Against Atheism

Æsahættr said:

Where have you read/heard that science forbids living organisms coming from non-living matter?




A) Why was it a mistake?
B) It wasn't an atom. It was a singularity, and all the Universe was contained in that singularity, so nothing was created.
C) That singularity did not exist forever.
D) There was a "beginning of time," although I don't think the word "beginning" is a very good one

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HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF CELL THEORY :
Spontaneous generation states that living things come from non living sources ; (eg.) maggots appear on
meat if left out too long ; after it rains — frogs , insects and plants seem to come out of mud in ponds.
All ideas of spontaneous generation were supported by observation. In 1870, Thomas Henry Huxley
used the term abiogenesis to describe the concept of spontaneous generation. In actual fact, we know
that life only arises from life or that living things come from other living things ; this is known as
biogenesis.
334 B.C.E. Aristotle put forward the idea of spontaneous generation — organisms can arise
spontaneously from non-living matter. He classified all organisms as plants or animals.
l668 Francesco Redi — (challenged the idea of spontaneous generation).
In his controlled experiment, he hypothesized that if maggots come from flies eggs ,then
maggots will appear only in open jars where flies can deposit eggs on meat. When testing, he
placed some meat samples in covered jars and some in uncovered jars. He found that maggots
appeared only in uncovered containers. He tested many times and obtained the same results
even with different meats.
1675 Leewenhoek discovers and invents the simple microscope. Using his microscope, he sees
microorganisms. This refuels the spontaneous generation debate.
1748 John Needham performed an experiment similar to Redi's. He boiled a meat broth (to kill
microbes); sealed one container ( not airtight — sterile) and left another open. The result was
microbes were present. This supported spontaneous generation.
2
1776 Spallanzani repeated Needham’s experiment. He boiled the containers for one hour; then,
sealed the flasks tightly. No microbes were present. The microbes appeared hours after the
seals were broken. He believed that microorganisms were carried in air and multiply when they
had a food supply.
1861 Pasteur repeated Spallanzani’s work. He used S - shaped necked flasks (heat flask and bend
into an S-shaped curve) which allowed air and microbes in. However when he boiled the
solution in the base of the flask this created steam which condensed and formed water droplets
which trapped microbes in the neck of the flask. The broth remained clear. He broke the necks
of the flasks. The broth turned cloudy. Flasks were tipped and the microbes mixed with the
broth. The broth turned cloudy. Some of his flasks (on display) are still sterile today.
From-http://www.cdli.ca/courses/biol2201/unit01/U1Notes.pdf

Life does not Arise from Non-liviong Matter..It is this Simple

Evolution has been disproven for over 100 years, and here's why: 1. Evolution requires that life comes from non-life. The first living cell is supposed to have come from non-living organic material in the oceans.
2. Life coming from non-life is called spontaneous generation. The dictionary confirms this: "Supposed production of living from non-living matter as inferred from appearance of life (due in fact to bacteria etc.) in some infusions..." [Oxford Concise Dictionary]
3. Louis Pasteur disproved spontaneous generation back in the 19th century when he placed a sterilised beaker with a straight entry tube alongside one with a crooked tube. Bacteria collected in the straight-tubed beaker but not in the crooked-tubed one, where instead they lodged in the bends of the pipe. He concluded that life only comes from life. This is now known as the law of biogenesis.
4. Since evolution requires life from non-life (spontaneous generation or abiogenesis), and Louis Pasteur disproved this, evolution has been rendered impossible on account of life not being able to generate from non-life.
From-http://www.evcforum.net/cgi-bin/dm.cgi?action=msg&f=13&t=27&m=1

Jerrell said:

3. Louis Pasteur disproved spontaneous generation back in the 19th century when he placed a sterilised beaker with a straight entry tube alongside one with a crooked tube. Bacteria collected in the straight-tubed beaker but not in the crooked-tubed one, where instead they lodged in the bends of the pipe. He concluded that life only comes from life. This is now known as the law of biogenesis.
4. Since evolution requires life from non-life (spontaneous generation or abiogenesis), and Louis Pasteur disproved this, evolution has been rendered impossible on account of life not being able to generate from non-life.
From-http://www.evcforum.net/cgi-bin/dm.cgi?action=msg&f=13&t=27&m=1

