[anticlimacus]

There is a difference between having "proof" and "good reasons"--sometimes the two can coincide, but they need not. One can have their particular "good reasons" for believing in a deity without arguing them to be a proof. Although if one is claiming them to be "good reasons" then one must be willing to let them stand the test of public criticism, where they may be found to not be very good reasons at all for holding a particular belief.

Perhaps then we could add another category: personal reasons. These are reasons that are good according to a particular persons background and life history--reasons, that one is willing to accept for their particular belief, but acknowledges they may not be good reasons for others.

[Drlee]

There is a difference between having "proof" and "good reasons"--sometimes the two can coincide, but they need not. One can have their particular "good reasons" for believing in a deity without arguing them to be a proof. Although if one is claiming them to be "good reasons" then one must be willing to let them stand the test of public criticism, where they may be found to not be very good reasons at all for holding a particular belief.

Perhaps then we could add another category: personal reasons. These are reasons that are good according to a particular persons background and life history--reasons, that one is willing to accept for their particular belief, but acknowledges they may not be good reasons for others.

Of course. But the term "public criticism" is too broad. Of course any individual member of the public may criticize, but "the public" in general, may not. The first implies an individual opinion or conclusion and the second implies a legal conclusion. At least in my country (the USA) this idea is sacrosanct. Other countries, not so much. In the US one is free not to believe in God but we assert no freedom from religion. Others, exercising their right to free religious expression, override any imagined right to silence from them. Further, individuals are free to vote their religious beliefs and to the extent that these beliefs do not impinge on the rights of others the fact of the origin of the individual vote is moot. So while we may not establish an official religion, nor forbid others their beliefs, we can still, informed by our personal beliefs, vote to make theft (for example) illegal. The point is not that we believe that theft is a violation of God's commandments that we are foisting on others but rather simply a statement that how a voter arrives at his/her vote is not subject to control by the state or even public scrutiny.

In the end, people are free to believe what they will and to be guided by those beliefs. We have enshrined in our constitution this very fundamental right.

[ReallyBig]

The same odd question could be raised to the Deist: Why would a being want to create a universe at all? If we are going to start getting into the "mind of God" in order to answer these questions, then we open pandoras box as to what this God could want and not want. Is it that much more outlandish to think that a God--for lack of a better word--who wants to create a universe also wants to have some intimate relation with it?

The difference between deciding to create the universe and deciding to declare bacon "evil food" are on slightly different levels don't you think? More than likely a higher power does in exist in my view. However, for me to believe that God cares himself with what you eat or drink and how you dress and all that other stuff that goes along with various religions requires me to suspend all critical thinking abilities whatsoever. Why would he care? What is the point of declaring pork and other animals unfit to eat. God may or may not know what we are up to at all moments and he may or may not even care about us individually but one thing I am certain of is that God doesn't give to shits about days of the week you can't work or what you eat or which day to get circumcised. That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever and I just don't have the capacity to ignore that.

[Drlee]

God may or may not know what we are up to at all moments and he may or may not even care about us individually but one thing I am certain of is that God doesn't give to shits about days of the week you can't work or what you eat or which day to get circumcised. That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever and I just don't have the capacity to ignore that.

But you might grant that He cares how we treat one-another?

IF so welcome to the essence of Christianity. Not church. Christianity. So if you think this might be a concern to God then get to work treating people well. Feed the hungry, heal the sick. Then trust in God to sort the rest of it out. That is pretty much what I do. And as you can see from this thread, it gets me in Dutch with a lot of folks.

[anticlimacus]

f course. But the term "public criticism" is too broad.

I suppose what I mean is rather public scrutiny or something more akin to "public reason" where a good reason is a reason that others, with other backgrounds, could accept as justified. It's a reason based on slightly more universal terms than, "this is just what I or my community thinks."

The difference between deciding to create the universe and deciding to declare bacon "evil food" are on slightly different levels don't you think? More than likely a higher power does in exist in my view. However, for me to believe that God cares himself with what you eat or drink and how you dress and all that other stuff that goes along with various religions requires me to suspend all critical thinking abilities whatsoever. Why would he care? What is the point of declaring pork and other animals unfit to eat. God may or may not know what we are up to at all moments and he may or may not even care about us individually but one thing I am certain of is that God doesn't give to shits about days of the week you can't work or what you eat or which day to get circumcised. That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever and I just don't have the capacity to ignore that.

