Tag: abiogenesis

^{Type
post

Author
Rob Stadler

Date
September 12, 2022

Categorized
Evolution

Tagged
abiogenesis, ATP Synthase, cellular repair, Chernobyl, Craig Venter, early Earth, energy harnessing, Eric Anderson, fermenter, fungus, God of the gaps argument, homeostasis, Long Story Short, naturalism of the gaps, obligate fermenter, origin of life, positive argument to design, proton gradient, radiation, replication, Rob Stadler, simplest viable life, Stairway to Life}

An Origin-of-Life Poser: No Short Cut to Energy-Harnessing

_{Rob Stadler

September 12, 2022

Evolution}

On today’s ID the Future, Stairway to Life co-author Rob Stadler and host Eric Anderson delve deeper into Challenge to Origin of Life: Energy Harnessing, the latest video in the Long Story Short intelligent design video series. Could the first cell have been much simpler than any current cell, making it easier for it to emerge through blind natural forces on the early Earth? Stadler and Anderson surface one big problem with that idea: in experiments to make relatively simple cells even simpler, the cells inevitably become less robust and adaptable. These simpler cells must be coddled to survive. But the first cell on earth would have been anything but coddled. It would have had no source of glucose and Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Jonathan Wells

Date
January 5, 2022

Categorized
Evolution

Tagged
abiogenesis, amino acids, borosilicate glass reactor vessel, catalyst, Charles Darwin, chemical evolution, early atmosphere, earth, Eric Anderson, geochemistry, George Gaylord Simpson, glass, Harold Urey, Icons of Evolution, Intelligent Design, James Tour, Jonathan Wells, Miller-Urey experiment, origin of life, Philip Abelson, Proteins, reducing atmosphere, silica, silicate rock, Stanley Miller, Teflon, the mystery of life’s origin, volcanic outgassing, warm little pond}

A New Flaw in the Miller-Urey Experiment, and a Few Old

_{Jonathan Wells

January 5, 2022

Evolution}

On today’s ID the Future, biologist Jonathan Wells and host Eric Anderson discuss a recently discovered problem with the famous Miller-Urey experiment, long ballyhooed in biology textbooks as dramatic experimental evidence for the naturalistic origin of life. The newly uncovered problem involves the glassware used in the experiment. It is an interesting finding, but as Wells explains, it is far from the first problem discovered with the experiment, nor the most serious one. While biology textbooks often present the 1952 experiment by Stanley Miller and Harold Urey as a key icon of evolution, even those origin-of-life researchers who hope to one day to discover a credible naturalistic scenario for the origin of the first living cell concede that the experiment Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Guillermo Gonzalez

Date
November 8, 2021

Categorized
Life Sciences

Tagged
abiogenesis, binary star systems, Casey Luskin, Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith, Guillermo Gonzalez, interstellar panspermia, interstellar transport times, Jupiter, Lord Kelvin, meteor impacts, Milky Way, moon, origin of life, panspermia, planet Earth, Svante Arrhenius, undirected panspermia}

It Came from Outer Space? Astrobiologist: Not Likely

_{Guillermo Gonzalez

November 8, 2021

Life Sciences}

On today’s ID the Future astrobiologist Guillermo Gonzalez and host Casey Luskin discuss the idea of undirected panspermia. Gonzalez explains the basic idea and what the best current evidence says about its plausibility. The occasion is his chapter on panspermia in the new anthology A Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith, co-edited by Casey Luskin, associate director of Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture. Undirected panspermia is the idea that the first life on our planet came from outer space, carried by chance processes from a faraway living planet on space dust, asteroids, or comets either from within our solar system, or from another star system to here. The idea of panspermia was inspired by the extreme difficulty of Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Rob Stadler

Date
October 25, 2021

Categorized
Evolution

Tagged
abiogenesis, amino acids, Arkansas Tech University, Biological Information, chemical evolution, degradation, entropy, Eric Anderson, homeostasis, homochirality, interfering cross-reactions, James Tour, Jim Tour, John Narcum, John Southerland, Long Story Short, Miller-Urey experiment, Murchison meteorite, origin of life, primordial soup, propaganda, relay synthesis, ribose, RNA, Rob Stadler, self-replication, simple life, Stairway to Life, synthetic organic chemistry, The Basic Building Blocks and the Origin of Life, toxic molecules, YouTube}

