A new, peer reviewed scientific paper has been published that attempts to calculate an actual rate of abiogenesis on cosmic scales, “Emergence of Life in an Inflationary Universe” by Tomonori Totani, in Scientific Reports 10 (2020). It is pretty good, but has some fatal flaws you should be aware of before citing it uncritically (flaws the paper itself acknowledges, but not obviously enough to many lay readers). It’s worth writing an article on because usually this never happens—such proposed rates tend either to be speculations outside peer review, or complete nonsense some ignoramus just made up, or were not actual assertions of frequency but just some crude calculations to show why we need to do more work to find out what the actual frequency might be (which someone else—usually a Christian apologist—later tried to “pass off” as an actual assertion of cosmic frequency for abiogenesis). Plus, the flaws one might take issue with in this paper are not obvious, yet important to understand. So the following will hopefully be helpful.
Backstory
This is a subject I’m properly published in. My peer reviewed paper on abiogenesis frequency arguments appeared in Biology & Philosophy back in 2004: “The Argument from Biogenesis: Probabilities against a Natural Origin of Life.” I addressed the question of course not as a scientist (I rely on actual scientific sources for that) but as a philosopher, analyzing the use of these kinds of calculations to push particular ideological narratives, which I accomplished by diagramming the logic of such arguments and by researching who actually made them and on what grounds and what their original arguments actually were—plus also illustrating their obsolescence in many cases, since many past claims had since been refuted by subsequent science, as I also documented.
I’ve since written a few blog articles on the subject of abiogenesis as well, most recently summarizing the matter in my critique of videos pushing theism at PragerU, but more particularly in Why Life Must Be Complex (and Thus Probably Won’t Be on Mars) and Could Be a 38% Chance We Are the Only Civilization in the Known Universe. Throughout all this work, including under peer review, I find that all attempts to locate an actual expected frequency of spontaneous biogenesis in the universe are fatally flawed, and can be proved to grossly under-estimate that frequency. And most scientists agree. The consensus in the protobiology and exobiology community is pretty much that abiogenesis is probably relatively common cosmically, if rare galactically. Only the actual discovery of alien life (or some reliable way of actually observationally proving its galactic absence) is likely at this point to alter that assessment.
In my paper for B&P I found all previous claims of frequency suffered from one or more of several fatal flaws (and by “fatal” I mean: you can’t fix them; it’s not some trivial error that once fixed produces a usable result):
- Obsolete sources: Whatever frequency was being quoted was so old, subsequent science already refuted it or rendered it unusable.
- Omission of context: The numbers being quoted were not actually used to assert a frequency of biogenesis in the first place.
- The wrong math: Not correctly calculating a probability (many different mistakes are made here, some inexcusable).
- Confusing the winner with the players: Assuming that only exactly our life is possible (or that there is only one possible self-replicating molecule), when in fact many other kinds of life are possible (and there must be many different self-replicators that could start it off), which has to be correctly taken into account in the math.
- Begging the size of the protobiont: Not deriving a sound evidence-based estimate for how small (i.e. how structurally simple) a self-replicating molecule can be.
- Confusing evolved for spontaneous features: Bizarrely assuming the first replicator has to be a highly evolved organism, or have all the same features as one (and thus grossly over-estimating a first replicator’s size).
- Requiring more accident than physics actually suggests: Incorrectly assuming certain features like homochirality must be original rather than evolved (heterochiral self-replicators are actually possible and could have evolved into homochiral ones), and/or incorrectly assuming such features must be arrived at by random chance when many known conditions can produce them nonrandomly (e.g. stellar conditions can cause homochirality long before random assembly produces a first replicator; recombination on clay surfaces already produces homochirality; homochiral chains are more stable and thus more able to grow into lengths necessary for self-replication; etc.).
Totani’s paper appears to avoid all these errors except numbers 5 and 7, and even with those he does far better than most, his arguments all based on solid science, which is an achievement in itself. His only Class 5 error is ignoring pre-RNA worlds and over-estimating even the minimum RNA size based on some faulty logic. With respect to his Class 7 error, he does not make that common mistake about homochirality, but his math still ignores many known mechanisms for ordering molecules, and thus can only grossly under-estimate biogenesis frequency. As we’ll see shortly, Totani actually admits that in his own paper’s conclusion, and it’s important to examine why that’s more important than he lets on.
Nevertheless, even with those two errors, Totani’s conclusion is that we should expect random abiogenesis to occur several times in the probable volume of the universe, but average less than once per volume of cosmos equivalent to the universe currently visible. This is a far more pessimistic estimate of biogenesis than any living protobiology expert has ever proffered. Usually such extreme pessimism attaches only to the frequency of civilizations, not of simple life or mere origin events (most of which will never evolve even into complex life much less civilizations). And yet, Totani shows that the observable universe is such a minuscule fraction of the size the universe must have on current cosmological theories (e.g. given the flatness of spacetime which entails a universe far larger than the mere horizon of visible light) that spontaneous abiogenesis is still an inevitable event, even with his extraordinarily pessimistic assumptions. As he puts it, even his most conservative estimates entail “life would have emerged on countless planets in the whole inflationary universe in which we exist.”
And yet his assumptions are still overly pessimistic. Let’s take a look…
Class VII Error: Overrating Accident vs. Necessity
Totani only calculates for random assembly of an RNA molecule of 40 nucleotide length (at the smallest). He disregards homochirality (and correctly explains why we should) and allows a large number of such molecules the possibility being self-replicating (avoiding error number 4) and demonstrates why small variations in starting assumptions have little effect on his conclusions, which are logarithmic (so the effects of varying microparameters are too minuscule to matter). But though he mentions the likelihood of ordering forces that greatly increase the probability of spontaneous assembly, he includes none of them in his calculations—for the obvious reason that we don’t yet have experimental data on their efficiency. But that makes his calculation a fallacy of Argument from Ignorance. He rightly calls for more experimental work to fix this problem, but an inattentive reader might miss that and think his results are scientific fact when even Totani himself admits they are an underestimate owing to present scientific ignorance, not scientific knowledge.
For example, Totani adds in his conclusion:
A possibly important process is polymerization over multiple cycles. In polymerization on clay surfaces, inactive monomers and oligomers left from the previous cycle must be released from a clay surface for the next cycle to work, but a fraction of long oligomers may remain on the surface. Adding newly activated monomers to such oligomers over many cycles may be an efficient way to assemble a long polymer.
Meaning, his math only assumed random assembly from scratch, when we know for a fact many polymers will build on existing ones, so that long strings have higher probabilities than random chance alone would predict. And when we take that into account, he says, this would imply “a possibility that abiogenesis has occurred more than once inside the observable universe” and therefore “this possibility should not be overlooked.” Of course, his math overlooks it.
This is kind of like robbing Peter to pay Paul here. He admits we should not overlook this; after having just overlooked it. So to translate what just happened into colloquial English: he is here telling you, perhaps too obscurely, that his actual results are a gross under-estimate of how many spontaneous life-forming events there are likely to be in the universe. His excuse is simply that the effect of including such ordering forces is unknown, therefore his math does not account for them. But that amounts to admitting his results are actually, in fact, false. It’s like saying “if we disregard all the things that make life frequent, we get a result that life is infrequent.” Being practically a useless tautology, this isn’t a very meaningful scientific result.
