i'm not going to speculate on varieties of simple life forms that 'may' have existed
But you already did. I was talking about the simple forms of life that may have existed and you retorted "even the simplest life forms are extremely complex". Are you retracting that as a rebuttal to my point?
If this is what molecular biology has shown, then how is it possible that evolutionary science can continue to teach that life had a simple beginning? There is no evidence of a simple beginning.
Let's tighten up here. The question seems to be why do natural historians conclude that life had a simple beginning? The evidence shows that multicellularity is a relatively modern phenomena, so by that measure life was simpler than it is today. There are three broad possibilities,
1) Life always existed.
2) Life had a simple origin.
3) Life had a complex origin.
The first is problematic since there is no evidence that this is, or even could be, the case.
The third is problematic since it goes against the evidence that complex things don't just occur without simpler precursors.
So we're left with the second, which coheres and is consistent with all available evidence.
So that's why.
how do they know that the primitive atmosphere lacked oxygen?
They know because experiments have shown that compounds such as amino acids are not stable in the presence of oxygen.
Nope. They know because of the distribution of oxides such as iron oxides (like rust) in the geology.
The know because of the evidence in geology of certain non living compounds existing in certain states that are not stable in oxygen rich environments.
They know because of various isotope signatures that are indicative of low oxygen enrionments in the geology.
So plenty of evidence of low oxygen levels. I don't know the details, but it took just a few minutes to find a handful of examples.
The Italian physician Francesco Redi (1700's) comes to mind. His experiments proved that maggots appeared in rotten meat only after flies had laid eggs on it thus disproving the prevailing belief of spontaneous generation.
Thus disproving the theory surrounding the origins of life on earth coming from rotten meat. Which is self evidently false and has never been proposed.
And im sure you know Louis Pasteur. He also performed experiments to determine whether tiny life forms could arise by themselves. He was able to show that even minute bacteria did not form in sterilized water protected from contamination.
Which disproves the origins of life theory that has bacteria forming in sterilized water.
And the Russian Alexander Oparin theorised that if the atmosphere was much different, life could possibly generate spontneously and in the
1950’s Stanley Miller attempted to test his theory and experimented with a flask. Apparently, producing some amino acids proved that Oparins theory was a possiblity.
So Oparin had a theory about how life originated and Miller demonstrated that it was possible. How is this an experiment which shows 'life cannot originate by chance'? None of them are experiments that show this.
abe: I just realized you lifted that section out of WTBTS' book, "Creator?" without really appreciating what you were doing. The bit about Miller in that book starts off with the experiment being hailed as a success, but that the enthusiasm died because the problem was more difficult than originally believed. You might want go on to quote the Author of 'of Pandas and People' with a view to portraying him as a voice of science - with a straight face. It is his claim after all, a creationist, that it is 'fundamentally implausible that unassisted matter and energy organized themselves into living systems.', upon which I think your argument fundamentally rests. Incredulity from a young earth creationist!
and you may already know this, but at the 1996 International Conference on the Origin of Life, the journal Science reported that the nearly 300 scientists who attended were still unable to provide an answer to how DNA and RNA molecules first appeared and how they evolved into self-reproducing cells
That we haven't solved all the answers in the Grand Theory of Life is a given in this debate. I fail to see how specifying an unsolved question is relevant.
But complete theories do get thown out. You've heard of the phlogiston theory?
It was a scientific theory introduced in the 1700's and was proved completely false.
Yes, of course theories can be falsified. I didn't say otherwise. But when the phlogiston theory was falsified, it did not mean that everything we knew about combustion was false.
I was talking about when theories combine into a greater whole. When that happens, it doesn't mean that both (or however many) theories were completely false. Being presently unable to unite two fields of related study is not evidence that one or both are necessarily false.
If it turns out that there could not have been a primordial soup which caused life to exist, then the theory of evolution will need to revised too. It will have to change its ideas on the ancestral link between species because if abiogenesis is impossible, then so will be the ancestral link.
Not at all. And that's my point. Could you tackle where I raised it in my OP about how it doesn't work this way?
The theory of evolution is the theory that explains how populations of life change into different forms of populations of life.
The Grand Theory explains how life originated and changed.
Any Grand Theory that has life starting from natural origins would be falsified by overturning natural abiogenesis.
If I explained God by saying 'I created God' and I explained life as 'God created life'. Then my first theory could be falsified by pointing out that I am alive. Does this falsify the 'God created life' theory? No, of course not!
The same applies here. Please don't repeat your position again, I know what it is. But can you deal with the rebuttal? Can you justify your position?
This quote needs repeating, since this is close to a defence of your position as there is:
{evolution} will have to change its ideas on the ancestral link between species because if abiogenesis is impossible, then so will be the ancestral link
Not necessarily. First of all - do you agree that most of the ancestral links would still have the same evidence in support of them? Agreed - there would be a weakening of the position for universal common descent, but only a small one. The evidence for it (and it's not proposed to be a single common ancestor at that point - due to Horizontal Gene Transfer, it stops making sense to talk about such things) would be the same. But if that first population of organisms was *poofed* into being, evolution would still work just fine. The Grand Theory is affected, but not 'sub parts' - just like with the falsification of the God Theory.
So yeah - natural history would require some rewrites to the early chapters, we'd have eliminated many Grand Theory candidates - but evolution escapes unscathed.
Edited by Modulous, : looked up Peg's sources
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