(December 6, 2019 at 8:51 pm)Yukon_Jack Wrote: Boru, I think you’re splitting hairs concerning the definition of law.
“Scientific laws (also known as natural laws) imply a cause and effect between the observed elements and must always apply under the same conditions.”
I use it to describe the way things are always known to happen say 2+2 will always =4. Water always boils when certain conditions are met. But there is nothing that governs the order of nucleotides and that in itself lies the mystery of how these instructions came about.

John 6IX, am I in agreement with you?

There is nothing that governs the path of a lightning strike in detail. There is nothing that governs the weather in detail. There is nothing that governs which specific polymers are formed in a polymer reaction.

And yet, all of those obey the laws. It's just that the specific conditions play a larger role than, for example, the orbit of a planet, or the boiling of water.

(December 6, 2019 at 8:51 pm)Yukon_Jack Wrote: Boru, I think you’re splitting hairs concerning the definition of law.
“Scientific laws (also known as natural laws) imply a cause and effect between the observed elements and must always apply under the same conditions.”
I use it to describe the way things are always known to happen say 2+2 will always =4. Water always boils when certain conditions are met. But there is nothing that governs the order of nucleotides and that in itself lies the mystery of how these instructions came about.

John 6IX, am I in agreement with you?

I haven't really been following the discussion.

We agree perhaps only insofar as DNA, or even RNA, are not things observed to emerge naturally from the environment the way crystals or rainclouds do; they seem exclusive to living organisms, which as Brewer's video suggests, creates a type of chicken-and-egg problem. However, once DNA is in existence as is the case today, all of its attributes including its transcription to RNA with its subsequent translation into proteins, are indeed governed by a careful biochemical dance whose laws are knowable.

So in conclusion, I agree there is a mystery with its origins; but I disagree if you extend this mystery to its current structure and function.

(December 7, 2019 at 3:44 pm)John 6IX Breezy Wrote: ; they seem exclusive to living organisms, which as Brewer's video suggests, creates a type of chicken-and-egg problem.

They're not exclusive to living organisms because viruses have DNA and RNA but are not considered to be living organisms.

(December 7, 2019 at 5:24 pm)Fake Messiah Wrote: They're not exclusive to living organisms because viruses have DNA and RNA but are not considered to be living organisms.

To my understanding, viruses cannot replicate their genetic material without the aid of a living organism.

Yeah but they themselves are not considered to be alive although they have the DNA. And they might have existed before life began.

But I guess the reason many people mistakenly think that DNA and RNA just came into existence is because things that existed before are not referred/ considered to be alive and therefore it gets confusing.

What existed before were not living things but various chemical machines.

Like in this video, it is explained how first proto cells might have started existing, based on the observations of spontaneous creation of fatty accids that then automatically form a membrane which is very similar to a membrane of a living cell, which can then trap other molecules and go further in chemical evolution.





And this video by same author shows even further about the connection between those observed chemical machines and how they led to RNA

(December 5, 2019 at 7:08 pm)Yukon_Jack Wrote: Paleophye, prove what?
You show me the laws of chemistry that dictate the sequence of DNA. It’s arbitrary in the fact that no physics of nature dictate it’s order the way say gravity shapes a planet or snowflakes get their 6 sided structure.
So explain the sequence that magically coincidentally forms useful proteins

You know the rules. He who makes the wacky claim gets to back up the wacky claim. Your claim. You get to prove it.

You'll want to start by outlining these rules of chemistry. Let me know if you have trouble with entropy. It's a bit pesky.

Otherwise your argument simply boils down to 'I'm certain that something that I don't understand doesn't apply to something else that I don't understand. Thus God.'

Isn't magic wonderful?

(December 6, 2019 at 8:51 pm)Yukon_Jack Wrote: ...
But there is nothing that governs the order of nucleotides and that in itself lies the mystery of how these instructions came about.
...

Sure there is, at least according the theory of biological evolution. Perhaps you could take sufficient time to research that theory.

(December 6, 2019 at 8:51 pm)Yukon_Jack Wrote: Boru, I think you’re splitting hairs concerning the definition of law.
“Scientific laws (also known as natural laws) imply a cause and effect between the observed elements and must always apply under the same conditions.”
I use it to describe the way things are always known to happen say 2+2 will always =4. Water always boils when certain conditions are met. But there is nothing that governs the order of nucleotides and that in itself lies the mystery of how these instructions came about.

John 6IX, am I in agreement with you?

You are assuming that the 'correct' order of nucleotides was a goal. So, on order to come up with the exact order we now have, there must have been something guiding it to our current state/order.

You are so enthralled with our existence, and how amazing we are, that you are assuming we are the end result of being guided by something even more amazing. "Well, we're the top of the food chain, the most intelligent, harnessed technology, traveled to the moon, etc, aren't we great. Something even greater must have designed us".

But we are not a goal of a creator, we are the end result of massive numbers of trial and error, where only the results that helped survival made it through the filter of natural selection.

It's not like DNA and the correct order of nucleotides came directly out of the very beginnings of the process that lead to us, without a vast number of successes and failures, trial and error, etc. The steps from the most basic self replicating molecule to us are immense. And there is nothing along the way that requires magic. The laws of physics and chemistry are enough to explain it.

Here's exactly what you are doing:

When one is dealt a bridge hand of thirteen cards, the probability of being dealt that particular hand (whatever cards it is comprised of) is less than one in 600 billion. Still, it would be absurd for someone to be dealt a hand, examine it carefully, calculate that the probability of getting it is less than one in 600 billion, and then conclude that he must not have been dealt that very hand because it is so very improbable.

But you are going one step further, you are getting a perfect bridge hand, 13 cards of all the same suite, and placing special importance on it, because it was predesignated as a perfect hand by the rules of the game. But here's the fact, getting a perfect bridge hand, has no greater odds than a hand with just a bunch of random cards of all different suits. In bridge, the perfect hand has so much importance, because it is defined that way. You are doing the same thing with us.

Polymath,
In regard to your lightening strike analogy, it’s true we don’t really know where it’s going to strike , the laws of physics/nature are governing and it’s random.
The ordering of nucleotides however, must be governed phenomena because it becomes instructions that get decoded. The order represents something more than just the material it’s made from, this is profound.
however a lightning strike does not represent
anything but itself , doesn’t get decoded into a specific function nor gets error corrected.
I take it John 6IX has realized there is something unnatural at play.