Posted on 11/10/2009 8:11:47 AM PST by GodGunsGuts
Former Nature editor Philip Ball once commented that ‘there is no assembly plant so delicate, versatile and adaptive as the cell” (1). Emeritus Professor Theodore Brown chose to wax metaphorical by likening the cell to a fully-fledged factory, with its own complex functional relationships and interactions akin to what we observe in our own manufacturing facilities (2). In recent years the seemingly intractable problem of explaining how the first cell came into existence through chance events, otherwise known as the ‘Chance Hypothesis’, has become more acute than ever as scientists have begun to realize that a minimum suite of functional components must exist for cells to be operational. Stephen Meyer’s summary of the current state of this so-called ‘minimal complexity’ research is profoundly insightful: ...
(Excerpt) Read more at uncommondescent.com ...
Isn't that similar to the old "With a million monkeys at typewriters, given enough time, one would end up with "War and Peace"?
I think the correct answer is both (they overlap, in the sense that biblical creationists automatically fall into the umbrella of ID; however the converse is not true). Kenyon was a presenter at the biblical creationist ICC conference I attended in 1994 (I attended his lecture), and wrote the foreword to What is Creation Science? by Drs. Henry Morris and Gary Parker. I've not seen him tightly identify himself with biblical creation, but I think this sufficient to put him in our camp (particularly the ICC participation). Also, he indicated Dr. A.E. Wilder-Smith's criticisms of his work as his reason for converting, and Wilder-Smith was an unabashed biblical creationist as well.
"Degeneration = fixity" Fascinating. And bizarrely wrong.
Degeneration and fixity are mutually exclusive concepts. If a species is degenerating then it is not fixed. Look, Linneaus discovered species hybridization over 200 years ago and realized that his species concept did not equal biblical 'kinds.' So your caricature of creationists believing in fixity of species has been out of date literally for centuries. I don't doubt that you can find some grandma somewhere who believes in fixity of species, but what would you say if I started depicting Lamarckism as the latest and greatest in evolutionary theorizing?
The real issue is whether life is on an 'upwards' path of increasing functional complexity and organization and functional diversification, or are we degenerating. The overwhelming evidence of empirical evolutionary biology testifies to the latter, as documented in books like Genetic Entropy by Dr. John Sanford and Not A Chance! by Dr. Lee Spetner. Against the caricature of "change vs. stasis" we have the real issue of "degeneration vs. evolution". It's not wonder evolutionists simply refuse to address the evidence on these terms.
I said biblical creationism is the bedrock foundation of conservatism, not that one has to be a creationist to espouse some/most conservative positions.
Conservatism is objectively based on certain absolutes such as the belief that we have rights and responsibilities; both of these concepts (rights and responsibilites) only have meaning if there is a personal Creator to whom we are accountable and who has a moral order we are under. This is why the founding fathers of this country set their claims of rights in their founding documents within the context of a 'Creator' who granted those rights.
Going further, we need to understand that our concept of a Creator governs what kinds of rights and responsibilities He would have for us. The God of an old earth is a vicious or uncaring demon-god, lord of eons of death, disease and suffering. As many atheists have pointed out, He is not a nice, or loving God. Only the biblical God who created a perfect world and who will restore it from the Curse we've brought upon it is a sound basis for our personal freedoms and responsibilities.
Historically, conservative thinkers have reflected this in the writings I've come across, from Burke and Adam Smith down to M. Stanton Evans, Herb Schlossberg, David Noebel and so forth. The only real deviation I can think of is Thomas Sowell, but by his own assertion he considers himself libertarian, not conservative, and his writings do not present an overarching paradigm such as necessary to ground conservatism. Likewise, where is the evidence that someone like Chris Hitchens is establishing a sound, non-arbitrary foundation for conservatism without biblical Christianity?
What do your and your gang have to comment about scientists at NASA/Ames finding uracil, one of the building blocks of RNA in space like conditions.
Using pyrimidines, known to be present in space wuth low temps, vacuum and high radiation, they showed in the lab that uracil could be formed in ice in space.
Maybe the building blocks of life did come from outer space.
That's a very good question. I would describe it this way: To speak of something happening by chance, we are saying that it does not require the action of a direct, intelligent agent, nor does it require a particular configuration of operational constraints (natural laws and immediate environmental causes), such that a given outcome becomes inevitable, given probabilistic resources for any chance elements within the scenario in question.
OK, that's a mouthful. Let me try to provide an illustration that is probably more helpful:
We enter a room and notice a variety of marbles of different colors sitting on the floor in an apparently random pattern. We are asked to consider whether the position of the marbles is due to (1) chance, (2) order, or (3) an intelligent agent.
The first thing we notice is the random scattering of all the marbles. There is no need to appeal to anything more than chance in the scattering of these marbles. But then we reflect a moment, and realize the marbles could be randomly scattered at all heights in the room, floating in mid-air. Why aren't they?
The answer, of course, is the law of gravity. Gravity is causing a layer of order in the results, the random scattering on the floor not-withstanding. So there is a mixture of chance and order that needs to be invoked in the overall explanation here.
And then, if we notice that the red marbles alone, of all the colors, spell out a word in English, we would have evidence for a cause not explainable by chance nor by natural laws/order.
I'm not sure I've answered the question, or gone down a rabbit trail. I apologize if the latter...
IF mutations ONLY lead to "degeneration" or "corruption" (as the YEC claim), then there is NO viable mechanism for "differentiation". The YEC's claim of "degeneration" implies fixity. It's not my fault that it's nonsense.
But if, on the other hand, we accept the claim of “degeneration only”, then why do all these beautifully “differentiated” species exist?
Doesn't biochemistry and other natural processes such as snowflake formation work the same way, a combination of natural law, and chance?
And then, if we notice that the red marbles alone, of all the colors, spell out a word in English, we would have evidence for a cause not explainable by chance nor by natural laws/order.
What if the marbles are dropped a billion times, and one of those drops out of a billion yields a word in English spelled by the red marbles?
There are difficult computational problems that aren't solvable (or easily solved) by algorithms alone, but are solvable when the algorithms are combined with chance or randomness. Perhaps God is a better problem solver than some people think.
I'm not sure I've answered the question, or gone down a rabbit trail. I apologize if the latter...
Good answer. Good post.
Still have my copy.
Thanks for the ping!
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