Re: What are the evolutionists hiding?

"On Sun, 14 Aug 2005 12:51:35 -0400, in article
<c5tuf11dfga4sp34o36qsj8n8fdhp4p58k@xxxxxxx>, r norman stated..."
>
>On 14 Aug 2005 09:27:37 -0700, "Ron O" <rokimoto@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>>
>>r norman wrote:
>>> On 14 Aug 2005 06:51:11 -0700, "Ron O" <rokimoto@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>
>>> >
>>> >r norman wrote:
>>> >> On Sat, 13 Aug 2005 14:14:02 -0400, "Robert J. Kolker"
>>> >> <nowhere@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>> >>
>>> >> >Logos wrote:
>>> >> >
>>>>> >> Evolutionists would like for you to believe that life sprang spontaneously
>>> >> >> from non-life, almost by magic.
>>> >> >
>>> >> >Actually the ToE says nothing of the kind. It says life has become
>>> >> >modified over time since it originally apeared and it offers a theory as
>>> >> >to how that happens. ToE does not address the problem of abiogenisis.
>>> >> >
>>> >> >The anti-evolutionists have trundled out this stinking carnard since
>>> >> >1859. It was false when Slippery Sam Wilberforce invoked it and it is
>>> >> >false now.
>>> >>
>>> >> Sorry, that answer simply doesn't work. What you say is technically
>>> >> true about how the "Theory of Evolution" is defined. However it is
>>> >> quite true that people who understand that evolution of life obeys
>>> >> natural laws as described by TOE also, in fact, almost universally
>>> >> believe that abiogenesis occurred by natural laws so that life did
>>> >> arise spontaneously from non-life. You can't get around that fact
>>> >> simply by arguing that the subject has a different name.
>>> >>
>>> >> There are far better ways to answer the query.
>>> >
>>> >That is just science. That isn't the theory of biological evolution.
>>> >What scientific field doesn't make such distinctions? Are theories of
>>> >stellar function and evolution suspect because we don't know everything
>>> >else? Is the Big Bang suspect because we don't know what happened
>>> >before the big bang?
>>> >
>>> >What part of the theory of biological evolution depends on our
>>> >understanding of abiogenesis? It is obvious that we can study the
>>> >evolution of life after abiogenesis without understanding abiogenesis.
>>> >Science tries to understand as many answers as it can come up with, but
>>> >it doesn't depend on knowing everything or we wouldn't call it science.
>>> > Scientists would be called librarians or theologians if they thought
>>> >that they had all the answers.
>>> >
>>>
>>> My point isn't that abiogenesis is not a separate discipline with
>>> separate concepts and ideas. Most people don't know exactly where
>>> evolution begins and ends. People who question the origin of life can
>>> be answered appropriately and not simply dismissed with the statement
>>> "that's not evolution!"
>>
>>You are basically wrong on this point. What is biological evolution?
>>It is the explanation of the diversity of life in the biosphere. It
>>says nothing about how life began. If it were not a separate disipline
>>why would it have its own name? You seem to miss the point that all
>>science is partitioned. Biological evolution is no different. There
>>may be a grand unifying theory somewhere in the future of physics, but
>>that doesn't mean that we can't understand gravity, and electro
>>magnetism. In the case of abiogenesis it is a very good thing that we
>>don't need to understand it to study biological evolution. Even if we
>>figure out the most probable means that life got started on this
>>planet, we have absolutely no means of determining if life didn't get
>>started by some less probable means. All that is required is that it
>>happened, and creationists and scientists agree that it must have
>>happened at some time somewhere in the universe.
>>
>
>The original post began: "Evolutionists would like for you to believe
>that life sprang spontaneously from non-life, almost by magic. Such a
>contention is so crazy I don't see how any common sense person could
>believe it." We all know that Logos, the poster, is either a crank or
>a troll (or both) and, from the entire style of the post, does not
>deserve a long, thoughtful response. However, it does NOT claim that
>"The Theory of evolution says that life sprang spontaneously." As I
>pointed out earlier, it is quite true that virtually all
>"evolutionists" would like for us all to believe that life sprang
>spontaneously from non-life. The magic part is another story.
>
>Let us assume that a naive but sincere person raises a question about
>the origin of life from non-life. That person should not be dismissed
>with the scornful "that is NOT evolution!". That person should be
>educated that there is a scientific study of the origin of life, a
>field rather distinct from the study of evolution, that there are
>hypotheses and proposals and ideas all consistent with natural
>processes that make such a transition quite reasonable.
>
>The name of this group is talk.origins, not talk.evolution. The
>origin of life is certainly a very appropriate subject for discussion
>here.

One comment from a non-scientist about this, FWIW.

One of the features of an dynamic field of inquiry is pushing
the ideas as far as possible, applying them beyond their original
boundaries. For various reasons:

* This may be a way of bringing some light on a previously puzzling
topic. Maybe the ideas of evolution, undirected change, natural
selection, and so on can be stretched beyond their strict application
to something like the origins of life -- or, even, to the origins of
the universe and black holes (the ideas associated with Lee Smolin).

* This may be a way of finding limitations, problems, or ambiguities
with the "core" ideas. Maybe we can find something about evolutionary
biology by pushing it too much, perhaps to the benefit of "standard"
evolutionary biology.

I think that a robust field *deserves* to be pushed this way.
Of course, mistakes will be made, but without mistakes there is no
learning. (By the way, this is starkly different from the way that ID
is treated by its advocates, where the idea seems to be how much can be
backed off from while still presenting the appearance of saying
something.)


--
---Tom S. <http://talkreason.org/articles/chickegg.cfm>

"a man who is not sometimes a fool, is always one."
Archdeacon William Paley

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Christof Koch
    ... Simpler Origin for Life" from earlier this year by Prof. Robert Shapiro, ... Life began with the appearance of the first RNA molecule. ... before proteins and DNA in the evolution of life. ...
    (sci.physics)
  • Re: Christof Koch
    ... Simpler Origin for Life" from earlier this year by Prof. Robert Shapiro, ... Life began with the appearance of the first RNA molecule. ... before proteins and DNA in the evolution of life. ...
    (sci.physics.relativity)
  • Re: Christof Koch
    ... Simpler Origin for Life" from earlier this year by Prof. Robert Shapiro, ... Life began with the appearance of the first RNA molecule. ... before proteins and DNA in the evolution of life. ...
    (talk.atheism)
  • Christof Koch
    ... Simpler Origin for Life" from earlier this year by Prof. Robert Shapiro, ... Life began with the appearance of the first RNA molecule. ... before proteins and DNA in the evolution of life. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Atheists are the biggest fools on Earth
    ... We're talking about evolution, which is orthogonal. ... Science has shown that this is not the case. ... >>>to all life and explains everything. ... >>eukaryotes are related through a single common ancestor. ...
    (talk.origins)