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Author Topic:   Evolution & Abiogenesis were originally one subject.
crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1466 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 106 of 140 (569050)
07-19-2010 10:48 PM
Reply to: Message 93 by marc9000
07-19-2010 7:50 PM


Re: intuitive linking
Any number of gases, both visible and invisible, can exist without having any weight, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist - that they’re not real material.
I think you'll find that's just not true at all. For instance, plain air has a weight of about 1.2 kg per cubic meter.
All matter has mass, marc.
I can burn up a piece of paper. I haven’t done any weight experiments with it, but it’s reasonable to guess that the ashes will weigh far less than the original piece of paper.
But of course the ash plus the carbon dioxide gas plus the water vapor will add up to the original weight of the paper.
But, in the atomic decay of uranium, we're aware of what gases are produced. When uranium decays, the result is one hydrogen nucleus and an atom of thorium. Yet, when you add up the mass of the hydrogen and thorium atoms that are produced, they do not add up to the atomic mass of uranium.
I can still see that statement in my science textbook, because it was so profound to me, it was something I’d never thought of before. Matter cannot be created nor destroyed.
As it turns out, matter can be destroyed:
It's just, the doings are a little beyond junior high science. You'll get there.
When it comes to human behavior, there are studies/thought processes that fall between empiricism and imagination. The words philosophy and motivation come to mind.
I don't believe that either of those are a path to knowledge more reliable than imagination.
Good examples of details of those two words are contained in the US Constitution, and other US founding documents, such as the Federalist Papers.
Neither the word "philosophy" nor "motivation" occur in the US Constitution.
How about evolutionists who imagine that the basic form of life, the cell, with its signal processing behaviors that rival or surpass that of modern computers, just fell into place by blind, unguided, purposeless, happenstance processes?
We've produced that conclusion as a result of a decades-long process of testable hypothesizing, experimentation, and observation of the natural world. Much of the evidence to which I refer is yours for the reading just as soon as you stop making pronouncements and start asking questions.
He had dreams — why do todays scientists, with todays knowledge of the cell, DNA, etc, have exactly the same dreams, with no updates?
But there have been updates. The field of biology has made light-years of progress since the days of Darwin's Bulldog. And, of course, we believe that the "simplest forms of life" are far simpler than cells. Some of those simpler-than-cell forms of life exist today; viruses, for instance. And, of course, some cells are simpler than others - prokaryotes vs. eukaryotes, for instance.
Those aren't strictly empirical subjects. If they were, there would be no political division in the US, would there?
Of course there are. Not everybody adopts positions according to empirical truth. For instance, they may have fallen prey to faith. Or stand to gain materially from advocacy of positions that are contrary to empirical fact.
But empiricism provides the best possible means to discern truth. You just look, and see.
As a conservative, I believe that the best way to know which ideas in those subjects work the best is by looking at the history of previous applications of them.
I agree! What you've described is empiricism. Just look, and see.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 93 by marc9000, posted 07-19-2010 7:50 PM marc9000 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 111 by marc9000, posted 07-20-2010 8:04 PM crashfrog has replied

crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1466 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 107 of 140 (569052)
07-19-2010 11:12 PM
Reply to: Message 100 by marc9000
07-19-2010 8:42 PM


