I think I have set a much lower bar than your question would imply. In this post, the very first bar that I have said, is for someone merely to name the components that would be necessary in the first life, not actually create them, but name them. And I’m not asking them to tell me what was in the first life just what could have been.
In the 19th century, not a single person could have given you a plausible explanation for how the stars could shine for more than a few thousand years, because nobody had as yet even imagined nuclear fusion. That science does not yet have an answer is not evidence that there is no possible answer.
Yes, you are proposing what you believe to be a minimum bar, without knowing what the actual minimum is, because you simply don't know everything that there is to be known about science.
And I would suggest that this whole exercise is wasteful and a bit intellectually dishonest. Having chosen, as part of the foundation of your faith, an interpretation of Genesis which rules out evolution, the chance that any argument could change your mind is essentially zero.
The simple fact is, just as we did not know a century ago, what powers the stars, we do not yet know how life came into existence. That does not in any way support the claim that it cannot have done so by purely natural means.
You seem to have forgotten what discussion we’re having. The discussion on hand has to do with people that have a theory, or say, they have a theory, of how life came about by purely naturalistic means. They Collett evolution. And I am saying that that particular theory is impossible. as a matter of fact, I am saying that as concerned, the first life they don’t even have a theory.
Ah, so you are simply challenging them to describe the theory they have? Do they know that?
Your writing has been more about demanding that they offer a theory; I have not seem them actually proposing one. Are you guys just talking past one another?
Well, if you recall, this thread is part of a debate. The debate is with two different people one of whom is another creationist, and we are discussing how best to attack evolution, and the other is an evolutionist and so obviously he would be the one that would need to respond to the attacks on evolution.
To a certain extent, you have seem to be someone that’s trying to defend evolution and so obviously you’re free to propose your theory, but you seem to rather shy away from that, and seem to insist that not having a theory at all make some thing possible which I must admit, I find a bit confusing.
Then you've missed my point: it is not a reasonable challenge to insist that one cannot defend evolution without being able to describe a way for it to work. Please go back and re-read what I said.
I find it rather sad that you think that you need to attack evolution; it seems to place great limits on G-d to insist that He can only have brought life into being by defying the very rules He embedded in the universe.
There are hypothesized beginnings for life... I vaguely remember the iron-sulfur hypothesis, tied to energy gradients around hot smokers deep in the ocean. Wtf do I know... I'm no microbiologist. I can tell you a lot about the poet Wilfred Owen but there's not much overlap between the subjects. In such cases I just defer to science... although that seems like an increasingly shaky policy post-COVID.
Ok so i just posted richard Dawkins giving an example of the evolution of the eye, which might be helpful here. My technical prowess isn’t great so I didn’t know how to post it in this reply.
Von, you make claims that for me supersede your argument parameters. First claim: evolution is impossible??? Remember this thing called COVID recently, and how it mutates into variants? What is this to you?
does the fact that we share more closely our DNA with certain animals than others pose an obstacle to you? You can demonstrably show both things. Why do you not trust the same logic you use to trust other theories, if it leads to evolution, as it demonstrably does? whittle it down to a manageable size that makes sense and go from there. I was born and believed in Anglicanism by the way. I stopped believing after i got over my fear of death and the unknown but it took awhile and I wasn’t firmly an apostate until I was 18. However, I know Catholics that believe as you, but also ‘believe’ in evolution. Isn’t this a more rational response to the information we have at hand?
Im shitty at making systems so unless you really want me too, im not going to try to make one in response to your post. However, Just say so and I will attempt it for you.
This is not a claim; it is an argument. Or, rather, the conclusion to an argument. I lay out the undisputed (in the sense that no one here has actually disputed any of them specifically) components of a first life, and make the mathematical argument that it is impossible (statistically) for all of these components to have come together at the same time, in the same place, and assembled themselves together successfully.
>>In a debate between A and B something can’t be evidence for A (in a discussion between A and B) unless it is evidence against B. IE you must be able to say ‘This could not have arrived via special creation’. Whenever you are arguing against special creation and in favour of evolution, it is not enough to say “This fits evolution.” You must be able to say “And it doesn’t fit Special Creation.” Which means you would have to have a theology of what Special Creation is. (see point 2)
So if you are going to argue that similar DNA between various animals is evidence against Special Creation, you would need to propose your theory of Special Creation (with which I would probably disagree) or accept mine as what you are arguing against. And then describe why various animals having various degrees of similarity in their DNA is an argument against Special Creation.
Similarly, you would have to take note of the fact that what is typically called 'Convergent Evolution' actually fits Special Creation more than evolution.
