• Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Access to private conversations with other members.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

Creation Science House Bill 3826

shmogie

Well-Known Member
Because abiogenesis is such an extraordinary claim it will take extraordinary "proof" to establish as fact, and I can only see this being accomplished by an actual demonstration.

.
If a living organism is produced in a lab after over a century of work, a lab with the most up to date equipment, by researcher/s with the highest level of education, isn´t that intelligent design ?

It certainly would not be representative of chance combinations of chemicals, in an environment not clearly understood.
 

Bear Wild

Well-Known Member
If a living organism is produced in a lab after over a century of work, a lab with the most up to date equipment, by researcher/s with the highest level of education, isn´t that intelligent design ?

It certainly would not be representative of chance combinations of chemicals, in an environment not clearly understood.
So live on earth was first developed in a lab? Maybe aliens? Problem with intelligent design for earth is who was the intelligent designer. So many possibilities to choose from and no evidence for any which is why an evidence devoid subject should not be taught in a science class.
 

Bear Wild

Well-Known Member
Abiogenesis is still in the hypothetical stage. That means that many of the questions and problems of abiogenesis have been answered but there is no overarching single explanation.

There is scientific evidence for abiogenesis, there is no evidence for the various creation myths.
I agree. This is one of the ridiculous parts of the arguments for intelligent design. Which myth is correct? The answer will be none of them since they are just that, myths to teach values not understanding of the natural world. All of those who support genesis have obviously no proof for genesis, since it contradicts with natural evidence, so the only way to argue against evolution is to come up with a generic intelligent designer idea which has no proof but does not give details that can show it is incorrect. If accepted then the next step is "Well if there is an intelligent designer then why not genesis" as an argument.
 

Bear Wild

Well-Known Member
Oh so you think because newton died before darwin he would not believe in God if he died after darwin? I dont think thats feasable to believe at all due to the fact there wer atheists even in newtons day.

I think newton if alive today would support stephen myers ID movement.



No, evidence was given and evidence is given still today.

Some court judgements are stupid rullings, look at all the innocents that go to jail as an example.



Ya, you can barry your head in the sand if you want.



The name is samantics. Created, designed, engineered, architecture, it dont matter. What matters is there evidence? Yes. Constantly nitpicking over samantics and motives does not give respect to ID scientists that do real science. And, frankly, thats wrong.
But there is no evidence. There is absolutely no evidence that there is an intelligent designer and plenty of evidence that the creative forces of nature is enough to explain how we came to be here.
 

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
If a living organism is produced in a lab after over a century of work, a lab with the most up to date equipment, by researcher/s with the highest level of education, isn´t that intelligent design ?

It certainly would not be representative of chance combinations of chemicals, in an environment not clearly understood.
No, not at all. You see what they are trying to replicate are early life environments. They are seeing if life would naturally form. They are not forcing life to form, that would be ID. A poor understanding of what is being done cannot be used to refute an idea.
 

Polymath257

Think & Care
Staff member
Premium Member
Simply not true. Chemical reactions cannot produce information. Chemical reactions are not information.

Every causal event creates information: if A causes B, then the presence of B is information about A occurring.

There is information in the directionality of chemical reactions. There is information in the types and arrangements of atoms in the molecules. It is information that a piece of a molecule is hydrophilic or hydrophobic. There is information in which atoms are attracted or bonded to which other atoms.

This is *exactly* the type of information that drives life. And it is all chemical. Even the sequence of DNA or RNA is simply information of the arrangement of the pieces in a molecule. The way the DNA 'code' works is all about which atoms attract which other atoms and which bonds are made. That is *all* chemical.
 

Polymath257

Think & Care
Staff member
Premium Member
No, not at all. You see what they are trying to replicate are early life environments. They are seeing if life would naturally form. They are not forcing life to form, that would be ID. A poor understanding of what is being done cannot be used to refute an idea.


Actually, both approaches are being done.