Re: intuitive linking
No, God’s method of creation (described in the Bible) doesn’t involve gradual chemical changes.
I'm sorry, I'm trying to explain that "abiogenesis" is a fairly non-specific term. Yes, I'm aware that God's supposed creation of life is not chemical.
Nonetheless, you can use the term "abiogenesis" to refer to any explanation of the origin of life, except for one - the explanation that life has always existed. Of course, I don't believe that, and neither do you. But that's a feature of some religions, and some crank theories such as "panspermia."
It's best not to get too hung up on what "abiogenesis" is supposed to mean. Regardless, the scientific explanation for the origin of life is a fundamentally chemical one.
Science can’t prove that there is no such thing as a realm of reality that humans can’t understand.
Science doesn't have to. You have to prove there is, if you want to convince anybody that there is.
It’s no more stupid than there can’t be a god, or if there is, humans can perfectly understand him therefore, abiogenesis is a fact.
Abiogenesis is trivially a fact; life did not exist on Earth at one point, and at another point, it did. However that happened - God or chemistry - we could refer to that as "abiogenesis", if we chose to.
Of course, that's frequently confusing, so for clarity's sake we usually talk about "special creation" (your position) or "chemical origins of life" (ours.) But both can easily be described as theories of abiogenesis.
I appreciate that that's confusing, and we're not saying it to trick you into accepting the chemical origins of life. Indeed, there are multiple theories of the chemical origin of life, so to say "abiogenesis" says almost nothing at all about how life began.
Personally, having learned of the enzymatic activity of RNA, I favor the "RNA world" hypothesis. Of course, RNA doesn't fossilize, so information about the earliest days of life on Earth is tantalizingly elusive.
It is NOT HONEST.
I'll agree that it's not particularly clear. I believe that when we attempt to discuss the origins of life on Earth we should be more explicit about precisely which model of those origins we're talking about.
But the point of this thread is to point out that evolution is not a theory of abiogenesis at all. They're two different subjects. Abiogenesis, in science, is a topic of chemistry, since the origins of life were chemical. Evolution is a theory of biology that explains how species change and develop over time.
No more than atheists have observed the big bang, or Tiikalak Rosae
But we have observed the aftermath of the Big Bang, and you can, too. And Tiktaalik existed. It really did, and the most parsimonious explanation for the history and diversity of life on Earth is that it, or an organism very much like it, was the intermediate step between fish and amphibians.
But his book still SOLD OUT ON THE VERY FIRST DAY.
Because it was controversial and revolutionary. And the first edition was limited to only 1170 copies. It wouldn't take that long to sell out.
Common sense tells me that it was a long hunger for intellectually fulfilled atheism that caused the book to sell out, for Darwin to be hero to atheists, in 1859, and today.
Perhaps, but that's hardly evidence that disproves his theories. Darwin had produced the first plausible explanation of the history and diversity of life on Earth besides "God made it that way." He'd single-handedly made biology a science instead of just stamp-collecting. Why wouldn't people be interested in that? Why would it disprove his theories that they were interested in it?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 100 by marc9000, posted 07-19-2010 8:42 PM marc9000 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 113 by marc9000, posted 07-20-2010 8:51 PM crashfrog has replied

Huntard
Member (Idle past 2295 days)
Posts: 2870
From: Limburg, The Netherlands
Joined: 09-02-2008


Message 108 of 140 (569061)
07-20-2010 3:16 AM
Reply to: Message 96 by marc9000
07-19-2010 8:06 PM


Re: intuitive linking
marc9000 writes:
It didn’t necessarily have to be rearranged from something else. Non-living material had to come into existence instantly, there’s no scientific reason to not believe that living material couldn’t have possibly originated instantly. There may be an atheistic reason, but not a scientific reason. There is a difference between material that was non-living, and ‘nothing’. Creation ex-nihilo can have nothing to do with chemicals.
And where did I say that "creation ex-nihilo" has anything to do with chemicals whatsoever? For that matter, where did I say that life must've come about from rearangement of different parts? And while you're at it, please point out where I said that life could not possibly have come about instantly.
Different people have different definitions of what ‘evidence’ is. I find the Bible to be perfect in the way it describes human nature, judging it by history and experience. I find Darwin lacking in his knowledge of the simplest forms of life, judging by recent scientific discoveries of the simplest forms of life.
Your bible doesn't even mention the simplest forms of life. Anyway, what does this have to do with evolution being true, or abiogenesis being wholly seperate from it?
Nope — the Bible warns about false teachers, or anyone who tries to add to it beyond the book of Revelation.
And you know I'm a false prophet how? You know, god warned me about people like you, he called them "the great corrupters of my works and words". Guess he doesn't like what you're doing.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 96 by marc9000, posted 07-19-2010 8:06 PM marc9000 has not replied

Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 109 of 140 (569066)
07-20-2010 4:29 AM
Reply to: Message 100 by marc9000
07-19-2010 8:42 PM


Re: intuitive linking
But there is evidence that it has been going on ever since 1859. Darwin didn’t board planes and do book tours, he didn’t get on television and do interviews with CNN, he didn’t get colorful pages on amazon with raving promotions and reviews by scientists. Book promotion was very slow - little more than word-of-mouth in the mid 19th century. But his book still SOLD OUT ON THE VERY FIRST DAY. We’re supposed to believe that’s because of a sudden interest in science by general public. Common sense tells me that it was a long hunger for intellectually fulfilled atheism that caused the book to sell out, for Darwin to be hero to atheists, in 1859, and today.
If you have absolutely no evidence for your fantasies, then attributing them to "common sense" serves, if anything, only to highlight the discrepancy between your daydreams and reality.
Actually, "common sense" has nothing at all to do with your nonsense. Whether the book was (as in your daydreams) an atheist manifesto, or whether it was (as in reality) the most revolutionary book on biology ever written, produced by one of the greatest naturalists of the age, it must still have been promoted in advance in order to sell out on its first day. There is no special atheist magic that would make an atheistic book become an instant best-seller before anyone knew what was in it.
You people.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 100 by marc9000, posted 07-19-2010 8:42 PM marc9000 has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 110 by caffeine, posted 07-20-2010 8:02 AM Dr Adequate has not replied

caffeine
Member (Idle past 1024 days)
Posts: 1800
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Joined: 10-22-2008


