Undersea vents possible origin of life

MSNBC ^ | 07/24/03 | Robert Roy Britt

[bedolido]

July 24 — In a new study, researchers speculate that a towering undersea hot-water chimney laden with microbes is just the sort of place that might have spawned life on Earth or even other planets.

THE HYDROTHERMAL VENT SYSTEM discovered two years ago has now been found to have endured for 30,000 years. Researchers said similar setups — on Earth and possibly on other worlds — might last millions of years and could have been incubators for the first life. The Lost City, as it has been named, is a craggy column of minerals and microbes sitting 2,500 feet below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. It is 180 feet (55 meters) tall, higher than any other known underwater vent system and more than twice as tall as most.

UNIQUE SYSTEM Underneath the structure, seawater seeps down into the fractured crust of Earth. There, the decay of one mineral forms another, called serpentine, and releases heat in the process. This process of serpentinization lifts warm water laden with minerals back into the ocean, building the structure.

[Stultis]

Do you honestly believe the incredbily complex amount of specified complex information need to create a human being, from blood clotting to abstract thinking could be put in the same category as unspecified complex information in a grain of sand.

I'm not putting them in the same category, but only pointing out that your statement -- "Information never arises from inorganic matter." -- is wrong. BTW, the information in the sand IS specified (for example it points up beach and down beach) once the code is read.

There is no such thing as "information" in an absolute sense (like energy, fields, or matter). Any non-random arrangement of matter (or energy, or temporal events, etc) can contain "information," and since there are such non-random arrangements literally everywhere, there is "information" literally everywhere.

[LiteKeeper]

Try this...I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

“It’s not science”

[LiteKeeper]

Please see my post #44.

Equivocation with the word "information" is not proof of your point. There is a science of Information Theory, cited in #44. And there are clear parameters regarding information.

There is clearly a difference between what you refer to as information, and what I am referring to. There is an immense difference between the information contained in the DNA in your body and the so-called information you say is in the grain of sand.

Please explain something simple, for instance, like the instructions guiding the blood clotting system in your body. There are so many interdependent functions going on - that CANNOT arise over eons of time by means of chance mutations.

[LiteKeeper]

EVOLUTION IS RELIGION--NOT SCIENCE
- IMPACT No. 332 February 2001
by Henry Morris, Ph.D.*

© Copyright 2003 Institute for Creation Research. All Rights Reserved

The writer has documented in two recent Impact articles1, 2 from admissions by evolutionists that the idea of particles-to-people evolution does not meet the criteria of a scientific theory. There are no evolutionary transitions that have ever been observed, either during human history or in the fossil record of the past; and the universal law of entropy seems to make it impossible on any significant scale.

Evolutionists claim that evolution is a scientific fact, but they almost always lose scientific debates with creationist scientists. Accordingly, most evolutionists now decline opportunities for scientific debates, preferring instead to make unilateral attacks on creationists.

Scientists should refuse formal debates because they do more harm than good, but scientists still need to counter the creationist message.3

The question is, just why do they need to counter the creationist message? Why are they so adamantly committed to anti-creationism?

The fact is that evolutionists believe in evolution because they want to. It is their desire at all costs to explain the origin of everything without a Creator. Evolutionism is thus intrinsically an atheistic religion. Some may prefer to call it humanism, and New Age evolutionists may place it in the context of some form of pantheism, but they all amount to the same thing. Whether atheism or humanism (or even pantheism), the purpose is to eliminate a personal God from any active role in the origin of the universe and all its components, including man.

The core of the humanistic philosophy is naturalism—the proposition that the natural world proceeds according to its own internal dynamics, without divine or supernatural control or guidance, and that we human beings are creations of that process. It is instructive to recall that the philosophers of the early humanistic movement debated as to which term more adequately described their position: humanism or naturalism. The two concepts are complementary and inseparable.4

Since both naturalism and humanism exclude God from science or any other active function in the creation or maintenance of life and the universe in general, it is very obvious that their position is nothing but atheism. And atheism, no less than theism, is a religion! Even doctrinaire-atheistic evolutionist Richard Dawkins admits that atheism cannot be proven to be true.

Of course we can't prove that there isn't a God.5

Therefore, they must believe it, and that makes it a religion. The atheistic nature of evolution is not only admitted, but insisted upon, by most of the leaders of evolutionary thought. Ernst Mayr, for example, says that:

Darwinism rejects all supernatural phenomena and causations.6

A professor in the Department of Biology at Kansas State University says:

Even if all the data point to an intelligent designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic.7

It is well known in the scientific world today that such influential evolutionists as Stephen Jay Gould and Edward Wilson of Harvard, Richard Dawkins of England, William Provine of Cornell, and numerous other evolutionary spokesmen are dogmatic atheists. Eminent scientific philosopher and ardent Darwinian atheist Michael Ruse has even acknowledged that evolution is their religion!

Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion—a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality. . . . Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today. 8

Another way of saying "religion" is "worldview," the whole of reality. The evolutionary worldview applies not only to the evolution of life, but even to that of the entire universe. In the realm of cosmic evolution, our naturalistic scientists depart even further from experimental science than life scientists do, manufacturing a variety of evolutionary cosmologies from esoteric mathematics and metaphysical speculation. Socialist Jeremy Rifkin has commented on this remarkable game.

Cosmologies are made up of small snippets of physical reality that have been remodeled by society into vast cosmic deceptions.9

They must believe in evolution, therefore, in spite of all the evidence, not because of it. And speaking of deceptions, note the following remarkable statement.

We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, . . . in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated commitment to materialism. . . . we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.10

The author of this frank statement is Richard Lewontin of Harvard. Since evolution is not a laboratory science, there is no way to test its validity, so all sorts of justso stories are contrived to adorn the textbooks. But that doesn't make them true! An evolutionist reviewing a recent book by another (but more critical) evolutionist, says:

We cannot identify ancestors or "missing links," and we cannot devise testable theories to explain how particular episodes of evolution came about. Gee is adamant that all the popular stories about how the first amphibians conquered the dry land, how the birds developed wings and feathers for flying, how the dinosaurs went extinct, and how humans evolved from apes are just products of our imagination, driven by prejudices and preconceptions.11

A fascinatingly honest admission by a physicist indicates the passionate commitment of establishment scientists to naturalism. Speaking of the trust students naturally place in their highly educated college professors, he says:

And I use that trust to effectively brainwash them. . . . our teaching methods are primarily those of propaganda. We appeal—without demonstration—to evidence that supports our position. We only introduce arguments and evidence that supports the currently accepted theories and omit or gloss over any evidence to the contrary.12

Creationist students in scientific courses taught by evolutionist professors can testify to the frustrating reality of that statement. Evolution is, indeed, the pseudoscientific basis of religious atheism, as Ruse pointed out. Will Provine at Cornell University is another scientist who frankly acknowledges this.

As the creationists claim, belief in modern evolution makes atheists of people. One can have a religious view that is compatible with evolution only if the religious view is indistinguishable from atheism.13

Once again we emphasize that evolution is not science, evolutionists' tirades notwithstanding. It is a philosophical worldview, nothing more. Another prominent evolutionist comments as follows:

(Evolution) must, they feel, explain everything. . . . A theory that explains everything might just as well be discarded since it has no real explanatory value. Of course, the other thing about evolution is that anything can be said because very little can be disproved. Experimental evidence is minimal.14

Even that statement is too generous. Actual experimental evidence demonstrating true evolution (that is, macroevolution) is not "minimal." It is nonexistent!

The concept of evolution as a form of religion is not new. In my book, The Long War Against God,15 I documented the fact that some form of evolution has been the pseudo-rationale behind every anti-creationist religion since the very beginning of history. This includes all the ancient ethnic religions, as well as such modern world religions as Buddhism, Hinduism, and others, as well as the "liberal" movements in even the creationist religions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam).

As far as the twentieth century is concerned, the leading evolutionist is generally considered to be Sir Julian Huxley, primary architect of modern neo-Darwinism. Huxley called evolution a "religion without revelation" and wrote a book with that title (2nd edition, 1957). In a later book, he said:

Evolution . . . is the most powerful and the most comprehensive idea that has ever arisen on earth.16

Later in the book he argued passionately that we must change "our pattern of religious thought from a God-centered to an evolution-centered pattern."17 Then he went on to say that: "the God hypothesis . . . is becoming an intellectual and moral burden on our thought." Therefore, he concluded that "we must construct something to take its place."18

That something, of course, is the religion of evolutionary humanism, and that is what the leaders of evolutionary humanism are trying to do today.

In closing this summary of the scientific case against evolution (and, therefore, for creation), the reader is reminded again that all quotations in the article are from doctrinaire evolutionists. No Bible references are included, and no statements by creationists. The evolutionists themselves, to all intents and purposes, have shown that evolutionism is not science, but religious faith in atheism.

