You wish. Faith doesn’t equal to any kind of truth. I can hope to win the lottery all I want. It’s wishing in one hand and shitting in the other until whatever you have your hopes in, pays off. Obviously an atheist is not going to have Christian Faith or any kind of religious faith that you’re basing it on.
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You are dishonest and disingenuous.
Atheists (for the most part) will honestly admit that there is no such thing as absolute certainty regarding these subjects. You seem incapable of understanding that faith is belief in the absence of evidence. It is NOT faith but rather a significant degree of confidence based on demonstrable evidence which convinces atheists, and more significantly, scientists.
The fatuous notion that there is any comparison between un-evidenced claims of a supernatural invisible man-god and the reasonable and logical un-acceptance of such claims is, well, startlingly revealing of your limited cognitive abilities.
At least three possibilities come to mind.
- You are cognitively incapable.
- You are (as you previously indicated) only interested in preaching.
- You have real estate holdings beneath a bridge.
It is obvious that you are highly invested in your beliefs. Given that fact, it is unlikely that you possess the capacity to accept contrary information, regardless of the demonstrable veracity contained therein. I hope I am mistaken and that you can indeed stir from your slumber.
.
.
Edit: (No one passes here by me unless they answer my questions three)
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So now you’re quote mining a paper that can be read in full by everyone else here?
This is not going to make you look good.
By the way, when prebiotic chemists use the word “plausible” in their papers, this is a shorthand for “our experimental data supports the proposal that these reactions could have taken place on Earth 4 billion years ago”.
No fucking “faith” required.
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False equivalence fallacy, atheism is the lack or absence of belief in any deity or deities, what you are reading courtesy of @Calilasseia is a scientific paper, reading but failing to understand of course. Since that scientific paper has nothing to do with religious faith, which is defined as a strong belief in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual conviction rather than proof. It also has nothing to do with atheism, in the astronomically unlikely event the irrefutable scientific facts of species evolution and natural selection were reversed or abandoned I would remain an atheist, as no one has demonstrated any objective evidence for any deity, or that they are even possible. They can’t even muster any rational argument for a deity.
Well quite, and how plausible is a deity when its followers have failed repeatedly to demonstrate any objective evidence for it, and the claims for it, as well as being riddled with logical fallacies, have no explanatory powers whatsoever?
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Since our latest mythology fanboy has engaged in blatant quote mining, and ignored the numerous paragraphs of subsequent material describing the experiments verifying the relevant postulates in various papers, I think it’s apposite to point out in detail a concept that is applicable here.
Organic chemists have known for a very long time how to synthesise a range of molecules. Indeed, the whole discipline of organic chemistry can be traced back to Wöhler’s landmark experiment in 1828, when he synthesised urea from ammonium cyanate, the experiment that once and for all killed off the notion known as “vitalism”, which postulated that a special “vital force” was needed to produce and sustain organic molecules. Having killed that specious notion, the religious antecedents of which are not difficult to trace, the newly fledged discipline of organic chemistry moved on, courtesy of several of its landmark practitioners, at a rapid pace. Thousands of new organic compounds, not extant in the biosphere, were quickly synthesised in the laboratory, and progress was already being made on the synthesis of simple biologically important molecules even in the 19th century.
Of course, the 20th century saw organic chemistry develop into a vast scientific discipline in its own right, and the organic chemists of the 19th century would be gazing with eyes on stalks at the developments that the end of the 20th century introduced into the discipline.
However, one important point needs to be stressed here. Organic chemists have known for decades (and in some cases, for more than two centuries), how to perform syntheses of organic molecules that involve reaction conditions pertinent to industrial synthesis. Which was, of course, one of the prime motivating impulses driving 19th century organic chemistry.
Of courswe, industrial syntheses have a habit of involving reactions requiring elevated temperatures and pressures, and the use of rare, expensive catalysts not normally found in nature, all performed in large reaction vessels built to withstand continued operation for long periods of time, while generating those reaction conditions.
Biological reactions, on the other hand, don’t involve conditions of this sort. Consequently, the subdivision of organic chemistry known as biochemistry, was launched to investigate reactions that occur under biological conditions, involving temperatures close to that of the ambient environment, normal atmospheric pressure, and pH values constrained within well-defined limits.
