Abiogenesis Is Improbable

The Meaning of the Resolution My source stated "Viruses are a borderline case between living and non-living material." The point is that evolution can take place in material that is not clearly living. My opponent did not dispute it. Exactly how improbable must an event be to be "unlikely to take place or be true?" Pro said that to be improbable it had to be unlikely to occur anywhere among the 100 million galaxies each having 100 million stars. That' means he must show it is not just a little unlikely, but unlikely at the level of one chance in 10^16. Science has formed hypotheses concerning the evolution of non-living matter into living matter. Pro must show that, based upon present knowledge, the chances of any abiogenesis hypothesis being true is less than about 1 in 10^16. Pro must show abiogenesis to be improbable anywhere in the universe. That encompasses the possibility that life on earth was transported here from another planet where the odds were better than on earth. When Pro said that creationism was not a subject of the debate, Therefore our debate was within the domain of science. That means that a scientific origin of life on earth is assumed. God may work through natural law, of course, that's not part of the debate. Estimate from the time to originate life on earth Pro reaches outside of science to claim that abiogenesis did not occur on earth. A ground rule of the debate is that we can only consider what science currently knows. Processes outside of the laws of nature have not been discovered by science, therefore Pro cannot assume them for the debate. Pro is calling upon a "God the Trickster" argument, that's not part of science. The calculation based upon the time for origination of life therefore stands. the odds of abiogenesis are better than one in ten based upon that calculation. Pro's later arguments imply that abiogenesis occurred sooner than supposed for the calculations. If so, the probability would be greater than calculated. Expert opinion says abiogenesis is inevitable. Pro asserted that not all scientists believe that abiogenesis is improbable, but he did not cite any expert in the field who holds that opinion. Therefore the argument stands. In the broad definition of "scientist" there are some, but are there experts in the field? How many? Pro provided no references within the 8000 character limit of the debate, therefore I am entitled to ignore them. I will respond here under the assumption that he will introduce the references in the text of the next round. Pro's Objections Pro only attacks the RNA world model of abiogenesis, and at that he only attacks old versions of the model. As data emerges that show some paths unlikely, new theories have been developed that solve the problem. [8. http://en.wikipedia.org... ] 1) The earth is between 4.4 and 4.6 trillion years old. Scientists widely accept that an atmosphere with free oxygen would not be conducive to abiogenesis. Pro did not dispute that the earth began without free oxygen in the atmosphere, but cites a paper that that provides evidence that free oxygen may have existed in the atmosphere before 2.7 billion years ago, possibly as early as 3.8 billion years ago. The paper is controversial, because it is not yet confirmed by independent studies and there is a great deal of evidence for the 2.7 billion year date. [6. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com... ] However, if the claim is true then life originated more quickly, and probability is greater. The articled cited by Pro says the team concluded that early abiogenesis was more likely as consequence, not less likely. It been assumed that the primordial atmosphere was full of toxic gases like ammonia and methane. New studies show that the early atmosphere was far more conducive to abiogenesis than thought.[7. http://www.dailygalaxy.com... ] So new evidence suggests that abiogenesis is more likely,not less likely. 2) Pro's [5] only says that cryovolcanoes now occur elsewhere in solar system, and makes no statement about the primordial atmosphere on earth. Pro's [6] is an outdated 1985 book by a scientist who hypothesize an abiogenesis path with a different atmosphere. If Pro's [6] is true, then Pro must rebut that path to abiogenesis and he did not. My [7] says the latest data favors a early atmosphere highly conducive to abiogenesis. 3) Pro provided no evidence that high concentrations of amino acids are needed for abiogenesis. His source says that amino acids are found in meteorites, showing that some generation process is common in the universe, even if Frey-Urey is not the only source. 4) Pro provides no evidence that any of the isolated claims is significant, not even slightly significant, to abiogenesis. The fallacy along the lines of "bird strikes are hazards to airlines, therefore no flight can be completed." 5) Cytosine is only necessary for one of the hypothesized paths to abiogenesis. A scientific article skeptical of the availability of cytosine points to "origin-of-life theories that do not require the four RNA bases: (i) The first..A number of possibilities may exist, with the clay system of A.G. Cairns-Smith (74) perhaps the bestknown. (ii) Life began with cycles of autocatalytic reactions. .." [9. http://www.pnas.org...] 6) Ribose and dioxyribose are simple sugars. "A slightly different version of the RNA-world hypothesis is that a different type of nucleic acid, such as PNA, TNA or GNA, was the first one to emerge as a self-reproducing molecule, to be replaced by RNA only later.[ Pyrimidine ribonucleosides and their respective nucleotides have been prebiotically synthesised by a sequence of reactions which by-pass the free sugars, and are assembled in a stepwise fashion ..." [8] they are not required for abiogenesis. 7) About a dozen natural methods have been suggested for sorting racemic mixes. the problem is called "breaking chiral symmetry." Creationists are fond of citing a 1995 conference in which scientist concluded the problem was unresolved. The solution is still not certain, but a 2005 paper offers a likely solution: "As Professor Michael McBride says in the News & Views section of Nature (452 [7184]: 161-2, 2008), this grinding method is "the first original method for isolating single-handed crystals from a mixture of mirror-image forms since Pasteur used tweezers to effect such a separation in 1848." [10. http://www.sciencewatch.com... ] 8) The solution to peptide bond formation involves an intermediate step in protein formation. "Elucidation of the evolutionary route from the simple system to the present complex rib some is a big challenge in modern science; this gap may be filled by the concept of the proto-ribosome, which is composed of a symmetrical tRNA-like dimer." [11. http://journalofcosmology.com... ] 9) Experiments have shown that polymerization can occur under the right conditions of heat and pressure, but its more likely that clay served as a catalyst. "... it turns out that recent work by James Ferris, who is at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, has shown exactly that this process does work under abiotic conditions." [12. http://pablosorigins.blogspot.com... ] Pro makes objections only to one narrow formulation of the RNA world theory. Those objections mostly date to the mid-90s and earlier. Modern theory [7, 8] has provides probable solutions to the puzzles, and has encompassed other theories, such as clay theory. Science has shown that abiogenesis is probable.