What is the Falsification for Abiogenesis and Theory of Evolution?

[tas8831]

Because they just fabricate those details apparently.

Like Tomkins fabricated his claims about the % similarity between humans and chimps?

 

[tas8831]

Uh huh. I've read plenty of college-type material on genetics. So, keep your insults to yourself.

And yet you dutifully ignored the references I provided that were genetics-related.

It is almost as if....

 

[Bertrand Russell White]

Sorry for all the suspicion, but we've seen too many posters start in the same vein as you have, only try to sneak in a literal inerrant Genesis, a young Earth and a global flood while they think we're not looking.

I appreciate this. I get this, I've debated with this type of Christian and Creationist myself. Very annoying, dishonest and deceptive. I try to be honest with myself and others as much as I can. Like everyone else commenting on this type of forum I tend toward assuming certain things myself. I try to call it as I see it based on a lot of study and reading across the sciences, history, philosophy, history, theology and other areas. I try to read the most respected and knowledgeable people in the areas where possible from different perspectives and at a decent level (university if I can). If they happen to have good ideas, even though they are a bit of a maverick so be it.

1. Genesis is definitely not inerrant and very very unlikely to be literal (probably based off Sumerian myths transmitted and converted into Babylonian myths that the Jews inherited when in exile in the Babylonian empire. I was pretty convinced of this after I took an ancient near east university course by an excellent professor who studied at the University of Pennsylvania who had done their PhD under the great oriental scholar Dr. Spicer and from my study since. This person was even a Christian, although I suspect a liberal Christian, who readily agreed that Genesis was mythological.)
2. YEC fails if Genesis is mythological (see point 1.!!)
3. Global Flood - besides their being no real evidence that stands up under scrutiny within the science of geology, makes no sense with the rest of the sciences when carefully analyzed (E.O. Wilson's consilience test). Creationists go to great lengths to justify this but even the concept of getting millions of animal species in a large boat is ridiculous and probably impossible (I think I once read a simple but viable analyses of this that showed how physically unlikely this was)
4. The OT of the Bible seems to suffer from a lack of evidence up until after at least the time of Solomon (lots of evidence one would expect is missing). Even the best Christian archeologists agree with this (for example Randall Price). I wouldn't go so far as to say that it has been a completely failed enterprise, but it seems to be getting closer to this each day. It seems to produce nothing or very little of real substance - such as establishing even something as simple as the united monarchy.
5. I believe in mainstream science although like some creationists and renegade secular scientists I'm not completely convinced that there aren't fundamental aspects of existing theories that might be missing (such as for evolution, quantum theory - Relativity and possibly the big bang). However, my concerns don't make me believe in any way that these theories are probably on the wrong track like Creationists believe. There may be more major changes to make the models consistent with reality, but god(s) and magic aren't necessary. For example, I would tend to think along the lines of secular scientists like James Shapiro (a world leader in evolution and evolution theory) that believe important aspects are still required for modern evolutionary theory. Being a former student of the pure sciences (math and theoretical physics) I would also like to see evolution put on a more firm mathematical framework like engineering, applied and theoretical physics and computational/quantum chemistry. However, all this is still within traditional materialist science - no god(s) or magic necessary.
6. I agree with John Horgan in his book - The End of Science - that science has become so successful that it may be coming to an end for discovering other really significant contours to reality - such as a theory of evolution or quantum theory. I personally think that there are more comprehensive models still available, but I have also studied business and unless there are good reasons to keep supporting so much non-applied science, politicians and others will start to move away from funding science like they already have for the supercollider that was to be built in Texas.
7. Science is the best way that humans have ever come up with to understand the world and mathematics is the best language to use to do that.
8. Driving out superstition and ghosts have been a good thing for society - science isn't exclusively responsible for this but has helped a great deal. However, it has also contributed a lot to our present problems such as: global warming, uncritical development of human technology (including weapons for the war machines, supporting the development of the military industrial complex etc.), pollution, over industrialization/urbanization/expansion into the natural world, major ecological problems because of human civilization and science/technology etc.

I could go on but I know you got the point probably without me going on and on - A problem I know I have! LOL

 

[SelfSim]

As I said, I know all that. I have been thinking of these issues since our previous discussions - it might be possible to have some type of non-earth based telescope or other astronomical equipment to establish that on planets like early earth, amino acids formation could be detected. If a survey was done of many such star systems with many such planets like ours in different parts of the universe, that established a credible body of knowledge for a theory/model than I would grant the point of natural based explanation for amino acids on a primitive earth was highly probable. I'm not sure how close we are to something like this. I'm not aware of anything more than astronomical devices that seem to show excellent evidence for planets around suns. I'm not sure whether these possible planets are similar in size to earth.

