Would only an evil god blame his own creations for the taint therein -- of his poor craftsmanship?

Red Sky at Morning

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Do you see Buddhists as believing in supernatural garbage?

Neither do we. Buddha was just a man and so was Jesus, if Jesus ever actually existed that is, which is doubtful.

Regards
DL
Buddhism seems more of a negation of self into the ocean of “oneness” more than anything like a positive belief though... what or who can a Buddhist live for?

Btw - is Buddhism not just a philosophical vaneer on atheism?
 
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@Red Sky at Morning
Atheists also externally conceptualize God, it's just the other side of the same coin. Once you have externally conceptualized God, then you have to choose whether you are atheist, or accept a "fake it 'til you make it" type of religion. They are not that dissimilar under the surface appearances. One choice is more hypocritical, while the other is just being more internally honest with yourself- still the same coin though.
 
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Buddhism seems more of a negation of self into the ocean of “oneness” more than anything like a positive belief though... what or who can a Buddhist live for?

Btw - is Buddhism not just a philosophical vaneer on atheism?
All religions preach that we are a part of a larger whole.

Buddhists see the whole of creation as the all while supernatural stupid thinkers see a genocidal prick of a god as good and a part of the whole.

Who is more stupid and who has the best morality?

Hint. Not Buddhists.

Regards
DL
 

Red Sky at Morning

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@Red Sky at Morning
Atheists also externally conceptualize God, it's just the other side of the same coin. Once you have externally conceptualized God, then you have to choose whether you are atheist, or accept a "fake it 'til you make it" type of religion. They are not that dissimilar under the surface appearances. One choice is more hypocritical, while the other is just being more internally honest with yourself- still the same coin though.
Paraphrasing here, you are stating that a theist believes in a God who is distinct and separate to his creation (as a painter is distinct and separate from his artwork). An atheist believes that neither he or any other external entity is God. These two groups either accept or reject the belief in an external God.

Conversely, someone who cares neither for theism or atheism might look within for their own form of “Christ Consciousness” and this actualisation and realisation of the divine within is the ultimate goal of spiritual refinement? I believe that this form of “spirituality” is best expressed in...

Harry Potter!

D31443C1-1247-44DE-99ED-87DFB7516438.jpeg

http://harrypotterforseekers.com
 
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Paraphrasing here, you are stating that a theist believes in a God who is distinct and separate to his creation (as a painter is distinct and separate from his artwork). An atheist believes that neither he or any other external entity is God. These two groups either accept or reject the belief in an external God.

Conversely, someone who cares neither for theism or atheism might look within for their own form of “Christ Consciousness” and this actualisation and realisation of the divine within is the ultimate goal of spiritual refinement? I believe that this form of “spirituality” is best expressed in...

Harry Potter!

View attachment 25340

http://harrypotterforseekers.com
quaint :)
 

Karlysymon

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Only literalist fools will believe in a real A & E.

Thanks for reprinting your myth.

Regards
DL
Really? I take it then that Jesus was a literalist fool when He appealed to the historicity of Genesis, right?

"And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female,
And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh?"
Matthew 19:4-6
 

Red Sky at Morning

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Really? I take it then that Jesus was a literalist fool when He appealed to the historicity of Genesis, right?

"And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female,
And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh?"
Matthew 19:4-6
I think our gnostic friend prefers the made up Jesus of the Nag Hamadi library to the one of the Gospels...
 
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Really? I take it then that Jesus was a literalist fool when He appealed to the historicity of Genesis, right?

"And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female,
And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh?"
Matthew 19:4-6
Read what Jesus had to say against his own religious traditions before telling us how Jesus loved Judaism.

Fact is, Jesus was anti-tradition.

Luke 11:52 Woe unto you, lawyers! for ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered.

Mark 7:13 Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have delivered: and many such like things do ye.

Literalism is for fools.

I hope you can see how intelligent the ancients were as compared to the mental trash that modern preachers and theists are using with the literal reading of myths.

https://bigthink.com/videos/what-is-god-2-2

Further.
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/03132009/watch.html

Rabbi Hillel, the older contemporary of Jesus, said that when asked to sum up the whole of Jewish teaching, while he stood on one leg, said, "The Golden Rule. That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the Torah. And everything else is only commentary. Now, go and study it."

Please listen as to what is said about the literal reading of myths.

"Origen, the great second or third century Greek commentator on the Bible said that it is absolutely impossible to take these texts literally. You simply cannot do so. And he said, "God has put these sort of conundrums and paradoxes in so that we are forced to seek a deeper meaning."

Matt 7;12 So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.

This is how early Gnostic Christians view the transition from reading myths properly to destructive literal reading and idol worship.


Regards
DL
 

MoDc

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Messages
140
“An all-loving god would surely not damn his children to an
eternity of torture simply for being born into a culture that
believes in the wrong deity, follows the wrong holy book or
attends the wrong type of church services.”

~ Armin Navabi

As we both know, the demon worshipped by adherents of the Abrahamic religions is evil.

And incompetent, he comes across as a bumbling alcoholic with rage issues.
 
