In the Darwin Debate, How Long Before the Tide Turns in Favor of Intelligent Design?

Evolution News and Views ^ | January 19, 2015 | Casey Luskin

[Mr. Lucky]

The problems with the Miller-Urey experiment are widely discussed in the literature. In order for their "experiment" to work, they had to produce an atmosphere to, among other things, contain no oxygen because an experimental atmosphere which resembled the atmosphere of early earth would have been caustic to the organic molecules they hoped to create. See, for instance Deamer, Microbiology & Molecular Biology Reviews, Vol. 61:239 (1997).

[TexasGator]

” they had to produce an atmosphere to, among other things, contain no oxygen “

That’s the theory. Early there was no oxygen in the atmosphere.

[Mr. Lucky]

That was the theory.

It's now acknowledged that the early atmosphere was rich in oxygen. New Evidence of Early Atmosphere and Life, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Vol. 63:1328-1330 (Nov. 1982).

[TexasGator]

” New Evidence of Early Atmosphere and Life, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Vol. 63:1328-1330 (Nov. 1982).”

Article is missing from archives.

http://journals.ametsoc.org/toc/bams/63/11

[Mr. Lucky]

OK, try Early Oxygen Rich Atmosphere? Origins of Sulfur in Rocks Tells Early Oxygen Story, Science Daily, April 2009.

[TexasGator]

“Early Oxygen Rich Atmosphere? Origins of Sulfur in Rocks Tells Early Oxygen Story, Science Daily, April 2009. “

Uh, this dates to 2.4 billion years ago. This is after the formation of the oxygen producing organsims.

[BroJoeK]

roamer_1: "I would submit that his theory was inevitably and catastrophically flawed from the very beginning..."

Despite your neutral, even scholarly, tone your points are all "catastrophically flawed", and amount to nothing more than denial of the obvious -- all of which I'll explain in depth as time permits, which sadly, is not now...

[BroJoeK]

ifinnegan: "How do you demarcate life?"

Personally, I'd draw the line somewhere between bacteria and viruses.
Bacteria are living, viruses are complex organic chemistry.

But if someone wishes to make a different case, I'd like to hear it...

[Mr. Lucky]

Look, there may be many viable scientific theories as to the origin of life, but "primordial soup" spontaneous generation isn't one of them.

"...the redux state of the Earth's mantle has not changed in the past 3.8 Gyr." Zahnle, Schaefer, Fegley, "Earth's Earliest Atmosphere", Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology" (2010).

[TexasGator]

Thermodynamics of origin of life: Why is there life?

(Why does life originate and exist now? It is the main question!
How does life originate? It is the second question!)
The transition between the animate and inanimate matter is a slow. It was predestined by the action of “thermodynamic principle of the substance stability” ( http://www.mdpi.org/ijms/papers/i7030098.pdf ) which describes the forward and backward linkages at the transmission of information between structural hierarchies during the chemical and biological evolution. http://gladyshevevolution.wordpress.com/article/thermodynamic-theory-of-evolution-of-169m15f5ytneq-3/
http://gladyshevevolution.wordpress.com/
See: Thermodynamics and the emergence of life.
The phenomena of life can be explained on the basis of quasi-equilibrium hierarchical thermodynamics of dynamic systems which stands at the solid foundation of thermodynamics of JW Gibbs. Theory can be constructed without using the concept of dissipative structures of I. Prigogine and his ideas about negentropy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYr1G5TZO50 http://gladyshevevolution.wordpress.com/article/science-evolution-and-reality-169m15f5ytneq-12/
http://endeav.net/news/22-life-evolution-thermodynamics.htm
From the point of view of thermodynamics, the phenomenon of life is defined as: “Life is the process of existence of constantly renewed polyhierarchical structures during cycles of transformation of labile chemical substances in the presence of liquid water on the planet.”
Hierarchical thermodynamics establishes a common genetic code of life in the universe
Sincerely,
Georgi Gladyshev
Professor of Physical Chemistry
P.S. Biodiversity See: Thermodynamic mechanisms of formation and evolution of living systems On the sculpting living organisms and systems

[ifinnegan]

Bacteria are very advanced forms of life.

