Before the Big Bang

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...instantaneous emergence of an extremely complicated life form the moment water existed....

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I have commented on this in the other thread in which you made this statement. It is so misleading that, if deliberate, could be seen as dishonest.--

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I for one will not argue with these giants of science.

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Considering that other giants of science have no problems with abiogenesis or evolution, you are being pretty selective about which giants of science you will argue with.--

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The funny thing is that having made the admission, science proceeds as though nothing had been discovered.

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This is false. As usual whenever scientists have a question that they cannot answer, they are actively working to find the answers. There is a lot of research going on right now in the field of abiogenesis. Although by no means complete, there have been a lot of discoveries, and we are gaining more and more insight into the possible processes. It seems that either you or your sources are the one who are proceeding as if nothing is being discovered.Let me point out that these "discoveries" that you mention consist of two scientists who, while undoubtably giants in their own fields, made statements based on their ignorance of the work being done in other fields. A person, however a giant he may be, merely expressing his skepticism hardly constitutes a "discovery".

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There was nothing to select from for the simple reason that as the first life form emerged there were by definition no previous life forms to select from.

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This is off-topic in a cosmology thread. See my reply entitled There was no "first" life form in a more appropriate thread.

OK, we disagree. No sense wasting time in this forum. I respect your views and hold on to mine.

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Mihkel

Dude, this is dodging. Opinions can vary from person to person, but facts do not vary.

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You know nothing of the sort! You assume or place faith in such but you do not know.Without your belief that something is beyond this world your arguement falls apart and I would maintain that by this reasoning it is all in your head.

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How dare you insult someone's faith! All in your head? Try the pre big bang, or some of the wild drug trip like dreams of old age conclusions! Without our belief, we would be, of all men, most miserable, but we will never be without it! You assume or place faith in evo things not proved every bit as much as believers in the Almighty do! We do not 'know'? Wrong, deep down we know, it is only you who know not. Belief something is 'beyond this world'? Not at all it is an important part of creation, and this world. It only shows where you are really coming from, whether you admit it or not.This message has been edited by simple, 02-16-2005 02:57 AM

simple First off,Jazzlover may have whatever faith he wishes to.He is not entitled to claim to know something such as spiritual dimensions unles he can demonstrate such.Second I do not know what you are meaning by pre-big bang or the wild drug trip you refer to. Why would you be miserable? You would be,just as we all are,human, and responsible completely for your actions.There would be no blaming demons for leading you astray and no appeal for forgiveness for not living up to someone else's standard of behaviour. Really?And what do you think I place faith in? Many of us live without belief in a deity so how can it be that important? LOL.Boldly spoken lad.Now show me what you think I am coming from.

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Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.

Unsupported assertion, based solely on your prejudices.

Jon - I think he has a book to plug, I doubt he's going to take onboard anything that is going to involve pulping that book.

The late Sir Fred Hoyle was (in this case) flat-out wrong. He made a calculation based on garbage assumptions and produced garbage. See Claim CF002.1 and Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics, and Probability of Abiogenesis Calculations. Not being able to explain it no is not the same as "it's imposible" or "we'll never be able to explain it". Crick did not rule out the possibility of abiogenesis. But real scientists will, in these cases, because in these cases those giants of scoence were wrong. You are using the "argument from authority" fallacy. Giants of science or not, their claims stand and fall on the evidence and the validity of their deductions. They were wrong.

Explain what you mean by dodging, please.
otherwise, I totally agree, there is only one truth.

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Mihkel

He mentioned facts, he never used the word truth. Those are two different things.

No, it is not based on my prejudices but rather the relevant literature - and the statistics of random events/mutations.

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Mihkel

And based on what authority can you assert that they were wrong?

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Mihkel

Then show your calculations.

Crick didn't make the claim that you ascribe to him, and he didn't have the information we have now, not by a long shot. So he's irrelevant.Hoyle started with garbage assumptions and, big surprise, his calculation produced garbage. The scenario for which he calculated was a "strawman" that nobody seriously proposes could have happened, and he put in meaningless and made-up numbers to start with. He even totally ignored the laws of chemistry!In addition he made another serious and fundamental mistake of assuming the the life we see is the only kind of life that could possibly evolve; he should have calculated the odds of any kind of life appearing.Try an analogy. Throw a penny towards a football field from way high up. The probability of life arising is like the probability of the penny landing on the field. The probability that Hoyle calculated is like calculating the probability that the penny lands on one particular specified blade of grass and then claiming that the penny can't land on the field because it's so improbable that the penny would land on that particular blade of grass. We don't know the probability of the penny landing on the field without more information (such as "what do you mean by way high up?" and "How many pennies do we get to throw?" and several others); but we definitley don't know that it couldn't land on the field just because the exact place it landed is improbable. Incredibly improbable stuff happens all the time.He made two errors that anyone knowledgable in undergraduate statistics shouldn't have made. He was great in many ways, but he royally screwed the pooch on that one.See Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics, and Probability of Abiogenesis Calculations.