Bad News for Creationists: Plausible Abiogenesis Path Found

[_Brackite]

Arguing for the existence of God is, for me, like arguing with someone to try to prove to them I love my children. I don't have to prove that to anyone. I know this sounds all emotionally based, because it is.

Amen, Ray A.!!.

[_EAllusion]

Young earth creationism as we know it was not popular among the early creationists. Instead, day-age creationist thought was the most commonplace. Think William Jennings Bryan at the Scopes Monkey trial.

Around the mid to late 1960's is when Henry Morris-esque young earthers really took the forefront of creationism. It's around the same time thanks to them terms like "scientific creationism" came into common use in an effort to get the material into public schools. But even then all the disparate views were intact among creationists. Old earthers, especially the day-agers, were within that movement in droves. By the 1980's people really began associating creationism with the ICR, CRS variant, in part because they were (and still are) the most common, and in part because their critics liked to target them as the illustrative example because they were especially ridiculous. But it's important to remember that even during the absolute zenith of "scientific creationism" there were old earthers, young earthers, and so on all arguing amongst themselves but coexisting in a big tent of creationism. There were people arguing for them in court that they weren't basing their views on the Bible, and they only were inferring a creator, not necessarily God, and so on.

What became the Intelligent Design movement was mostly led by people who called themselves progressive creationists until the name change occurred in the late 80's. But even the ID movement is representative of the panoply of creationist thought or what Philip Johnson called "the big tent." It contains young earthers (Pearcey, Nelson, etc.) just the same. The proportions are different, but it's all there. The same people. The same arguments. Arguments that Kevin uses mind you. Specific ones. Since creationist label was dropped because creationism was officially banned from public school teaching and it was developing a severely negative connotation, I'm not one to oblige the name shift.

[_JohnStuartMill]

There was a time when people who believed in "guided evolution" were referred to as "creationists"? That's my sticking point.

[_EAllusion]

There was a time when people who believed in "guided evolution" were referred to as "creationists"? That's my sticking point.

Yes and no. If those same people thought that the evidence showed evolution was guided by some intelligent entity, then sure.* If they were just theistic evolutionists, then no.

Kevin can be tough nut to crack on points like this, because he's doesn't feel bound by things like self-consistency or the truth. He'll make and argument and a later denied he ever made it until you quote him. Then he'll disappear for a bit. He also shifts the views he takes considerably over time. He did go from criticizing evolution with some of the most naïve arguments you'll ever see to attacking people for thinking he'd have a problem with evolution pretty quick. So what Kevin of today can be labeled as might not be the same as the Kevin of a couple a days ago.


*This can get a bit dicey, as it's not exactly coherent to claim you believe in evolution, but also think evolution by natural processes is discontinuous and requires divine intervention in some form. The "I believe in evolution" creationists usually are doing that.

[_mikwut]

I agree and disagree with Mr. John Stuart. Both sides make the mistakes of bluntness and a lack of subtlety that leaves both open for the criticism that any other discourse would receive of being juvenile. Yes it is bad news for "Creationists" that cling to the relative strawman that EAllusion so easily abashes, and thankfully so. But, change and growth are always seen as "bad news" looking at them, but from hindsight they always become welcome guests of growth. Now "growth" means "gaps" to atheists but growth it will remain. That is why naturalism of the gaps isn't recognized by the materialists in a tit-for-tat debate.

I agree and disagree with Kevin's historical atheism remarks, most atheists are some of the best and most charitable people I know, I don't personally know him but EAllusion very well might be a better man than me, I wouldn't be surprised, us theists don't get to carry a sword with a reputation of tolerance and well, even charity at many historical times and places. But, the relative moral merits of any of us are in the final analysis only relevant to exponents of the theistic world picture; and although polite atheistic society might currently abound and the social usefulness of science is at a peak in the grand order of things they have no real meaning. We must remember that evil has no reality in a meaningless world.

I also agree and disagree with Kevin regarding the discourse generally. It is a mistake to overlook the fact that the undoubted continued hostility between science and religion in no small part is exacerbated by the sleight of hand whereby a materialist philosophy is illicitly imported to bolster a particular world-view of science as Kevin points out, without the slightest regard or integrity to exactly what it is doing, why the need for such a sleight a hand? It is an astonishing window dressing, meaning is smuggled into a world which by definition lacks meaning. Kevin also doesn't forget that the attitude of many a theists opponent is not one of benign disdain, but a deap-seated animus. To ignore this would be silly. But, alas and ironic, that the theist also bows in shame that Christian and theistic evils abound including arrogance (my god what arrogance) pride, immaturity (again what immaturity! think of the atheists unsophisticated use of contingency, or the theists bluster with Dawkins when a different argument is being used or the clinging to ID when cautions of deism and incoherence have been given from theists for years) etc.. that allows for such fertile soil for such hierophants as Dawkins to muster such a following. But the theist must always remember that just a Peter Kreeft doesn't define me in every particular and I still adore him, so Dawkins need not be every bowling pin for atheism. The more sophisticated preying on the less is a tactic both sides have become masters at.