New Animated Video Dismantles Origin-of-Life Hype

_{Rob Stadler

October 25, 2021

Evolution}

Today’s ID the Future spotlights a new origin-of-life video showing that researchers aren’t anywhere close to creating life from non-life, despite the fact most Americans seem to believe otherwise. In the episode, host Eric Anderson interviews Stairway to Life co-author Rob Stadler, who helped create the new Long Story Short animated video. Stadler and Anderson explore how origin-of-life papers and popular media reports have misled the public, evidenced by a survey underscored by Rice University synthetic organic chemist James Tour. Then they discuss several daunting origin-of-life hurdles beyond the synthesis of key chemical building blocks. These are hurdles significant enough that each alone may doom the idea of life having once emerged from non-life spontaneously. Indeed, it is now a Read More ›

Molecule 3D illustration. Laboratory, molecules, crystal lattice. Nanotech research. Decoding genome. Virtual modeling of chemical processes. Hi-tech in medicine

^{Type
post

Author
Brian Miller

Date
September 8, 2021

Categorized
Life Sciences

Tagged
abiogenesis, Area 51, Biological Information, cell membrane, cells, Craig Venter, design inference, DNA, emergence, entropy, epicycles, genetic information, geocentrism, heliocentrism, homeostasis, information, Intelligent Design, James Tour, Jeremy England, Justin Brierley, methodological materialism, minimally complex cell, mysterious physics, nanotechnology, noise, origin of life, Paul Davies, Ptolemaic system, scientific Materialism, scientific revolutions, self-organization, self-reproducing machine, the mystery of life’s origin}

Physicist Brian Miller Talks Nanotech, Origin of Life, and Area 51

_{Brian Miller

September 8, 2021

Life Sciences}

On today’s ID the Future physicist Brian Miller and host Eric Anderson continue their exploration of a recent conversation between origin-of-life investigators Jeremy England and Paul Davies on Justin Brierley’s Unbelievable? radio show. Miller begins with a quick flyover of the many nanotechnologies essential to even to the simplest viable cell. A minimally complex cell is vastly more sophisticated than our best human nanotechnology. What about England’s insistence that real progress has been made in origin-of-life studies since the 1950s? True, Anderson says, but the progress has been principally in better understanding how the simplest cells function, and in figuring out what doesn’t work to blindly evolve life from non-life. That is, the direction of discovery has been to throw Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Brian Miller

Date
September 1, 2021

Categorized
Evolution

Tagged
abiogenesis, Biological Information, Brian Miller, early Earth, functional organization, Georgia Tech University, high energy, high order, Jeremy England, Justin Brierley, low entropy, minimally complex cell, Non-equilibrium Systems, order, origin of life, Paul Davies, Sara Walker, self-organization, the mystery of life’s origin, Unbelievable}

Dissecting an Unbelievable Conversation about Abiogenesis

_{Brian Miller

September 1, 2021

Evolution}

On today’s ID the Future physicist Brian Miller and host Eric Anderson explore a recent conversation between physicists Jeremy England and Paul Davies on Justin Brierley’s Unbelievable? radio show. Davies admitted he doesn’t want the origin of life to require divine design, while England argued that his work on non-equilibrium systems offers a promising avenue for explaining the origin of the first life in naturalistic terms. Miller and Anderson demur on both counts. They hold out hope that Davies, having recognized his philosophical bias, will eventually decide to follow the evidence wherever it leads, even if doing so has theistic implications. And as for Jeremy England’s approach, Miller says it’s fascinating work but fails to solve the origin-of-life challenge in Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Neil Thomas

Date
August 11, 2021

Categorized
Evolution

Tagged
abiogenesis, Adam Ure, agnosticism, Alexander Oparin, Andy Dougan, Atheism, Charles Darwin, Darwin’s warm little pond, Darwinism, DNA, double helix, Erasmus Darwin, Evolution, Francis Crick, Frankenstein, Harold Urey, Intelligent Design, James Watson, John Haldane, Karl August Weinhold, Louis Pasteur, Mary Shelley, Materialism, Matthew Clydesdale, Miller-Urey experiment, origin of life, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prometheus, Prometheus Unbound, Richard Dawkins, spontaneous generation, Stanley Miller, Theism, Watson and Crick}

