Give it up, arsehole. You are just being a vindictive pest
Most British scientists: Richard Dawkins' work misrepresents science
- Thread starter paddoboy
- Start date
Gee q-reeus, it appears that anyone and everyone that dare to show you the glaring errors in your thinking processes, is also one of those.
I did promise the Mrs to treat you with kid gloves, but you must accept the fact that ID is unscientific and that abiogenisis is the only solution, evidenced by the simple fact that at one time in the universe there was no life; then the next minute there was life.
I mean even on the long shot chance that we were created by say very advanced Aliens, one then needs to ask, where did the Aliens come from....
You take it easy, OK?
spidergoat
Valued Senior Member
Yeah, science never found anything new, let's just chalk it up to a wizard.
Xelasnave.1947
Valued Senior Member
Thank you for taking the time to address my questions.
You may know that I am an athiest so needless to say I am uncomfortable with any notion of God, dont get me wrong I do think it would be wonderful if there was but I can rationalise a reasonable case that Gods are mans creation rather than man being a creation of a God.
I do recognise that not everything can necessarily be proved beyond doubt, which I think is the way science regards findings.
I recall reading what were regarded as wise words to the effect that it is best if one can consider available views without the need to form a point of view.
I do as best I can but the notion of a God is beyond me but also the big bang is beyond me so perhaps all I can do is review and form no opinion.. wise by default hopefully.
Thanks again I appreciate the opportunity to hear anothers views.
Alex
A very nice simplistic explanation and relevent points in the following....
http://anotheratheist.tumblr.com/post/7024181525
Abiogenesis is supported by evidence
#atheist #evolution
One of the big scientific questions is how life began on earth. Many scientists are now agreed that life is almost certain to have originated out of simpler, chemical compounds. Further, that this is practically inevitable given the early conditions on earth. This isn’t about faith, but the evidence that has been accumulated.
Since the Miller experiments of the 1950s, the application of the principles of chemistry and physics to this problem has shown that nearly all the components of a simple-cell can and do form naturally.
The evidence can be summarised as:
Of course, we should for completeness consider the evidence for a divine creator or intelligent designer. I’ve made a list, but it’s blank.
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* The external energy sources for abiogenesis is why Pasteur’s experiments on spontaneous generation don’t apply. Pasteur looked at a closedthermodynamic system. Abiogenesis is about open thermodynamic systems. In order for complex molecules to be formed, local entropy has to be reduced and this is only possible in open-energy systems.
http://anotheratheist.tumblr.com/post/7024181525
Abiogenesis is supported by evidence
#atheist #evolution
One of the big scientific questions is how life began on earth. Many scientists are now agreed that life is almost certain to have originated out of simpler, chemical compounds. Further, that this is practically inevitable given the early conditions on earth. This isn’t about faith, but the evidence that has been accumulated.
Since the Miller experiments of the 1950s, the application of the principles of chemistry and physics to this problem has shown that nearly all the components of a simple-cell can and do form naturally.
The evidence can be summarised as:
- Environmental - There are several conditions that must apply to make chemical evolution possible. First, there has to be an external energy source*. Prebiotic earth has lots of these- lightning, volcanoes, radiation. Second, we can’t have a lot of oxygen. Lots of oxygen will make any formed complex molecules short-lived. Again, prebiotic earth had little atmospheric oxygen. Third, there has to be the chemicals available for life around to work with. That means 6 indispensable macro-elements- C, H, O, N, P and S have to be around. Again, these are known to be present.
- Why not Panspermia? Every cell of every organism is remarkably the same at an elemental level. It doesn’t matter if we are looking at fungi or fish or humans. The percentages of the macro-elements above are very similar. This is exactly what we’d see if life started by using the available chemicals on earth. In fact, the proportions of elements in every organism aligns most closely to river water. This supports abiogenesis occurring here on earth, and is a smoking gun for a natural origin of life.