The difference between the interest in creating a universe or code of conduct (e.g. eating a certain piece of food like bacon being profane), is entirely subjective and relative. A God might say, for instance: "What is the point in creating a universe if we do not have rational creatures that can obey my commandments?"

My point is that when we are talking about the "interests" of God--why should we assume that creating a universe is more rational than, say, being in a very particular relation to specific beings and creating a code of conduct? The only way we can really rationally answer that question is to claim to know something about the nature of that God in the first place so that we would have an idea of what would be rational for that God to do. But here we come full circle to the original problem--why should I think a God created the universe?

[ReallyBig]

But you might grant that He cares how we treat one-another?

IF so welcome to the essence of Christianity. Not church. Christianity. So if you think this might be a concern to God then get to work treating people well. Feed the hungry, heal the sick. Then trust in God to sort the rest of it out. That is pretty much what I do. And as you can see from this thread, it gets me in Dutch with a lot of folks.

People should be treating other people with respect regardless of their spirituality. That makes a society function much better than everyone tearing each other down. Religious people do give more to charity and do give more of their time and talents to helping others than non- religious people, that is indisputable. However, even atheists realize that you don't go around punching people at random just because you feel like it.

[ReallyBig]

I suppose what I mean is rather public scrutiny or something more akin to "public reason" where a good reason is a reason that others, with other backgrounds, could accept as justified. It's a reason based on slightly more universal terms than, "this is just what I or my community thinks."

The difference between the interest in creating a universe or code of conduct (e.g. eating a certain piece of food like bacon being profane), is entirely subjective and relative. A God might say, for instance: "What is the point in creating a universe if we do not have rational creatures that can obey my commandments?"

My point is that when we are talking about the "interests" of God--why should we assume that creating a universe is more rational than, say, being in a very particular relation to specific beings and creating a code of conduct? The only way we can really rationally answer that question is to claim to know something about the nature of that God in the first place so that we would have an idea of what would be rational for that God to do. But here we come full circle to the original problem--why should I think a God created the universe?

You assume a thought process where I don't. I prefer Einstein's pseudo theory where he compares it to a computer of some sort that just acts on its programming with no thought. A force powerful enough to get the universe just right for life to exist doesn't necessarily have to feel stuff like love, hate, desire to control etc. It just might act because of its nature. What I find just as inconceivable as a God that cares about bacon is saying that all this just happened by accident.

The reason I believe that there is more than likely a higher power is simply because of the odds. Contrary to the nonsense that NASA keeps spewing you need a lot more than just oxygen, water and carbon for life to form on a planet. There are something like 200 different things needed in a solar system to make life habitable including a magnetic field (hint hint NASA.....Mars' is virtually nonexistent), giant planets to clean up the bits and pieces, and so on. Then you add to that the odds for the strong and weak nuclear forces being just right. If the nuclear strong force were even a smidgeon off what it is now then stars would not have been able to form. If forget the exact number but it was something like 1 in 10 billion or trillion for us to get just the right strong force. Then we add the odds for gravity and electromagnetism being just right. Finally we multiply that by the odds for even the simplest RNA molecules to form at random and replicate which is another 1 in billions. At some point the odds of all those different variables being just right for life get ridiculously high to just happen by chance. You literally have a better chance at winning the Powerball lottery three times in a row than life just happening to form by accident.

[mikema63]

We evolved in this universe, its not particularly surprising that we couldnt survive in a different one. If the laws of the universe were different some other kind of life would have developed.

As for RNA replication, 1 in a billion isnt actually a lot when you consider the ridiculous number of molecules available at any one time to react. 18 ml of water has 6.022x10^23 molecules in it. Thats a 6 followed by 23 zeros in just 18 ml.

[ReallyBig]

We evolved in this universe, its not particularly surprising that we couldnt survive in a different one. If the laws of the universe were different some other kind of life would have developed.

As for RNA replication, 1 in a billion isnt actually a lot when you consider the ridiculous number of molecules available at any one time to react. 18 ml of water has 6.022x10^23 molecules in it. Thats a 6 followed by 23 zeros in just 18 ml.

Without stars forming there is no life..........period. This isn't Star Trek where you can have alternate scenarios with fluidic space and whatnot. Life NEEDS certain things to exist and stars forming is just one of them. DNA forming spontaneously has been rejected by the scientific community and RNA is also losing favor. The new theory that seems to have popped up is this guy from Harvard.......and no its not the lawyer guy.

