Here is further evidence that OoL research is really only at base camp,
if that. Excitement and optimism over reported progress needs to be
tempered thus:

"Explaining isolated steps on the road from simple chemicals to complex
living organisms is not enough. Looking at the big picture could help to
bridge rifts in this fractured research field."
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00544-4

Furthermore:

"The origin of life is really an extended continuum from the simplest
prebiotic chemistry to the first reproducing cells, with molecular
machines encoded by genes — machines such as ribosomes, the
protein-building factories found in all cells. Most scientists agree
that these nanomachines are a product of selection — but selection for
what, where and how? There is no consensus about what to look for, or
where. Nor is there even agreement on whether all life must be
carbon-based — although all known life on Earth is. Did meteorites
deliver cells or organic material from outer space? Did life start on
Earth in the hot waters of hydrothermal systems on land or in deep seas?"
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00544-4

This accords with commentary by Bruce Damer:

“[OoL research has] been mainly focused on individual solution chemistry
experiments where they want to show polymerization over here, or they
want to show metabolism over here, and Dave and I believe that it's time
for the field to go from incremental progress to substantial progress.
So, these are the four points we've come up with to make substantial
progress in the origin of life, and the first one is to employ something
called system chemistry, having sufficient complexity so instead of one
experiment say about proteins, now you have an experiment about the
encapsulation of proteins for example, and informational molecules built
from nucleotides in an environment that would say be like an analog of
the early Earth, build a complex experiment. Something we're calling
sufficient complexity, and all of these experiments have to move the
reactions away from equilibrium. And what do we mean by that? Well, in
in your high school chemistry experiments, something starts foaming
something changes color and then the experiment winds down and stops.
Well, life didn't get started that way. Life got started by a continuous
run-up of complexity and building upon in a sense nature as a ratchet.
So we have to figure out how to build experiments that move will move
away from equilibrium…”
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/HMw_ZoXIIOc/m/nb1u4MD6AAAJ

Is this state of affairs due to legitimate factors such as the field's
inherent complexity, timescales, interdisciplinary dependencies, etc? Or
is it increasingly pointing to the possibility that the formation of
chemical assemblies capable of Darwinian evolution is not possible
natural physico-chemical processes? Time may tell.

If nothing else, here is a filter through which to assess the next
breathless OoL breakthrough announcement.

On 3/1/2024 7:13 PM, MarkE wrote:
> Here is further evidence that OoL research is really only at base camp,
> if that. Excitement and optimism over reported progress needs to be
> tempered thus:
>
> "Explaining isolated steps on the road from simple chemicals to complex
> living organisms is not enough. Looking at the big picture could help to
> bridge rifts in this fractured research field."
> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00544-4

All You and Tour can do is wallow in denial. Both of you understand
that there isn't any creation science that you would want to accomplish.
The designer responsible for the origin of life 3.8 billion years ago
under the conditions that existed at that time is not the Biblical
designer. Tour even claims that he doesn't know how to do any
intelligent design creation science. It is his way to continue to
wallow in denial when he knows that he doesn't want to understand the
answers that he would get if he actually was able to do the creation
science.

There are ID perps that can deal with the reality of nature like Denton
and Behe, but YEC ID perps like Nelson never could. About the last
thing that Nelson would have wanted to occur would have been for Behe to
demonstrate that some intelligent designer was responsible for creating
the flagellum from what existed among micro organisms over a billion
years ago. For Nelson there never has been a billion years ago to worry
about, and is likely the reason that Nelson has always been the one that
kept claiming that the ID perps didn't have any ID science, yet, but
that they were all working on creating some legitimate ID science.
Nelson would have likely quit the ID scam if Meyer had ever been able to
demonstrate that some designer was responsible for designing all the
lifeforms that emerged within a 25 million year period over half a
billion years ago for the Cambrian explosion.

The origin of life science is among the weakest of scientific efforts,
and is only expected to figure out the most likely scenario for the
origin of life on this planet. They will likely never be able to
determine if life originated in some less likely scenario. This fact
dosen't matter for Biblical creationists because there really are no
Biblically relevant scenarios that could have occurred in this reality.