But it’s at least a useful start.
What Totani is doing here is working out in a well-informed and responsible way what the odds would be “by the most conservative polymerization process, i.e., random Poissonian adding of monomers,” and then correctly admits that that’s not likely the actual way life arose, it’s just the one way we can empirically prove possible at the present time (because he is only using as premises processes well demonstrated to work empirically and widely documented to occur in nature; facts, rather than mere theories). And by admitting he is only running numbers for “the most conservative” process, he is in effect building an argument a fortiori: rather than saying life must be so rare as to occur not even once per visible universe (i.e. per “Hubble volume”), he is saying that even if life is so rare as this (i.e. even if life only arises from purely random processes, the mere “random Poissonian adding of monomers”), it will inevitably occur countless times per actual universe (since the visible universe is necessarily only a fraction of the whole, and current successful cosmological theory gives strong indications of the minimum size of the actual universe on present observations, e.g. the extreme flatness of spacetime entails the universe extends an extraordinary distance beyond the visible horizon).
So although an apologist could misquote Totani’s paper as arguing against natural biogenesis, his paper is actually making a strong argument for natural biogenesis. And explicitly so: that’s his thesis. But one could even responsibly and validly use it as an argument against divine creation of life, even though that isn’t Totani’s thesis, because the divine does not need such a vast cosmos and complex chemistry to get life, whereas every godless universe does, so observations exactly match expectation on atheism without any added suppositions, whereas this is not the case for theism. The Bayes’ factor thus always leans towards atheism here.
But we can go beyond Totani’s math to a sounder idea of how life might arise from world to world using his own qualifying statements. As Totani himself admits:
It should be noted, however, that the case of a high abiogenesis rate…cannot be excluded by this work, because we assumed that abiotic RNA polymerization occurs only by the random Poisson process of adding monomers. Potential roles of much more efficient processes [in] the origin of life, such as non-linear auto- or cross-catalytic reactions, have been studied theoretically [for example].
Totani also notes that direct detection of life on alien worlds would support the conclusion that some such processes do indeed operate in the origination of life, and that in fact his paper’s results would reinforce that conclusion (since it predicts a much lower frequency of life by random process alone, discovering a higher frequency would demonstrate random processes do not operate alone). Therefore “this possibility should not be excluded.” Instead, Totani makes clear, all that “is shown by this work is that such a hypothetical process is not necessary if we [require] abiogenesis events to occur somewhere in an inflationary universe.” In other words, a random process alone is indeed fully sufficient. No divine intervention required—once we take into account well-established cosmology (he rightly leaves open the question at the level of fine tuning universe parameters as “far beyond the scope of this work”).
I think Totani does give a false impression though of the status of autocatalytic chemistry in the origin of life, particularly in more rapidly generating and thus selecting for long nucleotide chains. So his not including this in his math is a much more serious oversight than he lets on. Accounting for autocatalysis would greatly improve the frequency of life formation; it would remain cosmically rare, but not as rare as Totani’s math suggests. Totani appears to say that autocatalysis is merely “theoretical,” but that’s not exactly true. It merely hasn’t been used to generate spontaneous self-replicators in the lab—because that would require millions of years. Otherwise the phenomenon is well demonstrated to be real and well documented in nature. Indeed it would be weird if this played no role in forming the long polymers essential to any abiogenesis event, since autocatalytic systems can be vastly simpler than the polymers they produce, and thus will arise spontaneously with a far higher frequency. I cite abundant research on this point in my article for B&P and more has come out since (e.g. Hordijk & Steel’s 2018 summary of research “Autocatalytic Networks at the Basis of Life’s Origin and Organization” in Life and Hordijk’s earlier, 2013, summary “Autocatalytic Sets: From the Origin of Life to the Economy” in BioScience).
Class V Error: Begging the Size of the Protobiont
Another problem with Totani’s paper is that he seems to be over-estimating the minimum size of a self-replicator. That helps his case insofar as it shores up his a fortiori argument: even with such a conservative estimate, life comes out to be inevitable. But if you want to understand the actual odds of life forming by chance, you need to get away from his overly conservative assumption here. Which is derived only by fallacy, when he makes two arguments for his claim that the smallest possible RNA self-replicator must be at least 40 amino acids (in the form of nucleotides) long.
First, Totani argues from “the lack of evidence for multiple abiogenesis events in the history of Earth or in laboratories,” but elsewhere in the paper he contradicts himself by giving an already known explanation for that: at biogenesis “a long RNA polymer assembled by the Poisson process would be rare and there would be no competitor or predator around it.” So he knows why we don’t observe more of them: any spontaneous self-replicator would be so rapidly digested or destroyed by the existing biosphere as to have no chance of evolving into more ordered life. So we could never hope to see a second biogenesis event on earth, even should that occur. At most we can say a self-replicator must be longer than would have been discovered in labs by now, but we really haven’t even come close to fully exploring every possible nucleotide sequence in the domain Totani excludes.
Still, I do agree two such events on earth would be highly unlikely. Yes, Totani grossly under-estimates its frequency; but I’m pretty sure any adjustment of his math toward a more realistic frequency still wouldn’t get us to even beyond “once per thousand solar systems” much less “once per moon or planet.” And most experts concur on that. Totani’s point is that his math finds a frequency of spontaneous assembly of self-replicators well above one per solar system if self-replicators can be as small as merely 21 amino acids long. In particular, Totani concludes, “The minimum RNA length must be” either “21, 27 and 32 to expect one abiogenesis event for a survey of a single star,” “galaxy,” or “the observable universe” respectively. Which means self-replicators can’t be so small or else we’d seen a bunch more of them by now.
That is, however, a non sequitur—not only because, for instance, a minimum length of even 27 would only entail an average of one biogenesis event per galaxy, and we cannot expect to have surveyed the whole galaxy for life already (and this is again only with his conservative assumptions regarding process, which we noted above are already far too conservative); but also because, even if the minimum size were below 21, allowing multiple events in our solar system, we still cannot expect to have seen this even if it were happening, so our not seeing it is unusable as data. So that is not a valid argument.
Totani’s second argument is more defensible, but still flawed: there are no currently known “RNA molecules shorter than 25 nucleotides” that exhibit “a specified function,” whereas “there is a reasonable hope to find a functioning replicase ribozyme longer than 40–60” nucleotides. In other words, we haven’t observed anything in nature so small that even has a function, much less the function of self-replicating, so if we stick with what’s been experimentally accomplished so far, the minimum we can argue for is 40 nucleotides. It’s unclear if every possibility has been explored—Totani’s sources state that one could assemble and test every possible combination of 25 nucleotides in the lab, but do not indicate anyone has ever done this. But I agree it’s reasonable to assume (even if not certain) that someone would have found one by now. The problem is that “must be larger than 25” does not get you to “must be at least 40.” The early earth had millions of years to randomly sequence molecules; scientists do not. So replicators of, say, 30 nucleotide length are beyond our ability to discover by merely random mixing. So we cannot actually rule them out—and indeed, as we’ll see in a moment, shouldn’t.