Message 110 of 140 (569078)
07-20-2010 8:02 AM
Reply to: Message 109 by Dr Adequate
07-20-2010 4:29 AM


19th century bestseller
I had a look up on the whole 'selling out on the first day' idea, because I imagine the world of book-selling was a bit different bak in the day. The book was first released at the autumn sale of the publisher. This seemed to be a big trade fare, where all the libraries and book shops came to stock up for the upcoming season - not sure if these were twice a year or more often. In total, only 1,170 copies of Origin were available for sale, and all were shifted. Almost half went just to the big Mudie's Lending Library.
Not sure what relevance any of this has to the topic, but I just found it interesting that the oft-repeated story that the first edition sold out on its first day doesn't really correspond to the modern idea of an eager public snapping them off the shelves.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 109 by Dr Adequate, posted 07-20-2010 4:29 AM Dr Adequate has not replied

marc9000
Member
Posts: 1509
From: Ky U.S.
Joined: 12-25-2009
Member Rating: 1.4


Message 111 of 140 (569197)
07-20-2010 8:04 PM
Reply to: Message 106 by crashfrog
07-19-2010 10:48 PM


Re: intuitive linking
But, in the atomic decay of uranium, we're aware of what gases are produced. When uranium decays, the result is one hydrogen nucleus and an atom of thorium. Yet, when you add up the mass of the hydrogen and thorium atoms that are produced, they do not add up to the atomic mass of uranium.
As it turns out, matter can be destroyed:
It's just, the doings are a little beyond junior high science. You'll get there.
My junior-high science book was from the 1960’s. Didn’t the type of destruction you’re talking about happen in Japan in 1945? Apparently, the statement in my science book wasn’t.extra simple, or some type of primer for higher level science, it was WRONG, wasn’t it? Scientific study isn't always perfect, is it? Anyway, it said matter cannot be created nor destroyed, and so far you’ve focused only on the destruction part. I’ll probably be accused of moving the goalposts, but concerning the origins of life, as this thread and most any creationist/evolutionist debate is, CREATION of matter is what the issue really is. Do you have any examples of matter being created, that wasn’t rearranged from something else?
I don't believe that either of those are a path to knowledge more reliable than imagination.
We have to agree to disagree on that — I think philosophy and motivation have a more solid foundation/backing than does simple imagination.
Neither the word "philosophy" nor "motivation" occur in the US Constitution.
The documents CONTAIN them, they can contain them without the words physically occurring. Richard Dawkins babblings contain atheism most of the time, yet the word itself may not occur all that often.
We've produced that conclusion as a result of a decades-long process of testable hypothesizing, experimentation, and observation of the natural world. Much of the evidence to which I refer is yours for the reading just as soon as you stop making pronouncements and start asking questions.
It would be nice if hypothesizing, experimentation and observation could be done by perfect people, who have no worldview bias. But everyone does. Hypothesizing and experimentation is done by following pathways, and pathways can be long, they often don't allow a person to realize that one questionable step may logically suggest that he back up 50 or 100 steps. Sure, I know you'll tell me that's a big creationist problem. It's also an atheist problem.
But there have been updates. The field of biology has made light-years of progress since the days of Darwin's Bulldog. And, of course, we believe that the "simplest forms of life" are far simpler than cells. Some of those simpler-than-cell forms of life exist today; viruses, for instance. And, of course, some cells are simpler than others - prokaryotes vs. eukaryotes, for instance.
Michael Behe has been responsible for some of that progress. But he veered off the atheist path 500 steps ago. Atheists don't want to back up and check out that path.
Of course there are. Not everybody adopts positions according to empirical truth. For instance, they may have fallen prey to faith. Or stand to gain materially from advocacy of positions that are contrary to empirical fact.
Faith? Gain materially? You see it in religion - I see it in atheism.
But empiricism provides the best possible means to discern truth. You just look, and see.
I agree! What you've described is empiricism. Just look, and see.
What is empiricism? Naturalism? One realm only?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 106 by crashfrog, posted 07-19-2010 10:48 PM crashfrog has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 112 by crashfrog, posted 07-20-2010 8:47 PM marc9000 has replied

crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1466 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 112 of 140 (569203)
07-20-2010 8:47 PM
Reply to: Message 111 by marc9000
07-20-2010 8:04 PM