- Forming complex molecules- the environmental conditions above are necessary for abiogenesis but not sufficient to show its feasibility. Since the Miller-Urey experiments of the 1950s, we have shown that the building blocks of a cell will occur naturally. We have shown that amino-acids, sugars, RNA/DNA bases, hydrocarbons, phosphate esters, peptidesetc will all be formed under the right abiotic conditions. The 8 amino-acids that dominate these abiotic conditions are also those most common in proteins. This is another ‘smoking gun’ that life began from abiotic conditions on earth.
- The Proto-cell - A cell is basically a package of organic & inorganic molecules surrounded by a double-lipid membrane. We have shown small double-lipid membranes will form in small vesicles that surround organic molecules (since the experiments of Fox in the 1970s). In fact, it is remarkably easy to generate these.
- Replicating molecules. Life also needs molecules to be able to replicate. This is also a natural chemical phenomenon. In 1996 the jounal Nature reported the discovery of a self-replicating alpha-helical peptide. This had a 32-amino-acid sequence, and interestingly, had several dipeptides found in the membrane proteins of ancient archaebacteria.
Of course, we should for completeness consider the evidence for a divine creator or intelligent designer. I’ve made a list, but it’s blank.
-
* The external energy sources for abiogenesis is why Pasteur’s experiments on spontaneous generation don’t apply. Pasteur looked at a closedthermodynamic system. Abiogenesis is about open thermodynamic systems. In order for complex molecules to be formed, local entropy has to be reduced and this is only possible in open-energy systems.
This is even simpler explanation then the previous in a 10 minute video format.....
by
https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2009/szostak-facts.html
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2009
Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Carol W. Greider, Jack W. Szostak
Jack W. Szostak - Facts
Photo: U. Montan
Jack W. Szostak
Born: 9 November 1952, London, United Kingdom
Affiliation at the time of the award: Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Prize motivation: "for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase"
by
https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2009/szostak-facts.html
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2009
Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Carol W. Greider, Jack W. Szostak
Jack W. Szostak - Facts
Photo: U. Montan
Jack W. Szostak
Born: 9 November 1952, London, United Kingdom
Affiliation at the time of the award: Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Prize motivation: "for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase"
- The one thing you, paddoboy, can probably take as useful from that piece, is the argument against YOUR declared enthusiasm for panspermia. Shouldn't be a problem though. Given your habit of churning out an endless succession of full-reproduction cut & paste posts as overwhelm-by-flooding tactic. Who would remember to go back and check X posts previously, to note the conflicts?
ID is a religious belief. It is the belief that a higher intelligence (i.e. God) guided evolution. The term was coined by creationists who realized that creationism had (rightly) gotten a bad name, and they needed a more scienc-y sounding term. One of the first people to use it in a book, Charles B. Thaxton, heard the term "intelligent design" from a NASA engineer (the engineer was NOT referring to evolution) and was later quoted as saying "That's just what I need, it's a good engineering term." At a conference the same year he used the term for the first time in a talk, and it was later incorporated into the Wedge Strategy. This was not a strategy to research evolution, it was (from the document itself) intended:
- "To defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural and political legacies"
- "To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God"
"Our strategy has been to change the subject a bit so that we can get the issue of intelligent design, which really means the reality of God, before the academic world and into the schools."
That's not intelligent design; that is simple skepticism.
I have no argument with that the original motivation was as you stated there. All I and others of a similar bent care about is the actual quality of the arguments. And the better ones are extremely strong. Or would you care to provide devastating counter-arguments against the actual objective content in that lecture by James Tour?
I would tend to agree, depending on how far that line of thinking is taken. But it hasn't spared Berlinski or others of a similarly cautious tone from being pilloried as closet creationists, anti-science troglodytes and all the rest of the pejorative labels in their ideological foes armory. A few posters here are good at that.
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If he says "I have concerns concerning the RNA-world theory of abiogenesis" or something similar then no problem.
If he says "I reject all natural methods of abiogenesis" then he is, by definition, a creationist.
If he says "I believe in intelligent design" - he is also a creationist.
