Bad News for Creationists: Plausible Abiogenesis Path Found

[_Ray A]

Dawkins thinks it is "plausible" that aliens came to earth billions of years ago and planted life here. Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of DNA came up with this idea because he could not conceive the possibility that life originated on earth by natural means.

Now you're really asking to be thrown into the fruit-loop heresy basket, Kevin, but I guess it falls back to Richard himself, if he did say that. My impression is that he's really not as closed-minded as some think, however.

[_Kevin Graham]

Do you think I'm lying? This is precisely what he told Ben Stein in his interview with him.

[_Sethbag]

I'm not saying that a theism couldn't be invented for which evolution would present no worrisome challenge. I'm just saying that of the major theisms that exist on Earth today, I know of none whose Holy Books do not contain accounts of the coming forth of the Earth which are contradicted by the story told by science of the natural history of this Earth, including the process of speciation through evolution.

With regards to the LDS church, while I cannot tell any given LDS what they personally believe, I can say that LDS doctrine and teaching is that death did not exist on Earth, at all, until the Fall of Adam a few thousand years ago. That one doctrine alone is utterly destroyed by the evidence of evolution. The only rational defenses against this destruction are ones that seek to backpeddle and downplay whether or not this particular doctrine really came from God or not. But, along with that, the LDS beliefs regarding the Flood of Noah, and in general the origin of the human species, the origin of the various races, languages and so forth, along with certain constraints on the timeline of human population spread (the Flood, the Tower of Babel incident, etc.) are all contradicted by evidence-grounded scientific explanations.

Yes, LDS believers should be worried about evolution (and the rest of science). So should the adherents of the other major theistic traditions.

Instead, LDS believers who bother to think about this at all are more worried about backpeddling and rationalizations. Oh well, that's just what one would expect from a manmade religion. This is no real surprise.

[_Ray A]

Do you think I'm lying? This is precisely what he told Ben Stein in his interview with him.

I see no reason to disbelieve it, but I'll Google later anyway. I find the idea "plausible" as well.

[_JohnStuartMill]

You're completely missing the point. (You do this so often that you should change your name to "Completely Missing the Point.) The whole argument for Intelligent Design/fine-tuning relies on there being no possible materialistic explanation for a phenomenon. (Arguments against Mormonism do not need to meet this standard.) As such, finding a plausible mechanism defeats the argument.

But you have not found a plausible mechanism for everything. You constantly misunderstand the broader picture, which makes it frustrating arguing with you. Any argument that says an intelligence is not responsible for life on earth, must address all of what science tells us not just the parts you like to focus on for quick points. If you want to go back, then why stop at 3.8 billion years? Let's go back all the way to the beginning of nature itself. From the atheistic perspective, the universe came into existence because a chunk of matter became so hot and dense that it exploded. Unguided of course. And all the subsequent laws that were written, came about by accident. As did our galaxy, or distance from the sun, the pecise strengths of the nuclear forces, gravity, etc. None of that was by design, even though it is all mathematically tied together. No. It was all a cosmic accident that just turned out to work in our favor.

You have the unpleasant burden of trying to prove how life came from a chunk fo hot matter. Proponents of abiogenesis haven't even begun to explain this.

The argument is not that "an intelligence is not responsible for life on Earth", it is "there's no good reason to believe that an intelligence is responsible for life on Earth". I'm well-aware that I can't disprove a Creator any more than I can disprove claims that this Creator spoke to Joseph Smith. Fortunately, that's not my enterprise.

The "cosmic accident" didn't "turn out in our favor" in a meaningful sense, because we weren't around at the beginning to have a stake in how it turned out. If the "cosmic accident" turned out in another way, "we" would be unrecognizably different, or simply non-existent, just like a puddle would be a different shape if the hole it fell into were shaped differently, and non-existent if there were no hole at all.

There's nothing logically necessary about our existence -- we could have just as easily never been. It seems that this fact is too painful for you to apprehend.

Well, I'm surprised that you haven't, given your predilection for invoking supernatural agents to explain other phenomena that don't require it

You're showing the weakness of your position by having to resort to these kinds of games. You know very well this is not true. Again, this is a page out of Dawkins.

Seriously though, why is God responsible for abiogenesis but not lightning? Why NOT appeal to Thor, if you're going to appeal to God?