Re: intuitive linking
Do you have any examples of matter being created, that wasn’t rearranged from something else?
Sure:
Do you know what a "bubble chamber" is? Basically - if you take a charged particle, like a proton, and accelerate it to an appreciable percentage of the speed of light, then collide it with something - it breaks up, as you might expect, but it breaks up into pieces that add up to more mass than the original particle, but moving at much, much less speed. A "bubble chamber" is used to track the motion and charge of these subsequent particles, and produces the image you see above.
Apparently, the statement in my science book wasn’t.extra simple, or some type of primer for higher level science, it was WRONG, wasn’t it?
Yeah, basically.
Look, under most circumstances - for instance, all chemical interactions - the Law of Conservation of Matter holds true. Chemical reactions don't create or destroy matter, they just re-arrange it. Conservation of Matter states that the total mass of the products of a chemical reaction will be equivalent to the total mass of the reactants.
But under other, exotic circumstances, Conservation of Matter doesn't hold. It doesn't hold because Einstein discovered that matter and energy were interconvertable, and he related the equivalent energy of a given mass to the speed of light, squared.
Maybe you've seen that equation.
I think philosophy and motivation have a more solid foundation/backing than does simple imagination.
Philosophy is a field that lacks any sort of rigor - philosophy supplies no way to determine whether a given conjecture is wrong, it can only determine that they are "poorly formed."
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "motivation."
The documents CONTAIN them, they can contain them without the words physically occurring.
I'll have to take your word for that, I guess, since I don't entirely understand what you're getting at. The US Constitution is a legal document, not a work of political philosophy. And to any extent that it is "true", it's true because American citizens have agreed to treat it as true, and as the highest law of our land. It's not true in any sense beyond that - for instance, the US Constitution contains absolutely zero truth to someone standing in Piccadilly Square.
It's as true as the rules of Monopoly - which are false while you're playing Scrabble.
It would be nice if hypothesizing, experimentation and observation could be done by perfect people, who have no worldview bias. But everyone does.
Of course. But empiricism, and its more formal descendant science, have built-in protection against the personal biases of human beings. They're the most resistant to it, because they have a system of rigor that allows conjectures to be determined to be false. Religion doesn't have that. Intuition doesn't have that. Imagination doesn't have that.
Hypothesizing and experimentation is done by following pathways
I don't know what you mean by "pathway".
Sure, I know you'll tell me that's a big creationist problem. It's also an atheist problem.
Remember that the line of the debate isn't creationism vs. atheism, it's creationism vs. the science of evolution. Evolution is not equivalent to atheism. Atheism is a position about the non-existence of God. Evolution is a scientific theory that explains the history and diversity of life on Earth.
They're two very different subjects.
Michael Behe has been responsible for some of that progress.
Sure. But not the way you think. For instance, here's a paper of his I particularly enjoy:
quote:
Effects of methylation on a synthetic polynucleotide: the B--Z transition in poly(dG-m5dC).poly(dG-m5dC)
M Behe and G Felsenfeld
We have compared the behavior in solution of the synthetic polynucleotide poly(dG-m5dC).poly(dG-m5dC) with that of the unmethylated polynucleotide poly(dG-dC).poly(dG-dC). In solutions containing high concentrations of salt, poly(dG-dC).poly(dG-dC) is known to exhibit altered circular dichroic and absorption spectra correlated with formation of a left-handed Z DNA structure. Poly(dG-m5dC).poly(dG-m5dC) behaves similarly, but the spectral transition from the B to the Z form occurs at much lower salt concentrations, close to usual physiological conditions. Divalent and polyvalent ions are particularly effective: The B--Z transition of poly(dG-m5dC).(dG-m5dC) can be induced at a Mg2+ concentration three orders of magnitude lower than that required for the unmethylated polymer. We have also studied mixed copolymers containing both dC and m5dC. Our results suggest that the sequence m5dC-dG, which occurs in eukaryotic DNA, can have a disproportionately large effect on the B--Z transition.
Now, you say that Behe is not an atheist. That's certainly true. It doesn't seem to matter to his science, though, which is how it's supposed to work. Can you point to any part of this scientific paper that Behe would not have been able to write had he been an atheist, instead?
Atheists don't want to back up and check out that path.
I think you'll find instead that evolutionists are very much acquainted with the claims of "Darwin's Black Box", and have scientifically refuted the ones that aren't themselves nonsensical from the get-go. (Behe's concept of "specified complexity" gives zero indication of how we're supposed to actually detect it in nature; he just points to examples that he insists are too complex to evolve, even though it's been demonstrated how they did.)
What is empiricism?
Looking, and seeing. Accepting or rejecting propositions based on their congruence with observable physical reality. An empiricist is someone who could claim to be from Missouri - the "Show Me" state.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 111 by marc9000, posted 07-20-2010 8:04 PM marc9000 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 114 by marc9000, posted 07-20-2010 9:07 PM crashfrog has replied
 Message 123 by marc9000, posted 07-21-2010 7:47 PM crashfrog has replied

marc9000
Member
Posts: 1509
From: Ky U.S.
Joined: 12-25-2009
Member Rating: 1.4


Message 113 of 140 (569204)
07-20-2010 8:51 PM
Reply to: Message 107 by crashfrog
07-19-2010 11:12 PM