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2 ... ssibility/

The big problem I see with this theory though is as stated in the article the universe should be swimming in life and we should still be seeing these molecules today. Its not like the process of ambiogenesis would just automatically stop once the first RNA formed, it would continue to go on forever and ever and we would see those molecules to this day. But they do not exist in nature. That is a huge problem that I still haven't found a decent answer for. I asked one scientist and he postulated that maybe they were all eaten up by simple organisms and even he admitted that that was a stretch.

[mikema63]

Without stars forming there is no life..........period. This isn't Star Trek where you can have alternate scenarios with fluidic space and whatnot.

This isn't true at all, life exists in the geothermal vents at the bottom of the ocean and get no light and are entirely self sufficient. Many scientists think life on earth started at those vents. If there is life under the ice sheets of europa then it will be entirely without light. We don't know what sort of universe would exist with different laws of physics and to blanket say that life could never exist unless it was exactly like us and under exactly these conditions is incredibly unimaginative and short sighted.

Life NEEDS certain things to exist and stars forming is just one of them.

Life as we know it needs certain things sure, but not life as we don't know it. We only know one kind of life, and there is no reason to believe there couldn't be others.

DNA forming spontaneously has been rejected by the scientific community and RNA is also losing favor.

As part of that scientific community in my own small way I can certainly tell you that it isn't, the actual base pairs that make up RNA and DNA are actually observable out in the universe, there are giant clouds of the stuff. The basic materials of RNA, DNA, and protein have been found in meteorites and comets. The RNA hypothesis of abiogenesis is not by any means loosing favor except in pop science which always strives to try to make some fascinating article.

The new theory that seems to have popped up is this guy from Harvard.......and no its not the lawyer guy.

That a scientist somewhere has a problem with the RNA world hypothesis is not surprising in the least, there are lots of competing hypothesis. (not theories, we don't have a full theory of abiogenesis yet)

The big problem I see with this theory though is as stated in the article the universe should be swimming in life and we should still be seeing these molecules today.

We do see the base molecules everywhere, giant clouds of them. Our observation technology is unfortunately not that great, we only know the tiniest bit about the tiniest fraction of our galaxy which is only a yet tinier fraction of the universe.

Its not like the process of ambiogenesis would just automatically stop once the first RNA formed, it would continue to go on forever and ever and we would see those molecules to this day.

We see RNA molecules everywhere, because there are living things everywhere, there is no way to differentiate a single RNA molecule you might find from being from a bacteria or to have been spontaneously produced. We don't even have the technology to detect a single molecule of RNA.

But they do not exist in nature

They would be impossible to detect anywhere that already hosted living organisms. We have however managed to get short segments of RNA to assemble themselves in the lab, but without finding another planet on the cusp of developing life and detecting RNA molecules on it, we cannot every have direct evidence that it happens in nature.

That is a huge problem that I still haven't found a decent answer for.

It is almost certainly happening if the theory is true, but we wouldn't be able to detect it with the massively larger quantity of bacterial RNA's that we would also find in any sample. Bacteria are also liable to eat organic molecules that are just floating around.

I asked one scientist and he postulated that maybe they were all eaten up by simple organisms and even he admitted that that was a stretch.

Any that spawn today could easily be eaten by bacteria, its not much of a stretch at all, they would also be impossible to detect because literally everything has life in it. We've found bacteria in hydrochocoholic acid and salt flats, where we origionally thought they couldn't possibly live. Places that would be good for RNA development would also be very good places for bacteria to grow.

[Drlee]

The past few posts illustrate a point that was made earlier. It is difficult, to say the very least, to try to prove God. I understand that this argument is that of the now popular "intelligent design" theory but even that is to pat an answer for me. Though it would be a curiosity to imagine a creator who set everything in motion and then ignores it, this is, in a way, articulating a distinction without a difference. There is no practical difference between a God who ignores everything He has made and no God in the first place.

As to why the universe is not "swimming in life". Perhaps it is. We have reasonably intelligent life living in our oceans. Its evolution does not inevitably lead it to build "air ships" then "space ships". There is no real evidence (other than our own hubris) that increasing intelligence is an evolutional "advantage". It may well be that intelligence, as we understand it, is an evolutional disadvantage and that many if not most beings reaching our level of intelligence have a propensity to destroy themselves. I could make a good argument that we came very close to doing that on more than one occasion and that at least some evidence points to at least four ways that we might do it in the future.

