Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or subscriptions. Historical content remains viewable.

Dismiss

REPOST: On the Origin of Life (draft 1)

8 views

Skip to first unread message

david ford

unread,

Mar 17, 2005, 11:39:51 AM3/17/05

Some questions precede the general essay.

Suppose we play the game Let's Find the Atom. I label an atom, and you
look at atoms at a rate of one per second. How long would you have to
search to have a 95% probability of locating the labeled atom? (Only
10^17 seconds have passed since the big bang, and there are about 10^80
_atoms_ in the visible/ currently-observable universe.)

About the known blind/ non-intelligence-directed processes said to
exist, can any of them give rise to:

A spherical ball having a uniformly-identical radius of 1 meter, and
consisting of only metal, starting with 1,000 burning stars?

A functional refrigerator, or a functional car, starting with the
non-man-refashioned material on and within the earth?

A functional watch starting with the parts of a once-functional watch
that has been taken apart down to its individual watch-part-component parts?

A functional watch, starting with the pieces of a once-functional watch
that has been cut up into 200 pieces of equal weight?

A functional mousetrap, starting with the components of a mousetrap
separated from each other by a least 1 millimeter?

A functional biological lifeform, starting with non-living matter?

(below is some straying from the origin of life question)
A fruit fly population, starting with a bacterium?

A dragonfly population, starting with a fruit fly population?

A human population, starting with a dragonfly population?

A magazine's worth of arrangements of Roman letters conveying meaning,
starting with a massive bowl of alphabet cereal soup?

The encoded-in-DNA/ genetic instructions coding for:
an _E. coli_ bacterium, starting with non-living matter?
a human, starting with an _E. coli_ bacterium population?

A living bacterium, starting with the pieces of a once-living bacteria
that has been cut up into 2,500 pieces of equal weight?

The first biological lifeform, starting from non-living matter?

For which if any of the above scenarios could we say "totallyblind
processes couldhave didit"?

Suppose I take my watch apart using a screwdriver, teasing apart each of
the elements that constitute the watch. Within the following
circumstances, about how many seconds will it take for a 95% probability
of the watch coming back together and working?:
the pieces sit in a box that I bury: _____ seconds
the pieces are placed into a box that a machine then jiggles around:
_____ seconds
the pieces are placed into a sealed, water-filled container that a
machine then jiggles around: _____ seconds

With jiggling, which will occur first: the pieces come together to form
a functional watch, or the pieces turn into dust?

Suppose I take a living cell apart, teasing apart each of those
components of the cell I can see using a 10,000 power microscope. How
many seconds will it take for the cell to come back together and become
a living cell, and what would be the circumstances under which such
occurred?

Suppose I grind a living cell up into its constituent atoms. How many
seconds will it take for a 95% probability of the cell pieces coming
back together and becoming a living cell, and what would be the
circumstances under which such occurred?

Do you believe that starting with simply physics, life can come from
non-life? If "yes":
Suppose you had the opportunity to sit down and talk with British
philosopher and ex-atheist Antony Flew about the origin of life
question. What lines of evidence and arguments would you present to
Flew as part of your case that spontaneous generation is possible?
Would you tell Flew that the early earth's atmosphere was actually _not_
highly-reducing, and would you spell out the practical consequences of
that fact?

Would you share with Flew what Davies recently learned about the state
of the origin of life question from researchers in the field, namely
[Davies]"investigators feel uneasy about stating in public that the
origin of life is a mystery, even though behind closed doors they freely
admit they are baffled"?
Davies, National Academy of Sciences, Dawkins, Feynman
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=Pine.SGI.3.96A.990511230015.1040149B-100000%40umbc9.umbc.edu

In your discussion with Flew, how would you account for the origin of
the meaning-laden genetically-encoded information present in the first
biological lifeform?

1985 A.G. Cairns-Smith; How did recorded-in-DNA/ genetic information
originate?
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=dford3-32gv43F3jsrelU1%40individual.net
How does a seeingwatchmakingist account for the origin of
the recorded-in-DNA/ genetic information within:
a human? a bacterium? the first biological lifeform?
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=dford3-348nj6F47evohU1%40individual.net

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Bateson, William. 1915. "Heredity" _Annual Report of the
Smithsonian Institution, 1915_, 359-394. On 375:
....when we hear the spontaneous formation
of formaldehyde mentioned as a possible first
step in the origin of life we think of Harry Lauder in the
character of a Glasgow schoolboy pulling out his
treasures from his pocket-- "That's a wassher-- for
makkin' motor cars."

