Evolution has been Disproven

Hi Pecos,I see you tried to post the same thing in both Message 80 and Message 82. If you prematurely hit the Submit Reply button, you can still complete the rest of your message by editing it.I'm surprised to see a reply to something I wrote nearly a year and a half a ago, but it's heartening to see that some people take the discussion seriously enough to read the entire thread. You may have misconstrued what I was trying to say. If you check my Message 8 again you'll see that it is a reply to Karl, not to Defender. I was attempting to explain to Karl why EvC Forum will always have new members who know little about evolution. The paragraph from me that you quoted was talking about Creationists who do not believe us when we tell them the actual definitions of scientific terms. It is a common mistake of Creationists to believe that the theory evolution is about the origin of life, but it isn't. Abiogenesis is the study of the origin of life. There's certainly a gray area between life and non-life (i.e., at what point during the process of becoming life should complex chemistry be considered life), but all fields of science blend into other fields at the boundaries. For example, is thermodynamics physics or chemistry? Traditionally it's been chemistry, but now there's quantum thermodynamics, which is definitely physics (physicists are not so far off the mark to say that all science is physics, but that's a separate issue).In other words, I was expressing my inability to understand why many Creationists reject even basic definitions.--Percy

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In other words, I was expressing my inability to understand why many Creationists reject even basic definitions.

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Thanks for the composition, I appreciate your effort, but it does not ease my concerns about how creationists are viewed as somehow inferior, whether they understand science or not, whether they want to or not, and even whether or not they lay a dismal egg of ignorance. It is their affair, and if you do not wish to engage them in dialogue, you simply tell them, or don't promote their threads....as I am expressing my inability to understand why 'your kind' rejects Christianity/religion? Why is that?

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"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."
Hey, Albert, I agree!

To backtrack a bit to message 49...use of dictionaries and encyclopedias are useful to a point, but as has already been pointed out to get to the detailed level of understanding one must get past the few lines in a dictionary or the few paragraphs in an encyclopedia to the jargon and exacting definitions used by science. The quite similar definitions of SG and abiogenesis in these general reference texts seem to have defender hung up..perhaps defender's arguments are with dictionary and encyclopedia companies.As related to what Mr. Jack said, evolution deals with change after life started. Abiogenesis is a related but nontopic issue to evolution better suited to chemistry,or for some, cosmology or theology.Also,to quote from a 1933 text about the limitations of science is not very timely.What you have proven is that due to limitations in space and general definitions to various age groups and learning levels, that dictionaries and encyclopedias don't always give exacting scientific definitions. Several posters have made this distintion clear...to me anyway.The devil is in the details....dang that devil!ABB

Sorry, but the message you replied to was written 2 years ago and the author is long gone.

Thanks Jacen... I usually check the timestamp... I fooled myself when I saw some current responses and then read the thread from the beginning and didn't check the timestamp on a midthread message I responded to..chalk it up to being new here.Thanks againABB

Well, this is a valid concern, but I don't see how very much can be done about it. As long as there are Creationist websites out there spreading misinformation, and as long as there are naive Christians out there willing to read these websites and then march in here as full of indignation as they are of erroneous ideas, the possibility of attitudes like disdain, deprecation and denigration creeping into posts is hard to avoid. The situation is exacerbated when Creationists refuse to accept simple scientific definitions, such as for evolution and abiogenesis. I mean, after defining the terms for someone, what is the proper response to, "No, you're wrong." They *could* look it up, after all, and verify for themselves that you're not lying to them, but that's a rare event. Reject Christianity/religion? That seems like such a strange way of putting it. I'm not an opera lover, but it doesn't seem accurate to say I've rejected opera. By the same reasoning, I'm not Jewish, but I don't feel like I've rejected Judaism. I'm not Moslem, either, but I don't feel like I've rejected the Moslem faith. And so even though I'm not a Christian, I don't feel like I've rejected Christianity. In fact, as a Unitarian I embrace the same holy books, principles and morals as Christianity, and so I feel much more like I've accepted Christianity than rejected it, despite not being a Christian.But I do reject the interpretation of Genesis of the evangelical Christian community.--Percy

Percy,
Certainly you knew this question would come up when you used that term: How do you define Unitarian? The dictionary shows three meanings:1. An adherent of Unitarian Universalism.
2. A monotheist who is not a Christian.
3. A Christian who is not a Trinitarian.Would the points outlined in uua.org describe your beliefs? UUA.org discusses "spiritual life" and "God" etc.
I'm just trying to understand what you believe, because up until now I thought you were a full blown atheist.

Good grief, Ned; you're right about "ignorance". But what about "twisted logic"? Yes, life came from non-life. But the view of modern SCIENCE (ToE) says it came about by ACCIDENT, or RANDOM PROCESSES, or CHANCE or whatever term they've switched to lately. While Christianity says GOD designed/made it. To use twisted logic as you did above is on the same plane as "willful ignorance", which is not a very strong foundation for discussion.

Good grief, you're right. And did you notice that it took a LIVING organism with a set of INSTRUCTIONS to make that life? So, it was LIFE making LIFE. Not dead stuff bringing itself to life. You did notice that in your example, right?

