Evolution has been Disproven

Hi. Evolution has been disproven for over 100 years, and here's why:1. Evolution requires that life comes from non-life. The first living cell is supposed to have come from non-living organic material in the oceans.
2. Life coming from non-life is called spontaneous generation. The dictionary confirms this: "Supposed production of living from non-living matter as inferred from appearance of life (due in fact to bacteria etc.) in some infusions..." [Oxford Concise Dictionary]
3. Louis Pasteur disproved spontaneous generation back in the 19th century when he placed a sterilised beaker with a straight entry tube alongside one with a crooked tube. Bacteria collected in the straight-tubed beaker but not in the crooked-tubed one, where instead they lodged in the bends of the pipe. He concluded that life only comes from life. This is now known as the law of biogenesis.
4. Since evolution requires life from non-life (spontaneous generation or abiogenesis), and Louis Pasteur disproved this, evolution has been rendered impossible on account of life not being able to generate from non-life.

Thankyou all for your well-written replies. Your information is clear,concise and to the point. I have not seen other debates about this on the forum... Please forgive me if I misunderstand anything.I'm afraid I'm still a little hazy on the distinction between spontaneous generation and abiogenesis. Spontaneous generation (as we saw in the Oxford Dictionary) is an inferred production of living from non-living matter. Abiogenesis is the same - evolution infers that living matter came from non-living matter in the past. It infers that because we see life today, and because there was no life at the very beginning of the universe, at some point in the distant past living must have come from non-living matter. Pasteur, and no doubt many others since him, have proven that any living matter in an environment only comes from other living matter - outside contamination. Even humans have tried and failed to create life in a controlled environment. They can only take life from already living organisms.I merely would like to ascertain how, if living matter comes only from living matter (biogenesis), that abiogenesis can contravene this?

Pasteur's and subsequent experiments show life arising only from life. This happens everywhere in the world. It has been demonstrated that life arises from life, whereas it has not been demonstrated that life arises from non-life. When you consider that all nucleotides in a DNA chain have to be right-handed, and all amino acids in a protein have to be left-handed, it seems unlikely that random chance could select only the appropriate hand preference (chirality) of amino acid or nucleotide from the even-handed selection that occurs naturally.Now, no matter how much time is available for evolution, origin of life still comes down to living from non-living matter. Scientists using intelligent design have not been able to do this. Remember that cellular biology was unknown in Darwin's day. If cells had been understood as a complex factory of parts that will collapse with a critical piece in the wrong place, which is what a cell is, evolution would probably not have been proposed back in the nineteenth century. Before the advent of microscopes, the full impact of a cell's complexity was unknown to them.

OK, let's look in the Oxford Concise Dictionary again:spontaneous generation n. Supposed production of living from non-living matter as inferred from appearance of life (due in fact to bacteria etc.) in some infusions...abiogenesis n. spontaneous generation; supposed origin of life by formation of organic from inorganic substances... {Emphasis added}It seems to me that the dictionary doesn't even need both these entries. They look like the same thing. Abiogenesis doesn't even mention a long time period.Louis Pasteur disproved spontaneous generation, which apparently is only distinguished from abiogenesis by long time periods. Also you have mentioned that spontaneous generation focuses on decay from organic matter.
How is abiogenesis made more possible by using a long time period? How is it made more possible by using no organic material rather than some leftover organic material?Finally, since abiogenesis is taught in classrooms as fact, and the burden of proof is thus on the proponents of abiogenesis, how has it been demonstrated as a proven scientific fact?

So, abiogenesis is gradual change from large amounts of chemicals over long periods of time. However, spontaneous generation seems still similar. Because, although you said that spontaneous generation was theorised to produce any sort of living matter from non-living matter. That's what it says in the theory. Pasteur disproved microbial spontaneous generation for example.Now:
If Pasteur disproved spontaneous generation, and abiogenesis is different by virtue of long time periods, gradual change and large amounts of chemicals...1. Pasteur disproved the assumption that microbes could come from nowhere. Were there any special conditions on the primeval earth that could have enabled microbes to come from nowhere back then? How can you prove abiogenesis if you don't know what the primordial conditions were?
2. Spontaneous generation is nowhere qualified as having to use only small amounts of chemicals. Would that mean that Pasteur's theory would have been disproven if we redid his experiment today with massive amounts of chemicals?
3. Precisely how would long time periods add to the chances of life coming from non-life? Is Pasteur's demonstration contradicted if the chemicals are left in their beakers for millions of years?
4. If the above qualities really do distinguish abiogenesis from spontaneous generation, why is abiogenesis actually defined as being spontaneous generation? [See the Oxford Dictionary - my last post]If I haven't understood something, please accept my apologies. The most important question is, if the conditions of a billion years ago are unknown, and abiogenesis is today taught as being a fact, can anyone scientifically demonstrate abiogenesis? A scientific theory must be observably proven before it is accepted as true.

