Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxl!ihnp4!inuxc!pur-ee!uiucdcs!parsec!ctvax!uokvax!emjej From: emjej@uokvax.UUCP Newsgroups: net.misc Subject: Re: Paper on abiogenesis - (nf) Message-ID: <5642@uiucdcs.UUCP> Date: Tue, 14-Feb-84 23:26:41 EST Article-I.D.: uiucdcs.5642 Posted: Tue Feb 14 23:26:41 1984 Date-Received: Fri, 17-Feb-84 04:09:19 EST Lines: 43 #R:cca:-665200:uokvax:3800020:000:2225 uokvax!emjej Feb 11 09:35:00 1984 Re amino acids being generated in cold environments, the following quote from Dr. Jacob Bronowski (*The Ascent of Man*, p.316): "We used to think, until a few years ago, that life had to begin in those sultry, electic conditions. And then it began to occur to a few scientists that there is another set of extreme conditions which may be as powerful: that is the presence of ice. It is a strange thought; but ice has two properties which make it very attractive in the formation of simple, basic molecules. First of all, the process of freezing concentrates the material, which at the beginning of time must have been very dilute in the oceans. And secondly, it may be that the crystalline structure of ice makes it possible for molecules to line up in a way which is certainly important at every stage of life. "At any rate, Leslie Orgel did a number of elegant experiments of which I will describe the simplest. He took some of the basic constituents which are sure to have been present in the atmosphere of the earth at any early time: hydrogen cyanide is one, ammonia is another. He made a dilute solution of them in water, and then froze the solution over a period of several days. As a result, the concentrated material is pushed into a sort of tiny iceberg at the top, and there the presence of a small amount of colour reveals that organic molecules have been formed. Some amino acids, no doubt; but, most important, Orgel found that he had formed one of the four fundamental constituents in the genetic alphabet which directs all life. He had made adenine, one of the four bases in DNA..." The creationists' bogos "proofs" that abiogenesis is so improbable as to not be worth considering typically cheat their way to plausibility by confusing probability with conditional probability. To give an analogy: find a barn wall, and throw a dart at it. Now, if someone were to come along and throw another dart at the barn wall, it would be extremely unlikely that they would hit the *exact* spot you hit first (so if I were a creationist, I would say that clearly the hand of God directed your dart to hit where it did); on the other hand, he is almost certain to hit somewhere on the barn wall... James Jones