I would, unlike creationists, welcome such experiments and study. The results would be very insightful and helpful determining the issues in question. Although we couldn't control for things like we can for experiments on earth we could get a lot of potentially excellent information. This would then help to give real credibility to the man made controlled experiments on these issues on earth. This type of combined science would go a long way in eliminating the issues inherent on trying to account for historical issues in science from only the vantage point of made up experiments and methods from guesses based on that historical science. I'm sure that they are probably trying to get to this place today, I'm just not aware of any programs doing this that are likely to accomplish this. If there are, I welcome learning about them! I know they do large scale astronomical data collections on many parts of the universe to validate or invalidate certain theories, no reason this couldn't possible in what we are discussing.

First evidence that amino acids formed soon after the Big Bang:

A new measurement of chemical evolution suggests that amino acids filled the early universe some nine billion years before life emerged. That has important implications for understanding the origin of life and attempting to re-create it in the lab.

.. and so:

All this puts the Miller-Urey experiment in a very different perspective. Instead of simulating the conditions in which life emerged on Earth, this experiment actually reproduces the conditions in which amino acids first formed in the early universe. Indeed, this seems to have occurred much earlier than anyone imagined.

That has significant implications for our thinking about the origins of life. “The results suggest that the main ingredients of life, such as amino acids, nucleotides and other key molecules, came into existence very early, about 8-9 billion years before life,” say Kauffman and co.

Since the precise conditions in which life evolved on Earth took another eight to nine billion years to emerge, amino acids cannot be a sign of life potential at all, as had been thought after the Urey-Miller experiment. “Their existence in samples is by no means an immediate precursor of life,” say Kauffman and co.

 

[Astrid]

Ah, the Galileo gambit.
Pity that despite their millions of dollars of tax-free donations and income from sales of nonsense-filled tomes, the DI nor any other creationist 'science' group has been able to produce anything of merit supportive of their bible-based assertions. It is almost as if they have nothing of merit to offer, but you would continue to give them their day in court, so to speak.
I won't. They've had their chance and all they can vomit up are attacks and attempts to 'cast doubt' on evolution - nearly all of which are spurious at best.

The stupid thing is if they were right,
the evidence would be everywhere and
universally acknowledged.

 

[tas8831]

Because they make up pictures of animals that, in reality, they only have the teeth and a couple leg bones of. That's a lot of supposing.

As I asked you before - you've never taken comparative (or any kind of) anatomy, have you?

Many years ago, I came across a creationist book by, I think it was a guy named Marsh, maybe? Anyway, I flipped through the pages until I noticed an interesting set of diagrams showing several vases or pots of various shapes. Intrigued, I stopped flipping the pages to see what was afoot.
The vases/pots were supposed to be examples of different ways that pottery shards could be assembled into totally different shapes as an argument against using incomplete fossils skeletons to re-create creatures.
Marsh (if that was the author) was a plant biologist, and really had no business discussing fossils or skeletal remains, and trying to make an analogy between recreating a skeleton from a few bones and recreating a vessel from pottery shards was disingenuous and dishonest of him. As a trained anatomist, I know as a matter of course that a vessel does not shatter into predictably-shaped bits, like a skeleton disarticulates. An anatomist would be able to tell quite a bit about a bone - a single bone - and a paleontologist/tahponomist would know even more detail.

Did you know, for example, that it is possible to tell things like an approximate age, weight, muscle mass, etc. of an organism by looking at certain bones, providing you know what to look for? No? Didn't think so.

Of course, creationist dishonesty does not stop at a botanist making proclamations about fossil bones - creationist anatomists also fabricate and confabulate as necessary.
David Menton, creationist anatomist, for example - when the first Tiktaalik paper came out, Menton immediately took to AiG or ICR or some other YEC site to declare it irrelevant, as he declared triumphantly that Tiktaalik's pelvic fins were too frail to push it along on land and besides - Tiktaalik lacked a bone-to-bone articulation between its pectoral limb/fin and its axial skeleton, as ALL terrestrial quadrupeds need.

Two problems for Johnny creationist anatomist expert:
1. The paper describing Tik's pelvic limbs/fins was yet to be published, so he had literally no way of knowing what its pelvic limbs were like and
2. Literally some of the largest living land animals lack a bone-to-bone connection between their forelimbs and axial skeleton (like, elephants).

But golly, he's an EXPERT, so he musta been right.... right?

