Answering any questions on Evolution

[verysincere]

I think common sense would tell you that straw + bread crumbs does not make mice.

I've always found it fascinating when various "creation science authorities" quote Pasteur or whoever from centuries ago. Even IF there was not a basic confusion between spontaneous generation and abiogenesis, one wonders why they assume that they found some "law" enacted by Pasteur which prohibits modern day scientists from hypothesizing on abiogenesis processes.

It just strikes me that it is pathetic enough when some conference speaker or author writes such nonsense. But when semi-intelligent readers don't pause to wonder, "How does that make any sense?" Why does some scientist centuries ago have some kind of veto power over science today?

It truly illustrates "confirmation basis" in amazing ways. And that is the fascination I have for this entire topic of WHY people who are otherwise quite intelligent can go awry on some topics. (Yes, we have all been guilty of this at one time or another. After all, I was a YEC long ago. I admit it. But I simply hadn't bothered to really investigate the topics, even though I was generally much more scientifically literate than the average person.)

Of course, some "creation science" promoters truly are as generally clueless as they seem. But we err when we assume that everyone in the CS camp is a mental midget. It's simply not true. Indeed, I've know personally known some incredible language prodigies who mastered not only the Biblical languages, but every relevant cognate language and a great many modern languages. And another famous Australian creationist is a world-class chess player. IQ is clearly no vaccination against confirmation bias.

I wonder if there has ever been a good thread here on that topic. (Duhhhh. Yes, I know that that was a silly idea.)

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[verysincere]

There is an injection of humility that people get when they put heir faith in Jesus and trust Him with their life.

It sounds like you've had very little experience on seminary faculties, the administrative structures of ministry organizations, nor even the politics of the average mega-church pastoral staff! And that is can be a very GOOD thing.

Believe me, there is much advantage to preserving one's naivete and idealism. I would so WISH that your summary statement was so commonly true! (As much as I am a proponent of facing reality head on, there are advantages to remaining oblivious. I'm not being facetious. There truly is! Just as a child-like faith is important, so is a child-like idealism in some situations. Of course, there are other contexts where such a naive view is dangerous and leaves one ill-equipped.)

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[Zaius137]

Sorry this took so long but here it is. You are in brown.

How has science dispelled the possibility of spontaneous generation? There are many papers which say that we don't understand how it happened, but that is a different thing entirely from saying that it couldn't happen.

I would say my strongest argument for this is the probability that a form of life like described by a Von Neumann machine would spontaneously come together is below 10^-1000. Dembski’s universal probability bound is 10^-150 (the event will not happen).

But I note some other obvious problems:

· Vital ‘building blocks’ including cytosine and ribose are too unstable to have existed on a hypothetical prebiotic earth for long.

· Building blocks would be too dilute to actually build anything, and would be subject to cross-reactions.

· Even if the building blocks could have formed polymers, the polymers would readily hydrolyse.

· There is no tendency to form the high-information polymers required for life as opposed to random ones.

· Dr. Sutherland's reactions producing cytidine do not supply any explanation about how the Chirality problem is solved.

· Self replicating molecules can not replicate for long periods of time without running into second law problems…fuel source. (http://www.lifesorigin.com/prebiotic-synthesis-RNA-DNA-Proteins-9.pdf)

· RNA building blocks do not form RNA in the presence of water.

From:
Origin of Life: Instability of Building Blocks

The Bible provides an explanation. But this explanation (e.g. all animals and plants being created over a short time span in their modern forms) doesn't tie in with evidence, e.g. fossil evidence, biochemical evidence. Etc. Hence when evaluating which theory is our current best explanation of how life got to where it is today, the Bible's account doesn't explain things as well as evolution. Even if evolution doesn't explain absolutely everything perfectly.

I disagree there is not credible evidence for evolution in fossils or even a molecular mechanism in biochemistry. When real numbers are applied to chimp human divergence, there are not enough real mutations to demonstrate a 5 million year time line. As time goes on and real investigation of the genome advances, the possibility of common descent weakens. The problem is not that the explanations are not perfect the problem is the explanations don’t work.


