Primordial Soup: Interview with Stanley Miller 564
An anonymous reader writes "Stanley Miller's classic 'primordial soup' experiments showed that 13 of the 21 amino acids necessary for life could be made in a glass flask. For its fifty-year commemoration, Miller is interviewed today and reflects on what Carl Sagan
called 'the single most significant step in convincing many scientists that life is likely to be abundant in the cosmos.'"
Land Sharks (Score:5, Funny)
Of course, certain products of his experiments often indicate that not all of them are necessary. These products are, of course, "intellectual property lawyers."
I tried this experiment in high school...sort of (Score:4, Interesting)
It hardly needs saying, but in a week I didn't make any amino acids I could detect. Nevertheless, I ended up getting a shockingly high mark because I'd written up every possible reason I could think of for the experiment failing: not enough time, not enough interaction between liquid and gas, not enough energy from the light, test wasn't sensitive enough, Miller had faked his results (ha!), etc. I was disappointed in the results, but pretty happy with my mark. :-)
Re:I tried this experiment in high school...sort o (Score:5, Insightful)
Education should provoke thought. Just training kids to pass tests is of no value. What you did, analysing your results and thinking about _why_ you got them shows far more 'talent' than someone who just repeated an experiment that is guaranteed to give good results.
Sigh! Rant over. It is just crushing to see very little evidence of people designing their science lessons to impart the ability to think, like the guy who wrote Clouds in a Glass of Beer [amazon.com] did.
Re:I tried this experiment in high school...sort o (Score:2)
Our wind tunnel results conducted with a full motor showed decent stability. However, with a spent motor to simulate conditions in the unpowered flight segment, they showed considerable instability in the vessel. It was, however, extremely light (designed to maximize altitude for a given
Re:I tried this experiment in high school...sort o (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I tried this experiment in high school...sort o (Score:3, Funny)
Glass is a good blocker of UV. That's why one uses quartz cuvettes to determine the UV spectra of solutions from ca. 400 down to ca. 200 nm. I suspect this is where the good high-energy UVs that might have given you some chemical reactions are.
Article Text (Score:5, Informative)
Date Wednesday, May 14 @ 00:48:06
Topic Extrasolar Life
No single experiment, according to Carl Sagan, has done more to convince scientists that life is 'likely abundant in the cosmos' than the work fifty years ago by then graduate student, Stanley Miller. This week celebrates his milestone publication, and Astrobiology Magazine interviewed him about his work and reflections today.
Primordial Recipe: Spark and Stir
by Astrobiology Magazine staffwriter
Fifty years ago on May 15, 1953, a University of Chicago graduate student, Stanley Miller, published a landmark two-page paper in Science magazine. He considered if amino acids could be made from what was known about the early Earth's atmosphere. Could the building blocks of life be cooked up?
"... some warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, light, heat, electricity etc...", Charles Darwin, on the origins of life in tidal pools
Credit:Smithsonian
Miller began his paper:
"The idea that the organic compounds that serve as the basis of life were formed when the earth had an atmosphere of methane, ammonia, water and hydrogen instead of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, oxygen and water was suggested by Oparin and has been given emphasis by Urey and Bernal. In order to test this hypothesis..."
When Miller first presented his experimental findings to a large seminar, it is reported that at one point, Enrico Fermi politely asked if it was known whether this kind of process could have actually taken place on the primitive Earth. Harold Urey, Stanley's research advisor, immediately replied, saying 'If God did not do it this way, then he missed a good bet'. The seminar ended amid the laughter and, as the attendees filed out, some congratulated Stanley on his results.
Although Miller had submitted his paper in mid-December 1952, one reviewer did not believe the results and delayed its publication until May 15th. Later Carl Sagan would do many experiments varying the chemical percentages, but described the Miller-Urey experiments as "the single most significant step in convincing many scientists that life is likely to be abundant in the cosmos."
Early Earth: Flash in a Flask
Even today, only a few definitive things are known about what the Earth might have been like four billion years ago. It is thought that the early sun radiated only 70 percent of its modern power. No free oxygen could be found in Earth's atmosphere. The rocky wasteland lacked life. Absent were viruses, bacteria, plants and animals. Even the temperature itself is uncertain, since three schools of thought today maintain that the Earth could have been alternatively frozen, temperate or steamy.
Charles Darwin imagined life springing from a temperate world, with small ponds or runoff channels. Compared to diluted chemistry in a vast ocean, repeated evaporation and refilling have possible advantages, to find just the right concentrations somewhere so that biochemistry could begin. Glaciers, volcanoes, geysers and cometary debris potentially resupplied this primordial pond with both energy and more complex organic compounds. That is a scenario requiring relatively temperate starting conditions, and more extreme possibilities are also in the mix.