But none of this leads us to the subject at hand. How religious are you...except to say this....If you are looking for science to provide you with a God, the answer is at best, not very religious at all.

There was an excellent post that got passed by a bit earlier:

Dragoth Ur: Because reading dense religious philosophy is fucking hard and most people just can't be asked to waste the time. It is way easier to go to some building once a week and have some man in a suit give you the blessings of God.

People take the easy path 99% of the time.

This speaks to a very important aspect of religion. In a human's relationship with religious belief and practice the answer to "how religious are you" is most often "as religious as I need to be at the moment". Bibles and other religious texts are somewhat like the fire extinguisher in the hall....."break glass in case of fire". If we accept that there is little practical difference between people who reject religion and those who ignore it we can certainly see this around us every day. If we ignore the true atheist and agnostic for a moment we can see this of religious people of all colors and tints.

Looking at Christianity as an example, the majority are Christian when it suits their purpose. As long as life is going along just fine they will answer "yes" to the question, play Christmas and maybe Easter and that is about the extent of it. Because they send their children to church to learn the company line this can go on, and has gone on, since the beginning. If you went back very far in American history you may find more church attendance (but not much more) and this was very often because of the social aspect of religion in the days before mass communications. Today there are church goers for whom, (at this particular time of their life) attending church, as DU correctly points out, is much like going to the service station. I often call churches "service stations" because they are a place people go for a "service" which tops them off for the week. Then they go home and live lives only nominally changed by what they learned there. Finally there are Christians who act on their faith in a significant way. These are not at all uncommon but they are most certainly not the norm in the group "all religious people".

Question for the atheists. Can you imagine a set of circumstances where you might seek the solace of spirituality? Or do you reject the possibility that there is a higher power so dogmatically that you refuse to even consider the possibility?

[Frollein]

I don't believe in a god-person, i.e. "someone" with a definable will, self-awareness or personality who created the universe. Therefore I am not religious - there's no one there to worship.

[ReallyBig]

This isn't true at all, life exists in the geothermal vents at the bottom of the ocean and get no light and are entirely self sufficient. Many scientists think life on earth started at those vents. If there is life under the ice sheets of europa then it will be entirely without light. We don't know what sort of universe would exist with different laws of physics and to blanket say that life could never exist unless it was exactly like us and under exactly these conditions is incredibly unimaginative and short sighted.

-You are forgetting that stars are the stuff of life. The universe originally only had hydrogen and helium in it. In order to have heavier elements you need the formation of stars. After the first generation of stars died they spread the heavier elements around. Therefore, if you don't have stars you don't have life at all. Hydrogen and helium by themselves will never form life.

Life as we know it needs certain things sure, but not life as we don't know it. We only know one kind of life, and there is no reason to believe there couldn't be others.

-I think we are getting are wires crossed. You seem to be referring to life existing elsewhere. I am specifically talking about what is need for any life to form.

As part of that scientific community in my own small way I can certainly tell you that it isn't, the actual base pairs that make up RNA and DNA are actually observable out in the universe, there are giant clouds of the stuff. The basic materials of RNA, DNA, and protein have been found in meteorites and comets. The RNA hypothesis of abiogenesis is not by any means loosing favor except in pop science which always strives to try to make some fascinating article.

Then you should be aware that in fact DNA abiogenesis has fallen out of favor, hence the shift over the last few years to RNA.

That a scientist somewhere has a problem with the RNA world hypothesis is not surprising in the least, there are lots of competing hypothesis. (not theories, we don't have a full theory of abiogenesis yet)



We do see the base molecules everywhere, giant clouds of them. Our observation technology is unfortunately not that great, we only know the tiniest bit about the tiniest fraction of our galaxy which is only a yet tinier fraction of the universe.

-You are talking about proteins. I am talking about self replicating RNA molecules. Those do not exist but they should be all around us. As I said, processes in nature don't stop simply because some goal is met. If self replicating RNA formed then we would still see it today because it would still be randomly forming. We have found absolutely none of them anywhere.

We see RNA molecules everywhere, because there are living things everywhere, there is no way to differentiate a single RNA molecule you might find from being from a bacteria or to have been spontaneously produced. We don't even have the technology to detect a single molecule of RNA.

-What? RNA is a more complex molecule than the proteins you were referring to. Of course they can detect them. They are HUGE....in a microscopic sense.