 

[Bertrand Russell White]

Oh, someone was pointing out you might
police your words of language...an air of assumed
superiority is conveyed by words like "cute", " you obviously
don't know", " how old are you " "do,you know much "
"take some advice" etc. Those with emotional intelligence
have insight to know how others will respond to such.

Okay Bud.

 

[Bertrand Russell White]

No problem, the world is messy. Actually messy is not a great word, but we can accept that it will work in this case, but the more important part of your statement is that you are implying that I do not recognize this. More important is your use of expressions like "unfortunately my friend". That will do for a specific example in this post, for several more, read back in the responses to your post where several more were pointed out with comments that your use of those expressions characterized you as a particular type of poster.

NP. I agree (about use word messy). I suspect if we met in person, we would agree more ore less, on most things.

 

[renniks]

Did you know, for example, that it is possible to tell things like an approximate age, weight, muscle mass, etc. of an organism by looking at certain bones, providing you know what to look for? No? Didn't think so.

So what? I've skinned more animals than 99 perfect of the people on here. I know bone structure. A fossilized bone from an extinct animal is not gonna tell you what DNA it had, what fur, or lack of fur or hair or even exact size and shape. A whole skeleton construction from a leg bone and some teeth? You don't even know the skull shape. Guesswork is inevitable.

 

[Bertrand Russell White]

Again you are as Estrid says pretending superiority. exponential decay is not a foreign concept to many of us though I will admit it is to some. That said, I ask again, do you apply the same logic to our ability to discover things about the early universe?

Estrid and I got off, I think, to a bad start as I think he assumed a lot about me from what I originally said. He hasn't been able to shake this yet - and I admit I haven't helped with some of y comments and showing him up on some mistakes he made in his posts. I can be pretty sarcastic and will attack vigorously if someone assumes things that are untrue about me, like he did. I don't know him personally and most people are usually better than they come across when they don't have the anonymity of the internet. We would probably get along well in real life. I've always got along very well with people from Hong Kong and China - especially technical science types.

No, I don't because it is a different beast. What we see is first hand evidence except that it originally happened billions of years ago. I would accept aspects of chemical evolution in the same way I accept this, if there was a current way to take EMR from planets and show chemical evolution. As I outlined elsewhere in this forum. I'm not aware that this has occurred in science yet. If it has, it would be very big news and I would welcome it. If you are aware of such research, I would love to read about it - I have not kept up on this stuff like I did when I was much younger. I was thinking about this possibility after writing some of my posts. Unlike Creationists, if an astronomical program could survey planets similar to an early earth throughout different regions of the universe and statistically show a high probability of chemical evolution by scientists being able to study evidence for organic chemicals, this would settle a lot of questions about life (especially when combined with research on these areas on earth. This would be a great form of consilience between current evidence that happened from the past with current research related to the same). Hopefully there is a way that future technology will be developed to do this in short order. This is no problem with me if such science and tools develop. I'm not invested, in a worldview like Creationists, that can't tolerate such things.

 

[Ponderous Curmudgeon]

NP. I agree (about use word messy). I suspect if we met in person, we would agree more ore less, on most things.

From your recent response to Speedwell, I would agree, in fact we could even agree here on the internet, but that has not been what the colloquy has been about.

Unfortunately, it appears, through your use of Bertrand Russel as your avatar and moniker and your style of written language that you have inadvertently set yourself up in the position of an internet troll (a person who claims to know more than others and to lord it over them). You may be older and more experienced than a few and much so than many, but as you will probably agree that does not guarantee your greater wisdom. Take this from another poster who is often misunderstood, welcome to a new country that speaks a slightly different language that did not even exist when we learned our native languages. It takes practice and self reflection to speak a new language.

May we all learn and enjoy each others contributions.

 

[Bertrand Russell White]

First evidence that amino acids formed soon after the Big Bang:

.. and so:

I would welcome the information about this 8 - 9 billion years existence amino acids. This would seem to have to be likely in stellar and chemical evolution. I wouldn't be surprised if this is even pushed back even slightly further. As this post states, U-M was just a first step and didn't show much. However, a beginning is always important. Oparin's musings were also very important even though they were mostly conjectures - having stimulated U-M.

 

[Astrid]

Okay Bud.

You do know I am a woman, so you are deliberately
being odious, besides doing the rest of what I said.

 

[Bertrand Russell White]

From your recent response to Speedwell, I would agree, in fact we could even agree here on the internet, but that has not been what the colloquy has been about.

