Posted on 06/06/2013 12:16:27 PM PDT by kimtom
(article photo) The Law of Biogenesis tells us that in nature, life comes only from life of its kind (Miller, 2012). Therefore, abiogenesis (i.e., life arising from non-living materials) is impossible, according to the scientific evidence. How then can atheistic theories like Darwinian evolution be considered acceptable? There is a growing trend among evolutionists today to attempt to sidestep the problem of abiogenesis by contending that evolution has nothing to do with the origin of life, but rather is a theory which starts with life already in existence and explains the origin of all species from that original life form. However, this approach is merely wishful thinking—an effort to avoid the logical import of the Law of Biogenesis.
Historically, evolutionists have recognized that abiogenesis is a fundamental assumption inherent in evolutionary theory, and intuitively must be so. In 1960, British evolutionary physiologist, G.A. Kerkut, listed abiogenesis as the first assumption in a list of non-provable assumptions upon which evolution is founded. “The first assumption is ........
(Excerpt) Read more at apologeticspress.org ...
Sorry, but this one won't fly. All viruses are parasitic. They can reproduce only by infecting a living cell and "reprogramming" it to produce more viruses. Very much, actually, like a computer virus.
The notion of viruses reproducing independently and gradually evolving towards greater complexity is pretty silly. Much like a computer virus living in the wild of a world without computers or electricity.
I don’t have to prove anything.
All it takes is a belief that one in a thousand (or one in a million or one in a billion just pick a number) mutations give a survival advantage to the organism.
Remember something:
Darwins ideas have to do with survival of the fittest, not evolution as we see it today. Darwins ideas were proposed in the late 1800’s, almost a hundred years before DNA was even discovered.
It is kind of in hindsight that we see how DNA might relate to species variation.
And as I implied in my original post, evolution CAN explain differences between species and even differences between members of the same species.
But what evolution CANNOT explain is how it all got started.
We are here to talk about relevant issues to the subject.
I believe it was you that crossed the subject matter line first, so forgive me if I read a measure of petulance into your reply.
What protocols are they using that render it invalid, and what other disciplines and theories rely on those same protocols?
If you can read and understand my earlier response you’ll see that your response here is a nonsequitur. If you can’t see that, I am incapable of resolving that difficulty. Darwin never discussed the origin of life. Period.
If we're here to talk about people under the guise of talking about theories, then I want none of it, and I'll leave.
Correct re: viruses, they have DNA (or RNA) but lack the transcription factors they need to reproduce.
But there’s the rub:
How could a cell that doesn’t have the transcription factors reproduce and somehow carry on its (non-existent) transcription factors?
How can a cell that REQUIRES a sodium-potassium pump pass on a sodium-potassium pump to it’s offspring if it doesn’t already have it in the DNA?
It can’t.
Life is a very complex process with multiple dependent systems.
Most of those systems could not have evolved independently, because in the absence of life, what we call a system is a mini-molecular machine that, without life, wouldn’t do a single thing of any consequence.
Why do you assume all mutations are loss of information? Mutation means different information.
Evolution has fewer special exceptions than plate tectonics and plate tectonics is currently the generally accepted theory of geology. While many are willing to admit that origins of life is a whopper of an exception, it is the only major one. One of my complaints is that too many on both sides of the crevo wars refuse to accept that "I don't know" or insufficient evidence, is the best answer you can get to some questions (like Is this grad students speculation about the origins of life correct?)
http://palaeos.com/tellurobiota/life.htm
bttt. I will return to this when I finish my work.
Certainly they do, when they are moving. But knowing how a nutcracker works gives you no insight as to how it is made. You can compare it to other devices similar to nutcrackers, and you can explain the physics of how it works, but you have no description of how it is made.
Actually we do know that there was not much free oxygen, because there was free atmospheric iron. This is obvious from the thick layer of iron oxide in the geological record. So there was a progression from anaerobic bacteria that produced oxygen doing so for so long that all the atmospheric iron was used up. Only after that could free oxygen exist in the atmosphere.
We had that bit on FR about two weeks ago with some nanoparticles and DNA structures. Instead of the nano particles self-assembling head to heal, they formed a ladder.
