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Author Topic:   abiogenesis
Iblis
Member (Idle past 3895 days)
Posts: 663
Joined: 11-17-2005


Message 10 of 297 (543391)
01-17-2010 5:27 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by marc9000
01-17-2010 1:25 PM


Poetry and Biology
Abiogenesis is nothing less than a scientific analysis of what that "red clay" was composed of and what changes it underwent over time as God breathed that "breath of life" into it. Creation is nothing more than an inspired account of "Who done it."
The argument starts when people who can't understand poetry stake their faith and the faith of millions on obsolete pseudo-Aristotelian ideas about history and literary criticism. Aristotle wasn't popular with protein-starved churchmen because he was right, but rather because he had to dumb down his material to the point where even a bastard like Alexander the Great could get A's in his class.
Take it home, man. It was old and tired already before Jesus was born. God is dead; we killed him. He made us do it, because he was tired of shit like this. You can't be saved until you kill him too. In your heart, every day. Start now, give up your anti-science idol. They won't let you into heaven with these idols in your pockets. Kill it now.

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 Message 1 by marc9000, posted 01-17-2010 1:25 PM marc9000 has not replied

Iblis
Member (Idle past 3895 days)
Posts: 663
Joined: 11-17-2005


Message 23 of 297 (543631)
01-20-2010 12:41 AM
Reply to: Message 21 by Dr Adequate
01-19-2010 8:51 PM


Recognition
And yet I should think it a strange semantic quibble if someone were to argue that in that case, by definition, Jesus couldn't have turned water into wine; and stranger still if this argument came from a Biblical literalist.
They do say that though, in essence; or great gobs of them do, at least. They say that what he turned the water into was "new wine", alias grape juice, ie unfermented, aka won't get you drunk. They say this is why the wedding guests were so surprised that he didn't serve that first, but waited until they were all drunk and couldn't really appreciate the flavor and freshness of it. I know it makes more sense the other way around, but making more sense to the mature drinker isn't on their agenda anywhere.
http://www.biblestudymanuals.net/wine.htm
The difference between the denominations is really just a matter of recognition.
Catholics fail to recognize Protestants as fellow Christians.
Protestants fail to recognize the authority of the Pope.
And Baptists fail to recognize each other at the liquor store ...

This message is a reply to:
 Message 21 by Dr Adequate, posted 01-19-2010 8:51 PM Dr Adequate has not replied

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Iblis
Member (Idle past 3895 days)
Posts: 663
Joined: 11-17-2005


Message 27 of 297 (543643)
01-20-2010 3:20 AM
Reply to: Message 26 by Huntard
01-20-2010 3:12 AM


Re: A compromise, perhaps?
Haha no, that's the whole discussion! There's nothing to the question beyond the concession you just made!
If there had been, I would have posted something sensible about the primordial buffet by now.
PS: Oh, I guess there is the one dig about atheist bias, you could give that a good slapping. NM, carry on.

This message is a reply to:
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Iblis
Member (Idle past 3895 days)
Posts: 663
Joined: 11-17-2005


Message 67 of 297 (544053)
01-23-2010 1:38 AM
Reply to: Message 65 by marc9000
01-23-2010 12:24 AM