They would be impossible to detect anywhere that already hosted living organisms. We have however managed to get short segments of RNA to assemble themselves in the lab, but without finding another planet on the cusp of developing life and detecting RNA molecules on it, we cannot every have direct evidence that it happens in nature.

-short segments that are a tiny fraction of 1/10,000 the complexity of even the simplest self replicating RNA.

It is almost certainly happening if the theory is true, but we wouldn't be able to detect it with the massively larger quantity of bacterial RNA's that we would also find in any sample. Bacteria are also liable to eat organic molecules that are just floating around.

-by that logic then plankton wouldn't exist because it would be eaten by other organisms. Those molecules and I am not talking about the proteins you are referring to, I am talking about the simplest replicating RNA molecules should still be prevalent if indeed they formed by chance.

Any that spawn today could easily be eaten by bacteria, its not much of a stretch at all, they would also be impossible to detect because literally everything has life in it. We've found bacteria in hydrochocoholic acid and salt flats, where we origionally thought they couldn't possibly live. Places that would be good for RNA development would also be very good places for bacteria to grow.

-I don't argure about where life can exist, only the odds of it forming by chance.

Edit: Ack, my responses to your other points have the - in front of them. Seriously, they need to have it set up so that only the author is quoted instead of having to manually remove other quotes all the time.

[anticlimacus]

You assume a thought process where I don't. I prefer Einstein's pseudo theory where he compares it to a computer of some sort that just acts on its programming with no thought. A force powerful enough to get the universe just right for life to exist doesn't necessarily have to feel stuff like love, hate, desire to control etc. It just might act because of its nature. What I find just as inconceivable as a God that cares about bacon is saying that all this just happened by accident.

The reason I believe that there is more than likely a higher power is simply because of the odds. Contrary to the nonsense that NASA keeps spewing you need a lot more than just oxygen, water and carbon for life to form on a planet. There are something like 200 different things needed in a solar system to make life habitable including a magnetic field (hint hint NASA.....Mars' is virtually nonexistent), giant planets to clean up the bits and pieces, and so on. Then you add to that the odds for the strong and weak nuclear forces being just right. If the nuclear strong force were even a smidgeon off what it is now then stars would not have been able to form. If forget the exact number but it was something like 1 in 10 billion or trillion for us to get just the right strong force. Then we add the odds for gravity and electromagnetism being just right. Finally we multiply that by the odds for even the simplest RNA molecules to form at random and replicate which is another 1 in billions. At some point the odds of all those different variables being just right for life get ridiculously high to just happen by chance. You literally have a better chance at winning the Powerball lottery three times in a row than life just happening to form by accident.

I take your point that I am assuming a thought process. I suppose I misunderstood you with your comment about the bacon, which referenced the "cares" of this being. But since you seem to be arguing from a point of odds, I still struggle to see why the odds are in favor of a being that creates as opposed to their being no being that creates. Why are the odds greater for an uncreated creating Being than an uncreated natural process?

[mikema63]

The odds argument is impractical because we cant actually know the odds of god existing. Its likely inevitable or impossible and we cant know which.

My main problem is that I dont think any human can know, if God really were contacting us to tell is about himself than why does he not call except in inexplicably obtuse ways? I think religion is largely contructed around the clergy getting people to do what they want.

Im just going to live my life as best I can and if I go to hell anyway for not observing the correct series of practices whose truth I cannot differentiate between then I wouldnt have worshiped him anyway.

[ReallyBig]

I take your point that I am assuming a thought process. I suppose I misunderstood you with your comment about the bacon, which referenced the "cares" of this being. But since you seem to be arguing from a point of odds, I still struggle to see why the odds are in favor of a being that creates as opposed to their being no being that creates. Why are the odds greater for an uncreated creating Being than an uncreated natural process?

I can only go by the statistics that we have and certain scientific facts. One thing that everyone seems to agree on is that anything heavier than hydrogen and maybe helium (I forget if that was around after the Big Bang as well) was formed in stars and spread over the universe when they died. So we absolutely need stars because helium can't form complex chains by itself.

If they find out tomorrow that the Shapiro theory is correct and that life could be formed by a metabolic process then I will adjust my views. The one advantage of not being a dogmatic athiest or a religous zealot is that I can easily adjust my views as more information becomes available without destroying any preconceived notions. That was Einstein's point about atheists as well is that they were just the opposite of religious people. Religious people were 100% certain that their god exists and atheists are 100% certain that god doesn't exist. I honestly don't see the difference between the two other than they are on opposite sides of the equation. They are both equally as dogmatic and ideological to me as the other.