I think self propagation is the demarcation.

A book called Of Molecules and Men by Francis Crick greatly shaped my thinking on this many years ago.

[BroJoeK]

Iffinegan: "I think self propagation is the demarcation"

But self replication of organic molecules can happen at levels far too simple to be classified as "life".

My reference here is the above mentioned book by Addy Pross, "What is Life". She reviews more recent work... I'm on my second reading, hoping to "get" more of it.

[roamer_1]

Despite your neutral, even scholarly, tone your points are all "catastrophically flawed", and amount to nothing more than denial of the obvious -- all of which I'll explain in depth as time permits, which sadly, is not now...

What is obvious is that Darwin called his own fouls, and any one of those errata discounts the entire theory - And those errata exist to this day. To move Darwinian Evolution forward as science (rather than religion), each of those errata (and more, btw) must be disproved and explained. True science is not about proving a theory, but rather, in disproving the theory, no matter how pretty it is. The theory must withstand all criticism, and criticism should be rigorous.

Anthropological Global Warming should be a very big clue as to the state of modern science. If you have a brain in your head, you should find AGW an absurdity on it's face, with proven tampering with evidence only reinforcing the ludicrous nature of the claim... One would look at it, no doubt, with a very jaundiced eye.

With that same skeptical view (which I submit, is proper science), one can see that the very same conditions exist within modern evolution theory (with the same sort of tampering from the very beginning). I am in the comfortable position of needing only to point to ONE point of error - I don't even have to provide a reasonable alternative... That one point of error collapses the entirety of the theory.

I shouldn't need to remind people that it isn't the abundance of evidence that proves a theory, but rather, the utter absence of error. That which is supposedly obvious is not necessarily true.

Homo sapiens, ( Latin: “wise man”)

Rom 1:22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools [...]

[BroJoeK]

roamer_1: "What is obvious is that Darwin called his own fouls, and any one of those errata discounts the entire theory - And those errata exist to this day."

But there is no "entire theory", just two basic, indisputable facts: 1) Descent with modifications and 2) Natural selection.
Those are the innumerable-times observed and confirmed facts on which Darwin's theory of speciation rests.

And Darwin's theory merely says: if what we see from animal husbandry, and in nature itself, continues over long periods of time, the results can be increasing speciation.
Period, that's it -- no more, no less.

Yes, Darwin did speculate on how life may have originated, but he offered no theories, nor have we any strongly confirmed theories today -- just a number of hypotheses.

And what so amazing about Darwin's theory is that he knew nothing -- zero -- about genetics, much less DNA, and yet he essentially guessed it entirely correct.

Sure, sharp-shooters like yourself wish to debate the speed of evolution -- is it fast, or slow, or sometimes one & the other?
(the answer is: all of the above, depending on conditions).

But none of that effects the basic theory, and the confirming scientific evidence has grown, over the decades, to overwhelming, with no -- zero, zip, nada -- confirmed falsifying evidence.

Confirming evidence of evolution has poured in, from every branch of science -- from fossil morphology and radiometric dating to bio-chemistry and DNA comparative analysis, to physics-astronomy confirming the ages of stars & galaxies, to actual measurements of mutation rates and speciation requirements.
Nowhere is evidence found strongly falsifying Darwin's basic idea, everywhere evidence piles confirmation on top of confirmation.

So, you suppose that with one brilliant argument, you can deflate the entire theory, but you can't deny the facts, and that's why most scientists consider evolution as much fact as theory.

roamer_1: "Anthropological Global Warming should be a very big clue as to the state of modern science.
If you have a brain in your head, you should find AGW an absurdity on it's face..."

