I'd like to return to Sums1gruj's challenge, if I may.
RNA World also has evolution working on RNAs, since they are nucleic acids and can serve as hereditary material. Some modern organisms use RNA instead of DNA has their hereditary material.
There are other theories on abiogenesis. The one that I think has the best data, and the one where you can create life today from non-living chemicals is protein first. Basically, amino acids are heated, either dry or at a hydrothermal vent. The amino acids react to form proteins When water is added to dry heated amino acids or the hydrothermal vent solution is cooled, the proteins spontaneously form living cells. The cells metabolize, grow, respond to stimuli, and reproduce. They can evolve. Also, part of their metabolism is the synthesis of RNA and/or DNA. You see, the proteins act as enzymes. We can discuss this method in more detail if you want. It also is not chance. Chemistry is not chance. Nor are the odds astronomically against. Instead, the odds = 1 Virtual certainty.
Instead, what happens is that hypotheses/theories are proposed. Both hypotheses and theories are statements about the physical universe. Hypotheses tend to be more specific statements; theories tend to be more general statements. See my thread on this: Hypotheses, theories, and laws - Christian Forums
The fossil in strata is used to evaluate a theory. Put another way, theories are tested against observations.
In religion, new observations are fit into an existing religion as much as possible. Or the observations are rejected. Look at Judaism and Christianity. The gospel authors and Paul worked very hard, sometimes making things up, to fit Jesus and his new revelation into Judaism. On the flip side of the coin, Judaism simply rejected the Resurrection, Jesus' miracles, and Jesus' teachings, eventually kicking the Jewish Christians out of synagogue.
"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved." C. Darwin, On the Origin of Species, pg 450.
See? Evolution happens after the first life exists. Evolution does not care how that life arose. If it is God poofing the first cell into existence, that is fine.
"As phylogenetic analyses became commonplace in the 1980s, several groups emphasized what should have been obvious all along: Units of study in biology (from genes through organisms to higher taxa) do not represent statistically independent observations, but rather are interrelated through their historical connections." DM Hillis, Biology recapitulates phylogeny, Science (11 April) 276: 276-277, 1997. Primary articles are JX Becerra, Insects on plants: macroevolutionary chemical trends in host use. Science 276: 253-256, 1997; VA Pierce and DL Crawford, Phylogenetic analysis of glycolitic enzyme expression, Science 276: 256-259; and JP Huelsenbeck and B Rannala, Phylogenetic methods come of age: testing hypotheses in an evolutionary context. Science 276: 227-233, 1997.
There it is. Proved.
"Shall I tell you the truth? It is best. Your book is the first that ever made me doubt the doctrine of absolute creation, and I fear it will make hundreds do so. Your book tends to prove this - that if we accept the fact of absolute creation, God becomes God-the-Sometime-Deceiver. I do not mean merely in the case of fossils which pretend to be the bones of dead animals; but in ...your newly created Adam's navel, you make God tell a lie. It is not my reason, but my conscience which revolts here ... I cannot ...believe that God has written on the rocks one enormous and superfluous lie for all mankind. To this painful dilemma you have brought me, and will, I fear, bring hundreds. It will not make me throw away my Bible. I trust and hope. I know in whom I have believed, and can trust Him to bring my faith safe through this puzzle, as He has through others; but for the young I do fear. I would not for a thousand pounds put your book into my children's hands."
The statements above also make God tell a lie. What's more, an unnecessary lie. There is no need to make the earth look old when it is young. It is perfectly possible to create the earth young and it looks young. For instance, there is no need to make the decay products of uranium as tho the uranium has been decaying for a billion years when it has not. Instead, the rock simply doesn't have the decay products!
We as Christians require God to be truthful. God must be truthful in everything because we must take His word on such things as forgiveness of sins, mercy, and eternal life. If God tells lies, then we can't trust Him to tell us the truth about these things. Having God tell lies about the age of the earth may save a young earth, but it leaves us with a god that is identical to Satan and whom we cannot worship. Of course, there are all those scriptural verses telling us that God is trustworthy.
How's that for a rationale or proof?
The geologists who put together the "geological column" were all creationists. At least 2 of them -- Rev Buckland and Rev Sedgwick -- were ministers. Sedgwich was head of geology at Cambridge and Buckland was head of geology at Oxford. Their theory was creationism and, when they started, young earth creationism.