If the early Earth was a cauldron of volcanic activity, then seepage of acidic gases and heating might have circulated vital compounds to the surface. These vents may have been underwater, and precursors to biochemistry like acetic acid may have become reactive in combination with carbon monoxide. Alternatively, if the early Earth lacked any greenhouse of blanketing carbon dioxide, life could still have begun in a ball of ice. When combined with water, even a thin atmosphere of organics (formaldehyde, cyanide and ammonia) can create some building blocks of life (such as the amino acid, glycine). Thawing this 'snowball Earth' could then be triggered by a chance collision with large comets or meteors.
Terrestrial options for ea
Miller's Aide (Score:2, Funny)
One fateful day, they managed to shrink the aide using a debigulator device, so he could lead their civilization. When he demanded they unshrink him, they were indeed astounded by the very notion of a re-bigulator device.
True story.
Miller-Ade (Score:3, Funny)
Pepto to the rescue (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Pepto to the rescue (Score:2)
You should have tried synthesizing some of those a-nicer acids instead. (boom-boom)
another interview (Score:5, Informative)
On a related note: exobiology vs astrobiology? which do people prefer? (The definitions are in the links)
Re:another interview (Score:2)
High School Biology Class (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember being fascinated when I first heard of the experiment. It seemed so 'important,' despite the fact that they brushed right over it and no one else in my classes understood or cared.
Of course, now I'm in college, and I can try all of these things with my own equipment.
Ah, but does he mention that his amino acids... (Score:3, Interesting)
Just like every other fairy tale: exciting, adventurous, believable, and wrong.
Re:Ah, but does he mention that his amino acids... (Score:2)
Yea, like that crazy thing about men landing on the moon.
Re:Ah, but does he mention that his amino acids... (Score:2)
Re:Ah, but does he mention that his amino acids... (Score:2, Interesting)
Aren't we now seeing some evidence that certain precursors to single cell life are formed around thermal vents on the ocean floor?
Carl Sagan aside, didn't Millers experiment rise above the level of fairy tale at the very least? Possible, but not probable, I agree, but it does have some significance in the search for an answer, at least to me as an armchair scientist.
Re:Ah, but does he mention that his amino acids... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the same thought process that causes them to say "Evolution can't possibly be true because there is a missing link between species A and species C," and then when species B is discovered, they say "Aha! Now you have even bigger problems, because there is no link between A and B, and B and C!"
Evidence please! (Score:2)
broke down as fast as they were made
What does this mean? Do you mean that they existed for zero time (impossible?), that their breakdown process lasted as long as their creation process (meaningless?), that as more amino acids were created an equal number broke down (not much of a criticism?)
Re:Evidence please! (Score:2)
What does this mean? Do you mean that they existed for zero time (impossible?), that their breakdown process lasted as long as their creation process (meaningless?), that as more amino acids were created an equal number broke down (not much of a criticism?)
My guess is that the experiment reached an equilibrium concentration of amino acids, and the creationists think that this is somehow a problem :-)
Re:Evidence please! (Score:4, Informative)
It should be no surprise at all that the mixture was racemic. The reason only Creation "scientist's" websites say anything about it is because they are the only ones that think it has any relevance.
As for breakdown, they did break down quickly, that was in the original publications of the experiment.
The "break down as quickly as they are made" is a half truth. At the gas-liquid interface, this is true. The amino acids did break down very rapidly. However, a fraction of the products became dissolved in the liquid soon after formation, and were preserved. This caused a gradual buildup of product.
Re:Evidence please! (Score:2)
I don't have any beef with religion, or with looking for unity between science and same (as a skim of some of my previous threads will bear out) but the creationists on the Web (I assume, perhaps wrongly, that they are representative of the lot) seem to be mostly just parrots of other creationists, out to justify their belief system by citing misunderstood or misrepresented science.
A coworker of mine who is nominally
Re:Ah, but does he mention that his amino acids... (Score:2)
Obviously Wrong (Score:5, Informative)
Look at you set of hands, one is racemic "left" and the other is racemic "right". You have a completely racemized mixture of hands. This does not deny you use of your left hand.
If amino acid procduction is industrial, usually you get (depending on the process) a mixture of the two racimic (D and L) formations that an amino acid can take. They are mirror images of each other.
Why is this important, well on planet Earth, almost all amino acids involed in life are of type L. (Metorites and non-living processes contribute the majority, if not all, of the D racemes discovered today)
Why only L-amino acids? Today we do not "know" with 100% certainty, but the theory is a living system, for whatever reason, started producing L-amino acids, which unbalanced the ratio. Other living systems (or perhaps the same one) which harvestd these L-amino acids survived and thrived in this L-amino acid rich environment while those that required D-amino acids may have never existed or may have died out due to competition.