This also shows why we cannot determine that life on Earth was initially produced by an intelligence: we need to know the variety of ways that life can form naturally and compare them to the variety of ways in which it can form with a guiding intelligence. Only *after* doing that can we compare what we see from the early Earth and see what happened.

Given that we haven't been able to make life using either method, the simple answer is that we do not know. But, we also have no evidence of any intelligence being active at the time.
 

It Aint Necessarily So

Veteran Member
Premium Member
The problem is the politics in science, certain people having unrational bias who are in power making the rules.

Bias is not inherently bad. The biases of the scientific community, which are not irrational as you infer, are useful and constructive, including the bias to keep pseudoscience out of the scientific literature. The incredible success of science is the evidence that its biases such as the requirement that claims be supported with physical evidence are appropriate.

By contrast, pseudoscience, which has no exclusionary biases and accepts virtually any idea such as astrology and its assumption that the positions of heavenly bodies predict or control lives, is sterile. The biases of science exclude that kind of thinking.

The ID movement has been sterile as well, failing to find any aspect of nature that is better understood by positing an intelligent designer as its explanation.

Oh so you think because newton died before darwin he would not believe in God if he died after darwin?

"Although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist" - Richard Dawkins

Newton might be a theist if he lived today, but he wouldn't come to that position using reason or the scientific method. It would likely be for the same reason that educated people are theists today - they were raised in it and find it more comfortable and socially acceptable in their family and social setting to acquiesce than to be rigorously logical.

give respect to ID scientists that do real science

Some ID luminaries have contributed to papers that have been deemed good science and that have been published in respected peer-reviewed journals, but they are doing science at those times unrelated to intelligent design, not pseudoscience. The methods are different, as is the quality and reliability of the output.

So how does the current info tell us that intelligence is not "required" to originate DNA?

It doesn't. It also does not tell us that intelligence IS required for DNA to form and evolve.

DNA exists, and we assume that it first arose either naturalistically or by intelligent design. Both hypothesis are possible. Neither can be ruled in or ruled out. One, however, the naturalistic hypothesis, is far more parsimonious for not requiring the existence of a god or gods. Perhaps you think that DNA is too unlikely to exist undesigned, but if so, you're trying to get around that problem by positing a god. Can you think of anything less likely to exist undesigned than a god? I can't.

All our experience tells us instructions come from intelligence.

That depends what you are calling an instruction. Verbal instructions, yes, but not physical ones, such as a rock dropped in a gravitational field falling toward the center of mass..There is no evidence that the instruction to fall comes from an intelligent source.

Nothing is instructing DNA to do what it is doing beyond blind physical forces analogous to the force of gravity acting on the falling rock that determine which strands of bases will be read and transcribed. It all just matter doing what it does naturally.

Adenine is "instructed" to bond with thymidine only because of the shapes of the two molecules and the distribution and type of charge on the molecules. Various codons are associated with various amino acids in the ribosome not due to a linguistic code, but due to the laws of physics.
 

It Aint Necessarily So

Veteran Member
Premium Member
If im ignorent, go ahead and educate me.

That's not possible without your cooperation and many years of instruction. That's how others learned, and there are no shortcuts.

Furthermore, nobody can teach a man that which he has a stake in not learning. Teaching requires that the student be willing and able to consider evidence and any attendant argument dispassionately, and to be convinced by a compelling argument.

That's not how the faith-based thinker thinks. He decides what he wishes to be true before evidence is considered, and then massages the evidence to appear to support his faith-based premises, which he then presents as an argument ending with his premise masking as a conclusion.

Stephen in his speaches addressed this question. He said all great ideas in the past went through the fire of resistence before being accepted.

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

But they aren't always doing science. At times, they are doing pseudoscience.

The science side presented overwhelming evidence that ID and Creationism were one and the same.

Yes, and also that the ID people knew this, as when they made changes to a manuscript that was written just before the Edwards decision banning the teaching of creationism in American public schools, substituting "design proponents" for "creationists" wherever the latter appeared, including the smoking gun example of "cdesign proponentsists" found in one of the manuscripts. This was an excellent example of the dishonesty of the movement and its political and religious rather than scientific origins.

abiogenesis is such an extraordinary claim it will take extraordinary "proof" to establish it as fact,

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.