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Hmm, I hadn't heard of the "law of biogenesis" so I did a quick google search for it. Virtually all the results were either from Christian sites using it as an anti-evolutionist argument, or from skeptical sites attempting to rebut the claim. I wasn't interested in either, because I wanted information from an independent scientific source. Without trailing through huge numbers of results, I found just a couple of sources. One was a wikipedia article, which I will look at in a minute, and the other was the following entry from www.biology-online.org

biology-online said:

law of biogenesis --> recapitulation theory

The theory formulated by E.H. Haeckel that individuals in their embryonic development pass through stages similar in general structural plan to the stages their species passed through in its evolution; more technically phrased, the theory that ontogeny is an abbreviated recapitulation of phylogeny.
Synonym: biogenetic law, law of biogenesis, Haeckel's law, law of recapitulation.

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It would appear firstly that the "law of biogenesis" as you put it is not a particularly serious scientific law. Indeed, amoungst actual biologists, the name has already been taken for a different law.


Anyway, onto the wikipedia article, the only independent source regarding this law that I came across in the first couple of dozen entries.

wikipedia said:

Pasteur's (and others) empirical results were summarized in the phrase, Omne vivum ex vivo, Latin for "all life [is] from life", also known as the "law of biogenesis". They showed that life does not currently spontaneously arise in its present forms from non-life in nature. They did not show that life cannot arise once, and then evolve.

No life has ever been observed to arise from non-living matter. However, the Miller-Urey experiment did show that amino acids, and other subsequent organic compounds, can be synthesized from simple carbon atoms in the early earth conditions.

Critics of the "law of biogenesis" argue that:

• it is solely rooted in empiricism;
• it poses an instance of the fallacy of accident;
• "Abiogenesis is not possible because it has not been observed." is an argument from ignorance;
• the law is tantamount to the belief in a "life spirit", a non-measurable essence that is transferred from life to life in the process of biogenesis.

Proponents counter that:

• all natural laws are rooted in empiricism, and that explanations for natural phenomena not grounded in empiricism are necessarily tentative and/or philosophical;
• it is not a fallacy of accident, because no exception to the generalization has ever been observed;
• a natural law should be considered universal until an example to the contrary is found;
• the law has no relation to any belief in the "life spirit" — it is simply an empirical fact.

Charles Darwin in a letter to J.D. Hooker of February 1st 1871, made the suggestion that life may have begun in a "warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, lights, heat, electricity, etc. present, that a protein compound was chemically formed ready to undergo still more complex changes, at the present day such matter would be instantly devoured or absorbed, which would not have been the case before living creatures were formed." Thus, it is the presence of life itself which prevents "spontaneous generation" from occurring on Earth today.

In 2002, scientists succeeded in constructing an artificial and "functioning" (able to infect and kill mice) Polio virus. Other viruses have since been synthesized. These experiments do not qualify as true examples of abiogenesis, since viruses do not meet the standard biological criteria for life. Primarily, they do not respond to stimuli, they are ataxic, they lack the ability or the mechanics to grow or reproduce on their own, and they do not posess cells.

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(the highlights are mine not wiki's)

So, to begin with, it would seem that you have misunderstood the law of biogenesis. First of all, you are making it more than it is, by suggesting that it states that no life can arise from non-living material. It does not state that. It states that life cannot arise in its present form from non-living material. It makes no claims about whether very primitive life can form from increasingly complex molecules.
Secondly, you are also assuming that even the law in its diluted version is something that is widely accepted within biology. It is not. As you see from the article, there are critics and proponents within the scientific community. Interestingly, if you look at the wiki article on abiogensis it says that most of the critics of abiogenesis are not in fact biologists. The site biology-online might be considered to be a fairly good indicator of accepted biology, and it does not mention this law of biogenesis at all. It's obviously a fairly fringe part of biology that has been seized on by the creationist community because they can twist it to support their ideas.

Please read everything. That is from a Site, I did not write this. And yet still this thread is not about this.

My Biology teacher Teaches this also.

Now Please think, Take Nothing, and sit it in front of you. You can wait for one million years and get nothing.