Re:Ah, but does he mention that his amino acids... (Score:3, Informative)
I think you should take a look at the article. The "carefully customised" device is incredibly simple, consisting of 2 flasks, a hot plate, an electrical sparker, a water condesor, and some glass tubing. That's it. It could be further simplified to remove the heater, as all this does is to make more vapor available i
Re:It takes intelligence (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It takes intelligence (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: It takes intelligence (Score:5, Insightful)
> From what I recall (and a quick Google search), there is a big problem with Miller's experiment: the "environment" that Miller created was nothing like the environment of pre-biotic earth, becaus Miller's "atmosphere" was oxygen free, but geological evidence indicates that free oxygen has always been present on earth.
No, the existence of iron ore shows otherwise. It precipitated out of the seas when oxygen started building up in the atmosphere; in an oxydizing atmosphere there could never have been enough iron in the oceans to for the massive deposits we actually find.
BTW, I learned this a while back by spending a very little time with google. Make sure you're not getting all your "facts" from creationist Web sites.
> Also Miller had to create a "trap" to collect the amino acids being formed to protect them from breaking down again. What would the comparable "natural" trap be?
Out of my league, so I'll let someone else answer.
Though of course an obvious 'trap' is "life", e.g. if some of the AAs were incorporated into some kind of primitive self-replicator.
> Finally, the mix of both D and L aminos in Miller's soup presents a major problem. Living cells only use L amino acids. D aminos and proteins are toxic.
One hypothesis is that the earliest life formed by polymerization on a quasi-crystaline base such as clay, which could show a preference to one orientation over the other.
Another hypothesis is that both orientations were once used by life forms, but that the luck of the draw meant one crowded the other out. (You get that kind of thing in hereditary systems; a long time ago Scientific American had an interesting article about how surnames dissappear from populations over time due to differential breeding rates and essentially random factors.)
> So it seems to me that what Miller demonstrated is that creating amino acids requires an intelligent mind controlling the process.
Ignoring the problems with the claims you base that conclusion on, that is a major non sequitur. It is tantamount to saying "I rolled my car over yesterday, proving that cars can't be rolled over due to natural causes."
Re:Ah, but does he mention that his amino acids... (Score:2)
> Yeah, because nothing spells "truth" like an article on the internet.
At least an article on the internet can be evaluated on its merits, unlike a bold claim with no support whatsoever.
Duplicated His Results (Score:2, Funny)
If this experiment was done today.. (Score:4, Funny)
I thought all you needed was comets (Score:2)
I guess the question is to what extent did this seeding speed the development of life: would the chemistry have developed without a steady rain of complex molecules from the hea
Re:I thought all you needed was comets (Score:2)
My 2 cents (Score:2, Interesting)
The reason most of these experiments fail... (Score:2)
Why is all the 'cool stuff' 50 years old? (Score:2)
BTW, I think 451F is hot enough to "un-do" the amino acids
No soup for you! (Score:4, Funny)
How significant is this? (Score:4, Insightful)
Saying that the existance of amino acids on an early earth proves spontaneous generation is almost like saying the existance of carbon and water on a planet proves the existance of life on that planet. Inconclusive!
David Pesta
B.S. Biochemistry
Re: How significant is this? (Score:2)
> Saying that the existance of amino acids on an early earth proves spontaneous generation is almost like saying the existance of carbon and water on a planet proves the existance of life on that planet.
No ones says it "proves" anything, except that amino acids can be made from lifeless matter.
But consider how differently we view the building blocks of life now than our ancestors viewed them 500 years ago, because of experiments like this.
Re: How significant is this? (Score:3, Interesting)
> > No ones says it "proves" anything, except that amino acids can be made from lifeless matter.
> Are you sure that's all they are saying? The slashdot article said, "For its fifty-year commemoration, Miller is interviewed today and reflects on what Carl Sagan called 'the single most significant step in convincing many scientists that life is likely to be abundant in the cosmos.'" It looks like they are going much further than saying "amino acids can be made from lifeless matter.
I don't see th
Re: Agreed (Score:3, Interesting)
> It is a far leap from amino acids to life. I am still baffled by those who think that life just happens.
Most of us actually think that it happens as a result of the laws of the universe that give us interesting stuff like gravity and chemistry, which draw atoms together in large masses and do interesting things with them.
> The Earth's atmosphere today is much more hospitable to life but we still do not see amino acids coming together and organizing into complex proteins or anything resembling li
Re:Agreed (Score:5, Insightful)
This is true. and no one is saying that amino acids jumped up and formed life the second there were enough to matter. Life took time to form, a LOT of time.