OK, thanks. But if abiogenesis is merely a hypothesis, then why isn't evolution itself merely a hypothesis? Because you need abiogenesis in order to have evolution.
Since the modern theory of evolution requires its first simple life form to have come from no life, in order for evolution to be a proven fact, abiogenesis must first be proven.I notice nobody has replied to the other point I introduced a way back, about chirality. We could always start another thread, but these debates are flexible.

Dear Mammuthus:Evolution requires information to be added through mutation. Your experimental examples back at the end of the "Faith and Science" thread showed beneficial mutations, but the question is: did they add any genetic mutation? If certain microbes have a missing part (enzyme, I believe) that means they can't digest a certain nutritional substance, that means they'll probably have a smaller chance of survival than other microbes of the same species. Correct? That would be devolution. However, if you introduce a disease through that certain substance, the microbes without that digestive part would not contract the disease. A loss of information can be beneficial, depending on what conditions you're talking about, but it's still not evolution. Are there documented gains of information by random mutation?As for chirality, as far as I could see you addressed how organisms passed on their chirality after they were formed. But, since a DNA strand has umpteen-countless nucleotides, and they all have to be the same chirality, how could the very first DNA - the very first code of life, before specific chirality had yet existed - build itself by random chance from an environment in which left- and right-handed nucleotides are evenly distributed? One deviation from a particular handedness and the entire structure won't work. So, if random chance built the first DNA, how did it pick only those nucleotides of the right chirality?Deeply sorry for not replying again in that thread. Ah, well - we can have fun debating all this.

Hi Mammuthus.As I said, populations may switch to a mutation that is beneficial. If a disease is introduced all those with an enzyme to digest it will die, but those without will prosper. Thus a loss of information can be beneficial. Thus the adaptation of microbes to a new environment does not show information gain. Information gain is achieved when a random mutation generates new data in a gene. Can you show that the Lenski experiments succeeded as a result of new information, or did the microbe populations merely switch to a latent trait or something else already in their genetic makeup?
About those early replicators. How did they replicate? Proteins are required for life, and they are included in the cell's production cycle. Proteins also require a specific chirality. Where did they come from?
Now, we know that life won't work without specific-chirality DNA. So either the previous simple replicators must have all composed themselves of nucleotides with the same chirality, or DNA evolved from a replicator with non-specific chirality, and somehow arranged every left-handed nucleotide to the opposite side by random chance.
Simpler forms before DNA won't solve the problem as far as I understand it. If replicators before DNA worked just as well with specific chirality as without it, wouldn't mutations have been just as likely to keep non-specific chirality just as it was? Could you demonstrate how a pre-DNA strand could work without specific chirality, knowing what we do now about molecular biology?

Hello there.
Mammuthus, I wish to clarify something about my chirality point. You state "once the first molecule was formed" referring to a replicator, such as DNA, but I ask how the first molecule was formed with specific chirality.Back to abiogenesis:
Yesterday I received a massive, brand-new Collins 21st Century Dictionary. To find an up-to-date, modern description of abiogenesis, I turned to the spot and found:

quote:

---

abiogenesis n the hypothetical process by which living organisms arise from inanimate matter: formerly thought to explain the origin of microorganisms. Also called: spontaneous generation, autogenesis.

---

I was dumbfounded. This new and somewhat deep dictionary defines abiogenesis as formerly thought to explain life's origins, and equal to spontaneous generation! Then I looked up:

quote:

---

spontaneous generation n another name for abiogenesis.

---

These are from the Collins English Dictionary: 21st Century Edition (2000). (5th ed.) Glasgow: HarperCollins.Nowhere is any difference between abiogenesis and spontaneous generation mentioned. They are one and the same thing, and have been disproven for over a hundred years, since Louis Pasteur's time.You have mentioned that spontaneous generation concerns organic matter, unlike abiogenesis. Surely it would be easier for organic matter, which had all the right machinery for living cells right there, to form life than inorganic matter? Spontaneous generation and abiogenesis are both defined merely as life from non-life.You have also mentioned that abiogenesis had a long time in which to happen. Unfortunately it has been disproven (since it is spontaneous generation; see above) and thus will not happen no matter how long it is given. My mother is a fan of hugely complex jigsaw puzzles. She likes to spend days over a thousand-piece puzzle, putting it painstakingly together on a board, and then pull it apart again as soon as it's finished. She knows a lot by now about entropy. Anyway, if Mum had a lot of time to spare, she could save herself some trouble by shaking all the pieces together and throwing them on the floor. After about a billion years of trying this, she'd have a perfectly complete puzzle. (According to abiogenesis.) Given the problems of inorganic matter, where all the information in DNA and RNA on genetic traits and functional instructions etc. originally came from, as well as chirality (since there is an equal distribution of right- and left-handed nucleotides in nature, how did the first progenitor of DNA assemble itself randomly with the specific chirality necessary for life?)... considering all this, it would have been impossible for abiogenesis to occur. But as I said, since abiogenesis is spontaneous generation and has been experimentally disproven, it cannot happen no matter how long it is given. In the same way, since gravity has been experimentally proven, we won't suddenly float away from the earth no matter how long we wait around.By association, since you have to have abiogenesis before life can form for evolution to work on, evolution also could not have happened.

