Abiogenesis is their *weakness* in the discussion of creation vs. evolution.
If it were their strength, believe me, you'd be hearing more about it. But they can't tout it, because no one understands it.
(Again: Remember that Genesis says specifically that "the Earth brought forth life"--which implies evolution from abiogenesis. Judaic tradition sure describes the origin of all things better than Eskimo, eh?)
Say what you will, but the lack of progress with the abiogenic field speaks volumes about the limitations of our understanding of how life first formed. We simply *don't know,* but only a few honest biochemists will fess up to the truth. The rest remain guilty in their silence.
There's a huge amount of peer pressure to toe the line in science. If you want continued grant funding, you need a good word from your peers as a future reference. If you don't have it, you lose your livelihood. Few will dare to buck the establishment.
ID is new. There's no hurry. I think they're onto something, because they can't disprove Intelligent Design. In fact, many unanswered questions are hinting at, pointing at, Intelligent Design as the cause for why we can't answer a simple question: How did Life begin?
Why should there be something...rather than nothing?
While we cannot (and probably never will be able to) prove ID, the circumstantial evidence for it is overwhelming...but not quite proof.
Conversely, they cannot disprove I.D.
As for me, I view evolution and the entrenched cabal defending-it-at-all-costs as very close-minded. They're putting forth their own "just so" story.
For me, I view evolution as the Theory of Accidentialism.
There just hasn't been enough time elapsed here on Earth to generate life from inorganic materials, even by their own theories.
There's also the problem that life appeared the minute liquid water was able to form. In reality, that's the point where the countdown should have begun, and add many billions of years to that date. But that's not what happened. Life seemed to have been either introduced, or pre-programmed to introduce itself (Genesis, anyone?).
Either way, I think this univese was meant to have life in it. We have some bacteria that have more than a hundred times the genetic material you would expect for a bacteria...is it meant to be "seed material" to create other organisms?
Here we are, living on this Goldilocks world...right orbit, smack dab in the ecospshere...right inclination...right star...right part of the spiral arm...right age...a tiny fraction in change of temperature and matter wouldn't exist...quantum gravity "tuned" to be just right...even Hoyle said that it appeared as if Someone has "monkeyed" with the physics of the universe, that it was fine-tuned for life....
I'm sorry, but I think O.J. murdered Nicole because of all the circumstantial evidence, and I think God exists because of all the circumstantial evidence, too.
We're sitting here discussing the evidences for Design in biology. There's PLENTY, if you want to be honest about it.
But what's more important--there's even MORE evidence for Design in the cosmos. Some of the older Christians here can recollect when a select sect (cult, cabal...I'll use the word "sect") of slightly less-than-honest-to-the-general-public astronomers held out for far too many years for the Steady State Theory, held out beyond all reasonableness, and held out--by their own admission--because the thought of a universe with an "origin" carried too weight of an implication, and made them "uneasy." (Hints at the existence of a God to whom they might be accountable.) It all gets down to the desire to be libertine, rather than accountable.
If the universe is ultimately uncreated, eterally self-existent, or even accidental...then it has no purpose, and neither do we. Morality becomes irrelevant.
If, however, it was created, then morality becomes paramount. And this frightens some. But on the good side, it would mean that love, perception of aesthetic beauty, and the concept of altruism and mercy actually do have meaning, and our having them was by no means an accident.
I'm sickened by a few deceitful astronomers who clung tenanciously to the Steady State Theory (now on the ash heap), only to discard it and immediately jump onto the (minority) bandwagon of Brane Theory. They weren't held accountable. (Scolding would be sufficient.)
They'll simply do anything to DENY that this universe had an origin, a creation, in time.
(Brane Theory says that another universe "bumped" into this one, creating it. It conveniently begs the question of what created THAT OTHER universe. Another "just so" story we're supposed to accept. Oh, and there are 11 dimensions to it...did I mention that? We're supposed to lay back and accept this stuff, cut from whole cloth, unprovable, posited from nothing but imagination, and yet we cannot posit a Creator? Dudes, you guys must play by the same rhetorical rules. If you can make up your universes, we can posit God, for whom there's tons of circumstantial evidence.)
My $0.02, again. YMMV (your mileage may vary).
Let's all rest easy.
Sauron.
I hear you Sauron. Thank You.
Wolf
I think we're all honest about the appearance of design in life, even Dawkins admits that. It is that some assert that it can appear by chance and unguided selection.