[ReallyBig]

The odds argument is impractical because we cant actually know the odds of god existing. Its likely inevitable or impossible and we cant know which.

My main problem is that I dont think any human can know, if God really were contacting us to tell is about himself than why does he not call except in inexplicably obtuse ways? I think religion is largely contructed around the clergy getting people to do what they want.

Im just going to live my life as best I can and if I go to hell anyway for not observing the correct series of practices whose truth I cannot differentiate between then I wouldnt have worshiped him anyway.

One of the first times I started to question my Christianity was when I learned that the Bible we use today was actually cobbled together by a bunch of clergy from the Roman Catholic church in the primitive days before the internet. Some "books" were included while others were left out entirely at the discretion of the medieval Catholic church which as we all know isn't exactly known for being unbiased and free from corruption.

I am simply using the same argument that many atheists use just from the other side. They claim that the life formed spontaneously without any outside interference. By definition there is a statistical probability attached to that theory. When I read about the numbers it approaches if not exceeds the point of being statistically impossible and yes there is actually a point where something is considered to be statistically impossible.

[Godstud]

Faith and religion isn't about proving there's a God. Science is not about proving there is, or is not, a God, either. Religion and science can co-exist quite nicely.

Religion: God made the universe!
Science: Whatever... we're just trying to figure out how everything works.

Read a book(fiction). A Skeleton in God's Closet(I forget the author). It's about scientists finding evidence that Jesus did NOT resurrect. It's good insight into religion, and a decent read.

[mikema63]

Oh goodness, somehow I was too dumb to know how statistics work. Too bad given the number of molecules involved in spontanious rna generation and lack of knowlege about the probability of spontanious generation in the conditions of ancient earth you cannot make that guess or that leap.

It would take only one replicating RNA molecule to create life.

If you actually take all of tge universes molecules you increase the likelyhood to mindboglingly complex levels.

You cannot make the claim your trying to make, and even if you could it would require a full academic paper, not your feelings on its lukelyhood.

[ReallyBig]

Oh goodness, somehow I was too dumb to know how statistics work. Too bad given the number of molecules involved in spontanious rna generation and lack of knowlege about the probability of spontanious generation in the conditions of ancient earth you cannot make that guess or that leap.

It would take only one replicating RNA molecule to create life.

If you actually take all of tge universes molecules you increase the likelyhood to mindboglingly complex levels.

You cannot make the claim your trying to make, and even if you could it would require a full academic paper, not your feelings on its lukelyhood.

I am still waiting for an answer as to where they are now. We still have single cell organisms even though we evolved from them billions of years ago. Not all apes evolved into homininids. If life just happened by chance then we would still see these early very simple RNA or ribos all around us and we don't. Even the simplest organism today has 160,000 pairs and it can't reproduce. The simplest organism that can reproduce has 450,000 pairs.

An interesting read from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK26876/

Although RNA seems well suited to form the basis for a self-replicating set of biochemical catalysts, it is unlikely that RNA was the first kind of molecule to do so. From a purely chemical standpoint, it is difficult to imagine how long RNA molecules could be formed initially by purely nonenzymatic means. For one thing, the precursors of RNA, the ribonucleotides, are difficult to form nonenzymatically. Moreover, the formation of RNA requires that a long series of 3′ to 5′ phosphodiester linkages form in the face of a set of competing reactions, including hydrolysis, 2′ to 5′ linkages, 5′ to 5′ linkages, and so on. Given these problems, it has been suggested that the first molecules to possess both catalytic activity and information storage capabilities may have been polymers that resemble RNA but are chemically simpler (Figure 6-93). We do not have any remnants of these compounds in present-day cells, nor do such compounds leave fossil records. Nonetheless, the relative simplicity of these “RNA-like polymers” make them better candidates than RNA itself for the first biopolymers on Earth that had both information storage capacity and catalytic activity.

Note the part that they do not see these things today. It also confirms what I said earlier that in fact the scientific community has moved away from DNA abiogenisis to RNA abiogenisis and is now in the process of moving even further down the chain. The problem becomes that as you use simpler and simpler building blocks you necessarily decrease the odds of those forming RNA and eventually DNA.