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.

If a living organism is produced in a lab after over a century of work, a lab with the most up to date equipment, by researcher/s with the highest level of education, isn´t that intelligent design ?

Yes it is, but it doesn't rule out that the analogous steps occurred in the past without an intelligent designer. I can intelligently design a device that compresses carbon and generates diamonds from it over a few hours or days, but that doesn't mean that earth could not do the same thing over eons naturally.
 
Last edited:

shmogie

Well-Known Member
Every causal event creates information: if A causes B, then the presence of B is information about A occurring.

There is information in the directionality of chemical reactions. There is information in the types and arrangements of atoms in the molecules. It is information that a piece of a molecule is hydrophilic or hydrophobic. There is information in which atoms are attracted or bonded to which other atoms.

This is *exactly* the type of information that drives life. And it is all chemical. Even the sequence of DNA or RNA is simply information of the arrangement of the pieces in a molecule. The way the DNA 'code' works is all about which atoms attract which other atoms and which bonds are made. That is *all* chemical.
Sorry, but you apparently unaware of what biological information is and how it operates at the cellular level.

Chemical A in environment Y reacts in one way. Chemical A in environment Z reacts in a different way. This is an inherent chemical reaction, and has nothing to do with information, but is simply based in the property's of the chemical.

Water freezing or vaporizing depending upon the environment has nothing to do with information.

Biological information is an encoded symbolically represented message conveying expected action and intended purpose with two or more possible responses.

Computers convey information via electricity, the information is not electricity. The information is based in the software.

A living cell uses chemicals to convey information, the chemicals are not information.

The information is stored and relayed from encoded bits of information in DNA in a long chain of these bits. They are in the exact right place in the chain so the cell functions properly.
The DNA sends the information to RNA which initiates the proper action.

The cell cannot function without RNA, yet the RNA is made by the cells DNA, The DNA must be copied from another cells DNA

The evolving chemical reaction supporters have primarily adopted the concept of the RNA world, simply put, this idea envisions chemicals evolving through extremely complicated stages by reaction to the point where RNA is made, which somehow develops DNA

" It's nice to talk about self replicating DNA arising, in a soupy sea but in modern cells this replication requires suitable enzymes. The link between DNA and the enzyme is a highly complex one, involving RNA on a DNA template. ribosomes, enzymes to activate amino acids and transfer RNA molecules. How, in the absence of the final ,enzyme could selection act upon upon DNA and all the mechanisms for replicating it ? It is as though everything must happen at once: the entire system must come into being as one unit, or it is worthless. There may be ways out of this dilemma, but I don't see them at the moment" Frank B. Salisbury " Doubts About the Modern Synthetic Theory of Evolution" American Biology Teacher, 33: 335-338 ( September, 1971). I have used this quotation because in the intervening 48 years there have been no substantial "ways out of this dilemma" found.
 

shmogie

Well-Known Member
Bias is not inherently bad. The biases of the scientific community, which are not irrational as you infer, are useful and constructive, including the bias to keep pseudoscience out of the scientific literature. The incredible success of science is the evidence that its biases such as the requirement that claims be supported with physical evidence are appropriate.

By contrast, pseudoscience, which has no exclusionary biases and accepts virtually any idea such as astrology and its assumption that the positions of heavenly bodies predict or control lives, is sterile. The biases of science exclude that kind of thinking.

The ID movement has been sterile as well, failing to find any aspect of nature that is better understood by positing an intelligent designer as its explanation.



"Although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist" - Richard Dawkins

Newton might be a theist if he lived today, but he wouldn't come to that position using reason or the scientific method. It would likely be for the same reason that educated people are theists today - they were raised in it and find it more comfortable and socially acceptable in their family and social setting to acquiesce than to be rigorously logical.