Today we can see the statement contradicted by some recent famous fossils. For instance, there is the example of fossils found being intermediate between fish and amphibians. After the first one was found, and trumpeted in the scientific literature and press, a different one was found in Poland. The second was more toward amphibians but it was dated in strata older than the first. If the age of the fossils was done on their "desired location", that wouldn't have happened.
As a second example is the famous (in creationist circles) of finding organic material in a T rex fossil. That challenged an established theory that organic remains don't survive fossilization for more than a million years at most. Instead, here was organic material in a 70 million year old T rex fossil. The discoverer is Christian. Was the discovery suppressed because of the "desired location"? NO! Instead, the articles were published in one of the premier scientific journals: Science. Instead, the dating was checked by other means and now the theory that organic remains cannot survive fossilization is toast.
That's not what evolution states. One of the theories of abiogenesis is RNA World. It states that RNAs arose by chemistry. That is neither "unknown" or "chance". The chemical reactions are well known. RNAs also act as enzymes. The simplest ribozyme is a 2 base RNA. Some RNAs self-replicate. That is, they act as enzymes to catalyze their own synthesis from smaller RNAs.
RNA World also has evolution working on RNAs, since they are nucleic acids and can serve as hereditary material. Some modern organisms use RNA instead of DNA has their hereditary material.
There are other theories on abiogenesis. The one that I think has the best data, and the one where you can create life today from non-living chemicals is protein first. Basically, amino acids are heated, either dry or at a hydrothermal vent. The amino acids react to form proteins When water is added to dry heated amino acids or the hydrothermal vent solution is cooled, the proteins spontaneously form living cells. The cells metabolize, grow, respond to stimuli, and reproduce. They can evolve. Also, part of their metabolism is the synthesis of RNA and/or DNA. You see, the proteins act as enzymes. We can discuss this method in more detail if you want. It also is not chance. Chemistry is not chance. Nor are the odds astronomically against. Instead, the odds = 1 Virtual certainty.
That is a misuse of paradigm, theory, and how science works. It's more a description of how religion handles evidence, not science. "Paradigm" is a term coined by Thomas Kuhn in his theory on how science works. According to Kuhn, science works in "paradigms", which are similar to "worldviews". Paradigms are held by emotion more than data. Anomalous data is incorporated into the existing paradigm until there is a "paradigm shift" that looks at existing data a whole new way. According to Hume, the shift from geocentrism to heliocentrism was a paradigm shift fueled more by emotion (the universe was LOT bigger under heliocentrism) than data. Kuhn wants to evaluate his theory against data (evidence) from the history of science. Unfortunately, a close study of the history of science shows that neither paradigms nor paradigm shifts exist as Kuhn described them. Instead, theories are evaluated against data and the decision about which theory is wrong and which correct is based on data. In later work, Kuhn abandoned the terms "paradigm" and "paradigm shift".
Instead, what happens is that hypotheses/theories are proposed. Both hypotheses and theories are statements about the physical universe. Hypotheses tend to be more specific statements; theories tend to be more general statements. See my thread on this: Hypotheses, theories, and laws - Christian Forums
The fossil in strata is used to evaluate a theory. Put another way, theories are tested against observations.
In religion, new observations are fit into an existing religion as much as possible. Or the observations are rejected. Look at Judaism and Christianity. The gospel authors and Paul worked very hard, sometimes making things up, to fit Jesus and his new revelation into Judaism. On the flip side of the coin, Judaism simply rejected the Resurrection, Jesus' miracles, and Jesus' teachings, eventually kicking the Jewish Christians out of synagogue.
Evolution solved the problem of the origin of species. Not the origin of life. Darwin was quite clear about it. Look, if people are going to critique evolution, the least they can do is read the book. Here is what Darwin had to say about the origin of life and evolution:
"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved." C. Darwin, On the Origin of Species, pg 450.
See? Evolution happens after the first life exists. Evolution does not care how that life arose. If it is God poofing the first cell into existence, that is fine.
That's a great generality without any specifics.
That is called "naive falsification" and it is not how science works. Karl Popper (in contrast to Kuhn), noted that science works by falsifying theories; showing them to be wrong. But, when you have a major theory, one anomaly does not falsify it. So what is claimed as "truth" simply isn't. Sorry.
I'm sorry, but symmetry is not a requirement of theories. Look at Relativity. Gravity is not symmetrical! It is a force that only attracts.
Nope. The reality of spacetime is well-established. All the new theories of quantum gravity acknowledge spacetime. The trick is to quantize spacetime and/or gravity. No one has successfully done that yet. It may not be possible, in which case we have 2 large but contradictory physics theories: General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics.