I agree and disagree with John Stuart. The dialogue of organic evolution is the most sensitive, in some ways the most vulnerable. This is hardly surprising; the stakes are the highest because where we humans came from and what we are must be questions of central importance. We forget that language has variable meanings and can presuppose deap assumptions about the way the world is. Do we even have a satisfactory definition of "life" for these discussions to carry the intended meaning they surely desire for? There has been a strong theistic evolutionary thought (Numbers doesn't really address this) that addresses in a sophisticated way humans to be an evolutionary inevitability. The article doesn't disturb this theistic thought.

Polanyi, for me is always instructive. He stated in Personal Knowledge "This then is our liberation from objectivism: to realize that we can voice our ultimate convictions only from within our convictions, from the whole system of acceptances that are logically prior to any particular assertion of our own, prior to the holding of any particular piece of knowledge. (p.267)

Augustine was indeed right, we must first believe before we can understand, meaning is different from scientific fact.

kindest regards, mikwut

[_mikwut]

Kevin,

I would also be curious to know, why are you a theist? Do the anthropic arguments you post amount to sufficiency for your belief or is this not the reason you believe, but merely an important reason why theism fits the data better than atheism?

my regards, mikwut

[_BishopRic]

Arguing for the existence of God is, for me, like arguing with someone to try to prove to them I love my children. I don't have to prove that to anyone. I know this sounds all emotionally based, because it is.

Experiencing a feeling that you love your children is good evidence that you love your children, because "love" is a feeling, and experiencing a feeling is all that you need to know that it exists. Experiencing a feeling that God exists, on the other hand, is NOT good evidence that God exists, because experiencing a feeling is not evidence for anything other than the feeling itself.

I love this simple explanation...and often wonder how so many otherwise brilliant people don't see this. The "church" is the ultimate strawman by telling people that "if you get this 'feeling,' it is evidence the Book of Mormon is true, etc."

No, it is only evidence that you have a feeling, as "good" as it may be. Objectively, reason should tell us that since so many other religions experience the same feelings, and their doctrines are completely contradictory to Mormonism's, then perhaps the initial strawman is wrong.

[_Kevin Graham]

You pointed to Stalin and Pol Pot as exemplars of atheism, which they are not.

No, I never did that. Here, I did a search of all the times I used the word "Stalin" in a post. It all began a year ago in March when people were trying to imply religion is dangerous simply because some religious leaders killed. Here is what I said.

Wed Mar 19, 2008:

Dartagnan: So what kind of atheism is it that is dangerous? What kind of atheism breeds guys like Stalin? The kind of atheism that expresses intolerance towards theists.

Dude: Who cares about Stalin and his deranged personal psychology?! He wasn't just a skeptic (like most of us here). He was much, much more than that to become a murderous dictator.

Dartagnan: You're right. And bad religious people are much, much more than just religious. People in power will have the tendency to abuse that power no matter their views on the origin of life or the universe. I think the benefit of religion is that it provides a personal ideology to temper such temptation, whereas with atheism, well, there's nothing there. So I think the argument isn't what atheism causes so much as what it fails to preclude. Atheism does nothing to make bad people better but it doesn't make good people worse either. And that doesn't mean all atheists are bad. It just means atheism doesn't do anything. Religion effectively makes bad people better people, or at the least, makes a great effort at it.

Clearly I referred to a type of atheism, and did not lump all forms of atheism into Stalinism. But understanding this would require reading.

You've never said that

Yes, I said all of those things, but none of which fit the straw man you constructed. Let's walk through this for a second. You said I argue that "the lack of a naturalistic explanation for something implies that God exists." If that were all my argument amounted to, then I would laugh too.

Example #1:

There are clear indications that the symmetries of the universe point to a purpose and that is to promote the existence of human life. This is consistent with virtually all theistic belief systems. This in and of itself screams intelligent design. And when I say intelligent design, I mean to say there are indications that the universe was not an accident and the laws therein were tweaked by something intelligent.

How in the hell can that be watered down to a simple, "it must be God since nature hasn't explained it"? My point isn't that naturalism hasn't explained it. My point is that naturalism can't explain it in any way that excludes an intelligent source. The only explanation that stands a chance is the multiverse theory, which really isn't much of one since we will never be able to detect their existence, let alone count them out to confirm they amount to a trillion trillion.

