Thanks for the ping. I appreciate your effort to add material to the discussion. I wish I had a copy. While it is tempting to remark on improbability of randomly appearing RNA, it would be arrogant and against my principles to comment on something I haven't read at least excerpts of...
...you never know the alter ego of FreedomProtector may not be a science laymen....who is that masked man?
"It seems likely, then, that RNA guided the primordial synthesis of proteins, perhaps in a clumsy and primitive fashion. In this way, RNA was able to create tools-in the form of proteins-for more efficient biosynthesis, and some of these could have been put to use in the replicaiton of RNA and in the process of tool production itself."
Copyright 1989, that's 17 years ago.
Obligatory flame bait for both sides:
From what I have read of the book so far, that remark seems awfully vague and hand-waving-ish. What is the proposed rate constant for the formation of a typical strand of RNA (suitable for doing a primitive version of amino-acid-encoding) at 25 Co? Is stereoselection necessary at this point? *If* the RNA makes "a protein", what keeps that protein molecule around? What determines that the protein is "useful enough" to be immediately of benefit to the nascent "proto-cell" ?? And if it is not "useful enough", what is the feedback loop to change the RNA so it produces a useful protein...? (I.e. making useless protein not only wastes time and annoys the pig, as the saying goes, it also uses up the presumably limited supply of amino acids in the immediate vicinity.)
I suspect the *stock answer* would be--"but g_w, you don't understand. There isn't just *one* protocell--there are many millions, due to their small size and the available conditions in so many [tidal pools, clay substrates, whatever the current thinking is]. And by a wonderful, elegant, and convenient analogy to larger evolutionary model, by random chance all of the protocells that *did* waste their time in such a fashion just didn't survive; we happen to be the descendants of those that *did*TM yada yada."
Point taken--except that the above merely shows a (in one sense) "plausible mechanism", which might end up being "improbable" (when you consider the *actual odds* (whatever THAT means) of generating successful, 'eating', 'self-replicating' systems from scratch.
Can you flesh out actual rates, rate constants, concentrations of likely reactants? If not, please have the grace to admit that it is not "hard science" based on experiment, empirical results, or what not; but something a couple of steps above science fiction. A hazy model, a hypothesis, a proposed mechanism -- but not yet nailed down.
Obligatory OTHER flame-bait--I'm surprised nobody has yet issued the stern chestnut that "Evolution is NOT concerned with abiogenesis, so kindly STFU." ;-)
Cheers!