Creation Science House Bill 3826

[tas8831]

Stephen myer, mike behe and others on the board of ID, are scientists.

Not really. Behe is, but he refuses to test anything about ID. Meyer never was, really.

 

[tas8831]

Stephen Meyer published a paper on ID creationism in a scientific journal? Citation please.

Probably referring to the Sternberg Affair.
Meyer's paper was basically a bunch of his online essays cobbled together and shepherded through the process by his pal Sternberg. It was a typical 'evolution can't explain X' deal, in this case, his twisting of the Cambrian explosion.

 

[tas8831]

To me, William Lane Craig is always a good source for clear logic, having watched him pick apart one of Hawking's books.

Thats funny. Craig can't even defend his usual cosmological argument.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Even if this were anti-ID, they still managed to use Christian origin terms like "Judgement Day."

To me, William Lane Craig is always a good source for clear logic, having watched him pick apart one of Hawking's books. Here.

He event has thirty minutes to spare for questions!

Let's see what he has to say about intelligent design. He says it could be viable, but he doesn't need it to be true.

But he does say that many of the critics of ID tend to caricature design. He also says that most ID types might agree in evolution, and might agree in common evolutionary ancestry. What they don't agree with is "Darwinism" or Darwin's specific theory of random selection. Also that complexity is not the only model of design (crappy car and Mercedes are both designed). Nor is there any requirement that the designer be good.

Selection is the opposite of random. And William Lane Craig can only refute strawmen of his own creation. Once one understands his errors and at times falsehoods he is not that impressive.

 

[Twilight Hue]

You

God obviously shops at Big Lots odds and ends deep discount stores.

 

[Altfish]

Even if this were anti-ID, they still managed to use Christian origin terms like "Judgement Day."

To me, William Lane Craig is always a good source for clear logic, having watched him pick apart one of Hawking's books. Here.

He event has thirty minutes to spare for questions!

Let's see what he has to say about intelligent design. He says it could be viable, but he doesn't need it to be true.


But he does say that many of the critics of ID tend to caricature design. He also says that most ID types might agree in evolution, and might agree in common evolutionary ancestry. What they don't agree with is "Darwinism" or Darwin's specific theory of random selection. Also that complexity is not the only model of design (crappy car and Mercedes are both designed). Nor is there any requirement that the designer be good or even all-powerful.

Of course they use a catchy title - that's what documentary producers do.

William Lane Craig is a word salad expert; he says things that take you 2 minutes to work out what he is saying, by which time you have missed his next two sentences and lost your thread. He then claims to have won a debate. He's like Peterson.

Most of WLC's arguments have been well and truly debunked...e.g.

 

[Skwim]

You probably agree that it isn't necessary to establish it as a fact. If no more progress is made in abiogenesis research, it still remains a viable hypothesis and the most likely of the two to be correct.

Also, even if a path from atoms to life that can occur spontaneously under the proper conditions over deep time is uncovered, it may well be impossible to decide that this was the path nature took, or if the correct path is discerned, it may be impossible to confirm that that it is correct.

Most assuredly.

As I alluded earlier, unless abiogenesis can be ruled out, it remains not just a viable option, but the preferred hypothesis simply because it is simpler than hypotheses that require the existence of a god.

Just to be fair, if a god does exist I don't see abiogenesis necessarily precluding his role in it. However, how it would manifest is something else.

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[It Aint Necessarily So]

Biological information is not simply the result of natural chemical reaction.

Actually, it is. There is nothing going on at the subcellular level apart from matter passively and mindlessly behaving according to the laws of physics.

There is absolutely no research that has demonstrated the chemical process that would create and organize information in long strands of coded DNA, NONE.

This is also incorrect. There is plenty of science demonstrating the spontaneous creation and organization of nucleotides into nucleic acids

Producing synthetic diamonds is simply the replication of a known natural force. Producing life from non living matter is vastly, vastly more complicated.