I am still baffled by those who think that life just happens.
Life doesn't "just happen". It takes the right ingredients, energy and time. Possibly millions of years of time.
The Earth's atmosphere today is much more hospitable to life
No, it's not. Oxygen is a poison. Life has adapted to the presense of oxygen in the atmosphere. Oxygen activley destroys the basic building blocks of life when not protected.
but we still do not see amino acids coming together and organizing into complex proteins or anything resembling life.
And we never will on Earth. The atmosphere is all wrong for it. And we will have to wait a long time to see it. It's not like waiting for your cheese to get moldy.
This can't even be done in the laboratory.
For the reasons listed above. And creating life is a hell of a lot more complex than just creating amino acids. In the steps to creating life, this is on the same level as buying one adjustable wrench in the construction of the Empire State Building.
It is contrary to the 2nd law of thrmodynamics.
Really? How? Life is not a closed system. It requires energy from an outside source. The Sun provides the power that lets life go on.
I don't believe in spontaneous generation. The odds of it happening are beyond astronomical.
All you need is a positive non-zero probablity for something to eventually happen. We have no idea how amny times life almost formed and then died before it finally succeeded. Even with one chance in one-hundred million, if you have millions, and maybe billions of years for something to happen, it just might. And it only has to succede once.
Re:Chance has limits (Score:3, Insightful)
But life is not as random as that. What we know about the formation of organic molecules seems to show that they will form almost every time they are given the chance. Given the right ingredients (some of which we know, some we don't), the right conditions (which we are learning to be varied beyond what we ever imagined)
Re:Chance has limits (Score:3, Informative)
If your only idea of how evolution or the various theories of abiogenesis work is just "rolling the dice" then you're already tripped yourself up. The whole point to both these theories is that there are some natural MECHANISMS tha
Serious question: WHats the longest this has (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Serious question: WHats the longest this has (Score:3, Insightful)
Nah, we're actually pretty good at brutally sterilizing scientific and medical tools. As long as your equipment is designed with easy cleaning in m
Creationists... (Score:3, Funny)
Of course, Creationists don't take this theory seriously, because why would there be a glass flask on prehistoric Earth in the first place?
Ironically.... (Score:3, Funny)
Reply to several posts (Score:5, Informative)
Amino acids tend not to break down much. They are exceedingly stable once made. Those that happened to wander back into the electric current might have suffered, but the majority would have stayed safely in solution. The chemical reaction was proceeding in the gas phase; the products were sequestered in the water.
The products are racemic amino acids. Several plausible hypotheses have been put as to how it happened that the L amino acids became predominate: circular dichroism in natural radiation, preferential decompostion of D 14C labeled amino acids, etc.
We don't know all that much about the exact composition of the atmosphere at every time in the earth's history, but the fact that high-energy processes can give amino acids from simple precursors trumps all nit-picking.
The natural trap would be water. High energy events are always happening in the atmosphere (lightning, UV rays, cosmic rays). Lighting blasts convert nitrogen to nitrates. Roughly 10% of the nitrate in soil comes from nitrogen transformed by lightning, and the nitrates are trapped by water. The point to take home from the Miller experiment is that the small, high-energy intermediates formed by these processes can combine to form biologially complex building blocks.
This is just wrong. The conclusion drawn from the results of the experiment was revolutionary. It is of at least on the scale of Wohler's synthesis of urea, a biochemical, from "dead" cyanogen and ammonia.
Re:Reply to several posts (Score:5, Insightful)
The Miller experiment will go down in history as another irrational jump to conclusions based on a less-than-adequate scientific understanding to promote certain political needs in the scientific community in an attempt to prove macroevolution. I suspect that the only reason it's still promoted is political. It certainly isn't because it's good science. Decry the "nit-picking" all you wish, but the truth of the matter is that Miller's experiment, albeit revolutionary for the 1950's, is far from what modern science would ascribe as (1) reflective of the conditions of primeval earth and (2) extremely unlikely to occur even in the best of circumstances in the wild.
Re:Reply to several posts (Score:2)
I'm not qualified to pass judgment on the merits of his argument (and you provided a nice defense of it) but my experience is that the quote is a perfect description of how Miller's work is perceived in the evoluti
Before the Creationists jump into the fray.... (Score:2)
The first time I heard about this experiment (Score:3, Insightful)
Excited because I'd learned of something so seemingly important, and sadened because no one else seemed to see the importance of it.
That was also the year I saw the first images of atoms, that one where they had written the letters IBM with Xenon atoms. That was another tremendously shocking experience.
Is it just me or does the vast majority of the general population no longer see the importance of pure science? Are we so accustomed to amazing developments and incredible pieces of technology surrounding us all the time that things like these just don't impress us any more?
