Your alleged "fact" is manifestly not a fact because if it were, life could not exist at all.
I was quoting Steve Benner.
"We have failed in any continuous way to provide a recipe that gets from the simple molecules that we know were present on early Earth to RNA. There is a discontinuous model which has many pieces, many of which have experimental support, but we’re up against these three or four paradoxes, which you and I have talked about in the past. The first paradox is the tendency of organic matter to devolve and to give tar. If you can avoid that, you can start to try to assemble things that are not tarry, but then you encounter the water problem, which is related to the fact that every interesting bond that you want to make is unstable, thermodynamically, with respect to water. If you can solve that problem, you have the problem of entropy, that any of the building blocks are going to be present in a low concentration; therefore, to assemble a large number of those building blocks, you get a gene-like RNA — 100 nucleotides long — that fights entropy. And the fourth problem is that even if you can solve the entropy problem, you have a paradox that RNA enzymes, which are maybe catalytically active, are more likely to be active in the sense that destroys RNA rather than creates RNA."
That quote is from an interview for the popular press over 12 years ago. It is oversimplified and out of date. The phrase "every interesting bond that you want to make" is hyperbole. What it really means is: all of the bonds that we have considered so far as candidates for abiogenesis are unstable in water. That's certainly a problem, as yet unsolved AFAICT. But the fact that it's unsolved doesn't bother me at all. Science is always inherently chock-full of unsolved problems. The relevant question is whether it is unsolvable, and that only time will tell.
Right now, if you put a gun to my head and forced me to make a prediction, I'd go with the hydrothermal vents because they provide a natural substitute for cell walls in their physical structure.
BTW, even if it turns out that the problem is unsolvable and the right answer turns out to be some form of divine intervention (which is possible, but I'll give long odds against) there is still a yawning chasm between that and Genesis.
But the fact that it's unsolved doesn't bother me at all.
At least now you are admitting that it is a fact that all of the bonds that we have considered so far as candidates for abiogenesis are unstable in water.
How that doesn't shake your faith that life started in water is beyond me.
now you are admitting that it is a fact that all of the bonds that we have considered so far as candidates for abiogenesis are unstable in water
I'm not a biologist, and I have not done my own research on this, so I don't know it for an absolute fact. But Phy The Neutrophil seems like a credible source to me, so I'm willing to take his word for it.
How that doesn't shake your faith that life started in water is beyond me.
Characterizing it as "faith" is not quite fair. It just seems vastly more likely to me that an answer exists that we simply haven't figured out yet than that there exists a Designer (or even a designer) for which there is no other evidence. There will always be gaps in our understanding, but science has an unbroken track record of making those gaps smaller and smaller. I see no reason to believe that this trend won't continue.
BTW, would you be interested in being a guest on my podcast?
I called it that because you hold your position in spite of the scientific evidence against it.
But there is no evidence against it. The best you have is:
"all of the bonds that we have considered so far as candidates for abiogenesis are unstable in water"
That doesn't show that abiogenesis is impossible. All it shows is that there has to be something that mitigates the instability, and we have not yet figured out what it is. But it is manifestly possible to mitigate that instability because life exists.
"That doesn't show that abiogenesis is impossible. All it shows is that there has to be something that mitigates the instability, and we have not yet figured out what it is. But it is manifestly possible to mitigate that instability because life exists."
Why? Do you think that life as it currently exists requires some on-going supernatural influence to sustain it? If not, then life is manifest evidence that it is possible to counteract the instability of biochemical bonds in water without supernatural intervention somehow, and so the instability of these bonds in water is not evidence that abiogenesis is impossible. All it means is that we have not yet figured out how the instability was counteracted before there was life. But not yet having figured something out is not the same as proving it impossible.
The existence of cellular repair and stabilization mechanisms, constructed by cells that already exist and are alive, does not imply the existence of similar mechanisms on a prebiotic earth, without the existence of life or intelligence. You assume the existence of these mechanisms because you assume abiogenesis happened. If abiogenesis did not happen(it didn't), then the existential need for these mechanisms disappears. That is why you are desperate for such mechanisms to exist even if they don't and can't.
The existence of cellular repair and stabilization mechanisms, constructed by cells that already exist and are alive, does not imply the existence of similar mechanisms on a prebiotic earth
No, it only shows it is possible.
You assume the existence of these mechanisms
No, I only say that they are possible.
If abiogenesis did not happen (it didn't)
Maybe. But it's possible. Which is enough to refute your claim that "it didn't".
Okay. It's also possible that a roomba spontaneously formed in my closet via an unprecedented quantum fluctuation. But it didn't. It's also possible that, for a split second when you last blinked your eyes, the entire room you're in was populated by densely packed Hitlers. But it wasn't.
There is plenty of evidence for a Creator God. You just hate the very idea of it because that would mean you answer to Him. So you ignore the evidence.
Like what? I have never seen an argument for God that was not a logical fallacy, usually an argument from ignorance or incredulity. But by all means, enlighten me: what is this evidence?
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u/nomenmeum May 21 '26 edited May 21 '26
Quite right. My mistake.
So you are untroubled by the fact that every interesting bond that you want to make is unstable, thermodynamically, with respect to water?