I've lost the original thread to this,
and so I start this new. 


>> But you and I have two different def. of life.
>> I'm guessing you say it's what follows a fluke replicator that
>> emerges out of nothing
>
>Well, you guessed wrong.  I think that there's a chance that there can be
>chemical replicators, and I wouldn't call it life.

So you agree that before the first replicator
there was a type of chemical replication going on.
Was there also a type of 'chemical selection"
I tend to think that there was in the loosest sense
of hte word.

But what causes their chemical activity?
Do they have chemical activity outside of the sun cycle?


>> IMO It began the minute the sun began shining. Life is the
>> echo - the sun is the voice.
>
>Life began the minute the sun began shining?  Well, you're right - we are
>worlds apart!

The process could not begin before that.
Whether it always leads to life - I doubt it.
But for all these processes that are needed -
you have to have energy - and the only energy
of note at this time was the sun (see chart)
Where else?

(snipped)

>> Now you are getting to the problem of the traditional views on the
>> origin - it requires so much fluke events that it just didn't happen.
>> It would be easier for me to sprout wings next week and fly away.
>
>I'm saying this for *your* scenario.

All I need is a heat cycle - something cyclical
a variable but cyclical energy source - with
certain other necessary conditions.

>> No no no - there is no simple self replicator.  The simple way
>> is to see what happened - the sun forced energy on chemicals -
>> there was no
>> emerged awareness that a chemical system had to get in gear
>> and then (without energy) evolve to one.
>> That is an unsurmountable catch 22.

>Fair enough... then we must agree to disagree.  But I suggest you think
>of
>your own scanario in terms of "at point in time T there was no life, while
>at  point in time T' there was life".  The same Catch-22 exists in both
>your
>scenario and my scenario, when it comes to the "spark of
life" (that which
>differentiates life and non-life), IMO.  You just delay it a bit.

There was no spark - that suggests a moment - and
that before that moment there was not life, and after there was.
It was a gradual process forced by a cyclical heat source as first metabolism -
through a series of events - that led to (along the way) a replicator in the
Darwinian sense
- that was no more than a notable step of the process - as was the ability not
only to survive the heat but to utilzie it, or the ability to not only survive
and use, but store, or the ability to hide in a cell, or the ability for the
cell to divide, or etc. etc. etc. etc.

We humans love a moment in time - a birth event.
I think that does not apply here to the origin. 

Tom (the orignal)
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