Speed of Light and the Age of the Universe

[tas8831]

You love Miller Urey, a failed experiment, why ?

On what basis did it fail?

Surely, you are not so uninformed that you think Miller set out to create life?

Creating amino acids, 50% right handed 50% left handed. Life requires only left handed molecules.

You should read some of Bob Hazens' work of chirality. But since most YEC websites won't touch his stuff, you have probably never heard of him.

And remind me again - how many experiments have creation scientists done on the life-friendly properties of dust? I've looked and not even Tomkins dares touch such issues.

Miller admits that it was interesting, but a poorly designed experiment in which the environmental assumptions were dead wrong.

Again, citation/link please. Can't wait to read this "recent" interview with him, seeing as how he died in 2007....

Love it though, your choice.

In an interview in 1996, Miller states:

"In 1951, unaware of Oparin's work, Harold Urey came to the same conclusion about the reducing atmosphere. He knew enough chemistry and biology to figure that you might get the building blocks of life under these conditions...The experiments were done in Urey's lab when I was a graduate student. Urey gave a lecture in October of 1951 when I first arrived at Chicago and suggested that someone do these experiments. So I went to him and said, "I'd like to do those experiments". The first thing he tried to do was talk me out of it. Then he realized I was determined. He said the problem was that it was really a very risky experiment and probably wouldn't work, and he was responsible that I get a degree in three years or so. So we agreed to give it six months or a year. If it worked out fine, if not, on to something else. As it turned out I got some results in a matter of weeks."​

Weird - I have a hard time believing that this fellow would, within a few years (before dying 9 years later), have an about-face and claim his experiments failed.
Also note that it is clear that the goal was not to create life. I suspect your YEC sources are just the usual charlatans and propagandists I have concluded nearly all of them are. But I am sure you will be able to produce this interview and will be from a legitimate source.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

I am aware that a singularity has been proposed as a point of infinite denseness, that for an unknown reason began the rapid expansion.

Mathematical models in retrograde break down as all laws break down about one Planck time from the beginning of the bang.

I am surprised you don know this, it is pretty basic to some BB models.

I do know this. It is why bb theory is model concerning the expansion, not the origins thereof.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Your explanations are dotty, don´t you get it ? Weaseling means nothing no matter how many times you do it.

There's no weasling.
Abiogenesis is not a single hypothesis. There are several competing once that are being pursued / explored.

Do you disagree or not?

Abiogenesis is not a statement that life occurred somehow.

It certainly isn't a claim it occured in one specific way. Nore is it known in what way it occured.
It is only known that it occured. Because, as said dozens of times now, once there was no life and then there was.

It is a very specific term for the natural process of non living matter becoming a living organism.

Yes. And not a specific way of how this occured, which is still being explored. There are several competing hypothesis within this field that are being explored.
Perhaps one of them is correct, perhaps all are wrong.

You telling me something that I know is an error is a joke when you keep repeating it.

Once life did not exist and then it existed, so it came into being in some way at some time. True or false?

You keep saying several hypotheses, do you know how many or what they are ? Do you know the state of the research for each ?

No and no.
And irrelevant to the point being made.

 

[tas8831]

Of course I can´t produce the evidence you ask for, that is a given.

Yes, indeed.

Why you turn the argument back to that is an attempt at some kind of comparison, yet I have never made the claim that that evidence exists.

So you simply assume that whatever you believe is true, despite there being no evidence at all for it. i see.

The point being that it does not exist in any meaningful way for abiogenesis either.

I suppose that depends on what one means by "meaningful".

I find it very meaningful that Miller was able to produce bio-organic compounds from multiple versions of what the early atmosphere was thought to be like, and even to do so in water.

I find it very meaningful that Hazen's group has shown that the abiotic generation of bio-organic molecules under any number of conditions is possible, to include demonstrating that molecules of specific chiralities will adhere preferentially to certain minerals.

All of these things were denied in toto by creationists (and many rational chemists and biologists) until they were shown to be possible. Many creationists still deny even these - but most just retreat to the next level of goal-post-shifting.

Some interesting things have been done in designed experiments in a controlled environment,

Yes, that is how experiments are done, very good for you to understand that.

yet all of them in a cumulative fashion are infinitely small toward the goal and what they mean is not understood in the context of the abiogenesis process.

How else do you propose the research proceed?
Have you ever done scientific research?

You are right about the spelling, and no I did not learn of Koonins threshold from a creationist source, just the opposite, It was from a review of his book on an abiogenesis site.

I then did more research on his threshold, which is chapter 12 of the book.

I suggest you become familiar with it. The reviewer was surprised but could find few flaws in the science of the idea, of course, those will come.

I would be curious as to 2 things:

1. Who this reviewer you refer to is, and
2. What your background is such that you find that particular aspect of Koonin's book so beyond reproach.