But Take nothing and water, and sit it in front of you, Wait a million years and you get nothing

Now Take Water and something in the atmosphere, and you get organisms in the water.

Life does not come from Nothing, Something that's already Alive Makes life.

Jerrell said:

My Biology teacher Teaches this also.

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Yeah, and I had an aged Physics teacher who taught that evolution couldn't happen because it violated the laws of Thermodynamics. Well, that's only the case if you consider the Earth a closed system, which is it isn't...life wouldn't exist very long without that energy from the Sun we get constantly.

So just because some HS teacher teaches you something doesn't mean it's not complete bunkum. It's wise to do a little of your own research, especially in cases where the teacher may have a personal reason for myopia.

Now Please think, Take Nothing, and sit it in front of you. You can wait for one million years and get nothing.

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Oh spare me. Ike Asimov wrote a short essay on this topic for F&SF years ago, and explained how it could happen while violating no laws of physics.

Which means absolutely squat about whether God exists or not. Seriously, I'm a theist, and your arguments strike me as spurious at best. You keep using things you purport to know about the physical universe to argue for the existence of the metaphysical.

You might as well argue about the benefits of new public swimming pools in Baltimore because it will be good for the diet of residents of Botswana. It would make as much sense.

But Take nothing and water, and sit it in front of you, Wait a million years and you get nothing

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You won't have to wait a million years. It'll evaporate long before then. And what does this have to do with the price of tea in China? While anecdotal arguments may be a common rhetorical technique, logical arguments they are not.

Booko said:

Yeah, and I had an aged Physics teacher who taught that evolution couldn't happen because it violated the laws of Thermodynamics.

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One of my high school biology teachers failed biology in her final year of high school. Ya gotta wonder how some of these people get their qualifications.

Jerrell said:

If Jesus did not Die on the cross why do Eyewitnesses write that he did? And Also why do Roman Historians(who were not christian) write that Jesus was Crucifide. Why do Jewish HIstorians write about this, if he did not die on the cross? There is enough Evidence to beleive Jesus died on the cross, Historical evidence supports it.

If jesus did not die on the cross why did Acared Disciples Die for him? If he did not die on the cross why did Paul a Jew, who killed christians convert to christianity and die for the very religion...if Jeuss did not die.....History proclimas he died, you have no ground to deny this at all. I say this in truth, youn have no ground to deny Jesus Died.

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Such a sophistic arguement holy ****!

Jerrell you over estimate the truthfulness of ancient writers, just look at the "romance of the three kingdoms"... or maybe the early greek historians...

Jerrell said:

lol....John a disciple of Jesus, he wrote about Jesus. Peter was a Discple of Jesus, he wrote about it. Paul saw Jesus, he wrote about it. Matthew was a disciple of Jesus, he wrote about it. Even the Muslims write about it...

Do you escape or try to ignore the Historical records written by Jews and Romans aboutJesus? do you? It is Sad if you will ignore Factual Evidence....this is bad....

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If you find any evidence to be truely conclusive for any religious outlook, you may have to look into mental institutions... :slap: Religious belief is hardly based on TRUE facts, BECAUSE WE DON'T KNOW WHO IS RIGHT!!!!!!!!!

Jerrell said:

Please read everything. That is from a Site, I did not write this.

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It was from a forum. It was posted by one individual. This individual did not display any scientific credentials or demonstrate their expert knowledge on this matter. They were also rebutted by numerous other people immediately after posting that on their forum. If you want to make a claim regarding science, you will do so by citing serious sources, not some other crackpot on some other forum.

Jerrell said:

My Biology teacher Teaches this also.

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What qualifications does this teacher have? Did he/she give you any evidence for this claim? Did he/she tell it to you directly or was it in a textbook? What other sources can you cite within the scientific community that agree with him/her? Are you sure that he/she was claiming that no life can arise spontaneously, or was he/she claiming that life cannot arise in its present form spontaneously?

Jerrell said:

Now Please think, Take Nothing, and sit it in front of you. You can wait for one million years and get nothing.

But Take nothing and water, and sit it in front of you, Wait a million years and you get nothing

Now Take Water and something in the atmosphere, and you get organisms in the water.

Life does not come from Nothing, Something that's already Alive Makes life.