This is the one point where Totani overstates what his sources actually say. He only cites two: a 2012 paper by Robertson & Joyce that only has this to say on the point:
It is difficult to state with certainty the minimum possible size of an RNA replicase ribozyme. An RNA consisting of a single secondary structural element, that is, a small stem-loop containing 12–17 nucleotides, would not be expected to have replicase activity, whereas…[something] containing 40–60 nucleotides, offers a reasonable hope of functioning as a replicase ribozyme.
So Totani’s “40-60” number is actually just speculation. It is not any actual evidence-based argument for a minimum size. Granted, it’s well-founded speculation, and thus works a fortiori. But if you want to get at what’s true, not just a fortiori, this isn’t helpful. Totani’s only other source is an old, 1993 chapter by Szostak & Ellington that actually concludes the viable minimum range to be 30-60 nucleotides, not 40-60.
And this, mind you, is solely for an RNA-first scenario. It is now known RNA might actually be an evolved, not an original, feature of life. Which gets us to Totani’s biggest mistake: he only ever considers RNA protobionts. Nowhere in his paper does he account for PNA-first models of biogenesis (he gives only one oblique mention of it as something he won’t consider). Yet these are increasingly more likely (see Nelson et al. 2000, Nielson 2007, Sharma & Awasthi 2016). As I wrote for B&P all the way back in 2004:
Even a simple RNA system could itself be an evolved structure. Life might have begun with an even simpler and stronger peptide or PNA system (Travis 2000). We have created self-replicating peptides as small as 32 amino-acids [in monomer form] long (Lee 1996), demonstrating that the smallest possible chemical that could spark life may be much, much tinier than anything any[one] has assumed possible. McFadden calculates the odds against the Lee peptide arising by chance as 1 in 10 [to the power of] 41 (1996: 98), which is so far within the realm of cosmic possibility that it is already certain to have happened many times [even within the visible universe].
Totani, in other words, is reading the wrong literature. He is looking for the smallest self-replicating RNA molecule, when what we should be looking for is the smallest PNA molecule, because we have already experimentally proven that PNA self-replicators exist that are much simpler than anything we know from RNA. Indeed, if we apply Totani’s own highly conservative math to the smallest empirically known PNA self-replicator (which might not even be the smallest possible), then his own conclusion would be that life has already originated on average once per Hubble volume, not less than once. And again, his math is already overly conservative on that point, as I explained earlier.
So we can actually be sure life is more common than Totani concludes. It still must be extraordinarily rare; just not that rare.
Conclusion
Tomonori Totani’s mathematical study is still pretty good. It’s probably the best attempt at running such a calculation yet published, and its premises are all scientifically and mathematically sound from an a fortiori perspective: he admits he is being very conservative in his estimates, and still finds that life will spontaneously arise countless times in a single inflationary universe with properties like ours. But Totani’s conclusion becomes fallacious if taken as more than an argument a fortiorti. If one mistakenly quotes him as showing what is the case, rather than what would be the case even on false assumptions more conservative than the evidence warrants, you’d be misrepresenting what even Totani himself says. So be on your guard against Christian apologists pulling that trick.
Totani admits to this in several respects. For example, he knows his ignoring of known ordering processes (such as autocatalytic systems and successive assembly on clay surfaces) in calculating the number of long polymers that will arise by chance is logically invalid; he is merely sticking to what is most empirically certain to argue an a fortiori case for his conclusion—which is that life will commonly exist by accident in our universe (the opposite of what Christian apologists might claim). But Totani doesn’t even mention other important respects in which his conclusion is too conservative, such as that life is far more likely to originate with PNA than RNA, and self-replicating PNA molecules are already known to exist that are far simpler than Totani assumes.
Finally, there is one other way in which Totani’s paper could be misused by Creationists that is worth closing with. And it’s a point about math. What Totani calculates is not the probability of abiogenesis, but the frequency of it. In a sense those are the same things, but in an important sense they are not. Totani wants to know what the average rate of abiogenesis should be given four different volumes (solar system, galaxy, visible universe, actual universe). He finds it’s well above one for the last of those volumes (the only one that really matters), but well below one for the others (especially the first two), which would be bad news for scientists seeking life on other worlds (much less Mars!). We already saw this conclusion changes when we input the actually known smallest self-replicator, to an average of one event per visible universe (and lo and behold, here we are!).
But in actual fact, lots of things will happen in any given volume that deviate from average. This is a mathematically crucial point. So pay close attention here. Not only is the universe so unfathomably large that abiogenesis is inevitable even on Totani’s overly conservative assumptions, but it’s so large that extraordinarily unlikely events also happen in it. And this is why probability is more important to look at than frequency. Frequency tells you the average distribution of a thing (such as how many royal flushes we can expect to see across all poker games ever played), not the specific distribution of that thing (such as where or how often clusters of royal flushes will be observed).
Thus even if it were the case that the probability against life arising within our universe were 1 in 10^41, countless events of that improbability will occur in our universe. Even the creationist mathematician William Dembski admitted we can expect at least one event to happen in the visible universe to an improbability of 1 in 10^150! Now, this means events in general, not life specifically. But if events of that improbability can occur, that life should be one of them is no longer remarkable. After all, we will only ever find ourselves in a universe that wins that lottery, so that we observe ourselves in one isn’t remarkable; and as even Dembski pointed out, a universe can easily win that lottery by chance. Because it’s winning lotteries on that scale all the time.
Dembski would argue that, yes, that’s true, but life is such a remarkably specific way to win that lottery, shouldn’t we still consider it remarkable? And the answer is…no, not really. If even the visible universe will have won 10^109 such lotteries by now—as Dembski’s own math shows to be the case—is it really so remarkable that one of those wins should just by accident turn out to be “a self-replicating molecule”? Rather than, say, a supernova exactly shaped like Salma Hayek, or a solar system whose planets move in perfect synchronized circles exactly as Copernicus imagined, or any of the gazillion other things with odds of 1 in 10^41 that will inevitably happen across all cosmic space and time.
Objectively, there is nothing more remarkable about life being one of those things than the Salma Hayek nova would be. We are the only ones who think the one is more remarkable than the other, and that’s simply because by that very accident we’re able to think at all. But accident it remains. And that’s why a Salma Hayek nebula would no more prove God exists, than a similarly improbable terrestrial abiogenesis would. Both are equally unlikely—and equally inevitable. That’s how huge our universe is.
This is probably a much harder point to grasp. Creationists have a really hard time comprehending the likelihood of coincidence. So I wouldn’t spend much time arguing it with them. It’s much easier to argue a fortiori: Totani proved that even using unrealistically conservative assumptions as to the facts, we can expect life to have spontaneously arisen countless times in the whole volume of the actual universe we live in; and when we correct Totani’s error regarding the smallest known self-replicator—when we redo all his math with the Lee peptide as our model—we can expect life to have spontaneously arisen at least once even in the visible volume of our universe. Which is, so far, exactly what we observe.
