Origin of Life - Lecture by John Maynard Smith (5 of 6)

A lecture by the late John Maynard Smith on the origin of life.

- Further Reading -
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_life

- John Maynard Smith -
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5719510285700008320
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Maynard_Smith

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Abiogenesis
• Origin
• of
• Life
• John
• Maynard
• Smith

[rubymaynardsmith]

johnis my grandad i am 13 and hi youngest grandchild! he was amazing and helped me with lots of animal projects!

[Lihinel]

holy non sequitur, strawman!

Its the Flying Spaghetti Monster!

[aryah47]

@aryah47 and I didn't know homochirality was a 'showstopper' a precondition to life

[aryah47]

@stupidtreehugger maybe you mean nucleotides, not amino acids? well this talk just gave a hypothesis as to why and how this arbitrary coding might arise. As to the number unfortunately the speaker wasn't more specific but to claim that from a perspective of using amino acids as cofactor, there is a practical reason to use exactly 3. Homochirality is strange, but there again are hypothesis as to why - from polarized light from Mie scattering interstellar dust, to some autoamplification in life.

[AEVautomatic]

this guys voice sounds like it belongs to someone else.

[stupidtreehugger]

I appreciate your humour, but do you even know what the Problem of Homochirality is? Have you ever considered, also, how four amino acids (DNA) can code for 20? Do you understand what a metacode is? Its an ARBITRARY code, it requires fiat definition, simply an intellectual assignment wihtout the faintest shred of necessity. Like 'chair' signifies that sitting thing. Arbitrary. Tu comprende?

[MomoTheBellyDancer]

No, it's no evidence for intelligent intervention. It simply means we don't have all the parts of the puzzle yet. For evidence of intelligent intervention you to show that the thing intervening exists and how it intervened.

[RedLetterChristian]

seeing as how you seem to think that stupidtreehugger is putting forth an arguement that is weak and easily refuted, why don't you go ahead and refute it.Maybe you think that stupidtreehugger is misrepresenting JMS. I don't see this either, he is just pointing out an issue that JMS does not speak to.Probably because it makes his argument much much weaker. You should really think twice before defiling the sacred name of the Flying Spaghetti Monster!

unfortunately pride often has that effect

[stupidtreehugger]

Studiously avoids The Problem of Homochirality

02:10 "I don't think we're all that far from having a full chemical account of the origin of the first self-replicating molecules."

Surprisingly crassly presumes that making both isomers of a fraction of the 20 necessary amino acids in a toxic brew of tar and sparks that would immediately destroy the acids is somehow marvelously sufficient, when its clearly woefully inadequate and strong evidence for intelligent intervention.