You just have to go to the Reason To Believe web site where they admit
that the origin of life over 3 billion years ago is not mentioned in the
Bible. They try to fit reality into some type of Biblical
interpretation, but they can't do it. Once they have to claim the
obvious about the origin of life, the subsequent evolution of that life
on earth is never going to fit into what was written in the Bible. They
try to do it, but even though they admit that there is a lot not
mentioned in the Bible they still want to keep the order in which life
forms were Biblically created. They want land plants to be created
before sea creatures, sea creatures before land animals, but that isn't
what happened.

Origin of life denial that you are indulging in is never going to make
reality fit into Biblical interpretation. Origin of life denial does
nothing to resolve the issue that the Bible has with how life evolved on
this planet. It doesn't matter if a designer was responsible for the
subsequent evolution of life on this planet. That designer just is not
Biblical.

Really, Origin of life denial does nothing to resolve your
anti-evolution beliefs because all the subsequent evolution of life on
this planet does not reflect the Biblical creation mythology.

You just have to go to Reason to Believe and see what they claim about
whale evolution to understand that lame denial is never going to
accomplish what you want to accomplish. For some aspect of the Reason
To Believe "literal" interpretation they have to have whales created
among the first sea creatures and before the whale's land mammal
ancestors. You have an ID perp like Sternberg spending years on laying
out the gaps in the whale fossil record, clearly demonstrating that land
mammals existed long before whales existed. Sternberg is trying to
claim that his designer is responsible for filling his gaps, but the
Reason to Believe IDiots have to deny reality in order to fit whales
into their creation scenario. The designer that fills Sternberg's gap
denial isn't the Reason to Believe's Biblical designer. The designer of
life on this planet isn't your Biblical designer either because you are
actually in denial of the subsequent evolution of life on this planet.
The designer responsible for the origin of life 3.8 billion years ago is
also responsible for the Biblically incompatible order of creation of
the various lifeforms on this planet over the subsequent billions of years.

The Designer of the Top Six best evidences for IDiocy is not the
Biblical designer. That is why all the other IDiots quit the ID scam.
There never was any ID science that they ever wanted to accomplish. You
do not want to believe in the designer of the origin of life on this
planet, so wallowing in denial isn't going to do you any good. Instead
of giving up on the god-of-the-gaps creationist denial you continue to
plod forward with no hope of getting anywhere that you want to go.

Just tell us what your Biblical designer did after creating life 3.8
billion years ago. Denton is pretty much a deist and just claims that
his designer could have been responsible for the Big Bang, and the rest
of it could have unfolded into what we have today over billions of
years. Behe claims that after the creation of life his designer tweeked
lifeforms every once in a while to get us to where we are today.
Neither Denton nor Behe cares about the inconsistencies with Biblical
interpretations that exist for ID perps like Nelson or anti-evolution
IDiots like they have at Reason to Believe.

Ron Okimoto

>
> Furthermore:
>
> "The origin of life is really an extended continuum from the simplest
> prebiotic chemistry to the first reproducing cells, with molecular
> machines encoded by genes — machines such as ribosomes, the
> protein-building factories found in all cells. Most scientists agree
> that these nanomachines are a product of selection — but selection for
> what, where and how? There is no consensus about what to look for, or
> where. Nor is there even agreement on whether all life must be
> carbon-based — although all known life on Earth is. Did meteorites
> deliver cells or organic material from outer space? Did life start on
> Earth in the hot waters of hydrothermal systems on land or in deep seas?"
> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00544-4
>
> This accords with commentary by Bruce Damer:
>
> “[OoL research has] been mainly focused on individual solution chemistry
> experiments where they want to show polymerization over here, or they
> want to show metabolism over here, and Dave and I believe that it's time
> for the field to go from incremental progress to substantial progress.
> So, these are the four points we've come up with to make substantial
> progress in the origin of life, and the first one is to employ something
> called system chemistry, having sufficient complexity so instead of one
> experiment say about proteins, now you have an experiment about the
> encapsulation of proteins for example, and informational molecules built
> from nucleotides in an environment that would say be like an analog of
> the early Earth, build a complex experiment. Something we're calling
> sufficient complexity, and all of these experiments have to move the
> reactions away from equilibrium. And what do we mean by that? Well, in
> in your high school chemistry experiments, something starts foaming
> something changes color and then the experiment winds down and stops.
> Well, life didn't get started that way. Life got started by a continuous
> run-up of complexity and building upon in a sense nature as a ratchet.
> So we have to figure out how to build experiments that move will move
> away from equilibrium…”
> https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/HMw_ZoXIIOc/m/nb1u4MD6AAAJ
>
> Is this state of affairs due to legitimate factors such as the field's
> inherent complexity, timescales, interdisciplinary dependencies, etc? Or
> is it increasingly pointing to the possibility that the formation of
> chemical assemblies capable of Darwinian evolution is not possible
> natural physico-chemical processes? Time may tell.
>
> If nothing else, here is a filter through which to assess the next
> breathless OoL breakthrough announcement.
>
>
>
>

