So your an Athiest

[FatAndFaithless]

It's so well tuned for life that only 99% of all life in history has died out!

[Redbeard The Pink]

It was covered a little bit. Just a thought, but maybe the majority of the universe is inhospitable to life to show us how rare and privileged our planet is. As for earth, it is extremely well suited for life. It has the appropriate magnetic field, the well sized and positioned moon, it has the proper atmospheric conditions, it is in the habitable zone, it is the right size, and we have the proper sun to support life, we have the gas giants to attract and absorb asteroids, and we have an abundance of water. These are just a few of the many parameters that need to be met for a planet to sustain life.

Not necessarily. Really those are just parameters that exist on this planet, so life on this planet has evolved to thrive within them. For all we know, there could be a much wider range of life-supporting planets than we think. Microscopic life can exist under very extreme conditions on Earth, so it stands to reason that it's more common in the Universe than more complex macro-lifeforms.


Maybe the Universe is so inhospitable to life because the Universe doesn't have a designer or intended purpose, and life is just something that incidentally occurs here under the right circumstances. There's really no reason why that explanation is any less plausible than yours, and it's more easily testable, so Occam's Razor demands we rule it out before moving on to "Gaud did it."


Furthermore, if you trace any specific process or event back far enough the statistics make it seem really unlikely. That's not really the best way to determine how likely life is. A better way would be to look at the elements in the Universe versus the elements used in biochemistry.


Life is based mostly on carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. Carbon can make the greatest range of compounds of just about any atom on the periodic table (making it extremely well-suited to the versatility that organic chemistry requires), and those four elements are among the most abundant in our Universe (Helium is pretty common, too, but its being inert excludes it from most chemical reactions). Taking this into consideration along with the sheer size of the Universe and number of opportunities there must be for the proper conditions to be met, it actually seems that life is inevitable, not impossible, and there's certainly no reason to believe it has to be sparked by anything intelligent.

[AAA]

It was covered a little bit. Just a thought, but maybe the majority of the universe is inhospitable to life to show us how rare and privileged our planet is. As for earth, it is extremely well suited for life. It has the appropriate magnetic field, the well sized and positioned moon, it has the proper atmospheric conditions, it is in the habitable zone, it is the right size, and we have the proper sun to support life, we have the gas giants to attract and absorb asteroids, and we have an abundance of water. These are just a few of the many parameters that need to be met for a planet to sustain life.

Not necessarily. Really those are just parameters that exist on this planet, so life on this planet has evolved to thrive within them. For all we know, there could be a much wider range of life-supporting planets than we think. Microscopic life can exist under very extreme conditions on Earth, so it stands to reason that it's more common in the Universe than more complex macro-lifeforms.


Maybe the Universe is so inhospitable to life because the Universe doesn't have a designer or intended purpose, and life is just something that incidentally occurs here under the right circumstances. There's really no reason why that explanation is any less plausible than yours, and it's more easily testable, so Occam's Razor demands we rule it out before moving on to "Gaud did it."


Furthermore, if you trace any specific process or event back far enough the statistics make it seem really unlikely. That's not really the best way to determine how likely life is. A better way would be to look at the elements in the Universe versus the elements used in biochemistry.


Life is based mostly on carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. Carbon can make the greatest range of compounds of just about any atom on the periodic table (making it extremely well-suited to the versatility that organic chemistry requires), and those four elements are among the most abundant in our Universe (Helium is pretty common, too, but its being inert excludes it from most chemical reactions). Taking this into consideration along with the sheer size of the Universe and number of opportunities there must be for the proper conditions to be met, it actually seems that life is inevitable, not impossible, and there's certainly no reason to believe it has to be sparked by anything intelligent.

Well actually those are parameters that are believed to be necessary for life to evolve on a specific planet. So without them you don't get life. You seem to be under the impression that life will inevitably arise no matter what the conditions. I disagree.

Similar to that, the universe permits conditions for life that are unlikely. For example, the universe is expanding at a certain rate, but gravity is also pulling things back at a certain intensity. These two are counteracted in such a fine balance. Changing one even the slightest bit inhibits the formation of planets. There doesn't seem to be any reason that these two are balanced this way, but they are. It looks like some intelligence set these values the way they are.