Irrelevant to the point at hand. You implied that if life were created intelligently in a laboratory, that because intelligent design was involved, that that would somehow weaken the argument that the same processes could occur without the involvement of an intelligence, which you have not established as fact.

God could reach down and create a new continent, yet the atheist worshippers of science would say it was the result of natural causes.

The fact that such things aren't seen goes a long way toward arguing that they don't. In a universe inhabited by a god capable of poofing continents into existence, we might or might not see such things happening. In a godless universe, we would not. When you collect hundreds of such statements together, and see that nature always takes the path that is imposed on it if there is no god, the argument against gods intervening in our lives.

For example, if there is a god writing holy books, that book might be so outstanding and impressive that it couldn't be improved upon, or it might possibly be something much less, such as a book that human beings could have written, but in a godless universe, we would expect holy books that could easily have been written by people without the help of gods, which of course is what we find.

In a universe with a god in it that can hear and answer prayers, we might expect to find that those who prayed received divine assistance at a rate greater than that in those who do not pray, or not, whereas in a godless universe, we would expect prayer to have no effect except perhaps a psychological one due to praying.

Given the choice between fashioning a universe that obeys the instantaneous whim of that creator and one running like a giant clockwork according to blind rules that would be necessary in a godless universe capable of generating and sustaining life and mind, one again, we see the latter.

Over and over again, this god either exists but chooses not to intervene in our lives and our world, always choosing to imitate the nonexistent god like the desit notion of a god, or it is in fact nonexistent. Either way, this rules out the Abrahamic god, who it is claimed in a book allegedly authored by this god, wants to be known by mankind, loved, obeyed, and worshiped.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

To me, William Lane Craig is always a good source for clear logic

Not to me. Have you seen his version of the Kalam Cosmological argument? The reasoning is horrible:

1. “Whatever begins to exist has a cause of its existence.”
2. “The universe began to exist.”
3. “Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence.”
4. “If the universe has a cause of its existence, then an uncaused, personal Creator of the universe exists, who sans creation is beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless, and enormously powerful and intelligent.”
5. “Therefore, an uncaused, personal Creator of the universe exists, who sans creation is “beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless, and enormously powerful and intelligent.”​

That's what I mean by horrible reasoning. How does one get from saying that the universe has a cause to describing that cause in explicit detail such as it being a conscious creator that is also, "beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless, and enormously powerful and intelligent.” That's a the most extreme non sequitur I've ever encountered.

What happened to the multiverse hypothesis? On what basis what it excluded from this argument? None, which is what makes this argument a non sequitur fallacy - the conclusion doesn't follow from what preceded it.

How about this gem?

"The way in which I know Christianity is true is first and foremost on the basis of the witness of the Holy Spirit in my heart. And this gives me a self-authenticating means of knowing Christianity is true wholly apart from the evidence. And therefore, even if in some historically contingent circumstances the evidence that I have available to me should turn against Christianity, I do not think that this controverts the witness of the Holy Spirit. In such a situation, I should regard that as simply a result of the contingent circumstances that I'm in, and that if I were to pursue this with due diligence and with time, I would discover that the evidence, if in fact I could get the correct picture, would support exactly what the witness of the Holy Spirit tells me. So I think that's very important to get the relationship between faith and reason right..." - William Lane Craig

He's basically telling us that no evidence of any kind could possibly modify his god belief. Why would a rational skeptic be interested in anything that follows?​

Is that good thinking? He's telling us that even if he is wrong and evidence can be presented to confirm that fact, he will reject that evidence and continue believing what he believes by faith anyway. Faith cannot possibly be a path to truth given that any idea or its mutually exclusive polar opposite can be supported equally by faith even though we know that at least one of those must be incorrect.

Faith was not my path to atheism, but if it were, my atheism would be equally well (or poorly) founded as any theist's beliefs including Craig's.​

 

[Skwim]

Science could simplify the process to where a 10-year-old could replicate it at home and the Fundies still would not believe it.