Because matter-energy began to exist, consequently the world of biology
began to exist. The input of mind/intelligence was needed for the first
biological lifeform to originate. Human intelligence/ mind has not yet
been able to create life from non-living matter; consequently, the
mind/intelligence responsible for the creation of the first biological
lifeform was more brilliant than humankind's most brilliant biochemists
of today.

In his book _Darwin's Black Box_, biochemist and creationist Michael J.
Behe uses the analogy of a 1000 lane highway with busy traffic that must
be crossed to illustrate the formation of life from non-life.
Biochemists and chemists set up physically unrealistic/ implausible
conditions, and send thousands of candidates across. Some make it to
lane 2. Even fewer make it to lane 3. And none can be found to have
crossed to lane 4. They got run over by the traffic.

Then, in a valiant effort at trying to show that life can spontaneously
generate, the biochemists and chemists helicopter candidates to lane
700. They purposefully mix up some nucleotides and put them together,
or do other things whose occurrence requires much intelligence. Of
their attempts, even with the highly contrived conditions, only a few
make it to lane 701. Fewer still can be found to have crossed to lane
702. And none can be found to have gotten to lane 703. This is the
case with a reported peptide catalyzing its own formation. The
fragments that were joined were manufactured using human intelligence,
and who knows what for other intelligence went into making this peptide
supposedly make copies of itself.

Behe makes another excellent analogy. Imagine a person alleged that a
cake could be formed via totally-mindless processes. If he were to put
some sugar cane, wheat, and cocoa plants near a hot spring, then we
would have no problem with that. If, however, he got refined sugar,
cocoa, and flour at the store, we would get a little suspicious. If he
placed things in an oven to "speed things up," we would start shaking
our heads. And when he carefully measured out the components, mixed
them, placed the mix in a pan, and put it in the oven, we would walk
out. He claimed totally-mindless processes could result in a cake
originating, and then he put a whole lot of intelligence into the making
of the cake, which is not anywhere close to a cake appearing by
totally-mindless processes. Humans can make cakes. They cannot yet
make life. If scientists do produce life in the lab, that will only
show that intelligence was needed for the origination of biological
life.[Behe, 169]

In the Miller-Urey sparking apparatus experiments, the experimenters
intervened in protecting the amino acids formed from destruction by the
same electricity that formed them, and they had continuous sparking for
several days. This is not "leaving the lab alone for a while," but
rather an (unsuccessful) unrealistic attempt at creating life through an
input of intelligence. Even then, nothing even close to life was made.

In the controlled environment of a laboratory, humans can make it so
that any life forms that spontaneously generate do not get eaten up by
existing life forms.

Thought/ mind isn't required _any more_ for existing life to fabricate
copies of itself, but that doesn't mean that mind wasn't required in the
first place for the origination of the first biological lifeform. For
example, I used to use the software Pine to post to newsgroups. I
didn't have to expend much thought in getting at newsgroups, for the
computer programmers that wrote the software took care of all that with
the programs they made and that I used, blissfully unaware of the
complexity lurking behind every keystroke pressed that took me where I
wanted to go. Just because not much thought is required any more, that
does not mean that no intelligence/ mind was required to make the
software in the first place.

The much-ballyhooed Miller-Urey experiments of the 1950s used a
highly-reducing atmosphere, and even then, did not produce some of the
required amino acids. Not-highly-reducing atmospheres tremendously slow
down production of amino acids.

In all probability, the fabled primordial organic soup never existed.
To set the record straight, the early atmosphere was not highly-reducing
as has often been claimed. Instead of being predominantly composed of
methane (CH4), ammonia (NH3), and hydrogen (H2), it was made up of
carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrogen (N2), and carbon monoxide (CO), with
insignificant quantities of ammonia, hydrogen, methane, and hydrogen
sulfide (H2S).[Beck, Liem, and Simpson, 1177. See also Johnson (1993),
105, and Ross, 139]