Yes that would be true of course. From what I recall, he in particular simply adopted the skeptic position, though he may have shifted ground. Not sure. I know he is or was listed as a member of at least one ID foundation/institute whatever. But anyway received a lot of stick - just check.
Sure.
It's irrelevant to the fact, and therefore to your argument. All it deals with is the question of how, the elaboration of the complexities that Tours thinks must be dealt with in any explication of how - the whether is a completely different matter, and the whether was the question at hand when you posted the link.
And that - for the time being - dismisses the entire link and all of its content. If you care about the quality of your argument here, anyway.
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My enthusiasm for Panspermia remains as is at this time.
The point is what are you, who is preaching ID, going to take from it and my other reputable links...
Like I have been saying, may different routes are open, and it still does not alter the fact that Abiogenisis may have occurred many times throughout the universe.
Glad you liked it anyway. And I was well aware of the aspect re Panspermia, but again as people have been trying to inform, you, its that pathway that is still open.
Hope my next batch of posts please you just as much...
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You are free to construe it as merely a matter of 'how' meaning how nature for sure did it alone. Anyone without a blinkered commitment to atheism/materialism is also free to recognize the natural 'how' is insanely improbable to the extent 'whether' is the obvious question to ask.
No it doesn't. You fail to see or acknowledge the extent of the problems for nature-alone abiogenesis, but have nowhere else to go owing to your absolute commitment to 'nature did it - period'.
exchemist
Valued Senior Member
The core hypothesis of ID is that life arose through supernatural intervention, i.e. by a non-natural overriding of the processes of nature. If "assertion" is too strong, it is the hypothesis.
Such a hypothesis is deeply unscientific, since science is the search for natural explanations. It is also a science-stopper as, once the hypothesis is admitted, it can be used to account for anything at all that seems difficult or inconvenient to the researcher. A basic, basic rule of scientific enquiry is to consider ONLY natural explanations. Any thing outside that is metaphysics or witchcraft, not science.
It seems to me that ID is thus in the same intellectual territory as river and Magical Realist. Not intellectually respectable at all.
(Furthermore, although you may consider this ad hominem, it is actually a deceitful enterprise, as we know from its practitioners that is seeks to introduce the supernatural into science teaching as a form of social engineering. See the Wedge Strategy for details).
I won't press you on your as I understand it Christian convictions, but fail to see how the above is anything other than strait atheism/materialism. Folks like Kenneth Miller leave me absolutely bemused. He can apparently maintain at one and the same time to be a 'devout Catholic', while flaying anyone proposing a Divine agency at any stage of the non-life to us process. Amazing. And that's being nice.
Oh where forth art thou pot and kettle!
Doing as usual, your own brand of labelism as usual...Oh the irony of it all!
Everyone that has been trying to correct your approach to this, and your hero worshiping of Peltzer the Christian, all agree that its one chance in a billion, but a chance that has most definitely occurred at least once, and probably many more times taking into account the extent, content of the universe and the stuff of life being everywhere we look.
Like they say, we are all star dust.
exchemist
Valued Senior Member
Well there you are. Your reply reveals that you realise ID is essentially a religious proposition - something that IDers pretend to deny.
Actually I think Miller's position is simply that of most Christians who practise science: they see no need for God to fiddle, extraneously, with his own creation. They consider the order in the natural world itself to be upheld by God and that is enough.
Furthermore, they probably, like myself, do not see why it makes any sense to pick on life, of all the marvellous and currently unexplained phenomena we see around us in nature, as somehow uniquely important to explain by supernatural agency. My own suspicion is that this is due to bible-bashers reading Genesis a certain way, because the Genesis allegory is really focused on the position of Man, in creation and vis-a-vis God.
So again, it looks very much like religious people of a certain persuasion working backwards from their beliefs, in order to shoehorn God into science teaching. I often think the USA would do better to have religious studies taught in schools. That is what we do and it allows schools to separate the teaching of religious perspectives on human experience from the science perspective on nature, without denying the validity of either perspective.
(You will perhaps gather from the foregoing that I have some sympathy for Gould's concept of "non-overlapping magisteria".)