Evolution & Abiogenesis were originally one subject.

Message 121 of 140 (569311) 07-21-2010 11:04 AM

Reply to: Message 113 by marc9000 07-20-2010 8:51 PM

And there are also similarities between my wife and one of my co-workers. Would you advocate my treating them as the same woman?

Listing similarities, no matter how many there are, does nothing to overcome the presence of even one little difference. Abiogenesis details the transition to life from non-life. Evolution details the transition to life from other life. This is at least one difference. Therefore, abiogenesis and evolution are two different things. End of story.

Your arguments have so far amounted to nothing but an attempt to partition the universe of ideas into two groups: (1) Christianity and (2) Everything Else.

You may classify things this way, if you please. But this does not make it valid to say that everything in the “Everything Else” column is the same thing.

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We see attempts to separate them from the instant the term “abiogenesis” was coined. The very fact that Huxley made a term for this that wasn’t “evolution” should have been a clue to you that he didn’t think it was the same thing as the subject that already occupied the term “evolution.”

Ponder on that for awhile.

Darwin loves you.

Message 122 of 140 (569369) 07-21-2010 3:37 PM

Reply to: Message 85 by marc9000 07-18-2010 5:47 PM

That’s the point of abiogenesis! If life had an origin at all, it was an abiogenetic origin: otherwise, all life must have come from pre-existing life, and, by extension, there must never have been a first life form. That was the dichotomy Huxley was attempting to set up in your favorite quote:

quote:

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And thus the hypothesis that living matter always arises by the agency of pre-existing living matter, took definite shape... I shall call it the hypothesis of Biogenesis; and I shall term the contrary doctrine–that living matter may be produced by not living matter–the hypothesis of Abiogenesis.

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It is quite true that naturalistic abiogenesis and special creation are different things, but this doesn’t give you the right to suppress all terminology that highlights the similarities between them.

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There is more than one way to validly classify things, Marc. When discussing different aspects of the same subject, it becomes useful to switch between systems of classification as a pedagogical device.

Since the evolutionists here are trying to explain the differences between evolution and abiogenesis, it makes sense to use a system that highlights the similarities between naturalistic abiogenesis and special creation. This system nicely illustrates the point that abiogenesis---like special creation---is about the beginning of life, and evolution is about what has happened since then.

Furthermore, since naturalism/supernaturalism is not the dichotomy being discussed in the OP, system that uses naturalism/supernaturalism to classify things isn’t really helpful in discussing the topic of the OP.

Darwin loves you.

Message 123 of 140 (569425) 07-21-2010 7:47 PM

Reply to: Message 112 by crashfrog 07-20-2010 8:47 PM

Major accomplishment here – I just got an evolutionist to use the term “rearrangement”! And yes, I have no argument with any of that.

A motivation in the scientific community to fervently study some things, and completely ignore others, in the interest of supporting one worldview. The study of things like abiogenesis that border on not even being science, while ignoring work associated with ID, like detailed study on recent discoveries of complexity in biology, including paths of information and the time sequences that could be critical in determining successes and failures in naturalistic processes.

I don’t agree, but that’s another subject. It was political philosophy, it’s worked amazingly well, and it’s philosophy was Biblically based.

Science is loaded with the personal biases of human beings, and makes some conjectures that are not falsifiable. It has become a religion. Somewhere between 85% and 95% of the National Academy of Science members are atheists. Have you ever heard of the book A Jealous God by Pamela Winnick? A description from Amazon;

quote:

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The age-old war between religion and science has taken a new twist. Once the dedicated scientist-martyr fought heroically against rigid religionists. But now the tables have turned, and it is established science crusading against religion, pushing atheistic agendas in the classroom, in textbooks, and in the media. This book shows how science has now become a religion of its own-an often fanatical one at that-furiously preaching atheism, punishing dissenters, dictating how and what we should think, and subtly inserting its worldviews in everything from education to entertainment. And, with stunning clarity, it proves that, with billions of dollars up for grabs in the race for stem cell research, intellectual integrity has been replaced with good old-fashioned greed. With sharp insight and completely original reporting, this book defiantly shows the extent to which science is beating down religion and how this systematic tyranny is unmistakably weakening culture and society.

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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.

