Abiogenesis is the Scientific God

Sure they have, there are all kinds of spiders. The basic body plan is successful, but there are millions of forms.

 

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How many spider syngameons do suppose there are?

 

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However of course, variation within the respective syngameons has been ongoing for thousands of years, sometimes in the wild, and sometimes domestically.

 

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You mean species? About 200,000 It is not practical or possible to classify spiders by the ability to produce viable offspring. The best we can do is compare DNA and morphological similarities.

 

So you don't really know which "species" are actually interfertile?

 

Iceage,

Why does it matter? Do you have any evidence to suggest he was created by magic?

 

*sigh*

So many errors to correct, so little time.

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Except that they CAN be explained that way. I would think Michael Behe would serve as an example to you folks. Again and again he has insisted that this or that system could not have evolved step by step (blood clotting systems, flagella, etc) and again and again it has been pointed out that science does, in fact, have good explanations for how those systems evolved. His book has been utterly demolished by such counter-examples. (It was especially amusing how one of his prime metaphors, the mousetrap that he claimed to be "irreducibly complex," was quickly annihilated by several people who built traps of the standard variety which were, indeed, very reducible -- deliciously funny, that).

You may not be aware of this, but science is not in the business of "proving" things. There is no "proof" of ANY scientific theory. Proof is something that happens in mathematics. The word you're looking for is "evidence." Theories are accepted if they have lots of evidence and if they explain nature in a helpful way. There is at least some evidence for abiogenesis. There is none for creation. This does not mean conclusively that abiogenesis is true; it does mean that it's a better theory than creation strictly on the weight of evidence.

Exactly. Anyone who denies it probably hasn't read the Wedge document.

 

No, it's a complex field of study. Spiders are a kind of arachnid, related to scorpions and ticks. They evolved 400 million years ago, and were among the first species to live on land [wikipedia].

 

Yes it is....all the design features are evidence for something called design.....since this design CANNOT be explained by naturalistic means there is only one logical conclusion, an intelligent cause.....its pretty simple...take anything intelligently designed, like a car, TV, etc...the design cannot be explained naturalistically, so logically you must conclude that there was some intelligent cause....

Its like someone saying "So what if Stonehenges don't appear naturalistically, it doesn't matter and does not indicate an intelligent cause" such a foolish, irrational conclusion....a conclusion that only an atheist full of blind faith comes to...

What do you mean here? Information is always traced back to an intelligent cause, like say for instance language (information) used to communicate instructions, it is always traced back to an intelligent cause...

Yes, and neither did the first forms of life arise from a long evolutionary process before them (at least no evidence in 50 years of searching indicates so). Therefore you are siding with me that there must be an intelligent cause for the first forms of life...

Ok....so whats the point here? You're saying that all things can be explained naturalistically, even man-made things we know are the results of an intelligent cause....basically you're using a circular reasoning, so that a theist can never provide evidence that would convince you of an intelligent cause....

What you're telling me here is simple, its impossible to gather evidence of design, yet at the sametime you ask for evidence, but will reject and deny any type of evidence.

What will indicate design to you then if not design features without any undirected naturalistic cause? Using your logic, if we find some type of alien computer and we never see it naturally forming in nature we should conclude that the natural cause is simply unknown, and there was no intelligent cause....

Also, I still don't understand the point of saying that all complex things have created from something simple....

So basically you're going with the "nature-did-it" explanation, "we don't care if we don't know how something naturally formed or that we have no empirical evidence to support that it naturally formed, we know that it could've quite possibly by some means could've just formed in some way and thats good enough for us"

But at the sametime ask any atheists to believe in God without evidence and they'll say "Why would I believe in something without empirical evidence?" the irony...

 

What is this, remedial evolution class? If you want to discuss the topic and be taken seriously, you should at least do a little research and learn some of the basics.

None of the above. Humans evolved from an ancestor that was also the ancestor of chimps. And that ancestor evolved from a previous ancestor that was also the ancestor of the apes. And that ancestor evolved from a still earlier ancestor that was also the ancestor of tree shrews. And that ancestor evolved from an ancestor far far far in the past that was also the ancestor of, say, carrots. What's your point?

 

Really whats the explanation? All I see are theories of how things formed, theories without any type of empirical evidence backing them up....I can come up with elaborate theories on how the Great Pyramids naturally formed too or how Stonehenge was a naturalistic formation....all they have are meaningless theories without empirical evidence....

 

Haha....

It doesn't matter how many times you insistently shout it in caps, that doesn't make it true.

Never mind.... go back to exploring the sand with your head.

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Really? Show me then in labs the molecular machines found in cells naturally forming...show me instead of elaborate spurious theories without any type of empirical evidence to back them up.....

I challenge anyone to show me protobacteria naturally forming in labs from self-replicating polymers like the theory goes....this will be great evidence....but I say that it simply CANNOT be done....

 

Liege thinks it will be done within billions of years.

 

There you go glossing over the time issue again. Of course a developmental pathway that took millions of years, or even a part of that pathway that took thousands of years, is not going to occur in a lab in a matter of days, weeks, years, or decades. What is it about this that is so hard to grasp?

What we do see in the lab is replication of very small segments of various parts of that pathway. And if we can do that, then it is reasonable to think that eventually the whole thing will be accessible to science. You seem to want the complete, total pathway all at once. By that standard, a lot of scientific theories would never have gotten anywhere. Science is gradual.

 

The shell game is surely in place when they say that abiogenesis happened in some mysterious environment which is "hard to duplicate, and so has yet to be duplicated, and which hasn't occurred since billions of years ago," how conveeeenient, and they say it takes much more faith to believe that there's a Creator, wow.

 

So basically you're telling me you have no evidence.

- You should be able to show in labs the phase right before the self-replicating polymers turned into bacteria (this doesn't require millions years or anything like that)
- You should be able to show how DNA just happened to formed from spontaneous chemical reactions and fit into the correct position in the bacteria
- You should be able to show how the molecular machines (that just "happen" to be able read and interpret genetic information) arose from chemical reactions
- You should be able to show how any of the design features arose from chemical reactions

All I get is "well it took millions of years so we don't need any type of actual real evidence to support what we say, instead we have spurious theories that match what we believe"

 

"It happend a long time ago, that's how we know it happened."

 

Yeah, this is basically their answer. I can easily form an elaborate theory of how the Great Pyramids happened to naturally form over time....in fact there is a statistical chance that the Great Pyramids really did naturally form over time...I guess we can just believe that it did...

 

The evidence so far points to explanation by naturalistic means. There is no evidence pointing to supernatural means. There are plenty of naturalistic means available, and more to be found no doubt. We don't know what actually happened: we're working on it.

You and IAC claim that when a scientist says "We don't know, we're working on it" the scientist is manifesting faith and invoking a God.

"We don't know" = God, in your arguments.

Worse, or rather as bad, when a scientist says "we don't know which of these possibilities, if any, will check out " you fail to learn about the possibilities, and just hear "we don't know". And that, of course, = God.

The less you know, the bigger your God.

You fail to comprehend evolutionary explanations, and declare that failure to be evidence of God's handiwork.

The less you comprehend, the bigger your God.

If you were even more ignorant and uncomprehending, you would be telling us that God creates babies in mommy's tummy. Because a baby is far too complex to just be the spontaneous and random associations of chemicals, it must be a product of design and creation, true? And we would have no way of persuading you otherwise.