While I did take inorganic, organic and biochemistry as an undergrad, and molecular biology as a graduate student, I do not consider myself an expert on these issues, so I am curious as to what you found so impressive.

I just google 'Koonins threshold' and the first meaningful return was to Dutch biologist Gert Korthof's site, where he reviewed Koonin's book in 2013. Actually he only reviewed chapter 12, because:

"In this review I focus on a spectacular claim in chapter 12 and Appendix B that sets it apart from the rest of the book and from the opinion of almost every evolutionary biologist. For this review I ignore the rest of the book. So this is not a review of the book (impossible anyway)."​

Claims you find compelling for reasons that I can guess at, of course. I won't refer to much of Korthof's review, but for his closing statement:

"For, extraordinary claims should be build on very well researched evidence.
Finally, why not do an experiment? If only 13 RNA molecules with a total length of 1,800 nucleotides are necessary, it should not be that difficult to synthesize them and bring in the right chemical environment and observe the origin of life. If sequences are not (precisely) known, why not start with random sequences? That could verify or falsify Koonin's theory."​

You like Koonin's speculation because it fits your worldview (I guess, not sure how).

Looking forward to that interview with Miller in which he does a 180 on his experiments.

 

[tas8831]

Apples and oranges.

Right... Always an out.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

You love Miller Urey, a failed experiment, why ?

I have no particular feelings about it. I just pointed to that one, since it was brought up before.
You didn't answer my question.

Amino acids are the building blocks of life and complex molecules.
Before this experiment, it wasn't known how they could form.
This experiment demonstrated one way how they could form.

My quesiton is why you don't consider it "progress" in the search of how life began?
It seems to me that finding out a way in which complex building blocks of life can form, would count as progress in the search of how life can form.

So please answer my question.
Why isn't this progress in your view?

Creating amino acids, 50% right handed 50% left handed. Life requires only left handed molecules.

[/quote]



Must the Molecules of Life Always be Left-Handed or Right-Handed? | Space | Smithsonian

Certainly, if you cook up a batch of amino acids, sugars or their precursor molecules in a laboratory, you’ll always get a 50-50 mixture of left and right.


Also, I don't see what your point is. Even if the ratio were to be 95% right and 5% left... you'ld still have lefthanded ones available for life.. You might have a point if the ratio was always 100% right and 0% left and then having only left handed ones in living systems.

So, what's your point?

 

[Audie]

Also note that it is clear that the goal was not to create life. I suspect your YEC sources are just the usual charlatans and propagandists I have concluded nearly all of them are. But I am sure you will be able to produce this interview and will be from a legitimate source.

Ya think?

Side note, these creos are near as our of date
as their "bible". The 1950s are more recent than
Issac Newton and his alchemy, but really.

 

[Jose Fly]

In that sense, it was never alive in the first place.

The way I like to put it is....."Intelligent design" was stillborn as a science, and killed as a political strategy via the Dover ruling.

But no... the discovery institute still very much exists. Just like answers in genesis with their retarded creation museum and ark encounter. They really don't care about having lost trials and what not.

They have had their arses handed to them for decades, but they relentlessly persist in their dogmatism and make-belief, sadly.

Oh definitely. Creationist organizations will likely always exist. But the specific strategy of relabeling creationism as "intelligent design" as a means to sneak creationism into public schools is dead. Even the Disco Toot openly says they don't advocate for ID to be taught.

 

[Audie]

The way I like to put it is....."Intelligent design" was stillborn as a science, and killed as a political strategy via the Dover ruling.


Oh definitely. Creationist organizations will likely always exist. But the specific strategy of relabeling creationism as "intelligent design" as a means to sneak creationism into public schools is dead. Even the Disco Toot openly says they don't advocate for ID to be taught.

ID does involve a lot of wishful thinking
which leads inevitably to dishonesty in
research.

Of course, there is that chance, like that
out there finally in the trillion trillionth decimal
place at Pi, a Message will appear in code-
a little chance like that, but that somewhere
there will be finally found irreducible complexity.

And that, at least for those few IDers who can
think that deep, keeps them going.

 

[ecco]

You, like Shmogie, believe and accept science up to the point where it conflicts with your deeply ingrained indoctrinated religious beliefs.

Your deeply ingrained indoctrinated religious beliefs that you mistakenly thought were part of actual science oppose the truth.

Since I have no religious beliefs, your comment is nonsensical. Do you understand the term "nonsense"?

non·sense

/ˈnänˌsens,ˈnänsəns/

noun​

1. 
   
   1. 1.
      spoken or written words that have no meaning or make no sense.
      "he was talking absolute nonsense"
      synonyms: rubbish, balderdash, gibberish, claptrap, blarney, guff, blather, blether; More
      • 
        
        
2. 2.
   foolish or unacceptable behavior.