Absolutely. Fundies are committed to a belief that doesn't brook revision, modification, alteration, or any other kind of adjustment so as to accommodate facts. So, I wouldn't be at all concerned with what they think. My only concern is in education. Getting to the point where abiogenesis can be stated as fact in text books.

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[shmogie]

Actually, it is. There is nothing going on at the subcellular level apart from matter passively and mindlessly behaving according to the laws of physics.



This is also incorrect. There is plenty of science demonstrating the spontaneous creation and organization of nucleotides into nucleic acids



Irrelevant to the point at hand. You implied that if life were created intelligently in a laboratory, that because intelligent design was involved, that that would somehow weaken the argument that the same processes could occur without the involvement of an intelligence, which you have not established as fact.



The fact that such things aren't seen goes a long way toward arguing that they don't. In a universe inhabited by a god capable of poofing continents into existence, we might or might not see such things happening. In a godless universe, we would not. When you collect hundreds of such statements together, and see that nature always takes the path that is imposed on it if there is no god, the argument against gods intervening in our lives.

For example, if there is a god writing holy books, that book might be so outstanding and impressive that it couldn't be improved upon, or it might possibly be something much less, such as a book that human beings could have written, but in a godless universe, we would expect holy books that could easily have been written by people without the help of gods, which of course is what we find.

In a universe with a god in it that can hear and answer prayers, we might expect to find that those who prayed received divine assistance at a rate greater than that in those who do not pray, or not, whereas in a godless universe, we would expect prayer to have no effect except perhaps a psychological one due to praying.

Given the choice between fashioning a universe that obeys the instantaneous whim of that creator and one running like a giant clockwork according to blind rules that would be necessary in a godless universe capable of generating and sustaining life and mind, one again, we see the latter.

Over and over again, this god either exists but chooses not to intervene in our lives and our world, always choosing to imitate the nonexistent god like the desit notion of a god, or it is in fact nonexistent. Either way, this rules out the Abrahamic god, who it is claimed in a book allegedly authored by this god, wants to be known by mankind, loved, obeyed, and worshiped.

To your point re nucleotides " " The nucleotide sequence is also meaningless without a conceptual translative scheme and physical " hardware" capabilities. Ribosomes,tRNA'S, aminoicyl tRNA synthetases,and amino acids are all hardware components of the Shannon message receiver. But the instructions for this machinery is itself coded in DNA and executed by protein "workers" produced by that machinery. Without the machinery and protein workers, the information cannot be received and understood. And without genetic instruction (information), the machinery cannot be assembled." J.T. Trevors and D.L. Abel, " Chance and Necessity do not Explain the Origin of Life" Cell Biology International, 28: 729-739, 2004.

A conundrum that shows, to this point, that abiogenesis is totally unexpained,

A self replicating chemical molecule, be it an acid, or base, or protein is a virtual bit of nothing, when compared to what is required for a living cell to exist and function.

It is like saying a boomerang shows how space flight came about.

 

[shmogie]

Therein lies the rub.

Creationists like to ask if life has been created in a lab, then caution that if this happens, it is really design.

This is not a new tactic - the first iteration of this that I am personally aware of is in Randy Wysong's "The Creation Controversy" which came out in the early 1970s. One of the first creationist books I read. He, oddly, believed that life HAD been created in a lab, but he dismissed it as having to have been the product of "KNOW-HOW" (caps in original).

A pretty lame response if you ask me.

So then, a lab created functioning cell is defacto evidence that in nature a cell organized itself, built itself, and operated itself based upon chance combinations of chemicals ?

The mantra "if it could happen, it did happen" is a pretty shoddy substitute for fact.

 

[shmogie]

So you don't believe that ID was done by a god?

What I believe on that issue is irrelevant to the discussion. I am pointing out the massive flaws in the hypothesis of abiogenesis.

 

[shmogie]

Yes it has happened on the planet Earth. No evidence yet on other planets but no reason to believe it could not happen somewhere else. Can you give one example of testable evidence that there is a Creator? Start with the best one you know to understand what evidence you are speaking of.