Your article informed brilliantly. I didn’t know about PNA.
I failed to obtain “The Argument from Biogenesis: Probabilities against a Natural Origin of Life,” online. Is it available to me? If so, how?
Articles can be purchased directly from the journal that publishes them (albeit usually at outrageous prices, and I get none of that) or acquired for free or nominal fee through your local public library (ask the reference librarian how to order it through interlibrary loan).
I don’t yet have enough philosophy papers to publish an anthology of them (as I did for my history papers) but when I do this will be included (contracts with journals allow us to do that). That’s just not likely to happen for several years.
Abiojenisis is about ixplaning the mekanism which made an inorganic thing becum an organic thing; not that it purports t’ ixplain wher the thing itself came t’ be firstof. Is that currect?
I assume. I’m not sure what you asking.
The word abiogenesis means “life arising from non-life,” and thus refers to the initial biogenesis event, when some nonliving chemical system transitioned into a living chemical system. There are actually known transitional stages possible so it’s not merely binary. But the challenge for protobiologists (the scientists who study this question) is that almost all the evidence has been destroyed, so we have to rely on clues and theoretical models. But a lot of progress has been made in the field.
The “Argument from Abiogenesis” is a Creationist argument to the effect that “scientists can’t explain this event because all their proposed explanations require events so improbable not even one such event can be expected to occur, therefore a miracle from God was required.” They can only defend the key premise by lying about the science. As I demonstrated in B&P. Etc.
The lack of an empirically verified naturalistic explanation for the origin of life remains problematic for metaphysical naturalism
You must not have actually read the article you are commenting on. We have several naturalistic explanations for the origin of life, all match known science and available evidence.
You seem to be confusing that, with knowing which one is true. We don’t need to know which one is true; because we already know there are a dozen, any one of which can be true. Those explanations all completely fit the evidence and known science, and do so vastly better than any made-up supernatural nonsense.
In the same way, we don’t need to know which horse Caesar rode when he crossed the Rubicon. We have enough evidence to know he crossed the Rubicon, and probably on a horse. The fact that we don’t know which horse does not warrant concluding he therefore was carried across on a flight of angels.
Great joke, Richard!
While showering, I thought of the following scenario. They produce a TV series inspired by Columbo. The hero’s surname also begins with a C, but he has curly hair and wears glasses. Instead of investigating and solving murders, he investigates historical, philosophical, theological, and apologetic “homicides” and solves them by keen thinking. Columbo tossed in jokes, as well.
“No evidence exists that the accidental origin of life is too improbable to have occurred naturally, but there are numerous attempts to argue so.”
The flaw with this statement is that it tries to put the burden of proof on dissenters when it’s the other way around. Forget probability. Proponents of abiogenesis have yet to even demonstrate empirically that abiogenesis can happen and that it has happened. It is an empirically unverified working assumption, which suggests an agnostic stance on abiogenesis is the more rational one. Your ready acceptance of an assumption that lacks empirical verification is a little surprising given your statements elsewhere.
To the contrary, they have proved both to an adequate evidential standard to leave no room for bizarre superghosts to have been involved.
The evidence biogenesis was a natural chemical event is multiply corroborated in the geological and genetic record and in the known laws of chemistry; and there are at least a dozen ways it could have happened that match known laws of physics and the material evidence. Hence we don’t need to know which one actually transpired.
The burden is thus on someone who wants to insist it can’t have been any of those things (problem number one; because there is no evidence it wasn’t) and that it had to be this completely other hypothesis that violates all the laws of physics and for which there is no evidence whatever (problem number two; because there is zero evidence of that and in fact ample evidence against it—unlike the natural biogenesis hypotheses, which have ample evidence for and no evidence against).
You are greatly overstating things. I’m simply being honest about the state of origin of life research, as informed by those in the field I know and interact with and my own areas of academic expertise in biology and paleontology.
Abiogenesis has not been proved to an ‘adequate evidential standard’. Everyone in the field recognizes that abiogenesis is an unproven working assumption that is accepted as true a priori without empirical demonstration. The great hope is that one day we will have empirical verification for abiogenesis. But it’s simply inaccurate to say that we already do.
Not looking for a debate. Just a friendly FYI. Best.
I am not overstating anything. It is a peer reviewed scientific fact that we have a dozen different possible explanations of Earth biogenesis that fully fit all the evidence and known laws of physics. It is also a peer reviewed scientific fact that current geological and genetic data conform perfectly to natural biogenesis. And it is likewise a fact that no such evidence exists for superghosts ever being involved or needing to be.
You are illogically obsessing over information we don’t need. We do not need to know which theory of biogenesis is true to know one of them most likely is. Whereas to argue a superghost did it, you need to both empirically prove none of those theories is true and empirically prove a superghost did it. Neither of which has happened.
You are thus not thinking scientifically here, but like a delusional apologist who doesn’t know how evidence or logic works. And that’s the story of you.
I readily admit you have superior knowledge when it comes to classics/ancient history, because it is outside my area of expertise, which is in biology and paleontology. It would behoove you to exercise similar restraint and decorum when it comes to subjects outside your own area of expertise and training. You make unfounded assumptions about me, saying I’m ‘not thinking scientifically’ but am ‘like a delusional apologist who doesn’t know how evidence or logic works. And that’s the story of you’ (Thank you for informing me about me, by the way). Bold words considering how you know absolutely nothing about me. I didn’t know you possessed clairvoyant super powers.
I can’t say I’m surprised by your insults, because I observe that you similarly insult just about everyone who disagrees with you, including colleagues in your field. But I am surprised by how quick you are to leap to such presumptive conclusions about someone you don’t know. And why so caustic? Is it a knee-jerk reaction? Were you anticipating I would respond in kind and wanted to beat me to the punch? I can assure you there’s no need for any of that here. There’s no need for unfounded assumptions or personal insults. And I assume you do know how to have conversations without resorting to such, and you’re obviously intelligent enough to know that such an approach is counterproductive. (Surely, you don’t believe insults are the best way to win people over to your pov, do you? I’ve never known insults to accomplish that. Have you?).
Now we can delve into the peer reviewed literature if you want. But there’s no need for insults. And as a trained scientist, I know a thing or two about scientific thinking and how evidence and logic work, so please don’t presume to lecture me on the subject. You’re statements are actually far too emphatic for a scientist’s taste. No scientist speaks in such emphatic, decisive terms like ‘fully fit all the evidence’ or ‘conform perfectly’; not if they care about their long-term reputation. Nothing ever ‘fully fits all the evidence’. There are always outliers. And scientific ‘facts’ are always tentative, and subject to revision when new data warrants it. This is why scientists don’t like to speak emphatically in terms of ‘always’, or ‘fully’, or ‘never’, and why they qualify their conclusions. There are simply too many examples of past scientists making hardline, emphatic claims, only to be discredited later and have their credibility and reputations sullied.
