Posted on 09/08/2004 4:50:10 PM PDT by PatrickHenry
Once upon a time there were these very simple microbes.
That depends on where you choose to draw the line between "non-life" and "life". Define your question more specifically and I'll be glad to answer.
Sure. How do we get from amino acids (primodial soup) to organisms that can take in food and reproduce?
And how come all proteins are left handed, when the proteins we synthesize in vitro are left and right handed?
They aren't all left-handed, just most of them. Numerous living things produce and incorporate right-handed amino acids. As for why, because things work out more neatly when working with building blocks that are mostly of the same handedness, so evolution favored processes of life which specialized in one "hand" (left, or right).
Excuse my lack of clarity. Here's my thought process: 1. synthesis of proteins produces left and right handed proteins. 2. current life has primarily left handed. 3. proto life must use only one handed proteins 4. How does the first organism start with only the right handed proteins when the solution contains both right and left handed proteins?
Correct.
Once more for those who haven't been listening to these threads: Evolution is only concerned with what happens once a viable cell exists. It isn't concerned with how that cell came to be.
I step into the "crevo" threads from time to time. Usually I don't find anything I didn't read ten years ago on the evolution group on Usenet.
I think evolution should be concerned about abiogenesis. If that didn't happen, or cannot happen, that provides strong evidence in favor of intelligent design. And if there must be an Intelligent Designer, why have evolution?
I agree that evolution should stand or fall on its own, independent of abiogenesis, based upon the available evidence. However, the way you look at the evidence (interpretation) changes depending upon the result of abiogenesis and ID.
Ok, posted below is a rather lengthy quote from the article. The faulty logic of the ID article invalidates the argument, and to quote myself in the previous post:
Aye, there's the rub. To argue that something "cannot be explained" by blah, blah, blah. This is a purely subjective judgment, (substitute 'opinion.')
One cannot "Prove a Negative" (i.e., "cannot be explained") and even if one could - that wouldn't prove a "Designer" since another explanation not yet considered may be the actual answer.
The criticism from the link is as follows:
The Power of Negative Thinking
Negative argumentation against evolutionary theories seems to be the sole scientific content of “intelligent design”. That observation continues to hold true for this paper by Meyer.
1. Meyer gives no support for his assertion that PE proponents proposed species selection to account for “large morphological jumps”. (Use of the singular, “punctuated equilibrium”, is a common feature of antievolution writing. It is relatively less common among evolutionary biologists, who utilize the plural form, “punctuated equilibria”, as it was introduced by Eldredge and Gould in 1972.)
2. Meyer makes the false claim that PE was supposed to address the problem of the origin of biological information or form. As Gould and Eldredge 1977 noted, PE is a theory about speciation. It is an application of Ernst Mayr’s theory of allopatric speciation — a theory at the core of the Modern Synthesis — to the fossil record. Any discussion of PE that doesn’t mention allopatric speciation or something similar is ignoring the concept’s original meaning.
3. Meyer also makes the false claim that PE was supposed to address the origin of taxa higher than species. This class of error was specifically addressed in Gould and Eldredge 1977. PE is about the pattern of speciation observed in the fossil record, not about taxa other than species.
4. Meyer makes the false claim that genetic algorithms require a “target sequence” to work. Meyer cites two of his own articles as the relevant authority in this matter. However, when one examines these sources, one finds that what is cited in both of these earlier essays is a block of three paragraphs, the content of which is almost identical in the two essays. Meyer bases his denunciation of genetic algorithms as a field upon a superficial examination of two cases. While some genetic algorithm simulations for pedagogy do incorporate a “target sequence”, it is utterly false to say that all genetic algorithms do so. Meyer was in attendance at the NTSE in 1997 when one of us [WRE] brought up a genetic algorithm to solve the Traveling Salesman Problem, which was an example where no “target sequence” was available. Whole fields of evolutionary computation are completely overlooked by Meyer. Two citations relevant to Meyer’s claims are Chellapilla and Fogel (2001) and Stanley and Miikkulainen (2002). (That Meyer overlooks Chelapilla and Fogel 2001 is even more baffling given that Dembski 2002 discussed the work.)
Slow day placemarker.
You cheated, you read the article. (I did too. It was in Times Roman so I discounted the contents.)
Our taxes at work to support the important discipline of "Astrobiology".
Yeah, I'm deceptive that way.
I did find that Meyer claimed an "increase in specific complex information" or something similar but he never defined "specific complex information" nor did he explain how he measured it in the entities he discussed.
That's because there is no clear definition to rely upon. The criticism referenced also had a link to inconsistencies in the Dembski definition which was the basis for Meyer's. here
In the final analysis it is a case of "Begging the Question" since to define "complexity" as being impossible by any natural means, i.e., evolution, the definition has defined itself outside any possibility of verification.
This is the one flaw that these people seem incapable of seeing.
If human beings are limited to experiencing the natural world,
and the ultimate source of everything, especially life, is outside the natural world,
then the ultimate source of everything, especially life, is outside the experience of human beings.
Try as they might, what they want to prove simply cannot be proven, by definition. Thus, the muddy definitions you note here. It is a philosophical shell game.
Coming soon to a textbook near you! The editor at creationsafaris.com has an interesting take on this story:
Well, this ought to be testable. Put some photosynthetic prokaryotes together with archaebacteria in a hot spring, and see if they merge. Are we supposed to believe that this happened only in the unobservable past but is impossible today? It should be going on all the time, and should be common knowledge to microbiologists. It should not be a mystic story imagined by Darwinists alone.
Did Lake or Rivera observe anything like this happen? No. Did they explain how genome fusion could have overcome the barriers and defenses cells use today to protect their information? No. Did they do any real scientific, empirical, lab work? No. Did they just play with their favorite phylogenetic computer games? Yes. Did they find major problems with the standard evolutionary trees? Yes. Did they get tired of the old worn-out metaphor? Maybe. In the end, they do not have a scientific theory, only a metaphor, and metaphors bewitch you, Saruman.
If we could only call evolution a religion, I'd be happy. Demanding that this fairytale is science has shown me the meaning of 1Tim6:20. Not to mention psalm 119:99
To make himself happy, Idi Amin once attempted to rename syphilis "New Hope." But he still had the syph.
"Well, that's glory for you."Humpty Dumpty
You may call a dog a cat, but that wouldn't make it one.
So you use jennyp's board as a source, which links to an article by Glenn Branch, who is a part of that unbiased group NCSE and expect someone to take notice of the opinion? Har. You probably consider James Carvile as an unbiased source working for an even-handed network(CNN).
P.S.
Following links to NCSE, I found a statement which NCSE say was issued by the BSOW. I have not been able to find it anywhere else. The link provided in the following quoted portion of that unsubstantiated statement is a "dead" link.
Through a web presence (www.biolsocwash.org) and contemplated improvements in the journal, the Society hopes not only to continue but to increase its service to the world community of taxonomic biologists.
Now back to look at other forgeries.
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