Whether there is a creator or not is irrelevant to the discussion.

Blind faith in a concept that appears impossible is a great thing, you have it re abiogenesis.

Believing it happened in no way counts for anything in determining if it did, the evidence for it is paltry, at the very best

 

[ecco]

A conundrum that shows, to this point, that abiogenesis is totally unexpained,

• to this point, the nature of gravity is unexplained.
• to this point, the nature of quarks is unexplained.

• We've explained a lot more in the last 500 years than in all the explainin' that came before.
• We've explained a lot more in the last 50 years than in all the explainin' that came before.

Because of your religious beliefs, you can't even accept evolution, why are you discussing abiogenesis?

People who just come out and say "God said it - I believe it - End of story" are much more honest than people pretending to have issues with science.

 

[shmogie]

Quite the contrary, i am quite aware of it.



Those properties are a type of information.



The freezing of water gives information about the temperature and pressure of the environment.



Sorry, there are no 'expectations' or 'intended purpose' given the the DNA. There are sequences of nucleotides.



The information is the specific pattern of electrical or magnetic fields in the computer.


Incorrect, as i have explained.


The DNA doesn't 'send' any thing. Some proteins interact with the DNA, producing the messenger RNA. That RNA diffuses (not directed) across the nuclear membrane and interacts with a ribosome. That ribosome interacts with both the mRNA and the transfer RNA to link up amino acids connected to the tRNA.

Your 'exact right place in the chain' is simply saying that the end proteins do some reactions in the cell that keep it alive (i.e, doing certain reactions of metabolism).



The RNA is NOT made *just* by the DNA. It is made by the interaction of DNA and proteins called transcriptases. This is a chemical process.

But, we *know* that RNA can self-catalyze its own formation in certain circumstances relevant to abiogenesis. this breaks the cycle since RNA can stand as a genetic agent as well as being an active agent.



That's the whole point of the RNA world. We *know* that RNA can self-assemble. We also know it can catalyze relevant biological reactions. We know it is central to the DNA->RNA->protein cycle.

This is why the whole system does NOT have to come into existence all at once: most of the heavy lifting can be done by RNA alone.

" The analogy that comes to mind is that of a golfer, who having payed a golf ball through 18 holes, then assumed the ball could play itself around the course in his absence. He has demonstrated the possibility of the event, it is only necessary to presume that some natural force, earthquake, wind, flood etc,could present the same result given enough time. No physical law need be broken for spontaneous RNA formation to happen, but the chances against it are so immense, that the suggestion implies that the non living world had an innate desire to generate RNA. The majority of origin of life scientists who support the RNA first theory either accept this concept or feel that the immensely unfavorable odds were overcome by sheer luck. Many chemists, confronted with these difficulties, have fled the RNA first hypothesis as if it were a building on fire " Dr. Robert Shapiro, Science News Feb. 12 ,2007. " A Simpler Origin For Life ". Shapiro is a long time and well respected investigator for abiogenesis, obviously, an atheist.

As he points out, the RNA world is crumbling, and I could quote many in the bio chemical field to show it is so.

BTW, you still aren't clear as to what biological information is. I could give you some references if you choose

 

[shmogie]

• to this point, the nature of gravity is unexplained.
• to this point, the nature of quarks is unexplained.

• We've explained a lot more in the last 500 years than in all the explainin' that came before.
• We've explained a lot more in the last 50 years than in all the explainin' that came before.

Because of your religious beliefs, you can't even accept evolution, why are you discussing abiogenesis?

People who just come out and say "God said it - I believe it - End of story" are much more honest than people pretending to have issues with science.

My beliefs are irrelevant. You don't know what I believe.

I am discussing abiogenesis to show that it is a scientific impossibility.

You may have faith that it occurred, and that science will some day explain it, but that means absolutely nothing.

