Biogenesis

I will respond to this, I have watched it twice now,and have taken notes. I will be out of town for the next two days. I will respond asap.

You don't falsify a theory with a theory kid. You falsify a theory with observations.Also, just for the record, your statements about abiogenesis being a possibility and abiogenesis being falsified are completely contradictory when using the definition of falsification that is common to Bluejay, Catholic Scientist, Rahvin, me and the rest of the English-speaking world. Something is either considered possible or it is falsified, not both.This is why people keep accusing you of saying that abiogenesis is impossible; you say that it has been falsified. Of course, to do that would be tricky. To falsify abiogenesis in the broad sense of the word would require that you falsify, via observation, every conceivable abiogenetic model, a Sisyphean task indeed. Certainly any given specific model of abiogenesis could be falsified, but you seem reticent about taking a stab at this.ABE; Thanks to Moose and Bluegenes for spotting the mistake in this post. What can I say... It was late Edited by Adminnemooseus, : See above.Edited by Granny Magda, : Fixed daft mistake.

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Mutate and Survive

Not Huxley's version of biogenesis, about known life forms, obviously. If you think that this is bad science, then you need to present the evidence that contradicts it.From NASA:

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The Big Bang Model is a broadly accepted theory for the origin and evolution of our universe.

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From wiki:

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The Big Bang is the cosmological model of the universe that is best supported by all lines of scientific evidence and observation. The essential idea is that the universe has expanded from a primordial hot and dense initial condition at some finite time in the past and continues to expand to this day.

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You see. Abiogenesis, rather than eternal life, is supported by all lines of scientific evidence and observation. That makes it damn good science, whether it's O.K. with little you or not, and whether you understand the lines of evidence or not. In the nineteenth century, Huxley could be excused for regarding his own view that some form of abiogenesis was responsible for the origin of life as being a philosophical view, because he had none of the cosmological or chemical evidence that we have now. Also, supernatural explanations for many things were still given credibility in his culture (despite complete lack of evidence for such things), so that natural explanations for natural phenomena might still, in 1870, be regarded as philosophical viewpoints (bizarrely).

Obsolete.Edited by bluegenes, : Just saw moose's edit on granny's post.

Just to make it easier for you to dissect the video is a link to Szostak's Lab: Szostak Lab: Research It is not the principle of biogenesis that bothers people, it is your lack of understanding of it and your insistence that you are the absolute authority on it. Top that off with your denial of the evidence and semantic banter.
I feel pity for you. You have an oppurtunity to really learn something here, but instead you want to make this into an argument of logic principles. It is not our faith, but yours that seems to be tested. You seem to place limits on God to a 2000 year old book, while I place no such limit on His Power.

Hi, AlphaOmegakid.You're getting predictable. Well, I don’t really care why you’re not responding to me, but you’ve just confirmed my suspicions that, in order to get you to respond, I have to start with a direct rub or ad hominem remark. Please understand, it’s nothing personal: I just wanted to find a way to get answers to my questions, and this seemed to work best. Really? That’s interesting. Here’s you in Message #89: What logical fallacy is that? Equivocation, maybe? Whatever it is, you are now officially arguing something that you weren’t arguing at the beginning of this thread. I personally think it’s because, after having seen that “Biogenesis is silent about origins” conflicts with your philosophical faith, you promptly switched sides on the debate.Oops! I made an ad hominem.Withdrawn. That’s what they say in courtrooms after they’ve said something inappropriate, but don’t really want to take it back---I saw it on Law & Order.If you were not referring to Miller-Urey, or something similar to it, when you said this--- ---what were you referring to?But, I’ll go ahead and let you be right. I apologize for misunderstanding your argument and assuming that I knew what you were saying when, in fact, my argument was a complete and total strawman. In fact, all silliness aside, I can see how I kind of jumped the gun on that one. Sorry. Please notice that CS called me on this as well. See, that’s how I know he’s an honest debater, because, even when he agrees with me, he tells me when I’m making bad arguments.But, now I’ll repeat my argument, except with “Pasteur” instead of “M-U”:Reformed Bluejay writes: You claim that Pasteur’s meat-and-maggots experiment is “falsification” of abiogenesis. So, how many times did Edison “falsify” the lightbulb concept before he actually made one? No doubt you would have said, in 1878, that the concept of the lightbulb should not be taught in science classes because it had been “falsified.” Then, one year later, you’d be the biggest jackass in all of the scientific community.