Yes, and it has been done. IF DNA sequences are just a matter of similar coding and there is no historical relationships, then the base sequences of DNA from different organisms will be independent observations. Well, thanks to automated DNA sequencers, scientists are rountinely getting the base sequences from lots of DNA from widely varied species. What do they find? Are those base sequences independent observations because one "kind" does not transform into another "kind"?
"As phylogenetic analyses became commonplace in the 1980s, several groups emphasized what should have been obvious all along: Units of study in biology (from genes through organisms to higher taxa) do not represent statistically independent observations, but rather are interrelated through their historical connections." DM Hillis, Biology recapitulates phylogeny, Science (11 April) 276: 276-277, 1997. Primary articles are JX Becerra, Insects on plants: macroevolutionary chemical trends in host use. Science 276: 253-256, 1997; VA Pierce and DL Crawford, Phylogenetic analysis of glycolitic enzyme expression, Science 276: 256-259; and JP Huelsenbeck and B Rannala, Phylogenetic methods come of age: testing hypotheses in an evolutionary context. Science 276: 227-233, 1997.
There it is. Proved.
This was done in 1857. The book Oomphalos had been written by Rev. Phillip Gosse. In it Gosse proposed exactly what is stated here: God made the world look old but it was really young. Gosse asked Rev. Charles Kingsley write a Forward for the book. Kingsley refused. This is part of the letter of refusal:
"Shall I tell you the truth? It is best. Your book is the first that ever made me doubt the doctrine of absolute creation, and I fear it will make hundreds do so. Your book tends to prove this - that if we accept the fact of absolute creation, God becomes God-the-Sometime-Deceiver. I do not mean merely in the case of fossils which pretend to be the bones of dead animals; but in ...your newly created Adam's navel, you make God tell a lie. It is not my reason, but my conscience which revolts here ... I cannot ...believe that God has written on the rocks one enormous and superfluous lie for all mankind. To this painful dilemma you have brought me, and will, I fear, bring hundreds. It will not make me throw away my Bible. I trust and hope. I know in whom I have believed, and can trust Him to bring my faith safe through this puzzle, as He has through others; but for the young I do fear. I would not for a thousand pounds put your book into my children's hands."
The statements above also make God tell a lie. What's more, an unnecessary lie. There is no need to make the earth look old when it is young. It is perfectly possible to create the earth young and it looks young. For instance, there is no need to make the decay products of uranium as tho the uranium has been decaying for a billion years when it has not. Instead, the rock simply doesn't have the decay products!
We as Christians require God to be truthful. God must be truthful in everything because we must take His word on such things as forgiveness of sins, mercy, and eternal life. If God tells lies, then we can't trust Him to tell us the truth about these things. Having God tell lies about the age of the earth may save a young earth, but it leaves us with a god that is identical to Satan and whom we cannot worship. Of course, there are all those scriptural verses telling us that God is trustworthy.
How's that for a rationale or proof?
Remember that the fossil sequence and the relative ages of the rocks were done by creationists. Initially, it was pure empiricism done by an engineer building railroads in England in the early 1800s. As the railroad cut thru hills, William Smith noticed that fossils were in certain sequences in the rocks, with some fossils always below others, and some fossils appearing only in particular types of sediments. He realized that, standing on one hill, he could predict the sequence of fossils in the next hill when the railroad cut was made. No "desired location", because Smith didn't have such. It was pure observation.
The geologists who put together the "geological column" were all creationists. At least 2 of them -- Rev Buckland and Rev Sedgwick -- were ministers. Sedgwich was head of geology at Cambridge and Buckland was head of geology at Oxford. Their theory was creationism and, when they started, young earth creationism.
Today we can see the statement contradicted by some recent famous fossils. For instance, there is the example of fossils found being intermediate between fish and amphibians. After the first one was found, and trumpeted in the scientific literature and press, a different one was found in Poland. The second was more toward amphibians but it was dated in strata older than the first. If the age of the fossils was done on their "desired location", that wouldn't have happened.
As a second example is the famous (in creationist circles) of finding organic material in a T rex fossil. That challenged an established theory that organic remains don't survive fossilization for more than a million years at most. Instead, here was organic material in a 70 million year old T rex fossil. The discoverer is Christian. Was the discovery suppressed because of the "desired location"? NO! Instead, the articles were published in one of the premier scientific journals: Science. Instead, the dating was checked by other means and now the theory that organic remains cannot survive fossilization is toast.
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