Every thing we used to know about our four dimensional universe is now different in ways we can't yet understand!
… the naturalist believes that beneath every natural phenomenon there exists yet another natural phenomenon. If explanation by reference to an endless stack of large turtles is silly, then an explanation by reference to an endless stack of natural phenomena would be equally so. The naturalist's answer for the origin of life, therefore, is some natural phenomenon. (Which one is not particularly relevant.) When you ask them how that natural phenomenon came to be, their response boils down to: "It's natural phenomena all the way down!"
-Pete Chadwell
There are three classical hypotheses on the origins of viruses: Viruses may have once been small cells that parasitised larger cells (the degeneracy hypothesis or reduction hypothesis); some viruses may have evolved from bits of DNA or RNA that “escaped” from the genes of a larger organism (the vagrancy hypothesis or escape hypothesis); or viruses could have evolved from complex molecules of protein and nucleic acid at the same time as cells first appeared on earth (the virus-first hypothesis).
I’m inclined to support the third hypothesis, that viruses were originally more like plasmids. A plasmid is a small DNA molecule that is physically separate from, and can replicate independently of, chromosomal DNA within a cell. Most commonly found as small circular, double-stranded DNA molecules in bacteria, plasmids are sometimes present in archaea and eukaryotic organisms, suggesting that they came into being very early on, before there were three domains.
But these primitive viruses I suspect were quickly supplanted by more adaptable ones. Viruses are superb at adaptation, and since the vast majority of them are bacteriophage (using bacteria for hosts), once there were Archaea and bacteria, viral adaptation must have exploded.
Today, the smallest viruses are about 20-30nm, and the largest are massive, encode 900 genes, are about the size of bacteria, and can be seen with a light microscope. Though they are not harmful to humans, people produce an antibody against them, indicating that this was not always the case.
In fact, human DNA incorporates the entire RNA of several known viruses.
What a fatuous statement. Knowing how it works tells you quite a lot about how it's made. Knowing it cracks nuts requires it be made of something of a certain hardness. Observing it works by leverage tells you it is designed using an underlying principle. Observing its finish tells you what manner of tool was used to make it. Etc....
You are reaching for a magic wand that has no reason to exist other than provide you an out from drawing an inescapable conclusion....
I know of no other field of scientific endeavor that accepts repetition as a foil for equalibrium.
Whether you are a Darwinist or a theist what Darwin said is extremely relevant. His views have permeated all of science, buisness, government, education, and popular culture. His views has it origins in the ancients like Demicritus and Epucurus, Lucretius, on up through Newton, Galileo, Bacon, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, and right through the 1859 publication or Origins. AS it coupled with the ideas of Malthus, Nietzsche, Marxs, Hitler and the profundity of Darwins theory has issued in more pain and sufferiing than any other single idea.
Your tangential reference to string theory is, currently, irrelevant.
Empirically, all we know is that mutations happen. Using that as the basis of the theory of evolution is taking two data points an inch apart and extrapolating them to the ends of the universe.
Science can be 100% materialistic, it just has to admit there are questions it can't answer. There just isn't enough empirical evidence, and for some things (like evolution) collecting the needed empirical evidence would take impossibly long.
Science loses its way when it tries to answer cosmic questions based on the assumption of 100% materialism, especially as we know it.
One hundred years ago our understanding of the material world was vastly different. One another 100 years it will be just as different. That ground is far too unstable to build any grand edifice on.
If the theory of evolution were proposed today it would be laughed off the stage based on what we know about the complexities of cellular biology and biochemistry. Scientific knowledge of those fields was virtually non-existent when it was proposed.
It is simply carried forward on inertia and faith.
If, for instance, to take an extreme case, men were reared under precisely the same conditions as hive-bees, there can hardly be a doubt that our unmarried females would, like the worker-bees, think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers, and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters; and no one would think of interfering.To natural selection killing your siblings and offspring is all the same as loving them. Selection only favors what works to enhance survival and reproduction, and it does not matter if it is nice and moral, or harsh and brutal.
- Charles Darwin, Descent of Man, and Selection in Regard to Sex
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