Another major flaw in the Bible's account is that it doesn't explain where God came from, and you need God before you get creation. So, the totality of creation by God is largely unexplained.

Except God is displayed in his Creation Romans 1:20.

I would say that there is plenty of evidence for evolution. Similarity of morphology. Similarity of DNA and other biochemical properties.

When you apply the two concepts together; Morphology and genetic similarity a surprising discordance is observed. This fact is a real deficit to a comprehensive explanation of common descent.

The chemistry fits. Current chemistry would support abiogenesis starting with self-replicating proteins, or the RNA world. You say that these don't fit, but can you support this statement. Prions are an example of a self-replicating protein. We're still learning how RNA can form biologically active forms. So we don't need a new chemistry, we need an understanding of how the first proto-life formed, and known chemistry is entirely feasible. This doesn't mean of course that self-replicating proteins or the RNA world are what actually happened, just that they are among the possible explanations. We don't have a known sequence that leads from non-life to life, but we have nothing that suggests that this sequence is impossible.

Chemistry is understood by science today but there is no innate intent in chemistry to form life as demonstrated by Dean Kenyon an authority in the field. Self-replicating RNA and self-replicating proteins still need the basic Teleonomy to function even after you present some solutions to Chirality and natural occurrences of deoxynucleotides and ribonucleotides.

The main mystery at present seems to be the lack of time, that cellular life appeared too quickly on earth after life on earth became possible. (At least as far as we understand "possible"). This doesn't disprove abiogenesis. It must means that either the path to cellular life forms was far shorter/quicker than we currently imagine. OR that life came from space, with Mars and distribution of life from Mars through spores in meteorites being one possibility. If that happened, then a wet fertile Mars provides billions more years for the development of early life.

Time has always been the friend to the evolutionist but is nowa problem in common descent. Life starting on a warm earth in stagnate pools of organic sludge is just a fantasy as I explained by the “Faint Sun Paradox”.

Personally I don't like the theory of life from Mars. But currently I have to grudgingly accept that the evidence is weighing in its favour (or other life from space theories).

Mars as far as we have discovered is as sterile as a Petri dish. Cytosine is a component missing from meteorite evidence amongst other essential chemistry of life.

Again, how has anyone shown that spontaneous abiogenesis is impossible?

By observation, Information theory and experimental evidence.

At one point we didn't understand how bumblebees flew, with "current scientific understanding" suggesting that it was impossible. This just mean that we'd identified something that we didn't understand, and subsequent research discovered the mechanisms.


The possibly that a Bumblebee could not fly did not reach the minuteness of the possibility of abiogenesis. An astoundingly small number of 10^-1000.

At one point we didn't understand about microbes or how infectious diseases spread, and came up with all sorts of odd theories. Eventually we learned, and now have a good understanding.


At one point Darwin considered the cell as a bag of protoplasm and he fathered evolution.

IMHO we're at that point with abiogenesis. We know that something happened, but are still trying to work out how it happened.

Your post is entirely reasonable and polite. But can I point out that you're not discussing evolution at all in your post. You're discussing abiogenesis. Evolution is a process by which some life forms can evolve (including splitting) into other life forms. It says nothing about where life came from in the first place. Abiogenesis is an entirely different process/field. Evidence for or against particular theories of how life got started says nothing about evolution at all, because evolution makes no assumptions about how life got started in the first place.

I am trying to group evolution and abiogenesis because I fell that one is an empty explanation without the other as Huxley once thought.

 

[verysincere]

The possibly that a Bumblebee could not fly did not reach the minuteness of the possibility of abiogenesis. An astoundingly small number of 10^-1000.

The number is pure rubbish. The possibility that a Bumblee could fly was 100%.

But you are right about one thing: throwing about numbers which have no realistic likelihood of having a rational correlation or meaning in their origins debates..........is.....well....far too common with a great many in the "creation science" community.


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[verysincere]

Perhaps because so many Creationists are readers of the English language?