That said, there are no ‘possible explanations’ much less a dozen that ‘fully fit the evidence’. That is simply false. If you want we can look at some of the explanations you had in mind, and I will explain further.
‘Current geological and genetic data’ also do not ‘conform perfectly to natural biogenesis’. That is also false. For example, we did not have optimal conditions on the early earth like a strongly reducing atmosphere/environment, which our sum total empirical knowledge from prebiotic experiments indicates is necessary for abiogenesis. Our window of time for ‘chemical evolution’ between life’s first appearance and when the earth was sufficiently cool after formation to be habitable is also a fraction of the two billion years of time we once thought was available. We probably had ~200 million years at most. Many believe we had less time than that based on the frequency of bolide impacts in the Hadean, estimates of pyrolysis of organics at hydrothermal vents, and other considerations. Some consider the origin of life to be a geologically ‘instantaneous’/’negligible’ event with life essentially arising ‘just as soon’–geologically speaking–as the earth was cool enough to have liquid water/oceans.
To some, this short time frame implicates deterministic processes, but the evidence for this is scant. Others take this as evidence that life could not have arisen on Earth, and had to have arisen somewhere else.
Again, if you want we can delve into this subject further. But there’s no need for insults.
I am literally published on this subject under peer review. So don’t try to claim I’m the one here who doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
I am also extensively published in contemporary philosophy, with numerous peer reviewed articles, chapters, and books. A solid grasp of the empirical status of philosophically important questions in the sciences is fundamental to that subject field.
I suspect you are the one who lacks this expertise. Maybe you should listen to the guy who actually has proven he knows what he is talking about. Particularly regarding such issues as why 200 million years is more than enough time for spontaneous biogenesis to occur in a universe occupied by trillions of galaxies containing billions of planets and moons. That you don’t even know that, is the problem here. Until you fix that problem, you will never understand this subject. And until you understand it, you really shouldn’t be asserting opinions about it. Nor making up excuses to avoid gaining that understanding (like complaining about being insulted, rather than actually correcting your errors and acquiring the pertinent knowledge).
Yes, we all know how highly you think of yourself and how any scholar who disagrees with you is an ‘idiot’ and doesn’t know how to use evidence or think logically. And I’ve already read your seventeen year old article from 2004. Not impressed. Sorry.
You apparently haven’t kept up with the times. If you had you’d know that the ‘chance’ in Monod’s famous ‘Chance and Necessity’ has been replaced by ‘contingency’. You’d know that two broad philosophies guide OOL researchers: necessity/determinism or contingency (i.e., life is either the ‘inevitable’ result of the ‘laws’ of chemistry and physics–which does not seem to be the case–or a set of unpredictable, possibly one time occurring, unique contingencies). Luisi’s thousand page book, ‘The Emergence of Life’ has an excellent discussion on this.
What you seem to be unaware of is that OOL researchers, including those in the contingency camp (like Luisi) reject ID/YEC probability arguments about the impossibility of life’s origin from molecular components by chance as ‘funny’, but NOT because they’re entirely devoid of any merit (although many are), but because such are viewed as a stawman that no ‘serious scientist would have ever proposed something so silly’ (i.e., as life emerging this way by chance). Today’s researchers recognize that ‘chance’ is not an empirically grounded explanation. It’s not really an ‘explanation’ of anything at all (and some view it as tantamount to invoking miracles). Today’s researchers search for unique contingencies and favored pathways that actually would make the OOL more probable.
But (unlike some) I don’t claim to be omniscient, and freely admit you may know things on the subject of which I am unaware, so I’m more than willing to hear you out. So by all means, if it’s true that that the OOL by chance is not ‘too improbable’ (as your article states) then please explain how you know this, and specifically how you know that ‘200 million years is more than enough time for spontaneous biogenesis to occur’ on the early earth (yes, I did see your qualifier about billions of planets in trillions of galaxies in the universe, but my comment was specifically made in reference to abiogenesis on the early earth, not elsewhere). In order to make such a decisive, definitive claim that 200 million years is ‘more than enough time’ for ‘spontaneous biogenesis’, you must have some pretty amazing empirical evidence to back it up. Do tell.
**Please start by first answering a simple question: What *is the probability of life ‘spontaneously’ arising on earth within a 200 million year window?
LOL. I am publishing this childish and impertinent response of yours because it is so embarrassing for you I need make no further reply.
Any substantive point you attempt here has already been refuted with evidence in the article you are commenting on or works it cites.
Don’t waste any more of anyone’s time here with immature rambling that ignores everything you have been instructed to consult.
So in other words, you are unable to answer the question. Got it.
I answered it more than once here. That you ignore the answer is not my being unable to answer. To pretend otherwise is the behavior of a schoolyard child.
No one is ignoring or pretending. You have not directly answered my question. I will repeat it: “What is the probability of life ‘spontaneously’ arising on earth within a 200 million year window?” And to save time and avoid continued back-and-forth tedium, I will also answer the question myself: NO ONE KNOWS. The probability is currently incalculable and involves too many unknowns. And to save more time I will further note that based on what you have written here, in your article, and elsewhere that it would seem we are BOTH in AGREEMENT on this!
Sigh. I told you. The article you are commenting on already explains this. Please READ the article you are commenting on.
You will then learn you are asking for the wrong probability. The relevant probability is of this happening within a 200 million year window on ANY planet in the ENTIRE UNIVERSE. Which will always be some particular planet. There is no reason it “had” to be Earth. Earth is just where the dice rolled the boxcars. But those dice were being rolled billions and billions of times across all the biophilic planets and moons there are and ever have been.
As to what the correct probability is, my entire article you are commenting on goes over how we know roughly within a margin of error what it is. So READ. THE. ARTICLE.
I have read the article I’m commenting on. Multiple times. Do you mean your ‘conservative’ ‘under-estimate’ of ‘the probability against life arising within our universe’ being ‘1 in 10^41’? Is that what you’re referring to??? That is NOT the probability of life arising within our universe. That’s just ‘the odds’ you give ‘against the Lee peptide arising by chance’. But a single, self-replicating molecule does not life make. That is a far, far cry from the necessary (but not sufficient) dissipative homeostatic autopoietic systems that characterize life. Besides, if we’re going to be specific, our roughly 200 million year window includes not only the origin of life, but also the origin of the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA), which most put around 4.0-4.1 billion years ago.
Yes, and for all the reasons stated. The article (and linked material) explains:
(1) The chance of that single self-replicator is not the probability of biogenesis, because there must necessarily be countless other initial self-replicators, so the probability of any one of them arising by chance is the sum of them all, which will be many times higher (this is the third law of probability). Yet even just that one probability will be met 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times in the known universe. Ergo, any other factors that need converge can have no significant effect on the fact that P(random biogenesis) —> 1. This is fact.
(2) All the other converging conditions are established facts (we know for a fact that they existed on the early Earth; so their epistemic probability of their having been conjoined here is essentially 100%; this includes time: 200 million years is an outrageously long time, especially for single-chain and single-cell replicators, who double their populations in minutes, not years). And none of those conditions are anywhere near as unlikely as self-replicator chaining; we know for a fact that all of those conditions will be extremely common across the known universe. Not a single one is even unusual, statistically, in terms of its causal inevitability given such an enormous pool of randomized worlds and the established laws of physics and chemistry. It is in fact only self-replicator chain assembly that could have been too improbable; but facts now establish, it is not. And we need nothing more than these things to explain biogenesis.