science please
I'll work on that, it may take a week, or it may take a month.
It's going to take longer than that. You will need falsifiable hypotheses, predictions, experiments, and replicable results. Abiogenesis has scores of these things, because the people interested in it are doing actual work instead of just trying to pit marketing against materialism.
Judge John E Jones III in Dover writes:
On cross-examination, Professor Behe admitted that: There are no peer reviewed articles by anyone advocating for intelligent design supported by pertinent experiments or calculations which provide detailed rigorous accounts of how intelligent design of any biological system occurred. (22:22-23 (Behe)). Additionally, Professor Behe conceded that there are no peer-reviewed papers supporting his claims that complex molecular systems, like the bacterial flagellum, the blood-clotting cascade, and the immune system, were intelligently designed. (21:61-62 (complex molecular systems), 23:4-5 (immune system), and 22:124-25 (blood-clotting cascade) (Behe)). In that regard, there are no peer-reviewed articles supporting Professor Behe’s argument that certain complex molecular structures are irreducibly complex.17 (21:62, 22:124-25 (Behe)). In addition to failing to produce papers in peer-reviewed journals, ID also features no scientific research or testing. (28:114-15 (Fuller); 18:22-23, 105-06 (Behe)). After this searching and careful review of ID as espoused by its proponents, as elaborated upon in submissions to the Court, and as scrutinized over a six week trial, we find that ID is not science and cannot be adjudged a valid, accepted scientific theory as it has failed to publish in peer-reviewed journals, engage in research and testing, and gain acceptance in the scientific community. ID, as noted, is grounded in theology, not science. Accepting for the sake of argument its proponents’, as well as Defendants’ argument that to introduce ID to students will encourage critical thinking, it still has utterly no place in a science curriculum. Moreover, ID’s backers have sought to avoid the scientific scrutiny which we have now determined that it cannot withstand by advocating that the controversy, but not ID itself, should be taught in science class. This tactic is at best disingenuous, and at worst a canard.

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 Message 65 by marc9000, posted 01-23-2010 12:24 AM marc9000 has not replied

Iblis
Member (Idle past 3895 days)
Posts: 663
Joined: 11-17-2005


Message 85 of 297 (544219)
01-24-2010 8:20 PM
Reply to: Message 83 by marc9000
01-24-2010 5:06 PM


Re: Explanatory power
http://www.studytoanswer.net/origins/abiogenesis.html
My question would be (and it’s not a challenge, just a question from myself, a non-scientist) does what you put forward above solve the reducing atmosphere problem as described in this link?
We normally refuse to debate websites, but we appear to be making an exception in this case specifically because your site is so ill-informative. In the future though, please cut-and-paste small portions and summarize relevant arguments in your own terms to make this a better experience for the readers.
Yes, the experiment successfully produced some amino acids, but it did so only as a result of the use of an atmosphere specifically engineered to yield amino acids, since simple molecules containing all the needed atoms were conveniently provided. Evolutionists justify the use of this atmosphere on the basis of their claim that the "early earth" had a reducing atmosphere (one lacking oxygen or other oxidising agents). Yet, the sole reason that this reducing atmosphere is proposed is so that they can then use it to justify their theories! Instead of searching for evidence and then revising their theories to the data, they were (and are) engineering the (proposed) conditions to yield the data they desired. The "reducing atmosphere" of the early earth is completely an evolutionist construct.
