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Author Topic:   Evolution & Abiogenesis were originally one subject.
crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1717 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 68 of 140 (568769)
07-14-2010 11:21 PM
Reply to: Message 67 by Buzsaw
07-14-2010 11:02 PM


Re: evolution & abio
DNA/protein-based biochemistry evolved from RNA-based, because RNA can serve both as the molecule of information storage and as catalytic enzymes.
Enzymes don't need to "evolve" the ability to produce only right or left-handed chemistry; the way an enzyme operates means that it will only produce chiralities of a specific handedness.
The activity of ATP synthase is simply what happens when you drive an ATP-powered H+ transmembrane pump - that a cell might have to regulate its own pH - in reverse.
All of this can be found in any undergraduate biochemistry text. I'm a fan of Lehninger's Principles of Biochemistry, now in its 5th edition I think.

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 Message 67 by Buzsaw, posted 07-14-2010 11:02 PM Buzsaw has not replied

crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1717 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 78 of 140 (568883)
07-18-2010 5:09 PM
Reply to: Message 77 by marc9000
07-18-2010 5:05 PM


Re: intuitive linking
Name some things that you have created, or destroyed.
I recently engaged in a process of atomic decay wherein I destroyed mass. From one atomic nucleus I produced two whose masses, when summed, were less than the original.
Please name some things that you have observed God create ex nihilo.
But I did say that science is not the only source of knowledge.
No one who has ever said this is able to give an example of any other reliable source of knowledge.
Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 77 by marc9000, posted 07-18-2010 5:05 PM marc9000 has replied

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 Message 81 by marc9000, posted 07-18-2010 5:31 PM crashfrog has replied

crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1717 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 82 of 140 (568891)
07-18-2010 5:33 PM
Reply to: Message 79 by marc9000
07-18-2010 5:20 PM


Re: intuitive linking
Atheists cannot prove that life was not instantly created
Why would we have to "prove" that it was not? What evidence is there that it was?
What feats of instant creation have you observed by God or by anybody else? Please be specific. I'm having a difficult time accepting your assumption that instant creation is even possible. You have, after all, made a pretty compelling case that matter and energy can only be rearranged and inter-converted, not created or destroyed.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 79 by marc9000, posted 07-18-2010 5:20 PM marc9000 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 85 by marc9000, posted 07-18-2010 5:47 PM crashfrog has replied

crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1717 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 84 of 140 (568895)
07-18-2010 5:42 PM
Reply to: Message 81 by marc9000
07-18-2010 5:31 PM


Re: intuitive linking
Less than the original?
Yeah, less than the original. In other words, I broke an atom into two pieces, and when I weighed the two pieces, their weights added up to less than the original atom.
It didn't when I went to school.
What level of school? You wouldn't have learned nuclear physics until sophomore year of college, at the very earliest.
Science is not applicable to many subjects.
Empiricism is applicable to all subjects. No other epistemology but empiricism produces results that can be distinguished from imagination.
I'm sure that we both agree that "just guessing" or "just making things up" may produce something that gives the appearance of knowledge, but is not actually knowledge. Kekule may have awoken from a dream of the Orouboros with the aromatic structure of the benzene molecule fixed in his mind, but he didn't actually know benzene had that structure until he had performed the experiments that verified his intuition. (Imagine all the nameless chemists who dreamed that the structure of benzene was a hairpin, or a figure-8, or a branched tree, or the like.) You can't be said to "know" something if you haven't produced that knowledge via a means that produces results distinguishable from imagination.
How people get along, how to manage money, what may happen in the future.
Sociology
Economics
Climatology
To name a few.
You'd be surprised at what the Bible has to offer.
I've found it handy for propping up a wobbly desk, but that's about the limit of its usefulness.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 81 by marc9000, posted 07-18-2010 5:31 PM marc9000 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 93 by marc9000, posted 07-19-2010 7:50 PM crashfrog has replied

crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1717 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


(1)
Message 89 of 140 (568900)
07-18-2010 7:24 PM
Reply to: Message 85 by marc9000
07-18-2010 5:47 PM