Apparently you do not understand how silly and desperate you come across when you assert that atheists have religious beliefs.

a·the·ist
/ˈāTHēəst/
noun

1. a person who disbelieves or lacks belief in the existence of God or gods.

Then you compound that by implying that I have been indoctrinated. Please show how and when I was indoctrinated and by whom.


Your "arguments" are like those of a five year old "I'm not a poopy head, you're a poppy head".

I'd say it's time to grow up, but it's far too late for that.

 

[Jose Fly]

You imply this middle ground exists. What is there, and what does it mean ?

What does "middle ground" mean? It means there exists an area between "we know absolutely nothing" and "it's been proven".

Specific to origins, we do know more than absolutely nothing. We know the earth at one point in time didn't have life on it, and then it did. We know life first appeared on earth sometime between 4.5 and 3.7 billion years ago. We know the first life forms were single-celled, relatively simple organisms (i.e., life on earth didn't begin with mammals). We know the first life forms had a set of essential, now ubiquitous genes that are shared by all life on earth today. We know many of the basic building blocks of life can be made by plausible chemical pathways that occur in early planetary systems (e.g., amino acids have been found in space).

Beyond that, there are other things that while we may not "know" them, we can still be fairly confident about them. For example, being in the life sciences myself, I've spent the better part of my life studying life in various forms. I've seen how it replicates itself, how it adapts and evolves to changing conditions, and how it generally goes about its business. In all of these observations, there's one consistent underlying theme that never changes: It does it all by itself. IOW, everything life on earth does, it does by natural means. We can explain the most amazing processes without any need to throw our hands up in the air and say, "Huh! I think some god just did that!"

When we look at cells operating today all we ever see are natural processes, and we never see anything magical or supernatural going on. Thus, from a purely logical and consistency standpoint, it's not unreasonable to conclude that the first life on earth arose via equally natural mechanisms, even if we don't know what they are.

From an even broader perspective, we look around the universe and see other non-biological processes in chemistry, geology, climatology, cosmology, physics, etc. and all of them operate via completely natural means.

So yeah, we do know more than nothing.

Methinks the abiogenesis faithful say stupid things, and defend the stupidity with more of the same.

Always the assumption that great progress is being made, always the same confident assertion, when most have no idea of the research.

I mention results from OOL investigators, like Koonans threshold, and none of the believers even read it, or try and refute it. They truly aren´t interested, the dogma says, and that is the extent of it. Of course they will read nothing from a scientist who is a creationist, that is a given, yet they don´t even bother to read the research of abiogenesis believers, and what exactly has been achieved, at least I do that.

Like you, they are big on scorn defending the dogma, not the research.

Not sure why you felt the need to throw that accusation at me, but I guess that's your MO.

Typical behavior of dogmatists. They are separated from reality in their cocoon built on hoped fors, not facts.

Weird. What I consistently see from science advocates are acknowledgements that the OOL are an unknown and research is being done, both of which are true. The only folks I've ever seen claim any sort of certainty on this issue are the creationists.

There is unease in the OOL community, and a lot of frustration.

Perhaps so. Having been involved with research programs most of my professional life I can say that's not at all unusual. In fact, it's pretty much the nature of scientific research. It's all about trying to solve puzzles, which obviously can be very frustrating at times.

To the dogmatists, this doesn´t exist. All of these happy scientists are working away knocking out a piece of the abiogenesis puzzle on a frequent regular basis. It is a done deal, science proves how life came into being.

I've never seen anyone express that here.

 

[ecco]

Origin fables and models of the past are not knowledge.

What a hilarious comment coming from someone who believes in the Origin Fable written 6000 years ago by a group of people trying to establish a new religion. If you don't consider that knowledge why do you accept it?

Trying to divert attention to what you consider other fables does not elevate your own to the ranks of actual fact or knowledge.

Do try to keep up with the conversation. You are the one who made the comment about origin fables and knowledge. Are you really going to try to imply that your 6000 year old creation fable is not an origin creation fable?


Here is another one that's as good (and nonsensical) as your Genesis.

https://atlantablackstar.com/2016/0...n-creation-myths-the-world-should-know-about/
In the beginning, all that existed were the water, land and sky, which was ruled by Olorun. Another god named Obatala went to Olorun to ask if he could create land for living things to exist. When he was granted permission, Olorun visited Orunmila, Olorun’s first son, to consult with him about his wish. In response, Orunmila told him that he must obtain a gold chain, a snail’s shell filled with sand, palm nuts, corn and a special egg that encompassed the essence of both the men and women orishas. Obatala hung the long gold chain from the sky and climbed down to earth, only to find that he could only go so far due to the chain’s length. When he reached back to pour the sand from the snail’s shell to form dry land, he dropped the special egg and released Sankofa. When he reached the earth, Obatala spread the sand and planted the pine nuts. He even founded a hill and called it Ife. After a while, he decided to fashion human beings to keep him company because his task was quite lonely. He founded the city of Ife, and the gods and goddesses visited him and his creations on earth frequently.
​

That adds to the body of knowledge of the actual history of the earth just as much as your Genesis Story - That is to say - they both add nothing. They both are stories made up by men trying to account for their existence.