Seeing atoms SHOULD amazes us. Learning of the building blocks of life being created from scratch in a jar SHOULD boggle our minds. Yet so many people shrug things like this off and don't see the fundamental nature of them.
Ok, now I'm just sadened!
Miller is defunct (Score:5, Interesting)
"The most famous experiment
"But the possibility that earth once had a reducing atmosphere is questioned. A well known argument against it is the high photolability of methane and ammonia. Because a shielding layer of ozone was missing a high concentration of these gases is believed to be unlikely. Furthermore, several other results point to a neutral atmosphere of CO2 and N2. Given the fact that the atmosphere was based on an unproductive mixture of CO2 and N2 the nutritional value of the primordial ocean drops significantly.
"An alternative scenario has been propagated for several years by [Gunter] Wachterhauser. Instead of a primordial soup he favors hot minerals as the place where organic molecules were initially built as life subsequently emerged. Especially sulfur-containing minerals like pyrite are proposed to have acted as an energy source and catalyst both under the extreme conditions found in hydrothermal or volcanic vents."
Basically, primordial soup syntheses (like Miller's reactions) are out and hot rock syntheses are in. These hot rock procedures have much much much lower yields, but people are slowly figuring out how to build amino acids through them. For instance, people, headed by Wachterhauser, have figured out how to carbon fixate (condense) carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide into organic building blocks for amino acids. For instance, in early 2000, Chen and Bahnemann were able to convert CO2 and water to small organics (acetaldehyde, ethanol, acetic acid) at high pressures and temperatures. Similarly, people have figured out how to take amino acids and convert them into peptides under high temperature and pressure situations.
However, to date no one has been able to actually make an amino acid through these techniques. As a result, the proof that amino acids were delivered by comets or meteorites (true fact, this is not an x-file) and now space dust, becomes much more appealing. Once the building blocks arrived on Earth, these hot rock syntheses could have taken over.
Not Defunct (Score:3, Insightful)
The actual mechanism might not be what we thought it was then, but that is irrelevant.
Does the fact that gravity may function by means of gravatons invalidate the work of Isaac Newton?
Creationist Troll Alert (Score:2)
Wrong! You are plain wrong. Sod off back under your bridge in Arkansas, troll!
Re:Carl Sagan was missing Billions and Billions of (Score:5, Interesting)
You might want to actually provide some facts as to why Carl Sagan was wrong, rather than make an ad hominem attack. Most truly academic scientists generally take a bit more convincing than just being told that, "The guy was an asshole, so he must be wrong."
Re:Carl Sagan was missing Billions and Billions of (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Carl Sagan was missing Billions and Billions of (Score:2)
No. It's still one in a million. The odds determined here are that your number, one number out of a million choices, is randomly chosen as the winner. There are one million possibly outcomes. It doesn't matter which number you choose (multiple winners and real-world lottery bullocks like that aside).
Re:Carl Sagan was missing Billions and Billions of (Score:2)
Then you've picked the wrong numbers.
Why is this so hard to understand? There are 49x48x47x46x45x44 = 110,068,347,520 possible strings of six lottery balls. Divide by 6! because the order in which they appear doesn't matter. That's 13,983,816 possible sets of lottery numbers. You have picked one of these. Therefore, your chance of winning the lottery on any given draw is one in 13,983,8
Re:Carl Sagan was missing Billions and Billions of (Score:5, Insightful)
What? Are you suggesting that the movie Contact, which was a fun movie, but also new age UFO-cult pop drivel, led to Carl Sagan being more respected among SCIENTISTS?
Contact was BIASED? It's a work of fiction! What shortcomings of impartiality did you detect?
Most TRUELY academic scientists will tell you there seems to be "some" evidence of a creator
Well, Carl Sagan, it is true, is not as highly regarded for his own, unique, scientific contributions as one might believe watching PBS.
However, he had mountains of respect compared to anyone who pointed to anything specific and said it was evidence for the existence of a creator. It is perfectly well regarded in respected circles to quote Einstein "I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists", particularly if you are being harassed by religious nuts about your own beliefs - volunteering such sentiments in a TRUELY ACADEMIC setting is the mark of a crackpot, however.
To say that any particular observed phenomenon is evidence, however indirect or minor, of some sort of supernatural providence which exceeds our capacity to understand is the mark of a TRUELY desperate religious nut - not a TRUELY academic scientist.
Lottery = your chances in getting picked out the pool may be one in a million, but your chances of picking the right number on the right day and being that one in a million are impossible odds.
I'm a bioinformatician - you may be attempting to communicate something valid, but what you say is nonsense. If your odds of getting picked in a lotterry are one in a million, and you enter the loterry once, you have a one in a million chance of winning the loterry. If you have to enter the single, right loterry, and there are a million of them, the odds are one in a trillion (a million squared.) In any case, not "incalculable."
