Creating life

[geordief]

We sometimes  hear it said that such and such a person ,or a team has "created life"

 

OK ,let us imagine that this is actually  achieved (however we might define  life)....If this was to occur, it would be ,initially something very basic compared to what we would understand  as a living entity. 

Suppose we were to ask "Can you create something comparable to life forms that actually  exist?" would there be any paths  to achieving this?

 

Any paths that did not involve millions of years of evolution  and natural selection?

 

Could the idea even be entertained if there were not a physical environment  for the new creation to develop in?

 

I would not accept as an answer  a carbon copy (or an edited copy) of an existing life form.The new creation would have to  be an entirely new entity  that should be either immediately (seems incredible) ,or after a period  of evolution develop into something that would bear comparison (or outshine)an existing living creature (not necessarily  a higher order one  but why not seeing how hard it might be  to bear comparison to a lower order one?)

In the Bible ,God was supposed to have created humans in very short order-the  7th day wasn't it

 

What chances are ther for any   natural process  or intelligent designer (to coin a phrase) to achieve anything along those lines?

I suggest ** that we are equally  as unlikely  as any imagined God  to pull off this feat  and that the essential ingredient  in  developing life forms is  lots and lots of time.(as the physical world develops, then so can life,if  circumstances permit)

 

**I doubt  this is controversial 

 

 

[sethoflagos]

44 minutes ago, geordief said:

Suppose we were to ask "Can you create something comparable to life forms that actually  exist?" would there be any paths  to achieving this?

Any paths that did not involve millions of years of evolution  and natural selection?

A while ago I highlighted this paper https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/ast.2022.0027

... which - well just glance through it at least. It describes a catalytic conveyor belt for churning out a steady stream of modestly sized RNA sequences.

Which when coupled with a mechanism to produce its raw material input nucleoside phosphate monomers (see  https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/quarterly-reviews-of-biophysics/article/nucleic-acids-function-and-potential-for-abiogenesis/842529B9BDAD6E86F7919827725C1931) 

... appears to have the potential to fast-track evolution of the apparently highly improbable by a factor of many orders of magnitude.

Obviously, there is still a long way to go with this, but the bottom line is that we know with certainty that the first stirrings of life were present on earth very early in its history. And recent progress as described above are a credible basis for suspecting that the mechanisms may have been non-magickal.

 

 

 

[Peterkin]

1 hour ago, geordief said:

OK ,let us imagine that this is actually  achieved (however we might define  life)....If this was to occur, it would be ,initially something very basic compared to what we would understand  as a living entity. 

Suppose we were to ask "Can you create something comparable to life forms that actually  exist?" would there be any paths  to achieving this?

No. They would be have 'created' (recombined) a molecule. A big one. RNA-ish or maybe a little more; RNA with ambitions. It's not precisely a living entity, but it's more than just inanimate stuff. 

 

1 hour ago, geordief said:

In the Bible ,God was supposed to have created humans in very short order-the  7th day wasn't it

  Well, that's not going to work in any solar system we could recognize. None of Genesis would. God forgot to make plankton and protozoa, so everything that's built on them - i.e. every kind of life - becomes impossible.

No, there really isn't a lot of room for controversy.  

[Sensei]

1 hour ago, geordief said:

We sometimes  hear it said that such and such a person ,or a team has "created life"

Any paths that did not involve millions of years of evolution  and natural selection?

Write the code?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_Game_of_Life

Author makes it in Python:

 

[exchemist]

9 hours ago, geordief said:

We sometimes  hear it said that such and such a person ,or a team has "created life"

 

OK ,let us imagine that this is actually  achieved (however we might define  life)....If this was to occur, it would be ,initially something very basic compared to what we would understand  as a living entity. 

Suppose we were to ask "Can you create something comparable to life forms that actually  exist?" would there be any paths  to achieving this?

 

Any paths that did not involve millions of years of evolution  and natural selection?

 

Could the idea even be entertained if there were not a physical environment  for the new creation to develop in?

 

I would not accept as an answer  a carbon copy (or an edited copy) of an existing life form.The new creation would have to  be an entirely new entity  that should be either immediately (seems incredible) ,or after a period  of evolution develop into something that would bear comparison (or outshine)an existing living creature (not necessarily  a higher order one  but why not seeing how hard it might be  to bear comparison to a lower order one?)

In the Bible ,God was supposed to have created humans in very short order-the  7th day wasn't it

 

What chances are ther for any   natural process  or intelligent designer (to coin a phrase) to achieve anything along those lines?

I suggest ** that we are equally  as unlikely  as any imagined God  to pull off this feat  and that the essential ingredient  in  developing life forms is  lots and lots of time.(as the physical world develops, then so can life,if  circumstances permit)

 

**I doubt  this is controversial 

 

 

The point of ID is to insert supernatural agency at random unknown points, to supplement natural processes by miracles (i.e. suspension of the laws of nature, in favour of direct divine intervention.) Once a person has decided that is acceptable, anything is possible, and the consequence of that is that no predictive theory can be formulated. That is why ID is a science-stopper. 

Concerning the biblical accounts of creation, if taken literally they  would just mean God suspended natural processes and worked a series of miracles. Easy-peasy. But not science, obviously.

It looks as though life took about 500 million years to arise, once the planet was cool enough.