This shows a clear failure to understand reduction and its meaning in the study of earth's biosphere. Free oxygen is not a normal condition in the universe! The reason is that hydrogen is ubiquitous, what we tend to think of as "empty space" is actually very diffuse hydrogen. Combine this with the sharp variances in temperature normal to such a near-vacuum, and you have a situation where any existing free oxygen tends to combine with hydrogen to become water vapor and then precipitate into ice. Water is a relatively stable molecule and retains its structure through various elemental states, becoming more complex as other items are dissolved in it.
Several of the "soup" simulations I have witnessed started with free oxygen. It doesn't make any difference, the effect of the electrical discharge is to combine it with the abundance of hydrogen provided to increase the amount of water in the tank. There is no free oxygen left at the water level at the point where the amino acids begin forming.
Your site makes similar mistakes in understanding ultraviolet light; only they aren't mistakes, they are intentional deceptions.
Interestingly, if there had been an early reducing atmosphere when this abiogenesis was going on, the lack of an ozone layer would have meant that any amino acids formed in the primitive atmosphere would have been almost immediately destroyed by the intense ultraviolet radiation. Thus, it's a lose-lose situation for evolutionists on this count.
This is false on two counts. First of all, reduction by natural oxidation of hydrogen to produce a watery surface doesn't preclude the existence of O3 at a much higher elevation, where it could form an ozone layer. But beyond this, and more importantly, the penetration of large amounts of ultraviolet to the surface is not only not bad for the experiment, its essential, because uv at positive angles degrades right-handed compounds to a greater extent than it does left-handed, providing one key part of the best explanation for chirality.
We know that your site is aware of this second part, and ignoring it to confuse the issue, because they discuss it later in a weird misrepresentation of circular polarization in nebulae. Nor are their further arguments any more honest.
There has been no evidence found for the existence of this same sort of "sludge" anywhere in the geologic column, even though it should have been produced abundantly and laid down systematically throughout the entire period during which evolutionists propose that the process of abiogenesis was occurring.
The "sludge" is a key ingredient in hypotheses for the development of metabolism such as the nearly-universal "sandwich" model for the production of lipids and bases. Nor is there any big mystery as to why it isn't stored in the geologic table, it's volatile, it degrades over short periods of time unless energy is provided in a closed environment to generate more stable complex chemicals.
So then, after a vast misconception of what Miller-Urey does, what's the one substantial modern theory we see dissected? The pitiful 40-year-old clay, which was never made for us at all, it was always made for you, the believer.
One of these routes is to rely upon certain types of organophilic clays which are proposed to have served as "directors" for the reactions needed to produce simple biologic molecules, first proposed by the Scottish chemist Cairns-Smith.
Alexander Graham Cairns-Smith found in working with clay that it had certain properties that were useful in explaining (not accounting for, just explaining) the sort of crystalization-and-solution behavior that peptides and bases would have had to go through to become structured enough to become life. He also favors a quantum model for human thought and various other "new age" non-science models; on the other hand he's a good chemist. His "clay" only caught on specifically because it mirrors the bible account in some ways, making it the most appealing model for popular propaganda literature like The Blind Watchmaker by Dawkins.
It was already known to be a dead end at the time it began being used to describe the sort of thing that would have to be true to get to the RNA world, the real theory it is used to spice up as an "alternative" for (read, different angle on.)