Joined
Mar 14, 2017
Messages
3,907
“An all-loving god would surely not damn his children to an
eternity of torture simply for being born into a culture that
believes in the wrong deity, follows the wrong holy book or
attends the wrong type of church services.”

~ Armin Navabi

As we both know, the demon worshipped by adherents of the Abrahamic religions is evil.

And incompetent, he comes across as a bumbling alcoholic with rage issues.
so this guy is an ex muslim? did he know that in islam, people are not accountable until they are given a greater truth..and even then they'll be judged according to the knowledge of The All-knowing anyway?

think about it
a group of people, rejecting the message of a prophet living amongst them
vs some hindus today, rejecting islam because they dont agree with their subjective but perceived idea of what islam represents.

i had a hindu who used to tell me
'islam worships a sky daddy, we believe in the SUPREME REALITY' and i was like 'what's that?' and he went into this panthiestic idea of Brahman.
i was like 'you mean God is everywhere?' and he's like
'sdgfseg fkfkinng no man...brahman isnt God, Brahman is the Essence'
and gradually as i studied islam, it taught me a far more legitimate version of his own beliefs..until i proved to him that on the metaphysical level, anything he believes in, islam does too, but it defines it far better and prevents us from falling into outright madness (which is what it is when you get hindus marrying snakes/dogs).

realising he had ultimately failed..he then tried to diss my beliefs saying 'oh thats sufi, sufi is fake hinduism and real islam rejects it' and would go on linking me to bilal phillips videos..
i would insist that salafism is a retarded version of islam at best..made by incredible thick people..and proved that historical and global islam is far more sufi.
realising all of this, he became 'athiest' for the sake of convenience and spent the next few yrs hiding as an athiest and quoting richard dawkins
not long before he was 'ad homnenimen and flying spsdhagetti monster'ing every single point he ever made.

i dont suffer fools too easily man.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armin_Navabi
that is a story that has zero substance
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armin_Navabi#Apostasy_and_emigration
it is too vague and full of typical american type notions..
basically 'lets just say some random vague shit against islam and hope they believe it'

i cba going into details with you, but i can tell you this guy is full of shit.
please, make better arguments, use better sources...i will respect for yuo it
im not bothered about anti islam arguments provided they come from a genuine place.
i know an ex muslim girl who tried to convince me she was legit once..and i told her 'look, i know you, you like the D...and lots of it...your dad forcefully took you to pakistan to get a husband because you were fking around too much..and now you want to become an athiest because the muslim men in pakistan wont marry you'

i know another guy who's athiest and he told me 'i dont believe it, when i was a kid a molvi said i was posessed by a jinn..and i realised its all fake imaginary stuff'
and i was like "bro the astral plane, entities are real", when he tried to make it into a cultural/religious (backwardness) argument, i told him things like the astral plane are not inherently muslim but new age/western but taken from hinduism.
this guy didnt want to know, he wanted to be dumb.

you get a guy like sam harris...the guy is a jew..simple, im not racist, he's faking athiesm to argue to dumb as fk christians that its okay to kill muslims en masse.

These type of people man...wtf?

i fully respect anyone who's athiest with GENUINE arguments/concerns. i wonder about everything, all the time. im not a blind follower..
i would empathise with genuine people with genuine stories..
wtf is this?

ive known some genuinely honest athiests though. they reject religions like islam because fundamentally they look at life itself and question why such a system (or karma, judgement and injustice in the world) even exists. those guys tend to be more sad and genuinely just arent happy with the way life is. rather than believe in God, they come to terms with the idea that the universe/or naturedoesnt give a shit about us.
these guys dont hate religion though, they reject it, but respect it as some human attempt to make sense of it all.
 

MoDc

Established
Joined
Dec 5, 2019
Messages
140
so this guy is an ex muslim? did he know that in islam, people are not accountable until they are given a greater truth..and even then they'll be judged according to the knowledge of The All-knowing anyway?

think about it
a group of people, rejecting the message of a prophet living amongst them
vs some hindus today, rejecting islam because they dont agree with their subjective but perceived idea of what islam represents.

i had a hindu who used to tell me
'islam worships a sky daddy, we believe in the SUPREME REALITY' and i was like 'what's that?' and he went into this panthiestic idea of Brahman.
i was like 'you mean God is everywhere?' and he's like
'sdgfseg fkfkinng no man...brahman isnt God, Brahman is the Essence'
and gradually as i studied islam, it taught me a far more legitimate version of his own beliefs..until i proved to him that on the metaphysical level, anything he believes in, islam does too, but it defines it far better and prevents us from falling into outright madness (which is what it is when you get hindus marrying snakes/dogs).

realising he had ultimately failed..he then tried to diss my beliefs saying 'oh thats sufi, sufi is fake hinduism and real islam rejects it' and would go on linking me to bilal phillips videos..
i would insist that salafism is a retarded version of islam at best..made by incredible thick people..and proved that historical and global islam is far more sufi.
realising all of this, he became 'athiest' for the sake of convenience and spent the next few yrs hiding as an athiest and quoting richard dawkins
not long before he was 'ad homnenimen and flying spsdhagetti monster'ing every single point he ever made.

