer in bacteria does the opposite. It creates diversity not homogeneity.

 

Now it does, bacteria have speciated to the extent that lateral gene transfer is no long occurring at the rate that would cause homogeneity.

 

 

I am pretty familiar with episomal tranfer (I am a Doctor of Pharmacy). This process does distribute some genes across a heterogeneous population, but it certainly does not move the population toward homogeneity. The mechanism you described above where life "merged" does not have a biological example that I know of. Do you?

 

 

Not now because it doesn't happen very often, even less so the less related different species are. At the begining lateral gene transfer was the rule rather than the exception.

 

Eukaryotes are thought to be the merger of separate organisms, things like mitochondria, chloroplasts, and other cell bits and pieces are thought to be due to the Eukaryotes ability to merge with other cells. Eukaryotes are more complex internally than archia or eubacteria.

 

 

Hebrews 11:1 defines faith as "evidence for things unseen". This seems to be a good fit.

 

No evidence unexplained is evidence of unseen things, faith is just hope with a fancy name.

[Galapagos]

Thanks for the response, Gala. I will take this one at at time.

 

1) Thanks for the nomenclature. I will use "front loading" in this post. I did not suggest that "God did it". I suggested that the evidence support that the code is front loaded.

 

And you also stated that people who think "aliens did it" would like your beliefs:

My hypothesis puts even more complexity onto the first life form, but it is probably only a several orders of magnitude greater than it was already.

I suspect the folks that are interventionists (i.e. "aliens did it") would like my hypothesis.

Without getting into what the orders of magnitude of complexity you would have to be talking about in order for genetically engineering space-traveling aliens to have existed 3.8 million years ago, the only group I can think of who are crazy enough to believe this would be the adherents of the UFO religion Raelism:

Raëlism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Raëlians believe that all life on Earth, humans included, was created scientifically by human-like extra terrestrials that are more scientifically advanced than us, called the Elohim, using DNA synthesis and genetic engineering and thus believe in intelligent design. Throughout the ages, Elohim sent different prophets: Moses, Jesus, Buddha, and many others to guide humanity and to prepare us for the future. Largely left to progress on our own, until the time of the Apocalypse/Revelation when Elohim would send their final messenger and reveal the truth for all to know. Raëlians desire to spread that message and work towards building an Embassy where we can officially welcome the Elohim back, and for the first time in human history, actually understand them for who they are, instead of worshiping them as gods as our primitive ancestors did.[5]

 

You are lying. You are very obviously a proponent of Intelligent Design.

Here is a post by you from March of 2008, for example, both claiming that ID is science(it is not, and the court systems and major scientific organizations regard it as religious pseudoscience/junk science), and discussing the work of Michael Behe:

Whether or not you weight the credibility of Michael Behe's original arguments as high, medium or low (I would put it at medium), or Dembski's mathematical assessments (I would put these slightly lower), they have credible positions.

[...]

Behe started with simple observational points that some complex structures do not seem to have practical paths for serial mutation to result in a complex endpoint. Credible antagonists have countered that some elements of his complex structures do (in fact) pre-exist in other locales and for other purposes. But the key point is that neither position is proof.

[...]

If we can leave open some of the questions about abiogenesis, we can certainly leave open some of the questions about ID. ID folks are NOT saying "God did it". All they are saying is we cannot assert (based on the fact base) that this was exclusively serial mutation.

 

That, in my opinion, is science.

 

Bio

 

 

2) Ken Miller's "refutation" (above) doesn't really refute anything. He posits a problem with "runaway mutations" that would have nothing at all to do with front loading. His refutation is essentially a non-sequitur to my position. Mutations could do whatever they do. They usually result in dysfunctional systems that expire. Let them.

Bio

 

There is no evidence that the majority of non-coding DNA is functional(from Larry Moran's blog, junk in the human genome):

Sandwalk: Theme: Genomes & Junk DNA

Junk in Your Genome

 

Transposable Elements: (44% junk)1

DNA transposons: 3%

retrotransposons: 8%

L1 LINES: 16%

other LINES: 4%

SINES: 13%

 

Pseudogenes (from protein-encoding genes): 1.2% junk

 

Ribosomal RNA genes: essential 0.05% junk 0.09%

 

Protein-encoding genes:

transcribed region: essential 1.8% junk (not included above) 7.4%

regulatory sequences: essential 0.6%

 

Repetitive DNA

α satellite DNA (centromeres)

essential 2.0%

non-essential 1.0%%

telomeres

essential (<1000 kb, insignificant)

 

Total Essential (so far) 4.5%

 

Total Junk (so far) 54%

 

1. A small percentage (<1%) of all transposable elements have acquired a function in the human genome.

 

The fact that a fugu fish requires a genome only 1/8th our size(with only 1/3 of that 1/8th functional), a species of onion requires five times as much non coding DNA as humans do, and why some species of onion have genomes ten times as large as some others implies much of it is in fact junk(according to the scientists. this is not my opinion as a hypographer).