This message is a reply to:
 Message 83 by marc9000, posted 01-24-2010 5:06 PM marc9000 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 94 by marc9000, posted 01-26-2010 9:51 PM Iblis has replied

Iblis
Member (Idle past 3895 days)
Posts: 663
Joined: 11-17-2005


Message 107 of 297 (544548)
01-27-2010 12:19 AM
Reply to: Message 94 by marc9000
01-26-2010 9:51 PM


Supper's Ready
So to sum up what you've said, we’re there, with naturalistic abiogenesis? The PAH world hypothesis, combined with claims that the early earth atmosphere posed no threats to it becoming a starting point for evolution to begin, is now a solid theory? I haven’t seen it on the news. What am I not being told about that keeps naturalistic abiogenesis in its current position of only a hypothesis?
Oh, it's worse than that. The main question has been settled for more than 50 years.
In 1953, Stanley Miller and Harold Urey demonstrated that many simple biomolecules could be formed spontaneously from inorganic precursor compounds under laboratory conditions designed to mimic those found on Earth before the evolution of life. Of particular interest was the substantial yield of amino acids obtained, since amino acids are the building blocks for proteins.
In 1957, Sidney Fox demonstrated that dry mixtures of amino acids could be encouraged to polymerize upon exposure to moderate heat. When the resulting polypeptides, or proteinoids, were dissolved in hot water and the solution allowed to cool, they formed small spherical shells about 2 μm in diametermicrospheres. Under appropriate conditions, microspheres will bud new spheres at their surfaces.
Although roughly cellular in appearance, microspheres in and of themselves are not alive. Although they do reproduce asexually by budding, they do not pass on any type of genetic material. However they may have been important in the development of life, providing a membrane-enclosed volume which is similar to that of a cell. Microspheres, like cells, can grow and contain a double membrane which undergoes diffusion of materials and osmosis. Sidney Fox postulated that as these microspheres became more complex, they would carry on more lifelike functions. They would become heterotrophs, organisms with the ability to absorb nutrients from the environment for energy and growth. As the amount of nutrients in the environment decreased, competition for those precious resources increased. Heterotrophs with more complex biochemical reactions would have an advantage in this competition. Over time, organisms would evolve that used photosynthesis to produce energy.
Microparticle - Wikipedia
The Miller-Urey-Fox "soup to nuts" model shows that in virtually any reconstruction of early earth conditions, we are quickly going to arrive at proto-life that is capable of mutating and evolving. The questions that remain open are all about how something like that might have gotten to something more like this, nucleic-acid based life with a cell structure.
Before I get to the difficult parts that are still subject to heavy debate, I want to show you how the "sandwich" part works.
The concept of the primordial sandwich was proposed by the chemist Gnter Wchtershuser to describe the possible origins of the first cell membranes, and, therefore, the first cell.
According to the two main models of abiogenesis, RNA world and iron-sulfur world, prebiotic[1] processes existed before the development of the cell membrane. The difficulty with this idea, however, is that it is almost impossible to create a complex molecule such as RNA (or even its molecular precursor, pre-RNA) directly from simple organic molecules dissolved in a global ocean (Joyce, 1991), because without some mechanism to concentrate these organic molecules, they would be too dilute to generate the necessary chemical reactions to transform them from simple organic molecules into genuine prebiotic molecules.
To address this problem, Wchtershuser proposed that concentration might occur by concentration upon ("adsorption to") the surfaces of minerals. With the accumulation of enough amphipathic molecules (such as phospholipids), a bilayer will self-organize, and any molecules caught inside will become the contents of a liposome, and would be concentrated enough to allow chemical reactions to transform organic molecules into prebiotic molecules.
Although developed for his own iron-sulfur world model, the idea of the primordial sandwich has also been adopted by some adherents of the RNA world model.
Primordial sandwich - Wikipedia
Neither of these are just hypotheses anymore. Their explanatory power has made them theories, and they are used as a background for a great many current hypotheses. I will get to one of these in a moment, but I have some more things I want you to be aware of first. These are things we can already synthesize for ourselves.
Liposomes are used for drug delivery due to their unique properties. A liposome encapsulates a region on aqueous solution inside a hydrophobic membrane; dissolved hydrophilic solutes cannot readily pass through the lipids. Hydrophobic chemicals can be dissolved into the membrane, and in this way liposome can carry both hydrophobic molecules and hydrophilic molecules. To deliver the molecules to sites of action, the lipid bilayer can fuse with other bilayers such as the cell membrane, thus delivering the liposome contents. By making liposomes in a solution of DNA or drugs (which would normally be unable to diffuse through the membrane) they can be (indiscriminately) delivered past the lipid bilayer. There are three types of liposomes - MLV (multilamillar vesicles) SUV (Small Unilamellar Vesicles) and LUV (Large Unilamellar Vesicles). These are used to deliver different types of drugs.
