The bottom line - what do we really know?

The Barbarian · Apr 27, 2026

Mountainmike said:
When people speak of evolution, they discuss complete organisms and family trees. Fossil record and such like things.
An assumption of common descent rather than multiple independent pathways.

Actually, common descent is not a part of evolutionary theory. Even Darwin supposed that God might have created any number of living things. And it wouldn't matter. if God just magically poofed things into existence, evolution would work exactly as we see it working today.

Mountainmike said:
They speak of molecular biology mechanisms of inheritance.

Yes, DNA analysis does show descent. And we know this is a fact, because we can test it on organisms of known descent.

Mountainmike said:
They speak of mechanism of genetic variation and optimization by survival of fittest

It's so reliable that engineers are now copying evolutionary mechanisms to solve problems too complex for design. God had it right after all.Then the scientific world and OOL community does what it always does. Pretend the puzzle is almost solved , rather than barely started.

And you're wrong to imagine that scientists say evolutionary theory is settled with no further problems to be solved. There are many, many, remaining problems in evolutionary science. It's just that the four points of Darwnian theory have been repeatedly tested and confirmed.

Mountainmike said:
I will change that paradigm completely.
I will Focus not on the complete organism. Let us focus on the component cell. If you cannot explain that , you have no theory of life.

Sounds interesting. Show us any cell that could not possibly be evolved from a simpler cell. What do you have?

Mountainmike said:
Here is the actual reality. The actual voice of science.

The simplest known cell is incredibly complicated. The simplest known bacteria has hundreds of genes.
The modern cell is a self evolving, (assumed) self designing!, self repairing, self sustaining factory of thousands of proteins and other biochemicals.
It is orders of magnitude more complex than any chemical factory we know.

Show us the math for that. What do you have?

Mountainmike said:
Nobody knows where, when or how the first life started.

Darwin suggested that God did it. How life started was not part of his theory. However, God says that the earth produced living things as He intended. So there is that.

Mountainmike said:
Nobody knows what genome it had. But to be "life" it must have a genome.

So you're saying that there could not be self-replicating chemical systems in the absence of nucleic acids? Are you sure?

Mountainmike said:
There is no structure conjectured for the first life, detailed enough to test.

It's always a mistake to try to hide a religious doctrine in the shadow of what we don't yet know.

Mountainmike said:
And there is no model of conjectured chemistry of non life chemicals that can combine to form it.

No, that's wrong:

RNA world - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Mountainmike said:
Without knowing what the precursors were, nobody can say if they existed or do exist.
The minimum life is and must be IRREDUCIBLY COMPLEX.

By definition. However, irreducible complexity has been observed to evolve. Would you like to see an example?

Mountainmike said:
How do we know? Because of the definition of life, presupposes structures for energy, for reproduction , for mutation and even the genome as an information carrier has a minimum theoretical entropy to carry that information.

Here you've merely defined anything less than genomic life as "not life."

Mountainmike said:
So not only does science not know how life started at all.There is no structure proposed for first life or process to it.
So there is no hypothesis of abiogeneis.

No, that's wrong, too:

Abiogenesis: Definition, Theory, Evidence & Examples - Sciencing

Abiogenesis: Definition, Theory, Evidence & Examples

www.sciencing.com

But keep in mind, evolutionary theory doesn't depend on any particular way life began. God just poofing living things would be just as good as life being brought forth by the earth, as far as evolutionary theory goes.

Mountainmike said:
So before anyone tells you evolution is a fact,

It's directly observed all around us. Perhaps you don't know what biological evolution is. What do you think it is?

Mountainmike said:
In the landmark case on intelligent design, professor Behe picked the wrong thing to argue. He should have picked the first living cell.

He's a biologist. And he knew better than to make that error. He's quite aware that evolutionary theory isn't about the origin of life.

Mountainmike said:
Why have I written this?