On 02/03/2024 02:13, MarkE wrote:
> Here is further evidence that OoL research is really only at base camp,
> if that. Excitement and optimism over reported progress needs to be
> tempered thus:
>
> "Explaining isolated steps on the road from simple chemicals to complex
> living organisms is not enough. Looking at the big picture could help to
> bridge rifts in this fractured research field."
> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00544-4
>

What a good point - as Nick Lane & pals point out one can go much
further when taking life as a clue to its own origins:

"Life as a Guide to Its Own Origins"
https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-ecolsys-110421-101509

"Until recently, little of the requisite CO2 chemistry had been
demonstrated in the lab. This has changed dramatically in the last
decade; large sections of intermediary metabolism have now been
accomplished under reasonable prebiotic conditions (Muchowska et al.
2019, 2020; Preiner et al. 2020; Ralser 2018). But that is still far
from demonstrating flux through the entire network."

> Furthermore:
>
> "The origin of life is really an extended continuum from the simplest
> prebiotic chemistry to the first reproducing cells, with molecular
> machines encoded by genes — machines such as ribosomes, the
> protein-building factories found in all cells. Most scientists agree
> that these nanomachines are a product of selection — but selection for
> what, where and how? There is no consensus about what to look for, or
> where. Nor is there even agreement on whether all life must be
> carbon-based — although all known life on Earth is. Did meteorites
> deliver cells or organic material from outer space? Did life start on
> Earth in the hot waters of hydrothermal systems on land or in deep seas?"
> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00544-4
>

I am losing my mind, that article is by Nick Lane. That dude. When I
read "The Vital Question" I thought "that's the most quote-mineable work
on the subject of evolution I've ever read and I don't know if he's a
babe in the woods or just refusing to write defensively". I kind of
wondered from then on if I'd ever see him actually quote-mined because
honestly creationists these days don't read stuff like "The Vital
Question". So here it is then!

Hint: I don't have access so here's me putting chips down that the rest
of the article says: "it's the deep seas hydrothermal systems one and
the reason I'm pointing out the field is fractured is to tell them to
get on board already. 'Not carbon-based'? for crying out loud..."
[paraphrased]

> This accords with commentary by Bruce Damer:
>
> “[OoL research has] been mainly focused on individual solution chemistry
> experiments where they want to show polymerization over here, or they
> want to show metabolism over here, and Dave and I believe that it's time
> for the field to go from incremental progress to substantial progress.
> So, these are the four points we've come up with to make substantial
> progress in the origin of life, and the first one is to employ something
> called system chemistry, having sufficient complexity so instead of one
> experiment say about proteins, now you have an experiment about the
> encapsulation of proteins for example, and informational molecules built
> from nucleotides in an environment that would say be like an analog of
> the early Earth, build a complex experiment. Something we're calling
> sufficient complexity, and all of these experiments have to move the
> reactions away from equilibrium. And what do we mean by that? Well, in
> in your high school chemistry experiments, something starts foaming
> something changes color and then the experiment winds down and stops.
> Well, life didn't get started that way. Life got started by a continuous
> run-up of complexity and building upon in a sense nature as a ratchet.
> So we have to figure out how to build experiments that move will move
> away from equilibrium…”
> https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/HMw_ZoXIIOc/m/nb1u4MD6AAAJ
>
> Is this state of affairs due to legitimate factors such as the field's
> inherent complexity, timescales, interdisciplinary dependencies, etc? Or
> is it increasingly pointing to the possibility that the formation of
> chemical assemblies capable of Darwinian evolution is not possible
> natural physico-chemical processes? Time may tell.
Yes, it's telling "no" right now. These are very exciting articles,
they're not announcing the death knell of the field they're firing the
starting pistol.

