Big Bang (Page 2)

I think I answered that implicitly in my previous response, but I'll do it explicitly here: no. Scientists are human, and those things are inherently human. Preconceived notions are where hypotheses come from, but testing of those hypotheses very often leads to those precoceived notions being dispproved.

And peer review provides a check and balance system.

Mike made an excellent point about historical science (anthropology) being exceedingly difficult to examine experimentally, however as more fossils are uncovered and the foensic techniques used to examine them are improved, the evidence for evolution only grows stronger and stronger.

To me the only plausible argument against evolution is that God planted evidence to test our faith, but that seems counterintuitive to what God, to me, is.

There have been a number of experiments that show support for this theory, by creating various amino acids and ribozymes from a 'base' of non-living organic chemicals.  None of them have created life out of nothing, I will agree.  However, if that is the basis for rejecting the possiblity, then please show us the proof that you have that God created life.  If you're going to apply your "scientific method" that lack of a successful experiment disproves a theory then apply it fairly to the theory of a supernatural creator.

Not sure what you mean by this, evolution would only occur within a species.  Monkey's don't spontaneously evolve into snakes.  There is plenty of fossil evidence that shows intermediate species, as an organism evolves from one form to another.

Frogs, birds, rabbits and lizards all have different forelimbs, reflecting their different lifestyles. But those different forelimbs all share the same set of bones - the humerus, the radius, and the ulna. These are the same bones seen in fossils of the extinct transitional animal, Eusthenopteron, which demonstrates their common ancestry.

If you don't trust the fossil record, then there are experiments with bacteria that show how they evolve in the laboratory, by becoming resistant to anti-biotics and otherwise adapting to their environment.  Due to their short lifespan, this is easily observed.

One example does not equal many, many.  Your emphatic insistence that you are right and evolution is provably false doesn't make your case any stronger.

There are many people of faith who support evolution and do not find it incompatible with their religion as another counterpoint.

That's a good point, Chris. I don't think Mike is saying otherwise.

I think it's important that metaphysics or theology don't over rule science in cases where there is clear empirical evidence for some phenomenon.

Science is an important way to understand the nature of reality.

One of my concerns, though, is the growing belief by some that science ought to be able to speak to questions that are actually metaphysical or theological in nature. It seems that in these cases, science is overstepping its bounds and is trying to become Scientism.

Scientism is a religion, in my view, and is distictly different than science.

It seems to me that believers in scientism often try to make moral claims. If someone is a believer in scientism, then I think they have the burden of proving why certain moral claims are true.

For example, if someone follows scientism and is also against war as a priciple, the burden is on them to show why war is wrong. What is the foundation that this belief is based on.

It seems to me that it takes more than science to understand the nature of reality. Disciplines like philosophy and theology seem to have been lost in the conversation in the public square. It seems like the dominant argument is that religion ought to be a private matter and that only science is acceptable in the public square.

To me, this thinking smacks of Scientism.

Duly noted. That's good stuff, thanks. 

No, I get bent out of shape when people dress up myths and false assumptions as fact.  Question it, and help refine it, but don't attempt to refute it with ignorance, misunderstanding, and fraudulent claims.

Also I didn't put words in your mouth.  You said that you didn't believe the primordial soup theory because no one had successfully created "life" in a laboratory experiment.

Mutations alone don't drive towards more complex order.  Mutations coupled with natural selection does.  If a given mutation increases an organisms suitability for it's environment, then it is selected/more likely to survive and pass on the mutation.  See the previously stated bacterium experiments and drug resistance for an example of this in action.

Uhh, citation please?

Before we understood lightning, that was thought to be caused by God.  Before we understood disease and viruses, those were thought to be caused by God.  It is illogical to conclude that something is impossible just because you can't conceive of it.

And funny that you should mention DNA.  

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5405638.stm 

harmony - 2006-10-04 8:24 AM

 I love this...only because I see this in the workplace all the time. 

Thanks!  I needed a laugh :-)

runningwoof - 2006-10-04 10:30 AM

harmony - 2006-10-04 8:24 AM

 I love this...only because I see this in the workplace all the time. 

Actually, evolution claims the exact opposite.  That one species does evolve over time into another species. 

If this is the case, there should be thousands and thousands of examples of intermediate species.  The fossil record should be crawling with them (hmmm...I like that.  Fossils crawling.  I amuse myself :-). 

