Bad News for Creationists: Plausible Abiogenesis Path Found

[_JohnStuartMill]

Dawkins thinks that panspermia is a kind of Intelligent Design. That should tell you how seriously he takes it.

[_Ray A]

A friend of mine still has my copy of The God Delusion, but I think chapter 2 speculates about the possibility of extraterrestrial origins. From a critical review:

Dawkins finishes chapter 2 with a discussion of the possibility of extraterrestrial life. He maintains that we must remain agnostic on this issue, since there are many points of ignorance regarding values that can be assigned to the Drake equation.....

Dawkins describes the possible existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life as being "superhuman" as opposed to "supernatural," and speculates that if we detect any other advanced civilization that is must be vastly superior to ours (especially if their telltale signal has been traveling through space for thousands of years (which seems likely at this point). He says that if those beings appeared to us, they would seem to possess magic and would be "god-like."

[_Brackite]

Which is kind of funny, because they should. I guess they sidestep it either through apathy, or else handwaving exercises.

About the only theism out there that doesn't need to be concerned about evolution is the most absolutely meaningless forms, like "I believe in some higher power, and that's about all I can say".

I am a believer in God, and I believe that the earth is about 4.5 billion Years old, and I also believe in Human Evolution.

From Wikipedia:

Contemporary advocates of theistic evolution

...

Contemporary biologists and geologists who are Christians and theistic evolutionists include:

Paleontologist Robert T. Bakker
R. J. Berry,Professor of Genetics at University College London
Microbiologist Richard G. Colling of Olivet Nazarene University, author of Random Designer: Created from Chaos to Connect with Creator
Geneticist Francis Collins, director of the Human Genome Project and author of The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief in which he has suggested the term BioLogos for theistic evolution. Collins is also the founder of the Biologos Foundation.
Biologist Darrel Falk of Point Loma Nazarene University, author of Coming to Peace with Science
Biologist Denis Lamoureux of St. Joseph's College, University of Alberta, Canada who has co-authored with evolution critic Phillip E. Johnson Darwinism Defeated? The Johnson-Lamoureux Debate on Biological Origins (Regent College, 1999)
Evangelical Christian and geologist Keith B. Miller of Kansas State University, who compiled an anthology Perspectives on an Evolving Creation (Eerdmans, 2003)
Kenneth R. Miller, professor of biology at Brown University, author of Finding Darwin's God (Cliff Street Books, 1999), in which he states his belief in God and argues that "evolution is the key to understanding God" (Dr. Miller has also called himself "an orthodox Catholic and an orthodox Darwinist" in the 2001 PBS special "Evolution")
Biologist Joan Roughgarden at Stanford University is author of various books including Evolution and Christian Faith: Reflections of an Evolutionary Biologist
Paleobiologist Prof. Simon Conway Morris of Cambridge University, well known for his groundbreaking work on the Burgess Shale fossils and the Cambrian explosion, and author of Life's Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe

Philosophers, theologians, and physical scientists who have supported the evolutionary creationist model include:

Eco-theologian Fr. Thomas Berry
Fr. George Coyne of the Vatican Observatory
Physicist Karl Giberson of Eastern Nazarene College, author of several books: Worlds Apart: The Unholy War between Religion and Science, Species of Origins: America’s Search for a Creation Story, The Oracles of Science: Celebrity Scientists Versus God and Religion, and Saving Darwin.
Theologian-philosopher John Haught of Georgetown University
Evolutionary evangelist-theologian Michael Dowd, author of Thank God for Evolution
Martinez Hewlett, co-author of the book Can You Believe in God And Evolution?
Biochemist and theologian Alister McGrath, Professor of Historical Theology at the University of Oxford
Theologian-philosopher Thomas Jay Oord of Northwest Nazarene University (known for saying, "The Bible tells us how to find abundant life, not the details of how life became abundant.")
Pope John Paul II, who is famous for praising evolutionary biology and calling its accounts of human origins "more than a hypothesis"[29]
Ted Peters, co-author of the book Can You Believe in God And Evolution?
Physicist and theologian Rev. John Polkinghorne of Cambridge University
Theologian Rev. Keith Ward, former Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford, author of God, Chance, and Necessity
Theologian-philosopher Rev. Michał Heller, professor of philosophy at the Pontifical Academy of Theology in Kraków, Poland, and an adjunct member of the Vatican Observatory staff.
Theologian-philosopher catholic archbishop Józef Życiński, professor of philosophy at the Pontifical Academy of Theology in Kraków, Poland.