Re: intuitive linking
I'm sorry, I'm trying to explain that "abiogenesis" is a fairly non-specific term. Yes, I'm aware that God's supposed creation of life is not chemical.
It’s only recently been transformed into a non-specific term, as I’ve been saying, and showing evidence and the political reasons for. You and no one else here has been able to refute it. I’d expect to see writings from Huxley or his followers, or Miller-Urey and their followers, references to abiogenesis that included supernatural creation somewhere on the net. I asked for examples back in my message 65 — no one has provided them. We don’t see any evidence of them in the following paragraph from Huxley himself either, do we?
quote:
These experiments seem almost childishly simple, and one wonders how it was that no one ever thought of them before. Simple as they are, however, they are worthy of the most careful study, for every piece of experimental work since done, in regard to this subject, has been shaped upon the model furnished by the Italian philosopher. As the results of his experiments were the same, however varied the nature of the materials he used, it is not wonderful that there arose in Redi's mind a presumption, that, in all such cases of the seeming production of life from dead matter, the real explanation was the introduction of living germs from without into that dead matter.4 [236] And thus the hypothesis that living matter always arises by the agency of pre-existing living matter, took definite shape; and had, henceforward, a right to be considered and a claim to be refuted, in each particular case, before the production of living matter in any other way could be admitted by careful reasoners. It will be necessary for me to refer to this hypothesis so frequently, that, to save circumlocution, I shall call it the hypothesis of Biogenesis; and I shall term the contrary doctrine—that living matter may be produced by not living matter—the hypothesis of Abiogenesis.
http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/CE8/B-Ab.html
He was talking about nothing but scientific experimentation. My assertion is that until only the last few decades, the word actually meant something descriptive, a belief that life could arise from non-living chemicals by gradual, naturalistic processes on an early earth.
It's best not to get too hung up on what "abiogenesis" is supposed to mean. Regardless, the scientific explanation for the origin of life is a fundamentally chemical one.
That would be true, if atheists weren’t hysterically hung up on what the term Intelligent Design" means. They’ve spent millions of dollars to block it from the public scientific realm. It's a major hang-up of theirs.
marc9000 writes:
Science can’t prove that there is no such thing as a realm of reality that humans can’t understand.
Science doesn't have to.
I think it does, if it attempts to trump other realms with only the one realm that it understands. That’s a big part of the entire issue — of the entire religion/naturalism controversy.
If science doesn’t have to prove that there is no realm of reality that’s beyond human understanding, then it should respect the possibilities that there are by keeping it’s speculation that no other realm exists out of publicly funded scientific study.
Abiogenesis is trivially a fact; life did not exist on Earth at one point, and at another point, it did. However that happened - God or chemistry - we could refer to that as "abiogenesis", if we chose to.
Nobody chose to, until only the past few decades. If you have evidence to the contrary, please present it. Something had to be done with the word, because of over a hundred years of constant failure to put together a coherent, systematic scientific study on it. The scientific study on it today is fragmented and incomplete, with promisory notes for the future. Promisory notes are not science. They're not permitted for ID.
I appreciate that that's confusing, and we're not saying it to trick you into accepting the chemical origins of life.
Then the word should be used the way it was used in Huxley's day, in Miller-Urey's day. It worked then. Creation was called "creation". It worked well. I’m not worried about myself being tricked, I’m worried about young public school students, not yet old enough to form a positive worldview, being tricked. And I’m worried about their sleeping parents being tricked.
But the point of this thread is to point out that evolution is not a theory of abiogenesis at all. They're two different subjects. Abiogenesis, in science, is a topic of chemistry, since the origins of life were chemical. Evolution is a theory of biology that explains how species change and develop over time.
They're studied the same way, with the same type of scientific methods, by the same people, in the same buildings. They're both about naturalistic change over long periods of time. They both involve chemicals and they both involve biology. The worldviews of the people who study them both seek to cheapen Christianity. So there are similarities. The reason they've only recently seen attempts to separate them is political, the failures of naturalistic abiogenesis to meet the criteria recently set for Intelligent Design. (Naturalistic) abiogenesis has to kept low key, or atheists fear it could be turned upside down on them if it was ever hauled into court like Intelligent Design was.
But we have observed the aftermath of the Big Bang, and you can, too.
I can observe the aftermath of God's creation. I can also scale down planet sizes and light years - have you ever done that? I can't observe or imagine an explosion of that magnitude that would result in the order that we see.
Because it was controversial and revolutionary. And the first edition was limited to only 1170 copies. It wouldn't take that long to sell out.
1170 copies in one day, back in 1859, was probably far better than just about any other book of that time. So it was controversial and revolutionary, we can agree on that. Why do you suppose it's important to so many posters here to try to show numbers suggesting that it wasn't? Because the reason it sold out was obvious - it didn't appeal as science, it appealed as atheism
Perhaps, but that's hardly evidence that disproves his theories. Darwin had produced the first plausible explanation of the history and diversity of life on Earth besides "God made it that way." He'd single-handedly made biology a science instead of just stamp-collecting. Why wouldn't people be interested in that? Why would it disprove his theories that they were interested in it?
I never said that it disproves his theories. But what it does do is put naturalistic/atheistic studies on the same order as religion. It lead to a lot of atheist philosophy. That philosophy hasn’t remained philosophy, it’s become science.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 107 by crashfrog, posted 07-19-2010 11:12 PM crashfrog has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 116 by crashfrog, posted 07-20-2010 9:24 PM marc9000 has not replied
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marc9000
Member
Posts: 1509
From: Ky U.S.
Joined: 12-25-2009
Member Rating: 1.4