Not to be dramatic, but there actually would be museums full of them.  Yet, there is not.  There are a few fossils, that some have pointed out, look like an intermediate species (like the one you mention).  However, these could also be examples of extinct species and not a transitional form at all.  Even the recent supposed fossils of human ancestors.  They could be extinct forms of some other kind of primate. 

The bacteria examples you give are mutations w/i species which creationists don't refute.  One species does have change w/i it's kind.  The different kinds of dogs for example...which can be shown to happen in a relatively small amount of generations.  However, this change w/i species will never create another species.  In fact, mutations that severe do not strengthen the progeny, but typically weaken it to the point of not surviving and reproducing.

Well put!  I agree there seems to be a obvious lack of transitional fossiles.

~Mike

I'm still waiting for you to back up your claim that complex life existed shortly after the earth cooled.  Do you have a citation for that somewhere? 

I don't remember where I read this first so I read my daughter's 10th grade biology book last night.  It said the earth is about 4.5 billions years old and the oldest fossils showing life creatures are about 3.5 billion years old.  OK, so maybe I over stated this with my "shortly after the earth cooled"....but still, this only gives about a billion years for lifeless elements of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen to come together in such a way that "life" was spontaneously created.

But wait, there's more....I came across this in her biology book that refutes one of claims that I think you made:

"Reevaluating the Miller-Urey Model.  Recent discoveries have caused scientists to reevaluate the Miller-Urey Model.  We now know that the reductant molecules used in Miller's experiment could not have existed in abundance on the early Earth.  Four billion years ago, Earth did not have a protective layer of ozone gas, O3......Without ozone, ultraviolet radiation would have destroyed any ammonia and methane present in the atmosphere. When these gases are absent from the Miller-Urey experiment, key biological molecules are not made." p254. Holt, Biology, 2006

Understand that the Miller-Urey Model supposedly supported the hypothesis that life began in primordial soup.  So then, I stand by my original assessment, science has NEVER been able to create life.  Even the flawed Miller-Urey Model "cheated" (albeit not intentionally). And even this model did NOT produce life, only "amino acids, fatty acids and other hydrocarbons".  These are "building blocks" not a living anything....not even a single cell!

So then, the evolution theory and the origins of life is off in a ditch.  Scientific process - observation, hypothesis, prediction, experiment, theory - falls apart right out of the starting gate!  That is, when the original hypothesis is proven wrong, the whole theory needs to be reevaluated in light of the new evidence. But this is not done.  It's as if evolutionist have made of their minds and no amount of scientific evidence or their lack of experimental evidence is gonna dissuade them.

Personally I believe that God created all life and created all species.  I am open to possibility that God used evolution to populate and diversify life but frankly science has not shown any convincing evidence for this hypothesis.

~Mike

1. Since his first experiment, Miller and others have experimented with other atmospheric compositions, too. Complex organic molecules form under a wide range of prebiotic conditions.
   
2. It is possible that life arose well away from the atmosphere -- for example, around deep-sea hydrothermal vents. This could make the atmospheric content largely irrelevant. 
   
3. A problem was found with that first experiment.  So, it is re-evaluated and new ideas and experiments have been performed which continue to show the formation of organic compounds in a variety of conditions.
4. Simply because the answer hasn't been found yet, does not mean it does not exist.  Human flight was long considered impossible, until just the past few hundred years!
   

What is 'life'?  Is it a self replicating organism, cell, molecule?  The cells that exist today are the product of several billion years of evolution.  It is not reasonable to expect to find a 3.5 million year old cell that is identical to a cell of today.  There are many theories as to the origin of cellular life as we know it today:

• Proteinoid microspheres: This theory gives a plausible account of how some replicating structures, which might well be called alive, could have arisen. Its main difficulty is explaining how modern cells arose from the microspheres.
• Clay crystals: This says that the first replicators were crystals in clay. Though they do not have a metabolism or respond to the environment, these crystals carry information and reproduce. Again, there is no known mechanism for moving from clay to DNA.
• Emerging hypercycles: This proposes a gradual origin of the first life, roughly in the following stages: (1) a primordial soup of simple organic compounds. This seems to be almost inevitable; (2) nucleoproteins, somewhat like modern tRNA or peptide nucleic acid, and semicatalytic; (3) hypercycles, or pockets of primitive biochemical pathways that include some approximate self-replication; (4) cellular hypercycles, in which more complex hypercycles are enclosed in a primitive membrane; (5) first simple cell. Complexity theory suggests that the self-organization is not improbable. This view of abiogenesis is the current front-runner.
• The iron-sulfur world: It has been found that all the steps for the conversion of carbon monoxide into peptides can occur at high temperature and pressure, catalyzed by iron and nickel sulfides. Such conditions exist around submarine hydrothermal vents. Iron sulfide precipitates could have served as precursors of cell walls as well as catalysts. A peptide cycle, from peptides to amino acids and back, is a prerequisite to metabolism, and such a cycle could have arisen in the iron-sulfur world.
• Polymerization on sheltered organophilic surfaces: The first self-replicating molecules may have formed within tiny indentations of silica-rich surfaces so that the surrounding rock was its first cell wall.
• Something that no one has thought of yet.