i dont suffer fools too easily man.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armin_Navabi
that is a story that has zero substance
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armin_Navabi#Apostasy_and_emigration
it is too vague and full of typical american type notions..
basically 'lets just say some random vague shit against islam and hope they believe it'

i cba going into details with you, but i can tell you this guy is full of shit.
please, make better arguments, use better sources...i will respect for yuo it
im not bothered about anti islam arguments provided they come from a genuine place.
i know an ex muslim girl who tried to convince me she was legit once..and i told her 'look, i know you, you like the D...and lots of it...your dad forcefully took you to pakistan to get a husband because you were fking around too much..and now you want to become an athiest because the muslim men in pakistan wont marry you'

i know another guy who's athiest and he told me 'i dont believe it, when i was a kid a molvi said i was posessed by a jinn..and i realised its all fake imaginary stuff'
and i was like "bro the astral plane, entities are real", when he tried to make it into a cultural/religious (backwardness) argument, i told him things like the astral plane are not inherently muslim but new age/western but taken from hinduism.
this guy didnt want to know, he wanted to be dumb.

you get a guy like sam harris...the guy is a jew..simple, im not racist, he's faking athiesm to argue to dumb as fk christians that its okay to kill muslims en masse.

These type of people man...wtf?

i fully respect anyone who's athiest with GENUINE arguments/concerns. i wonder about everything, all the time. im not a blind follower..
i would empathise with genuine people with genuine stories..
wtf is this?

ive known some genuinely honest athiests though. they reject religions like islam because fundamentally they look at life itself and question why such a system (or karma, judgement and injustice in the world) even exists. those guys tend to be more sad and genuinely just arent happy with the way life is. rather than believe in God, they come to terms with the idea that the universe/or naturedoesnt give a shit about us.
these guys dont hate religion though, they reject it, but respect it as some human attempt to make sense of it all.
I don’t know anything about the guy but the quote is accurate.

“It’s a good quote” - Trump after quoting Mussolini

Anyway if the guy is a new atheist on the vein of Sam Harris or Bill Maher, cheerleaders for US Imperialism, fuck him.

Doesn’t undermine the point of the cruelty of God if he damns his own creations to an eternal torture dimension for actions ( largely determined by where he placed us in the universe ) taken in a finite life.

Doesn’t change the fact that the OT is one blunder from God after the other either.

I never claimed atheist anyway. I’m an agnostic. All evidence and reason leads one to conclude that evolution is the means of “creation-and the idea of an intelligent self aware designer is a false idea. It doesn’t tell us anymore than that though.
 

MoDc

Established
Joined
Dec 5, 2019
Messages
140
so this guy is an ex muslim? did he know that in islam, people are not accountable until they are given a greater truth..and even then they'll be judged according to the knowledge of The All-knowing anyway?

think about it
a group of people, rejecting the message of a prophet living amongst them
vs some hindus today, rejecting islam because they dont agree with their subjective but perceived idea of what islam represents.

i had a hindu who used to tell me
'islam worships a sky daddy, we believe in the SUPREME REALITY' and i was like 'what's that?' and he went into this panthiestic idea of Brahman.
i was like 'you mean God is everywhere?' and he's like
'sdgfseg fkfkinng no man...brahman isnt God, Brahman is the Essence'
and gradually as i studied islam, it taught me a far more legitimate version of his own beliefs..until i proved to him that on the metaphysical level, anything he believes in, islam does too, but it defines it far better and prevents us from falling into outright madness (which is what it is when you get hindus marrying snakes/dogs).

realising he had ultimately failed..he then tried to diss my beliefs saying 'oh thats sufi, sufi is fake hinduism and real islam rejects it' and would go on linking me to bilal phillips videos..
i would insist that salafism is a retarded version of islam at best..made by incredible thick people..and proved that historical and global islam is far more sufi.
realising all of this, he became 'athiest' for the sake of convenience and spent the next few yrs hiding as an athiest and quoting richard dawkins
not long before he was 'ad homnenimen and flying spsdhagetti monster'ing every single point he ever made.

i dont suffer fools too easily man.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armin_Navabi
that is a story that has zero substance
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armin_Navabi#Apostasy_and_emigration
it is too vague and full of typical american type notions..
basically 'lets just say some random vague shit against islam and hope they believe it'

i cba going into details with you, but i can tell you this guy is full of shit.
please, make better arguments, use better sources...i will respect for yuo it
im not bothered about anti islam arguments provided they come from a genuine place.
i know an ex muslim girl who tried to convince me she was legit once..and i told her 'look, i know you, you like the D...and lots of it...your dad forcefully took you to pakistan to get a husband because you were fking around too much..and now you want to become an athiest because the muslim men in pakistan wont marry you'

i know another guy who's athiest and he told me 'i dont believe it, when i was a kid a molvi said i was posessed by a jinn..and i realised its all fake imaginary stuff'
and i was like "bro the astral plane, entities are real", when he tried to make it into a cultural/religious (backwardness) argument, i told him things like the astral plane are not inherently muslim but new age/western but taken from hinduism.
this guy didnt want to know, he wanted to be dumb.

you get a guy like sam harris...the guy is a jew..simple, im not racist, he's faking athiesm to argue to dumb as fk christians that its okay to kill muslims en masse.