>>However, I know Catholics that believe as you, but also ‘believe’ in evolution. Isn’t this a more rational response to the information we have at hand?
Well, no, it isn't a very rational response to believe two utterly contradictory things.
However, if what you are asking is why I don't believe both in God and in evolution (as Russ seems to do) then my answer would be that the theory of materialistic evolution flatly contradicts both theology and the evidence in several significant ways so, no, again, that is not rational.
I would remind you of the quote form the Orthodox Jewish scientist:
The acid test for a scientific theory is the quantitative agreement of its conclusions with observed fact. To my knowledge, the only quantitative test of the mutation-selection theory of evolution has been made by L.M. Spetner and myself. (J. Theoret. Biol 7, p. 412, 1964 and ibid 11, p. 336, 1966). Using recent results on the molecular structure of DNA, we have been able to calculate rough estimates for the number of generations required to obtain a favorable mutation. The numbers are so fantastically large that to assume that evolution has occurred within geological times in accordance with the fossil record through random mutation and selection is to assume an event more miraculous than that of a monkey producing all the works of Shakespeare by typing at random on an electric typewriter. By all canons of rational statistical inference, such a hypothesis must be rejected. Since I have no vested interest in the truth of the theory of evolution, I am therefore free to reject it as inconsistent in its present form with the facts of geology. As T. Huxley put it, a true scientist must “sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads.”
Hey Von, I’m still around. I finally got a good laptop and can actually reply to you in notes far easier. Im sure your long since moved on from our prior debates. If you care to discuss another topic or continue an old one I left hanging. I can do so now comfortably. Take care
I would especially love to see a post where you tried to compare evolution and special creation from an objective scientific basis. Not using any theological points.
If science achieved abiogenesis in a manner which could be plausibly replicable in nature would your objection that it is impossible vanish?
I think I have set a much lower bar than your question would imply. In this post, the very first bar that I have said, is for someone merely to name the components that would be necessary in the first life, not actually create them, but name them. And I’m not asking them to tell me what was in the first life just what could have been.
And yet, your bar is still unreasonably high.
In the 19th century, not a single person could have given you a plausible explanation for how the stars could shine for more than a few thousand years, because nobody had as yet even imagined nuclear fusion. That science does not yet have an answer is not evidence that there is no possible answer.
Yes, you are proposing what you believe to be a minimum bar, without knowing what the actual minimum is, because you simply don't know everything that there is to be known about science.
And I would suggest that this whole exercise is wasteful and a bit intellectually dishonest. Having chosen, as part of the foundation of your faith, an interpretation of Genesis which rules out evolution, the chance that any argument could change your mind is essentially zero.
The simple fact is, just as we did not know a century ago, what powers the stars, we do not yet know how life came into existence. That does not in any way support the claim that it cannot have done so by purely natural means.
You seem to have forgotten what discussion we’re having. The discussion on hand has to do with people that have a theory, or say, they have a theory, of how life came about by purely naturalistic means. They Collett evolution. And I am saying that that particular theory is impossible. as a matter of fact, I am saying that as concerned, the first life they don’t even have a theory.
Ah, so you are simply challenging them to describe the theory they have? Do they know that?
Your writing has been more about demanding that they offer a theory; I have not seem them actually proposing one. Are you guys just talking past one another?
Well, if you recall, this thread is part of a debate. The debate is with two different people one of whom is another creationist, and we are discussing how best to attack evolution, and the other is an evolutionist and so obviously he would be the one that would need to respond to the attacks on evolution.
To a certain extent, you have seem to be someone that’s trying to defend evolution and so obviously you’re free to propose your theory, but you seem to rather shy away from that, and seem to insist that not having a theory at all make some thing possible which I must admit, I find a bit confusing.
Then you've missed my point: it is not a reasonable challenge to insist that one cannot defend evolution without being able to describe a way for it to work. Please go back and re-read what I said.
I find it rather sad that you think that you need to attack evolution; it seems to place great limits on G-d to insist that He can only have brought life into being by defying the very rules He embedded in the universe.
There are hypothesized beginnings for life... I vaguely remember the iron-sulfur hypothesis, tied to energy gradients around hot smokers deep in the ocean. Wtf do I know... I'm no microbiologist. I can tell you a lot about the poet Wilfred Owen but there's not much overlap between the subjects. In such cases I just defer to science... although that seems like an increasingly shaky policy post-COVID.
Ok so i just posted richard Dawkins giving an example of the evolution of the eye, which might be helpful here. My technical prowess isn’t great so I didn’t know how to post it in this reply.
