Summations Only

Edited by Tangle, : Wrong reply button

This has all the hallmarks of a drive-by posting.

I've seen a few go off and start their own blogs, I think perhaps they prefer the safety of preaching from the pulpit than a two way conversation.There is something else though, the debate style is quite aggressive, it's adversarial, like the trial system. That system works well when there's well briefed advocates but it often fails those who try to defend themselves without the tools or the training.I quite often think that there's a place on these type of fora for the inqisitorial approach to establishing the truth. I find that I'm more often in the situation of wanting to discuss a problem or learn more about something, poke at an idea or explore a nagging doubt with insufficient knowledge of my own to get anywhere with it than put a flag on the hill top and settle down to defend it.Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

Really? Selective memory perhaps.Personally, I'm not going to forget these in a hurry; if ever. Message 129Dawn Bertot writes:
He was a filthy piece of garbage and a piece of dung. Recieve that which you have reaped Mr Hitchens
and
speaking of puerile dickheads, did you hear that Hitch died? Portilo writes:
So like a cockroach, rat, bacteria or pondscum, Hitch did his job. Artemis writes:
I am glad he is dead, fuck him.
And
LOL the rationale of a dick sucking bitch like yourself. too funny. eat shit and die.Christianity at it finest.

Might as well add the possibility of some sort of god thing spraying the planet with single celled organisms or simple replicating molecules - just so as not to unecessarily outrage the righteous.

Try this Buzz.I'm building a model aeroplane from a kit of plastic parts. [in the UK they're called Airfix kits - boxes of little bits and pieces of plastic that you glue together to make an F22 Raptor or a Spitfire]. The kit is a prerequisite - without the kit of parts I can't make the plane but it doesn't matter how I got the kit.As it happens, the kit was a present for my kid's birthday from his grand dad, but it could have come from Amazon or eBay. I might have got in my car and gone to town to buy it. It could have come down the chimney with Father Christmas or I might have no idea where it came from, it's just here on my kitchen table.It doesn't matter a damn that I might not even know how I got it it because I can still build the plane without that knowledge - but of course, it's absolutely true that without the kit I can't make the plane at all.In the natural world, evolution builds the plane but something else makes the kit of parts - if you need to put your god somewhere, he's the guy who breaks into your house in the middle of the night, leaves the box on the kitchen table, then tiptoes out without waking anyone.

Yes, but no-one but 1960s news papers use that phrase - it's not science, but I suppose it conveys some of the idea. Yes or No to what Buzz?If it helps you any, i think it's a near certainty that replicating molecules arose from your alphabet soup and evolution then used them to create the life we see around us. I expect that we'll be able to replicate that ourselves in my lifetime. We'll probably never be able to prove that that's how it came about, but it will show that it's possible and therefore at least a good contender for the prize.The next question is where did the soup come from? Science has some jolly good ideas about that too but there's a god shaped hole here and there amongst all this, you can plonk him in there if you wish.

Given that you have so little time, can I suggest that it would be better to post less but more thoughtfully?I can't count how many times you've told someone that what they've said is a fair point and that you'll get back to them when you have more time. You never do get back to them, but you do continue to nit-pick and bugger about with daft or insignificant issues regardless.To be honest, you're not doing your reputation or your cause any favours by shooting from the keyboard like this.

It's not a hard concept to grasp Buz, so I guess you're either pretending or really incapable of understanding it. Despite the evidence, let's hope you're just pretending.Evolution works on life. Without life there is no evolution. So life IS a precursor to evolution.But life needn't have come out of your 'soup' (abiogenesis). It could have been put there by your god, been brought in by comets from another planet, planted by aliens or whatever else you can think of. It doesn't matter were it comes from, as soon as it arrives, evolution can get working on it.

It's a standard creationist tactic. They know science hasn't yet worked out how life started (abiogenesis is the favoued scientific hypothesis) whilst we have overwhelming evidence for what happened after it started (evolution).So they deliberately conflate abiogenesis with evolution so that they can say that evolution is therefore somehow unproven.We can trace the evolutionary path from a Model T Ford to a F1 racecar even without knowing where the Ford came from......

Normally I'd agree with that, there must be an internet law somewhere that says that any online debate will eventually result in at least one party defending a position he doesn't hold. If there isn't a law, then I'm naming it.But in this case i do think it matters that this distinction is made. This is what Answers in Genesis are telling their readers. It's a wedge. They think that evolution falls apart because science can't yet explain how life started.If they just stuck to saying that science doesn't know how life started and never will, they'd have a powerful and honest point to make, but they have to extend it into the lie. The Origin of Life | Answers in Genesis

We don't know how life started, that's completly accurate. But you must understand that how it started simply doesn't matter to ToE because the ToE works no matter what caused life.You've been asked several times to tell us how the ToE would be affected if a pair of replicating molecules got here by the different what ifs that we can think of:1. God did it
2. A meteor brought it
3. Aliens planted it
4. Alphabet primordial soup cooked it up
5. anoPut your mind to answering that as a simple task.
(You'll have to put your beliefs that evolution isn't true anyway aside for a minute or two because I think that's why you're having a problem with something that we all think is simple and obvious.)Hopefully, if you can just think it as simple logic and not a great conspiracy on behalf of science you'll at least understand our position and agree that it's sensible. You don't have to believe any of it, you just have to understand that seperating abigenesis from evolution is rational.(At least at the simple level we are talking at. I suspect that once we have solved the problem of abiogenesis, it will be a lot more complicated than this and it may be that the ToE Will extend backwards some way into it.)

The main outcome of this thread is the demonstration of irrationality repeatedly shown by creationists.The abiogenesis debate - or actually, lack of debate - was particularly illustrative, culminating in this massively delusional statement Despite being asked many times how the ToE would change if any of the differing ideas of 'genesis' occurred - which would prove conclusively that it was only life that mattered and not where it came from - an answer wasn't even once attempted.The evolutionists position is that it wouldn't change in any significant way at all so all the creos had to do was show how we are wrong. But we had not one single comment.And yet Buzz crosses the line last, claiming a win despite foul play. Astonishing.