>
> If nothing else, here is a filter through which to assess the next
> breathless OoL breakthrough announcement.
>

On 02/03/2024 02:13, MarkE wrote:
> Here is further evidence that OoL research is really only at base camp,
> if that. Excitement and optimism over reported progress needs to be
> tempered thus:
>
> "Explaining isolated steps on the road from simple chemicals to complex
> living organisms is not enough. Looking at the big picture could help to
> bridge rifts in this fractured research field."
> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00544-4
>

snip

Okay you know what I've now seen three different sources describing this
article as confirming ID/debunking OoL research and that *look* like
they read it (as in, they quote from it & claim to have read the full
thing) so I'd really like to see for myself what it says. Anybody have a
subscription to Nature & feel generous with PDFs?

On 12/04/2024 18:11, Arkalen wrote:
> On 02/03/2024 02:13, MarkE wrote:
>> Here is further evidence that OoL research is really only at base
>> camp, if that. Excitement and optimism over reported progress needs to
>> be tempered thus:
>>
>> "Explaining isolated steps on the road from simple chemicals to
>> complex living organisms is not enough. Looking at the big picture
>> could help to bridge rifts in this fractured research field."
>> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00544-4
>>
>
> snip
>
> Okay you know what I've now seen three different sources describing this
> article as confirming ID/debunking OoL research and that *look* like
> they read it (as in, they quote from it & claim to have read the full
> thing) so I'd really like to see for myself what it says. Anybody have a
> subscription to Nature & feel generous with PDFs?
>

Got my hands on the paper! (thanks mom :)) And I can confirm... that it
is hilarious. Let me give you an extremely bad-faith reading between the
lines that I am sure Nick Lane would repudiate in the most indignant terms.

First, I'll say my overall bet on the paper was wrong - it isn't telling
everyone the hydrothermal vent theory is correct and while it is asking
the field to get on with a program that program isn't quite "do the
alkaline hydrothermal vent theory". It's also, needless to say, not at
all saying OoL research is in a rut and I think my description of it
firing a starting pistol is still correct.

Now first, to reveal to you all what follows the "here are all the
issues that make abiogenesis a seemingly intractable problem" quote mine:

"None of this precludes understanding the
origin of life, but it does make competing
hypotheses hard to prove or disprove unam-
biguously. Combine that with the overarch-
ing importance of the question and it’s clear
why the field is beset with over-claims and
counter-claims, which in turn warp funding,
attention and recognition.

This context has splintered the field.
Strongly opposed viewpoints have coexisted
for decades over basic questions such as the
source of energy and carbon, the need for light
and whether selection acts on genes, chemical
networks or cells.

To understand how life might have begun,
researchers must stop cherry-picking the
most beautiful bits of data or the most appar-
ently convincing isolated steps, and explore
the implications of these deep differences in
context. Depending on the starting point, each
hypothesis has different testable predictions.
For example, if life started in a warm pond on
land, the succession of steps leading from
prebiotic chemistry to cells with genes is sur-
prisingly different from those that must be
posited if the first cells emerged in deep-sea
hydrothermal vents.

Building coherent frameworks — in which
all the steps in the continuum fit together — is
essential to making real progress."

=> Hmm, I wonder what parts of the field have been highlighting
beautiful bits of data and convincing isolated steps, and who's been
building a coherent framework in which all the steps in the continuum
fit together.

"To see why,
here we highlight two of the most prominent
frameworks, which propose radically distinct
environments for the origin of life."

=> Oh how uncharitable of me! There are two such competing frameworks
equal in dignity, fair enough. So what's the first one?

"Prebiotic soup"

=> Nicholas Herbert Lane (not his real name) I have watched your talks I
know what you think of "soup".

"This chemistry can produce relevant
products, such as the nucleotide building
blocks of genes, in high yields — although dif-
ferent reactions occur in distinct environments,
ranging from laboratory equivalents of the
atmosphere to geothermal ponds and streams."

"Meteorite impacts might be one source, but there is
little agreement about that among geologists."