(3) The hypothesis that biogenesis was a random event is verified factually by the observation of all the necessary concurrent conditions (whereas no intelligent design scenario is), e.g. random biogenesis (not intelligent design) predicts a vast universe of vast age with vast content (to make the improbable self-replicator chain a likely outcome, owing to such vast numbers of available attempts) and a universe almost entirely lethal to life (this universe, by both mass and volume, is 99.9999…% lethal to life, and thus is as near to being incapable of hosting life as a universe can be and still randomly generate life). Both observationa are predicted by random biogenesis. Neither is predicted by intelligent design. And nothing uniquely predicted by intelligent design is observed. The conclusion follows. See §2 in Bayesian Counter-Apologetics.
All of this you would already know, if you would simply read the articles you’ve been told to read, before commenting on them.
Richard Carrier wrote: “All the other converging conditions are established facts (we know for a fact that they existed on the early Earth)”
And in your view, these ‘converging conditions’ are? Please clarify.
By the Lords of Kobol you are now talking in a circle. I just gave you a summary of all those converging facts and links covering the rest. Since you refuse to actually learn or read anything I will summarize what I am saying one last time.
Pick any “fact” that has to be the case for any of the dozen or so evidence-based theories of biogenesis on Earth, and it has been extensively documented to be actually or inevitably ubiquitously occurring in the entirety of the known universe.
Therefore, nothing else is needed to explain what happened. Abundant evidence establishes every model would work given enough time; abundant evidence establishes there was enough time; and abundant evidence establishes every required element of every model is absurdly frequent in the known universe.
Yes, that means there are any of a dozen ways it could have happened, because the evidence has been destroyed by time, so we cannot zero in on which one was the one that happened here. But the probability on present evidence it was one of them approaches 100%, given all the facts I just summarized.
If you want to explore those facts, you have an article and links. Go to it.
“All of this you would already know, if you would simply read the articles you’ve been told to read, before commenting on them.”
And as I’ve repeatedly stated, I have read them. I simply disagree with your assessment. I will say it again: The 1 in 10^41 odds you give is for (‘toy model’) assembly of a single, self-replicating molecule, NOT for the origin of life. Your claim that the odds are actually far better than this due to putative ‘countless other initial self-replicators’–only one of which need arise–that ‘must necessarily’ have existed is likewise irrelevant and misses the point entirely, because that still only deals with a single molecule, NOT the origin of life. It doesn’t matter how many supposed ‘countless’ different self-replicators you think could theoretically achieve the same result, because no single one of them can achieve all the results that are needed. As I said, a single molecule does not life make. A single self-replicating molecule is neither living, nor sufficient in itself to originate (or evolve) life. It may be entirely necessary, but it’s nowhere near sufficient. Even if more than one type of self-replicating molecule can perform the same type of function, no one molecule can perform every function that is needed for life (which for even ‘simplest, first’ life is believed to require the functional integration of at least three key components: metabolism, compartmentalization/encapsulation, and replication–not of a single molecule, but of the entire autopoietic entity). This is one of the many problems that all single polymer scenarios–which try to avoid the astronomical improbabilities associated with the independent random assembly of multiple different polymers (with different functions) on the early earth in sufficient proximity during the same window of time–ultimately run into: you still have to eventually somehow derive all these other components, either independently or from a putative single self-replicating polymer. And the single self-replicator of the ‘RNA First’ hypothesis is not even part of life as we know it, which regardless of whether other types of life are possible is still where we need to get to on earth in only a few hundred million years.
The appeal of ‘RNA First’ is that at first blush it seems to solve the chicken-or-egg paradox of ‘DNA is needed to make proteins/catalytic enzymes, and proteins/enzymes are needed to make DNA, so which came first?’ The discovery of catalytic RNA seems to circumvent this problem, but only temporarily, because we still must somehow separate this combined informational-catalytic polymer into separate informational (DNA) and catalytic (proteins) polymers and cooperatively integrate them into a sophisticated transcription-translation information processing system for protein synthesis in only a few hundred million years. The ‘RNA First’ hypothesis glosses over these immense difficulties by simply assuming that somehow the ‘RNA World’ transitioned to this ‘DNA-Protein’ world. But no one really knows how to plausibly accomplish this, even in theory. Even logically, there are immense hurdles. There is no straightforward trajectory from a self-replicating system that selfishly outcompetes and chemically ‘evolves’ by ‘Darwinian natural selection’ into separate informational and catalytic biopolymers related through an arbitrary, semiotic code that are functionally integrated and work together cooperatively, not competitively. And it is further difficult to explain how a single self-replicator that was so successful (in terms of fitness), would then be replaced, so as to leave no vestige of its prior existence (i.e., we see catalytic RNA, but we don’t see self-replicators in living things that catalyze their own synthesis. Those functions are segregated in life). ‘RNA First’ proponents postulate an initial self-replicator (that was subsequently replaced and left no physical evidence of its prior existence) in an attempt to solve only one small piece of the greater puzzle. ‘Metabolism First’ proponents reject the scenario. You treat it as if it is a foregone conclusion, when it remains a contentious, hotly debated issue.
Thus, you haven’t proved the origin of life by random chance to P —> 1, you’ve simply moved the goal posts by reducing the problem of life’s origin to just the origin of a single self-replicating molecule, while ignoring a host of other problems and assuming that if we can just generate an initial self-replicator then any and all subsequent problems will magically solve themselves, and life will automatically emerge via ‘Darwinian’ chemical evolution. But that is an enormous leap that no one has empirically demonstrated can happen, or even how it plausibly could happen in theory. It reminds me of a 2011 NewScientist article entitled, ‘First Life: the search for the first replicator’ that similarly relates: ‘Once the first self-replicating entities appeared, natural selection kicked in, favouring any offspring with variations that made them better at replicating themselves. Soon the first simple cells appeared. The rest is prehistory.’ But that’s like saying, ‘Hitler failed his entrance exam for the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. One thing led to another. And the US dropped an atomic bomb on Japan.’ It explains nothing and leaves out most everything.
And that brings us full circle to what is really my main point: namely, that unlike biological evolution and universal common ancestry–for which we enjoy substantial, definitive evidence–we do not possess the same for the origin of life and cannot speak in such definitive, emphatic terms. Abiogenesis is our working hypothesis in science and assumed to be true, but unlike biological evolution it still remains an empirically unverified working assumption. That is not an argument for theism or ‘super ghosts’–which have no consideration or place in science–nor the rantings of a ‘delusional apologist’ as you erroneously presume (I’m an evolutionary biologist). It’s simply a statement of fact about our current level of scientific knowledge on the subject. While biological evolution has been empirically demonstrated, abiogenesis has not, and it would be misleading to suggest otherwise.
