Re: Creationist Claim


jgrisham@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
Giant Sloth wrote:
I came across the following creationist claim: "It is impossible to
chemically produce many basic molecules required for any living
system."

"Impossible" is a poor choice of words. People have a nasty habit of
doing the impossible, perhaps only to be contrary. We built pyramids.
We flew to the moon. If we had the faith of a mustard seed, as another
creationist's claim goes, we can do anything we can imagine. Let's just
note that no one has created life in a lab from scratch, yet.

The idea is that this is proof that natural process could not
have created life, and therefore God must have created life. Never
mind the conclusion, is the statement itself true? That humans cannot
chemically (not using living organisms or their products) produce many
basic molecules required for life?

The typical argument for our inability to do it seems to be that the
conditions that started life are unknown. The Mars meteor was used to
suggest an extraterrestrial source for life on Earth. If you are at all
willing to accept that a chunk of Mars with a biological hitchhiker
escaped that planet's gravity, survived the cold and vacuum of space
travel, survived the entry into Earth's atmosphere, where it became the
catalyst for life on Earth, and call that fantasy "science", then,
you've just traded an old creationism for a new kind of creationism.

Bollocks.

The proposition that life started on Mars rather than Earth is
testable, and will no doubt be tested when we can send sufficiently
sophisticated probes to Mars. There is evidence in those Martian
meteroites in the form of structures which can reasonably be
interpreted as of biological origin. There is dispute over this
interpretation, but this does not make it any less valid as a
scientific interpretation of the data.

Creationism offers no evidence, and therefore offers no basis of
evidence which can be interpreted in different ways, or is an
"explanation" in any way capable of testing against any evidence.

If the evidence shows that life originated on Mars, and that
interpretation is sufficiently robust to withstand the rigours of
scientific analysis, it will become accepted by science. As it stands
it isn't, because the evidence is very limited. But if it is, your
incredulity, or my incredulity, or the incredulity of Uncle Tom Cobbley
and all is utterly irrelevant. Some of the most powerful theories in
science strain credulity. Yet they are accepted because they provide a
robust framework for the interpretation of evidence.

Your postings show that you have not grasped the essential difference
between science and creationism. Why not try to understand, rather than
making statements which trumpet your ignorance?

RF


JTG 8/21/06


Thanks,
GS

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