Re: intuitive linking
Because ANY origin of life is being called "abiogenesis" throughout this thread, as if there was no other way for life to originate.
I don't understand, I guess. "Abiogenesis" is just a word that can be applied to any model of the chemical origin of life. And there are a few. But the word could really be applied to any instance of life emerging from lifelessness, which is why the standard creationist argument "abiogenesis is physically impossible; therefore God did it" is so patently stupid.
But I don't see what any of that has to do with what I asked. Nobody has to prove to you that God didn't do something. Reasonable people don't accept positions only because they haven't been disproven - there's an infinite number of mutually contradicting positions that nobody has disproven simply because nobody has asserted them yet.
Assertions are supported by the positive evidence in favor of them, not by a lack of evidence against them. "It hasn't been disproven" is the beginning of your argument, not the end of it.
I read it in historical accounts (the Bible) by authorities that were authorized by the one who did it.
Uh...huh. So, you've never observed it yourself, though, which is what I asked. Right?
just like atheists reading "Origin of Species" and accepting without question all the experimentation and theories of Darwin.
But we don't do that.

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 Message 85 by marc9000, posted 07-18-2010 5:47 PM marc9000 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 100 by marc9000, posted 07-19-2010 8:42 PM crashfrog has replied

crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1717 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 106 of 140 (569050)
07-19-2010 10:48 PM
Reply to: Message 93 by marc9000
07-19-2010 7:50 PM


Re: intuitive linking
Any number of gases, both visible and invisible, can exist without having any weight, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist - that they’re not real material.
I think you'll find that's just not true at all. For instance, plain air has a weight of about 1.2 kg per cubic meter.
All matter has mass, marc.
I can burn up a piece of paper. I haven’t done any weight experiments with it, but it’s reasonable to guess that the ashes will weigh far less than the original piece of paper.
But of course the ash plus the carbon dioxide gas plus the water vapor will add up to the original weight of the paper.
But, in the atomic decay of uranium, we're aware of what gases are produced. When uranium decays, the result is one hydrogen nucleus and an atom of thorium. Yet, when you add up the mass of the hydrogen and thorium atoms that are produced, they do not add up to the atomic mass of uranium.
I can still see that statement in my science textbook, because it was so profound to me, it was something I’d never thought of before. Matter cannot be created nor destroyed.
As it turns out, matter can be destroyed:
It's just, the doings are a little beyond junior high science. You'll get there.
When it comes to human behavior, there are studies/thought processes that fall between empiricism and imagination. The words philosophy and motivation come to mind.
I don't believe that either of those are a path to knowledge more reliable than imagination.
Good examples of details of those two words are contained in the US Constitution, and other US founding documents, such as the Federalist Papers.
Neither the word "philosophy" nor "motivation" occur in the US Constitution.
How about evolutionists who imagine that the basic form of life, the cell, with its signal processing behaviors that rival or surpass that of modern computers, just fell into place by blind, unguided, purposeless, happenstance processes?
We've produced that conclusion as a result of a decades-long process of testable hypothesizing, experimentation, and observation of the natural world. Much of the evidence to which I refer is yours for the reading just as soon as you stop making pronouncements and start asking questions.
He had dreams — why do todays scientists, with todays knowledge of the cell, DNA, etc, have exactly the same dreams, with no updates?
But there have been updates. The field of biology has made light-years of progress since the days of Darwin's Bulldog. And, of course, we believe that the "simplest forms of life" are far simpler than cells. Some of those simpler-than-cell forms of life exist today; viruses, for instance. And, of course, some cells are simpler than others - prokaryotes vs. eukaryotes, for instance.
Those aren't strictly empirical subjects. If they were, there would be no political division in the US, would there?
Of course there are. Not everybody adopts positions according to empirical truth. For instance, they may have fallen prey to faith. Or stand to gain materially from advocacy of positions that are contrary to empirical fact.
But empiricism provides the best possible means to discern truth. You just look, and see.
As a conservative, I believe that the best way to know which ideas in those subjects work the best is by looking at the history of previous applications of them.
I agree! What you've described is empiricism. Just look, and see.