The early earth's atmosphere was _not_ highly-reducing, as is required
if one is to get anywhere close to a reasonable number and variety of
amino acids. Instead, the atmosphere was for the most part nitrogen,
carbon monoxide, and carbon dioxide, with volcanoes spewing out CO2 and
N.[Naeye, 41. For volcanoes, see Horgan, 121. See also Shapiro,
111-112, Rana & Ross, 99-100] With such an atmosphere, experimenters
report getting only glycine. With some reactions, one can obtain an
additional 4 amino acids, but then that's it.[Schlesinger & Miller, 381]

Regarding the amount of time available for spontaneous generation,
Manfred Schidlowski of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry reports
from studying carbon 12 and carbon 13 isotopes that he's found, in the
words of his article's title, "A 3,800-million-year isotopic record of
life from carbon in sedimentary rocks."[_Nature_ 333: 313-318 (1988)]
That's on the lower end.

At the upper end, it's reported in _Nature_ 342: 139-42 (1989) that
early earth suffered much bombardment by asteroids, bombardments that
may have sterilized the earth, with the latest sterilizing bombardment
most likely occurring 3.8 billion years ago. (For something not
requiring light, i.e., living near an ocean vent, it could have survived
as early as 4.44 bya.)

So, in the words of Christopher Chyba and Carl Sagan, "The terrestrial
origins of life must therefore have coincided with the final stages of
the heavy bombardment of the inner Solar System...."[_Nature_ 355:
125-132 (1992), 125] In short, proponents of spontaneous generation
have extremely little, if any, time for their non-existent nucleotides
and amino acids to happen to come together to form life.

The important point to keep in mind is not just that there was no
primordial pond oozing with amino acids and nucleotides-- remember that
destructive processes would have been at work at least as much as
constructive processes, and the atmosphere was not highly-reducing-- but
that even with the existence of such a pond, the formation of life by
mindless processes from it is essentially zero.

According to _Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary_, 10th ed.,
"chance" is defined as 1a: "something that happens unpredictably
without discernable human intention or observable cause," and 1b: "the
assumed impersonal purposeless determiner of unaccountable happenings:
LUCK."

If one adheres to materialism, one does not believe that an immaterial,
superior intellect exists, nor that such a superintellect created
biological life. According to materialism, life must have arisen by
chance, i.e., life arose apart from any intelligent entity's "intention"
to create life, i.e., life arose in an "impersonal purposeless" manner.

Now we could follow materialist Francis Crick of double helix fame and
propose that life arrived on earth with the assistance of aliens:
To avoid damage, the microorganisms are supposed to have
traveled in the head of an unmanned spaceship sent to Earth
by a higher civilization which had developed elsewhere some
billions of years ago. The spaceship was unmanned so that
its range would be as great as possible. Life started here
when these organisms were dropped into the primitive oceans
and began to multiply....[as quoted in Hoyle, 159]
However, the question would then become "Where did those aliens come
from?" Replying "other aliens" demonstrates the infinite regress gotten
with this line of thought, and this infinite regress cannot go on
forever, since the universe is at most only 20 billion years old.

The choice is clear: either intelligence/mind was at least in part
behind the origination of the first biological lifeform, or life
(whether ours or the purported aliens' or their progenitors, etc.) arose
by non-intelligence-directed-at-any-level processes.

Fred Hoyle rejects the big bang model, not because of a lack of evidence
for it-- ironically, he actually put together some of the evidence
supporting the model-- but in part because he knows from ten years of
studying biochemistry that 20 billion years is fantastically too short
to produce anything like the complexity seen in biology:

Lightman, Alan and Roberta Brawer. 1990. _Origins: The
Lives and Worlds of Modern Cosmologists_ (Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Harvard University Press), 563pp., Hoyle
section on 51-66. Material on 59-60:
"But today, I do have rather strong feelings that I don't
think the big bang is right. I happen to get those views
from something that hardly anybody else believes. I just
don't think that the huge complexities of biology could
have evolved in a mere 10^18 grams of material on the
earth. (The biosphere of the earth is 10^18 grams.) I don't
think that chemical evolution on the earth could possibly
have produced the biological system. I think this has to be
considered as a cosmological issue."

"You think it requires more than the Hubble time to
produce the biology we see? We need more time than the
big bang gives us?" "Yes. That's right." "When did you
develop this idea?" "Most of the last 10 years I've spent
reading technical biology. It's come as a result of
understanding the complexity of enzymes and all the rest
of the biochemistry that is involved."