In the interests of thoroughness and to dispense with any further accusations that I haven’t read the article, I will also take time to comment on selected portions of said article. In addition to the main problem I see of reducing life’s origin to the origin of a self-replicator, I feel there is some inconsistency and/or selective application/criticism in your article. You are very good at spotting others’ assumptions, but I feel like you do so selectively and inconsistently, and don’t always recognize some of your own assumptions that you make in turn. I believe you have also conflated some issues, and I disagree with you that Totani has committed ‘fatal flaws’ in his article. I find that Totani’s work is exactly what it purports to be; no more, and no less. I will start with some of your ‘fatal flaws’:
“4. Confusing the winner with the players: Assuming that only exactly our life is possible (or that there is only one possible self-replicating molecule), when in fact many other kinds of life are possible” [In theory. But that is an assumption, too. Maybe there are, maybe there aren’t. We simply don’t know. Certainly no one has demonstrated that ‘many other kinds of life are possible’, and the phrase ‘many other kinds’ is ambiguous.] “(and there must be many different self-replicators that could start it off),” [Again, supposition. Why ‘must’ there have been? Where is your indisputable empirical evidence to make such an emphatic claim? The truth is we don’t know. We don’t have definitive empirical evidence to demonstrate that any single self-replicating molecule–much less the examples you discuss–are sufficient to ‘start it off” (which I take to mean a pathway that inevitably and unavoidably leads to life via ‘Darwinian’ chemical evolution). It is a popular idea. It is often presumed. But even proponents recognize that scenarios invoking self-replicators, autocatalytic sets, and the like may be necessary, but are still not sufficient. For example, the authors of the ‘Autocatalytic Networks at the Basis of Life’s Origin and Organization’ article you cite make this plain in the abstract: ‘We argue that autocatalytic sets are a necessary (although not sufficient) condition for life-like behavior.].
What the empirical and experimental evidence does indicate is that cells with minimal genomes of only a few hundred genes and proteins can exist. But these are parasitic obligates or synthetic organisms that can only exist in controlled environments within a narrow range of tolerances and which are dependent on artificially or host supplied nutrients. By contrast, the ‘simplest’ free living cells have genomes with upwards of a thousand genes. Of course, it is assumed that the very first life had to be far simpler–some suggest 30-40 genes–and maybe it was so, but again this is still conjecture and speculation. No one has demonstrated this empirically. But regardless, if estimates are correct, then we had only a few hundred million years to not only originate a putative self-replicator and ‘first life’, but also the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA), with an estimated 400 genes.
“5. Begging the size of the protobiont: Not deriving a sound evidence-based estimate for how small (i.e., how structurally simple) a self-replicating molecule can be.”
This is a conflation. A self-replicating molecule is not a protobiont. A protobiont is encapsulated/compartmentalized (i.e., ‘membrane’-bound) by definition.
Regarding Totani, you write, ‘His only Type 5 error is ignoring pre-RNA worlds and over-estimating even the minimum RNA size based on some faulty logic’. No, it isn’t. You have this tendency to make emphatic, rigid, black-or-white claims, and to frame others’ work in similar ways, when they have not done so themselves. Totani’s article is very speculative and rife with uncertainties, as many theoretical works are. But there’s nothing wrong with that, because his work acknowledges this and doesn’t purport to be definitive ‘proof’. He continually qualifies his remarks and acknowledges that there are many uncertainties in his calculations. These are the marks of a meticulous, careful scientist who doesn’t inflate the significance of his conclusions but properly tempers them in accordance with the inherent uncertainties that exist.
You write: “Totani’s second argument is more defensible, but still flawed: there are no currently known ‘RNA molecules shorter than 25 nucleotides’ that exhibit ‘a specified function,’ whereas ‘there is a reasonable hope to find a functioning replicase ribozyme longer than 40-60’ nucleotides. In other words, we haven’t observed anything in nature so small that even has a function much less the function of self-replicating, so if we stick with what’s been experimentally accomplished so far, the minimum we can argue is 40 nucleotides….The problem is that ‘must be larger than 25’ does not get you to ‘must be at least 40.’ The early earth had millions of years to randomly sequence molecules; scientists do not. So replicators of, say, 30 nucleotide length are beyond our ability to discover by merely random mixing. So we cannot actually rule them out.”—But neither can we ‘rule them in’. You’re just speculating. Regardless, Totani is not ruling them out either. He’s simply basing his figures on what the empirical, observational evidence he cites actually supports, as opposed to speculating.
You write: “This is the one point where Totani overstates what his sources actually say. He only cites two: a 2012 paper by Robertson & Joyce that only has this to say on the point:
“It is difficult to state with certainty the minimum possible size of an RNA replicase ribozyme. An RNA consisting of a single secondary structural element, that is, a small stem-loop containing 12–17 nucleotides, would not be expected to have replicase activity, whereas…[something] containing 40–60 nucleotides, offers a reasonable hope of functioning as a replicase ribozyme.”
“So Totani’s “40-60” number is actually just speculation. It is not any actual evidence-based argument for a minimum size.”
No, you are mistaken. It’s not ‘just speculation’. It shows a lack of understanding of molecular biology. You omitted significant parts of the quote. It’s not just ‘something’ containing 40-60 nucleotides, but a specific, structural feature at issue:
“An RNA consisting of a single secondary structural element, that is, a small stem-loop containing 12 –17 nucleotides, would not be expected to have replicase activity, whereas a double stem-loop, perhaps forming a “dumbbell” structure or a pseudoknot, might just be capable of a low level of activity. A triple stem-loop structure, containing 40–60 nucleotides, offers a reasonable hope of functioning as a replicase ribozyme.One could, for example, imagine a molecule consisting of a pseudoknot and a pendant stem-loop that forms a cleft for template-dependent replication.”
You seem to misunderstand. It’s not the length by itself that’s significant, but the secondary structure stem-loop needed for catalytic activity. Multiple stem loops are needed for meaningful catalysis that outpace naturally occurring decomposition reactions. The nucleotide numbers simply reflect the number of nucleotides needed to structurally form a stem-loop. It is common knowledge that a small stem-loop (‘containing 12-17 nucleotides) does not exhibit catalytic activity. The reasons for this are well-understood. When it comes to a putative ‘RNA World’ ribozyme that specifically catalyzes RNA replication (i.e., a replicase), ‘it is difficult to state with certainty the minimum possible length’. But based on extant ribozyme correlates that catalyze non-replication reactions we would not expect replicase activity to occur with a single stem-loop, because we don’t observe catalytic activity with single stem-loops in extant ribozymes; and even if we did, the activity level would be negligible and not sufficient to outpace decomposition.