"Nor does this approach explain just how these
“reservoirs of material ... come to life when
conditions change”"

"The problems are that there is
little evidence that RNA can catalyse many of
the reactions attributed to it (such as those
required for metabolism)"

"copying ‘naked’
RNA (that is not enclosed in compartments
such as cells) favours the RNA strands that rep-
licate the fastest. Far from building complex-
ity, these tend to get smaller and simpler over
time."

"Worse, by regularly drying everything
out, wet–dry cycles keep forming random
groupings of RNA (in effect, randomized
genomes). The best combinations, which hap-
pen to encode multiple useful catalysts, are
immediately lost again by re-randomization
in the next generation, precluding the ‘verti-
cal inheritance’ that is needed for evolution
to build novelty."

" Evolution would therefore need
to replace each and every step in metabolism,
and there is no evidence that such a wholesale
replacement is possible."

"Can genes that encode
multiple metabolic pathways have arisen at
once? The odds against this are so great that
the astrophysicist Fred Hoyle once compared
it to a tornado blowing through a junkyard and
assembling a jumbo jet."

=> Wow that's a lot of pretty severe problems you point out there Nick
(and Joana, sorry for erasing you like that)

"On balance, we would say that prebiotic
chemistry starting with cyanide can produce
the building blocks of life, but most of the
downstream steps predicted by this frame-
work remain problematic"

=> Hmm, sounds like that would be an issue for a coherent framework in
which all the steps in the continuum fit together

Okay now "Hydrothermal systems":

"There are plenty of prob-
lems here, too, but they differ from those in
the prebiotic soup framework."

=> I see, different but equal in dignity, of course of course

"The first problem is that H2 and CO2 are
not particularly reactive"

=> Nickleby Tiberius Lane did you not solve that problem? Let me check
your publication page hmmm "CO2 reduction driven by a pH gradient"
Hudson et al 2020, surely you're aware of it you're fifth author after all

"Research in the past few years shows
that these conditions can drive the synthesis
of carboxylic acids and long-chain fatty acids,
which can self-assemble into cell-like struc-
tures bounded by lipid bilayer membranes."

=> Oh yeah you know it does

"But many chemists are troubled by the
idea that, in the absence of enzymes to serve
as catalysts, hydrothermal flow could drive
scores of reactions through a network that
prefigures metabolism, from CO2 right up to
nucleotides"

=> LOL don't you love how the previous section presented issues as "This
is an issue" but this section is all "Many chemists [that aren't us] are
troubled..."

"The chemist Leslie Orgel once dis-
missed this scenario as an “appeal to magic”."

=> That's a fun parallel to the previous section's quote of Hoyle. That
previous one was followed by a sentence hammering the point: "It is not
good enough to counter that evolution will find a way: a real
explanation needs to specify how.". What sentence follows this one?

"Certainly, further data are required, support-
ing or otherwise."

=> LMAO so the most empty concession possible, okay oh wait the
paragraph isn't over:

"Certainly, further data are required, support-
ing or otherwise. Multiple steps have now been
shown to occur spontaneously in core meta-
bolic pathways (such as the Krebs cycle and
amino-acid biosynthesis) without being driven
by enzymes, but this is still far from demon-
strating flux through the entire network."

=> That... Seems like a certain amount of supporting data you have
already, Joana Charybdis Xavier!

The next paragraph I just appreciate with no sarcasm whatsoever, I think
it presents a legitimate difficulty in a fair way:

"Polymerization is another stumbling block.
Nucleotides have been polymerized in water
on mineral surfaces, but this raises similar
questions to those noted for wet–dry cycles
about how selection could act. If the problem
is solved by polymerizing nucleotides inside
growing protocells, mineral surfaces would
not have been available. Polymerization would
then have needed to happen in cell-like (aque-
ous gel) conditions, but without enzymes. If
serious attempts to synthesize RNA under
those conditions fail, the overall framework
would need to be modified."

=> I mean, it actually presents a number of difficulties most of which
they have hypotheses to handle (the selection aspect most notably), but
the "mineral surfaces would not have been available inside a protocell"
does seem like a real problem. A *tantalizing research problem* even, do
young, dynamic early-stage researchers or PhD students read "Nature" by
any chance?