I don't have a problem with theists. I have a problem with s****y arguments. That's why I can't stand Intelligent Design morons, and that's why you're on the receiving end of a lot of my ire.

No, you're actng like a typical bigot. I do not come here to criticize atheists for being atheists. In fact I beleve I have stated on numerous occasions that I find it hard to fault them for their positions. By contrast, you have no tolerance for those who believe things you do not. You're constantly tryng to pick a fight. But I realize now just how young you are, cocky and full of beans.

I'm picking a fight with you because you posted dumdum thoughts in the Celestial thread (which I did not start), then ran from it like a scared rabbit. I'm rubbing your nose in your awful arguments, not in your ultimate beliefs.

Naturalism of the gaps is extraordinarily well-supported, Kevin. We've looked under millions of rocks, found naturalism under each one, and God under none.

Except nobody has claimed God hides under a rock. Here you go again with the silly Dawkins approach, insisting on misrepresenting your opponent's position at all costs.

This is just offensively stupid. I'm going to try to explain it to you, though, against my better judgment.

"Under a rock" is a metaphor for "the unknown". We didn't know where lightning came from in the Middle Ages, but that doesn't mean that it came from God.

If naturalism of the gaps was supported, then there would be no gaps to begin with.

Wow, you mean to tell me that we knew the explanation for lightning all along? That's incredible.

Everything would have a naturalstic explanation. But we know everything doesn't have a naturalistc explanation. Your hope that eventually everything will, is no different than an LDS apologist claiming one day we will find Zarahemla in Brasil.

It's more akin to claiming that the sun will rise tomorrow, because we've seen it do so thousands of times in the past. It's not a sure thing, but it'd still be pretty stupid to think otherwise without a damned good reason.

Militant atheists who think they can use science to disprove God.

The idea that we exist because some dense matter exploded, and after blind natural forces had churned over the course of 11.2 billion years, and after a primordal soup encountered some electricity, lfe sprung forth in a Frankenstein kinda way. I don't think you fully appreciate just how complex the simplest cell really is. To show that amino acids could be produced by the natural forces of the universe, is far from substantiating abogenesis. This is like saying the winds of Egypt have produced perfectly round balls of sand, therefore given enough time, we should expect it to produce a pin-ball machine.

Your ignorance of the current debates regarding abiogenesis is breathtaking. How many materialists are claiming that cells just sprung out of existence, Kevin?

None. Know why? Because you don't need a fully-formed cell to get life off the ground. RNA can do the job quite well, which is why this discovery is so important.

By the way, good job in luring me into this. But I will stick to what I said, and wait until I get back to my personal library before getting deeper into this subject. Until then, yes, you're still prettier than me.

Your "personal library"? Are you sure it's not... "nothing"?

[_JohnStuartMill]

I'm not going to be engaging in any lengthy debates on this subject, but I thought I'd inject a statement from Dawkins in his Time debate with Francis Collins. I know Dawkins has favoured abiogenesis, but I'd like to know what he means by the following statment I've placed in bold:

DAWKINS: My mind is not closed, as you have occasionally suggested, Francis. My mind is open to the most wonderful range of future possibilities, which I cannot even dream about, nor can you, nor can anybody else. What I am skeptical about is the idea that whatever wonderful revelation does come in the science of the future, it will turn out to be one of the particular historical religions that people happen to have dreamed up. When we started out and we were talking about the origins of the universe and the physical constants, I provided what I thought were cogent arguments against a supernatural intelligent designer. But it does seem to me to be a worthy idea. Refutable--but nevertheless grand and big enough to be worthy of respect. I don't see the Olympian gods or Jesus coming down and dying on the Cross as worthy of that grandeur. They strike me as parochial. If there is a God, it's going to be a whole lot bigger and a whole lot more incomprehensible than anything that any theologian of any religion has ever proposed.

So Dawkins is open to the idea of "some kind of God"???

Yes. Technically, he's an agnostic, but he doesn't like the term, because he believes in God about as much as he believes in fairies.

[_JohnStuartMill]

Dawkins thinks it is "plausible" that aliens came to earth billions of years ago and planted life here. Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of DNA came up with this idea because he could not conceive the possibility that life originated on earth by natural means.