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Given what I said above, can you give me any reason why “falsified,” of your usage, should be given any sort of respect by a scientist? Why should we even regard the term as meaning anything in particular? What difference does it make whether an idea is falsified, if falsification can be reversed? Your usage of the term is utterly, irreconcilably, incomprehensibly wrong.

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But, wait: there is a proper usage of “falsified” in the Edison context. He falsified the X thousand hypotheses that each of the X thousand things he tried would actually produce a sustainable electric light. So, applying this across fields, what did the Pasteur experiment falsify? It falsified the hypothesis that maggots can form spontaneously from rotting meat. Did it falsify the hypothesis that life can arise gradually from non-living chemicals through a gradual increase in complexity of naturally-occurring chemical reactions?

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No. So stop saying that it did.Lest you accuse me of further strawmanization of your arguments, here are two quotes of you claiming that Pasteur’s experiment falsifies Abiogenesis: Now, support the claim, or retract it, because you very well did make it.----- What’s even more crucial is that we actually define a term that accurately portrays reality. Since viruses behave the same as life with respect to pretty much all theories that relate to life, I propose that, for all theoretical purposes, viruses be considered “life.” They certainly behave more like life than like non-living things.That’s why there’s so much debate about exactly what certain terms mean: not because we care about semantics, but because our human tendency to become married to semantics has often caused us to overlook all those areas where nature itself has “equivocated” on what it considers "life" and "non-life." Why should a virus behave like life in relation to any of the laws of nature if it is not life, or at least some sort of “life-oid?” It’s not our definitions that are equivocating, but rather, nature playing silly buggers with our categorizing fetish.-----And now, we have a role-reversal: Please show me where I have made this claim. This is a strawman argument: I didn’t say anything about pigs or China or God or the Bible. In fact, the only thing I remember saying about God on this entire thread is that I believe in Him too.If you wish to complain about other people’s exact wording, you’d better be willing to stick to exact wording, yourself. Otherwise, you are being intellectually dishonest.-----One other point I’d like to address: How is this valid? If there was a point in history wherein no life existed (as predicted by Big Bang Theory), then, if the Law of Biogenesis were universally true, there would never be any life in existence, because life could not arise where no life exists. So, your claim here is invalid.The thing you have to do is defeat Big Bang Theory, because the “Law of Biogenesis,” as you see it, is in direct violation of BBT.Edited by Bluejay, : I didn't like my wording around the "nature's equivocation" part.Edited by Bluejay, : Cool yellow color to my text.Edited by Bluejay, : Removed a childish, offensive and Forum-Guidelines-breaking remark ad replaced it with something more innocuous. I apologize to AOkid if he already read it.

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Darwin loves you.