Taking Leave of Darwin’s Warm Little Pond

_{Neil Thomas

August 11, 2021

Evolution}

Today’s ID the Future offers a sneak peek at the new book Taking Leave of Darwin: A Longtime Agnostic Discovers the Case for Design by Neil Thomas (Discovery Institute Press). Here Scotsman Andrew McDiarmid reads from a Chapter 2 segment titled “The Elusive First Step.” Much of the book is a critical examination of Darwin’s theory of biological evolution, in its original and updated forms; but here Thomas takes up Darwin’s proposal for the unguided origin of the first living cell. Thomas, like others before, points up the persistent and growing problems with a designer-free origin of life, but here he also explores some of the cultural influences that primed society to view the leap from non-life to life as Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Brian Miller

Date
July 21, 2021

Categorized
Evolution

Tagged
abiogenesis, Brownian motion, building blocks of life, cell death, chemical evolution, Dave Farina, entropy, homochirality, information problem, James Tour, mass transfer problem, Molecular Machines, origin of life, synthetic organic chemistry, the Levinthal paradox of the interactome, yeast cell}

More on James Tour’s Abiogenesis YouTube Series

_{Brian Miller

July 21, 2021

Evolution}

On today’s ID the Future, physicist Brian Miller continues his review of James Tour’s origin-of-life YouTube series. As Miller explains, Tour, a world-renowned synthetic organic chemist and professor at Rice University, was inspired to create the series when YouTuber and evolutionist Dave Farina critiqued Tour’s critique of contemporary origin-of-life claims. In reviewing Tour’s video series, Miller and host Eric Anderson praise the Tour series and discuss the Levinthal paradox of the interactome, the ridiculously long odds of blind processes assembling the first living cell, and the challenge of cell death (think Humpty Dumpty and what all the king’s men couldn’t do). Also discussed: entropy, molecular machines, the challenges that Brownian motion and homochirality pose, the presence of intelligent design in Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Eric Hedin

Date
June 30, 2021

Categorized
Life Sciences

Tagged
abiogenesis, Arthur Hobson, Boundaries of Science, crystals, entropy, generalized second law of thermodynamics, information, information content of a system, open systems, ordered systems, origin of life, primordial soup, single-celled organism, star formation}

Physicist Eric Hedin: Information, Entropy, First Life

_{Eric Hedin

June 30, 2021

Life Sciences}

On today’s ID the Future, Canceled Science author and physicist Eric Hedin talks with host Eric Anderson about the challenge the generalized second law of thermodynamics poses for purely naturalistic scenarios for the origin of the first living organism. The problem is generating the reams of exquisitely orchestrated biological information required for even the simplest self-reproducing cell, and fundamental principles of physics, Hedin argues, mitigate against chemical processes getting the job done. What about the fact that the Earth is an open system, gaining energy from the sun? Does that provide an end-run around the second law? Hedin says no and explains why, using easy-to-grasp illustrations. His recent book from Discovery Institute Press, Canceled Science: What Some Atheists Don’t Want Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Brian Miller

Date
May 24, 2021

Categorized
Evolution

Tagged
abiogenesis, Brian Miller, building blocks of life, chemical evolution, Dave Farina, Duke University, entropy, James Tour, MIT, Natural Selection, origin of life, prebiotic chemistry, Professor Dave, Rice University, Richard Dawkins, self-organization, synthetic organic chemistry, The Blind Watchmaker}

Brian Miller Distills the YouTube Debate between Dave Farina and James Tour

_{Brian Miller

May 24, 2021

Evolution}

On today’s ID the Future, host Eric Anderson and physicist Brian Miller, research director for Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, discuss a recent debate between YouTube science educator Dave Farina and Rice University synthetic organic chemist James Tour. Tour has argued that no one—not even the most elite of origin-of-life scientists–has a clue how life could have arisen through blind natural forces on the early earth. Farina created a YouTube response on his channel arguing that Tour is wrong and that origin-of-life researchers are well on their way to solving the mystery of life’s origin. Tour then responded in his own YouTube video series. Now Miller and Anderson boil it all down and argue that Tour is right Read More ›