If you enter the loterry every day for a billion years and have a chance of winning each time, even vanishingly small odds
Furthermore, while it is true that the odds of life arising around any given star may be extremely small, even over a billion year timespan - Sagan's point remains valid, there are about a SEXTILLION (that's ten ^ 21) stars in known universe.
The reason that we don't have enough information to calculate the odds of life arising on an earth-like planet is because we don't have enough information. The one earth-like planet we observe, the Earth, has life on it, but we're here, so our single observation is hopelessly biased.
On the other hand - unless they are "TRUELY academic" - most scientists feel that life arose as a purely chemical process, from chemical laws which were the same at that time as they are today.
Now, we don't yet know all of the steps that need to occur in order for life to arise. However, even given our broad ignorance, we can conclude that you need organic monomers of some kind (assuming organic life such as ours - an entirely seperate question) is Step 1.
Whatever the probability of success of steps 2...n, the more likely you are to succeed at Step 1, the more likely the entire process is to succeed.
Stanley Miller showed that there conditions, conditions not inconceivable on a young, earthlike planet, under which the formation of these molecular monomers is highly likely.
Therefore, the entire series of steps becomes more likely. Groundbreaking work.
Not a single scientists has been able to prove 100% that life exists elsewhere, only propoganda and conjecture.
Entirely true. We may very well be alone in the universe. However, our best estimate is that we are not. Conjecture, yes, propoganda - only in so far as all scientific endeavor is propoganda against superstitious beliefs.
Re:Carl Sagan was missing Billions and Billions of (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Carl Sagan was missing Billions and Billions of (Score:4, Interesting)
Odd. I could swear that there are people who've actually won the lottery... a couple hundred in America, I wager, which puts them at just about 1 in a million.
Statistic impossibilities mean "don't plan on it happening to you," not "it'll never happen to anyone."
Re:Carl Sagan was missing Billions and Billions of (Score:2)
yep and all quite neatly explained by Lee Smolin's theory of Cosmological Natural Selection [ukscientists.com]. See his book The Life of the Universe [amazon.co.uk]. No god needed here, nor any rampant anthopocentricism, just physics and evolution. And remember kids, evolution evolved out of blind iteration.
Re:Carl Sagan was missing Billions and Billions of (Score:2)
I'm a Christian, I've moved on from this argument because it doesn't matter how we got here, what matters is that God did it and why and how we are supposed to live now. Doing otherwise puts God in a box and limits him by religion (and that IMHO is wrong).
Re:Nice troll (Score:2)
Re:Would it be possible, (Score:2)
Re:where ? (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes, and we are thoroughly enjoying the play written by your sadistic puppetmaster [erols.com].
we certainly can't give life to something dead
Yet. Once people were dying of diseases that can be easily cured today. A stopped heart can be restarted, a damaged heart can be replaced. In near future we can grow new replacement organs. All this has required a lot of research. No thanks to religions. I don't see any reason why the creation of a s
Re:where ? (Score:2)
Correction: no one has pursuaded you that God exists. I have seen more than enough evidence to convince - ie, prove - that He exists. Just because you have not yet encountered it does not mean nobody has.
Extraordinary claim is that there is no God. Ordinary claim is that there is. This is all a matter of bias - everything you say can equally be reversed against your own position, so you should be careful what a
Re:where ? (Score:2)
So if I claim that Santa Claus exists, the burden of proof is on you to disprove it?
Let me guess - your god is special.
Re:where ? (Score:2)
Re:where ? (Score:2)
No, your point is good. But as they say, it's the one who is making an extraordinary claim that needs extraordinary evidence.
Atheism makes no claims at all. It just rejects the various god-claims of others, due to lack of evidence.
Atheism is by far the minority the world over, so I consider the burden of proof with them.
You misunderstand how logical argument works. The person making the claim has to prove it. It may make you feel comfortable to believe what you think the majority believes, but this
Re:where ? (Score:2)
No thanks. At what might seem like a cop-out, I'll not engage in debates on specifics here on slashdot. It quickly deteriorates into a waste of time, and I'm sick of being called a believer in fairy tales before the idiot who's "discussing" with me understands what it is I believe.
However, if you are genuinely interested, and not just interested in a good debate, then e-mail me at tunip at tyreth.homelinux.org.
Re:where ? (Score:2)
You can't prove a negative? (Score:3, Informative)
I will refer you to this site [suny.edu], which has a handy breakdown of the scientific method for you. Note in particular the bit that says "Experiments are useful in disproving hypotheses. Hypotheses cannot be proved."