Apparently, because you don't know what biological evolution is, or what's in the theory that describes it. You're trying to disprove a claim not made by evolutionary theory. And so far, you're not even managing to do that.

The Barbarian · Apr 27, 2026

QvQ said:
Of course maize survives outside cultivation.

Contemporary corn, unlike its wild grassy ancestor teosinte, can't survive without people because it can't disperse its own seeds.

stevevw · May 11, 2026

I have read and watched a few videos and articles from Dr James Tour who seems to know what he is talking about. I am not knowledgable enough to understand all that is being said. But I get the gist of the impossible steps reuired in some stages and that the more time that has gone by the more complex the steps involved become.

Many scientists describe the cell as a factory and assembly line. But even more complicated in that this is not about fixed parts locking together. But enzymes and chemical bases encoding to generate forms. Something is making the code. Chemicals can't think..

It would take longer than the existence of the universe to map out the code for life. Thats why origins of life always skips the most important steps.

According to Tour scientists are creating a scam when they claim they have solved how life came about. They are nowhere near this and the more time that goes by and the more we discover. The more it looks designed.

I mean here we have the worlds best minds trying to solve how life from non life came about and still they have no idea. That seems to suggest that an aweful lot of intelligence went into life happening.

The Barbarian · May 11, 2026

stevevw said:
I have read and watched a few videos and articles from Dr James Tour who seems to know what he is talking about.

Tell us which of his arguments do you find compelling? Let's talk about it.

stevevw said:
According to Tour scientists are creating a scam when they claim they have solved how life came about.

Show me where a scientist says he's solved how life came about. I think Tour is stuffed with prunes. But maybe I'm wrong. Show me.

stevevw said:
I mean here we have the worlds best minds trying to solve how life from non life came about and still they have no idea.

They have a lot of clues about that. The first clue is that the most essential organelle for cellular life is the most simple and spontaneously assembles from molecules known to have existed on the very early Earth. There's more, if you'd like to hear it.

stevevw said:
That seems to suggest that an aweful lot of intelligence went into life happening.

He says He created the Earth to produce life, so I suppose He would know better than Tour.

Hvizsgyak · May 11, 2026

The Barbarian said:
Tell us which of his arguments do you find compelling? Let's talk about it.

Show me where a scientist says he's solved how life came about. I think Tour is stuffed with prunes. But maybe I'm wrong. Show me.

They have a lot of clues about that. The first clue is that the most essential organelle for cellular life is the most simple and spontaneously assembles from molecules known to have existed on the very early Earth. There's more, if you'd like to hear it.

He says He created the Earth to produce life, so I suppose He would know better than Tour.

I don't know, Barbarian. James Tour and Stephen Meyers are a great "one-two punch" against the over-exaggerated claims of the Theory of Evolution people. Those two people make very good sense to me and I'm hoping others will start to see the truths they talk about.

By the way, I hope you have been doing well. I haven't been on the platform for a while. It's nice to see things are the same as they usually have been

.

The Barbarian · May 11, 2026

Tell us which of his arguments do you find compelling? Let's talk about it.

Hvizsgyak said:
I don't know, Barbarian.

So what makes you think he's right?

Hvizsgyak said:
James Tour and Stephen Meyers are a great "one-two punch" against the over-exaggerated claims of the Theory of Evolution people.

I'm just noting that Tour seems to have confused the origin of life with Evolutionary Theory, and wrongly claims that scientists claim to have solved how life came about. These are rather egregious errors. The convincer for me is that God's word supports abiogenesis.

Can you show us any argument by Meyers that you find compelling?

Hvizsgyak said:
Those two people make very good sense to me

What arguments, specifically? Let's talk about them.

Hvizsgyak said:
By the way, I hope you have been doing well.

Still mowing the yard, building stuff, and doing the dog park every morning. I'm getting really old, but so far, nothing serious has gone wrong. You?

stevevw · May 12, 2026

The Barbarian said:
Tell us which of his arguments do you find compelling? Let's talk about it.

