Theistic Evol vs ID vs Hindu religion

And whatever path abiogenesis may have taken, it has been lost to time and will never be able to be confirmed for sure.

But that is not what I was addressing. You said that it was "impossible." THis means that you think that there was no possible path whatsoever.

Well, this material shows that there are very plausible paths which abiogenesis could have taken. YOur assertion that it is "impossible" is proven to be false.

Nice strawman you knocked over there. Will you ever address the real issue?

No one suggests that a complete cell just popped into existance. If you will read some of the references, you will see how lab experiments have shown the ability of natural materials to prganize themselves it such things as strands of RNA all of the same chiral orientation that can replicate themselves. That is the kind of step along the way that is hypothesized and that kind of step has been shown to be possible in the lab using common materials as catalyst.

 

I say specifically where I see it.

The ideas put forth by the IDers cannot stand on their evidence as design so no, I don't recognize them.

Are you suggesting that I should recognize flawed evidence for some reason? Are you suggesting that it requires the loss of intellectual integrity to be an IDer?

 

And let's remind you what these ID heros of yours have to say on the issue of common descent.

Why do you continue to support them? Should you not be calling them "atheist darwinists" by now?

Behe:

Dembski:

Wells:

They find common descent to "convincing" and with no reason to "doubt" it. They say that common descent cannot "be denied by reasonable people." They say that ID accepts common descent "cheerfully."

So why are you not viciously attacking such people instead of criticizing me for not agreeing with all they have to say?

 

So, Bob, just to be clear. You are dropping your assertion that abiogenesis is "impossible," right?

"Impossible" is what you first said and now you are changing your wording to say things like that it did not happen. Those are two totally different lines of approach.

Any reason why you would say so confidently that it "never happened?" How do you know? Even your ID hero's admit that all life shares a common ancestor. They say that the evidence is "convincing." THey say that there is "no reason to doubt" this. They say that this "cannot be denied by reasonable people."

Are you reasonable?

Or are you going to continue to doubt even the ID leaders that you hold up when they say that your position is unreasonable?

 

So you are back to saying that abiogenesis is "impossible." It is so hard to follow you sometimes.

So now I will refer you back to my list of references that show that it is not, in fact, impossible. You have never addressed any of the actual science that has been done in this area.

There are many plausible avenues of research. From work that shows that the basic building blocks would have been made naturally. Research that shows that common materials such as borate and clays would catalyze the formation of complex organic molecules like RNA all with the same chiral orientation. Work that shows how these RNA strand can catalyze themselves and how later they could have served as both the informational carrying and the enzymes of early life. Work that shows how other common materials will take such strands of RNA an little bits of oily substances that would have been formed in the early earth and automatically organize them into "cells" with the RNA on the inside and a lipid wall around them. THis is almost starting to sound like a cell, eh?

All this good lab work which you cannot refute. But you still stick to your "impossible" claim.

Not surprising.

After all, I bet you still deny common descent even though your ID heros say that no "reasonable" person can deny it.

 

I never claimed such. Trying to read an alternate meaning into my post?

They are not opposite but they are not the same either. But you are committing a fallacy of equivocation by trying to say that they are.

Your first claim is that it is "impossible."

I then provided an extensive list of references showing that there are many plausible methods by which life could have arisen. These are experiments which duplicate various aspects of what the early earth was thought to be like and which show how various steps along paths that have been hypothesized have a basis in fact.

Have they gone through the whole process consectuatively. Well, no. But this is a process that took perhaps a billion years or more. You are going to whine over not being able to replicate it in a couple of decades.

My references do not show that any one of the possible paths are what actually happened. Life may have taken an as yet uhthought of path.

No matter. Your contention was "impossible." Showing possible paths disputes your assertion completely.

So you go back to your unsupported assertion that it never happened and you try to fallaciously equate this to impossible.

But, you cannot show that it did not happen and you cannot show that the proposed paths are flawed.

So why do you think that by swapping back and forth between assertions for which you have not a single fact means that you can continue to assert "impossible?'

Try and show that the proposed paths are really "impossible" before continuing to assert such. That might require that you actually read some of them.