References
1 Morris, Henry M., "The Scientific Case Against Evolution—Part I," (Impact No. 330, December 2000), pp. i-iv.
2 Morris, Henry M., "The Scientific Case Against Evolution—Part II," (Impact No. 331, January 2001), pp. i-iv.
3 Scott, Eugenie, "Fighting Talk," New Scientist (vol. 166, April 22, 2000), p.47. Dr. Scott is director of the anti-creationist organization euphemistically named The National Center for Science Education.
4 Ericson, Edward L., "Reclaiming the Higher Ground," The Humanist (vol. 60, September/October 2000), p. 30.
5 Dawkins, Richard, replying to a critique of his faith in the liberal journal, Science and Christian Belief (vol. 7, 1994), p. 47.
6 Mayr, Ernst, "Darwin's Influence on Modern Thought," Scientific American (vol. 283, July 2000), p. 83.
7 Todd, Scott C., "A View from Kansas on the Evolution Debates," Nature (vol. 401. September 30, 1999), p. 423.
8 Ruse, Michael, "Saving Darwinism from the Darwinians," National Post (May 13, 2000), p. B-3.
9 Rifkin, Jeremy, "Reinventing Nature," The Humanist (vol. 58, March/April 1998), p. 24.
10 Lewontin, Richard, Review of The Demon-Haunted World, by Carl Sagan. In New York Review of Books, January 9, 1997.
11 Bowler, Peter J., Review of In Search of Deep Time by Henry Gee (Free Press, 1999), American Scientist (vol. 88, March/April 2000), p. 169.
12 Singham, Mark, "Teaching and Propaganda," Physics Today (vol. 53, June 2000), p. 54.
13 Provine, Will, "No Free Will," in Catching Up with the Vision, Ed. by Margaret W. Rossiter (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), p. S123.
14 Appleyard, Bryan, "You Asked for It," New Scientist (vol. 166, April 22, 2000), p. 45.
15 Morris, Henry M., The Long War Against God (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1989), 344 pp.
16 Huxley, Julian, Essays of a Humanist (New York: Harper and `Row, 1964),
p. 125.
17 Ibid., p. 222.
18 Ibid.
* Dr. Morris is Founder and President Emeritus of the Institute for Creation Research.

[NewLand]

Thanks! I've already read that and many others on ICR.

[NewLand]

Great article...It's too bad that the blind cannot see what is in front of them. Keep praying...

[tortoise]

My definition is scientific. To be specific, I am quoting Dr Werner Gitt, Director and Professor at the German Federal Institute of Physics and Technology. He has written numerous scientific papers in the field of information science, numerical mathematics, and control engineering.

With all due respect, I am one of the people who made the field what it is today and your definition is wrong. I will directly address the assertions of anybody who wants to discuss the mathematics, but that isn't what goes on here. We get third-hand assertions that originated from people who do not understand the field, presented first-hand by people who don't even pretend to understand the field. Not much of an argument, that.

A coding system always entails a nonmaterial intellectual process. A physical matter cannot produce an information code. All experiences show that every piece of creative information represents some mental effort and can be traced to a personal idea-giver who exercised his own free will, and who is endowed with an intelligent mind.... There is no known law of nature, no known process and no known sequence of events which can cause information to originate by itself in matter...

This guy uses the same invalid definition of information as you. That's what you get for using a reference with questionable credentials. The "Sell By" date on his understanding of information theory was passed sometime around the Korean War.

More to the point: His above claim runs directly contrary to some of the basic theorems of information theory. There was a seminal set of mathematical papers published in IEEE's information theory journal (THE journal in the field) in the 1970s that prove that his assertions are false, and which are foundational to the field today. This guy is clueless and his understanding pre-dates when most of the field was developed.

Your source is thereby discredited. Anybody who can't even keep up with important works in the field that are more than 25 years old is not an expert. That would be like using the Wright brothers as expert references on supersonic aircraft.

[tortoise]

Information theory investigates the origin and nature of the information in the universe.

No it doesn't. Information theory is a field of mathematics that deals with "patterns" in the abstract (the best colloquial definition I can think of for "information"). Applied to the real world (e.g. thermodynamics, economics, etc), there is a single additional rule that makes the system behave like it does: information can never be moved, only copied (not coincidentally, exactly like our plain old silicon computers). Everything that exists IS information, and therefore you can't have a universe that isn't packed to the gills with information.

Information theory is NOT a science, it is mathematics. The application to the real universe requires assuming a single additional rule which I mentioned above. And there is even a sub-field of information theory that assumes that rule as well and therefore thoroughly characterizes our universe.

[longshadow]

authoritative placemarker

[PatrickHenry]

Information theory is NOT a science, it is mathematics.