And the scientific community *has* reevaluated the original Miller experiment.  Because one experiment is flawed, you do *not* throw out the entire theory of abiogensis and evolution.  It's not really even one theory, but a whole collection of theories.

The theory of evolution applies as long as life exists. How that life came to exist is not relevant to evolution. Claiming that evolution does not apply without a theory of abiogenesis makes no sense.

Abiogenesis is a fact. Regardless of how you imagine it happened (note that creation is a theory of abiogenesis), it is a fact that there once was no life on earth and that now there is. Thus, even if evolution needs abiogenesis, it has it.

If you still feel there is no basis for evolution, then well, I don't really know what to say other than to point to the mountains of fossil evidence and ask what all of that is, if evolution doesn't exist.  Just as you berate "scientists" for having made up their mind already and ignoring evidence to the contrary (without getting into what that evidence supposedly is), you state in the next paragraph that you are doing exactly the same thing. 

I have been touched by his Noodly Appendage.   

Coredump, I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.  I've done much reading about evolution and the origins of life and remain unconvinced that there is "proof".  Even the scientific community knows there is no proof and that is why it still called a theory.  If there was proof, it would be called a law of nature.  Natural selection makes sense to me on a macro level but not a micro level.  When you study the nature of cells at the molecular level there certainly seems to be a well thought out design.

My education is in electrical engineering not microbiolgy so I am not in a position to take a hard position either way.  I know there are PhD microbiologist who are way more educated in this field than either of us and they don't all agree....so I guess we'll just have to wait till we get more evidence.  :-)

~Mike

Gravity is also a theory.  As is relativity.  A "theory" means a well-substantiated explanation of the given data.  There is plenty of data that supports the theory of evolution.  There's 3.5 million years of the fossil record.  There's experimental evidence of evolution that can be observed in the laboratory during a human lifetime.  New species are even able to be formed.  See experiments with everyone's favorite fruit fly.  The new 'species' cannot breed with the parent species but is fertile with its own type, so it is, by definition, a new 'species'.

Before computers became interesting to me, I was on biology tear.  Both my parents hold degrees in Anthropology, and my mother worked at the Field Museum in Chicago for several years, so I'm quite familiar with the field we're discussing.

And you make too much of this supposed "disagreement" among scientists.  There is disagreement on the finer details of evolution, yes, but that is far from their being widespread disagreement over evolution as a broad theory.  I can find electrical engineers who disagree over the best way to design an integrated circuit, yet that doesn't mean that integrated circuits are an invalid science, does it?

Gravity is not a theory, it is a defined as a law.  It is one of the 4 fundamental forces in nature.  Gravity can be specifically defined, it is reapeatable and predicatble and is measurable.  Therefore, science defines it as a law.

Granted we don't know WHY gravity works.  We know that Mass A will be attracted to Mass B with a froce propotional to their mass and inverserly propotional to thier seperation....but we don't know why.  So science 'accepts' this and 'defines' it as a law.

They recently had 500 PhD level biologist sign a statement supporting the theory of intelligent design.  You can blow off this discent.....but that's a lot of brain power to take lightly.

As long as there is disagreements among those educated in this field, I'm not gonna be hard over on any position.

RE the electrical analogy.  There is no debate on Ohms Law or Maxwell's equations.  These are universally accepted as facts; laws, not theories.

 ~Mike

You posted a very detailed thought above about fossils being rare; but now say there are 3.5 million years of the fossil record to substantiate (partially) macroevolution.  Unfortunately it can't be both ways.  As I said above...which hasn't been responded to...there is no fossil evidence for one species evolving into another.  And the ones that are pointed to can be explained as extinct species.

I've never heard of the experiment with fruit flys resulting in a new species....only a variation of an existing one (?)