Think of a clearing in the middle of the woods. Two narrow paths go winding through the trees in opposite directions. One is the religious path, and the other is the atheist path. Things like billions of years, random mutation, natural selection, abiogenesis, scaffolding, claims and study of “religion defect genes” and all the study related to that – these all don’t happen at equal distances from the clearing. They often follow one another, build on one another, and the path is long. If something goes wrong, (a big Christian tree gets in the way) it doesn’t instantly offer a two step retreat back to the clearing. It’s easier to dance around that big Christian tree, and continue along the atheist path. Little school children, about to enter science class for the first time, are standing in the clearing. A science teacher (a member of the National Academy of Sciences) is standing 50 ft down the atheist path, calling; “come on kiddies, you can’t go down that other path since church and state have been separated! There’s no 10 commandments signposts along this path anyway!

Of course I understand that the Christian path works the same way. A Darwinist tree can get in the way, and be a problem, and Christians can tend to dance around it and continue on the Christian path. 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.

Atheism is the conclusion and evolution is the pathway. Just like religion can be a conclusion, and Intelligent design can be a pathway. Either both are true, or both are false. Atheists want to disconnect evolution and atheism, and combine ID and religion. It’s a double standard.

Your “demonstrations” have been atheist dogma, they have not been completely empirical science. In William Dembski’s words;

quote:

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Mathematicians have not muscled into the biologists domain. Rather biologists have uncovered certain facts to which mathematics applies. The application of mathematics to these facts has been unsettling for some biologists. Even so, the proper response of biologists is to meet this challenge of mathematics head on. The wrong response is to keep oneself uninformed about mathematics, assert that mathematics is largely irrelevant to the biological enterprise and continue business as usual. Disdain for mathematics does nothing to foster scientific inquiry. Mathematics does indeed elucidate biological complexity. It is ignorance or dogmatism to claim otherwise.

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(My response to message 117)

Henry Morris is dead. IT WAS YOU! IT WAS YOU!

(My response to message 116)

I have, you’re just too far down the atheist path. When little kids in the clearing hear “abiogenisis is a fact”, religion is cleverly erased from their minds. Go ahead and dance around the tree, but it’s there in your path. Go ahead and cut it down.

Any conjecture that involves naturalism. No supernatural conjecture, you won’t find it anywhere on that page. Your saw is getting dull.

Huxley was ignoring the supernatural, and talkorigins nowadays links it to the supernatural. Still can’t link me to anything from Huxley’s day, or 50 or 75 years after that, showing a clear reference to abiogenesis being supernatural, can you?

They’re afraid of the term, because they’re studying it in the public realm, and it’s not science anymore than ID is.

Supernatural realms. 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. Just because humans can't understand them doesn't mean they don't exist.

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.

Yes, that leads to a belief that Genesis is false. That leads to a belief that Exodus is false. That the whole Bible is nothing but fairy tales. That Christ wasn’t much of a Christian. That there is no such thing as sin. That if it feels good, knock up the girlfriend – taxpayers will pay for the abortion. That God might be a “she”. It can lead to a lot of things. Like a $13 trillion national debt, that didn’t exist before an activist court separated church and state in 1947.

Good creationists have better things to do than enter these atheist playgrounds. They’re too intimidated – too polite. They can’t handle implications that they’re the only one on the planet with Christian conservative views. Or when a "Christian" claims that God is a she, or that "Christ wasn't much of a Christisn". ~I~ would have thrown up my hands and left after a few of jar's comments if I wasn't experienced at this. Current popular literature and the airwaves are loaded with people with views identical to mine. Have you ever heard of David Horowitz? He documents the relationship of atheist, liberal professors with Marxism. If you, and most other atheist like you are not like that, that’s great. But you should show more concern about those high profile people who are. Ever hear of Ward Churchill?

Well, I stand corrected on that! If they were done in the same building, abiogenesis study could be more likely to find itself in court, facing the same 1st amendment establishment clause that Intelligent Design did at Dover!

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”. And I’m noting the actions of our socialist president, the likes of which this country has never seen before.

It’s possible to do the here-and-now work that she does without applying worldviews. I know that it’s claimed work like controlling crop pests wouldn’t be possible without a deep application of evolution (Darwinism), but I think that can be exaggerated. I had another poster on other forums tell me that without a belief in a billions of year old earth, we couldn’t purify and distribute drinking water. It gets to be quite a stretch sometimes.

Sure, I believe you. 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.

In one day?

Message 124 of 140 (569432) 07-21-2010 7:55 PM

Reply to: Message 123 by marc9000 07-21-2010 7:47 PM

I'm sorry but that is simply yet another false assertion and yet another attempt to change teh subject.

The US Constitution is NOT Biblically based in any way or form.

So far no one has been able to show ANYTHING in the US Constitution that is Biblically based.