You then write: “And this, mind you, is solely for an RNA-first scenario. It is now known RNA might [yes, might, it is conjecture] actually be an evolved, not an original, feature of life. Which gets us to Totani’s biggest mistake: he only ever considers RNA protobionts [No, not a ‘protobiont’. Totani doesn’t consider membrane-bound protocells; except only to note that ‘the highly uncertain’ Pev parameter–the probability an active polymer once produced proceeds to Darwinian evolution to complete abiogenesis–which he assumes with 100% certainty (Pev = 1) ‘as a baseline’–that consideration of ‘Any other essential factors involved in the origin of life, e.g., encapsulation by membrane vesicle formation, may significantly reduce this parameter’]. Nowhere in his paper does he even mention, much less account for, PNA-first models of biogenesis. [That’s not quite true. Totani notes that ‘Non-RNA nucleic acid analogues may have carried genetic information before the RNA world emerged’ and says his formulations ‘can also be applied to such cases’, but that is not ‘the aim of this work’, which focuses specifically on RNA polymer assembly. Non-RNA analogues are beyond the scope of his work. You can’t fault research for being no more or less than what it purports to be]. Yet these are increasingly more likely [No, that does not follow. The experiments simply demonstrate that PNA-based replicators as short as 32aa can be produced. They don’t prove (and can’t prove) that that’s what actually happened historically, nor is there any vestige of such actually existing in the history of life.]…. Totani, in other words, is reading the wrong literature. [No, he’s aware of it, it’s just not the focus of his research]. He is looking for the smallest self-replicating RNA molecule, when what we should be looking for is the smallest PNA molecule [No, not necessarily (see below)], because we have already experimentally proven that PNA self-replicators exist that are much simpler than anything we know from RNA. [But again, that doesn’t prove a PNA-World preceded an RNA-World.] Indeed, if we apply Totani’s own highly conservative math to the smallest empirically known PNA self-replicator [but not empirically known as an actual stage in the history of life] then his own conclusion would be that life has already originated on average once per Hubble volume, not less than once. And again, his math is already overly conservative on that point, as I explained earlier.”
The problem here is that you have latched onto a ‘PNA-First’ scenario because in your mind it seems to be a ‘slam dunk win’ that makes abiogenesis all the more certain, when it’s actually not necessarily so. This is because you have to factor in the actual chemistry. The greater ease with which PNA self-replicators form implies greater thermodynamic stability, which is great for PNA, but not for subsequent ‘chemical evolution’. The rule is chemical reaction systems run toward lower energetic, equilibrium states and then stop. The more stable, the more difficult it is to get products to participate in further reactions. Thus, instead of a slam-dunk win, PNA could be a chemical dead-end. Like the problems with transitioning from an RNA- to DNA-World, it is not clear that transition from a PNA- to RNA-World could be an easily accomplished feat It’s easier to get PNA nucleotides than RNA nucleotides, but not necessarily as easy to then go from PNA to RNA. Such may ultimately be more problematic than the problems with RNA nucleotide synthesis. That is why not everyone has jumped on the PNA ‘bandwagon’. And that is why it’s not significant that Totani doesn’t address PNA-First scenarios, and why it isn’t his ‘biggest mistake’ or any mistake at all.”
So we can actually be sure life is more common than Totani concludes. It still must be extraordinarily rare; just not that rare.”
No, we can’t actually conclude that, because of the numerous assumptions and uncertainties that you don’t address. You selectively focus on factors that you believe increase the probability of abiogenesis, while ignoring the factors that don’t. Like the Pev = 1.0 assumption that once we have a self-replicator, chemical evolution will proceed to the origin of life with 100% certainty. An enormous leap that is assumed without empirical demonstration. Why do you ignore such a huge assumption? By contrast, Totani recognizes the probability that this would actually happen is ‘highly uncertain’, and further notes that his study does not consider ‘other essential factors involved in the origin of life’ that ‘may significantly reduce this parameter’.
Another example of this selective criticism is where you make much of Totani’s statement that the possibility of abiogenesis occurring more than once inside the observable universe should not be overlooked, which you then claim he overlooks. You write, ‘It’s like saying “if we disregard all the things that make life frequent, we get a result that life is infrequent.” Being practically a useless tautology, this isn’t a very meaningful scientific result.” But Totani’s discussion is more nuanced than this and than you give him credit for. You fail to point out that Totani also disregards many things that make life infrequent in his same discussion of this possibility, and that he is not claiming his calculation is an accurate reflection of all these realities, but that he is doing ‘toy model’ chemistry (i.e., ‘As a toy model to consider this…’) that does not factor in ‘RNA oligomer destruction’ by processes like ‘hydrolysis or UV radiation during the dry phase’ that may limit ‘such a polymerization process’. Why do you not similarly take him to task for his failure to consider empirically known processes that would reduce the likelihood of abiogenesis?
The truth is Totani has done nothing grievous nor made any ‘fatal flaws’ in reasoning or methodology. To the contrary, he has been exceedingly transparent about his methods and the assumptions and uncertainties therein, as well as the limitations of his work. There is also nothing wrong with ‘toy domain’ chemistry, which is routinely employed in probability estimates like this. A grievous ‘sin’ would be to use ‘toy domain’ models, but fail to disclose this in one’s methods, because that would falsely imply the results are closer to reality than they actually are. And it seems that you have done similarly here by giving readers the false impression that abiogenesis has been proven with 100% certainty, when in fact, these are ‘tinker toy’ assembly models that do not accurately reflect physico-chemical realities. It is not just a simple matter of ‘rolling the dice’ enough times like you said in an earlier comment, because that is not how mass action chemistry actually works. And yet you don’t take Totani to task for this. Totani assumes a sufficient supply of activated RNA nucleotides, but you don’t take him to task for this either (Do you know how difficult it is to generate just the building blocks of the building blocks of RNA and then activate them? Extremely. It further requires a reducing atmosphere which didn’t exist on the early earth, so a temporary, transient impact-induced one has to be postulated, and on and on and on). These, and countless other real-world problems for abiogenesis are not factored into Totani’s toy domain chemistry. But you don’t object to that.
For a general discussion of such problems in life origin research, see, e.g., Bains (2020), “Getting Beyond the Toy Domain. Meditations on David Deamer’s ‘Assembling Life'”:
“In my view, almost all the OOL chemistry that I see is Toy Domain chemistry. It is making single types of biochemicals in a controlled laboratory setting using pure chemicals that might, just might, have been present in trace amounts in a complex mixture of thousands of other chemicals at OOL, under conditions that might have existed and might have persisted long enough, and then stopping the reaction at exactly the right time to maximize the yield of what you want. It neglects that many of the postulated starting materials are themselves unstable. It neglects that they will react with other chemicals present. It neglects that the intermediates will all react with each other, and with the products.”
I also take issue with some of the things you say in ‘fatal flaws’ #6 & #7, but I grow tired….
You are making a large number of factual, mathematical, and epistemological mistakes here. I address them all in Biogenesis and the Laws of Evidence.
I just ordered and read the book by Jason Rosenhouse – The Failures of Mathematical Anti-Evolutionism (2022). Your 2004 paper was a quick reference in Chapter 5. I was wondering if you had a chance to read this and considered doing a shout out and review?
I’ve skimmed it. It’s great (and indeed, more or less is an extended thesis inspired by my 2004 paper; yet he does the subject much better than I did). But I have no plans to review it in particular. If anyone asks for a suggestion on the subject, though, he tops the list.