To illustrate the improbability of chance _protein_ formation-- not
including the also necessary DNA and RNA-- and they are necessary, since
all three components have to be there for the highly-interdependent
system to work-- Hoyle uses the analogy of the chances that a junkyard
having the debris of a Boeing 747 would, after a tornado had passed
through, contain a plane capable of flight to convey the chances he
calculated that a usable set of enzymes for a bacterium could be formed
by chance, specifically, 1 in 10^40,000 (or 1 followed by 40,000
zeros).[Hoyle, 17, 19]

Hoyle, Fred. 1983. _The Intelligent Universe_ (NY: Holt, Rinehart
and Winston), 256pp. On 18-19, the section "The idea of the
primordial soup":
The popular idea that life could have arisen spontaneously on
Earth dates back to experiments that caught the public
imagination earlier this century. If you stir up simple
non-organic molecules like water, ammonia, methane, carbon
dioxide and hydrogen cyanide with almost any form of intense
energy, ultraviolet light for instance, some of the molecules
reassemble themselves into amino acids, a result demonstrated
about thirty years ago by Stanley Miller and Harold Urey. The
amino acids, the individual building blocks of proteins can
therefore be produced by natural means. But this is far from
proving that life could have evolved in this way. No one has
shown that the correct arrangements of amino acids, like the
orderings in enzymes, can be produced by this method. No
evidence for this huge jump in complexity has ever been found,
nor in my opinion will it be. Nevertheless, many scientists have
made this leap-- from the formation of individual amino acids to
the random formation of whole chains of amino acids like
enzymes-- in spite of the obviously huge odds against such an
event having ever taken place on the Earth, and this quite
unjustified conclusion has stuck.

In a popular lecture I once unflatteringly described the thinking
of these scientists as a "junkyard mentality". Since this
reference became widely and not quite accurately quoted I will
repeat it here. A junkyard contains all the bits and pieces of a
Boeing 747, dismembered in disarray. A whirlwind happens to blow
through the yard. What is the chance that after its passage a
fully assembled 747, ready to fly, will be found standing there?
So small as to be negligible, even if a tornado were to blow
through enough junkyards to fill the whole Universe.

To vaguely give you an idea of the odds of 1 in 10^40,000, 10^17 seconds
have gone by since the big bang, and there are 10^80 atoms in the
visible/ currently-observable universe. In conveying the figure 1 part
in 10^37, astronomer and creationist Hugh Ross uses the analogy of the
chances of picking out, blindfolded, one red dime out of a billion piles
of silver dimes. "How big are the dime piles?" you ask. Each one
covers the area of North America and reaches to the moon.[Ross, 109]

Much worse odds than Hoyle's 1 in 10^40,000 are provided by physicist
Harold Morowitz, who figured the odds of an _entire_ bacterium
reassembling by chance whose every chemical bond had been broken (i.e.,
the bacterium is ground into its constituent atoms) as being 1 in
10^100,000,000,000.[Shapiro, 128] Twenty billion years is pitifully
inadequate for the mindless assembly of even the "simplest" forms of
life even if the entire visible cosmos consisted of a primordial soup;
if significantly less complex, they could not exist.[Ross, 140-1]

A virus is not a lifeform, but merely an encapsulated piece of DNA or
RNA, and it must use a living cell to request that copies of itself be
made. That's why Sagan says that viroids "have probably most recently
evolved from more complex organisms rather than from simpler ones."
Viroids "are composed of less than 10,000 atoms." Sagan adds that "the
smallest known free-living organisms are the PPLO (pleuropneumonia-like
organisms) and similar small beasts. They are composed of about 50
million atoms."[Sagan, _Cosmos_ (1980), 365pp., 39] I invite you to
attempt to come up with a description of an organism that would be alive
and survive on its own and that is simpler than these PPLO organisms.
Biological life is able to fabricate a reproduction of itself, which is
an extraordinarily complicated feat-- imagine if you had designed a
robot that could fabricate other robots-- and thus, it should come as no
surprise that:
life is extremely complicated and sophisticated, and this sophistication
is _essential_ to the feat of fabricating a copy of itself.

Cairns-Smith, A.G. 1985. _Seven Clues to the Origin of
Life: A Scientific Detective Story_ (Great Britain:
Cambridge University Press), 131pp. A paragraph on 22:
This is perhaps the most technical chapter in the book
(although it is not that bad). Some readers may want
just to skim it (or skip all but this page if they must),
taking on trust the main burden of argument that it
presents-- that the workings of all life on the Earth are
seen to be fabulously complex and sophisticated on the
molecular scale. Present-day organisms are manifestly
pieces of 'high technology', and what is more seem to be
necessarily so.