For what it's worth, Dawkins does not think that this is very likely, and recognizes that it just pushes the question back another step. You really shouldn't rely on Ben Stein's propaganda to inform your opinions on this subject.

[_Kevin Graham]

JST, this turned out exactly as I expected and it is amazing how you later try to blame me for improper tone or what not. You continue to misunderstand and/or misrepresent my position while offering mockery and ridicule as a response. I'm not ignorant of the abiogenesis debate as you insist. I simply don't make the assertions that you attribute to me and it gets tiresome having to constantly correct you. Assertions that lead you to these ridiculous conclusions (i.e I never said cells jumped into existence from nowhere. I understand the evolution argument very well. You simply missed my point, as usual).

In any event, I am now editing the interview of Dawkins and I will post it on Youtube, and then I am back to the Book of Abraham stuff until I return home. The file is processing now and should be done within the nex few minutes, and then I'll upload and provide the hyperlink.

And no, it isn't Stein's "propaganda." It is Dawkins speaking on behalf of his own views. That is what I rely on. Stein didn't force him to answer as he did. He was asked how life came to exist on earth and this was the best answer he could think of.

[_JohnStuartMill]

I wonder if you'll have the intellectual honesty to link to Dawkins' explanation of his response, Kevin.

Another example. Toward the end of his interview with me, Stein asked whether I could think of any circumstances whatsoever under which intelligent design might have occurred. It's the kind of challenge I relish, and I set myself the task of imagining the most plausible scenario I could. I wanted to give ID its best shot, however poor that best shot might be. I must have been feeling magnanimous that day, because I was aware that the leading advocates of Intelligent Design are very fond of protesting that they are not talking about God as the designer, but about some unnamed and unspecified intelligence, which might even be an alien from another planet. Indeed, this is the only way they differentiate themselves from fundamentalist creationists, and they do it only when they need to, in order to weasel their way around church/state separation laws. So, bending over backwards to accommodate the IDiots ("oh NOOOOO, of course we aren't talking about God, this is SCIENCE") and bending over backwards to make the best case I could for intelligent design, I constructed a science fiction scenario. Like Michael Ruse (as I surmise) I still hadn't rumbled Stein, and I was charitable enough to think he was an honestly stupid man, sincerely seeking enlightenment from a scientist. I patiently explained to him that life could conceivably have been seeded on Earth by an alien intelligence from another planet (Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel suggested something similar -- semi tongue-in-cheek). The conclusion I was heading towards was that, even in the highly unlikely event that some such 'Directed Panspermia' was responsible for designing life on this planet, the alien beings would THEMSELVES have to have evolved, if not by Darwinian selection, by some equivalent 'crane' (to quote Dan Dennett). My point here was that design can never be an ULTIMATE explanation for organized complexity. Even if life on Earth was seeded by intelligent designers on another planet, and even if the alien life form was itself seeded four billion years earlier, the regress must ultimately be terminated (and we have only some 13 billion years to play with because of the finite age of the universe). Organized complexity cannot just spontaneously happen. That, for goodness sake, is the creationists' whole point, when they bang on about eyes and bacterial flagella! Evolution by natural selection is the only known process whereby organized complexity can ultimately come into being. Organized complexity -- and that includes everything capable of designing anything intelligently -- comes LATE into the universe. It cannot exist at the beginning, as I have explained again and again in my writings.

This 'Ultimate 747' argument, as I called it in The God Delusion, may or may not persuade you. That is not my concern here. My concern here is that my science fiction thought experiment -- however implausible -- was designed to illustrate intelligent design's closest approach to being plausible. I was most emphaticaly NOT saying that I believed the thought experiment. Quite the contrary. I do not believe it (and I don't think Francis Crick believed it either). I was bending over backwards to make the best case I could for a form of intelligent design. And my clear implication was that the best case I could make was a very implausible case indeed. In other words, I was using the thought experiment as a way of demonstrating strong opposition to all theories of intelligent design.

http://richarddawkins.net/article,2394, ... rd-Dawkins

[_Kevin Graham]

Ok, it finally rendered on youtube. Here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/user/dartagnank

I promise to talk more on this stuff in due time.

Edit: Yes shooter, I am familiar with Dawkins response, but I don't think he does anything to nullify the import of what he said.