No way I'm going to pick a fight on this one. If you say so, I'm in!

[bondserv]

Wind, Rain, Sea, Sun and Time + Junkyard = 747

[bondserv]

Logos!

[Dataman]

BTTT...your thoughts on #99?

The evolutionary theory rests on presuppositions, not fact. It is only one interpretation of the data. It can point to internal factual aspects but even fairy tales have internal factual aspects to them such as trees, mountains, villages and people. When we examine the presuppositions of the rabid evolutionist, we find incoherent, inconsistent, random and often illogical thought patterns. When confronted with their own inconsistency, they have but one (and very well used) recourse: deny, deny, deny.

Here is one glaring example which has already been pointed out: The existence of a Creator is denied because (so they have said) of a lack of evidence. However, speculation that supports their world view is assumed to be fact until proven otherwise. IOW, reject a proposition for lack of evidence (regardless of whethere there really is evidence) if it displeases; accept a proposition without evidence if it pleases.

This is intellectual laziness or dishonesty or ignorance, take your pick.

[f.Christian]

If the history of evolution shows us anything, it is that we get nowhere by labeling our ignorance globdidit.

[f.Christian]

To: Alamo-Girl

ag ...


That pretty much sums up the problem I have with scientific materialism. It is a belief - a bias - and thus, myopic.


g3 ...


Indeed, it is myopic because it refuses to see what it does not want to see. It's logic is very faulty. It says that whatever cannot be studied by it, is not science and therefore it does not exist. This is a very false conclusion and tries to 'prove' something by excluding everything that contradicts their conclusion. It is thus rhetoric, not science.


2,751 posted on 07/24/2003 10:01 PM PDT by gore3000 (Insults are the way the Devil praises the Truth.)

[Dataman]

With all due respect, I am one of the people who made the field what it is today and your definition is wrong.

How can we verify that? You can claim anything on the internet. Regardless, do you suppose you are immune from scrutiny because of your claim? We would have not supersonic aircraft if the original design of the Wright brothers was not allowed to be corrected.

It matters not how intelligent you think you are, life cannot be reduced to mathematics. Math says evolution didn't happen. Therefore those who want to belive in evo do so against all odds and against reason itself.

[conservababeJen]

When man uses 'science' in an attempt to discredit God, The Creator of all things, that's where I draw the line. Plain and simple

Well said!! Me too! (and many other Freeper Conservative Christians)

[conservababeJen]

longshadow:"authoritative placemarker"

interesting choice of words placemaker

[Stultis]

[Henry Morris in quote mining mode:]

A fascinatingly honest admission by a physicist indicates the passionate commitment of establishment scientists to naturalism. Speaking of the trust students naturally place in their highly educated college professors, he says:

And I use that trust to effectively brainwash them. . . . our teaching methods are primarily those of propaganda. We appeal—without demonstration—to evidence that supports our position. We only introduce arguments and evidence that supports the currently accepted theories and omit or gloss over any evidence to the contrary.12

Wow, you mean there isn't time in a 3-credit hour introductory physics class to adequately demonstrate the evidence for every theory taught, and examine all the arguments that were raised against them and how they were answered? Boy, I never woulda guessed. [end sarcasm]

Of course introductory science courses are taught dogmatically. I think it would be a good practice to examine some theories in detail, and relate the history of their intitial proposal, how they were tested, and why they came to be accepted, but in an introductory class you could only do that with maybe two or three examples at best. For the most part your job is in fact to "propagandize" students, i.e. to relate to them the current content of science. You can't even start to think critically about a field until you have absorbed the basic information.

The op-ed in question:
http://www.aip.org/pt/june00/opin600.htm

Replies thereto:
http://www.aip.org/pt/vol-53/iss-11/p14.html

BTW, although the editorial was written with regard to the Kansas Board of Education evolution controversy, the author was NOT talking about, as Morris deceptively suggests, propagandizing "naturalism". He was talking about the fact that introductory course don't (and can't) provide sufficient evidence of the theories and principles taught, and that most students therefore ultimately accept them on the authority of the teacher, the college, and the institution of professional science. He was saying that teachers of these intro classes propagandize the content of science, not "naturalism". He was actually applauding students who rejected the theories, even if for religious reasons, because they were being skeptical of authority (here rather obviously overlooking the fact that they were probably rejecting them because they even more rigidly accepted a different authority). The author seems to have a bit of a 60's "down with the establishment" thing on here.

[LiteKeeper]

Information, Science and Biology

The Problem of Information for the Theory of Evolution: Has Dawkins really solved it?