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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
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#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