Post by rizdek on Jan 28, 2019 14:58:18 GMT
"experiments on shorter lengths of RNA chains." Did you reference these experiments? What is the significance of what you think these experiments show...that long chain molecules, such as RNA, could never form "naturally" and must only occur due to divine intervention?
" What really matters is that the chains do need to do something more constructive now. " Are you suggesting that any time an RNA chain is longer than ~40 molecules it represents a direct divine intervention tantamount to a miracle? So life in general is just one long God caused miracle, with God essentially performing untold trillions of ongoing miracles inside each animal and plant cell just to keep them alive? Is this the best God could do? Create matter/energy so poorly designed that HE has to keep anything of use going perpetually? Does he have to artificially keep stars burning and even keep water molecules together in a perpetual series of miracles everywhere on earth and throughout the universe where ever water occurs?
So you would agree that the things that happen in living cells (their strategies) are purely natural...including metabolism, cell division, breaking down protein to release nitrogen, subsequent protein formation, the kreb's cycle and genetic replication...all that is purely natural...something that goes on due to regular laws of chemistry. IOW, once life "got started" it proceeds naturally with all the myriad of complex reactions and interactions being just what chemicals do and what chemistry allows? So the chemistry of life does not require any divine intervention to keep it going and as long as the conditions are just so, the chemistry of life will proceed and support its continuance and proliferation. Furthermore, I think we could agree that the chemistry of life proceeds in a nonrandom manner, it doesn't require some illusive "random chance generator"...an almost magical combination of chemicals that is counter to natural chemical interaction...it's all going on along regular and essentially predictable (or at least theoretically predictable) courses of interaction.
If we agree on that, then I'm safe in believing that if those conditions occurred by some natural means in a natural setting...or some essentially similar natural conditions...at some point in the billion years between when the earth is believed to have formed, during which surface water began collecting and when life is believed to have appeared, that the normal chemistry we agree goes on in living cells would have been sufficient to have triggered primitive life. Then I see no reason to conclude that this life, due to the process of "essentially" random mutations and natural selection, could not have evolved into the life forms we see around us.
I say "essentially" random because I'm not convinced anything purely random occurs in nature. And even if there is, I see no reason to invoke such randomness into the process of life and life reproduction. At the level at which life chemistry occurs...and especially the replication of genetic material...there are a host of factors that could come into play making the process (mutations that provide variation in the replicating process) for all intents and purposes random. For example, it is believed that radiation from the sun might have an effect on the reproduction of genetic material. So while those emanations from that distant object didn't really happen because of purely random processes, ie the chemical reaction in the sun which produces this radiation, is proceeding along regular and understood...or at least theoretically understandABLE, their hitting the earth and the interacting with the specific molecules that are undergoing replication at the time they did becomes an essentially random influence. IOW, for all intents and purposes we can say mutations are caused by random factors even though each of those individual factors might not occur due to purely random processes.
I have seen no research or evidence that the process of life is not normal chemistry nor anything that suggests that under the proper conditions, that same chemistry that now sustains life, cannot have triggered life from noon-living chemicals, either on earth, or perhaps on some distant planet such that the essential components somehow found their way to earth so life got a foothold here. As long as NO divine intervention is required for the chemistry of life, it seems safe to say the origin of life is due to a natural process.
Do you think God would have been unable to create matter/energy those billions of years ago in just the right way SUCH THAT it could eventually self organize into life naturally?