 

[Subduction Zone]

" The analogy that comes to mind is that of a golfer, who having payed a golf ball through 18 holes, then assumed the ball could play itself around the course in his absence. He has demonstrated the possibility of the event, it is only necessary to presume that some natural force, earthquake, wind, flood etc,could present the same result given enough time. No physical law need be broken for spontaneous RNA formation to happen, but the chances against it are so immense, that the suggestion implies that the non living world had an innate desire to generate RNA. The majority of origin of life scientists who support the RNA first theory either accept this concept or feel that the immensely unfavorable odds were overcome by sheer luck. Many chemists, confronted with these difficulties, have fled the RNA first hypothesis as if it were a building on fire " Dr. Robert Shapiro, Science News Feb. 12 ,2007. " A Simpler Origin For Life ". Shapiro is a long time and well respected investigator for abiogenesis, obviously, an atheist.

As he points out, the RNA world is crumbling, and I could quote many in the bio chemical field to show it is so.

BTW, you still aren't clear as to what biological information is. I could give you some references if you choose

That was written in 2007, normally I do not use Google searches as evidence but you claimed researchers have been abandoning the search. Since 2007 a Google Scholar search for peer reviewed papers on RNA and abiogenesis turns up over 2,000 articles on the topic:

Google Scholar

That appears to be quite a bit of research in an area that has been abandoned. My suggestion, don't drink the Creationist Cool-Aid <my spelling> before you check out their claims for yourself.

 

[Subduction Zone]

My beliefs are irrelevant. You don't know what I believe.

I am discussing abiogenesis to show that it is a scientific impossibility.

You may have faith that it occurred, and that science will some day explain it, but that means absolutely nothing.

When are you going to show the impossibility?

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

To your point re nucleotides " " The nucleotide sequence is also meaningless without a conceptual translative scheme and physical " hardware" capabilities. Ribosomes,tRNA'S, aminoicyl tRNA synthetases,and amino acids are all hardware components of the Shannon message receiver. But the instructions for this machinery is itself coded in DNA and executed by protein "workers" produced by that machinery. Without the machinery and protein workers, the information cannot be received and understood. And without genetic instruction (information), the machinery cannot be assembled." J.T. Trevors and D.L. Abel, " Chance and Necessity do not Explain the Origin of Life" Cell Biology International, 28: 729-739, 2004. A conundrum that shows, to this point, that abiogenesis is totally unexpained, A self replicating chemical molecule, be it an acid, or base, or protein is a virtual bit of nothing, when compared to what is required for a living cell to exist and function.It is like saying a boomerang shows how space flight came about.

"abiogenesis is totally unexpained"? No, but let's grant that point for now. So what? Does that make it wrong or ruled out to you? Intelligent design is completely unexplained. Is that a problem for you? If not, why should the idea that abiogenesis is not yet explained be a problem for the scientists investigating the hypothesis?

What's your greater point? That you know that blind, naturalistic, undirected abiogenesis could not or did not occur on earth?

My money is still on that possibility as long as it remains a possibility. However unlikely you consider the possibility that life self-organized from non-life without the help of an intelligent designer, it remains more unlikely a god, which would be orders of magnitude more complex than a living cell, could exist undesigned and uncreated. Self-assembling replicators such as the first population of living cells, seems like something much more likely to exist without intelligent input than a god.

Nevertheless, I don't rule out either possibility, and don't know how anybody can. Ruling out abiogenesis as a possibility without demonstrating its impossibility is a logical error, a non sequitur. Such a conclusion does not follow from what preceded it, which is essentially an incredulity fallacy - in essense, "I can't imagine how it could have happened, therefore it didn't, and therefore there must be a god that made it happen." I have to let you choose that path alone.

I am pointing out the massive flaws in the hypothesis of abiogenesis.

What flaws? Did you mean hurdles? The hurdles facing the hypothesis of naturalistic abiogenesis are nothing compared to the hurdle of accounting for a god. Please explain how such a thing is even possible, let alone actual? And why do you so readily accept the existence of the one, a god, while rejecting the possibility of the other, abiogenesis, out of hand based on you not being able to imagine how nature could rise to the challenge.