Example #2:

we cannot see God, but his/her/its existence conveniently explains a lot about the beauty in the world we live in; things science has not been able to explain. It is truly difficult for some people to sit and wonder at the amazing world we live in and not conclude it was by intelligent design.

Yes, there is much about the world that screams intelligence. This isn't the same thing as saying, "it must be God since nature hasn't explained it"? There is plenty that naturalism hasn't explained, that I think will eventually be explained via science. In the meantime I don't count any of these things as evidence for God. We haven't found a cure for Cancer yet. I don't consider that evidence for God. We have yet to figure out how make batteries last ten years. I don't think that is evidence for God. I've never seen a bear crap in the woods, but I doubt the piles that have been discovered are based on divine intervention.

Example #3:

It defies logic to say it was an accident or that we won the cosmological jackpot. To that extent, I know a God exists.

Exactly.

Why is this one so hard to comprehend? Naturalism cannot explain this without some intelligent source. The problem isn't that it hasn't, but that it can't. Go ahead an just try to throw out some kind of "plausible" naturalistic explanation for the fact that all of the universal constants share one common value, which just happens to be one that theists have taken for granted for thousands of years.

All the other stuff about biology and evolution, you can throw up some kind of plausible scenario that might offer satisfying explanations. For example you can simply say one day scientists will watch various elements come together in a controlled experiment, to form a living cell. Fine. I guess that's plausible. There is no reason to think it willhappen, but at least that is a way naturalism could explain life forming naturally.

But with the fine-tuned universe, just try to come up with a plausible explanation. All you have to fall back on is the appeal to chance. Enter the multiverse argument, which I find to be less than convincing, as well as humorous.

I guess you just don't fully understand the slew of evidences that point to an intelligence source of the universe. Pity.

I've called Kevin a creationist because he has endorsed numerous arguments that were and are the heart of creationist argumentation, all the way down to the specific rhetorical examples. I don't even know if Kevin fully appreciates that when he goes on about Hoyle and abiogenesis, he might as well be reading a creationist pamphlet from 1983. Chances are he is in a sense.

Let's get this straight. JSM brings up the subject of abiogenesis in a clearly derogatory manner. Clearly fishing for a response from me, I bring up the history of abiogenesis and the failure of the Miller project.

In 1983, some creationist pamphlet referred to the same history. Therefore, I must have been reading a creationist pamphlet, or at the very least. I'm a creationist. What impressive logic!

I mean its just unfathomable that I read about the experiment in science literature. Hell, who needs to rely on creationist material when everything I have said can be found in the damned wiki!?!

EA's problem is that he is the one relying strictly on articles from the secular web. I have never purchased a damn thing from an ID proponent. Every book I have cited has explicity criticized the ID crew (McGrath, D'Souza, Collins). EA is exercising the guilt by association fallacy, as usual.

He must appreciate that he is at times flat quoting creationist works, as I've caught him doing that on more than one occasion.

BS! This was forever ago, and you googled an page that contained an article written by a creationist (I assume he was) I referenced, but the same article was found on numerous websites, and I didn't retreive it from the creationist site you linked everyone to. I had no idea he was a creationist (You're the one with the complete mug list on your dart board). You and Beastie proceeded to accuse me of scrolling through answersingenesis.com which I had not, and have not, wasted my time to read - ever. So where is your other example?

Kevin can be tough nut to crack on points like this, because he's doesn't feel bound by things like self-consistency or the truth.

Excuse me?

He'll make and argument and a later denied he ever made it until you quote him.

CFR! And I hope you don't have JSM's examples in mind.

Then he'll disappear for a bit. He also shifts the views he takes considerably over time.

Yes, it is true that among the lot of us, only I have demonstrated the ability to change my mind when convinced of other arguments. But I'm sure you meant it as an insult.

He did go from criticizing evolution with some of the most naïve arguments you'll ever see to attacking people for thinking he'd have a problem with evolution pretty quick.

Horsecrap! I have never denied evolution. In the begining I presented some points for the sake of argument. I had never seen an Evolution debate before so I figured I'd start one. But nowhere did I reject evolution. You just think it is a sacrosanct doctrine of your own religion, that you assume if anyone dares mention any questions about it, then they must be anti-science, atheist hating idiots. The typical knee-jerk response we might expect from a Mormon when told Joseph Smith was a pervert.

Anyone who knows my style and history, especially at MAD over the years, knows I like to play devil's advocate to ghet things rolling.