Edited by jar, : hit key too soon

Message 125 of 140 (569433) 07-21-2010 7:56 PM

Reply to: Message 118 by crashfrog 07-20-2010 9:30 PM

I knew it! I knew it! It was me who gave you the idea to say that.

People have died for a lot less. 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.

Even if Dr Adequate wouldn’t have wasted Morris, prominent creationists are just as effectively silenced as death, when they’re shouted down by the peer review process at today’s ivory towers. The movie “Expelled” demonstrated it clearly.

Murder isn’t necessary (yet) So far, academic discrimination and bought courts seem to be working well for the scientific community. But I’ll bet Behe has some pretty elaborate alarm systems on his house.

Micro evolution, yes, Darwinism, no. If it were as sound as you say, the entire creation/evolution debate would be different. The anger from the evolutionist camp wouldn't be near as pronounced. Evolutionists wouldn't be so afraid of Intelligent Design, for example.

Message 127 of 140 (569436) 07-21-2010 8:05 PM

Reply to: Message 121 by Blue Jay 07-21-2010 11:04 AM

Religion is the belief in and current presence of a supernatural being. Intelligent Design is the study of empirical evidence of design in nature. They are two different things. End of story. Or do you have a double standard?

That is what I observe in how these debates go. I believe people of all those beliefs should be able to get along in a society without any one of them being publicly established. One of the “everything else” group, evolutionism, has been publicly established.

It’s just that no two positions in the everything else column ever seem to debate each other on forums such as these, about anything. . Everything individually, or combined, in the everything else column always opposes Christianity. That’s the reason I classify things that way.
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Just like the term “Intelligent Design” was coined to separate it from religion? It depends on who is doing the coining, doesn’t it? Lovers of Darwin are in, religious people are out.

Message 128 of 140 (569438) 07-21-2010 8:12 PM

Reply to: Message 122 by Blue Jay 07-21-2010 3:37 PM

Then why are all my opponents here suppressing all terminology that highlights the similarities between evolution and abiogenesis?

http://science.jrank.org/pages/1387/Chemical-Evolution.html

quote:

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Chemical evolution describes chemical changes on the primitive Earth that gave rise to the first forms of life.

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Please describe the differences between abiogenesis and chemical evolution.

But creationists aren’t allowed to do that are they? Intelligent Design is always religion, isn’t it?

But the topic of chemical evolution is really helpful in discussing the topic of the OP, isn’t it? Thanks for inspiring me to find it. It seems to be all over the net.

Message 129 of 140 (569445) 07-21-2010 8:35 PM

Reply to: Message 123 by marc9000 07-21-2010 7:47 PM

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'.

Sorry, you're still not making any sense. This isn't the motivation of any scientist.

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.

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?

"Religion" describes a system of ethics explained by recourse to supernatural beings.

Science doesn't do that.

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.

Which religious path? Be specific.

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.

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.

And they have. Behe has never been able to cogently respond to these biologists.

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.)

He doesn't even say "naturalism." He does say "dogma", though, indicating that he's referring to religion.

Of course it's science, if science is used to study it.

What supernatural realms? Be specific.

And what realms are those, where those things are possible? Be specific.

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?

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.

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?

The racist? Sure.

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.

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.

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.

You're right - he's black.

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.

Message 130 of 140 (569447) 07-21-2010 8:43 PM

Reply to: Message 125 by marc9000 07-21-2010 7:56 PM

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.

"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?

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.

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.

Why would we be afraid of what has become a national laughingstock?

Message 131 of 140 (569448) 07-21-2010 8:44 PM

Reply to: Message 127 by marc9000 07-21-2010 8:05 PM

Design by who? Be specific.

Message 132 of 140 (569450) 07-21-2010 8:48 PM

Reply to: Message 123 by marc9000 07-21-2010 7:47 PM

Please explain the following.
1) What is the court ruling you are referring to and what do you think the ruling says?
2) How is the national debt related to separation of church and state?

Edited by Theodoric, : No reason given.

Message 133 of 140 (569461) 07-21-2010 9:34 PM

Reply to: Message 129 by crashfrog 07-21-2010 8:35 PM

Isn't it remarkable how creationists almost always behave like that?

I really am beginning to think that religion does horrible damage to the human higher mental processes.

What do you think?

Message 134 of 140 (569464) 07-21-2010 9:40 PM

Reply to: Message 133 by Woodsy 07-21-2010 9:34 PM

Belief gets in the way of learning.

Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love, 1973

Message 135 of 140 (569473) 07-21-2010 10:08 PM

Reply to: Message 133 by Woodsy 07-21-2010 9:34 PM

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.