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 Message 93 by marc9000, posted 07-19-2010 7:50 PM marc9000 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 111 by marc9000, posted 07-20-2010 8:04 PM crashfrog has replied

crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1717 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 107 of 140 (569052)
07-19-2010 11:12 PM
Reply to: Message 100 by marc9000
07-19-2010 8:42 PM


Re: intuitive linking
No, God’s method of creation (described in the Bible) doesn’t involve gradual chemical changes.
I'm sorry, I'm trying to explain that "abiogenesis" is a fairly non-specific term. Yes, I'm aware that God's supposed creation of life is not chemical.
Nonetheless, you can use the term "abiogenesis" to refer to any explanation of the origin of life, except for one - the explanation that life has always existed. Of course, I don't believe that, and neither do you. But that's a feature of some religions, and some crank theories such as "panspermia."
It's best not to get too hung up on what "abiogenesis" is supposed to mean. Regardless, the scientific explanation for the origin of life is a fundamentally chemical one.
Science can’t prove that there is no such thing as a realm of reality that humans can’t understand.
Science doesn't have to. You have to prove there is, if you want to convince anybody that there is.
It’s no more stupid than there can’t be a god, or if there is, humans can perfectly understand him therefore, abiogenesis is a fact.
Abiogenesis is trivially a fact; life did not exist on Earth at one point, and at another point, it did. However that happened - God or chemistry - we could refer to that as "abiogenesis", if we chose to.
Of course, that's frequently confusing, so for clarity's sake we usually talk about "special creation" (your position) or "chemical origins of life" (ours.) But both can easily be described as theories of abiogenesis.
I appreciate that that's confusing, and we're not saying it to trick you into accepting the chemical origins of life. Indeed, there are multiple theories of the chemical origin of life, so to say "abiogenesis" says almost nothing at all about how life began.
Personally, having learned of the enzymatic activity of RNA, I favor the "RNA world" hypothesis. Of course, RNA doesn't fossilize, so information about the earliest days of life on Earth is tantalizingly elusive.
It is NOT HONEST.
I'll agree that it's not particularly clear. I believe that when we attempt to discuss the origins of life on Earth we should be more explicit about precisely which model of those origins we're talking about.
But the point of this thread is to point out that evolution is not a theory of abiogenesis at all. They're two different subjects. Abiogenesis, in science, is a topic of chemistry, since the origins of life were chemical. Evolution is a theory of biology that explains how species change and develop over time.
No more than atheists have observed the big bang, or Tiikalak Rosae
But we have observed the aftermath of the Big Bang, and you can, too. And Tiktaalik existed. It really did, and the most parsimonious explanation for the history and diversity of life on Earth is that it, or an organism very much like it, was the intermediate step between fish and amphibians.
But his book still SOLD OUT ON THE VERY FIRST DAY.
Because it was controversial and revolutionary. And the first edition was limited to only 1170 copies. It wouldn't take that long to sell out.
Common sense tells me that it was a long hunger for intellectually fulfilled atheism that caused the book to sell out, for Darwin to be hero to atheists, in 1859, and today.
Perhaps, but that's hardly evidence that disproves his theories. Darwin had produced the first plausible explanation of the history and diversity of life on Earth besides "God made it that way." He'd single-handedly made biology a science instead of just stamp-collecting. Why wouldn't people be interested in that? Why would it disprove his theories that they were interested in it?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 100 by marc9000, posted 07-19-2010 8:42 PM marc9000 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 113 by marc9000, posted 07-20-2010 8:51 PM crashfrog has replied

crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1717 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 112 of 140 (569203)
07-20-2010 8:47 PM
Reply to: Message 111 by marc9000
07-20-2010 8:04 PM


