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To: ahayes
That assertion has been refuted.

OK. So what? Answer the questions I asked you. I can flip the switch on a refrigerator and produce cold in a hot environment.

What second assertion involving personal incredulity? That life is a complex arrangement of chemical reactions? Or that living things die?

206 posted on 03/12/2006 3:34:33 PM PST by AndrewC (How to become rich... First you start out with a million dollars.)
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To: AndrewC

You basically said that although one type of reaction may proceed in the presence of light, you don't see how any number of chemical reactions could produce in the end a living system. That's the argument from personal incredulity, demonstrated when someone states disbelief in something because he doesn't understand or cannot imagine how it could be true. There's nothing particularly wrong with this. However, one's incredulity doesn't count as proof. You might not be able to imagine how a living system might arise by aggregation of various molecules and gradual modifications. However, there are a lot of people who can imagine it. Does this constitute proof on either side? Nope. The best we can do is go looking for evidence that it might be plausible or implausible. The field of "prebiotic evolution" is providing evidence that it's not so implausible as all that.

All of which is not really relevant to the theory of evolution itself. The theory of evolution concerns itself with heritable changes in the genetic material, not how the genetic material got there in the first place. Interestingly there are plenty of theistic evolutionists who believe that God made the first living cell and sent it on its way, while there are others who believe God engineered the process of abiogenesis and subsequent evolution like he engineers the weather--steering everything to produce the desired result, but typically not interfering in any way that breaks the laws of nature.


211 posted on 03/13/2006 6:12:01 AM PST by ahayes
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