Now of course, quite a few biological reactions involve catalysts of their own, in the form of enzymes, and consequently, researchers working on the origin of life are interested in reactions that don’t require enzymes, in order to avoid the problems of circularity. Furthermore, any chemical reaction that is to be considered a candidate for a prebiotic chemical reaction, has to operate within the conditions present on the early Earth, information about which is handily provided via a number of pieces of geological evidence. For example, the near total absence of O2 is supported by the appearance in suitably ancient strata of banded iron formations, which cannot form in the presence of abundant atmospheric oxygen, or oxygen dissolved in water, which quickly oxidises solubel Fe2+ ions to insoluble Fe3+ ions. Data obtained from spectroscopic analysis of interstellar gas clouds is also useful in determining the conditions under which prebiotic chemistry would have operated.
So, since scientists have good information on the sort of conditions that a chemical reaction would have to operate in on the early Earth, they can replicate those conditions, and test their proposed reaction schemes to see if they do indeed operate under those conditions. Reactions are described as “prebiotically plausible” precisely because they have been tested under the requisite conditions in the laboratory, and found to work therein.
So, let’s nail this particular piece of quote mining duplicity once and for all, shall we?
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Quoting a paper Referenced in a paper you shared: “To evaluate how life may have begun on Earth, we must access what Earth was like during its early history and under what conditions the processes thought to be involved in the origin of life took place. Considerable progress has been made in our knowledge of the early Earth and in how the transition from abiotic to biotic chemistry may have occurred. Nevertheless, there are still enormous gaps in our understanding of how the simple organic compounds associated with life as we know it reacted to generate the first living entities and how these in turn evolved into organisms that left behind actual evidence of their existence in the rock record.”
Once again: Words have meanings. Facts: Knowledge or information based on real occurrences.
Faith:a strongly held belief or theory.
Sounds like atheists have to use something to fill in the enormous gaps to be able to follow their demigod, natural selection.
“Strongly held beliefs or theories”
Do you really think they are equal, and equate to faith?
And furthermore, do you think that any of this has anything to do with scientific Theories presented?
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That is straight up trolling.
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Sounds like projecting to me. Can’t cover the cavernous void of evidence for his deity.
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Oh look, more rampant duplicity from our resident stormtrooper for creationist bullshit.
First of all, let’s deal with another outstanding issue, namely, the purpose of the abstract in a scientific paper. The purpose of the abstract is twofold, namely:
[1] To present a summary of the state of knowledge of a particular topic before the authors began their research, along with an honest appraisal of outstanding problems or unknowns that are pertinent to their research;
[2] To present a summary of the solution being proposed by the authors to relevant problems or unknowns covered in [1] above.
But of course, I’m used to seeing creationists quote mine the part involving [1], and omitting the part involving [2]. A piece of dishonesty that once again demonstrates not only how worthless mythology fanboyism is, but how perniciously corroding it is from an ethical standpoint. If you have to lie to this extent to prop up your attachment to a cartoon magic man from a goat herder mythology, then both are unworthy of our attention.
Of course, it’s not just the abstract of a paper that is subject to this sort of mendacious quote mining, but that’s a favourite target of creationist quote miners, so I thought I would clear up once and for all how an abstract is meant to be read honestly. Though of course this applies to the whole paper, not just the abstract.
Speaking of honest discourse with respect to scientific papers, I notice that a bare quote was delivered above WITHOUT ANY CITIATION. Which meant that I had to waste time in unnecessary labour tracking down the source being quoted, a task that took some time because I have provided citations myself for dozens of peer reviewed scientific papers. Indeed, it turns out that our lying creationist wasn’t even quoting from a paper I’ve covered in this thread, but a paper from an entirely different thread, and did so without proper attribution. For the record, the paper being quoted from was this one:
How Life Began On Earth: A Status Report by Jeffrey L. Bada, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 226: 1-15 (22nd July 2004)
Now I’m interested to know how our creationist obtained this paper, unless of course he’s simply copy-pasting a quote mine from a creationist website, because according to this link to the paper, the paper in question is paywalled. Which means that it is only accessible [1] by direct payment to the publisher, or [2] via institutional access from a recognised educational establishment. This is NOT a work that the typical Internet warrior for creationism would have direct access to. So the question remains, where did our mythology fanboy obtain the requisite quote? An issue that is made all the more pressing, because this paper is not a paper I have directly cited in any of my posts here.
Now, according to our mythology fanboy, we are to believe that he chose one of the references from a different paper (though of course he doesn’t provide a citation for that paper either, to try and hide his mendacity), then provided a “quote” from that other paper, despite that paper being paywalled and beyond access for many here.
Now unfortunately for our mythology fanboy, I happen to have connections, and as a corollary, have access to the full paper, which I downloaded way back in 2010. And thus, I am in a position to tell everyone that this IS a quote mine, because the “quote” is deliberately cut off just before the two pages of explanation following immediately after the cutoff point. Let’s take a look at the relevant text, shall we?