---

Not necessarily. Really those are just parameters that exist on this planet, so life on this planet has evolved to thrive within them. For all we know, there could be a much wider range of life-supporting planets than we think. Microscopic life can exist under very extreme conditions on Earth, so it stands to reason that it's more common in the Universe than more complex macro-lifeforms.


Maybe the Universe is so inhospitable to life because the Universe doesn't have a designer or intended purpose, and life is just something that incidentally occurs here under the right circumstances. There's really no reason why that explanation is any less plausible than yours, and it's more easily testable, so Occam's Razor demands we rule it out before moving on to "Gaud did it."


Furthermore, if you trace any specific process or event back far enough the statistics make it seem really unlikely. That's not really the best way to determine how likely life is. A better way would be to look at the elements in the Universe versus the elements used in biochemistry.


Life is based mostly on carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. Carbon can make the greatest range of compounds of just about any atom on the periodic table (making it extremely well-suited to the versatility that organic chemistry requires), and those four elements are among the most abundant in our Universe (Helium is pretty common, too, but its being inert excludes it from most chemical reactions). Taking this into consideration along with the sheer size of the Universe and number of opportunities there must be for the proper conditions to be met, it actually seems that life is inevitable, not impossible, and there's certainly no reason to believe it has to be sparked by anything intelligent.

Well actually those are parameters that are believed to be necessary for life to evolve on a specific planet. So without them you don't get life. You seem to be under the impression that life will inevitably arise no matter what the conditions. I disagree.

Similar to that, the universe permits conditions for life that are unlikely. For example, the universe is expanding at a certain rate, but gravity is also pulling things back at a certain intensity. These two are counteracted in such a fine balance. Changing one even the slightest bit inhibits the formation of planets. There doesn't seem to be any reason that these two are balanced this way, but they are. It looks like some intelligence set these values the way they are.

Also carbon does react uniquely, but there is no chemical reason that they should formulate into complex sequences.

---

Cancer rates are expected to increase by 75 % by 2030, and by 90% in developed countries.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/246061.php

Cancer arises when mutations in the DNA that codes for enzymes that regulate the cell cycle accumulate. When you lose the ability to regulate the cell cycle, you get cancer cells. As mutations accumulate, so do diseases. This is just one example.

Hi,

Sorry, but Correlation =/= Causation.

The above link is not evidence but a commentary. I want hard scientific data from relevent Oncological or immunology journals please to back up your claims. The above link does not support or verify the ones you made here.
Thanks.

I guess I don't know what you want from me. Is the claim that you want me to support that diseases are becoming more prevalent as time goes on? If so, it is just a fact that there are many diseases caused by mutation in genes. Just look up genetic disorders, and realize that they arise from mutated gene sequences.

---

It's so well tuned for life that only 99% of all life in history has died out.

 Maybe a flood killed them?

[Cyberman]

Seriously?

[God of Mr. Hanky]

God of Mr. Hanky
[quote pid='1133127' dateline='1449343969']
Whether or not that uncited claim is true is not above debate, but the possibilities they imply for life under a broader range of conditions remain strong.

That you call them "extremophiles" is rather interesting, considering how life, when it first began 4 billion years ago, did so under similar conditions - the atmosphere and ocean was choked with volcanic activity and no oxygen. It was hardly extreme to these life forms, which made do with what it had available. That's what life does.

Yeah, but I don't think life could form under those conditions. It obviously can live there now, but we don't know if abiogenesis could occur there. They would need to have very rigid peptidoglycan walls to prevent the degradation of any nucleotide chains that somehow formed. These complicated cell walls require enzymes to form. They would also need metabolism that allowed them to convert the toxic chemicals around them into substances that they could use, and have a way to incorporate them into themselves. That's just the tip of the iceberg.

---

I just want to point out that the beliefs of scientists are completely irrelevant to the work that they do. Sir Isaac Newton was a practicing alchemist as well as a mathematician and physicist, but it's his work in the latter fields in which he made the greatest contribution. Scientists like everyone else have to show their work, or it doesn't mean a damn.

Agreed
[/quote]

AAA - you should understand that abiogenesis under any conditions can only produce the most simple, self-replicating strands of molecules which are far from the relative complexities of genetic material in its simplest modern form (RNA). It would therefore get through very few replication cycles with the available material which it feeds on before becoming itself consumed by a life form which is billions of years up the tree for its survival traits. So if you're holding your breath waiting to see this happen anywhere in the present natural world, don't - it can only happen where no pre-existing life which would munch it up before it gets the chance to evolve!