Dictionary » A » Abiogenesis
Abiogenesis
Abiogenesis

(Science: study) The study of how life originally arose on the planet, encompasses the ancient belief in the spontaneous generation of life from non living matter.


abio·gen·e·sis noun \ˌā-ˌbī-ō-ˈjen-ə-səs\
Definition of ABIOGENESIS
: the supposed spontaneous origination of living organisms directly from lifeless matter—called also spontaneous generation; compare biogenesis

Equivocation fallacy.

(Big surprise there.)

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[Zaius137]

The number is pure rubbish. The possibility that a Bumblee could fly was 100%.

But you are right about one thing: throwing about numbers which have no realistic likelihood of having a rational correlation or meaning in their origins debates..........is.....well....far too common with a great many in the "creation science" community.


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The bumblebee was not my example.

I believe that those astoundingly small numbers were from evolutionists in the first place. One from a conference on evolution in the 60’s (10^-450) another from Hoyle (10^-2000) defiantly not a creationist but an expert in his field.

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[Zaius137]

Perhaps because so many Creationists are readers of the English language?

Dictionary » A » Abiogenesis
Abiogenesis
Abiogenesis

(Science: study) The study of how life originally arose on the planet, encompasses the ancient belief in the spontaneous generation of life from non living matter.


abio·gen·e·sis noun \ˌā-ˌbī-ō-ˈjen-ə-səs\
Definition of ABIOGENESIS
: the supposed spontaneous origination of living organisms directly from lifeless matter—called also spontaneous generation; compare biogenesis

Thanks SkyWriting it never occurred to me to look up that formal definition.

 

[verysincere]

The bumblebee was not my example.

And yet you applied it in your post.

I would say my strongest argument for this is the probability that a form of life like described by a Von Neumann machine would spontaneously come together is below 10^-1000.

Please explain what "that a form of life like described by a Von Neumann machine" means. (Some of us DO know what Von Neumann created.) Do you know what a Von Neumann machine is?

(HINT: The entire sentence makes no sense. Or perhaps I should say "zero sense." Stating that a Von Neumann machine "describes" ANYTHING is a content-free observation.)

Dembski’s universal probability bound is 10^-150 (the event will not happen).

"Dembski's universal probability bound" is basically disregarded by everyone but Dembski (and a few non-scientists who think Dembski understands statistics.) OK, I should restate that: The only people who DO regard it are those who use it as an example of bad math.

Indeed, have you ever noticed how many publications and websites cite Dembski for ridiculous pseudo-statistics? Here's an example:

Dishonest Dembski:the Universal Probability Bound : Good Math, Bad Math

Notice the titles:

Good Math. Bad Math.
Finding the fun in good math.
Squashing bad math and the fools who promote it.

It is bad enough when someone can't get many of their articles published in reputable journals. But when everybody starts using your articles as really bad examples of mathematical dishonesty, that's hitting bottom. (Er, actually, when Dembski created the anti-Dover Trial website that produced the flatulence sounds when you clicked on Judge Jone's picture, that's when he hit bottom.)

Anyway, you can read the website for yourself but here is my first "favorite" of the assessments of Dembski's work:

One of the dishonest things that Dembski frequently does that really bugs me is take bogus arguments, and dress them up using mathematical terminology and verbosity to make them look more credible. An example of this is Dembski's universal probability bound. Dembski's definition of the UPB from the ICSID online encyclopedia is......

My suggestion: Starting citing reputable scientists who know what they are talking about. (And Borel would have been outraged at Dembski's claim and how even his own work has been abused by the ID camp. Borel was simply explaining mathematics concepts to a general audience, NOT mathematicians. He experimented with various analogies and had NO IDEA that really bad scholars would someday take Borel's work entirely out of context. The same thing happened to Gould after his death. YECs started quote-mining his works and coming up with all kinds of meaningless nonsense.)

===> But here is one of the biggest problems in the ID and "creation science" movements. Instead of citing works that have the consensus of the scientific community, they pick something obscure in some forgotten publication and make some convenient argument out of it. They don't care about context. They don't care if it means what they claim. For example, there is no Borel's Law! It is simply an illustration he used with non-mathematicians.