Like I said I am not a biologist or geneticist. But I get the gist of at least one part of the proble, which is the fomose issue. This is what Tour and the paper he was referring argued. That there is no way shown to make the sugers necessarily for the molecules that build a living cell. This is only one as there are others like chirality or handedness.

Tour mentions the difficulty for producing the necessary steps for sugers at the beginning of the video.

Glucose synthesis remains unresolved
Name me one person that has made a stereocontrolled reaction to make glucose and that could ever separate it from the mess that you get. You have to seperate the glucose to take it on to the next step. Molecules that are in a mixture can't do chemistry. What did Lee Cronin tell you what happens in the foremose? Billions of compounds in seconds to hours. You get billions. The mineral surface didn't take care of this problem.

Then he cites the paper by Raman Orion, Krishna Mirththy and Charles Leotaa who wrote a recent paper on the foremose reaction for making sugars.

Why are sugars important? Sugars have another name called carbohydrates and another name called saccharides. That is one of the four major classes of compounds that build us. You have to have the lipids and the amino acids which make the proteins. You have to have the nucleotides which make DNA and RNA. And you have to have the sugars or the carbohydrates to make the polysaccharides. Those are the four classes of compounds. The small molecules that make them up and then the polymer forms.

So sugars are one of the major classes. But to make DNA and RNA, you also have to have the sugar because DNA and RNA are made of nucleotides and a nucleotide has a three component part. It has a nucleobase. It has a phosphate and it has a sugar.

So if you can't solve the sugar problem, you can't make any of the carbohydrates. And if you can't make any of the carbohydrates, you can't make DNA and RNA. That's how critical sugars are.

And people thought there was a prebiotic route to the making of sugars using the foremose reaction. And that reaction now goes away due to the paper cited.

PS I noticed the skeptic scientist in the video mentions that this all could have happened because "chemicals do chemistry" in nature. But that implies that the steps which are hard for intelligent scientists to do in a lab are intelligently designed to do chemistry with its inbuilt ability to make such sugars and DNA/RNA ect.

The Barbarian said:
Show me where a scientist says he's solved how life came about. I think Tour is stuffed with prunes. But maybe I'm wrong. Show me.

The video cited two or three headlines that imply they have solved the big question. You and I both know that there is a degree of metaphysics in the search for the origins of life. Scientists, well at least most especially in certain fields like biology are atheist.

When they speak of such things they cannot help but imply metaphysics. Or at least for the natural next step of naturalism. Its a bit similar to the origins of the universe and existence. How they found the god particle or the origins of "something from nothing" ect.

The Barbarian said:
They have a lot of clues about that. The first clue is that the most essential organelle for cellular life is the most simple and spontaneously assembles from molecules known to have existed on the very early Earth. There's more, if you'd like to hear it.

I am sure there is. But if the creation of life is Gods handiwork then I don't think we will ever understand. For example how did those molecules form. Plus I don't think the simplest life is simple. What we said was simple keeps getting more complicated. Tour is speaking about those molecules and steps.

The Barbarian said:
He says He created the Earth to produce life, so I suppose He would know better than Tour.

I think that is Tours point. That its so complex and amazing that it is showing Gods involvement. Its what we would expect from a God who installed whatever it takes to make life in the very fabric (if you could even call it a fabric as it implies some substance). But the code and laws of life are of a mind and needed to be there to create these building blocks in the first place.

Even the smallest and most simple steps are that way because it has Gods creation quality where it can lead to something that is complex. But not just complex. That it could become a living soul that chemicals and all those steps in themselves do not possess.

It may be as the ancient beliefs have said and now some science is finding. That molecules, energy, and these building blocks contain some aspect of a life force or consciousness. That they interact with light which is the source of all life. Which is designed to move towards life.

But certainly not as naturalism claims which actually gives that creative ability to nature itself as though it was a god like creator. Worshipping what God created rather than the creator.