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If you have nothing for a million years in a closed system, then you will have nothing at the end of that million years. If you have nothing in an open system, then you could well have something at the end of that time. The Earth is an open system.

Hmm, it is a good argument, however i have to disagree with a great deal of it. There will always be things like this, and things like this against Christianity, and against Mormanism, and Judaism, and Marxism, and Baptism, and Muslims, and all of them. We simply have to face the fact that some people beleive some things, and that a vast majority of the time it will never change anyone's mind on the subject.

Hmm, it is a good argument, however i have to disagree with a great deal of it. There will always be things like this, and things like this against Christianity, and against Mormanism, and Judaism, and Marxism, and Baptism, and Muslims, and all of them. We simply have to face the fact that some people beleive some things, and that a vast majority of the time it will never change anyone's mind on the subject.

Maxist said:

Hmm, it is a good argument, however i have to disagree with a great deal of it. There will always be things like this, and things like this against Christianity, and against Mormanism, and Judaism, and Marxism, and Baptism, and Muslims, and all of them. We simply have to face the fact that some people beleive some things, and that a vast majority of the time it will never change anyone's mind on the subject.

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Perhaps you would care to share what it is about the argument that you disagree with?
If logic is stuck to, then arguments for or against religious beliefs are not a waste of time, as time goes on then gradually we must get closer and closer to the truth, as some arguments might help push a few people a little further in one direction if they make good logical sense (and are therefore more likely to be true). Of course, it only works when people are logical...

Of course, it only works when people are logical...

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An ill-advised suggestion; i've noticed it only increases the invocations of "logic" and "reason" with little regard to either.

mr.guy said:

An ill-advised suggestion; i've noticed it only increases the invocations of "logic" and "reason" with little regard to either.

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Better that people attempt to be logical and fail, or even to be discretly deliberately illogical, than to openly oppose logic altogether and refuse to participate in logical debate.

Æsahættr said:

Better that people attempt to be logical and fail, or even to be discretly deliberately illogical, than to openly oppose logic altogether and refuse to participate in logical debate.

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Why? To say that "openly" opposing logic is worse seems to be a driving factor in some here presenting so much fiction and "intuitive" reasoning under the banner-flag of plain logic. It gets the same treatment as god, which is to say it seems to be on everyone's side.

Better (now ya got me using it) that all are honest about their framework than trying to deliniate towards four sided triangles and such.

Or is it?

mr.guy said:

Why? To say that "openly" opposing logic is worse seems to be a driving factor in some here presenting so much fiction and "intuitive" reasoning under the banner-flag of plain logic. It gets the same treatment as god, which is to say it seems to be on everyone's side.

Better (now ya got me using it) that all are honest about their framework than trying to deliniate towards four sided triangles and such.

Or is it?

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A 4 sided triangle is obviously illogical. As long as people allow others to give a logical explanation, then it is not hard to explain exactly why a 4 sided triangle is illogical. It's only when people refuse in principle to allow logic as a means for seeking the truth that any such nonsence can exist indefinitely without eventually being disproven.

As long as people allow others to give a logical explanation...

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I've not balked at this. Mandating proof, as you've no doubt noticed, really isn't in lots of folks core interest; until it's demanded of them.

Then they start making it up.

Then i get a headache.

Quoth_The _Raven said:

One of my high school biology teachers failed biology in her final year of high school. Ya gotta wonder how some of these people get their qualifications.

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Oh no!!! <runs screaming from the room>

You mean the schools in Australia are as <ahem> messed up as they are in the States?

So much effort!

If theists would really want to find the truth, they would read more of science.

I mean real science, not religious research.

The principal problem with religions is that religions require to believe first and then think but only within the limits of particular religion.

Atheists don't believe in anything and have an open mind. They question everything, they looking for the real meaningfull answers and that's why they are able to find it.

Tony said:

So much effort!

If theists would really want to find the truth, they would read more of science.

I mean real science, not religious research.

The principal problem with religions is that religions require to believe first and then think but only within the limits of particular religion.

Atheists don't believe in anything and have an open mind. They question everything, they looking for the real meaningfull answers and that's why they are able to find it.

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Ow, ow, ow. :banghead3

Generalizations and labelling others is not a particularly effective way of making one's point.