Posted on 06/07/2002 11:35:28 AM PDT by jennyp
WHAT? If macroevolution is true, then what I described must have occurred.
That is not in the least true.
Individuals do not start new species, as a general rule, so attempting to locate the exact point of individual speciation is another fools errand. Please indicate that you made some attempt to understand my original reply to this contention.
Zoologists invent species as a matter of referential convenience. Despite numerous attempts by creationists to hang arguments on it, there is no solid reality to our species designations to demand to see the interfaces of. There is only a continuous cloud of diminishing probability that any given critter will successfully mate with any other given critter.
Why would simians come about if primative anthropods were doing their job?
Times change. The earth cools. Other alternative approaches become so much more efficient in the altered environment that they prevail.
Unless you're asking for money. You're not saying that a self-defined "community of experts" should be above scrutiny are you? Remember Carl Sagan predicting a new ice age because of oil well fires in the Gulf War?
No. This isn't relevant to anything I have suggested. What I have suggested is that you don't rate and rank scientific ideas by counting the noses of the pigs at its feeding trough. We do not use popular democratic criteria to evaluate ideas in science. We find our most knowledgeable thinkers on the subject to hand, require that they publish formal papers to exacting criteria, and apply only the excruciating critical judgement of other scientists, selected because their training allows them to understand the issues, to the results.
To do otherwise would be like consulting pigs about proper table setting.
we consult the views of our best specialized scientists
Like Francis "ET" Crick?
Is Francis Crick an abiogensis scientist? No. He he helped figure out how DNA work produces protein. His opinion on subjects outside his formal publishing specialization is so much flatulant gas. Try Woese, or Fitch&Margoliash, for example, who have published under science's exacting criteria for the technical journals, on the subject under discussion.
Oh come off it. Thousands of examples of speciation have been found in the natural world. It is common grist of Biology Grad student's Doctorals.
Crick is among the most brillant scientists living. Because he's basically honest yet can't admit to the existance of God, he has resorted to crediting space aliens for our creation.
The guppies were your analogy to the simplicity of RNA changing to DNA.
Since you don't like the math proofs, how would you falsify abiogenesis?
With 6 billion people in it, the world is brimming over with brilliant guys. They all have lots of opinions. Until those opinions are vetted in referreed technical journals, they are entertainment, and do not in any manner represent the current opinion of science on any subject. There are some opinions about abiogenesis that survive this scruteny. Crick's outpourings on the subject are not among them, and therefore, referencing him is in no manner authoratitive about the current state of science, which is presently quite open to perceived issues in abiogensis.
And, by the way, the "space aliens planted seeds" theory does not really answer any extant questions very satisfactorily: where did the space aliens come from?
RNA didn't "change" to DNA. The RNA is still running the show. DNA is just offline tape storage, which we probably once got along fine without, when things were hotter, and efficient production of mRNA was not all the rage.
Since you don't like the math proofs, how would you falsify abiogenesis?
You have to divide this into two questions: How would I formally falsify abiogensis? By examining the entire state space of the universe as if it were a giant chess game I could read backwards in time and constructing of eden proof: ie, a proof that some point in evolution could not be reached from a starting point with no life in it. I think it is a safe guess that humans will never have enough resources to attempt this proof.
Less formally, you could refute abiogensis if you capture a wild example of life forming by some other means. Feel free.
Like I said, to refute a thing, you need positive evidence to the contrary. Pointing out that you don't yet know everything, as creationists and complexity honks do, is a pointless truism.
uh huh, prebiotic reagents, eh? Kindly submit your proof that sugar in the ATP cycle was the only possible energy capturing and conserving cycle that could have been employed pre-biotically. If you want to talk about short half-lives, consider mRNA. After it's been used by a couple of ribosomes to produce a protein, it breaks down and has to be disposed of. If it didn't, and nothing else intermediated, your cells would fill up and explode with unneeded protein & mRNA junk--unless, of course, you didn't have any DNA in the first place, and just got your mRNA from a finite store--say, a golgi body for example--or by a complex cyclic relationship of various RNA set in a feedback loop regulated by the constant, well-throttled outpouring of johnny-on-the-spot mRNA.
This should read:
constructing a garden of eden proof
Sorry.
You have to divide this into two questions: How would I formally falsify abiogensis? By examining the entire state space of the universe as if it were a giant chess game I could read backwards in time and constructing of eden proof: ie, a proof that some point in evolution could not be reached from a starting point with no life in it.
As Hoyle and Morowitz did.
I think it is a safe guess that humans will never have enough resources to attempt this proof.
So it can't be falsified. (This means it has fallen as a science,)
When you say nobody do you mean the authors of those links or science in general?
Even the vast majority of scientists don't want to think about this subject at all. Which is why such arrogant pronounciations, such as you have referenced, about the death of abiogensis based on so little rigor pass for scientific opinion in the popular mind--since few scientists will betrouble themselves to mount a defense.
Kindly submit your proof that the approaches I have suggested are the only possible ways to falsify abiogensis.
Which means . . .(see post 650)
They, of course, did nothing of the sort. In terms of my suggested computation, they picked one back-vector out of countless trillions of the back-in-time computations that would be required to examine the universe exhaustively. As they say, it's not that you're right; it's not that you're wrong. It's that you aren't even in the game.
You are crossing the line from silly to pointlessly ridiculous. I asked you how you would falsify abiogenesis and you basically said you can't.
I'm content with the math proofs indicating that for all practical expectations it is false. In my view, it has been falsified.
Which means . . .(see post 650)
Which means that science is not a democracy, just as I said. When you want to ask a particular scientific question, you ask the people working on it, and you don't give a cat's poop what anyone else thinks, because anyone else's opinion is uninformed to the point of uselessness.
Actually -- since we have an rough estimate of the size and age of the universe and provided for a very generous margin of error -- there isn't "countless trillions." Which is the point of the calculations.
Oh really. Where did I say that no one could come up with a counterexample? Where did I say that mine was the only possible approach? You have a real problem with categories don't you? Believe it or not, my opinion does not represent closure on what science is capable of thinking. I know this may be a shock.
I'm content with the math proofs indicating that for all practical expectations it is false. In my view, it has been falsified.
And I wish you every happiness with your view, but if you continue to suggest that this is science's view, I will continue to object, as it is plainly not.
Really? And what is the granulatity of the universe to which such calculations could be applied? How will you dismiss the problem that God plays dice below the quantum length?--thereby requiring you to branch the calculation and consider multiple possible previous universes at the each discrete timemark every time you step back? Assuming time comes in packages that are ultimately discrete.
Again, you are mistaking a random calculation for a definitive proof--the gulf between the two is beyond wide.
I'll grant you that abiogenesis is in the same scientific category as "multiple possible previous universes."
Again, you are mistaking a random calculation for a definitive proof--the gulf between the two is beyond wide.
Again, you are mistaking my claim that the odds of 1 to 10^340,000,000 for abiogenesis (which is a premeditated calculation, not a random one) is definitive. I'm just pointing out that it is far more rational to believe in God.
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