On 29, a sentence and three paragraphs:
An _E. coli_ just is a complicated machine too, and I
think that _any_ free-living nucleic-acid-based forms of
life would have to be.

Take just part of our system-- the automatic protein
synthesiser. Any such machinery, however it is made,
is surely going to be clever, complicated engineering;
because it is a complicated and difficult job that has
to be done.

Ask any organic chemist how long it takes to put
together a small protein, say one with 100 amino acids
in it. Or go and look up the recipe for such an operation
as it is written out in scientific journals. You will find
pages and pages of tightly written instructions, couched
in terms that assume your expertise in handling
laboratory apparatus and require you to use many rather
specialised and well-purified chemical reagents and
solvents. And the result of following such instructions?
If you are lucky a few thousandths of a gram of product
from kilograms of starting materials.

Or go and read all the details and examine the
engineering drawings for a laboratory machine that can
build protein chains automatically. (If you want to buy
one it will cost you more than a video-recorder.) You
will be impressed by how clever such machines are--
and not surprised that _E. coli_'s machine is clever too.
It would have to be, wouldn't it?

Rather than accepting the input of a non-material entity in the creation
of life, Hoyle proposes that the universe is infinitely old using a
jerry-rigged version of his discredited steady state theory and by
saying that life originated in space, since the earth is only 4.5
billion years old. He remarks,
We have seen that life could not have originated here on the
Earth. Nor does it look as though biological evolution can
be explained from within an Earthbound theory of life.
Genes from outside the Earth are needed to drive the
evolutionary process. This much can be consolidated by
strictly scientific means, by experiment, observation, and
calculation.[Hoyle, 242]

To reiterate, the idea of "genes from outside the Earth" leaves
unanswered the question of how those genes came into existence. Some
other people driven by the data to the idea that life must have
originated from elsewhere in the universe (acceptance of the input of a
superior non-material mind/intellect is unacceptable to them) include
Thomas Gold, Leslie Orgel, Chandra Wickramasinghe, and Swedish physicist
Svante Arrhenius, besides Crick and Hoyle.[Heeren, 183-4] Crick worked
with DNA for a long time. It is significant that this Nobel laureate
has to resort to little green men in a pathetic attempt to avoid the
evidence staring him in the face that a superintellect designed
biological life.

You might want to think that spontaneous generation occurred in the
hostile conditions of outer space. The universe is at most 20 billion
years, but you'll have to wait for heavier, life-essential elements to
form through star burning's nuclear fusion. I'll give you say 5 billion
years for spontaneous generation to occur in space making use of the
wastes of 2 generations of stars. You have 5 billion years to get life
from non-life in the exceedingly life-hostile environment of space.
Good luck.

Incidentally, Ross expects that life or remnants of life will be
discovered on Mars because Mars is close enough to earth that material
ejected by asteroid collisions could very easily have traveled
there.[Ross, 144-5]

RNA World

In discussing the idea of self-replicating RNA, a Feb. 1991 article in
_Scientific American_ notes that "RNA is difficult to synthesize...
[and] the molecule cannot easily generate copies of itself."[pg 118]
And this is assuming that the early atmosphere was highly reducing,
which it wasn't. Rebek's experiment, where he got something that's like
proteins and nucleic acids, was made using _highly_ contrived
conditions.[pg 120]

It is observed that "RNA and its components are difficult to synthesize
in a laboratory under the best of conditions...."[pg 119] One problem
is that in getting the requisite ribose, one also gets all kinds of
other material that stands in the way of RNA formation. Also, a key
component of RNA is phosphorous, which is pretty rare. Also, once the
scientist synthesizes RNA, it needs much outside, i.e., intelligent,
help so it can make copies of itself.

Joyce, Gerald F. 1989. "RNA evolution and the origins of life"
_Nature_ 338: 217-24. The last paragraph:
The transition to an RNA world, like the origins of life in
general, is fraught with uncertainty and is plagued by a lack of
relevant experimental data. Researchers into the origin of life
have grown accustomed to the level of frustration in these
problems. Perhaps it is time for a new group of scientists to join
in the frustration. The discovery of catalytic RNA and the
appreciation of the dual role of RNA as both genetic material and
catalyst have kindled new interest in the evolution of RNA and the
origins of life. It is time to go beyond talking about an RNA world
and begin to put the evolution of RNA in the context of the
chemistry that came before it and the biology that followed.