Well since you asked so nicely, I guess I will oblige. I have already responded to this video twice now, but this one will be in detail. I have asked for evidence for abiogenesis, and this video happens to be the best offered, so lets examine this evidence.1. It's a cartoon! Graphics and animation. I have accused people who believe in this stuff as having a great philosophical faith. This video is strong evidence of that. It is full of imagination with little or no evidentiary content.2. The video starts by making this statement... Yeah. Right. Why then do you (the video maker) and Dr. Szostak invoke evolution so early on in the process of abiogenesis. The whole reason creationists accuse evo's of using evolution throughout their various constructs is because they do. In this case evolution is hypothesized light years in development before a genome was present and light years before life was present. Some type of natural selection must act on complicated molecules. In the case of this mythology, evolution must start acting as soon as the lipid vesicle contains some sort of polymer nucleotide sequence. Evolution was invoked before life, reproduction, and genetic material. Let alone a genome.Not only do you have the mythology of chemicals coming to life. You also have the mythology of evolution acting on those chemicals.Now to support this here is a quote directly from Dr. Szostak's page: So let's get this straight! Every abiogenetic postulation/model requires a new theory of evolutionary natural selection for success.3. The whole of Dr. Szostak's work in abiogenesis can be wrapped up in one word. EQUIVOCATION. With this logical fallacy invoked from the beginning, wonders of science can happen in magical mystical ways to like minded fallacious thinkers.In the video, it begins by comparing current life with early life. What? What is this early life? It certainly isn't alive! So let's just see how equivocation can work it's magic."Early life must have been extremely simple"... There you go. Now you have your unsuspecting, non skeptical followers all convinced that there is such a thing as "early life" that differs from life as we know it today and as it is presented in the rocks. So "early life" is assumed with zero evidence and zero definition. Talk about mind numbed robots.4. Now we perform another act of mythological magic by equivocating on the word "growth". Growth in a cell is caused by many functions, but metabolism and the ATP process is fundamental to cellular growth. But not with simple "early life". "Early life" can start with simple lipid bilayers that can form vesicles. With a thermodynamic energy source, these vesicles can bump into each other and one vesicle may "consume" another mechanically. Now while waiving my magical equivocation wand, he declares that as "cellular growth".Did I just miss something? Or did this highly educated scientist just describe cellular growth as being comparable to growth of crystals, stalagmites and stalactites and a whole host of other chemical systems that grow. But that's why there is a differentiation between life and death, because life's growth is self contained. Food is imported through the membrane, processed, and energy is created. No energy source is needed. Only organic matter is needed. But with the magic of equivocation, we can have "growing" lipid cells.5. But we are not finished yet! Now let’s make one vesicle magically grow into two! That’s “cell division”. Man that wand is important. With thermal energy provided the “simple cells” can bump into each other and mechanically divide. Hallelujah, we have replication.So now we have “simple cells” “growing” and “dividing.” I do love magic shows and this one is the best I’ve ever seen. And all he uses is the magic wand of equivocation. With each magic act, there is an element of reality and an element of deception. The reality is that lipid bilayers and vesicles do grow and divide. The deception is in the equivocation of terms.6. Now for the final act. Let’s create genetics. Monomers come into the “cell membrane” through simple osmosis. Then they join with other monomers already inside and become RNA like polymers. That’s like putting one rabbit in the hat and then pulling ten out. This part is really glossed over. Just the right monomers must enter, and no oxidizing agents can be allowed. And they all must be chiral. But remember, you can’t see into the hat, only the magician knows what’s happening inside. So now we have the beginnings of a “genome”. There goes that magic equivocation wand.7. Now comes another magician. Evolution and natural selection. Even though these “cells” aren’t really growing or dividing now we are going to use the magic of evolution. That magic selects which vesicles that have the polymers inside survive and thrive. And there is more “cell growth” and “division.”8. Wait! I forgot millions of years. He is the greatest magician of all times. He can make anything happen. He can take simple vesicles with simple polymers inside to complex protein producing, metabolizing , and DNA reproducing life. Wow!Shame on Dr. Szostak and all the EVC Forum followers. To allow a legitimate field of science to become overrun by such fallacious use of language. But that is what religious faith can do. I’ve seen it many times.This is nothing more than an equivocating game which is wrong.And to top it off, please review the first quote above from Szostak’s page. This cartoon, is NOT PLAUSIBLE. You people have been advocating that this stuff is plausible, but the good Dr. is not so brazen. He is searching for plausibility. Yet you have the audacity to submit this as scientific evidence. This crap should definitely be kept out of the schools.

It is a "cartoon" that summarizes 20 years of his work. This animation shows in an easy to understand way, the experiments he has carried out.
Did you miss this page of his peer reviewed published papers?
Szostak Lab: PublicationsThis is a cartoon:
Your lack of understanding is profound! I am sure you are aware that the fossil record does show that the earliest forms of life were simple single celled organisms. Way to put words in his mouth. The only person "equivocating" is you AOKid. This is not cellular growth this is growth of a vesicle.
This is not cell division it is splitting of a vesicle. I could not have said what you are doing any better than you did yourself
Oh, but it is.
Every step of this has been tested, reviewed, and repeated in a lab. AGAIN AOKID YOU HAVE FAILED TO DO MORE THAN WAVE YOUR HAND AT THE VIDEOCould you please present some evidence that contradicts ANYTHING presented in the video?