Stimbo - Going that far back, what people declared of themselves publicly didn't mean much - very few were secure or balsey enough to incite the ire of intolerant church officials who could and did end people's lives for challenging their ideas. Therefore, as you probably know (but AAA doesn't), many of the early scientists who were declared Christians were secretly atheist.

[Mermaid]

No I don't deny the facts, I just have a different interpretation of them. If we don't allow discussion of the scientific evidence, then we will never get closer to truth.

---

You make statements with very basic untruths such as this:

In order for evolution (molecules to man) to work, you need to actually increase the number of nucleotides, and point mutations don't do that (accept again the frameshift, which I still believe to always disrupt the protein's function).

 
So yes, you do deny the facts.

[Redbeard The Pink]

Well actually those are parameters that are believed to be necessary for life to evolve on a specific planet. So without them you don't get life. You seem to be under the impression that life will inevitably arise no matter what the conditions. I disagree.

I would also disagree with that assertion, especially since it's not what I actually said.


What I'm basically saying is that life (and whatever conditions make it possible) were/are inevitable considering the size, age, and composition of the Universe.


Furthermore, those are the conditions right now (and some of them have been that way for most of Earth's history), but it's believed that the conditions necessary for abiogenesis of microscopic lifeforms are drastically different than those we witness today in terms of atmosphere, soil content, and water content. It's entirely possible that there are many planets out there whose conditions never really improved beyond those stages, and so the only life on those planets is tiny and still swimming in soup or whatever. There are, right now, on this planet, a wide range of conditions that allow or disallow life to exist in various forms and stages, so why wouldn't there also be a reasonably wide range of life-supporting conditions found in the Universe?

Similar to that, the universe permits conditions for life that are unlikely. For example, the universe is expanding at a certain rate, but gravity is also pulling things back at a certain intensity. These two are counteracted in such a fine balance. Changing one even the slightest bit inhibits the formation of planets. There doesn't seem to be any reason that these two are balanced this way, but they are. It looks like some intelligence set these values the way they are.

I'm no physicist, but I don't think gravity is pulling against the expansion of the Universe. In fact, I'm pretty sure that both Universal expansion and gravitational fields are functions of space-time itself. Space-time is actually what's expanding when most physicists talk about Universal expansion, and the warping of space-time is what creates gravitational fields and "pushes" objects in space toward each other.

 Maybe a flood killed them?

Ok, how hard did you study biology again? Please tell me I'm not gonna have to go into all the various and sundry reasons why the Biblical Great Flood is scientifically impossible. I've done it so many times. Please.

[TheRocketSurgeon]

Sorry I took so long to reply... the moment I wrote that I'm not busy, the phone calls started. *sigh*

I'm gonna do this piecemeal, since we're getting into a lot of sub-discussion...

1. Changing one word to another is making different information, but not new. In order for evolution (molecules to man) to work, you need to actually increase the number of nucleotides, and point mutations don't do that (accept again the frameshift, which I still believe to always disrupt the protein's function). I understand that point mutations aren't always harmful, but every time I try to find examples of beneficial mutations I get something like Sickle Cell Anemia, which decreases the hemoglobin's function in normal conditions. Do you know of any beneficial mutations?

That "different information" IS new information, if it's a combination that hasn't been seen before, or seen before in that organism.

What are "normal conditions"? I know what you think you mean by it, but life evolves in a changing environment, and one which frequently adds new threats (invasive species, new diseases, climate change, etc) to which the creature must adapt. Sickle Cell allows for survival in a particular environment. However, you are correct that it is a poor example-- it's a simple example, but not necessarily the best one. You might look into the CCR5+ mutation which allows HIV patients to resist the virus by altering one of their glycoproteins on the surface of the cell so the virus can't "latch on" and invade the CD4 cells. You might look into the mutation "accident", ~5 million years ago, that led to the rise of human intelligence:

http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/2007040..._sys.shtml

2. We have already covered transposable elements in class, and I'm still not seeing how it is a creative process. It seems to again just be altering existing information. No new nucleotides are being added (unless its a retrotransposon) Your sentence example leads to an inferior sentence after the phrase gets inserted. I have trouble accepting that random nucleotide changes could lead to a sequence for a transposable element, when the odds of getting nucleotides in a functional order seem to be unlikely unless they offer immediate selective advantages (which I don't think the transposons would). Don't you think that the transposons could be seen as a design to allow antibiotic resistance to be transferred among bacteria to keep bacterial populations from being wiped out? This seems like what you would expect from a design given the important ecological role that microbial life plays.

