Posted on 05/08/2003 10:11:06 AM PDT by Nebullis
I could equally argue that one-cells, or unisexuals, or prokariotes, are non-life, because they don't look like us, play bridge, or pay taxes. If life ramped up from basic beginnings in constrained, mildly ordered natural environments akin to Conway's game of Life, then your claims about life-vs-non-life are just spurious word-games. At some point, unlifelike automata turned into lifelike automata. Where that supposed barrier is, differs depending on what criteria for "real" life you have arbitrarily chosen.
You obviously are trying to confuse the issue. You have often argued very strongly for abiogenesis. As to games and other nonsense about life from non-life there are none that can surmount the problems against it that real science has shown.
As to your atheism, I see no difference in your writings from those of atheists. Like you they also hate God.
For one thing, non-life cannot 'evolve'. YOu need a complete living thing to start off the life process and that requires at a minimum some half million DNA pairs. We do know that there is no needful arrangement of these pairs as regarding chemistry. We do not know of any DNA even in non-living things. Besides the arrangement of the DNA problem you have a few others in achieving life from non-life. One is that it takes more than DNA to make a living thing. You need the proteins, and the whole organism for life to work and be able to replicate itself. You thus have a chicken and egg problem here. In addition you have the problem of RNA reading the symbolic DNA code. This is impossible without a designer.
You mean the switch from an interesting discussion to yet another recitation of the exact same feeble,
As usual, when caught playing games the evolutionists insult. You completely twisted my words around from a discussion of evolution to one on abiogenesis to which they did not apply.
What we were discussing was the fitness cost of non-working functions and organs which evolutionists are forced to assume in order to make their theory work.The problem for evolution is to slowly, gradually, in small steps create a totally new organ, function, etc. with each single step making the organism more fit. You do not wish to discuss this since such is impossible and the article completely avoids the question of fitness cost for that very reason.
The problem with turing machines as the source of life from non-life is that only intelligent designers build turing machines. The only intelligent designer possible at the time life began is God.
donh: That is correct.
whattajoke: Let it also be known that I, whattajoke, an avowed non-theist, non believer in anything supernatural at all, cannot disagree with your statement.
quickl: Wow, you've finally gotten what we've been saying all along?
dimensio: I do not, however, see such an assertion as incompatable with or contradictory to the theory of evolution.
So tell me fellas, how is it you can allow for a supernatural creation of the universe and a supernatural beginning of life, but reject with absolute certainty --yet without any proof whatsoever--, a supernatural beginning for man?
Don't tell me it is because special creation is unscientific. You just admitted the possibility of two other "unscientific" events.
Keying on Fully as the evidence that the Church accepts Darwinian evolution? If not, what other evidence do you offer about the Church's acceptance of this as man's origin? I am not aware of any and I have checked extensively since returning to the Church. I am happy to take the info I presented to you from the Cathechism of the Church and writings from different Popes and follow their conclusions as being current Church teachings. What is your evidence that the Church holds to Darwinian evolution?
Hey, isn't that the best of both worlds or are you saying that doesn't work? Did Hitler, Stalin, or Buddha go to your heaven if they accepted your god in the last 2 minutes of their life?
Your incapacity to read the threads you are discussing remains world class. Wolfram has demonstrated that about one in 256 ramdomly chosen, rudimentary discrete fields of discourse that can generate repeating patterns through simple cell relationships, generate turing machines. Get his book and check it out for yourself--he's done nothing you can't reproduce yourself on your computer.
Apprently, you can't read either. Is this some kind of creationist infection that's going around? Nothing in any of what your quoted deponents said suggests that they "reject with absolute certainty" a supernatural beginning for man.
I can't speak for all skeptics, but what I reject is that there is some sort of slapdown contest between what science knows or cares about, and God's place in creation. Science is about material evidence. About immaterial or unavailable evidence, science quite properly stands mute.
Look whose talking.
You have often argued very strongly for abiogenesis.
This is, as usual, incorrect.
I have represented the 12 or so most common suggestions as to how naturalistic abiogenesis could occur. If we are talking about things that might have been possible, lacking any spectacular evidence one or another--which we do-- there is no substantive reason to reject them in favor of non-naturalistic explanations. More specifically, I have argued that that means the creationist claim--yours in particular--that God did it because no other explanation exists, is simply wishful thinking on creationist's part.
As to games and other nonsense about life from non-life there are none that can surmount the problems against it that real science has shown.
This is, of course, blatant nonsense. There is no major body of scientific thought that rejects abiogenic origins, just as there is none that rejects devine intervention.
As to your atheism, I see no difference in your writings from those of atheists. Like you they also hate God.
So athiests hate an entity they don't believe exists, eh? That must be a good trick. Sure they hate God's run-of-the-mill avaricious, self-satisfied, self-seeking, cruel representatives, but they don't hate God nearly enough; but, So what? That doesn't give you a license to rewrite Webster's to suit your arguments. Obviously, I am not an athiest by any rational measure.
As usual, you couldn't track a conversation sealed in a paper bag with you. Evolution obviously did not begin with the story we presently know about. Regardless of how many times you drag out the theory that prokartiotes shazaamed together from junk yard organics one day because they felt like it.
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