Some ID luminaries have contributed to papers that have been deemed good science and that have been published in respected peer-reviewed journals, but they are doing science at those times unrelated to intelligent design, not pseudoscience. The methods are different, as is the quality and reliability of the output.



It doesn't. It also does not tell us that intelligence IS required for DNA to form and evolve.

DNA exists, and we assume that it first arose either naturalistically or by intelligent design. Both hypothesis are possible. Neither can be ruled in or ruled out. One, however, the naturalistic hypothesis, is far more parsimonious for not requiring the existence of a god or gods. Perhaps you think that DNA is too unlikely to exist undesigned, but if so, you're trying to get around that problem by positing a god. Can you think of anything less likely to exist undesigned than a god? I can't.



That depends what you are calling an instruction. Verbal instructions, yes, but not physical ones, such as a rock dropped in a gravitational field falling toward the center of mass..There is no evidence that the instruction to fall comes from an intelligent source.

Nothing is instructing DNA to do what it is doing beyond blind physical forces analogous to the force of gravity acting on the falling rock that determine which strands of bases will be read and transcribed. It all just matter doing what it does naturally.

Adenine is "instructed" to bond with thymidine only because of the shapes of the two molecules and the distribution and type of charge on the molecules. Various codons are associated with various amino acids in the ribosome not due to a linguistic code, but due to the laws of physics.
This is a bit of misinformation regarding biological information.

Biological information is not simply the result of natural chemical reaction. Chemical reaction is the method by which the DNA communicates the information to RNA which activates the proteins which cause the cell to respond.

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

shmogie

Well-Known Member
So live on earth was first developed in a lab? Maybe aliens? Problem with intelligent design for earth is who was the intelligent designer. So many possibilities to choose from and no evidence for any which is why an evidence devoid subject should not be taught in a science class.
I made a statement regarding abiogenesis and intelligent design, i'e. the intelligent design of science.

I made no statement re intelligent design by God
 

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
This is a bit of misinformation regarding biological information.

Biological information is not simply the result of natural chemical reaction. Chemical reaction is the method by which the DNA communicates the information to RNA which activates the proteins which cause the cell to respond.

There is absolutely no research that has demonstrated the chemical process that would create and organize information in long strands of coded DNA, NONE.
Of course, there is no research demonstrating your underlined claim either.
But the theory that info can be created in DNA is testable, unlike claims of
divine origin.
 

shmogie

Well-Known Member
That's not possible without your cooperation and many years of instruction. That's how others learned, and there are no shortcuts.

Furthermore, nobody can teach a man that which he has a stake in not learning. Teaching requires that the student be willing and able to consider evidence and any attendant argument dispassionately, and to be convinced by a compelling argument.

That's not how the faith-based thinker thinks. He decides what he wishes to be true before evidence is considered, and then massages the evidence to appear to support his faith-based premises, which he then presents as an argument ending with his premise masking as a conclusion.





But they aren't always doing science. At times, they are doing pseudoscience.



Yes, and also that the ID people knew this, as when they made changes to a manuscript that was written just before the Edwards decision banning the teaching of creationism in American public schools, substituting "design proponents" for "creationists" wherever the former appeared, including the smoking gun example of "cdesign proponentsists" found in one of the manuscripts. This was an excellent example of the dishonesty of the movement and its political and religious rather than scientific origins.



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.

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.



Yes it is, but it doesn't rule out that the analogous steps occurred in the past without an intelligent designer. I can intelligently design a device that compresses carbon and generates diamonds from it over a few hours or days, but that doesn't mean that earth could not do the same thing over eons naturally.
Producing synthetic diamonds is simply the replication of a known natural force.

Producing life from non living matter is vastly, vastly more complicated.

There is no current understanding of the alleged process. There is no current understanding of how chance combinations of chemicals produced the extremely complex and detailed information to operate a living organism with all the capabilities to read the information and activate the machinery of the organism based upon the information.,
 

ecco

Veteran Member
Because abiogenesis is such an extraordinary claim it will take extraordinary "proof" to establish it as fact, and I can only see this being accomplished by an actual demonstration.

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