The Barbarian · May 12, 2026

stevevw said:
Like I said I am not a biologist or geneticist. But I get the gist of at least one part of the proble, which is the fomose issue. This is what Tour and the paper he was referring argued. That there is no way shown to make the sugers necessarily for the molecules that build a living cell. This is only one as there are others like chirality or handedness.

Chemical Science 2025

Abiotic formation of hexoses and disaccharides in aqueous microdroplets

This study also provides evidence that hexose disaccharides, previously observed in plausible primordial environments, and pentose disaccharides, as demonstrated here for the first time, can form in microdroplets under abiotic conditions. Pentoses and hexoses form disaccharides in microdroplets during their brief flight time from the emitter to the inlet of the mass spectrometer without the need for any additional acid or base. The fragmentation of the glucose disaccharide products showed good agreement with that of the same mixture of disaccharides associated with the bulk acid-catalyzed glycosylation of glucose. In addition, pentoses dimerize although the exact mixture of isomers produced remains elusive due to the limited availability of pentose disaccharide standards.

These findings support the hypothesis that the air–water interface of aqueous microdroplets, characterized by an acidic and/or basic environment, can serve as a locale for chemistry relevant to the origins of life. Such a mechanism is plausible for abiotic synthesis under conditions like sea spray aerosols and is potentially analogous to the generation of aerosols on ocean worlds like Enceladus where disaccharides might be found.

Abiotic formation of hexoses and disaccharides in aqueous microdroplets

Understanding the chemical reactions that led to the origin of life is a fundamental challenge of chemistry. The formose reaction, an abiotic pathway to monosaccharides, provides a mechanism of sugar formation from simple aldehydes and ketones. However, the reaction requires the addition of...

pubs.rsc.org

Amino Acid Asymmetry in the Murchison Meteorite

The Murchison meteorite is a carbonaceous chondrite. These are generally believed to be remnants of spent comets. There is conclusive evidence that water once flowed through them (4). This one struck Earth on September 28, 1969, scattering fragments across pastures near Murchison, Victoria, Australia.

Other scientists, before 1997, have demonstrated that there are more left-handed than right-handed versions of some amino acids found in the Murchison meteorite

Amino Acid Asymmetry in the Murchison Meteorite! by Brig Klyce

www.panspermia.org

23 October 1997
Nature
Extraterrestrial Handedness

Extraterrestrial handedness - Nature

M. H. Engel and S. A. Macko1 tentatively ascribe the enantiomeric excess of L-amino acids in extraterrestrial sources to the circular polarization of synchrotron radiation, from a neutron star, incident on the interstellar molecular cloud from which the Solar System formed (see also the...

www.nature.com

Anything else? Keep in mind, this isn't even about evolution. Tour got that wrong, too.

stevevw said:
The video cited two or three headlines that imply they have solved the big question. You and I both know that there is a degree of metaphysics in the search for the origins of life. Scientists, well at least most especially in certain fields like biology are atheist.

And yet, biologists who are theists work along side agnostics and atheists with no problems. Because science doesn't require metaphysical assumptions.

stevevw said:
Plus I don't think the simplest life is simple.

Science Feb 2026

Editor’s summary

For life to emerge, a primordial system must have been able to propagate genetic information without the complex machinery of modern biology. RNA has long been proposed to fulfill this role through self-replication; however, previously described catalytic RNAs (ribozymes) are too large to either copy themselves or arise readily from random RNA sequence pools. Gianni et al. report the discovery of a small ribozyme capable of assembling copies of both itself and its encoding template from short RNA building blocks. The demonstration of such complex activity in a compact RNA sequence supports the plausibility of spontaneously arising self-replicating RNAs at the origin of life.

stevevw said:
What we said was simple keeps getting more complicated

Not lately. God has said that He created the Earth to produce life as He intended. That's the miracle. As Michael Denton points out, the science indicates a universe that formed so as to make living things as naturally as everything else. He sees a sort of distant designer. I see a God Who created the universe so that it would bring forth life.

stevevw said:
Even the smallest and most simple steps are that way because it has Gods creation quality where it can lead to something that is complex. But not just complex. That it could become a living soul that chemicals and all those steps in themselves do not possess.