Von, you make claims that for me supersede your argument parameters. First claim: evolution is impossible??? Remember this thing called COVID recently, and how it mutates into variants? What is this to you?
does the fact that we share more closely our DNA with certain animals than others pose an obstacle to you? You can demonstrably show both things. Why do you not trust the same logic you use to trust other theories, if it leads to evolution, as it demonstrably does? whittle it down to a manageable size that makes sense and go from there. I was born and believed in Anglicanism by the way. I stopped believing after i got over my fear of death and the unknown but it took awhile and I wasn’t firmly an apostate until I was 18. However, I know Catholics that believe as you, but also ‘believe’ in evolution. Isn’t this a more rational response to the information we have at hand?
Im shitty at making systems so unless you really want me too, im not going to try to make one in response to your post. However, Just say so and I will attempt it for you.
>> First claim: evolution is impossible???
This is not a claim; it is an argument. Or, rather, the conclusion to an argument. I lay out the undisputed (in the sense that no one here has actually disputed any of them specifically) components of a first life, and make the mathematical argument that it is impossible (statistically) for all of these components to have come together at the same time, in the same place, and assembled themselves together successfully.
>>does the fact that we share more closely our DNA with certain animals than others pose an obstacle to you?
I would point you back to the 'Ground Rules' post (I don't think I can link here, so: https://vonwriting.substack.com/p/ground-rules) specifically the ground rule:
>>In a debate between A and B something can’t be evidence for A (in a discussion between A and B) unless it is evidence against B. IE you must be able to say ‘This could not have arrived via special creation’. Whenever you are arguing against special creation and in favour of evolution, it is not enough to say “This fits evolution.” You must be able to say “And it doesn’t fit Special Creation.” Which means you would have to have a theology of what Special Creation is. (see point 2)
So if you are going to argue that similar DNA between various animals is evidence against Special Creation, you would need to propose your theory of Special Creation (with which I would probably disagree) or accept mine as what you are arguing against. And then describe why various animals having various degrees of similarity in their DNA is an argument against Special Creation.
Similarly, you would have to take note of the fact that what is typically called 'Convergent Evolution' actually fits Special Creation more than evolution.
This just isn’t true at all
You might want to be a little more specific as to what the 'that' is that you say isn't true. I said a lot of things in this post.
>>However, I know Catholics that believe as you, but also ‘believe’ in evolution. Isn’t this a more rational response to the information we have at hand?
Well, no, it isn't a very rational response to believe two utterly contradictory things.
However, if what you are asking is why I don't believe both in God and in evolution (as Russ seems to do) then my answer would be that the theory of materialistic evolution flatly contradicts both theology and the evidence in several significant ways so, no, again, that is not rational.
I would remind you of the quote form the Orthodox Jewish scientist:
The acid test for a scientific theory is the quantitative agreement of its conclusions with observed fact. To my knowledge, the only quantitative test of the mutation-selection theory of evolution has been made by L.M. Spetner and myself. (J. Theoret. Biol 7, p. 412, 1964 and ibid 11, p. 336, 1966). Using recent results on the molecular structure of DNA, we have been able to calculate rough estimates for the number of generations required to obtain a favorable mutation. The numbers are so fantastically large that to assume that evolution has occurred within geological times in accordance with the fossil record through random mutation and selection is to assume an event more miraculous than that of a monkey producing all the works of Shakespeare by typing at random on an electric typewriter. By all canons of rational statistical inference, such a hypothesis must be rejected. Since I have no vested interest in the truth of the theory of evolution, I am therefore free to reject it as inconsistent in its present form with the facts of geology. As T. Huxley put it, a true scientist must “sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads.”
Prof. A. M. Hasofer (Professor Hasofer is a leading member of the Association of Orthodox Jewish Scientists.); https://answersingenesis.org/genesis/the-orthodox-jew-and-evolution/
And sorry i have no idea where that eye video went. Just you tube “richard dawkins demonstrates the evolution of the eye”
If you wish to write an article on the evolution of the eye, I am certainly willing to respond to it. It is obviously and completely impossible.
However, this particular post was about biogenesis or the evolution of the first life
Yes, correct. From non-life.
Hey Von, I’m still around. I finally got a good laptop and can actually reply to you in notes far easier. Im sure your long since moved on from our prior debates. If you care to discuss another topic or continue an old one I left hanging. I can do so now comfortably. Take care
I am looking forward to you writing! I have several posts on creation that you can respond to certainly.
I would especially love to see a post where you tried to compare evolution and special creation from an objective scientific basis. Not using any theological points.