Re: intuitive linking
Do you have any examples of matter being created, that wasn’t rearranged from something else?
Sure:
Do you know what a "bubble chamber" is? Basically - if you take a charged particle, like a proton, and accelerate it to an appreciable percentage of the speed of light, then collide it with something - it breaks up, as you might expect, but it breaks up into pieces that add up to more mass than the original particle, but moving at much, much less speed. A "bubble chamber" is used to track the motion and charge of these subsequent particles, and produces the image you see above.
Apparently, the statement in my science book wasn’t.extra simple, or some type of primer for higher level science, it was WRONG, wasn’t it?
Yeah, basically.
Look, under most circumstances - for instance, all chemical interactions - the Law of Conservation of Matter holds true. Chemical reactions don't create or destroy matter, they just re-arrange it. Conservation of Matter states that the total mass of the products of a chemical reaction will be equivalent to the total mass of the reactants.
But under other, exotic circumstances, Conservation of Matter doesn't hold. It doesn't hold because Einstein discovered that matter and energy were interconvertable, and he related the equivalent energy of a given mass to the speed of light, squared.
Maybe you've seen that equation.
I think philosophy and motivation have a more solid foundation/backing than does simple imagination.
Philosophy is a field that lacks any sort of rigor - philosophy supplies no way to determine whether a given conjecture is wrong, it can only determine that they are "poorly formed."
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "motivation."
The documents CONTAIN them, they can contain them without the words physically occurring.
I'll have to take your word for that, I guess, since I don't entirely understand what you're getting at. The US Constitution is a legal document, not a work of political philosophy. And to any extent that it is "true", it's true because American citizens have agreed to treat it as true, and as the highest law of our land. It's not true in any sense beyond that - for instance, the US Constitution contains absolutely zero truth to someone standing in Piccadilly Square.
It's as true as the rules of Monopoly - which are false while you're playing Scrabble.
It would be nice if hypothesizing, experimentation and observation could be done by perfect people, who have no worldview bias. But everyone does.
Of course. But empiricism, and its more formal descendant science, have built-in protection against the personal biases of human beings. They're the most resistant to it, because they have a system of rigor that allows conjectures to be determined to be false. Religion doesn't have that. Intuition doesn't have that. Imagination doesn't have that.
Hypothesizing and experimentation is done by following pathways
I don't know what you mean by "pathway".
Sure, I know you'll tell me that's a big creationist problem. It's also an atheist problem.
Remember that the line of the debate isn't creationism vs. atheism, it's creationism vs. the science of evolution. Evolution is not equivalent to atheism. Atheism is a position about the non-existence of God. Evolution is a scientific theory that explains the history and diversity of life on Earth.
They're two very different subjects.
Michael Behe has been responsible for some of that progress.
Sure. But not the way you think. For instance, here's a paper of his I particularly enjoy:
quote:
Effects of methylation on a synthetic polynucleotide: the B--Z transition in poly(dG-m5dC).poly(dG-m5dC)
M Behe and G Felsenfeld
We have compared the behavior in solution of the synthetic polynucleotide poly(dG-m5dC).poly(dG-m5dC) with that of the unmethylated polynucleotide poly(dG-dC).poly(dG-dC). In solutions containing high concentrations of salt, poly(dG-dC).poly(dG-dC) is known to exhibit altered circular dichroic and absorption spectra correlated with formation of a left-handed Z DNA structure. Poly(dG-m5dC).poly(dG-m5dC) behaves similarly, but the spectral transition from the B to the Z form occurs at much lower salt concentrations, close to usual physiological conditions. Divalent and polyvalent ions are particularly effective: The B--Z transition of poly(dG-m5dC).(dG-m5dC) can be induced at a Mg2+ concentration three orders of magnitude lower than that required for the unmethylated polymer. We have also studied mixed copolymers containing both dC and m5dC. Our results suggest that the sequence m5dC-dG, which occurs in eukaryotic DNA, can have a disproportionately large effect on the B--Z transition.
Now, you say that Behe is not an atheist. That's certainly true. It doesn't seem to matter to his science, though, which is how it's supposed to work. Can you point to any part of this scientific paper that Behe would not have been able to write had he been an atheist, instead?
Atheists don't want to back up and check out that path.
I think you'll find instead that evolutionists are very much acquainted with the claims of "Darwin's Black Box", and have scientifically refuted the ones that aren't themselves nonsensical from the get-go. (Behe's concept of "specified complexity" gives zero indication of how we're supposed to actually detect it in nature; he just points to examples that he insists are too complex to evolve, even though it's been demonstrated how they did.)
What is empiricism?
Looking, and seeing. Accepting or rejecting propositions based on their congruence with observable physical reality. An empiricist is someone who could claim to be from Missouri - the "Show Me" state.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 111 by marc9000, posted 07-20-2010 8:04 PM marc9000 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 114 by marc9000, posted 07-20-2010 9:07 PM crashfrog has replied
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crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1717 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 116 of 140 (569208)
07-20-2010 9:24 PM
Reply to: Message 113 by marc9000
07-20-2010 8:51 PM