Clay

Pigliucci, Massimo. Sept-Oct 1999. "Where do we come from?: a humbling
look at the biology of life's origin" _Skeptical Inquirer_. From the
section "From Dust to Dust..." at
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2843/is_5_23/ai_55683967/pg_3
What is wrong with this picture? First of all,
Cairns-Smith seems to completely ignore what a
living organism is to begin with. For one thing....
Second.... Furthermore.... Moreover.... Another
colossal hole in the clay theory....

Two lines of evidence against the spontaneous generation hypothesis

a) theoretical considerations

2001 Gerald Schroeder, 1999 Paul Davies, 1992 Hubert Yockey, & 1968
Michael Polanyi: [Davies]"life cannot be 'written into' the laws of
physics" presently known
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=dford3-33b2blF3tdum0U1%40individual.net

on "order" and varieties of "complexity"
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=b1c67abe.0407211714.53153989%40posting.google.com

b) experiment results

1985 A.G. Cairns-Smith, 1986 Andrew Scott, 1999 Freeman Dyson
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=dford3-33bltcF3rgbovU1%40individual.net

some 1915-1999 doses of reality
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=dford3-33arf3F3vjdggU1%40individual.net

You take a highly-reducing atmosphere and zap it for a week using
electricity or heat. What do you get? You might get tar. You might
get some amino acids. Do you get life? No. This experiment has been
done many times in the lab. Did life ever appear? No. A question for
you: how many times does this experiment have to be done before you
concede that life cannot spontaneously appear in such a situation?

You take a non-highly-reducing atmosphere and zap it. What do you get?
You might get nothing. And you might get the amino acid glycine,
largely. After some reactions with the glycine, you get a few more
amino acids, and then that's it. With the small number of amino acids,
does life appear out of them? No.
Question: regarding experiments that take into consideration the fact
that the early earth's atmosphere was not highly-reducing, how many
times must those experiments be done and come up empty before you
concede that life does not spontaneously generate? Keep in mind that
protein by itself is not anywhere close to the highly-interdependent
DNA, RNA, protein system seen today.

Bibliography

Beck, William, Karel Liem, and George Gaylord
Simpson. 1991. _Life: An Introduction to Biology_,
3rd edition (NY: HarperCollins), 1361+pp.
Behe, Michael J. 1996. _Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical
Challenge to Evolution_ (NY: The Free Press), 307pp.
Cairns-Smith, A.G. 1985. _Seven Clues to the Origin
of Life: A Scientific Detective Story_ (Great Britain:
Cambridge University Press), 131pp.
Davies, Paul. 1999. _The Fifth Miracle: The Search for
the Origin and Meaning of Life_ (New York: Simon &
Schuster), 304pp.
Heeren, Fred. 1995. _Show Me God: What the
Message from Space is Telling Us About God_
(Wheeling, Illinois: Searchlight Publications), 336pp.
Horgan, John. February 1991. "In the Beginning..."
_Scientific American_, 117-125.
Hoyle, Fred. 1983. _The Intelligent Universe_ (NY:
Holt, Rinehart and Winston), 256pp.
Johnson, Phillip E. 1993. _Darwin on Trial_
(Illinois: InterVarsity Press), 220pp., 102-112.
Naeye, Robert. July 1996. "Okay, Where Are They?"
_Astronomy_, 38-43.
Rana, Fazale and Hugh Ross. 2004. _Origins of Life:
Biblical and Evolutionary Models Face Off_ (USA:
NavPress), 298pp.
Ross, Hugh. 1993, ____. _The Creator and the Cosmos:
How the Greatest Scientific Discoveries of the
Century Reveal God_ (Colorado Springs, CO:
NavPress Publishing Group), 185pp.
Schlesinger, Gordon and Stanley L. Miller. 1983.
"Prebiotic Synthesis in Atmospheres Containing
CH_4, CO, and CO_2: I. Amino Acids" _Journal
of Molecular Evolution_ 19: 376-382.
Shapiro, Robert. 1986. _Origins: A Skeptic's Guide to the
Creation of Life on Earth_ (Great Britain: Penguin
Books), 332pp.