These type of people man...wtf?

i fully respect anyone who's athiest with GENUINE arguments/concerns. i wonder about everything, all the time. im not a blind follower..
i would empathise with genuine people with genuine stories..
wtf is this?

ive known some genuinely honest athiests though. they reject religions like islam because fundamentally they look at life itself and question why such a system (or karma, judgement and injustice in the world) even exists. those guys tend to be more sad and genuinely just arent happy with the way life is. rather than believe in God, they come to terms with the idea that the universe/or naturedoesnt give a shit about us.
these guys dont hate religion though, they reject it, but respect it as some human attempt to make sense of it all.
And as far as Islam goes, I have no problem with how people believe as long as it’s

A) Not politcal
B) An infringement on my freedoms
C) An infringement on the freedoms of the commons and public at large

I see what I see in Muslim countries from theocracies to military dictatorships. I understand it’s more complex than just religion. I certainly see it’s misogyny in you.

Take it as you will.

I believe people should largely have their own spiritual/philosophical outlook if they desire such things, individualized and private.
 

Red Sky at Morning

Superstar
Joined
Mar 15, 2017
Messages
13,931
I never claimed atheist anyway. I’m an agnostic. All evidence and reason leads one to conclude that evolution is the means of “creation-and the idea of an intelligent self aware designer is a false idea. It doesn’t tell us anymore than that though.
“All evidence and reason?!” A bold claim in the face of the towering improbability of abiogenesis...



An Open Letter to My Colleagues
James Tour

https://inference-review.com/article/an-open-letter-to-my-colleagues

LIFE SHOULD NOT EXIST. This much we know from chemistry. In contrast to the ubiquity of life on earth, the lifelessness of other planets makes far better chemical sense. Synthetic chemists know what it takes to build just one molecular compound. The compound must be designed, the stereochemistry controlled. Yield optimization, purification, and characterization are needed. An elaborate supply is required to control synthesis from start to finish. None of this is easy. Few researchers from other disciplines understand how molecules are synthesized.

Synthetic constraints must be taken into account when considering the prebiotic preparation of the four classes of compounds needed for life: the amino acids, the nucleotides, the saccharides, and the lipids.1 The next level beyond synthesis involves the components needed for the construction of nanosystems, which are then assembled into a microsystem. Composed of many nanosystems, the cell is nature’s fundamental microsystem. If the first cells were relatively simple, they still required at least 256 protein-coding genes. This requirement is as close to an absolute as we find in synthetic chemistry. A bacterium which encodes 1,354 proteins contains one of the smallest genomes currently known.2

Consider the following Gedankenexperiment. Let us assume that all the molecules we think may be needed to construct a cell are available in the requisite chemical and stereochemical purities. Let us assume that these molecules can be separated and delivered to a well-equipped laboratory. Let us also assume that the millions of articles comprising the chemical and biochemical literature are readily accessible.

How might we build a cell?

It is not enough to have the chemicals on hand. The relationship between the nucleotides and everything else must be specified and, for this, coding information is essential. DNA and RNA are the primary informational carriers of the cell. No matter the medium life might have adopted at the very beginning, its information had to come from somewhere. A string of nucleotides does not inherently encode anything. Let us assume that DNA and RNA are available in whatever sequence we desire.

A cell, as defined in synthetic biological terms, is a system that can maintain ion gradients, capture and process energy, store information, and mutate.3 Can we build a cell from the raw materials?4 We are synthetic chemists, after all. If we cannot do it, nobody can. Lipids of an appropriate length can spontaneously form lipid bilayers.

Molecular biology textbooks say as much. A lipid bilayer bubble can contain water, and was a likely precursor to the modern cell membrane.5 Lipid assembly into a lipid bilayer membrane can easily be provoked by agitation, or sonication in a lab.

Et voilà. The required lipid bilayer then forms. Right?

Not so fast. A few concerns should give us pause:6

Researchers have identified thousands of different lipid structures in modern cell membranes. These include glycerolipids, sphingolipids, sterols, prenols, saccharolipids, and polyketides.7 For this reason, selecting the bilayer composition for our synthetic membrane target is far from straightforward. When making synthetic vesicles—synthetic lipid bilayer membranes—mixtures of lipids can, it should be noted, destabilize the system.
Lipid bilayers surround subcellular organelles, such as nuclei and mitochondria, which are themselves nanosystems and microsystems. Each of these has their own lipid composition.
Lipids have a non-symmetric distribution. The outer and inner faces of the lipid bilayer are chemically inequivalent and cannot be interchanged.
The lipids are just the beginning. Protein–lipid complexes are the required passive transport sites and active pumps for the passage of ions and molecules through bilayer membranes, often with high specificity. Some allow passage for substrates into the compartment, and others their exit. The complexity increases further because all lipid bilayers have vast numbers of polysaccharide (sugar) appendages, known as glycans, and the sugars are no joke. These are important for nanosystem and microsystem regulation. The inherent complexity of these saccharides is daunting. Six repeat units of the saccharide D-pyranose can form more than one trillion different hexasaccharides through branching (constitutional) and glycosidic (stereochemical) diversity.8 Imagine the breadth of the library!