I quote the Onion Test once more:

The onion test is a simple reality check for anyone who thinks they have come up with a universal function for non-coding DNA. Whatever your proposed function, ask yourself this question: Can I explain why an onion needs about five times more non-coding DNA for this function than a human?

 

I appreciate you confirming my main point. In fact, if I were going to preload code for a couple of kingdoms, I would probably explode the initial genome as quickly as possible, then winnow it down as phylogenation occurred. But then, I wasn't there when it happened.

 

Your picture does a better job of supporting my position that my earlier brief statement.

 

Bio

 

So your explanation for the vast variation in genome sizes(and amounts of non-coding DNA) is that if you (an intentional agent) were to Intelligently Design life, you would "front-load"(as suggested by dispenser of religious and confirmed pseudoscience, Michael Behe) , then start "winnowing down" until you reached your goal.

 

:)

Feel free to address any of the posts by T Ryan Gregory(he says hes welcoming comments, but also notes that most ID people probably aren't interested in any real science) if you still want to carry on with this:

Genomicron: An opportunity for ID to be scientific.

Genomicron: Junk DNA and ID redux.

[Moontanman]

BTW, if you really want to explore the alternate tree thing here are some possibilities.

 

Nanobe - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Nanobacterium - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Prion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

While these are only indicators of possibilities it is evident that life as we know it might have some competition and how difficult it would be to detect that life.

[Galapagos]

Your own quote states that these discoveries "dampen the bang" of the explostion. The probabilistic issues with generating a new enzyme system de novo still remain. Gould was still defending PE when he passed away (2006, I believe)

 

You are both incorrect about genetic probabilities and misconstruing PE. I now quote Niles Eldridge himself, from the peer-reviewed page curated by him on Scholarpedia:

Punctuated equilibria - Scholarpedia

Curator: Dr. Bruce S. Lieberman, Department of Geology and Natural History Museum, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS

Curator: Dr. Niles Eldredge, The American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY

Punctuated equilibria - Scholarpedia

As is often typical of any new idea, punctuated equilibria sparked considerable discussion and generated significant controversy. One aspect of disagreement was the disconnect between what biologists and paleontologists meant by “rapid change.” To a paleontologist, the 5,000 to 50,000 years typical for a speciation event would seem incredibly rapid, especially due to the limits of resolution in the fossil record and in the face of millions of years of otherwise morphological stability. By contrast, to a biologist, the 5,000 to 50,000 years that Eldredge and Gould consigned to speciation events seemed like a tremendous stretch of time: more than long enough to accommodate “gradual evolutionary divergence.” Because of the disconnect between what “rapid” meant to biologists and paleontologists, some biologists were inclined to view punctuated equilibria as necessitating effectively instantaneous evolutionary change (which was incorrect). Also, and in a related vein, Eldredge and Gould (1972) and Gould and Eldredge (1977) were careful to stipulate that only relatively small morphological differences separated closely related species, and in particular that different species were not separated by unbridgeable evolutionary gaps; however, there was also confusion and controversy on this point as well.

 

More from Larry Moran:

Sandwalk: Macromutations and Punctuated Equilibria

 

What kind of changes are we talking about here? Very small changes. So small, in fact, that it often takes an expert to recognize them in the fossil record. We're talking about the differences between snails in the same genus, or different species of trilobites, or changes in the surface marking of diatoms. We aren't talking about saltations when we look at punctuated equilibria patterns. People who think that the normal pattern of punctuated equilibria represent big leaps in evolution are confusing two different aspects of evolution.

 

And T R Gregory:

Genomicron: Punctuated equilibria is not saltationism.

Gould did maintain an interest in macromutations in his discussion of development in the 1970s and 80s, but this was separate from punk eek. Linking them just because the same author discussed them would be like calling natural selection a Lamarckian theory because Darwin considered the inheritance of acquired characteristics in the Origin.

 

I'm not interested in your personal opinion on the fossil record. Please cite your claims with references to the work of actual scientists.