Liposomes are used as models for artificial cells. Liposomes can also be designed to deliver drugs in other ways. Liposomes that contain low (or high) pH can be constructed such that dissolved aqueous drugs will be charged in solution (i.e., the pH is outside the drug's pI range). As the pH naturally neutralizes within the liposome (protons can pass through some membranes), the drug will also be neutralized, allowing it to freely pass through a membrane. These liposomes work to deliver drug by diffusion rather than by direct cell fusion. Another strategy for liposome drug delivery is to target endocytosis events. Liposomes can be made in a particular size range that makes them viable targets for natural macrophage phagocytosis. These liposomes may be digested while in the macrophage's phagosome, thus releasing its drug. Liposomes can also be decorated with opsonins and ligands to activate endocytosis in other cell types.
Liposome - Wikipedia
These are artificial cell membranes that we construct on a regular basis for our own purposes. That in itself wouldn't mean that they could just occur naturally, but luckily we already know they occur naturally, using mineral bases and "sludge", as detailed above.
We also construct our own nucleic-acid chains, from scratch, for similar purposes.
DNA and RNA have a deoxyribose and ribose sugar backbone, respectively, whereas PNA's backbone is composed of repeating N-(2-aminoethyl)-glycine units linked by peptide bonds. The various purine and pyrimidine bases are linked to the backbone by methylene carbonyl bonds. PNAs are depicted like peptides, with the N-terminus at the first (left) position and the C-terminus at the right.[1]
Since the backbone of PNA contains no charged phosphate groups, the binding between PNA/DNA strands is stronger than between DNA/DNA strands due to the lack of electrostatic repulsion. Early experiments with homopyrimidine strands (strands consisting of only one repeated pyrimidine base) have shown that the Tm ("melting" temperature) of a 6-base thymine PNA/adenine DNA double helix was 31 C in comparison to an equivalent 6-base DNA/DNA duplex that denatures at a temperature less than 10 C. Mixed base PNA molecules are true mimics of DNA molecules in terms of base-pair recognition. PNA/PNA binding is stronger than PNA/DNA binding.
Synthetic peptide nucleic acid oligomers have been used in recent years in molecular biology procedures, diagnostic assays and antisense therapies. Due to their higher binding strength it is not necessary to design long PNA oligomers for use in these roles, which usually require oligonucleotide probes of 20—25 bases. The main concern of the length of the PNA-oligomers is to guarantee the specificity. PNA oligomers also show greater specificity in binding to complementary DNAs, with a PNA/DNA base mismatch being more destabilizing than a similar mismatch in a DNA/DNA duplex. This binding strength and specificity also applies to PNA/RNA duplexes. PNAs are not easily recognized by either nucleases or proteases, making them resistant to enzyme degradation. PNAs are also stable over a wide pH range.
Peptide nucleic acid - Wikipedia
Now we are getting to the good part. Peptide nucleic acid has been proposed as a good example of the kind of thing that would have had to have been there prior to an RNA or DNA world such as we see early life consisting of.
Numerous problems exist with the current thinking of RNA as the first genetic material. No plausible prebiotic processes have yet been demonstrated to produce the nucleosides or nucleotides or for efficient two-way nonenzymatic replication. Peptide nucleic acid (PNA) is a promising precursor to RNA, consisting of N-(2-aminoethyl)glycine (AEG) and the adenine, uracil, guanine, and cytosine-N-acetic acids. However, PNA has not yet been demonstrated to be prebiotic. We show here that AEG is produced directly in electric discharge reactions from CH4, N2, NH3, and H2O. Electric discharges also produce ethylenediamine, as do NH4CN polymerizations. AEG is produced from the robust Strecker synthesis with ethylenediamine. The NH4CN polymerization in the presence of glycine leads to the adenine and guanine-N 9-acetic acids, and the cytosine and uracil-N 1-acetic acids are produced in high yield from the reaction of cyanoacetaldehyde with hydantoic acid, rather than urea. Preliminary experiments suggest that AEG may polymerize rapidly at 100C to give the polypeptide backbone of PNA. The ease of synthesis of the components of PNA and possibility of polymerization of AEG reinforce the possibility that PNA may have been the first genetic material.
Just a moment...
Note that this covers the components of PNA, not the assembly process itself. Though much easier than something like RNA, synthesis of PNA still takes some work. So there was some confusion as to how such stacking could have occurred in nature.
Then, starting in 2003 as new starseed transmissions interpreted from the Red Rectangle nebula led us to a deeper understanding of Polycyclic/Nuclear Aromatics, it became clear how this could occur easily.