Polysaccharides are the most abundant organic molecules on the planet. Their importance is reflected in the fact that they are produced by and are essential to all natural systems. Every cell membrane is coated with a complex array of polysaccharides, and all cell-to-cell interactions take place through saccharide participation on the lipid bilayer membrane surface. Eliminating any class of saccharides from an organism results in its death, and every cellular dysfunction involves saccharides.

In a report entitled “Transforming Glycoscience,” the US National Research Council recently noted that,

very little is known about glycan diversification during evolution. Over three billion years of evolution has failed to generate any kind of living cell that is not covered with a dense and complex array of glycans.9
What is more, Vlatka Zoldoš, Tomislav Horvat, and Gordan Lauc observed: “A peculiarity of glycan moieties of glycoproteins is that they are not synthesized using a direct genetic template. Instead, they result from the activity of several hundreds of enzymes organized in complex pathways.”10

Saccharides are information-rich molecules. Glycosyl transferases encode information into glycans and saccharide binding proteins decode the information stored in the glycan structures. This process is repeated according to polysaccharide branching and coupling patterns.11 Saccharides encode and transfer information long after their initial enzymatic construction.12 Polysaccharides carry more potential information than any other macromolecule, including DNA and RNA. For this reason, lipid-associated polysaccharides are proving enigmatic.13

Cellular and organelle bilayers, which were once thought of as simple vesicles, are anything but. They are highly functional gatekeepers. By virtue of their glycans, lipid bilayers become enormous banks of stored, readable, and re-writable information. The sonication of a few random lipids, polysaccharides, and proteins in a lab will not yield cellular lipid bilayer membranes.

Mes frères, mes semblables, with these complexities in mind, how can we build the microsystem of a simple cell? Would we be able to build even the lipid bilayers? These diminutive cellular microsystems—which are, in turn, composed of thousands of nanosystems—are beyond our comprehension. Yet we are led to believe that 3.8 billion years ago the requisite compounds could be found in some cave, or undersea vent, and somehow or other they assembled themselves into the first cell.

Could time really have worked such magic?

Many of the molecular structures needed for life are not thermodynamically favored by their syntheses. Formed by the formose reaction, the saccharides undergo further condensation under the very reaction conditions in which they form. The result is polymeric material, not to mention its stereo-randomness at every stereogenic center, therefore doubly useless.14 Time is the enemy. The reaction must be stopped soon after the desired product is formed. If we run out of synthetic intermediates in the laboratory, we have to go back to the beginning. Nature does not keep a laboratory notebook. How does she bring up more material from the rear?

If one understands the second law of thermodynamics, according to some physicists,15 “You [can] start with a random clump of atoms, and if you shine light on it for long enough, it should not be so surprising that you get a plant.”16 The interactions of light with small molecules is well understood. The experiment has been performed. The outcome is known. Regardless of the wavelength of the light, no plant ever forms.

We synthetic chemists should state the obvious. The appearance of life on earth is a mystery. We are nowhere near solving this problem. The proposals offered thus far to explain life’s origin make no scientific sense.

Beyond our planet, all the others that have been probed are lifeless, a result in accord with our chemical expectations. The laws of physics and chemistry’s Periodic Table are universal, suggesting that life based upon amino acids, nucleotides, saccharides and lipids is an anomaly. Life should not exist anywhere in our universe. Life should not even exist on the surface of the earth.17