Scooter the Mighty

unread,

Mar 17, 2005, 12:23:26 PM3/17/05

david ford wrote:
> Some questions precede the general essay.
>

<snip>

Nope. Still as stupid as when you posted this same thing a couple days
ago.

Cary Kittrell

unread,

Mar 17, 2005, 12:24:47 PM3/17/05

Logically, we can only infer from our own experience.

And since, in our own experience, only humans make clearly
designed objects, then the only honest conclusion which
does not exceed our experience is that humans created the
universe.

-- cary

John

unread,

Mar 17, 2005, 9:44:11 PM3/17/05

"Cary Kittrell" <ca...@afone.as.arizona.edu> wrote in message
news:d1cegv$l7h$1...@onion.ccit.arizona.edu...

> In article <reposted.0.dford...@individual.net> david ford
> <dfo...@gl.umbc.edu> writes:
>> Some questions precede the general essay.
>>

snip

>
> Logically, we can only infer from our own experience.
>
> And since, in our own experience, only humans make clearly
> designed objects, then the only honest conclusion which
> does not exceed our experience is that humans created the
> universe.
>

Hands up who made DF?

Eros

unread,

Mar 17, 2005, 11:01:03 PM3/17/05

David,

What on earth makes you think any of this is weird stuff you post is
evidence that supports the religious view of Divine Creation?
Incredulity is not evidence, you know! How about posting some evidence
that *directly* supports the wild assertions of creationism. Can you
provide any?

EROS.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In recent years, certain individuals motivated by religious views have
mounted an attack on evolution. This group favors what it calls
"creation science", which is not really science at all because it
invokes supernatural phenomena. Science, in contrast, is based on
observations of the natural world. All beliefs that entail supernatural
creation, including the idea known as intelligent design, fall within
the domain of religion rather than science. For this reason, they must
be excluded from science courses in our public schools. ." -- The
Geological Society of America, Position Statement, May 2001.
http://www.geosociety.org/aboutus/position1.htm

scooter

unread,

Mar 17, 2005, 11:35:49 PM3/17/05

david ford wrote:

Besides the fact that you distort and quote mine for snippets that you
can take out of context, you make no argument for ID/creationism. What
do you suggest we teach? What lesson plan did you have in mind? How
bout this: I believe that we were created by God. Ok, thats it for the
semester. See you next year. I don't think thats gonna hold up
constitutionally.

bhawes

unread,

Mar 18, 2005, 10:15:23 AM3/18/05

*snip an army of strawmen*

*snip a mountain of incredulity*

david ford wrote:
> Because matter-energy began to exist, consequently the world of
biology
> began to exist. The input of mind/intelligence was needed for the
first
> biological lifeform to originate.

Someone please trot all evidence for mind/intelligence independant of
biological lifeforms

> Thought/ mind isn't required _any more_ for existing life to
fabricate
> copies of itself, but that doesn't mean that mind wasn't required in
the
> first place for the origination of the first biological lifeform.

Someone please trot out any evidence for mind/intelligence
independant of biological lifeforms

> The choice is clear: either intelligence/mind was at least in part

> behind the origination of the first biological lifeform...

Someone please trot out just one pittance of evidence for
mind/intelligence independant of biological lifeforms

> .., or life (whether ours or the purported aliens' or their

progenitors, etc.) > arose by non-intelligence-directed-at-any-level
processes.

Given the evidence presented, this is the only option remaining in
you're false dichotomy

Eudaemonic Plague

unread,

Mar 18, 2005, 3:50:18 PM3/18/05

"John" <ju...@junk.com> wrote in message
news:d1df9r$n7m$1...@perki.connect.com.au...
:
: "Cary Kittrell" <ca...@afone.as.arizona.edu> wrote in message

Not me, my work isn't so shoddy.

Paul W

unread,

Mar 18, 2005, 5:06:05 PM3/18/05

I don't know, but it must of been on a Monday or Friday.

Matt Giwer

unread,

Mar 19, 2005, 12:05:03 AM3/19/05

He is a self-made man which relieves the almighty of a terrible responsibility.

--
Jesus did not condemn slavery. Enough said.
-- The Iron Webmaster, 3393
nizkor http://www.giwersworld.org/nizkook/nizkook.phtml

0 new messages