Its funny that a discussion with a YEC, which appears to be a pointless exercise can still yield some interesting thought processes.
Of all of the issues that an Atheist (well me to be honest) faces the issue of abiogenesis was always the most difficult.
As I saw it we need, at a minimum, the simplest form of life we can imagine (RNA plus proteins) that can replicate.
The replication part is the hardest to explain.
How could something that is able to reproduce itself form in the first-place?
It implies that we have a simple structure that forms in one way (through a natural process) but then produces progeny that are formed in a different way - reproduction.
I had never been able to address that and, therefore, in the way that people do I put it to the back of mind and ignored it, whilst every so often it would rear its head and make me uncomfortable.
Yesterday, however, I saw something during the argument with Grace that didn't initially strike me as that important but now just hit me upside the head.
This was a quote that I found online:
"The components of simple viruses such as TMV, which consists of a single RNA molecule and one protein species, undergo self-assembly if they are mixed in solution. "
From http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK21523/
TMV sounds like just about the sort of thing one might expect to kick off life itself.
Self-assembly explains its first existence. What I didn't realize till this morning is that means its replicating by default:
TMV forms in solution. Exists for a while. Breaks back down to its component parts - AND THEN REFORMS just as it did the first time.
Obviously in that first population we have, for a very short period, TMV forming from components that have never been part of it but thereafter it is constantly re-using components from previous incarnations.
This solves the problem. I had been working with the idea that initial formation and subsequent reproduction were different. They are not.
Not sure this will mean anything to anyone else - but it just made my day.
Of all of the issues that an Atheist (well me to be honest) faces the issue of abiogenesis was always the most difficult.
As I saw it we need, at a minimum, the simplest form of life we can imagine (RNA plus proteins) that can replicate.
The replication part is the hardest to explain.
How could something that is able to reproduce itself form in the first-place?
It implies that we have a simple structure that forms in one way (through a natural process) but then produces progeny that are formed in a different way - reproduction.
I had never been able to address that and, therefore, in the way that people do I put it to the back of mind and ignored it, whilst every so often it would rear its head and make me uncomfortable.
Yesterday, however, I saw something during the argument with Grace that didn't initially strike me as that important but now just hit me upside the head.
This was a quote that I found online:
"The components of simple viruses such as TMV, which consists of a single RNA molecule and one protein species, undergo self-assembly if they are mixed in solution. "
From http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK21523/
TMV sounds like just about the sort of thing one might expect to kick off life itself.
Self-assembly explains its first existence. What I didn't realize till this morning is that means its replicating by default:
TMV forms in solution. Exists for a while. Breaks back down to its component parts - AND THEN REFORMS just as it did the first time.
Obviously in that first population we have, for a very short period, TMV forming from components that have never been part of it but thereafter it is constantly re-using components from previous incarnations.
This solves the problem. I had been working with the idea that initial formation and subsequent reproduction were different. They are not.
Not sure this will mean anything to anyone else - but it just made my day.