Notice that man came from nature as everything else did. But that living soul had to be given immediately from God.

stevevw said:
It may be as the ancient beliefs have said and now some science is finding. That molecules, energy, and these building blocks contain some aspect of a life force or consciousness.

Some people say that all matter has consciousness. I would say that all matter exists and acts only because of God's involvement.
Matthew 10:29 Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and not one of them shall fall on the ground without your Father.

Hvizsgyak · May 17, 2026

The Barbarian said:
Tell us which of his arguments do you find compelling? Let's talk about it.

So what makes you think he's right?

I'm just noting that Tour seems to have confused the origin of life with Evolutionary Theory, and wrongly claims that scientists claim to have solved how life came about. These are rather egregious errors. The convincer for me is that God's word supports abiogenesis.

Can you show us any argument by Meyers that you find compelling?

What arguments, specifically? Let's talk about them.

Still mowing the yard, building stuff, and doing the dog park every morning. I'm getting really old, but so far, nothing serious has gone wrong. You?

We've had this discussion before on another thread and as you could probably tell at the time, I really didn't have any answers to any alternative solutions for the Theory of Evolution or the Origin of Life. But from what I have read about those two topics, they just don't sound correct. Yes, it's only a gut feeling.

I remember from that last thread's discussion, that you and a few others did a really nice job about laying out the basis of The Theory of Evolution and the Origin of Life, and it was explained very well by all of you, but I just didn't see what you all saw about those two topics. I appreciate your efforts to explain to me how those two topics work but parts of them just didn't sit well with me.

It is nice to hear that you are doing well. You are still sounding very sharp in your discussions, and you manage to keep your cool even in the toughest discussions. As for me, I'm a couple of years into my 60s. When I was working, I really didn't think I'd make it through my 60s but I retired and I'm slowly regaining my health and have a better outlook. Of course, as they say, "tomorrow is never guaranteed". I'll keep moving until I can't anymore. So far, walking the dog a lot keeps me going

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Enjoy your day :oldthumbsup:

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The Barbarian · May 17, 2026

Hvizsgyak said:
We've had this discussion before on another thread and as you could probably tell at the time, I really didn't have any answers to any alternative solutions for the Theory of Evolution or the Origin of Life. But from what I have read about those two topics, they just don't sound correct. Yes, it's only a gut feeling.

In science, gut feelings matter only if they lead to testable hypotheses. I should commend you for knowing that Evolutionary theory and the origin of life are two different things.

Hvizsgyak said:
It is nice to hear that you are doing well. You are still sounding very sharp in your discussions, and you manage to keep your cool even in the toughest discussions. As for me, I'm a couple of years into my 60s. When I was working, I really didn't think I'd make it through my 60s but I retired and I'm slowly regaining my health and have a better outlook. Of course, as they say, "tomorrow is never guaranteed". I'll keep moving until I can't anymore. So far, walking the dog a lot keeps me going

Well, I'm a lot older than that, and stuff starts going wrong here and there. But each morning I can get up and take the pup to the dog park is a good day.

John Bauer · May 18, 2026

Hvizsgyak said:
From what I have read about [the theory of evolution and the origin of life,] they just don't sound correct. Yes, it's only a gut feeling.

What would it need in order to sound correct? What is your gut saying is missing?

The bottom line - what do we really know?

Crabby Old White Guy

Crabby Old White Guy

Contemporary corn, unlike its wild grassy ancestor teosinte, can't survive without people because it can't disperse its own seeds. ​

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Abiotic formation of hexoses and disaccharides in aqueous microdroplets​

Amino Acid Asymmetry in the Murchison Meteorite​

Editor’s summary​

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