 

[ecco]

Your dismissal of the Theory of Evolution is proof that you have no interest in accepting science regardless of how much evidence there is.

The theory of evolution of life does not even rank old wives tales. Your desperate attempts to pretend it is known, and part of actual science just show a fanaticism typical of those in your religion.

There are many Christians who believe the Theory of Evolution is fact.
There are many Christians scientists who believe the Theory of Evolution is fact.
There are many Christians clergy who believe the Theory of Evolution is fact.

Those folks are members of your religion.

"There is no contradiction between an evolutionary theory of human origins and the doctrine of God as Creator."
— General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church​

And then there is this...My emphasis

"We the undersigned, Christian clergy from many different traditions, believe that the timeless truths of the Bible and the discoveries of modern science may comfortably coexist. We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests. To reject this truth or to treat it as 'one theory among others' is to deliberately embrace scientific ignorance and transmit such ignorance to our children. We believe that among God's good gifts are human minds capable of critical thought and that the failure to fully employ this gift is a rejection of the will of our Creator…. We urge school board members to preserve the integrity of the science curriculum by affirming the teaching of the theory of evolution as a core component of human knowledge. We ask that science remain science and that religion remain religion, two very different, but complementary, forms of truth."
—"The Clergy Letter Project" signed by more than 10,000 Christian clergy members.


​

Source for both:
Evolution Resources from the National Academies

Why do you "deliberately embrace scientific ignorance"?

 

[Jose Fly]

ID does involve a lot of wishful thinking
which leads inevitably to dishonesty in
research.

Of course, there is that chance, like that
out there finally in the trillion trillionth decimal
place at Pi, a Message will appear in code-
a little chance like that, but that somewhere
there will be finally found irreducible complexity.

And that, at least for those few IDers who can
think that deep, keeps them going.

Kinda like bigfoot hunters. There's always the chance that one day, they'll find one.

 

[Ouroboros]

There are many Christians who believe the Theory of Evolution is fact.
There are many Christians scientists who believe the Theory of Evolution is fact.
There are many Christians clergy who believe the Theory of Evolution is fact.

Exactly.

It's actually not hard even to read Genesis from an Evolutionary perspective. God commands the oceans, land, and sky to produce life. It doesn't say he/she/it created life piece by piece, but rather had the world create the variety for him/her/it. So... evolution it is.

 

[gnostic]

The heart of the BB is the alleged singularity, the point of infinite denseness, that burst forth with massive energy/mass and everything there is. First cause, energy/mass, expansion.

No, the Big Bang is about the development of the observable universe, and all the development of forces (gravity, EM, weak and strong nuclear), subatomic and atomic particles and large structures (eg stars, galaxies) formed within that universe, all due to the EXPANSION.

The BB also covered how stars formed elements heavier than hydrogen and helium atoms from death of stars (eg red giant stars, supernovas, etc).

The theory really begins with the Planck Epoch (from 0 to 10^−43 seconds). It doesn’t really say much (never explain) about BEFORE the BB (before the Planck Epoch), leaving it as open question.

Even the Planck Epoch is little understood, and still hypothetical and theoretical.

 

[gnostic]

The fable of evolution is about animals. Animals changing into man for example.

Humans are animals, dad. It is not fable.

We are also mammals.

You have no problem with humans been classified as mammals, do you?

 

[dad]

He was just pointing out your misuse of the word "fable". You could use "myth", "story", "legend", or other words, but a fable is a story where animals are talking... like the snake in Genesis. That's an example of a fable.

2Ti 4:4 - And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.
The word translated from Greek means this

"a speech, word, saying

1. a narrative, story
   1. a true narrative
   2. a fiction, a fable
      1. an invention, a falsehood"

 

[dad]

Not a fable and not just animals, but all life.

As I just said in the very post you are replying to.

The bible meaning for fable is this

"

1. a speech, word, saying
2. a narrative, story
   1. a true narrative
   2. a fiction, a fable
      1. an invention, a falsehood"

 

[ratiocinator]

The point being that it does not exist in any meaningful way for abiogenesis either.

What point are you actually trying to make here? You keep on attacking the state of research on the process of abiogenesis but why is that at all significant?

We have plentiful evidence of how things came about up to the point about 4.4 billion years ago when life started (somehow or other) and plenty of evidence of how it evolved subsequently. Given that all of that was the result of natural processes, are you actually suggesting that it would be a sensible approach to abandon the working assumption that the start of life, that one part of the whole picture, was also natural?

Are you actually trying to compare that with religious faith?