He also has defended the work of specific creationist leaders. He has compared his own reasoning to that of others who have gone on the record as endorsing creationist arguments.

You can't possibly be this obtuse. Muslims argue that the Bible is corrupt. Bart Ehrman argues the same thing. Barty Ehrman is a Muslim?

If arguments are worth repeating, then they will be repeated by a wide variety of groups who don't necessarily agree with everything the author believes. But you are wrong about me and I resent your constant and riduclous charges that I am sitting here cutting and pasting from "creationist works" as if I have no orginal thoughts of my own. Come to think fo it, can you present a single counter-argument to the theists on your own? One that hasn't been borrowed from some former atheist? I've heard you regurgitate everything from the teapot and articles from the secular web. The difference between us is that I don't need to poison the well by constantly accusing you of simply plagiarizing other atheists; though essentially everythying you have offered as a counter-argument can be found in the writing of atheists before you.

I called Kevin a bigot because he makes bigoted generalizations about atheists all the time. Here it involved touching on his tendency to attribute some undesirable characteristics to Dawkins then generalize whatever he thinks of Dawkins to all atheists, even when that is wildly inappropriate. Kevin has routinely irrationally described atheists as having nasty traits as a category.

You have a persecution complex that I think is hilarious. I feel like I'm back at MAD. Of course I have never generalized all atheists in that way, but the fact you feel that way says more about you than me. Who says atheism can't be like a religion?

The fact is Dawkins has been invoked on numerous occassions in these discussions, so anyone willing to rely on him as a source deserves to be refuted in the same manner. You guys bend over backwards trying to defend him and the only way you can do it is by pretending I made an "argument" about his stupid comment about panspermia. So how does this work. JSM gets the straw and you set it up, or do you guys take turns?

Come on, Kevin. Can you dispute that there are a great many Christian and other believers out there who fear that the theory of evolution, and other scientific or naturalistic explanations of various aspects of our natural history, undermine the need for belief in God?

I do dispute it. You guys love tearing down these kinds of straw men. Present an argument or some anecdote and then tell us how we should be scared of it.

So far every theist who has read this thread is scratching his head or just flat out laughing that JSM thinks we're supposed to feel our theism is threatened by this article. But hey, we're just too stupid to know JSM understands our arguments better than we do.

Yes, there is a tiny minority of Christians who try to hang onto ID for dear life, not because it does something to refute theism, but because it destroys their precious and idiotic faith in a literal Genesis. That's all it is about. These are the same people who think the world was created in six days. Very VERY few people are adamant about this. Most people who would say "yes" in any kind of census, are those who would probably be convinced otherwise in one lesson. They just haven't exposed themselves to these kinds of issues in a serious way.

But you guys throw up these straw men as if they somehow refute the lot of us.

I would also be curious to know, why are you a theist? Do the anthropic arguments you post amount to sufficiency for your belief or is this not the reason you believe, but merely an important reason why theism fits the data better than atheism?

It is an amalgam to be sure, but fine-tuning plays a large part.

[_EAllusion]

Let's get this straight. JSM brings up the subject of abiogenesis in a clearly derogatory manner. Clearly fishing for a response from me, I bring up the history of abiogenesis and the failure of the Miller project.

As if this was the only posting you've done on this message board. You have repeatedly positively referenced Hoyle's abiogenesis is so unlikely as to be impossible arguments in reference to making a design case for the origin of life. Heck, you have referred to Hoyle even in the context of just endorsing creationist anti-evolution thought.

For instance:

The scientific dogmatism created by the doctrine of evolution was not something anti-evolutionst creationists just came up with recently. It has been something observed by evolutionists themselves over the course of the past half century. The main problem with evolution is that it rests on assumptions that cannot be verified using the scientific method. This might not mean much for staunch evolutionists who think the evidence is so obvious anyway, but for the same group of people who bashed religion and religious ideas for failing to test their beliefs using the "scientific method," well they can only be considered hypocrites.

Tarski asked me what the holes in evolution theory were and I responded with,

"Well, for starters, the fact that nobdoy has produced a consistent ecological factor that would plausibly cause an ape-like creature to evolve into a super intelligent, hairless, upright, meat eating homo sapien."

And this is true. EA avoided the question and directed me to neotany. So did the Dude. Tarski just responded with a hypothetical scenario of social humans interacting with one another as if he were in a time machine watching it take place. He cannot verify anything he just said about the past. It is conjecture. We don't know for a fact that apes headed out of the forrest and lost their hair. We don't even know that if they did walk out of the forrest, that the sun would have caused that. This is conjecture. And so it is with the explanations for just about every other difference between apes and humans. They might be true, and it makes sense. But it is not something that can be verified using the scientific method.