 

My comments were on your misconstruing of the Cambrian, yet you responded with more confusion about PE and the work of SJ Gould(you were clearly misrepresenting him).

This is still much more well supported than anything you have posted:

Cambrian explosion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The fossil record as Darwin knew it seemed to suggest that the major metazoan groups appeared in a few million years of the early to mid-Cambrian, and even in the 1980s this still appeared to be the case.[12][13]

 

However, evidence of Precambrian metazoa is gradually accumulating. If the Ediacaran Kimberella was a mollusc-like protostome (one of the two main groups of coelomates),[56][17] the protostome and deuterostome lineages must have split significantly before 550 million years ago (deuterostomes are the other main group of coelomates).[74] Even if it is not a protostome, it is widely accepted as a bilaterian.[74][60] Since fossils of rather modern-looking Cnidarians (jellyfish-like organisms) have been found in the Doushantuo lagerstätte, the Cnidarian and bilaterian lineages must have diverged well over 580 million years ago.[74]

 

Trace fossils[54] and predatory borings in Cloudina shells provide further evidence of Ediacaran animals.[64] Some fossils from the Doushantuo formation have been interpreted as embryos and one (Vernanimalcula) as a bilaterian coelomate, although these interpretations are not universally accepted.[45][46][75] Earlier still, predatory pressure has acted on stromatolites and acritarchs since around 1,250 million years ago.[41]

 

The presence of Precambrian animals somewhat dampens the "bang" of the explosion: not only was the appearance of animals gradual, but their evolutionary radiation ("diversification") may also not have been as rapid as once thought. Indeed, statistical analysis shows that the Cambrian explosion was no faster than any of the other radiations in animals' history.[4]

 

There is little doubt that disparity – that is, the range of different organism "designs" or "ways of life" – rose sharply in the early Cambrian.[5] However recent research has overthrown the once-popular idea that disparity was exceptionally high throughout the Cambrian, before subsequently decreasing.[76] In fact, disparity remains relatively low throughout the Cambrian, with modern levels of disparity only attained after the early Ordovician radiation.[5]

 

The diversity of many Cambrian assemblages is similar to today's.[77][71]

The same goes for your personal version of PE. You are either being purposefully deceptive, or are just simply ignorant and mistaken.

[modest]

Hebrews 11:1 defines faith as "evidence for things unseen". This seems to be a good fit.

 

:hihi: Lethargic Sundays... :)

 

I don't suppose you gave half a definition in your quote up there. Maybe the half definition goes well with the half argument and the half "theory" it half supports? Probably so, but I'm sure the point is lost on you, so... I'll be direct...

 

Faith is the "substance of things hoped for" (Heb. 11.1), and that's the problem BioChem. The only support you have for this preposterous front loading assertion is "hope". You've described an intelligence (like a program) that exists in, apparently, every cell on earth. This program has the ability to create from scratch every species in existence, making it god-like in power and complexity—and yet, nobody has ever found evidence that it exists. No evidence. All you have is a hope that it's there, hope that somebody put it there, and hope that it means what you hope it means.

 

Yes, I think you could not have picked a better verse to describe what's wrong here. Hope and faith are not evidence, and neither can support a hypothesis.

 

~modest

[Galapagos]

I am pretty familiar with episomal tranfer (I am a Doctor of Pharmacy). This process does distribute some genes across a heterogeneous population, but it certainly does not move the population toward homogeneity.

 

Excellent coverage on this from Carl Zimmer over at The Loom:

 

Festooning The Tree Of Life | The Loom | Discover Magazine

Bacteria and other single-celled microbes make up much more of life’s genetic diversity, and they were around for three billion years before animals showed up for the party. So much of the history of life may not fit the tree metaphor very well any more. No longer can we assume that the genes in a species all have the same history. Some of them may have leaped from species to species.

 

So how should we picture the history of life then? The newest assault on this tough question just came out in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences. Tal Dagan, a biologist at the University of Dusseldorf, and her colleagues have festooned the tree of life with lateral gene transfer. They analyzed 539,723 genes from the completely sequenced genomes of 181 species of microbes. To begin making their new picture of evoluiton, they drew a tree showing how those 181 species are related. They used a gene that doesn’t seem to have been traded around much, and which therefore reflects the common descent of the microbes.

[...]