I'm just guessing here, but I think the reason would be similar to the desire that physicists have to come up with a unified theory, which would bring quantum mechanics and general relativity together into a single, coherent, consistent whole. The ToE has been firmly established by evidence from existing, observable life and from the fossil records of life in the past, and it does not make any assertions about how life began in the first place. Given that this theory is firmly established and evolutionary mechanisms are increasingly well understood, it's important that any attempt to explain how life began in the first place should be unified with the ToE, by describing a progression from raw materials and first principles, through stages that are demonstrable or explainable as being consistent with known physical processes, to yield the cellular forms that are the fundamental units of evolution. A theory of origins that does not connect thoroughly and coherently with the ToE would be no good at all. With this statement, and several others throughout this thread (belief in angels, assertion that life was created by the God of the Bible), you've made it clear that you do not want to see any critical, reasoned, evidence-based discussion of the origins of life presented in science classrooms.You say you feel this way because you think that discussions of models such as Dr. Szostak's are no less faith-based than your own personal beliefs. You refuse to acknowledge the supporting evidence, the experimentation, and the attention to physical details that motivate and support Szostak's models. I expect that if you paid closer attention to the details, and noticed changes, adjustments or alternate versions of the models, you would criticize this as just more equivocation, more weaseling to side-step falsifiability, rather than recognizing it as an essential part of the scientific process that it is.In effect, you are not willing to submit your own beliefs to the same scrutiny and critical thinking that is always necessarily applied to the ToE, to Szostak's or similar models of life origins, to general relativity, quantum mechanics, and so on. In other words, you want the schools to reject scientific topics because they conflict with your personal religious beliefs.I respect and credit your position with regard to this important point: you are clearly not proposing that your religious beliefs should be taught in science classrooms. But you seem to be appealing to a misguided (or warped) sense of "fairness": "if my Judeo-Christian beliefs about life origins cannot be taught in science class, then neither can anything that contradicts my beliefs." With all due respect, that's outrageous and preposterous -- it puts us back to the trials of Galileo and Scopes. Is that where you want us to go? Must your tolerance of critical thinking really be so limited?(I would agree with a proposal that the Biblical creation story can be taught in public schools -- in a social studies class where all creation mythologies are given fair consideration, and critical thinking can be applied more freely on logical, ethical and esthetic grounds, without the requirements of scientific rigor and physical evidence.)My apologies if my comments seem like an ad hominem attack. My intent is not to criticize you personally, but simply to clarify the manner in which you exemplify so much of the argumentation from people who, because of their personal religious beliefs, persistently reject non-religious explanations of reality.

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autotelic adj. (of an entity or event) having within itself the purpose of its existence or happening.

No you are way wrong. I was asked to comment on the evidence in the video. I did. This video goes way beyond Dr.Szostak's work. He does not make the claims this video (as evidence) does. This video is hand waiving equivocation. Period. No, I didn't. I did my research before I commented on the video. The question is did you? Have you read any of his work? If so, why don't you try and cite one of his articles and try to write more than a couple of legitimate sentences about it. I will be happy to talk technical with you rather that endure your silly little claims and one liner hand waiving comments. Sticks and stones... I think your lack of understanding is profound. You certainly have'nt been able to make a legitimate argument about anything. Instead, you rely on these juvenile comments. CS take note, this is what real troll activity is all about. Then how, pray tell, is this evidence of the formation of life? Please try and string a paragraph of word together in your argument. If you can. Crystals grow and crystals are mechanically divided. Is that evidence of the origin of life also? There are many examples of evidence of chemical substances that grow and divide in the same manner as vesicles. They are dead. Non-living. The only way for this to be assumed as evidence for the origin of life is an equivocation of terms that would make one think that this is similar to cellular activity. It is not at all similar without the equivocation. Your dishonesty is evident with your techniques of quotemining my words. Absolutely not!. Vesicles grow just like many other chemical arrangements do. Vesicles divide just like many other chemical arrangements do. RNA can self replicate under certain labratory conditions. This has all been tested, reviewed, and repeated in the labratory. RNA naturally spontaneously forming and later self replicating in a vesicle has not happened. Replication of vesicles with RNA has not happened. And no natural selection of self replicating vesicles has happened. That's the real evidence.What truly has been seen by science is that certain dead chemical arrangements grow and divide. That's evidence of death, or non-living matter. This is not evidence that supports that life can come from chemicals.And the main point that need to emphasized is that Dr, Szostak doesn't make the wild unsubstantiated claims your silly little cartoon does.From the words of his own web page... Dr Szostak doesn't claim to have a plausible pathway to a primitive cell. He is working on a hypothetical model. He doesn't have one and has not published one. He does not have enough evidence that suggests the things you think he is suggesting or the video is suggesting. The evidence does not support a legitimate pathway at this time.Now why don't you stop waiving your tiny one liner hands, and actually put up a well thought out argument if you think this evidence is plausible.

Bluejay my dear friend. I tried my best to help you, but the way your mind works, it is closed to recognizing fallacies. Yes, I constructed a strawman. It was obviously done on purpose. "Pigs flying over China" is a rather large clue. It was an absurdity to show you and others how dishonest strawman arguments are. That's why I constructed one for you that was obviously absurd. The absurdity was intended for you to recognize, but you didn't.And still you thought I was actually arguing this. This just goes to show how a mind that has been trained in fallacies cannot recognize them. It bothered you that I made this ridiculous claim. It should. All strawman arguments are ridiculous, deceptive, and dishonest. Many have been made against me, and they aren't obviously ridiculous like the one I constructed for you. They are slight twists to my words, but are equally deceptive dishonest and ridiculous.Now I hope, that at least you will think twice before you claim that I am arguing a certain way. Be sure of what I am saying, and not what you are hearing. If you argue what you hear, you may be constructing a strawmen.I respectfully and laughingly withdraw my obviously ridiculous strawman of the pigs flying over China.Please forgive me for such a stunt, but I felt it was long overdue to make this point.