Re: intuitive linking
It’s only recently been transformed into a non-specific term, as I’ve been saying, and showing evidence and the political reasons for.
You haven't shown me any evidence that it hasn't been used in precisely the way I describe.
We don’t see any evidence of them in the following paragraph from Huxley himself either, do we?
But that's exactly how Huxley is using it - he's describing any conjecture that proposes life arising from lifelessness.
My assertion is that until only the last few decades, the word actually meant something descriptive, a belief that life could arise from non-living chemicals by gradual, naturalistic processes on an early earth.
But that's exactly backwards. Huxley coined the term to describe any conjecture by which life could have arisen from lifelessness. Nowadays it's more likely to refer to a scientific model of the origin of life, because it's a "science-sounding" word, and creationists frequently use it in opposition to their own position of special creation.
You've got the history of the word precisely backwards. It means "life from lifelessness." That's what you believe and it's what I believe. Nowadays it more frequently refers to scientific models of the origin of life, but scientists don't really use the term, because it's irritatingly nonspecific and useless when you're debating how life arose from lifelessness.
It's never been intended to trick anybody into atheism. We don't need to trick people into atheism, atheism is true and very convincing when approached rationally. Frankly, demonstrating the ample evidence in favor of the scientific theory of evolution produces more atheists than anything else, in my opinion, and it has the advantage of being honest, to boot. Tricking people into belief is the province of religion.
They’ve spent millions of dollars to block it from the public scientific realm.
Because ID isn't science, it's religion attempting to masquerade as science.
I think it does, if it attempts to trump other realms with only the one realm that it understands.
What other realms?
If science doesn’t have to prove that there is no realm of reality that’s beyond human understanding, then it should respect the possibilities that there are by keeping it’s speculation that no other realm exists out of publicly funded scientific study.
There's no instance where it doesn't do that. There are only instances of those who do assert other realms imposing on the proper domain of science. The conflict between science and religion is one that only exists because religions keep trying to impose their authority over the realm of science by making claims testable by empiricism. If people want to go on asserting untestable, unreachable, ineffable spirit realms, science has nothing to stop them. It's only when those proponents say their realms have an effect on the real world that they transgress into the realm of science.
It's only when the religious attempt to dishonestly claim the mantle and respectability of science for their religious dogma that they come into conflict.
Nobody chose to, until only the past few decades.
Nonsense.
The scientific study on it today is fragmented and incomplete, with promisory notes for the future.
I think you'll find that's just not true. There's actually a lot of good science surrounding the chemical origins of life. For instance, what do you think about the RNA world?
Then the word should be used the way it was used in Huxley's day, in Miller-Urey's day.
If it causes confusion - and it's obvious that it has made you very confused indeed - then I don't think we should use it at all. Indeed, most scientific sources don't. Leninger's Principles of Biochemistry doesn't use it even once (I just checked.)
I’m worried about young public school students, not yet old enough to form a positive worldview, being tricked.
Being "tricked" into what, exactly? Into believing that evolution is a highly-supported scientific explanation of the history and diversity of life on Earth? But that's true. Into believing that scientists have explanations for the earliest days of life on Earth? But that's also true.
Into believing that Christians are able to simultaneously hold religious faith and accept the scientific theory of evolution? That's true as well. I'm just not clear on what this great "trick" is supposed to be. And you're honestly the first person I've ever met who even thought this was some kind of issue, and I've debated hundreds of creationists at this board over seven years.
I really do think you're determined to blow this out of proportion. If you think it's an unclear word, I'll promise to use it neither in your presence, nor in the presence of any "young public school students", who I never talk to anyway.
They're studied the same way, with the same type of scientific methods, by the same people, in the same buildings.
No, they're not. Here at UNL for instance origin-of-life chemistry is done in Hamilton and evolutionary biology is done in the Beadle Center.
Moreover, biology is done by biologist and chemistry is done by chemists. They're not the same field at all. They even have different journals.
The worldviews of the people who study them both seek to cheapen Christianity.
Come on. Now you're impugning the motives of people like myself, and more importantly my wife, who does actually study the evolutionary relationships of insects.
Do you honestly think her motivation is to "cheapen Christianity"? I can tell you that it is not - her motivation is to feed people, by determining effective ways to control crop pests. Sure, we're atheists. If you think we sit around all day thinking of how to "cheapen" your religion, you're suffering from paranoid delusions.
And what about my wife's Christian colleagues? She's literally the only atheist in her entire department, but the work she does is hardly different than the work they do. Are Christians trying to "cheapen Christianity"?
Don't you think there's anybody in the life sciences who is actually interested in how life works? That's the motivation of literally everyone in the life sciences I've ever met. It's certainly my motivation. It's insulting of you to insinuate otherwise.
1170 copies in one day, back in 1859, was probably far better than just about any other book of that time.
We have the internet, you know. For instance, Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was published the year before "On the Origin of Species"; it sold nearly 300,000 copies. Dickens' "The Tale of Two Cities" was published serially; each new issue sold well over 100,000 copies. "The Tale of Two Cities" remains one of the English language's most printed books, at over 200 million copies made.
The idea that there was a vast groundswell of atheists having bought all the copies of Darwin's book is just ludicrous. Do you really think us atheists are part of some kind of history-spanning conspiracy to attack Christians?
That's a paranoid delusion, Marc.
But what it does do is put naturalistic/atheistic studies on the same order as religion.
How does it do anything like that?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 113 by marc9000, posted 07-20-2010 8:51 PM marc9000 has not replied

crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1717 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 118 of 140 (569210)
07-20-2010 9:30 PM
Reply to: Message 114 by marc9000
07-20-2010 9:07 PM


Re: intuitive linking
Not good enough for the origin of matter.
Now you're just moving the goalposts.
Do you think he would continue to live?
"Live"? Ok, let me try to get your precise meaning.
You're saying that if a creationist asserted that there was some kind of gravitational evidence that the Earth's orbit around the Sun isn't stable over a timeframe of 4 billions years, scientists would kill him?
Seriously? You think that's the reason that creationism has no scientific traction? Because its prominent proponents are mysteriously murdered by a scientific hit squad?
Is that really what you're saying? Can you point to even a single prominent creationist, or ID proponent, who has been murdered in service of an "evolutionist conspiracy"? Michael Behe is even allowed to keep publishing biochemistry papers. I just linked you to one. How is that even possible if there's this vast conspiracy of evolutionists?
Did you ever even stop to consider that the reason the scientific community is so monolithic in their support for evolution is because it really is good, sound science?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 114 by marc9000, posted 07-20-2010 9:07 PM marc9000 has replied

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 Message 125 by marc9000, posted 07-21-2010 7:56 PM crashfrog has replied

crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1717 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 129 of 140 (569445)
07-21-2010 8:35 PM
Reply to: Message 123 by marc9000
07-21-2010 7:47 PM


