Denial of Evolution VII (2015)

[GeoffP]

You still remain a prick, a thorn in sciforums side, the sooner you fuck off the better.

That was the fastest switch of opinion I've ever seen on SF. Hilarious.

 

[GeoffP]

Last post on this. You believe what you want, the day abiogenesis becomes a scientific theory is the day I'll take it seriously.

I think I see your problem here:

Abiogenesis

noun
1. the now discredited theory that living organisms can arise spontaneously from inanimate matter; spontaneous generation.
2. the theory that the earliest life forms on earth developed from nonliving matter.​

So: 2. yes, 1. good God, no. No, no one's pushing 1 these days. Because it's a touch crazy.

 

[davewhite04]

I think I see your problem here:

Abiogenesis

noun
1. the now discredited theory that living organisms can arise spontaneously from inanimate matter; spontaneous generation.
2. the theory that the earliest life forms on earth developed from nonliving matter.​

So: 2. yes, 1. good God, no. No, no one's pushing 1 these days. Because it's a touch crazy.

This link is better then a dictionary Geoff.

 

[billvon]

the day abiogenesis becomes a scientific theory is the day I'll take it seriously.

Ask and ye shall receive!

===========================
Iron–sulfur world theory

The iron–sulfur world theory is a set of proposals for the origin of life and the early evolution of life advanced in a series of articles between 1988 and 1992 by Günter Wächtershäuser, a Munich patent lawyer with a degree in chemistry, who had been encouraged and supported by philosopher Karl R. Popper to publish his ideas. The theory proposes that early life may have formed on the surface of iron sulfide minerals, hence the name. It was developed by retrodiction from extant biochemistry in conjunction with chemical experiments.
=============================

 

[GeoffP]

I was hoping your confusion was hung up on the old Aristotelian usage. Apparently not.

It's a scientific theory, and a pretty good one. This disheartens you? I thought faith was founded in faith. "Put not your God to the test", it is written (Luke 4:12).

 

[davewhite04]

I thought faith was founded in faith. "Put not your God to the test", it is written (Luke 4:12).

Exactly. Watch you don't get 10 points for preaching.

 

[Bells]

Mod Note

You still remain a prick, a thorn in sciforums side, the sooner you fuck off the better.

This is really not acceptable.

I have issued you with a warning for it, and if you keep it up, the points will simply accumulate until we simply shut the door behind you on your way out.

 

[Bells]

They are fools, grasping onto a hypothesis to justify no need for a God at all. Fools would say abiogenesis is a scientific theory, look it up if you want to learn.

I really don't think you are in any position to be referring to anyone as "fools" at present.

And abiogenesis is a scientific theory.

Exactly. Watch you don't get 10 points for preaching.

He's not preaching.

 

[GeoffP]

Exactly. Watch you don't get 10 points for preaching.

What I'm saying is that your faith is your faith irrespective of evidence, no? That's why it's called faith. Remember Job? There you go.

 

[davewhite04]

What I'm saying is that your faith is your faith irrespective of evidence, no? That's why it's called faith. Remember Job? There you go.

I do remember Job, a genuine inspiration to all.

 

[iceaura]

It makes sense, that if life was designed, that the designers would use basic building blocks which are easily available in the environment. In other words, the designer would make the environment likely to produce these building blocks using relatively simple mechanisms. It only makes sense.

This brings the possibility of an actual scientific hypothesis from a creationist into view.

We have the "building blocks" given, but no living being. We have the entire range of living organisms, all of which are complex consequences of accepted evolution, undesigned. We should be able to narrow down between them, in time and space, an hypothesized act of creation: what was created, when it was created, and what it was created from.

Failing that, a specific and testable hypothesis as to what prevented ordinary evolutionary processes from producing living organisms from these "building blocks", at that time, would be a decent fallback option for the creation/design proposer.

 

[davewhite04]

Mod Note



This is really not acceptable.

I have issued you with a warning for it, and if you keep it up, the points will simply accumulate until we simply shut the door behind you on your way out.

I'm sure James R is thick skinned enough to not take my comment to heart. You just need to remember it wasn't directed to you as I wouldn't waste my time.

EDIT: Apology to James R for being a man and taking my quip on the chin.

 

[Captain Kremmen]

Whatever began the journey towards life was very simple. It had to be.
It's a good problem.
Has anyone done any work investigating some kind of natural chromatography?
That would cause local concentrations of chemicals.

 

[GeoffP]

I do remember Job, a genuine inspiration to all.

So would you not ignore what you perceive as insults to your faith - mentioning again, that this is not intended to be so, and that the expression of same would be a kind of violation of scientific perspective - and simply carry on? The world drags on a good man. Don't let it. Words are only air.