Message 114 of 140 (569205)
07-20-2010 9:07 PM
Reply to: Message 112 by crashfrog
07-20-2010 8:47 PM


Re: intuitive linking
Do you know what a "bubble chamber" is? Basically - if you take a charged particle, like a proton, and accelerate it to an appreciable percentage of the speed of light, then collide it with something - it breaks up, as you might expect, but it breaks up into pieces that add up to more mass than the original particle, but moving at much, much less speed. A "bubble chamber" is used to track the motion and charge of these subsequent particles, and produces the image you see above.
That's profound, but it still had to start with something. Not good enough for the origin of matter.
[I'm about out of time tonight - I'll have to skip along some, maybe I'll address more of this post in the coming evenings]
Of course. But empiricism, and its more formal descendant science, have built-in protection against the personal biases of human beings. They're the most resistant to it, because they have a system of rigor that allows conjectures to be determined to be false. Religion doesn't have that. Intuition doesn't have that. Imagination doesn't have that.
The sun is a really bright thing, the earth is something like 10 or so light-minutes away from it. Suppose science found a new way to measure, completely overcoming that brightness, so that we could actually measure the distance of the sun to the earth in feet, or even inches? Then suppose some unfortunate scientist overcame personal biases, and proclaimed some bad news "guess what Darwinists, it's not possible that earth has gone around the sun millions, or billions of times. It would have been drawn in (or drifted away) after 30 or 40 thousand times, tops. Do you think he would continue to live? Would the scientific community gladly accept becoming a laughingstock, in the interest of truth?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 112 by crashfrog, posted 07-20-2010 8:47 PM crashfrog has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 115 by jar, posted 07-20-2010 9:18 PM marc9000 has not replied
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jar
Member (Idle past 393 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


Message 115 of 140 (569207)
07-20-2010 9:18 PM
Reply to: Message 114 by marc9000
07-20-2010 9:07 PM


Re: intuitive linking
marc9000 writes:
The sun is a really bright thing, the earth is something like 10 or so light-minutes away from it. Suppose science found a new way to measure, completely overcoming that brightness, so that we could actually measure the distance of the sun to the earth in feet, or even inches? Then suppose some unfortunate scientist overcame personal biases, and proclaimed some bad news "guess what Darwinists, it's not possible that earth has gone around the sun millions, or billions of times. It would have been drawn in (or drifted away) after 30 or 40 thousand times, tops. Do you think he would continue to live? Would the scientific community gladly accept becoming a laughingstock, in the interest of truth?
Sheesh.
Eight light minutes away.
And of course we can measure the distance in feet or inches or miles or kilometers or furlongs or hands or any other system you want to consider.
And guess what? Proclamations mean nothing in science. Any scientist that made a proclamation would be a laughingstock and rightly so.
That really is the crux of your problem, you have no clue how science is done.
What is needed for your scientist to avoid becoming a laughingstock is that he must present the model explaining why the earth would have spiraled into the sun.
Of course, we know for a fact that the earth has NOT spiraled into the sun in several billions of years. That much is fact. That much is supported by overwhelming evidence.
BUT the important point is that this is just another example of you trying to palm the pea, change the subject in addition to continuing to post assertions that have been refuted, shown to be false in this very thread.

Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 114 by marc9000, posted 07-20-2010 9:07 PM marc9000 has not replied

crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1466 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 116 of 140 (569208)
07-20-2010 9:24 PM
Reply to: Message 113 by marc9000
07-20-2010 8:51 PM