See James Tour, “Animadversions of a Synthetic Chemist,” Inference: International Review of Science 2, no. 2 (2016); James Tour, “Two Experiments in Abiogenesis,” Inference: International Review of Science 2, no. 3 (2016). ↩
See Wikipedia, “Minimal Genome.” ↩
David Dearner, “A Giant Step Towards Artificial Life?” Trends in Biotechnology 23, no. 7 (2008): 336–38, doi:10.1016/j.tibtech.2005.05.008. ↩
A small towards this goal was achieved when a synthetic genome was inserted into a host cell from which the original genome had been removed. The bilayer membrane of the host cell and all of its cytoplasmic constituents had already been created by natural biological processes. See Daniel Gibson et al., “Creation of a Bacterial Cell Controlled by a Chemically Synthesized Genome,” Science 329, no. 5,987 (2010): 52–56, doi:10.1126/science.1190719. ↩
Bruce Alberts et al., Molecular Biology of the Cell, 4th ed. (New York: Garland Science, 2002). ↩
See F. Xabier Contreras et al., “Molecular Recognition of a Single Sphingolipid Species by a Protein’s Transmembrane Domain,” Nature 481 (2012): 525–29, doi:10.1038/nature10742; Yoshiyuki Norimatsu et al., “Protein–Phospholipid Interplay Revealed with Crystals of a Calcium Pump,” Nature 545 (2017): 193–98, doi:10.1038/nature22357. ↩
See Lipidomics Gateway, “LIPID MAPS Structure Database.” ↩
Roger Laine, “Invited Commentary: A Calculation of All Possible Oligosaccharide Isomers Both Branched and Linear Yields 1.05 × 1012 Structures for a Reducing Hexasaccharide: The Isomer Barrier to Development of Single-Method Saccharide Sequencing or Synthesis Systems,” Glycobiology 4, no. 6 (1994): 759–67, doi:10.1093/glycob/4.6.759. ↩
National Research Council, Transforming Glycoscience: A Roadmap for the Future (Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2012), 72, doi:10.17226/13446. ↩
Vlatka Zoldoš, Tomislav Horvat and Gordan Lauc, “Glycomics Meets Genomics, Epigenomics and Other High Throughput Omics for System Biology Studies,” Current Opinion in Chemical Biology 17, no. 1 (2012): 33–40, doi:10.1016/j.cbpa.2012.12.007. ↩
Adapted from Maureen Taylor and Kurt Drickamer, Introduction to Glycobiology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). ↩
Gordan Lauc, Aleksandar Vojta and Vlatka Zoldoš, “Epigenetic Regulation of Glycosylation Is the Quantum Mechanics of Biology,” Biochimica et Biophysica Acta – General Subjects 1,840, no. 1 (2014): 65–70, doi:10.1016/j.bbagen.2013.08.017. ↩
Claus-Wilhelm von der Lieth, Thomas Luetteke, and Martin Frank, eds., Bioinformatics for Glycobiology and Glycomics: An Introduction (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009). ↩
James Tour, “Animadversions of a Synthetic Chemist,” Inference: International Review of Science 2, no. 2 (2016). ↩
See Jeremy England, “Statistical Physics of Self-Replication,” Journal of Chemical Physics 139 (2013), doi:10.1063/1.4818538; Paul Rosenberg, “God is on the Ropes: The Brilliant New Science That Has Creationists and the Christian Right Terrified,” Salon, January 3, 2015. ↩
Natalie Wolchover, “A New Physics Theory of Life,” Quanta, January 22, 2014. ↩
The author wishes to thank Anthony Futerman of the Weizmann Institute and Russell Carlson of the University of Georgia for information on lipids and saccharides, respectively. ↩
Published on August 2, 2017 in Volume 3, Issue 2.
 

MoDc

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“All evidence and reason?!” A bold claim in the face of the towering improbability of abiogenesis...



An Open Letter to My Colleagues
James Tour

https://inference-review.com/article/an-open-letter-to-my-colleagues

LIFE SHOULD NOT EXIST. This much we know from chemistry. In contrast to the ubiquity of life on earth, the lifelessness of other planets makes far better chemical sense. Synthetic chemists know what it takes to build just one molecular compound. The compound must be designed, the stereochemistry controlled. Yield optimization, purification, and characterization are needed. An elaborate supply is required to control synthesis from start to finish. None of this is easy. Few researchers from other disciplines understand how molecules are synthesized.

Synthetic constraints must be taken into account when considering the prebiotic preparation of the four classes of compounds needed for life: the amino acids, the nucleotides, the saccharides, and the lipids.1 The next level beyond synthesis involves the components needed for the construction of nanosystems, which are then assembled into a microsystem. Composed of many nanosystems, the cell is nature’s fundamental microsystem. If the first cells were relatively simple, they still required at least 256 protein-coding genes. This requirement is as close to an absolute as we find in synthetic chemistry. A bacterium which encodes 1,354 proteins contains one of the smallest genomes currently known.2

Consider the following Gedankenexperiment. Let us assume that all the molecules we think may be needed to construct a cell are available in the requisite chemical and stereochemical purities. Let us assume that these molecules can be separated and delivered to a well-equipped laboratory. Let us also assume that the millions of articles comprising the chemical and biochemical literature are readily accessible.

How might we build a cell?

It is not enough to have the chemicals on hand. The relationship between the nucleotides and everything else must be specified and, for this, coding information is essential. DNA and RNA are the primary informational carriers of the cell. No matter the medium life might have adopted at the very beginning, its information had to come from somewhere. A string of nucleotides does not inherently encode anything. Let us assume that DNA and RNA are available in whatever sequence we desire.

A cell, as defined in synthetic biological terms, is a system that can maintain ion gradients, capture and process energy, store information, and mutate.3 Can we build a cell from the raw materials?4 We are synthetic chemists, after all. If we cannot do it, nobody can. Lipids of an appropriate length can spontaneously form lipid bilayers.

Molecular biology textbooks say as much. A lipid bilayer bubble can contain water, and was a likely precursor to the modern cell membrane.5 Lipid assembly into a lipid bilayer membrane can easily be provoked by agitation, or sonication in a lab.

Et voilà. The required lipid bilayer then forms. Right?

