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User:GregG/Answers to QE (view source)
Revision as of 04:55, September 5, 2012
, 04:55, September 5, 2012→The answers: expand answer 1
;How did life originate? How did life with hundreds of proteins originate just by chemistry without intelligent design?
;How did life originate? How did life with hundreds of proteins originate just by chemistry without intelligent design?
:Properly speaking (and regardless of the opinions of some scientists), what we commonly understand to be the theory of evolution concerns itself with how life changed once the first life forms came into existence. Abiogenesis is separate and distinct from evolution.
:Properly speaking (and regardless of the opinions of some scientists), what we commonly understand to be the theory of evolution concerns itself with how life changed once the first life forms came into existence. Abiogenesis is separate and distinct from evolution.
:Nevertheless, the development of the first replicating molecules could have occurred during the early part of Earth's existence. It may be true that the odds are astronomically against life coming into existence naturally, but we should note that we are examining the question of how life began from the perspective of an Earth where life ''does'' exist. To borrow an analogy from John Allen Paulos's ''Innumeracy'', one does not compute the astronomical odds against a particular board of bridge hands being dealt at random, look at a bridge board, and therefore conclude that the board was not randomly dealt. Likewise, the odds of winning the Powerball jackpot are incredibly long, yet, when someone does win, it would be silly to go back and conclude that the long odds meant that the drawing was fixed.
;How did the DNA code originate? The code is a sophisticated language system with letters and words where the meaning of the words is unrelated to the chemical properties of the letters—just as the information on this page is not a product of the chemical properties of the ink (or pixels on a screen). What other coding system has existed without intelligent design?
;How did the DNA code originate? The code is a sophisticated language system with letters and words where the meaning of the words is unrelated to the chemical properties of the letters—just as the information on this page is not a product of the chemical properties of the ink (or pixels on a screen). What other coding system has existed without intelligent design?
:First of all, the statement "The code is a sophisticated language system with letters and words where the meaning of the words is unrelated to the chemical properties of the letters" demonstrates a misunderstanding of protein structure and chemistry and how proteins are formed. Nucleic acids are transcribed to mRNA, and triplets of nucleotides are converted to amino acids through tRNA in translation. The sequence of amino acids determines the shape of the protein<ref>If the protein is folded correctly, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_folding</ref>, which also affects its function, much as in mathematics, the sequence of digits in a number determines its value, which affects number theoretic properties (such as being prime). It is true, though, that the function of a protein cannot be trivially determined from its amino acid sequence, just as whether a number is prime cannot be trivially determined from its sequence of digits in the general case.
:First of all, the statement "The code is a sophisticated language system with letters and words where the meaning of the words is unrelated to the chemical properties of the letters" demonstrates a misunderstanding of protein structure and chemistry and how proteins are formed. Nucleic acids are transcribed to mRNA, and triplets of nucleotides are converted to amino acids through tRNA in translation. The sequence of amino acids determines the shape of the protein<ref>If the protein is folded correctly, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_folding</ref>, which also affects its function, much as in mathematics, the sequence of digits in a number determines its value, which affects number theoretic properties (such as being prime). It is true, though, that the function of a protein cannot be trivially determined from its amino acid sequence, just as whether a number is prime cannot be trivially determined from its sequence of digits in the general case.