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Chemists Claim to Have Solved Riddle of How Life Began on Earth

posted by on Friday March 20 2015, @07:00PM   Printer-friendly
from the nope-aliens-did-it dept.

AnonTechie writes:

A team of chemists working at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, at Cambridge in the UK believes they have solved the mystery of how it was possible for life to begin on Earth over four billion years ago. In their paper published in the journal Nature Chemistry, the team describes how they were able to map reactions that produced two and three-carbon sugars, amino acids, ribonucleotides and glycerol—the material necessary for metabolism and for creating the building blocks of proteins and ribonucleic acid molecules and also for allowing for the creation of lipids that form cell membranes.

Scientists have debated for years the various possibilities that could have led to life evolving on Earth, and the arguments have only grown more heated in recent years as many have suggested that it did not happen here it all, instead, it was brought to us from comets or some other celestial body. Most of the recent debate has found scientists in one of three chicken-or-the-egg first camps: RNA world advocates, metabolism-first supporters and those who believe that cell membranes must have developed first.

http://phys.org/news/2015-03-chemists-riddle-life-began-earth.html

[Abstract]: http://www.nature.com/nchem/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nchem.2202.html

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 21 2015, @03:38AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 21 2015, @03:38AM (#160686)

    I am condescending because you admitted that you have nothing but faith. You didn't present any evidence; you just mentioned more nonsense about faith. If you believe in the existence of a god without evidence (and there is no good evidence, and ignorance doesn't count as evidence), then you are irrational.

  • (Score: 1) by anubi on Saturday March 21 2015, @07:30AM

    by anubi (2828) on Saturday March 21 2015, @07:30AM (#160712) Journal

    I cite the "watchmaker's analogy" as evidence. Its all the evidence I have. I am aware of the complexity of everything around me and am at a complete loss of words to explain it.

    Occam's razor steps in... you find a watch... there was most likely a watchmaker somewhere who made it. It didn't get there by itself.

    And that's about all I know. The rest is conjecture, and I openly admit it as such.

    --
    "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 21 2015, @08:49AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 21 2015, @08:49AM (#160729)

      That is not evidence. That is just saying, "I don't know how this could have happened without a god, so it was god." In other words, an argument from ignorance. God of the gaps is still very popular.

      We know watches are created because we create them all the time and we have evidence that it happens. No such evidence exists for god. And I think that Occam's razor wouldn't support an omnipotent being far more complex than anything we can possibly imagine.