Can you understand that ALL of these things we're discussing happen EACH time an organism reproduces, and that it occurs throughout the population? Any new mutation, even if it's just a rearranging of what's already there, adds new information to the gene pool. If you keep thinking of genetics as an individual thing rather than looking at the gene pool overall, you're going to have a hard time passing that class. Evolution often happens by combination... say, a duplication followed by a frame shift followed by a couple of point mutations, etc, and not always in the same individual, because these genes are being passed down to each generation. It is the accumulation of the changes that may suddenly do something that alters the function in a novel way, but which confers an advantage that lets the individual have more offspring, contributing more of the new gene to the population. THAT is actually what evolution is, a change over time in the gene pool, including sub-pools splitting off to form a new "direction" in the evolutionary line... a split in a branch on the tree of life. You seem to be confusing two different questions: one is "how does new DNA attach to a genome to create more places for evolution to operate upon" and the other is "how does the genome change over time to produce novel phenotypes"?

3. I just worry that changing the wording of a sentence is never going to improve the information content of that sentence.

Sure it can. Perhaps a slightly more-efficient protein, perhaps one that triggers other systems in the endocrine system that allow you to run faster than others (like Lance Armstrong's oversized heart, which allowed him to win even before he started juicing... those steroids he used were just altering what his genes already said for his system to produce, artificially, but the process can occur naturally if the genome says to do so), or one that makes you resistant to a disease that wipes out 90% of the rest of your tribe, and so on and so on.

To use a literary example, "Frankly my dear, I don't give a darn" was what the movie studios wanted Gable to say in Gone with the Wind. It's only one transposition (or shift) and one point mutation away from the version the author insisted upon, "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn", but the difference is night and day. This is even more true in DNA, where a single change can result in an entirely different amino acid, which makes a different protein chain, which folds a bit differently, and may do radically different things.

4. If the duplicate genes can be regulated, then does that mean that the promoter and promoter proximal elements  of the gene are also duplicated during the event? Also I think there might be something to the idea of irreducible complexity, because if you have a protein being "played" with by evolution, then it is only going to settle into its role as part of the molecular machine if, when by doing so,  the cell has an improved chance of survival. The cell would not have an improved chance of survival unless the new protein actually had a useful function. The protein changing from one intermediate form over time would have to have a constant use to the cell to not be selected against, right?

Not necessarily. It might "tax" a cell/organism to have genes that effectively do nothing, or which nearly-duplicate another process, but as I've already pointed out... we all have them. Life is not always 100% efficient (I'd say never). Natural Selection only operates against a gene when it confers a selective disadvantage, in terms of reproducing. If it doesn't interfere with the organism's ability to make babies (which can also make babies), but also doesn't help, then it is neutral.

When you say "being 'played' with by evolution", you have the entire concept wrong (with all due respect). Evolution doesn't do anything. It's simply something we observe, after-the-fact. The only thing actually happening is the biochemistry of reproducing DNA. The genes don't even care what the other genes do, unless it impacts their little part of the overall machinery, as you call it. There's no goal to evolution. It is blind and random, except as the environment and breeding challenges impact the Natural Selection process (which is entirely separate from the "adding new information" question).

In short, it works like this. Two primary things expand the diversity of the genome in a gene pool: Mutations and Recombination. Two primary things reduce it: Natural Selection and Genetic Drift.

That's it. That's really all there is to it. The genome becomes more varied, and NS trims it back into a shape that is favored by the environment because some make more babies than others. Easy-peasy. Everything else I'm hearing from you sounds like psychological projection of our own concepts onto chemicals that couldn't care less what we think they are doing, or that we think someone had to make those chemicals combine just THIS way or THAT way.

Not reality.

[AAA]

God of Mr. Hanky
[quote pid='1133127' dateline='1449343969']
Whether or not that uncited claim is true is not above debate, but the possibilities they imply for life under a broader range of conditions remain strong.