And, by the way, do you still oppose common descent even though your ID heros accept it and say that no "reasonable" person can deny it?

You are reasonable, are you not?

 

UTE, you are presenting your opinions as facts in a number of cases here. First, I do not see where Bob ever indicated that he had any heros among the ID movement. So that is simply a snide, and false, comment on your part.

Personally I am friends with several of the published leaders of the ID movement. I respect them highly in many ways. Are they my heros? No, they are not. If I had any hero at all, it would be my own husband, Barry. I'm sure Bob has the same sort of referencing. There are a number of people he respects highly and trusts, but they are not his heros, and for you to use that term derogatorily, as you have, only shows your own desperation in this discussion.

Second, we can prove common ancestry within groups. Dogs had a common dog ancestor. Swine had a common swine ancestor. Horses had a common horse ancestor, etc. Genetic and biological evidence easily goes back to original distinct populations. But to try to get from one basic sort of organism to another basic sort is something that depends on a previously held faith that that sort of evolution is correct. A lot of people have that faith, but that does not make it the truth.

As far as abiogenesis is concerned, "many plausible methods by which life could have arisen" is not evidence. It is imagination. And all the imagination in the world does not create data. The data we have from labs and nature indicate that abiogenesis is impossible, despite the imaginations of believers.

Believers like you say it took "a billion years or more". And then you need another billion to get to a multicellular organism. Let's go with that. The rest of evolution just ran out of time, I'm afraid. For unless those early organisms had generation times of several years each, the number of generations it took to get to a simple multicellular organism is in the trillions, and there is not that much time to get from that multicellular organism to ferns, monkeys, dinosaurs, sharks, etc. Abiogenesis and evolution itself fail in terms of data, logic, mathematics and even all but the most absurd and stubborn faith and/or ignorance.

 

I think I am presenting the majority opinion as something that I agree with and that I presented references that support that opinion.

You got me. I am much more aggressive with Bob than required. On the other hand, in my opinion I merely echoing the kind of language that he often uses himself.

But he is also the one that brought up ID to begin with. He asked my opinion of IDism right there at the beginning of the very first post on this thread. I think that it is valid, since he was trying to make a point about agreeing or disagreeing with ID, that many of the leaders in ID do not have a problem with universal common descent, at least in what they write.

I have no desparation at all. I have the facts on my side. Again, my choice in phrasing has more to do with echoing his own style of posting and with an over agressiveness with him. You should now by this point that those who wish to have reasonable discussion with me can have that and those who wish to increase the discourse to something stronger can also have that answered in kind.

The very same evidence that shows common ancestry within such groups continues to be present for as far up the nested heirarchies you wish to go. There is no sharp demarcation where the evidence ends.

There are, however, a lot of different lines where some people capriciously quit recognizing the evidence. YEers cannot even seem to agree where these lines are. Some recognize only changes within species. Some no change at all that results in something new. Some recognize maybe new genera. Some even go up to families or higher. Of course they then assert much higher rates of change than any biologists would say possible, by orders of magnitude. They are also pretty vague about where the observed genetic diversity comes from.

I'll give you the same response.

How life arose is lost to history, never to be known for sure. However, I gave a sizable list of references of research into how it might have happened. These show at least that it is not "impossible." If you want to challenge the mainstream researchers, fine, be my guest. I gave a nice list of references from which to start. I am sure that it would not be too hard to track down the authors and the editors if you can demonstrate their mistakes.

You have made this assertion many times in the past. I have consistently sent you to references that show that the genetic diversity of all of the eukaryotes is tiny compared to the diversity of the prokaryotes. And multicellular life is just a subset of the eukaryotes. In terms of reality, there has not been that much genetic diversity since the rise of multicellular life compared to what came before. For instance, here I previously addressed this claim.

http://www.baptistboard.com/showpost.php?p=23015&postcount=207

I have answered the question several different times with several different references. You continue to assert that there is some problem without ever addressing the reality that there is comparitively little additional diversity needed to get "to ferns, monkeys, dinosaurs, sharks."

I am not even sure that we have ever received a specific answer as to where you assert that the observed genetic diversity comes from. We have some braod assertions about information rich genomes or some such. But nothng specific and with evidence.