It is known that polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons are a likely constituent of the primordial sea. PAH's are not normally very soluble in sea water, but when subject to ionizing radiation such as solar UV light, the outer hydrogen atoms can be stripped off and replaced with a hydroxyl group, rendering the PAH's far more soluble in water.
These modified PAHs are amphiphilic, which means that they have parts that are both hydrophilic and hydrophobic. Thus when in solution, like lipids, they tend to self organise themselves in stacks, with the hydrophobic parts protected.
In this self ordering stack, the separation between rings is 0.34 nm. This is the same separation found in RNA and DNA. Smaller molecules will naturally attach themselves to the PAH rings. However PAH rings, while forming, tend to swivel around on one another, which will tend to dislodge attached compounds that would collide with those attached to those above and below. Therefore it encourages preferential attachment of flat molecules such as pyrimidine and purine bases. These bases are similarly amphiphilic and so also tend to line up in similar stacks. This ends up making an effective scaffold for a nucleic acid backbone to form along the bases.
A small change in acidity would then allow the bases to break off from the original stack of PAHs and so form molecules like RNA.
Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon - Wikipedia
Note that my favorite, PNA, is almost certainly not the earliest occurrence of a natural nucleic acid. That honor goes to GNA.
The 2,3-dihydroxypropylnucleoside analogues were first prepared by Ueda et al. (1971). Soon thereafter it was shown that phosphate-linked oligomers of the analogues did in fact exhibit hypochromicity in the presence of RNA and DNA in solution (Seita et al. 1972). The preparation of the polymers was later described by Cook et al. (1995, 1999) and Acevedo and Andrews (1996). The GNA-GNA self-pairing described by Zhang and Meggers is however novel, and the specificity of interaction well-demonstrated, the molecules themselves.
DNA and RNA have a deoxyribose and ribose sugar backbone, respectively, whereas GNA's backbone is composed of repeating glycerol units linked by phosphodiester bonds. The glycerol molecule has just three carbon atoms and still shows Watson-Crick base pairing. Interestingly, the Watson-Crick base pairing is much more stable in GNA than its natural counterparts DNA and RNA as it requires a high temperature to melt a duplex of GNA. It is possibly the simplest of the nucleic acids, so making it a hypothetical precursor to RNA.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNA_(nucleic_acid)
Also note, and this may have bearing on your main theme, everything in this post since Miller-Urey is engaged in evolution. It reproduces, it changes over time, it undergoes natural selection. The only thing that keeps it from being "life" is a metaphysical objection to calling anything less than a complete cell by that name.
Abiogenesis proponents are to a man atheist. The atheist leanings of the current scientific community are comparable to the religious leanings of the ID community.
Nonsense. All the Jesuits and more than half the Charismatics and huge gobs of the Spiritualists of all stripes support abiogenesis or chemical evolution as the means by which their creator accomplished his work. Anyone who studies what I'm giving you and isn't stuck in their box misinterpreting the poetry to limit God's options somehow has no problem with this process. It is, as I have mentioned already, a good solid elucidation of the concept of the development of modern kinds from "red dirt" / pre-organic compost / product of metabolism / shit, on command, of its own accord in its own way, without direct interference required. This is the same process Genesis describes.
I’ve been opposed by several in the past as a group[not here] and been taunted for missing just one or two evenings, as the new posts from different angles continued to pile up.
Well, I for one am not going to taunt you for not answering. What I'm going to taunt you for, is for answering without bringing in this "science" that ID is allegedly doing or being or consisting of.
What I want are hypotheses, predictions, experiments, and replicable results. In case someone may have confused you about this, Buzsaw for example, I don't care about peer review. Bring me replicable results, and I can then, replicate them. I've been through variations on the soup dozens of times, and the sandwich twice. I'm hoping for a stacking experiment with PAH sometime in the next year or so, but there are difficulties working with the stuff because it's a health hazard. (Don't want your genes restacked, do you? Neither did the 9-11 babies.)
There's a huge misrepresentation of how peer review works going on in the non-science community, to reiterate. If you can find replicable results, we can start replicating. Being a humble patent clerk or an anonymous internet rat doesn't prevent that, peer review can begin right here. I've also been involved in Deluge Theory corpse-stacking experiments, with church elders who didn't want to just believe a lie. Any subject, any hypothesis, someone here can walk through it with you.
Edited by Iblis, : psychic attack by Jesuits shouting Rectangle RECTANGLE