Unfortunately, it appears, through your use of Bertrand Russel as your avatar and moniker and your style of written language that you have inadvertently set yourself up in the position of an internet troll (a person who claims to know more than others and to lord it over them). You may be older and more experienced than a few and much so than many, but as you will probably agree that does not guarantee your greater wisdom. Take this from another poster who is often misunderstood, welcome to a new country that speaks a slightly different language that did not even exist when we learned our native languages. It takes practice and self reflection to speak a new language.

May we all learn and enjoy each others contributions.

LOL - I find what you say about Russell, avatar and moniker funny. I can see why you would say this. His initials just happen to be the initials of my name. I do admit that I relate a little with his personality- being a bit of a renegade, controversial and someone who created sparks. I also appreciate his mathematical genius as that was one of my specializations in U many moons ago and brilliance in philosophy (I am drawn to philosophy as well). However, he and I are also significantly different.

Like Feyerabend, Russell didn't like to be confined by boxes and simple characterizations - of who he was. To this I whole hardily agree. Life is much more complex than that. I don't advocate this just for myself but for everyone.

 

[Bertrand Russell White]

You do know I am a woman, so you are deliberately
being odious, besides doing the rest of what I said.

Sorry, no I didn't. I apologize.

 

[Astrid]

LOL - I find what you say about Russell, avatar and moniker funny. I can see why you would say this. His initials just happen to be the initials of my name. I do admit that I relate a little with his personality- being a bit of a renegade, controversial and someone who created sparks. I also appreciate his mathematical genius as that was one of my specializations in U many moons ago and brilliance in philosophy (I am drawn to philosophy as well). However, he and I are also significantly different.

Like Feyerabend, Russell didn't like to be confined by boxes and simple characterizations - of who he was. To this I whole hardily agree. Life is much more complex than that. I don't advocate this just for myself but for everyone.

Let us know of you ever have an original idea.

 

[Ponderous Curmudgeon]

Estrid and I got off, I think, to a bad start as I think he assumed a lot about me from what I originally said. He hasn't been able to shake this yet - and I admit I haven't helped with some of y comments and showing him up on some mistakes he made in his posts. I can be pretty sarcastic and will attack vigorously if someone assumes things that are untrue about me, like he did. I don't know him personally and most people are usually better than they come across when they don't have the anonymity of the internet. We would probably get along well in real life. I've always got along very well with people from Hong Kong and China - especially technical science types.

No, I don't because it is a different beast. What we see is first hand evidence except that it originally happened billions of years ago. I would accept aspects of chemical evolution in the same way I accept this, if there was a current way to take EMR from planets and show chemical evolution. As I outlined elsewhere in this forum. I'm not aware that this has occurred in science yet. If it has, it would be very big news and I would welcome it. If you are aware of such research, I would love to read about it - I have not kept up on this stuff like I did when I was much younger. I was thinking about this possibility after writing some of my posts. Unlike Creationists, if an astronomical program could survey planets similar to an early earth throughout different regions of the universe and statistically show a high probability of chemical evolution by scientists being able to study evidence for organic chemicals, this would settle a lot of questions about life (especially when combined with research on these areas on earth. This would be a great form of consilience between current evidence that happened from the past with current research related to the same). Hopefully there is a way that future technology will be developed to do this in short order. This is no problem with me if such science and tools develop. I'm not invested, in a worldview like Creationists, that can't tolerate such things.

you have probably read my last response by now. (example of why this is not equivalent to a face to face conversation). Yes we are both curmudgeons and that is largely what my last post was about. We are also prone to flippant and sarcastic comments especially when responding to people we find unserious. In fact I am going to end this for now before I make any comments I will regret.

Look forward to hearing more of your wisdom (not sarcastic) in the future.

 

[Bertrand Russell White]

I see what you are, I just dont understand the need to lie for Jesus.

Wow! So you're omniscient? Pretty impressive. You caught me! Not.

 

[Bertrand Russell White]

you have probably read my last response by now. (example of why this is not equivalent to a face to face conversation). Yes we are both curmudgeons and that is largely what my last post was about. We are also prone to flippant and sarcastic comments especially when responding to people we find unserious. In fact I am going to end this for now before I make any comments I will regret.

Look forward to hearing more of your wisdom (not sarcastic) in the future.

NP.

 

[Astrid]

Sorry, no I didn't. I apologize.

Going by the wild variance between my posts and
how you respond I was pretty sure you don't actually
read them. I did specify female esrlier, Estrid is a womans
name and it's on profile.
But OK were careless rather than deliberate.
The ok bud thing was of course just being dismissive.

I will readily say I don't generally care for men very
much and condescension will immediately
provoke some strong distaste.
It really would behoove you to get it that
nobody here appreciates the super wisdom
bit, even if it happens to rub me wronger
than it does others.

You been to Hong Kong?