 

[matthew809]

In saying this you have revealed a deficiency in your perspective regarding the true spatial and temporal extent of the arena in which events play out. In the observable universe alone there are hundreds of billions of galaxies each with hundreds of billions of stars (and that's just the small ones -- there are an innumerable number of giant elliptical galaxies that contain several trillion stars of their own). And again, that's just the observable universe; the universe itself is almost certainly considerably more massive (some recent estimates suggest that it may be at least 250 times bigger). Combine this with matters obvious propensity for self-organization and complex behaviour (as should be obvious by now -- also see this, this and this) particularly given changing environmental conditions, and multiply this already utterly mind-boggling number of opportunities by the extent of the temporal dimension in question (the total time during which planetary systems have been forming, which is a very long time) and I think it becomes perfectly reasonable to suggest that it would be impossible for life not to emerge in at least a few places.

In other words just like so many others your real problem is that you are simply too small-minded to get a proper handle on what is possible, or probable. It's not unexpected of course since it's neither natural or easy for us to think so big but if you're gonna tackle the big topics you at least need to try.

But I used to be a believer in the theory of evolution. I used to ponder the exact same descriptions that you just wrote about the universe... and I still do. Why do evolutionists constantly feel the need to explain the rationale behind their beliefs, as if it's something so very complex? You haven't enlightened me... I figured this stuff out a long time ago. Please give me just a little credit. I have actually advanced from what I would consider a simple-minded paradigm. Just because I have come to a different conclusion than you, that does not make me small-minded.

And this hopelessly inadequate analogy is just further proof. The truth is that the emergence of life on just one planet is something more like a billion people buying a billion lottery tickets in a billion different draws every day for a billion years until some seemingly unlikely but at this point statistically inevitable series of wins occurs. That's abiogenesis, and as pointed out earlier because the nature of matter is conducive to it anyway the draws are never actually random; they are constrained to a mere subset of possibilities by the natural order. So this leaves plenty of opportunities for the process to actually get started and then fail (for whatever reason) before finally assuming more robust forms in more favourable conditions for much greater lengths of time.

Your billions/billions/billions analogy is fine for showing how one extremely unlikely event, with enough time and space, is actually inevitable. And you could even go ahead and apply this same reasoning to any unlikely event... and another event, and so on. But by definition, these events are disconnected from each other. The moment you try to connect them together, into a single chain of dependent events, within a finite time-frame and space, you have an exponentially less probable scenario with each event that you haphazardly add. And unfortunately for the theory of evolution(and apparently unknowing to evolutionists), the number of events in this chain are enormously beyond reason. In other words, an inevitable scenario becomes an impossible one.... and I realize this may be hard for an evolutionist to understand.

 

[davewhite04]

So would you not ignore what you perceive as insults to your faith - mentioning again, that this is not intended to be so, and that the expression of same would be a kind of violation of scientific perspective - and simply carry on? The world drags on a good man. Don't let it. Words are only air.

I don't think I've taking any insult that was directed to me seriously, have i?

Mark 7:15
15 There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him: but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man.

 

[davewhite04]

But I used to be a believer in the theory of evolution. I used to ponder the exact same descriptions that you just wrote about the universe... and I still do. Why do evolutionists constantly feel the need to explain the rationale behind their beliefs, as if it's something so very complex? You haven't enlightened me... I figured this stuff out a long time ago. Please give me just a little credit. I have actually advanced from what I would consider a simple-minded paradigm. Just because I have come to a different conclusion than you, that does not make me small-minded.<snip>

So how do you explain the difference between a child and their parents?

Edit: Interesting Link

 

[Captain Kremmen]

Maybe Abiogenesis began with the Big Bang.
Is there an urge to exist, to gather information, and become conscious?
Otherwise why would things become more complex and evolve?

 

[billvon]

But I used to be a believer in the theory of evolution. I used to ponder the exact same descriptions that you just wrote about the universe... and I still do. Why do evolutionists constantly feel the need to explain the rationale behind their beliefs, as if it's something so very complex?

The nature of science is to explain the rationale behind scientific theories, to better understand how the universe works. Often, those theories are indeed very complex.

And note that Rav did not explain the rationale until you asked him about it.

Your billions/billions/billions analogy is fine for showing how one extremely unlikely event, with enough time and space, is actually inevitable. And you could even go ahead and apply this same reasoning to any unlikely event... and another event, and so on. But by definition, these events are disconnected from each other. The moment you try to connect them together, into a single chain of dependent events, within a finite time-frame and space, you have an exponentially less probable scenario with each event that you haphazardly add. And unfortunately for the theory of evolution(and apparently unknowing to evolutionists), the number of events in this chain are enormously beyond reason.

No, they are not. And every time someone claims that "X is impossible!" (X being the formation of amino acids without life, or simple self-replicating molecules, or the formation of a lipid membrane) a scientist comes along and demonstrates how that is possible. When you have a string of, say, a dozen possible things that have to happen in a row - and they are possible enough that they can be readily re-created - the odds of that happening in nature can be calculated, and is far from impossible.

 

[davewhite04]

Maybe Abiogenesis began with the Big Bang.
Is there an urge to exist, to gather information, and become conscious?
Otherwise why would things become more complex and evolve?

Began where exactly?

Earth is about 3.5 billion years old and the universe is about 14 billion years old.