The God argument is a problem for scientists *pr
Re:where ? (Score:2)
ooh pick me, that's an easy one. Cells 'die' when they lose internal quantum coherence and are thus unable to take advantage of the inverse zeno effect. see the excellent book Quantum Evolution [amazon.co.uk] for a full discussion of this, or this specific extract from the book [geneticengineering.org].
in this particular case my sig is wrong.
Re:where ? (Score:2)
Re:Life Not So Common (Score:2)
The conclusion of your linked article:
"Believers in Christ know that the Creator of life has already been revealed through the Bible. Even those who search for a creator other than God will, in fact, have the Creator of life revealed to them in the near future, for every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God t
Re:Life Not So Common (Score:2, Insightful)
"Believers in Atheism know that evolution has already been proven by science. Even those who search for an explanation other than evolution will, in fact, die and cease to exist and their attempts to find 'God' will be futile."
With reasoning like that, some evolutionists also find it easy to dismiss evidence.
Both sides of the issue have religious components. What we need are people who can be honest about what they think when they explore the issue. I bel
Re:Life Not So Common (Score:4, Insightful)
That article could have just as easily said,
But it didn't. Evolutionists don't argue like that. They don't need to, because they have evidence. That's the point.
Re: Life Not So Common (Score:3, Insightful)
> > Why is it that Christian "logic" dictates that God is real even though you can't see Him, yet it does not follow that alien life must be real even though we can't see it?
..and leaves us wondering whether God is real in the same way, say, a brick is real.
> It doesn't say that. It says that the ways of seeing God are not always the same as the ways of seeing, say, a brick.
> Things really appear- to many people- to be designed.
And the sun appears - to almost everyone - to go around the e
Re:I love this experiment (Score:2)
See these posts:
One [slashdot.org] and two [slashdot.org].
I have defended creation
Re:I love this experiment (Score:2)
Absolutely. It is as absurd to insist that God requires a creator as it is to insist that the Universe requires one. In either case, one must accept that something can exist without being created by something else.
Re:I love this experiment (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay then, please set out the creationist position in terms we simple atheists can understand. please try and avoid circular arguments.
Re:I love this experiment (Score:3, Interesting)
Either way, if you can't tell, I don't feel like getting into a debate on specifics unless the person is willing to actually consider what I say. Som
Re: I love this experiment (Score:3, Interesting)
> If you are interested to learn, the evidence is there. I can point you to the place where the most misunderstandings occur - and that's with inheritence. Evolutionists commonly quote examples similar to Darwin's finches as proof of evolution. They do not understand that these observations are explained equally well, or better, under the creationist model.
The problem is that you can explain any observation with the creationist model, since at heart it is an appeal to magic.
At least the scientific th
Re:I love this experiment (Score:2)
Re:I love this experiment (Score:3, Interesting)
"We know there is a God because it says so in the bible, and since God wrote the bible it must be true"
A circular argument is a fallacy not because it is based on an assumption, but that the assumption is the same as the conclusion you are seeking to prove. Remember, arguments are by definition based on assumptions, that is what you are trying to prove.
Check out the Internet Infidels [infidels.org] for a great explanation of logical fallacies.
Re:I love this experiment (Score:4, Interesting)
ROTFLMAO
Evolution is one of the most established theories there is. Every test designed to disprove the theory has failed. The theory that living things evolve is just a theory, like the theory that gravity acts between two physical objects is only a theory. On the other hand the theory that an almighty creator created everything is so specious if defied reason. It's not testable, it's not falsable, it's not scientific. It's the work of cranks and crazies from thousands of years ago who had nothing else to explain what they could see. The point of science is that all theories should be debunked, and debunkable. Theories that withstand efforts to debunk them are good theories, but still only theories. Theories that make predictions when are then verified by experiment are good theories.
And this talk of 'god guided evolution' is also just a crock. I mean if your god is so amazing then why does he need to guide evolution? for sport? he's omniscient and beyond such earthly pleasures surely.
no. if you overuse mouthwash the plaque causing bacteria will evolve to eat that mouthwash. if you take antibiotics the bacteria aflicting you will evolve resistance via the very well understood mechanisms of natural selection. the list of examples that support evolutionary theories is inexhaustable. why posit the existance of a god when it's just not needed to explain things and does not add in any way to our understanding of the world.
evolution even works in software. genetic programming, genetic algorithms, evolutionary computing - does god guide these?
you can even look at evolution in non-living systems. take for example the vinyl LP. faced with 'attack' by CDs and CD players, the LP and turntables, evolved from a recording medium into a musical instrument in their own right. did god have a vested interest in the survival of LPs? is god a DJ?
Your god bats for both sides. the god the poor iraqi's were busy praying to is the same god as yours. Those guys who flew planes into the WTC - same god driving their bus too.