Abiogenesis is not part of the theory of evolution, and the theory of evolution says nothing about creation. The tenor of your posts suggests that you have a bizarre idea that those who support evolution are atheists. That is false, and so your following few paragraphs are based on a false premise. BTW abiogenesis is being studied, and if I were you I wouldn't predicate my faith on those studies ultimately failing to provide a naturalistic explanation. Worshipping the God of the Gaps is risky.
There's a huge amount of peer pressure to toe the line in science. If you want continued grant funding, you need a good word from your peers as a future reference. If you don't have it, you lose your livelihood. Few will dare to buck the establishment.
THis is just paranoid nonsense. The fame and fortune that would await anyone who falsified a central unifying theory such as evolution with genuine evidence would be undying. The idea that scientists (most of whom are religious believers) are hiding the evidence to further some kind of evolutionist agenda is beyond parody.
ID is new. There's no hurry. I think they're onto something, because they can't disprove Intelligent Design. In fact, many unanswered questions are hinting at, pointing at, Intelligent Design as the cause for why we can't answer a simple question: How did Life begin?
ID isn't new, it is one of man's oldest ideas. In the last few-thousand years ID hasn't produced one single insight. Incidentally are you aware of the opinions of the main scientific exponent of ID, Michael Behe?
Is that a set of beliefs you are happy to sign up to? If not then best drop the support for ID.
Either way, I think this univese was meant to have life in it. We have some bacteria that have more than a hundred times the genetic material you would expect for a bacteria...is it meant to be "seed material" to create other organisms? Here we are, living on this Goldilocks world...right orbit, smack dab in the ecospshere...right inclination...right star...right part of the spiral arm...right age...a tiny fraction in change of temperature and matter wouldn't exist...quantum gravity "tuned" to be just right...even Hoyle said that it appeared as if Someone has "monkeyed" with the physics of the universe, that it was fine-tuned for life....
About .000000000000000000000001% of the universe appears to be "fine-tuned for life" as you put it. Isn't that rather wasteful. Another way of putting it would be, "to get life like us, you'd need a universe and a planet just like ours", Well duh! And wasn't your argument just now that life was so unlikely that God had to tinker to make it appear. Now you've reversed that stance to say that we've got a goldilocks universe where all this is inevitable. Which is it, then?
It all gets down to the desire to be libertine, rather than accountable. If the universe is ultimately uncreated, eterally self-existent, or even accidental...then it has no purpose, and neither do we. Morality becomes irrelevant. If, however, it was created, then morality becomes paramount. And this frightens some. But on the good side, it would mean that love, perception of aesthetic beauty, and the concept of altruism and mercy actually do have meaning, and our having them was by no means an accident.
You make an enormous jump from "The universe was created" (if we accept that, for the sake of argument). To "morality becomes paramount". Whence comes this jump. Why should the creator of the universe share our notions of morality? Why should the creator of the universe care about us at all? He seems to have created this "rather large" artifact of which we form a vanishingly tiny and insignificant portion. To get a sense of the scale of the universe, imagine a cubic mile of fine powder, 10 grains to the mm, 1000 grains per cubic mill. Each of those grains is a sun in the universe, spread them out so the average distance between them is many miles. Near one of them, and a thousand times smaller is a miniscule speck, and on its surface is... us. You really think that the whole shebang was created just to get us? What kind of Goldilocks universe is that wastefulness?
I grow weary of the duplicitousness of the militant evos. Growing up I remember hearing about the wealth of evidence from the paleontology community demonstrating the irrefutable evidence of the fact of evolution. Yet when we focus on this evidence we find that the wealth of transitional forms Darwin hoped for is devoid of substantiation. Now we are told to believe the theory absent the record of transitional paleontological fossils. To boot, when Gould, Dawkins, et al admit to one another of said absence of fossils, they attempt to back pedal from their own admission in the face of public attack. Sorry, no take backs. The militant evos are flat wrong and they have been called on it and no volume of slippery forked tongues will undo the grave they have excavated for themselves. Simply duplicitous!
If it were their strength, believe me, you'd be hearing more about it. But they can't tout it, because no one understands it.
Sorry, not so. Different field entirely.
In grad school I did the course in human evolution, two advanced courses in problems in evolution, human races, and studied both human osteology and fossil man for the Ph.D. exams. Never once do I remember abiogenesis coming up for discussion. Why? Different field entirely!
It is only the creation types (who must think they found the 'smoking gun' at last) that keep linking the two. Either that or the creationist websites have this near the top.