Re: intuitive linking
Major accomplishment here — I just got an evolutionist to use the term rearrangement!
I think the sooner you start seeing this process as one in which we explore scientific truth side-by-side, and stop seeing it as a process by which you try to trick me into saying magic words, the better.
Just sayin'.
A motivation in the scientific community to fervently study some things, and completely ignore others, in the interest of supporting one worldview.
Sorry, you're still not making any sense. This isn't the motivation of any scientist.
The study of things like abiogenesis that border on not even being science, while ignoring work associated with ID
Nobody's ignoring any ID "work"; there just isn't any. ID is not a research program. It's not a functional explanatory model. It's a deceptive legal program to get creationism in schools under a guise that doesn't so openly violate the First Amendment's establishment clause.
It was political philosophy, it’s worked amazingly well, and it’s philosophy was Biblically based.
I think you'll find that's trivially untrue - there are no elections in the Bible, the Bill of Rights contradicts the Ten Commandments, and the Bible itself says precious little about how to organize the government of a nation. Few if any of the authors of that document were what you would recognize as Christians; most of them rejected almost every claim of the Bible. Why would they base a document on a book they fundamentally rejected?
. It has become a religion.
"Religion" describes a system of ethics explained by recourse to supernatural beings.
Science doesn't do that.
You’re a good poster, but forums such as these, with the ganging up sport of shouting down creationists and causing them to pack up and leave as quickly as possible does go along well with the documented points that this book makes.
Nobody can be "shouted down" on an internet forum. And we're actually making efforts not to needlessly duplicate points, so that creationists don't have to deal with ten people telling them the same thing.
And we're enthusiastic about science, like evolutionists tend to be. Creationists aren't ever enthusiastic about science - clearly you're not - they're enthusiastic about playing games. You know, like you're doing. And since truth wins out over games, creationists can't help but be discouraged when their games fail. Hence, a revolving door of new creationists, seemingly unaware that the debate has ever occurred before they joined it, spouting a stead stream of what we call "PRATTs" - Points Refuted A Thousand Times.
But, hey. You brought in something new. Something kind of stupid, to be sure, but something new. That's something you should be commended for. You're more interesting than the average creationist, who just rolls in here, calls us all "evo-tards", and shouts "Jesus ROOLZ!" as he makes a quick retreat to the exit.
One is the religious path, and the other is the atheist path.
Which religious path? Be specific.
But the continuance on the same ‘worldview’ path is comparable, evolutionists are as guilty as religious people in making their study arrive at a conclusion that they’ve already reached.
Ok, sure. "Path dependency" is a known cognitive bias in human beings. Sure, that's a problem for everybody - people don't want to admit that they're wrong after they've spent so much time defending a position.
But, between religion and science, only one system of knowledge gives its most famous award - plus a million dollar prize - to the person who disproves the scientific status quo. And it isn't religion.
Atheism is the conclusion and evolution is the pathway.
If evolution necessitates atheism then how do you explain all the religious evolutionists? The theistic evolutionists? The millions of Americans who believe that God shaped species through natural selection and random mutation, as scientists describe? The Pope? Are you saying the spiritual and legal leader of the Catholic church, the largest organized Christian church in the world, is an atheist? That doesn't make any sense at all.
Atheism is a position of philosophy. Evolution is a scientific theory that explains the history and diversity of life on Earth. And that's all it explains.
Even so, the proper response of biologists is to meet this challenge of mathematics head on.
And they have. Behe has never been able to cogently respond to these biologists.
When little kids in the clearing hear abiogenisis is a fact
What little kids have ever heard "abiogenesis is a fact"? Do you have an example of this from contemporary primary school educational materials? I mean, these days it's a struggle to get school teachers to accurately teach sound consensus science; expecting them to explain the RNA world to first-graders is a little much even for us.
I mean, you didn't even hear about nuclear physics in your schooling. You had no idea that matter could be created or destroyed. Somehow you'd heard of Einstein but never knew what he was famous for. Don't you think it's possible that maybe you have an inaccurate picture of the state of American science education? (Hint: it's deplorable.)
Any conjecture that involves naturalism.
He doesn't even say "naturalism." He does say "dogma", though, indicating that he's referring to religion.
They’re afraid of the term, because they’re studying it in the public realm, and it’s not science anymore than ID is.
Of course it's science, if science is used to study it.
Supernatural realms.
What supernatural realms? Be specific.
Ones where creation can happen without complex rearrangement. Ones where there is more than one time dimension, ones where there are more than three space dimensions.
And what realms are those, where those things are possible? Be specific.
Into a godless, purposeless and pointless worldview, which can easily lead to an if it feels good, do it mentality, which leads to liberal political point of view, which re-writes the actual history of the United States.
And how exactly do you explain all the political conservatives who accept scientific evolution? How do you explain the religious persons, of every denomination and flavor, who accept scientific evolution? How do you explain all the US historians who accept scientific evolution?
If it's an inevitable path to atheism how do you explain all the Christian evolutionists who won't ever become atheists?
Like a $13 trillion national debt, that didn’t exist before an activist court separated church and state in 1947.
Don't you ever get tired of being wrong? I mean, almost nothing you say is actually factual. You have some amazing delusions about the history of science and the history of the United States, all rolled up into a conspiracy theory that scientists are coming to kill you.
Don't you, at any point, begin to see how unsupportable that all is? Well, you will when you're older.
Good creationists have better things to do than enter these atheist playgrounds. They’re too intimidated — too polite
Not judging by the ones we get around here who do nothing but call people "evo-tards". Not judging by you, who doesn't even know me and yet you made imprecations against my wife's professional judgement and intellectual honesty.
Polite? If only. And didn't you just undercut your own conspiracy theory from before, where the reason we get so few creationists is because they get "shouted down", somehow, over a means of communication where nobody can hear you shouting?
Have you ever heard of David Horowitz?
The racist? Sure.
I know there are a lot of decent atheist people, I have atheist friends. It’s your leaders that I’m worried about. I’ve read Horowitz’s book The Professors.
My wife's professors are all Christians. Did it ever occur to you that David Horowitz is a liar? That he's wrong? That he's peddling conspiracy theorists to sell books to the easily deluded?
When you get to college, I think you'll find out. There's a reason why people come out of college laughing at the conservative freshmen who think they're going to be able to show up their liberal profs in class.
But you should show more concern about those high profile people who are. Ever hear of Ward Churchill?
Of course, but only from conservatives. How influential do you think Ward Churchill is in the grand scheme of things? You are aware that he doesn't teach anywhere, right? Hasn't since he was fired in 2007? And that when he did teach, it was at in fucking Boulder, Colorado? Not exactly Berkley, now is it? "High profile"? Please. He's a high profile conservative boogyman, not some prominent liberal figure.
It’s possible to do the here-and-now work that she does without applying worldviews.
No, it's not. Why would she need to manage emerging pest resistance if pests never evolved resistance? How could she do AFLP if species didn't inherit genetic characteristics from each other? How could she elucidate evolutionary relationships if those relationships didn't exist?
It makes no sense. If evolution really wasn't true, her research wouldn't be possible. But she's been doing it for years. She's been doing things that are impossible if your worldview is true. That's part of how I know your worldview is wrong.
And I’m noting the actions of our socialist president, the likes of which this country has never seen before.
You're right - he's black.
It’s the leaders, the prominent people in science that Pamela Winnick described in her book A jealous god that shows the publicly funded political action by the scientific community to promote itself, and oppose the traditional form of government and morality in the US.
And that's just tinfoil hat nonsense. A paranoid conspiracy theory.
We're not out to get you, Marc, and we're not out to get the nation. (Hardly any scientists are political.) We're out to find out how living things work.

