Sorry for coming so late to the debate itself, but just a few comments about Ramsay's response.
From the very beginning he seems to be confusing a written debate with a call into Sean Hannity's show.
(quoting Aron) "
it doesn't matter how the first life appeared on the Earth. It could have been seeded by aliens, created by a god, [sic] arisen by chemical processes, or it could have come about by some other means as yet unidentified."
Aliens? Really! Where is "all the evidence" for this nonsense? Is this the beginning of "21st Century Just So Stories" by the Aron-Ra?
Wow! Aron offers the four currently plausible, however unlikely, possibilities for the advent of life, and yet he choses he focuses on the most socialiably mockable one.
Ugh it gets worse just in his next comment.
He should clarify whether or not he believes in abiogenesis, (or spontaneous generation of life), and since Francisco Redi, Louis Pasteur, and others disproved it over a century ago, why?
Actually Mr. Ramsay, abiogenesis is completely different from spontaneous generation as that disproven (by Pasteur) concept suggested things like Flies emerging from raw meat, Mice emerging from corn and Geese emerging from Barnacles whereas abiogenesis suggests that self-replicating "pre-life" would develop into self-replicating "life."
His rambling diatribe about abogenesis/evolution aside, let's look at the next landmine he gladly jumps on.
The second major portion of what is generically called 'evolution' in textbooks was more specifically referred to as descent with modification by Darwin. This idea predates Darwin. The ancient Egyptians, for example, believed 2500 years before Darwin that a cow gave birth to the first human and hence worshipped cows. A well-known children's fairy tale speaks of a kiss turning a frog into a prince. Today evolutionists speak of time turning a frog into a prince. The more we learn about how biologic systems really work, we understand that a molecule-to-man evolution is nothing but a fairy tale 'dressed up in a lab coat.'
Actually, if he really wanted to be serious about the ancient origins of evolution as expressed by both Darwin and the Modern Synthesis, he should have cited Anaximander who first suggested life originated in the seas. As far as his suggestions that Egyptians worshipped cows, and therefore thought cows birthed humans - will he address the cat cult of Bast? But before I digress to far, evolutionary theory does not suggest that cows gave birth to humans and therefore his analogy is fallacious.
The "frog turns to prince" false analogy was done on the web by Fred M. Williams years ago, and falisfied about 10 minutes after he posted it.
And "molecules to man" or it's rhyming Siamese cousin, "goo to you via the zoo" is just as laughable as the parady of it I coined, "Clod to Bod via God." Thankfully science is not determined by semi-clever phrases.
These are logical and factual errors in the first few paragraphs of Ramsay's response. I realize that the talk radio/"gotcha" point debators out there will think he's wonderful, but I have to say I find him pathetic.