In one sentence you manage to get two major screwups which I'm pretty sure you have already been told are wrong. (who was it accusing us of being arrogant because we found difficult to tolerate?).The ToE says nothing about how life came about. It tells us how life diversified into the forms we have today. How life arose remains to be determined. It may not have come about by chance at all.Evolution is NOT a random process.Now have you read that over a couple of times. Once that is settled in we can progress a bit.

You hit it right on the head. And the REASON they distance themselves from abiogenesis is the "amino acid problem" that is absolutely insurmountable. There is just no way for enough left handed amino acids to come about by "chance" to make even ONE right handed protein. The probability of that happening by itself is 10 to the oh, 1200th or so power I believe (law of probability is 10 to the 50th power, don't forget). And even if that DID happen, we would have only ONE protein that COULDN'T survive on it's own because it would have NO instructions, much less a mechanism, to replicate itself. You want to see an evolutionist go beserk? Just mention the amino acid problem to them; but be sure to DUCK so you don't get hit by inadvertant sputum!And Mr Jack makes a good show of a point in post # 25: First, there is NO mathematical model that shows ANY plausibility whatsoever for life coming from non-life (amino acid problem).Second, "some experiments" refer to the "Miller" experiment (and others) which insinuated that a bolt of lightning (and other stuff) made "the building blocks of life" somehow, which was a bogus experiment but I won't cover that here (evolutionists get VERY defensive when you take pokes at Miller), neglecting the fact that Miller's experiment produced nothing more than the same POISONOUS mixture of left-handed and right-handed amino acids that a dead body produces by itself (WITHOUT intelligence!).And third, they "lack any credible alternative theory" because they don't want to consider GOD as the owner of this chunk of real estate, and that he made some rules for anyone who wants to live here (rules like "thou shalt not bear false witness" and "thou shalt not covet" and "thou shalt not use God's name in vain", etc). If they leave God out, they will NEVER have a credible alternative theory.

Don't know. Who was it? Is this a quiz? I'm TRYING to read carefully. Yeah. Right. And it CAN'T. So why isn't it taught that way? We're taught that we came from a primordial broth after a bunch of (random) chemical reactions took place. And it's all taught in the SAME breath. Speaking of reading CAREFULLY, did you NOTICE that? So, where do we draw the line? And did you notice Darwin's comments about the "origin of plants"? (this is NOT a quiz). "Origin" eh? Now WHY would Charles be thinking about the ORIGIN of ANYTHING? Seems like he had a thing for botany, I guess. Now I'm starting to see a flicker of light in you, Ned. Unless you're talking about aliens of course. Then we would have to discuss the origin of aliens, though, wouldn't we?But nevermind all that; instead I want to focus on: Oh, really. Well, now I feel like I'm being enlightened. So, tell me more; what is the "non-random" driving force behind mutations?

Mutations are random. The "non-random" driving force is selection. Evolution is driving by selection on differences between individuals. The source of differences is partially mutations. Care to quote Darwin's comments? It is a bad idea to be sarcastic and arrogance when you are displaying a high degree of ignorance of the subject. So you want to discuss the origin of God instead of aliens?In fact, that is not at all what I meant about "not by accident". We don't know yet if that is necessary. There are two possible paths:
1) Accident. The earliest error-permitting replicators were simple enough to arise by chance in a reasonable amount of time.
2) Chemical Imparative. The nature of the chemical conditions at the time makes error-prone replicators a natural consequence of those conditions. That is they are as bound to arise as water is from H2 and O2 under the right conditions.Of course some mix of the two is more likely. There are hints that a self-catalyzing replicator can be a rather simple chemical.As as small side question: When it is demonstrated how life can arise from non-living chemicals will you then be giving up your faith? You seem to think that it is a direct disproving of God. That is not a position that the majority of Christians take of course. Just the fringier ones.ABE
Corrected comment about off topic, this is about origin of life, just badly titled.This message has been edited by NosyNed, 02-09-2005 01:22 AM

Juhrahnimo LOL. Can you locate a paper in a peer reviewed source where someone claims that chance is the way that amino acids come about? Have you heard of the work of Professor Donna Blackmond?This website
http://www.ic.ac.uk/P5343.htm has an article you might be interested in. LOL!Sputum? Where do you get this stuff from? Watchtower comics? Really? Do you think that a mathematical model is required to show such a thing?Perhaps you could also allow us in on what constitutes non-life as seperate from life? Certainly the Miller experiments has fallen from favour over the years however research continues to gather evidence of the conditions necessary for understanding how the process of abiogenesis could have occured.The work is hard and the evidence difficult to pin down but given time there will no doubt be a coherent model that will stand scrutiny, Science doesn't consider god because there is no evidence to show that such a entity is more than the fabrication of our minds. From the tone of your post it appears that you feel threatened by the possibility of a non divine means of beginning for life. That is a bold statement coming from someone who has already made up their mind and closed it to any possibility of their being mistaken.

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

Do you know that probability is expressed as a number between 0 and 1? "10 to the oh 1200th or so power" is not a number between 0 and 1 and can thus never be the probability of anything.What do you mean by "law of probability is 10 to the 50th power"? It is a meaningless statement to me.

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We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. - Richard Dawkins