The phenomenon is just plain sad.

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[USincognito]

I contend that abiogenesis and Spontaneous generation are alike because the two propositions both rely on the existence of magic.

Contend until your heart is content. Your redifinition of terms won't change the fact that the two concepts are utterly unrelated.

If you wish to defend abiogenesis, the spotlight is yours, maybe you have some evidence I have overlooked.

I have a feeling that there's lots of evidence with which you have been presented but that you choose to ignore. In this instance, I'll be satisfied correcting your attempts to conflate a fully formed maggot being spontaneously generated from a hunk of rotting meat with abiogenesis.

 

[verysincere]

Feel free to stick with your simple, one sentence dictionary definitions though. I'll stick with the actual facts.

He also leans on Dembski for his statistics. So "one sentence dictionary definitions" would at least show some evidence of a "kind" of peer review. Unlike Dembski, most dictionaries aren't guilty of simply pulling numbers out of thin air. (Or should I say, "thin error"?)

Seriously, it is just plain difficult to get all that serious about these topics when Dembski and things like "Borel's Law" are treated like scientific facts. And the "Von Neumann machine" statement spoke volumes (by saying nothing that had any meaning.)

I affirm Biblical creation (though not the TRADITIONS which badly distort what the Bible actually says about origins) and I affirm the theory of evolution --- because there is no conflict between the two. But that topic in itself gives us a lot that we could be discussing. But instead, the "Creation & Evolution" forum tends towards a lot of "creation science" nonsense from pseudo-scientists who are shunned by the vast majority of the world's scientific community. (And the claim of "discrimination" is true ONLY in the sense that pseudo-science and ignorance of the scientific method tends to destroy one's credibility and leads to becoming a laughingstock. See Dembski above. The world tends to discriminate against nonsense.)

Unfortunately, too many threads here degenerate into the uninformed quoting from the pseudo-scientists who are uninformed. So no matter how many times real evidence is presented, it is ignored or distorted.

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[verysincere]

I would say my strongest argument for this is the probability that a form of life like described by a Von Neumann machine would spontaneously come together is below 10^-1000.

I'm still awaiting an explanation of that sentence from anyone willing to derive meaning from it. Either entire phrases are missing or it is virtually content-free.

Yet, it is a "strongest argument".

/

 

[USincognito]

One from a conference on evolution in the 60’s (10^-450)

What conference was that?

another from Hoyle (10^-2000) defiantly not a creationist but an expert in his field.

Right, that field being astronomy, not biochemistry.

Hoyle's fallacy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Zaius137]

What conference was that?



Right, that field being astronomy, not biochemistry.

Hoyle's fallacy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The figure of approximately 1 in 10 to the 1000th was presented at a symposium in April 25 and 26 1962 at the Wiser Institute of Anatomy and Biology in Philadelphia.

I have some articles I would like you to comment about:


http://www.ankerberg.com/Articles/_PDFArchives/science/SC2W0104C.pdf

http://www.iscid.org/papers/Mullan_PrimitiveCell_112302.pdf





“At one time living cells were considered no more than empty table tennis balls. As biochemists have learned more about the complexity of life, it has become increasingly apparent that thousands of specific and complex chemicals are required for any form of life to survive. Evolutionist Harold Morowitz estimated the probability for chance formation of even the simplest form of living organism at 1/10340,000,000.”

Harold Morowitz | Creation Facts

 

[pgp_protector]

Odds of x are worthless without understanding.
Great Moments in Pedantry: The odds of your existence - Boing Boing

 

[USincognito]

The figure of approximately 1 in 10 to the 1000th was presented at a symposium in April 25 and 26 1962 at the Wiser Institute of Anatomy and Biology in Philadelphia.

Why do you have all these details about the dates and location of the symposium, but not the name of it? Is there a transcription of the proceedings somewhere or is this just Creationist lore and legend passed on with vague citations?

Again, not that it matters, Hoyle was an astronomer and had some crank ideas. He was probably conflating a "spontaneously formed" say, bacteria with abiogenesis.