Not so fast. A few concerns should give us pause:6

Researchers have identified thousands of different lipid structures in modern cell membranes. These include glycerolipids, sphingolipids, sterols, prenols, saccharolipids, and polyketides.7 For this reason, selecting the bilayer composition for our synthetic membrane target is far from straightforward. When making synthetic vesicles—synthetic lipid bilayer membranes—mixtures of lipids can, it should be noted, destabilize the system.
Lipid bilayers surround subcellular organelles, such as nuclei and mitochondria, which are themselves nanosystems and microsystems. Each of these has their own lipid composition.
Lipids have a non-symmetric distribution. The outer and inner faces of the lipid bilayer are chemically inequivalent and cannot be interchanged.
The lipids are just the beginning. Protein–lipid complexes are the required passive transport sites and active pumps for the passage of ions and molecules through bilayer membranes, often with high specificity. Some allow passage for substrates into the compartment, and others their exit. The complexity increases further because all lipid bilayers have vast numbers of polysaccharide (sugar) appendages, known as glycans, and the sugars are no joke. These are important for nanosystem and microsystem regulation. The inherent complexity of these saccharides is daunting. Six repeat units of the saccharide D-pyranose can form more than one trillion different hexasaccharides through branching (constitutional) and glycosidic (stereochemical) diversity.8 Imagine the breadth of the library!

Polysaccharides are the most abundant organic molecules on the planet. Their importance is reflected in the fact that they are produced by and are essential to all natural systems. Every cell membrane is coated with a complex array of polysaccharides, and all cell-to-cell interactions take place through saccharide participation on the lipid bilayer membrane surface. Eliminating any class of saccharides from an organism results in its death, and every cellular dysfunction involves saccharides.

In a report entitled “Transforming Glycoscience,” the US National Research Council recently noted that,

very little is known about glycan diversification during evolution. Over three billion years of evolution has failed to generate any kind of living cell that is not covered with a dense and complex array of glycans.9
What is more, Vlatka Zoldoš, Tomislav Horvat, and Gordan Lauc observed: “A peculiarity of glycan moieties of glycoproteins is that they are not synthesized using a direct genetic template. Instead, they result from the activity of several hundreds of enzymes organized in complex pathways.”10

Saccharides are information-rich molecules. Glycosyl transferases encode information into glycans and saccharide binding proteins decode the information stored in the glycan structures. This process is repeated according to polysaccharide branching and coupling patterns.11 Saccharides encode and transfer information long after their initial enzymatic construction.12 Polysaccharides carry more potential information than any other macromolecule, including DNA and RNA. For this reason, lipid-associated polysaccharides are proving enigmatic.13

Cellular and organelle bilayers, which were once thought of as simple vesicles, are anything but. They are highly functional gatekeepers. By virtue of their glycans, lipid bilayers become enormous banks of stored, readable, and re-writable information. The sonication of a few random lipids, polysaccharides, and proteins in a lab will not yield cellular lipid bilayer membranes.

Mes frères, mes semblables, with these complexities in mind, how can we build the microsystem of a simple cell? Would we be able to build even the lipid bilayers? These diminutive cellular microsystems—which are, in turn, composed of thousands of nanosystems—are beyond our comprehension. Yet we are led to believe that 3.8 billion years ago the requisite compounds could be found in some cave, or undersea vent, and somehow or other they assembled themselves into the first cell.

Could time really have worked such magic?

Many of the molecular structures needed for life are not thermodynamically favored by their syntheses. Formed by the formose reaction, the saccharides undergo further condensation under the very reaction conditions in which they form. The result is polymeric material, not to mention its stereo-randomness at every stereogenic center, therefore doubly useless.14 Time is the enemy. The reaction must be stopped soon after the desired product is formed. If we run out of synthetic intermediates in the laboratory, we have to go back to the beginning. Nature does not keep a laboratory notebook. How does she bring up more material from the rear?

If one understands the second law of thermodynamics, according to some physicists,15 “You [can] start with a random clump of atoms, and if you shine light on it for long enough, it should not be so surprising that you get a plant.”16 The interactions of light with small molecules is well understood. The experiment has been performed. The outcome is known. Regardless of the wavelength of the light, no plant ever forms.

We synthetic chemists should state the obvious. The appearance of life on earth is a mystery. We are nowhere near solving this problem. The proposals offered thus far to explain life’s origin make no scientific sense.

Beyond our planet, all the others that have been probed are lifeless, a result in accord with our chemical expectations. The laws of physics and chemistry’s Periodic Table are universal, suggesting that life based upon amino acids, nucleotides, saccharides and lipids is an anomaly. Life should not exist anywhere in our universe. Life should not even exist on the surface of the earth.17