There is actually more evidence for pigs flying over China than there is for most creationist claims:

The same can't be said for most creationist claims.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

Yes this is the kind of credibility that is represented in this forum.

So, you're unable to refute?

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And by the way, your critique of the video was super shitty. You were the one doing the equivocating and you basically just hand waved it away.But since you're more interested in arguing like a troll than actually learning something, I won't waste my time explaining it to you.

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Science fails to recognize the single most potent element of human existence.
Letting the reigns go to the unfolding is faith, faith, faith, faith.
Science has failed our world.
Science has failed our Mother Earth.
-System of a Down, "Science"He who makes a beast out of himself, gets rid of the pain of being a man.
-Avenged Sevenfold, "Bat Country"

Hi, Kid. Given the state of the debate, I wasn't going to make any assumptions. Um... the evidence clearly shows that I did recognize it, and that I did call you on it, and that I am still waiting for you to put up a rebuttal against my original argument. You keep diverting the thread away from the topic at hand for the opportunity to mock me and my colleagues, and have somehow managed to forget that your whole point on this thread was to show me that abiogenesis is not science, and that you are not addressing this main point because you would rather make fun of scientists.If you would like, I could go through all my nearly four hundred posts and point out all the stupid errors I made in every one of them---I am sure there are a lot, because I have effectively learned formal debate logic from this forum, and have been very pleased with how it has improved my ability to do good science in the real world. Then, I will create an entire thread about how stupid and fallacy-prone Bluejay is, and you can spend hours mocking me and my ignorance about science---that could be a good creo recruitement tool, too. Maybe then, after you’ve settled down (in a year or so), we can have an intelligent debate about whether or not Abiogenesis is a reasonable conclusion from the little evidence we have, regardless of who the person is who is making the argument.Go to the nearest university or other academic setting, and ask all the logicians, mathematicians and scientists there to choose between our conflicting definitions of “falsification.” I guarantee that they will all line up behind the definition you have rejected, despite having been provided it half a dozen times or more on this one thread. Until you have done this or the equivalent, I will not entertain any more discussion with you about the definition of "falsification," because it won't do a lick of good.I have been straightforward and honest with you, admitting to you when I made mistakes, changing my arguments to your satisfaction, apologizing when my wordings or assumptions were poor, and repenting when I wrote something inappropriate. Yet, all you seem capable of returning to me is self-righteous "forgiveness" for a swear word and mockery for an inability to understand your miserable interpretation of the workings of logic and science, with a simultaneous inability and/or unwillingness to respond to any of the arguments placed before you. I understand your arguments just fine: I am rejecting them, because they are stupid and wrong. And you are simply calling me stupid because I disagree.-----Now, to refresh your memory, here are the points that I made in Message 246:

1. You have changed your position on whether or not Biogenesis has anything to say about the origin of life. I think this is because you realized you were making claims contrary to your philosophical faith, or are equivocating in a vain attempt to stay ahead. What is your explanation for it?
2. You have claimed that Pasteur's experiment disproved the mechanism proposed for an abiotic origin of life when, in fact, it disproved an entirely different mechanism.
3. You still think definitions and quotes hold more credibility than straightforward observations of the world around us, such as, “viruses can’t be life because there is a definition that excludes them, even though they certainly behave like life.”

Please read Message 246 and take the time to respond to the three main points I made, as outlined directly above this paragraph.You have several options:

1. Show how I have misrepresented you in each of these cases (this one will be hard, because I have a paper trail to prove them all).
2. Show how your reasoning in each of these cases is appropriate for science.
3. Admit that you were wrong or that you made a simple mistake or typo.

-----In addition, I would like you to take a look at Message 197, because I think your answer to that would be a tremendous help for everybody on this thread. Note: I made one minor change in the wording of that post. I apologize in advance if this offends or upsets you, and I will be happy to change it back to the original wording if you like that better.{AbE: The link I provided to message #197 isn't working, and I've tried to redo it several times. You may have to just go there manually. Sorry.}Edited by Bluejay, : Apology added at the end.Edited by Bluejay, : Switched links to the "msg" dBCodes. Thanks, CS: I knew there was a reason we kept you around.

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Darwin loves you.