If one is able to access the full paper, one then notices that five pages thereof are devoted to expounding upon relevant aspects of prebiotic chemistry, including explicit statements of relevant chemical reactions.
Consequently, the insinuation that those of us here who pay attention to scientific research are engaging in “fabrication” to prop up a “faith position” (oh, the irony) is no only manifestly false, but a blatant piece of projection on the part of our mythology fanboy. Who has, above, been exposed as engaging in duplicitous fabrication himself.
But then I suspect he’s merely taking his cue from that arch-charlatan and professional liar for doctrine known as Henry Morris, one of the pedlars of lies over at Arsewater in Genesis, who, for those who haven’t encountered this sleazy and slimy individual, was the author of a “how to” manual for creationist quote miners, a screed whose exhortations to lie for Jeebus have been enthusiastically pursued by creationists since its publication.
Indeed, one of the quote mines Morris encouraged his dribblingly encephalitic audience to copy-paste in mindless Xerox bot fashion, has been exposed as a blatant and total fabrication elsewhere. I’m referring of course both to this handy exposition of the subset of creationist lies know as quote mines, and the instance labelled “Quote #57” mentioned here.
Now it turns out that “Quote #57” is a tissue of lies from start to finish, and bears NO relation to George Wald’s original article in Scientific American that it purports to quote from. Now, it transpires that several people have reprised Wald’s original article from Scientific American and made the material available on that second page I’ve just linked to. The regulars here will find it highly educational with respect to the depths creationists will plumb in order to propagandise for their worthless litlle doctrine.
So, exactly where did our mythology fanboy obtain his “quote”? Inquiring minds would like to know.
Meanwhile, this now leads me to make the following request:
Anyone purporting to “quote” from a peer reviewed scientific paper, or other relevant academic source, should provide a proper citation for that source, and where possible, a link to any freely available complete copy of the paper or article in question when known to the poster. Failure to do so should be a disciplinary offence on the forum.
I commend the above request to the moderation team.
Oh, and meanwhile, just to show that even professional scientists can miss out on developments, Bada, in that paper, states the following on page 12 of the paper:
Those familiar with my article on the emergence of life on Earth posted elsewhere on this forum, will recall that with respect to the emergence of the RNA World, I cited no less than twenty-one scientific papers devoted to that topic, listed therein as references [22] to [42] inclusive, and no less than fifteen of those papers pre-data Bada’s 2004 paper above, including papers covering the catalytic formation of RNA oligomers via montmorillonite catalysis. Plus, it would only take four years to elapse since Bada’s 2004 paper, for Joyce to publish his paper Darwininan Evolution On A Chip, featuring in vitro evolution of RNA oligomers, and solve that problem as well, said work being enhanced further by the team of Japanese scientists (Norikazu Ichihashi and co-workers) whose experiments resulted in an RNA molecular ecosystm evolving in their laboratory.
But of course, we are dealing with a paper that was dealing with the state of knowledge in the field seventeen years ago. Though mistaking scientific publications as being static affairs is an easy mistake to make, for mythology fanboys used to the static nature of their mythology’s assertions.
In accordance with my request above, I take the view, strongly I might add, that this latest example of duplicity deserve material sanction of some sort.
Ah yes. “Montromorillonite catalysis” the demigod of organic biologists! Kidding
I love chemistry. Did “okay” in organic (compared to all of the hopes and dreams shattered by would-be med students who absolutely failed the course). I got 74 %. Disappointing, by my standards at the time.
I recall the notes of the professor were so absolutely horrendous that I skipped going to class altogether and rigorously woke up early every morning to read the subject straight out of the textbook.
To think of all the kids who may have failed that course because of this Prof’s lazy and downright criminal notes! Wow 
I took microbiology as well. The topic of the ribosome was always a hot one. I did ask one lecture, how a ribosome could be a protein and also be the source of proteins. In 2002, this was a mystery.
Which leads me to my question, Caly …
What in “God’s” green earth is “ Montromorillonite catalysis”???
A brief explanation might do us all some good. Even if I am a theist (by circumstance and not choice - mind you. I was abducted by alien overlords, you know … 
). True story.
Quite simply, montmorillonites are clay minerals, consisting of a mixture of Mg2+ and Ca2+ silicates, among other compounds. The exact composition varies from location to location, but they usually contain a fair concentration of Mg2+ and Ca2+ ions.