That you call them "extremophiles" is rather interesting, considering how life, when it first began 4 billion years ago, did so under similar conditions - the atmosphere and ocean was choked with volcanic activity and no oxygen. It was hardly extreme to these life forms, which made do with what it had available. That's what life does.

Yeah, but I don't think life could form under those conditions. It obviously can live there now, but we don't know if abiogenesis could occur there. They would need to have very rigid peptidoglycan walls to prevent the degradation of any nucleotide chains that somehow formed. These complicated cell walls require enzymes to form. They would also need metabolism that allowed them to convert the toxic chemicals around them into substances that they could use, and have a way to incorporate them into themselves. That's just the tip of the iceberg.

---

I just want to point out that the beliefs of scientists are completely irrelevant to the work that they do. Sir Isaac Newton was a practicing alchemist as well as a mathematician and physicist, but it's his work in the latter fields in which he made the greatest contribution. Scientists like everyone else have to show their work, or it doesn't mean a damn.

Agreed

AAA - you should understand that abiogenesis under any conditions can only produce the most simple, self-replicating strands of molecules which are far from the relative complexities of genetic material in its simplest modern form (RNA). It would therefore get through very few replication cycles with the available material which it feeds on before becoming itself consumed by a life form which is billions of years up the tree for its survival traits. So if you're holding your breath waiting to see this happen anywhere in the present natural world, don't - it can only happen where no pre-existing life which would munch it up before it gets the chance to evolve!

Stimbo - Going that far back, what people declared of themselves publicly didn't mean much - very few were secure or balsey enough to incite the ire of intolerant church officials who could and did end people's lives for challenging their ideas. Therefore, as you probably know (but AAA doesn't), many of the early scientists who were declared Christians were secretly atheist.
[/quote]
Yeah but just to be able to reproduce yourself, you have to have  a sequence with the chemical capabilities to acquire materials from the environment and incorporate them into itself. It also has to be stable enough to not be destroyed. Even "simple" molecules are not so simple when you consider what they have to be able to do.

And Isaac Newton (probably the smartest man who ever lived) was actually not even remotely atheistic. He wrote more on Christian theology than he did science. He wrote on the prophecies of Daniel, and he actually calculated the battle of Armageddon to occur somewhere around 2060. You can't say the scientists were secretly atheists when they identified as Christians. Maybe you wish they were atheists, but that doesn't make it so.

---

Well actually those are parameters that are believed to be necessary for life to evolve on a specific planet. So without them you don't get life. You seem to be under the impression that life will inevitably arise no matter what the conditions. I disagree.

I would also disagree with that assertion, especially since it's not what I actually said.


What I'm basically saying is that life (and whatever conditions make it possible) were/are inevitable considering the size, age, and composition of the Universe.


Furthermore, those are the conditions right now (and some of them have been that way for most of Earth's history), but it's believed that the conditions necessary for abiogenesis of microscopic lifeforms are drastically different than those we witness today in terms of atmosphere, soil content, and water content. It's entirely possible that there are many planets out there whose conditions never really improved beyond those stages, and so the only life on those planets is tiny and still swimming in soup or whatever. There are, right now, on this planet, a wide range of conditions that allow or disallow life to exist in various forms and stages, so why wouldn't there also be a reasonably wide range of life-supporting conditions found in the Universe?

Similar to that, the universe permits conditions for life that are unlikely. For example, the universe is expanding at a certain rate, but gravity is also pulling things back at a certain intensity. These two are counteracted in such a fine balance. Changing one even the slightest bit inhibits the formation of planets. There doesn't seem to be any reason that these two are balanced this way, but they are. It looks like some intelligence set these values the way they are.

I'm no physicist, but I don't think gravity is pulling against the expansion of the Universe. In fact, I'm pretty sure that both Universal expansion and gravitational fields are functions of space-time itself. Space-time is actually what's expanding when most physicists talk about Universal expansion, and the warping of space-time is what creates gravitational fields and "pushes" objects in space toward each other.

 Maybe a flood killed them?

Ok, how hard did you study biology again? Please tell me I'm not gonna have to go into all the various and sundry reasons why the Biblical Great Flood is scientifically impossible. I've done it so many times. Please.

Hah, the flood thing was mostly a joke. I probably shouldn't have said it cause now you won't take me seriously.

[Mermaid]

I would really love for you to make all of these confidently stated claims to your bio and genetics professors. And I would also love for you to capture this on video and post it online.