"Knowledge in most scientific domains is now doubling about every five years. How fast is it growing in religion?" - Sam Harris

This message is a reply to:
 Message 123 by marc9000, posted 07-21-2010 7:47 PM marc9000 has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 133 by Woodsy, posted 07-21-2010 9:34 PM crashfrog has replied

crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1717 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 130 of 140 (569447)
07-21-2010 8:43 PM
Reply to: Message 125 by marc9000
07-21-2010 7:56 PM


Re: intuitive linking
The scientific community simply isn’t going to allow any evidence for a young earth to see the light of day. It would be the biggest political upset in the history of the world.
Which the scientific community frequently gives out Nobel Prizes for. You know, along with a million dollars?
The reason the "evidence" for a young Earth doesn't "see the light of day" is because there is none.
The movie Expelled demonstrated it clearly.
"Expelled" is a tissue of lies, even its producers admitted that. And I showed you one of Behe's papers in biochemistry. How did that get out - how did the dozen or so papers he's published since "Darwin's Black Box" get published - if there's this vast scientific "conspiracy" to suppress dissent?
But I’ll bet Behe has some pretty elaborate alarm systems on his house.
You're a paranoid schizo. Of course Behe doesn't have alarms. Of course no one is going to kill Behe. We don't have to kill him - he's wrong.
If it were as sound as you say, the entire creation/evolution debate would be different.
Different how? Different from how it is now, where the battle lines are invariably drawn between people with significant science expertise on the evolutionist side, and pastors, high school kids, and retirees on the creationist side?
The entire debate is exactly what it would be like if the scientific consensus was soundly behind evolution, and creationism was the sole province of persons with nearly no scientific background whatsoever.
Evolutionists wouldn't be so afraid of Intelligent Design, for example.
Why would we be afraid of what has become a national laughingstock?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 125 by marc9000, posted 07-21-2010 7:56 PM marc9000 has not replied

crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1717 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 131 of 140 (569448)
07-21-2010 8:44 PM
Reply to: Message 127 by marc9000
07-21-2010 8:05 PM


Re: Similar vs Same
Intelligent Design is the study of empirical evidence of design in nature.
Design by who? Be specific.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 127 by marc9000, posted 07-21-2010 8:05 PM marc9000 has not replied

crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1717 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 135 of 140 (569473)
07-21-2010 10:08 PM
Reply to: Message 133 by Woodsy
07-21-2010 9:34 PM


Re: intuitive linking
What do you think?
I don't know if it does any permanent damage but it's certainly a handicap to rational thought.
People need to ask themselves why they would subject things, like religion, to a lesser burden of evidence - especially if the stakes are so important.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 133 by Woodsy, posted 07-21-2010 9:34 PM Woodsy has not replied

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