That same geological evidence which confirms Darwinian evolution also tells us that the earth warms and cools significantly, over time, naturally, without human interference.
It tells us that the current Ice Age began around 2.6 million years ago and consists of approximately 100,000 years of glaciation, interspersed by warm periods of maybe 15,000 years.
Our current interglacial is about 12,000 years old, meaning, it's getting long of tooth.

So, can human activity delay the next ice age?
Maybe, a little, but probably not much.
On the other hand, our time scale here is thousands of years in the future, very hard to predict...

That's what I'd call science, the rest is politics, the new home for old apparatchiks of international socialism.

None of which has anything to do with theories relating to evolution.

[BroJoeK]

iffinnegan: "A book called Of Molecules and Men by Francis Crick greatly shaped my thinking on this many years ago."

Sorry about my previous response -- posting from a "smart-phone" can be quite problematic... ;-(

Here is a great book for updating your thinking:

Addy Pross: "What is Life? How chemistry becomes biology"

[ifinnegan]

You all ready recommended that book, and I thanked you for that.

I’ve been reading it.

The author’s view is consistent with mine and what j have been saying.

I am also curious. Do you even know who Francis Crick was?

[onedoug]

Though a fair account of how close they think they’re getting:

Robert M Hazen, “gen·e·sis: The Scientific Quest For Life’s Origin”.

I believe God wants us to use the brains He gave us.

[BroJoeK]

Roamer_1: "I would submit that his theory was inevitably and catastrophically flawed from the very beginning - His premise is that 'life changes because it must', whereas the truth lies closer to 'life changes because it CAN'."

I'd call your criticism of Darwin totally trivial, to the point of being meaningless.
"Can" versus "must" is a ridiculous distinction, worthy of those ancient theologians who debated angels on pin heads.
You might just as well condemn Newton's laws of motion because Newton knew nothing of Einstein's relativity theory.

Roamer_1 : "I will fervently declare that such is restricted to species and does not extend to genre (kind)."

The word "species" is a scientific term of biological classification, as are words like "genus", "order", "phylum", etc.
All such terms are defined by science, in order to classify every living thing on Earth.

But there are no biological terms "genre" or "kind".
Indeed "kind" is a strictly religious term, which defies all attempts to specify scientifically.
Therefore, regardless of how "fervently" you declare it, your words are meaningless.

As for the process of speciation itself, there are abundant though highly incomplete records of it in fossils, and corresponding records in comparisons of various species DNA.
What these all illustrate is that the more ancient two species common ancestors, the more different are both their DNA and physical morphology.

In short, they confirm Darwin's theory.

Roamer_1 : "This I would largely deny. As I said before, I think adaptation is rather quick, and and is driven by an ability to profit..."

Only anti-evolutionists distinguish between "adaption" and "evolution", or "micro" versus "macro".
In real science, they are precisely the same thing, one shorter-term, the other longer-term.
But the process is the same throughout, as first described by Darwin: 1) Descent with modification and 2) Natural Selection.

Roamer_1 : "...at least he took scientific method seriously, and strove to provide errata, something that is lost upon today's generation."

No, most of what you call "errata" has long since been fully investigated and resolved.
That's why basic evolution is not an issue to science, it's not even just a theory, but is strongly considered more - or - less fact.

[BroJoeK]

ifinnegan: "You all ready recommended that book, and I thanked you for that. I’ve been reading it."

Well, then, I'm delighted to hear that!
By all means, let us know your impressions, responses, etc.
I'm still reading it the second time, hoping to absorb a better grasp on her ideas.

ifinnegan: "Do you even know who Francis Crick was?"

Yes, and curiously, his life-span almost exactly matched my Dad's -- within less than a year at both ends...

I also note that Crick left Cambridge in 1976, and did not study DNA after that, but moved on to neuroscience at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California.

So Crick was not involved in the amazing advances in DNA analysis over the past ten to twenty years.
Therefore, I think he could not have the final word today on such subjects as abiogenesis or panspermia.