Re:I love this experiment (Score:3, Interesting)
Isaac Asimov had a short story about this. If an alien saw us playing pool, he'd be confused. "Why bother using that inefficient stick to poke a ball to knock the other balls into the pockets? You've got hands, why not just grab them and stuff them in the pockets?"
The proposal was that God used inefficient, roundabout means for its own amusement, like a "trick shot" in pool. The punchline was...
spoiler...
Re:I love this experiment (Score:4, Informative)
Next: I don't recall bringing up the age of the earth, but since you ask, there are many ways of measuring the age of geological structures, and thus the earth.
- radiometric dating. This method relies on the radioactive decay of an unstable type of atom (parent isotope) within the rock into another type of stable atom (daughter isotope). In a certain period of time, called the half-life, half of the parent isotopes will have decayed into daughter isotopes; in an additional, equivalent period of time, half of the remaining parent isotopes will have decayed, and so on. The length of the half-life, which can be measured, varies for different isotopes. By measuring the ratio of parent to daughter isotopes, the time that has elapsed since decay began can be calculated; this is equivalent to the age of the rock.
- fission track dating. Certain minerals in rocks contain small amounts of uranium which decay radioactively by the splitting apart of the atomic nucleus (nuclear fission). The two fission fragments produced are highly energetic and highly charged, and they produce a linear trail of radiation damage in the surrounding crystals of the rock. This trail is known as a fission track. Fission tracks can be enlarged by chemical etching until they can be observed and measured under a microscope. The number of tracks is proportional to the time since they started to accumulate, and to the amount of uranium in the rock. The amount of uranium present can be determined by irradiating the rock with neutrons to produce a second set of fission tracks. The ratio of the original tracks to the new ones gives a measure of geological age.
- amino-acid racemisation. The method relies on the fact that molecules of amino-acids, the building blocks of proteins, occur in two different forms that are mirror images of each other. These two forms are referred to as left-handed and right-handed. In living organisms, only left-handed amino acid molecules are present, but once the organism dies they slowly convert to their right handed form. Simultaneously, the right handed forms produced slowly convert back to left handed forms, until an equilibrium is reached (half left handed and half right handed), at which point the ratio remains constant. The time taken to reach equilibrium is known, so by determining the ratio of right handed to left handed forms it is possible to estimate the time elapsed since the organism died.
see the Museum of Victoria's site [vic.gov.au] for more detail. You may also like to check out the Age of the earth FAQ [talkorigins.org], or that bastion of all wisdom - google [google.com].Re: I love this experiment (Score:3, Interesting)
> Next question then. All these theories are based on the known speed of a process. How do you know this process has been operating at that speed for all of history? Eg, potassium half-life. How do you know that has always decayed at the same constant rate the last millions of years?
Because unlike the fantasy world inhabited by evolution deniers, scientists live in a world where claims have consequences. E.g., if radioactive decay rates are not constant within a very small margin, the universe would b
Re: I love this experiment (Score:3, Informative)
> Oh, you think your position is so secure. "Every test designed to disprove the theory has failed". What are you talking about? Evolution is not scientific.
All you're doing is showing the better-informed part of the public that your denial of evolution is based on complete ignorance of what it is all about.
If you understood the theory of evolution at the "read one book on it" level you would be able to make a long list of conceivable falsifying observations.
> Tell me how you know the earth is so
Re: I love this experiment (Score:4, Insightful)
> I personally take the position that it can be well shown that evolution is largely inconclusive. People can use it as a theoretical model to understand a lot of things, but I have kept my eyes on too many of the details to say it can be said true for sure.
Please list some of the details that you think cast doubt on it, along with some insightful comments that will let us know whether you're talking about something you understand instead of just quoting creationist Web sites.
> So, if evolution in its strictest sense does turn out to be false, the only alternative is creation.
non sequitur
> (Even God guided evolution can be thought of as a form of creation to a point.)
God-guided chemstry, god-guided weather, god-guided planetary orbits, and god-guided nuclear fission make a lot of sense too.
> Outlining all of this thought with exhaustive examples would be well beyond the scope of this post.
Providing supporting details is outside the scope of creationism altogether.
Re:I love this experiment (Score:2)
Re:I love this experiment (Score:3, Insightful)
Since then I have been educated, and while I believe evolution probably didn't happen exactly as we currently think it did, I think it is the
Re:I love this experiment (Score:2)
Re:I love this experiment (Score:2)
I agree that the heavens are several billion years old. The earth, however, is not. You probably think this is twisted. I assure you it is not. Read this book [amazon.com] if you want to know how.
But you need to tell me in your next post whether you are going
Re:Nice try Miller... (Score:2)