Re: intuitive linking
It’s only recently been transformed into a non-specific term, as I’ve been saying, and showing evidence and the political reasons for.
You haven't shown me any evidence that it hasn't been used in precisely the way I describe.
We don’t see any evidence of them in the following paragraph from Huxley himself either, do we?
But that's exactly how Huxley is using it - he's describing any conjecture that proposes life arising from lifelessness.
My assertion is that until only the last few decades, the word actually meant something descriptive, a belief that life could arise from non-living chemicals by gradual, naturalistic processes on an early earth.
But that's exactly backwards. Huxley coined the term to describe any conjecture by which life could have arisen from lifelessness. Nowadays it's more likely to refer to a scientific model of the origin of life, because it's a "science-sounding" word, and creationists frequently use it in opposition to their own position of special creation.
You've got the history of the word precisely backwards. It means "life from lifelessness." That's what you believe and it's what I believe. Nowadays it more frequently refers to scientific models of the origin of life, but scientists don't really use the term, because it's irritatingly nonspecific and useless when you're debating how life arose from lifelessness.
It's never been intended to trick anybody into atheism. We don't need to trick people into atheism, atheism is true and very convincing when approached rationally. Frankly, demonstrating the ample evidence in favor of the scientific theory of evolution produces more atheists than anything else, in my opinion, and it has the advantage of being honest, to boot. Tricking people into belief is the province of religion.
They’ve spent millions of dollars to block it from the public scientific realm.
Because ID isn't science, it's religion attempting to masquerade as science.
I think it does, if it attempts to trump other realms with only the one realm that it understands.
What other realms?
If science doesn’t have to prove that there is no realm of reality that’s beyond human understanding, then it should respect the possibilities that there are by keeping it’s speculation that no other realm exists out of publicly funded scientific study.
There's no instance where it doesn't do that. There are only instances of those who do assert other realms imposing on the proper domain of science. The conflict between science and religion is one that only exists because religions keep trying to impose their authority over the realm of science by making claims testable by empiricism. If people want to go on asserting untestable, unreachable, ineffable spirit realms, science has nothing to stop them. It's only when those proponents say their realms have an effect on the real world that they transgress into the realm of science.
It's only when the religious attempt to dishonestly claim the mantle and respectability of science for their religious dogma that they come into conflict.
Nobody chose to, until only the past few decades.
Nonsense.
The scientific study on it today is fragmented and incomplete, with promisory notes for the future.
I think you'll find that's just not true. There's actually a lot of good science surrounding the chemical origins of life. For instance, what do you think about the RNA world?
Then the word should be used the way it was used in Huxley's day, in Miller-Urey's day.
If it causes confusion - and it's obvious that it has made you very confused indeed - then I don't think we should use it at all. Indeed, most scientific sources don't. Leninger's Principles of Biochemistry doesn't use it even once (I just checked.)
I’m worried about young public school students, not yet old enough to form a positive worldview, being tricked.
Being "tricked" into what, exactly? Into believing that evolution is a highly-supported scientific explanation of the history and diversity of life on Earth? But that's true. Into believing that scientists have explanations for the earliest days of life on Earth? But that's also true.
Into believing that Christians are able to simultaneously hold religious faith and accept the scientific theory of evolution? That's true as well. I'm just not clear on what this great "trick" is supposed to be. And you're honestly the first person I've ever met who even thought this was some kind of issue, and I've debated hundreds of creationists at this board over seven years.
I really do think you're determined to blow this out of proportion. If you think it's an unclear word, I'll promise to use it neither in your presence, nor in the presence of any "young public school students", who I never talk to anyway.
They're studied the same way, with the same type of scientific methods, by the same people, in the same buildings.
No, they're not. Here at UNL for instance origin-of-life chemistry is done in Hamilton and evolutionary biology is done in the Beadle Center.
Moreover, biology is done by biologist and chemistry is done by chemists. They're not the same field at all. They even have different journals.
The worldviews of the people who study them both seek to cheapen Christianity.
Come on. Now you're impugning the motives of people like myself, and more importantly my wife, who does actually study the evolutionary relationships of insects.
Do you honestly think her motivation is to "cheapen Christianity"? I can tell you that it is not - her motivation is to feed people, by determining effective ways to control crop pests. Sure, we're atheists. If you think we sit around all day thinking of how to "cheapen" your religion, you're suffering from paranoid delusions.
And what about my wife's Christian colleagues? She's literally the only atheist in her entire department, but the work she does is hardly different than the work they do. Are Christians trying to "cheapen Christianity"?
Don't you think there's anybody in the life sciences who is actually interested in how life works? That's the motivation of literally everyone in the life sciences I've ever met. It's certainly my motivation. It's insulting of you to insinuate otherwise.
1170 copies in one day, back in 1859, was probably far better than just about any other book of that time.
We have the internet, you know. For instance, Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was published the year before "On the Origin of Species"; it sold nearly 300,000 copies. Dickens' "The Tale of Two Cities" was published serially; each new issue sold well over 100,000 copies. "The Tale of Two Cities" remains one of the English language's most printed books, at over 200 million copies made.
The idea that there was a vast groundswell of atheists having bought all the copies of Darwin's book is just ludicrous. Do you really think us atheists are part of some kind of history-spanning conspiracy to attack Christians?
That's a paranoid delusion, Marc.
But what it does do is put naturalistic/atheistic studies on the same order as religion.
How does it do anything like that?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 113 by marc9000, posted 07-20-2010 8:51 PM marc9000 has not replied

Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 117 of 140 (569209)
07-20-2010 9:25 PM
Reply to: Message 114 by marc9000
07-20-2010 9:07 PM


Re: intuitive linking
The sun is a really bright thing, the earth is something like 10 or so light-minutes away from it. Suppose science found a new way to measure, completely overcoming that brightness, so that we could actually measure the distance of the sun to the earth in feet, or even inches? Then suppose some unfortunate scientist overcame personal biases, and proclaimed some bad news "guess what Darwinists, it's not possible that earth has gone around the sun millions, or billions of times. It would have been drawn in (or drifted away) after 30 or 40 thousand times, tops. Do you think he would continue to live?
That's the best laugh I've had for a week.
---
Sane people will note an amusing consequence of marc's paranoid fantasies. The fact that to date no creationist clown has been rubbed out by Evil-utionist ninjas must imply that so far not one of them has come up with a single good argument.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 114 by marc9000, posted 07-20-2010 9:07 PM marc9000 has not replied

crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1466 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 118 of 140 (569210)
07-20-2010 9:30 PM
Reply to: Message 114 by marc9000
07-20-2010 9:07 PM


Re: intuitive linking
Not good enough for the origin of matter.
Now you're just moving the goalposts.
Do you think he would continue to live?
"Live"? Ok, let me try to get your precise meaning.
You're saying that if a creationist asserted that there was some kind of gravitational evidence that the Earth's orbit around the Sun isn't stable over a timeframe of 4 billions years, scientists would kill him?
Seriously? You think that's the reason that creationism has no scientific traction? Because its prominent proponents are mysteriously murdered by a scientific hit squad?
Is that really what you're saying? Can you point to even a single prominent creationist, or ID proponent, who has been murdered in service of an "evolutionist conspiracy"? Michael Behe is even allowed to keep publishing biochemistry papers. I just linked you to one. How is that even possible if there's this vast conspiracy of evolutionists?
Did you ever even stop to consider that the reason the scientific community is so monolithic in their support for evolution is because it really is good, sound science?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 114 by marc9000, posted 07-20-2010 9:07 PM marc9000 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 119 by Dr Adequate, posted 07-20-2010 9:48 PM crashfrog has not replied
 Message 125 by marc9000, posted 07-21-2010 7:56 PM crashfrog has replied

Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 119 of 140 (569213)
07-20-2010 9:48 PM
Reply to: Message 118 by crashfrog
07-20-2010 9:30 PM


Re: intuitive linking
Is that really what you're saying? Can you point to even a single prominent creationist, or ID proponent, who has been murdered in service of an "evolutionist conspiracy"? Michael Behe is even allowed to keep publishing biochemistry papers. I just linked you to one. How is that even possible if there's this vast conspiracy of evolutionists?
See my previous post.
Marc hypthothesized that if anyone ever comes up with a good creationist argument then our vast evil conspiracy is prepared to strike.
That's why the good argument itself had to be hypothetical, and based on observations not actually made, since so far no-one has come up with a good creationist argument or made any observations contrary to evolution.
If they ever do, then of course the fearsome Ninjas Of Darwin will strike before you can say "paranoid psychosis". But so long as the arguments of creationists continue to be complete crap, we can let them live.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 118 by crashfrog, posted 07-20-2010 9:30 PM crashfrog has not replied

articulett
Member (Idle past 3371 days)
Posts: 49
Joined: 06-15-2010


(1)
Message 120 of 140 (569234)
07-21-2010 3:39 AM


I agree that no one had come up with a good creationist argument, but I'd imagine that a great many people would be interested in such an argument if there ever was such a thing-- especially if it came with actual evidence.
I can understand why creationists would be afraid of the evidence for evolution. They've been indoctrinated to believe that they have to have faith in a certain version of events to live "happily ever after" and some have been threatened with hell for a loss of that faith.
But then their delusion has to include this world where scientists are uninterested in the facts even though these facts could help them live happily ever after! If there was an invisible being who wanted people to believe certain things to live happily after they die, then wouldn't every scientist be interested in finding out more about that being and what he wanted so they could make their own eternity fabulous? Wouldn't they be gathering, and testing all the evidence-- testing various prophets and so forth to see which one could do the most, predict the best, raise the dead or whatever?
When stuff is true, the evidence accumulates-- look at all we've done with DNA-- mapped genomes, paternity tests, forensics, etc. It just must take a lot of paranoia, indoctrination, and obfuscation to tell yourself that science is a conspiracy and that the real truth belongs to a certain sect which developed on the planet less than 2000 years ago.
But this idea of scientists killing people...?! I can only imagine that a person who thinks that has gotten science confused with religion. It's religion that cares about what people believe; Science cares about what is true regardless of what people believe.

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