Evolution is not Abiogenesis

I agree, and I don't think you'll find natural scientists heedless of origin of life issues. It's just that replicating molecules don't leave fossils, which means that wildly different techniques are needed to study the origin of life than to study the origin of species, which means you're most likely to find different scientists studying each. I don't think it sweeps it under the rug to label it a different theory; I think it's only a recognition that the origin of life is a different kind of problem than the origin of species, that different tools are needed to study it, and that it's usually chemists, not biologists, who do the studying.Also, when multiple origin of life models are being discussed, say RNA world vs. lipid world vs. silicate molding, wouldn't it be confusing to have to refer to each model as "the theory of evolution"? I don't see the merit. Obviously the theory of evolution is going to both inform, and be informed by, our models of the origin of life. I just don't see why you think there's no daylight between them. It's not a conspiracy to trick you, Chuck.

Well, at Thanksgiving dinner, do you swallow an entire turkey whole, or take bites?The separation is a digestion problem. We solve it by specialization - biochemists do biochemistry, zoologists study animals, botanists study plants, doctors - at least some of them - are biologists who study the human body and its problems. You don't go to the proctologist for an eye exam.It's obviously not all separate, but we study it separately because regardless of your position on evolution, even the least problem in the life sciences is of such a magnitude that it takes several lifetimes of study to elucidate - even as we stand at the pinnacle of an enormous pile of solved problems and uncovered facts, like the fact that DNA is the molecule of heredity (it took 100 years or more to find that out.) Um, well, good luck with that. Here's the problem - your competing Creation theory has to be at least as explanitory as the theory of evolution, and if all of us evolutionists here were to collaborate on a list of everything explained by evolution, we could labor full-time on that list for ten years and not be finished. Evolution has enormous explanitory power, such that Theodosius Dobzhansky famously stated that "nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution." If that sounds a bit religious to you, it's because he was religious. In the same essay, he wrote:

quote:

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Does the evolutionary doctrine clash with religious faith? It does not. It is a blunder to mistake the Holy Scriptures for elementary textbooks of astronomy, geology, biology, and anthropology. Only if symbols are construed to mean what they are not intended to mean can there arise imaginary, insoluble conflicts. ...the blunder leads to blasphemy: the Creator is accused of systematic deceitfulness.

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You may very well be the genius who is able to create an intellectually-rigorous theory of special creation by the Christian God, but you'd have to explain to me how you're going to do that all by yourself, with no life sciences training whatsoever, all by arguing on an internet debate forum. How do you expect that to work, exactly?

Well, because "atheism" is the philosophical position that there's no such thing as God. It's not the position that all life is the evolutionary descendant of a single common ancestor. An atheist does not believe in gods, human or otherwise.

No. Why would that be the case?

Whoever said that?

Well, no. That's not accurate. I suspect you didn't even bother to read the cited paper (Ledberg 1952): http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/access/BBABFJ.pdfwhich really is your loss, since it's one of the seminal papers in the biosciences, incredibly influential though you might not realize it without collegiate-level coursework in biology. The paper doesn't even mention "abiogenesis", and it's about nothing but new traits arising in bacteria as a result of random mutation. The paper elegantly proves every element of that case - that the traits are novel, that they arise by random, and that they are heritable (which, we now know, is the result of mutations in DNA.)Taq, of course, is doing nothing but using your rhetorical conflation of evolution and abiogenesis against you - if, as you contend, they're truly one and the same, than any evidence for evolution must also prove a material origin of life. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Nobody's posted any writings that "clearly combine them", and it's hardly a trick by evolutionists to attempt to turn one's own faulty reasoning against them. It's a standard rhetorical technique that you yourself have employed. There was nothing to take exception to because no combination was made. You've simply failed, as usual, to understand any of the points being made against you. Completely and utterly failed.

If I hold up the King of Spades, and you refer to it as the Ace of Hearts, that doesn't make those words "subjective" and "meaningless", it just makes you a liar. Sadly, human speech is not limited to what is unambiguous and objective - that's a requirement we must voluntarily adhere to if we expect to be judged as truthtellers. But that doesn't seem to be your priority.

Right, but that was obviously an allusion to your position that abiogenesis and evolution are the same thing, which has the necessary logical consequence that any and all papers that support any form of evolution must, in your view, be held to be evidence for abiogenesis. Sorry, but that's the consequence of your position. You can't have it both ways. By your definition of "abiogenesis" ("evolution"), it must be. That, of course, is the point - it's a reducto ad absurdum of your position, because it's absurd to describe a paper about how bacteria evolve the capacity to metabolize new food sources by mutation as lending much support to abiogenesis. But, again, your position that evolution and abiogenesis refer to the exact same thing logically necessitates that you treat the Ledberg paper as proof of "abiogenesis."Taq doesn't think the Ledberg paper is about abiogenesis, and neither do the rest of us, because evolution and abiogenesis are two very separate things such that support for one doesn't necessarily tell us anything about the other. (Practically, of course, different fields of science do very much inform each other.) Well, I guess because I'm smarter than you, or I read more closely than you do, and therefore I didn't make the same boneheaded mistake you made in completely missing his point. So you accept our position that evolution is something different than abiogenesis? Then Taq's argument has worked, and you've seen the flaw in your previous position revealed by the absurdity of having to consider the Ledberg paper support for abiogenesis. Yes, exactly. The Ledberg paper is about evolution, not about "life from non-life." Which is Taq's argument, exactly - it's an absurd consequence of your position to have to consider the Ledberg paper about abiogenesis, which means that by reducto ad absurdum, your position was wrong. You seem to have tacitly accepted this by retreating from that position. Yes. Now, please try to understand them. I guess I don't understand. Do they not have reducto ad absurdum where you're from?

Again, you have failed to understand. Taq did not try to pass off the Ledberg paper as about abiogenesis, presumably because he assumed you would have read it and noticed immediately that it was not about abiogenesis. But, since you lack even the most basic qualifications in this field, since you in fact know less about biology than a 5th grader, that was probably overoptimistic of him.So, don't take anybody's word for anything. Read the paper and then observe that it is not, in fact, about the generation of life from non-life. And then assume that Taq, a professional in the field of biology, knows at least as much about it as you, and now see if you can determine why he would, in opposing your position that evolution and abiogenesis are two words for the same thing, present a paper that he knows is only about evolution as being about "abiogenesis." So all things that are without "purposeful guidance" are "evolution" and "abiogenesis"? Don't you just mean that you forgot?

Heliocentricity? Oops, you're wrong again.

It has to do with your argument, and how your position necessitates a logical contradiction.Reducto ad absurdum. It's no dance. You're the least comprehending individual I've ever met, and I'm attempting to assist you out of pity.