It transpires that if you allow nucleotides to come into contact with montmorillonite clays in aqueous solution, the result is that the Mg2+ and Ca2+ ions catalyse the coupling of those nucleotides into RNA strands, sometimes with remarkable effiiciency.
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Can you explain this quote from Wikipedia in greater detail?
Thus, the driving force for the evolution of the ribosome from an ancient self-replicating machine into its current form as a translational machine may have been the selective pressure to incorporate proteins into the ribosome’s self-replicating mechanisms, so as to increase its capacity for self-replication.
Also, I just wanted to brag a bit more.
I got 74% in organic chemistry. My dream was to be a genetic engineer. My entire first 2 years was built on this goal.
Then the wind was knocked out of me with organic chemistry. Even in Uni I was used to A’s and B’s.
Before third year, someone (I don’t recall who) mentioned that “molecular biology” was even harder than organic chemistry.
So I opted out and with that my dreams of being a genetic engineer fizzled out and I turned to plan B - high school math teacher.
Then I fell in love. Then I fell out of love. Then I smoked a big joint. Then I had an existential panic attack (for five months). Then I fell into depression. Then it all turned into psychosis. And that turned into a hurt locker, the likes of which only a few brave souls have endured (and successfully emerged from) over the course of history (as is my understanding from an “inside” source)!
But enough about me! How’d you do in Organic Chem. Cali?
Don’t be bashful. I bet you aced it!
First step: scientists discovered some time ago, that RNA strands possess the ability to act as catalysts for a wide range of reactions, and these catalysts were, depending upon function, named ribozymes and aptazymes.
Similarly, self-replicating RNA strands are now a staple of prebiotic chemistry research. Gerald F. Joyce made use of them in his paper Darwinian Evolution On A Chip, as did the Japanese researchers who found their self-replicating RNAs develop a molecular ecosystem.
The fun part here, is that some RNA strands are both self-replicating and catalysts for other reactions. The prototype earliest ribosome falls into this category. It can both self-replicate in an environment containing free nucleotides, and catalyse the formation of peptides by bonding amino acids together.
Now, of course, from the standpoint of self-replication, additions to the base molecule that make that self-replication more efficient are going to be selected for. So, the hypothesis is that the original (and simple) prototype ribosome RNA, acquired additions of that very sort, that made self-replication more efficient, and along the way, some of those additions involved bonding of peptide strands to the core. Other additions included extra RNA subunits that also again enhanced self-replication, until encapsulation within vesicles provided a second role - namely, the harnessing of its peptide synthesis capacity to help build the material for new and improved cells.
Two scientific papers covering the above in more detail include this one and this one, along with this book (which comes with a £200 price tag - eek).
Citations:
The Ribosome As A Missing Link In The Evolution Of Life by Meredith Root-Bernstein and Robert Root-Bernstein, Journal of Theoretical Biology, 367:, 130-158 (21st February 2015)
Origin And Evolution Of The Ribosome by George E. Fox, Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives In Biology, 2010;2: a003483
Evolution Of The Protein Synthesis Machinery And Its Regulation, edited by Greco Hernández and Rosemary Jagus, ISBN: 978-3-319-39468-8
Needless to say, there’s a lot of work been performed on elucidating both the operation and the history of the ribosome - I suspect if you exercise the requisite effort, you’ll find over 2,000 papers published on this topic from the past 10 years alone.
Amazing. Really appreciate it. What did you major in, Cali? If you don’t mind me asking?
My undergraduate subject was mathematics. Which allowed me to deal with canards about Gödel earlier on.
But I had such a stellar education in other subjects from my previous teachers, that I am able to cross several disciplines without it being too onerous. 
I’ve already mentioned elsewhere, that science classes in the 1970s here in the UK were freewheeling affairs, with respect to the sort of fun and games I was allowed to indulge in during lab time. Can you imagine how cool it is for a 15 year old schoolboy to be told he’s going to be working today with real live plutonium?
Likewise, the chemistry classes were a blast - sometimes literally. You know you’re having a fun day when the opening of your test tube suddenly starts emitting bright green flames. That was, if memory serves, the day we were futzing about with boron compounds.
The biology classes were the classes that gave me a lasting passion for tropical fish, first of all because some beautiful ones were illustrated on the class wall, and second, because I was put on the fish tank maintenance rota. The tank was about five feet long, and among other inmates, had a Convict Cichlid that was about 3 inches in length. Not the prettiest fish in that tank, but he had … let’s call it, personality. 
Sadly, we weren’t allowed to do the cool volcano experiment with potassium dichromate ourselves (and the teacher made us watch that one from behind a blast shield), but you can bet a lot of us wanted to once we saw that reaction strut its stuff.