I appreciate Tarski's conjecture because it is educated conjecture. But I asked him kindly: "But very little about this is testable, is it not? Isn't it true that the scientific method is limited to the present?"

So far he has not answered this, even though he responded to other portions of my post, he didn't respond to this. I'm trying to be just as "patient" as anyone else here. Unlike them, I am not address just one person, I am addressing several, including the barking detractors such as yourself.

But it remains that much of the assumptions for which evolution theory is based, is beyond verification via the scientific method. This was my point from the beginning and I was trying to gradually work my way here after getting some answers from our three scientists. Unfortunately, the discussion got polluted with the usual suspects rallying for a walkout because they think I'm a moron!

Tarski's belief that life could have originated by complex chemical reactions is interesting, but there are experts who would probably consider this nothing more than wishful thinking. Leslie E. Orgel is the distinguished Oxford Chemist who wrote in a 1994 issue of Scientific American,

"It is extremely improbable that proteins and nucleic acids, both of which are structurally complex, arose spontaneously in the same place at the same time. Yet it also seems impossible to have one without the other. And so, at first glance, one might have to conclude that life could never, in fact, have originated by chemical means."

In 1982 Keith Thompson, professor of biology and dean of the graduate school at Yale University, wrote in American Scientist

"Twenty years ago Mayr, in his Animal Species and Evolution, seemed to have shown that if evolution is a jigsaw puzzle, then at least all the edge pieces were in place. But today we are less confident and the whole subject is in the most exciting ferment. Evolution is both troubled from without by the nagging insistence of antiscientists [his term for creationists—BT] and nagged from within by the troubling complexities of genetic and developmental mechanisms and new questions about the central mystery—speciation itself "

The British astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle must also be another "daft" person according to Sir Schmo.

Quote:
I don’t know how long it is going to be before astronomers generally recognize that the combinatorial arrangement of not even one among the many thousands of biopolymers on which life depends could have been arrived at by natural processes here on the Earth. Astronomers will have a little difficulty in understanding this because they will be assured by biologists that it is not so, the biologists having been assured in their turn by others that it is not so. The “others” are a group of persons who believe, quite openly, in mathematical miracles. They advocate the belief that tucked away in nature, outside of normal physics, there is a law which performs miracles (provided the miracles are in the aid of biology). This curious situation sits oddly on a profession that for long has been dedicated to coming up with logical explanations of biblical miracles ... It is quite otherwise, however, with the modern miracle workers, who are always to be found living in the twilight fringes of thermodynamics...

The chance that higher forms have emerged in this way is comparable with the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein

At all events, anyone with even a nodding acquaintance with the Rubik cube will concede the near-impossibility of a solution being obtained by a blind person moving the cubic faces at random. Now imagine 1050 blind persons each with a scrambled Rubik cube, and try to conceive of the chance of them all simultaneously arriving at the solved form. You then have the chance of arriving by random shuffling at just one of the many biopolymers on which life depends. The notion that not only biopolymers but the operating programme of a living cell could be arrived at by chance in a primordial organic soup here on the Earth is evidently nonsense of a high order

Hoyle, "The Big Bang in Astronomy,” New Scientist, 1981.

So it is silly to say anyone who suggests there are problems, is "daft." There are plenty of highly intelligent and well qualified people who believe there are problems with evolution theory.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=6057&p=151003&hilit=Hoyle#p151003

(It bears mentioning that Kevin was caught quote-mining here via creationist sources. The first quote actually was about a scientist writing in favor of the RNA-World hypothesis, so it looks like we've come full circle.)

It is more than a bit disingenuous to pretend I'm just inventing out of thin air to create a strawman. I'm referring to your own posting history. I have a basis for saying what I do that goes beyond what was said simply in this thread.

[_EAllusion]

If you say you believe in God for the same reasons Anthony Flew does, and Flew says, "My one and only piece of relevant evidence [for an Aristotelian God] is the apparent impossibility of providing a naturalistic theory of the origin from DNA of the first reproducing species ... [In fact] the only reason which I have for beginning to think of believing in a First Cause god is the impossibility of providing a naturalistic account of the origin of the first reproducing organisms" and proceeds to endorse the the work of a well-known old earth creationist apologist in Gerald Schroeder, then logic dictates you are saying you believe in God at least in part because of creationist arguments. That's what creationism is. It's not a strawman to simply point it out. And, to be frank, any plausible natural path defeats this reasoning before one has to go through the trouble of pointing out the fallacious nature of it, so JSM's post here is relavent to that.