( Contemporary advocates of theistic evolution: )

[_JohnStuartMill]

Then you don't believe Genesis.

[_The Dude]

I agree with all the quotes from Richard Dawkins, and I'm glad he is out there taking a stand (so to speak), but I think the right thing to do is embrace the God-worshipers who find a way to make peace with evolution. They are painted into a corner*, this is plain, but it is rude and ungracious to keep bashing them for clinging to childhood beliefs. We can compromise.



*Kenneth Miller's wonderful book (Finding Darwin's God) points out the God-of-the-Gaps fallacy of creationism, but in the end Miller has God filling the gap of quantum indeterminacy in order to say there remains a way for divine intelligence to influence evolution and bring about humans by miracles and design.

[_JohnStuartMill]

I see that as a stop-gap measure, Dude, and the reasons I think it's a sub-optimal solution are contained almost entirely in your asterisked aside. That said, sometimes stop-gap measures are warranted, because the ideal situation is not possible.

[_Brackite]

Then you don't believe Genesis.

I believe that the Book of Genesis is mostly Metaphorical.

[_EAllusion]

In defense of Ken Miller, the god-of-the gaps reasoning he's attacking when it comes to ID/creationism is just an argument from ignorance. Miller's ideas on quantum indeterminacy aren't really a god of the gaps argument. God isn't explaining the phenomenon. It's just a way Dr. Miller thinks God has to operate in the natural world to influence it without violating being a problem for naturalist methodology. The quantum veil is a "gap" in our knowledge that God is hiding in, but it's not "god of the gaps" in the formal sense of being an argument from ignorance used to conclude God.

Dawkin's doesn't take the idea that aliens designed life seriously. Saying something is possible is not the same thing as thinking it likely or even plausible. Dawkins considers that a form of Intelligent Design, and you should know how he feels about Intelligent Design. Kevin has had this explained to him in greater detail in the past, and it hasn't dissuaded him from pulling out this argument again. So he's likely not to be convinced at this point. If only he could see how much that makes him look like his current board nemesis when the issue is the Book of Abraham.

Francis Crick did not come up with the idea of panspermia. Furthermore, panspermia technically is just the idea that life on earth was seeded by already existing life from extraterresterial sources. How that life originated is a separate question. As Crick would tell you himself, there isn't much evidence of this view, but it is of course a conceivable possibility. Looks like the RNA world hypothesis just got stronger, though.

[_JohnStuartMill]

You're right -- panspermia could be microbes from an asteroid finding their way to Earth; it doesn't have to be from an intelligent source.

[_EAllusion]

To answer a question posted up thread, let's say the RNA world hypothesis achieved a point where not only was it shown to be a plausible route of chemical evolution of pre-life into life, but that there is solid evidence this is what happened on earth.

How would the abiogenesis is unlikely/impossible/can't be explained therefore God crowd react?

They'd split. One group would attack the RNA world hypothesis with bad arguments to retain the premise that abiogenesis is unlikely/impossible/can't be explained. Another group would simply move on to the other things that are unexplained to make the same kind of god of the gaps argument. Another group, of course, would just drop that type of argument. Feel free to speculate on the %'s, but this is pretty much what happened when modern evolutionary theory came along and explained biodiversity with a devastatingly large body of evidence.