Does it seem to you that archeologists are some of the most narcissistic scientists around? They get an idea and anyone with a different theory (not even creationists) get hammered professionally.
Tough questions for ToE enthusiasts:
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Does it seem to you that archeologists are some of the most narcissistic scientists around? They get an idea and anyone with a different theory (not even creationists) get hammered professionally.
What is you basis for that claim? Is it the usual wishful thinking?
I linked to four recent papers about abiogenesis. Did you look at any of them? Or do the usual creationist thing of just ignoring evidence that does not fit your faith-position?
And lo, they have done.
You just want to pretend they have not.
So the issue is that you are convinced they will fail because you assume creationism is true. It is not about evidence, it is about you objecting to people investigating science that threads your faith-position.
And yet they do. But you would have to read them to determine that.
Authentic Nouveau
Well-known member
That displays their insecurities
I reviewed the links you posted. Did you seriously get what they were saying and NOT saying? Nothing that was said was anything near convincing that they figured anything out for sure. They had a few little indicators of hopeful possibilities and a lot of speculation. The last one was especially speculative.
1. Do you understand how little they did say and the immense challenges this field of study holds? Even some of the articles you posted started off saying that.
2. Do you appreciate the complexity of the smallest single cell life form? Do you have any clue how far they are from getting all the right chemicals together in a prebiotic, natural environment, and then the formation of all the necessary proteins? It gets worse. Do you have any idea how these proteins are ordered to begin functioning? For example, you can put the precise proteins and chemicals together in a test tube or any sort of specialized environment and these proteins will not begin to order themselves and start functioning any more than a pile of plastic, silicon, and precious metals will assemble into a computer. I realize that the computer is dry and the living cell is wet, but just because the proteins are floating around in a fluid doesn't mean that they will assemble in the precise order and begin functioning together as a system. Get serious!
Darwinian processes by their own definition don't even start before you have inheritance from a parent.
rossum
Well-known member
That is science. We do not have gravity figured out "for sure". Newton had errors. Einstein has smaller errors, but there are still errors. Scientists are working on Quantum Gravity, which will reduce the uncertainty even further.
Science always has a margin of error.
You left out the word "contemporary". Early life was a lot more simple. For one thing, it did not have to avoid predators, which modern life does.
Proteins is one of the things that modern life has, but early life may not have had. If RNA world is correct, then proteins were not present. If Proteins first is correct, then obviously they were. Your case here relies on an uncertain assumption.
Your YEC sources are lying to you again. See Keefe and Szostak (2001) "Functional proteins from a random-sequence library", for examples of randomly assembled functional proteins. You will not get very far here if you rely on sources that lie to you.
Correct. Abiogenesis is different from evolution. Abiogenesis gets you the first reproducing just-about-living cell. Once that cell reproduces you have a population and evolution can start.
I open it and it was a blast from the past. I actually read these articles and debated them more than 10 years ago. I'll review again with the more current studies and get back to you.
You are confusing scientific research with progress. Biologists ever since Darwin have been tainted with irrational exuberance. OoL research is not little league where everyone gets a trophy. I think they want to get a trophy because everyone wants their work to count for something.
You said,
"Just-about living celling"? How far are OoL researchers away from reaching even your lowered that goal?
Can you answer that without irrational exuberance?
Definition of abiogenesis: "the original evolution of life or living organisms from inorganic or inanimate substances"
Most estimates put the minimum number of GENES at 473 for a reproducing living cell.
The smallest known living bacteria has about 482 PROTEINS.
Like, I said, OoL research is far, far from reaching their goal. For me it's about how precision nanotech biological machines and systems came about when there is no natural force to assemble them. OoL research is attempting to discover such a contrivance of conditions and forces to do this, but missing the obvious. A better explanation is intentional design.
To make a comparison, early OoL researchers saw the cell like a caveman would see a laptop computer. A square hunk of plastic. How do you get a square hunk of plastic to form naturally? Well let's see, maybe if... But then some caveman opened the laptop and managed to look at its circuits and concluded it is a hunk of plastic with little metal boxes inside. How do you get a square hunk of plastic AND little square boxes of metal inside to form naturally? Well let's see, maybe it... Then another caveman begins to see that the little metal boxes are not just boxes... So, as new things are discovered in the laptop, the ideas for how it can form naturally becomes harder and harder to find. In the case of Miller/Urey, ignorance was bliss... for awhile. Biologists liked to propagate that bliss for several generations of textbooks. After all, what scientist doesn't want to look smart.
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rossum
Well-known member
Wrong.
Much closer than creationists. OoL has produced many of the chemicals of life. Creationism has yet to show any evidence of any deity creating even one molecule. Better get to work.
Your evidence that the first living cell had either genes or proteins is? Without evidence, you are making an unsupported assumption. One of the OoL hypotheses being researched is RNA world, where neither genes nor proteins were present initially.
Like I said, creationist research is far far far from reaching its goal. It does not even have one amino acid molecule.
You can get back to us when you have some evidence of any deity creating an amino acid, a purine or a pyrimidine. Biology has all three.
Iktomi
Active member
So says the textbook sufferer of Walter Mitty Syndrome ?
There is no observable evidence for a reproducing living cell being created by purely natural forces. If you think I'm wrong, then please name it.
There is actually a law, called the law of biogenesis that says life comes from life. Evidence for a deity? What sort of evidence would you even accept? A visible appearance of the deity and nothing else? It's ironic because you have no appearance of any natural force to produce anything near life-like. You're biased.
Nobody was there, so what can we do?
Would you accept any sort of evidence of design based on complex specified information being created? We see new complex and specified information being introduced by intentional design all the time. Any examples that natural, inorganic molecules produce specified complex information?
rossum
Well-known member
I was not talking about a living cell, I was talking about biological molecules: amino acids, purines, pyrimidines. We observe these molecules forming naturally. We do not observe any of these molecules being created by any deity.
So what living meta-God gave rise to the Abrahamic God? You need to think more carefully about that 'law', which has been shown wrong since the late 19th century.
Look at the remaining evidence. Can the police only solve a crime if there are eye-witnesses?
ID proponents need to test their claimed design detection methods; to date I have not seen any of their methods being tested. I am aware that Professor Behe has accepted that his Irreducible Complexity idea is not impossible for evolution, though it is more difficult for IC systems to evolve than for non-IC systems.
For the other proposed design detection methods, there needs to be rigorous testing to ensure that they work as intended. I know that, as Dr. Dembski pointed out, that a false negative is always possible; Something may be designed to give the appearance of non-design, but actually be designed. Some parts of cryptography, for instance, are deliberately designed to appear random, while not actually being random.
It is more important to test the accuracy of positive results for design. Something like a thorough double-blind test would be needed.
I will not accept results from an untested claimed 'design test' since any such results would be too prone to error.
I will also not accept the results of raw, oversimplified probability calculations. Such calculations often omit crucial elements, such as the effects of chemistry, or else make unwarranted assumptions. Any such calculations will need to specify all assumptions made so they can be checked.