This message is a reply to:
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Iblis
Member (Idle past 3895 days)
Posts: 663
Joined: 11-17-2005


Message 205 of 297 (551233)
03-22-2010 1:39 AM
Reply to: Message 199 by marc9000
03-21-2010 5:24 PM


abioGENESIS
Abiogenesis is atheistic trash talk. It can be dressed up in the shiny suit of science only because of the atheists who control science.
No, I can't let this stand, sorry. You think you are defending some sort of high ground, whereas in fact your position is untenable. There is nothing intrinsically atheistic about abiogenesis. Far from it!
NEWS FLASH: The Jesuits believe in God! And they have defended abiogenesis throughout the history of their order. And they aren't alone, the vast majority of intelligent Christians with an interest in natural history have always defended it, going back at least to the 3rd century when the New Testament's view of the Old and the doctrines of the Church Fathers had certainly begun to be collected.
Do you know why? Because it agrees with the Bible! It is a Biblical concept, and it only became a scientific concept when science began to be the prevailing world view. Let's just look at Genesis, and see what God is said to have created and how life is said to have come to be.
First let's look at creation
Genesis 1:1 writes:
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
That's pretty clear, isn't it? Nowadays we might say "spacetime" and "matter/energy", but we know what we are talking about. The sky, and the planet, might sum it up? And we can assume that they were created with the properties that they have, that the nature of the universe and the matter in it are part of this alleged creation event. Yes?
So, is anything else created right thereafterward? Well, not in so many words.
Genesis 1:3 writes:
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
But I won't argue about it. The light is commanded to BE. That could well be a description of a special creation, possibly a detail in the creation of matter/energy, but I won't say it isn't creation. There's another command for something to directly BE, right after that.
Genesis 1:6 writes:
And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
Again, the firmament is commanded to exist. This may well be a special creation, even if the word "create" isn't used. But notice that we already have these waters, that the firmament is to divide. These are part of the "heavens and the earth" that were already created. They are properties of the preexisting matter, in other words. With me so far?
So now let's look at how life comes about.
Genesis 1:11 writes:
And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, [and] the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed [is] in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
Did you catch that? He doesn't create the plants, like he did the heavens and the earth (primary creation.) He doesn't even command them to be, the way he does the light and the firmament (secondary creation.) No, what he does is, he commands the earth to bring them forth. He has created the earth, matter, with the innate ability, to bring forth vegetable life. It does it at his command, BUT it's the earth that does it.
This is a wonderful pre-ce picture of abiogenesis isn't it? Unliving matter brings forth living foliage. Now let's have a look at the rest of the origin of life.
Genesis 1:20 writes:
And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl [that] may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.
See that? He commands the water, to bring forth simple animal life. The earth is already there, it has vegetable life, it has water, now the water has the innate ability, on command, to bring forth simple creatures. He doesn't create them, he tells the water to do the trick he created water with the ability to do. Got it?
Genesis 1:24 writes:
And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.
That's right! The earth, now with vegetable and simple animal life, has the capacity, on its own, on command, to bring forth complex animal life. This is super-clear, these life forms aren't created, they aren't commanded to be, the earth is commanded to bring them forth. If God commands you to bring forth a forum post, is that a special creation? Or is it something you have the ability to do, which you received as part of your own nature?
Now, is there anything else that God is said to have actually created? Sure, let's look at this part.
Genesis 1:27 writes:
So God created man in his [own] image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
Pretty interesting, huh? This might be a rough spot, but I don't think it is. Is it the body of man that is the image of God? I don't think so, I think it has something to do with what St. Paul later calls "a living soul". We could call it intelligence, if we want to use scientific terms. The second story in Genesis goes into more detail, the man is descended from complex organic crud ("red clay") but what God adds to that, is a living spirit.
Is there anything else in Genesis 1 to support this view? Well yes, as ICANT has been kind enough to point out more than once.
Genesis 1:21 writes:
And God created great whales ...
Yep. You got it. The only other organism, that God is specifically noted as creating, rather than just having the world bring forth naturally, are the cetaceans. That's right, the only other set of organisms, besides the primates like ourselves, whom science suspects to have intelligence high enough to constitute self-awareness. "A living soul". Read it, understand it. Stop believing what lazy biologists and dishonest mathematicians tell you about it, and read it, for yourself.
And this is why the Jesuits stuck so hard to spontaneous generation in the pre-Pasteur years. Because it made a good example of how things needed to be, for the story to be true. They had a hard time giving up their example, just as some of us still have difficulties giving up the clay theory, just as I myself still love to use PNA as an example, even though I know GNA is the real candidate. But you know, science marches on. If anyone disproves abiogenesis ever, it will be science, because the fundies cant be bothered to do real work and the Jesuits would prefer not to.
So stop claiming there's anything atheistic about matter bringing forth life the way God commanded it to in Genesis 1. Now.
NOTA BENE: Apologies to everyone fighting the good fight, I know this is a science forum. But he keeps claiming a literal reading of the book says something that it doesn't, and that's not right. I would maintain that literacy is a genuine academic study, and that calling him on it is of interest to science. But I'm done now, with the provision that any further attempts to claim abiogenesis is the least bit atheistic are also off topic. Thanks!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 199 by marc9000, posted 03-21-2010 5:24 PM marc9000 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 206 by New Cat's Eye, posted 03-22-2010 12:25 PM Iblis has replied
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Iblis
Member (Idle past 3895 days)
Posts: 663
Joined: 11-17-2005