I waqs fortunate to attend a school, where the science teachers weren’t afraid to let you get up close and personal to things that could go “bang” in spectacular fashion, poison you in horrible ways, or result in you exiting the classrom in flames. The day the chemistrhy teacher let fly with white phosphorus was a particulary unforgettable one, and taught us much about why this stuff was banned for use in bombs by the Geneva Convention.
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@Calilasseia That was a wonderful exposition of Gödel, I must say - even if (admittedly) I don’t grasp the proof. I will have to look at it in depth.
I venture an undergrad back in your day and age was something of an undertaking.
I too have an undergrad in Math as well (with a “concentration” in “Life Sciences”).
About a year ago I worked on a “supposed approximation” for the series summation of the prime numbers.
It’s somewhat interesting in that you can substitute the accepted “1/2n^2logn” asymptotic formula in to the sigma notation, move my formula around a bit, and end up with a formula for the “nth” prime as 10^(something long with a lot of logs).
Would you be interested in having a gander? I can send you a link. I worked on it as a hobby and I have no ties to the mathematics community or desire for recognition.
Nonsense, and also hilarious given the completely unevidenced archaic superstition you are peddling is claimed to be literally as old as time.
You do know you can Google word definitions right?
Fact
noun
- a thing that is known or proved to be true.
Note the word or in there.
Faith
noun
- complete trust or confidence in someone or something.
- strong belief in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual conviction rather than proof.
Note that faith in science is the first definition, and entirely unlike the blind faith in doctrine that religions peddle.
Nope, that’s just a lie creationists peddle as they know they have exactly nothing to support their inexplicable magic, or their unevidenced deity, they can’t even demonstrate any objective evidence a deity is even possible, you have have failed repeatedly to do this yourself.
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Meanwhile, look what I just found … first confirmed detection of phospholipid base molecules in interstellar space.
Non-techical exposition is presented here, while the scientific paper can be downloaded in full from this link.
Ethanolamine, or 2-aminoethanol, is a base molecule for the synthesis of phospholipids, which readily combines with phosphate ions to form the phosphatidylethanolamine group, to which numerous fatty acids can then bind to form phospholipids proper. This molecule has now been detected in an interstellar gas cloud via spectroscopy, specifically, the gas cloud SgrB2 in the constellation of Sagittarius, in a region of the galaxy close to the galactic centre. From the spectroscopic data, it was not only possible to detect the presence of the molecule, but the likely abundance of the molecule in the interstellar gas cloud in question.
While the synthesis route for this molecule in an interstellar gas cloud will be different from that under early Earth conditions the mere fact that a phospholipid precursor can be found in interstellar space, along with amino acids, sugars and nucleotide precursors, pretty much demolishes the usual specious apologetic fabrications asserting that the emrgence of these molecules via testable natural processes is purportedly “unlikely”.
Of course, on a prebiotic Earth, the moment a Miller-Urey synthesis produces the amino acid serine, decarboxylation thereof yields ethanolamine, and recent work replicating Miller’s experiments have indeed produced serine as one of the amino acids arising from the passing of an electrical discharge through simple gas mixtures. Indeed, this paper:
New Insights Into Prebiotic Chemistry From Stanley Milelr’s Spark Discharge Experiments by Jeffrey L. Bada, Chemistry Society Review, 42: 2186-2196 (2013)
revealed that replication of Miller’s experiments, followed by analysis of the reaction products with modern analytical tools, produced not merely the five amino acids Miller was able to identify with his 1950s vintage techniques, but over forty amino acids and related compounds. The paper covers in detail the species involved, and serine is indeed one of those amino acids produced in the experiments.
Now, once serine is available for the reaction, decarboxylation thereof can be accomplished in a pebiotic scenario, if the serine molecules are in aqueous solution, and in contact with certain minerals. Minerals containing copper compounds are especially efficient as catalysts for the reaction, though other transition element minerals can perform the same role.
Indeed, decarboxylation of serine has become an important biosynthesis route within living organisms in its own right, for the production of ethanolamine and subsequent biosynthesis of phospholipids, and living organisms have acquired through evolution various enzymes facilitating this reaction. Pyridoxal phosphate, the active form of vitamin B6, is a frequently deployed reagent for this purpose in a biochemical setting, and metalloenzymes containing iron atoms are also implicated biosynthesis pathways for ethanolamine.
Once again, science works. unlike mythology.
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I was going through the paper you shared and decided to take a deep dive by looking at the references listed in the paper to look at what was supporting that paper, since I have full access to them.