See James Tour, “Animadversions of a Synthetic Chemist,” Inference: International Review of Science 2, no. 2 (2016); James Tour, “Two Experiments in Abiogenesis,” Inference: International Review of Science 2, no. 3 (2016). ↩
See Wikipedia, “Minimal Genome.” ↩
David Dearner, “A Giant Step Towards Artificial Life?” Trends in Biotechnology 23, no. 7 (2008): 336–38, doi:10.1016/j.tibtech.2005.05.008. ↩
A small towards this goal was achieved when a synthetic genome was inserted into a host cell from which the original genome had been removed. The bilayer membrane of the host cell and all of its cytoplasmic constituents had already been created by natural biological processes. See Daniel Gibson et al., “Creation of a Bacterial Cell Controlled by a Chemically Synthesized Genome,” Science 329, no. 5,987 (2010): 52–56, doi:10.1126/science.1190719. ↩
Bruce Alberts et al., Molecular Biology of the Cell, 4th ed. (New York: Garland Science, 2002). ↩
See F. Xabier Contreras et al., “Molecular Recognition of a Single Sphingolipid Species by a Protein’s Transmembrane Domain,” Nature 481 (2012): 525–29, doi:10.1038/nature10742; Yoshiyuki Norimatsu et al., “Protein–Phospholipid Interplay Revealed with Crystals of a Calcium Pump,” Nature 545 (2017): 193–98, doi:10.1038/nature22357. ↩
See Lipidomics Gateway, “LIPID MAPS Structure Database.” ↩
Roger Laine, “Invited Commentary: A Calculation of All Possible Oligosaccharide Isomers Both Branched and Linear Yields 1.05 × 1012 Structures for a Reducing Hexasaccharide: The Isomer Barrier to Development of Single-Method Saccharide Sequencing or Synthesis Systems,” Glycobiology 4, no. 6 (1994): 759–67, doi:10.1093/glycob/4.6.759. ↩
National Research Council, Transforming Glycoscience: A Roadmap for the Future (Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2012), 72, doi:10.17226/13446. ↩
Vlatka Zoldoš, Tomislav Horvat and Gordan Lauc, “Glycomics Meets Genomics, Epigenomics and Other High Throughput Omics for System Biology Studies,” Current Opinion in Chemical Biology 17, no. 1 (2012): 33–40, doi:10.1016/j.cbpa.2012.12.007. ↩
Adapted from Maureen Taylor and Kurt Drickamer, Introduction to Glycobiology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). ↩
Gordan Lauc, Aleksandar Vojta and Vlatka Zoldoš, “Epigenetic Regulation of Glycosylation Is the Quantum Mechanics of Biology,” Biochimica et Biophysica Acta – General Subjects 1,840, no. 1 (2014): 65–70, doi:10.1016/j.bbagen.2013.08.017. ↩
Claus-Wilhelm von der Lieth, Thomas Luetteke, and Martin Frank, eds., Bioinformatics for Glycobiology and Glycomics: An Introduction (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009). ↩
James Tour, “Animadversions of a Synthetic Chemist,” Inference: International Review of Science 2, no. 2 (2016). ↩
See Jeremy England, “Statistical Physics of Self-Replication,” Journal of Chemical Physics 139 (2013), doi:10.1063/1.4818538; Paul Rosenberg, “God is on the Ropes: The Brilliant New Science That Has Creationists and the Christian Right Terrified,” Salon, January 3, 2015. ↩
Natalie Wolchover, “A New Physics Theory of Life,” Quanta, January 22, 2014. ↩
The author wishes to thank Anthony Futerman of the Weizmann Institute and Russell Carlson of the University of Georgia for information on lipids and saccharides, respectively. ↩
Published on August 2, 2017 in Volume 3, Issue 2.
I’ve heard it all before, first evolution and abiogenesis are not the same thing.

second there are some good theories, lighting strikes, radiation etc could create the raw material into something alive. Viruses aren’t technically living organisms but they operate similarly to micro bacteria.

I said evolution is the means of creation, which it is, it’s true no matter how far you bury your head in the sand. It speaks not to precisely how life arose.
 

Red Sky at Morning

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I’ve heard it all before, first evolution and abiogenesis are not the same thing.

second there are some good theories, lighting strikes, radiation etc could create the raw material into something alive. Viruses aren’t technically living organisms but they operate similarly to micro bacteria.

I said evolution is the means of creation, which it is, it’s true no matter how far you bury your head in the sand. It speaks not to precisely how life arose.
Without abiogenesis you can’t have evolution. If a car won’t start, it won’t travel.

Think about it....
 

MoDc

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Messages
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Without abiogenesis you can’t have evolution. If a car won’t start, it won’t travel.

Think about it....
Who started God’s car? Why is it easier for you to believe in something uncreated that created us than to believe that chemistry set the stage for life?
 

Red Sky at Morning

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Messages
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but God does? Don’t do that. How much magic is required to believe in Biblical myths as literal truths?
7ACF91E9-1ADB-4B3E-8B63-A925E75DA03B.jpeg

Born: 6 December 1878– Died: 5 March 1953

Psalm (19th book of the OT) Chapter 53 (KJV)

53 The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. Corrupt are they, and have done abominable iniquity: there is none that doeth good.

2 God looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, that did seek God.

3 Every one of them is gone back: they are altogether become filthy; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.

4 Have the workers of iniquity no knowledge? who eat up my people as they eat bread: they have not called upon God.

5 There were they in great fear, where no fear was: for God hath scattered the bones of him that encampeth against thee: thou hast put them to shame, because God hath despised them.

6 Oh that the salvation of Israel were come out of Zion! When God bringeth back the captivity of his people, Jacob shall rejoice, and Israel shall be glad.
 
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