I have some articles I would like you to comment about:

Ah, the well know microbiologist John Ankerberg. I always turn to a prophecy kook with a horrible grasp of science in order to learn about biology. And ISCID is a C/ID organization. I'd expect the same quality of work from them that I would Disco or Jonathan Sarfati.

Harold Morowitz estimated the probability for chance formation of even the simplest form of living organism at 1/10340,000,000.”

And, again, Morowitz's calculation was a "spontaneously formed" say, bacteria, which isn't what abiogenesis hypothesises happening.

Feel free to contine conflating "spontaneous generation" with abiogenesis though... it's making one of us look good.

 

[SkyWriting]

I affirm Biblical creation (though not the TRADITIONS which badly distort what the Bible actually says about origins) and I affirm the theory of evolution --- because there is no conflict between the two.

I don't know what "traditions" you refer to. I believe it as it reads. It clearly specifies a 6 day creation. That's not what my church teaches.

The TOE doesn't not allow for any supernatural intervention. That is conflict.
The TOE requires that the strong shall live and weak shall die. That is in conflict.
The TOE says that all life formed on it's own power, based on it's natural properties. That's in conflict.
The TOE teaches that everything is good, and that death is natural. That's in conflict.
The TOE teaches that error and corruption are healthy and that death of the misfits is the path the righteous must trample on to achieve greatness. That is in conflict with the Biblical message.

When you say there is no conflict, you speak not in Truth. Much worse actually.

 

[SkyWriting]

Odds of x are worthless without understanding.
Great Moments in Pedantry: The odds of your existence - Boing Boing

While that link correctly shows that God was responsible for life,
I have doubts regarding that source based on the slant of their other offerings:

Great Moments in Pedantry: Analyzing blackboards from school-themed porn
Great Moments in Pedantry: Parsing the language of porn

 

[Zaius137]

Why do you have all these details about the dates and location of the symposium, but not the name of it? Is there a transcription of the proceedings somewhere or is this just Creationist lore and legend passed on with vague citations?

Again, not that it matters, Hoyle was an astronomer and had some crank ideas. He was probably conflating a "spontaneously formed" say, bacteria with abiogenesis.



Ah, the well know microbiologist John Ankerberg. I always turn to a prophecy kook with a horrible grasp of science in order to learn about biology. And ISCID is a C/ID organization. I'd expect the same quality of work from them that I would Disco or Jonathan Sarfati.



And, again, Morowitz's calculation was a "spontaneously formed" say, bacteria, which isn't what abiogenesis hypothesises happening.

Feel free to contine conflating "spontaneous generation" with abiogenesis though... it's making one of us look good.

I notice your objection is not from a scientific viewpoint but as always Ad-hominem.
What is wrong with Harold J. Morowitz?

Harold J. Morowitz (1927-) is an American biophysicist noted for a number of publications, beginning with his 1963 Life and the Physical Sciences, on the topic of the use and application of thermodynamics in the study of biology, with focus on the origin of life topic. Morowitz’ believes that life arose on earth by processes that may be understood by considering the laws of chemistry and physics as applied to complex adaptive systems. On the issue of thermodynamics and biology, he comments: [1]
“The use of thermodynamics in biology has a long history rich in confusion and rampant with attempts to use equilibrium constructs under nonequilibrium conditions.”

 

[good brother]

Again, not that it matters, Hoyle was an astronomer and had some crank ideas....

Ah, the well know microbiologist John Ankerberg. I always turn to a prophecy kook with a horrible grasp of science in order to learn about biology....

And, again, Morowitz's calculation...

Do you trust what Darwin had to say on evolution? You do know he wasn't any kind of scientist according to your all's standards these days- he was simply a seminary student! That's all he was, but somehow, every evolutionist believes he was absolutely infallible in his ideas, thoughts, and conclusions! Yet if a seminary student came forward today with a theory that went against good ol' Chuckie Darwin, no one would believe him/her because they "aren't real scientists". It's ironic you can't even see the irony in it all.

In Christ, GB

 

[good brother]

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