Message 207 of 297 (551684)
03-23-2010 6:21 PM
Reply to: Message 206 by New Cat's Eye
03-22-2010 12:25 PM


Re: abioGENESIS
Lets look at the whole thing in context
Yes yes, of course, but I didn't want to get bogged down there. My posts run way too long as is. So when I got to the point where that can of worms would have come open, instead I tied off the spurting artery with a trite subliminal association between "jesus saves" and "save the whales" and proceeded to my apologies. You knew that already.
But sure, it could be read that way. It certainly looks all mixed together in English, and I don't mind the implications a bit. When I look at the Hebrew though, I see what look to me like separate clauses. I see the whales tanniyn being created bara', and the creatures nephesh being brought forth sharats, and then God seeing ra'ah that they're good towb. So while I wouldn't argue against an interpretation that the whales are also brought forth, and/or that the creatures are also created, what I couldn't tolerate arguing would be that the whales were not created, or that the creatures were not brought forth. See the difference?
created them after their kind
In the same way, based on the word order, I wouldn't put up much of a fight against this further interpretation. It very well could be saying that they were also created after their kind here. But the primary association is with "brought forth", so it is no good saying that they were not brought forth after their kind.
So fine, the complexities of the interpretation are up for grabs. What I don't feel is debatable at all is the fact that the text shows unliving matter bringing forth life. This is a textbook example of abiogenesis historically, and it's at the exact opposite end of the book from atheism.
The fact that it then proceeds with two more iterations of this "bringing forth", which could be interpreted to refer to philogeny and speciation respectively, is pretty much out of scope here. The neat association between two kinds of intelligent life in these events is an interesting mnemonic tool. I won't bother arguing here against the concept that the text may be teaching something inconsistent with evolution, but it's undeniable that unliving earth and water are depicted as bringing forth living plants and animals on command. So abiogenesis is safe on home base.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 206 by New Cat's Eye, posted 03-22-2010 12:25 PM New Cat's Eye has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 210 by New Cat's Eye, posted 03-24-2010 11:29 AM Iblis has not replied

Iblis
Member (Idle past 3895 days)
Posts: 663
Joined: 11-17-2005


(1)
Message 248 of 297 (555868)
04-15-2010 8:02 PM
Reply to: Message 247 by marc9000
04-15-2010 7:21 PM


not science
So all you can really require of ID to be science is for it to make small (compartmentalized, if you will) studies and determinations comparable to what abiogensis studies have — see message 107 for examples.
I was glad to see that you did sort of get the point of that post. Prior to this the best you had come up with is "unfalsifiable", which was a bit silly because I had summed up two conflicting base theories, one of which must eat the others, and also an example which is most likely already falsified, along with what falsified it. I will come right back to this.
But yes, you do get it, for ID to climb out of the hole dug for it at Dover it will need to be able to produce some real studies, genuine experiments, results that support some views and results that refute some views. That's right, in order to actually be science it will have to be wrong about things, to argue with itself, to represent a genuine determination to find the truth rather than a group of odd factoids thrown together to support a metaphysical view.
You were moving in the right direction when you started touching on junk DNA. Oh, you got stomped, don't get me wrong, but my point is that that's the sort of thing that needs some work, and that work might be productive to your world view. Or, the results might totally refute your worldview! Those are the breaks, with science you punch your ride and take your chances.
And that's why ID proponentsists can't actually do any science, it is MUCH too risky. Imagine the hell a fellow might get sent to for being the one to prove that all that unused DNA is actually our fur, tails, gills, front legs, antennae, stem, and flowers. WOOPS!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 247 by marc9000, posted 04-15-2010 7:21 PM marc9000 has not replied

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