To substantiate my claims further as you asked, I quote the following from In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood - 1.   The Law of Biogenesis:

quote:

---

The beginning of the evolutionary process raises a question which is as yet unanswerable. What was the origin of life on this planet? Until fairly recent times there was a pretty general belief in the occurrence of ‘spontaneous generation.’ It was supposed that lowly forms of life developed spontaneously from, for example, putrefying meat. But careful experiments, notably those of Pasteur, showed that this conclusion was due to imperfect observation, and it became an accepted doctrine [the law of biogenesis] that life never arises except from life. So far as actual evidence goes, this is still the only possible conclusion. But since it is a conclusion that seems to lead back to some supernatural creative act, it is a conclusion that scientific men find very difficult of acceptance. It carries with it what are felt to be, in the present mental climate, undesirable philosophic implications, and it is opposed to the scientific desire for continuity. It introduces an unaccountable break in the chain of causation, and therefore cannot be admitted as part of science unless it is quite impossible to reject it. For that reason most scientific men prefer to believe that life arose, in some way not yet understood, from inorganic matter in accordance with the laws of physics and chemistry. J. W. N. Sullivan, The Limitations of Science (New York: The Viking Press, Inc., 1933), p. 94.

---

In other words, biogenesis has been experimentally demonstrated over and over. Abiogenesis has not. The above author cites philosophical reasons for believing in abiogenesis when he admits that biogenesis is "the only possible conclusion".Dear Rei, your definitions of spontaneous generation opposed to abiogenesis are not actually part of the theories. Spontaneous generation is defined - see my above post - as merely life coming from non-life. Abiogenesis has never been observed occurring, in the same way as null gravity here on earth has never been observed occurring. We can be reasonably certain that, were you to test both of these for a billion years, having been disproven once they would continue to be disproven. Large amounts of time do not make a disproven hypothesis more likely to happen. To substantiate my claim that abiogenesis and spontaneous generation are in fact the same thing, and are used as such by scientists, I went to the Encyclopaedia Britannica website and typed in "abiogenesis". There was no entry for abiogenesis, but instead I was taken straight to "spontaneous generation":

quote:

---

also called Abiogenesis, the hypothetical process by which living organisms develop from nonliving matter; also, the archaic theory that utilizes this process to explain the origin of life. Pieces of cheese and bread wrapped in rags and left in a dark corner, for example, were thus thought to produce mice, according to this theory, because after several weeks, there were mice in the rags.

---

From :Britannica
Therefore, substantiated by evidence, I have shown that spontaneous generation and abiogenesis are one and the same. Spontaneous generation is agreed to have been disproven by Pasteur et al., and since I have demonstrated that abiogenesis is identical to spontaneous generation, abiogenesis also has been disproven.Rei, I would like evidence to back up your claim that spontaneous generation and abiogenesis mean different things in scientific use. I would also very much be grateful to learn of evidence showing that either is possible.

Actually, there have been experiments that test abiogenesis in primeval-earth conditions. According to Muncaster, R. (2002). A Skeptic's Search for God. Eugene, Oregon: Harvest House Publishers, the Miller-Urey experiments of the 1950s attempted to synthesise life (NB: by human intelligent design) under the precise conditions that you inquired about. The result was that they produced some amino acids, but in a controlled artificial environment; 98% of the product was tar, somewhat detrimental to the survival of first life; amino acids could even more easily be destroyed by the same source that created them, whereas Miller and Urey caught the good stuff in a trap, which was again hardly the early earth's primeval conditions. Therefore, abiogenesis has indeed been tested under primeval conditions, with scientists attempting to prove it, and create life by intelligent design. Abiogenesis failed there.Rei, I thank you for your reply. I am not disputing that scientists use the term 'abiogenesis' (to mean basic life from non-life) much more nowadays than 'spontaneous generation'. My assertion is that abiogenesis and spontaneous generation actually mean the same thing, proof for which from several distinguished dictionaries and the Encyclopaedia Britannica I offered above. Scientists may utilise one term more than the other, but they still mean the same.I would be grateful for any proof that abiogenesis and spontaneous generation are in any way defined as being different, or that either of them is remotely possible.defender