Analyzing this tree bush mangrove thicket Gordian knot, Dagan and her colleagues found a fascinating interplay between vertical and lateral gene transfer. If you look at any one of the 181 genomes, 81% on average of its genes experienced lateral gene transfer at some point in its history. So clearly lateral gene transfer is rampant. But once genes made the jump, they tended not to make another one–in fact, Dagan and her colleagues conclude that most became trapped in vertical descent.

 

This new picture is a far cry from Darwin’s sketch, and thank goodness for that. A science that doesn’t move forward for 150 years isn’t much of a science at all. But we may need some new metaphors to help us catch up with it.

 

Click to view excellent images from the study in the above post.

 

The image in this post is more interesting(imo) as it contains a bit more content:

Tangling the Tree | The Loom | Discover Magazine

This picture is a splendid representation of this debate. Scientists at the European Bioinformatics Institute created it by comparing 184 microbes. The scientists first identified genes that the microbes all inherited from a common ancestor that they then passed down in conventional parent-to-offspring fashion. By comparing their different sequences, the scientists were able to draw a conventional tree of the sort Darwin had in mind. Next, they scanned the genomes of these microbes for jumping genes. They drew the jumpers as vines from one branch to the next. They then produced this three-dimensional picture.

 

As you can see, the branches rise from a common ancestor, but they are enmeshed in vines. What’s particularly fascinating about it is the way in which the vines connect the branches. It is not a random mesh. Instead, a few species are like hubs, with spokes radiating out to the other species. This is the same pattern that turns up in many networks in life, from the genes that interact in a cell to the nodes of the Internet. These hubs can bring a vast number of nodes into close contact. It’s why you can play Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. In the microbial world, this network allows genes to move quickly through the tree of life, whether those genes provide resistance to antibiotics or allow microbes to cope with some other change in the environment. The Kevin Bacons of the microbial world, at least in the current study, seem to be species that live in habitats where they may come in intimate contact with other species, such as in plant roots. They then act as gene banks from which other species can make withdrawals.

 

Also, I didn't directly link to this in my previous posts, but to anyone who hasn't seen it here is a link to the relevant court rulings on Intelligent Design from Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District.

Also, recently Ken Miller guest blogged over at The Loom further debunking Intelligent Design. Probably of interest to anyone following this thread:

 

Smoke and Mirrors, Whales and Lampreys: A Guest Post by Ken Miller | The Loom | Discover Magazine

 

Ken Miller’s Guest Post, Part Two | The Loom | Discover Magazine

 

Ken Miller’s Final Guest Post: Looking Forward | The Loom | Discover Magazine

[Moontanman]

Great post dude, way to cut to the chase, I'd rep you if I could.

[HydrogenBond]

I keep coming back to an energy balance because it defines what is possible and/or what is most likely. For example, making the first proteins is postulated using clays. The clay lowers the activation energy hill, so the reactions can move forward. Without the clays, the activation energy hill is much higher, even though both mechanisms end at the same final state in terms of a protein energy hill.

 

Even replicators can only move forward if there is sufficient energy to climb an energy hill. This can occur either with an external energy source or a catalytic mechanism that lowers the height of the activation energy hill. This sets a constraint of what is possible and/or what would need to happen.

 

If we compare a perfect genetic base pair, to one with a defect due to improper base pairing, the final states exist at two different energy levels, with the defect existing at slightly higher energy. It has potential energy. Genetic defects begin with potential energy. The goal then becomes how to lower this. The result should be predictable since only certain paths reach the bottom of the energy hill. There are also others paths, that lower the potential but these end up with extra potential. It is possible all will occur, but the data we collect millions of years later reflect movement to the bottom of the energy hill.

An example is exploding a mixture of H2 and O2, there may be a bunch of random radicals during the explosion, but lowest energy is defined as H2O. That is the goal of all the random diversity.

[Biochemist]

Yeah; sure ya lost me. You can hold all these complex chemical arguments together, but my straightforward point is suddenly too complex. Really?. Really!!?? My point is, all your objections ultimately lie on the reducto ad absurdum and they are all cherry picked to make your god belief a perfect fit once we accept , read, "don't object to", the implied absurd conclusion that life can arise spontaneously, which is to say without your god, or creator, intelligent designer or whatever dress you're hiding it behind today.

I don't think I cherry picked anything. I took the same complete data set you are using, and viewed it differently.

 

Again, I do not attempt to support a divine-intervention model. I just allow for it. Nothing I asserted above required divine intervention.

 

And I NEVER asserted that life could arise spontaneously. I said I did not know how it happened.