Masterclass

[MarkE]

David Deamer, an elder statesman of OoL I believe, concludes an article relating to OoL as follows:

“I will close with a quote from Freeman Dyson, a theoretical physicist at Princeton University who also enjoys thinking about the origin of life:

‘You had what I call the garbage bag model. The early cells were just little bags of some kind of cell membrane, which might have been oily or it might have been a metal oxide. And inside you had a more or less random collection of organic molecules, with the characteristic that small molecules could diffuse in through the membrane, but big molecules could not diffuse out. By converting small molecules into big molecules, you could concentrate the organic contents on the inside, so the cells would become more concentrated and the chemistry would gradually become more efficient. So these things could evolve without any kind of replication. It's a simple statistical inheritance. When a cell became so big that it got cut in half, or shaken in half, by some rainstorm or environmental disturbance, it would then produce two cells which would be its daughters, which would inherit, more or less, but only statistically, the chemical machinery inside. Evolution could work under those conditions.’”
https://www.science20.com/stars_planets_life/calculating_odds_life_could_begin_chance

(Note: I’m not commenting on the content of the article itself.)

THE IRONY

A scientist from an unrelated field rattles off a just-so story on how life might have originated – and a leader in OoL quotes him approvingly.

A scientist accomplished in an overlapping field with highly relevant expertise (James Tour) launches a serious, sustained, specific, coherent critique of OoL research progress and claims -- and is dismissed as unqualified to comment.

THE COMPLETE IRONY

The analogy of “a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747” is dismissed as invalid.

The analogy of a tornado in a molecular junkyard is offered as a satisfactory summary of how life may have begun: “...cut in half, or shaken in half, by some rainstorm or environmental disturbance” (the tornado, in case you missed it), acting on “the garbage bag model…little bags of some kind of cell membrane…inside you had a more or less random collection of organic molecules” (you get the idea).

To be clear, swollen bags of garbage divided, resealed, and injected with more garbage produce…only more garbage. AKA, garbage in, garbage out.

The claim that “these things could evolve without any kind of replication. It's a simple statistical inheritance...” is a masterclass in sleight-of-hand. Either that or belief in real magic.

[broger...@gmail.com]

On Wednesday, August 30, 2023 at 7:50:20 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
> David Deamer, an elder statesman of OoL I believe, concludes an article relating to OoL as follows:
>
> “I will close with a quote from Freeman Dyson, a theoretical physicist at Princeton University who also enjoys thinking about the origin of life:
>
> ‘You had what I call the garbage bag model. The early cells were just little bags of some kind of cell membrane, which might have been oily or it might have been a metal oxide. And inside you had a more or less random collection of organic molecules, with the characteristic that small molecules could diffuse in through the membrane, but big molecules could not diffuse out. By converting small molecules into big molecules, you could concentrate the organic contents on the inside, so the cells would become more concentrated and the chemistry would gradually become more efficient. So these things could evolve without any kind of replication. It's a simple statistical inheritance. When a cell became so big that it got cut in half, or shaken in half, by some rainstorm or environmental disturbance, it would then produce two cells which would be its daughters, which would inherit, more or less, but only statistically, the chemical machinery inside. Evolution could work under those conditions.’”
> https://www.science20.com/stars_planets_life/calculating_odds_life_could_begin_chance
>
> (Note: I’m not commenting on the content of the article itself.)

Yes, I noticed that your comments actually ignore everything that Deamer wrote. And, indeed, this blog post is in no way a summary of current thought on OoL, simply an attempt to refute one of the ID movements arguments that OoL is impossible in principle. If you are interested in learning about the science in the field, you're stuck reading an actual book.

>
> THE IRONY
>
> A scientist from an unrelated field rattles off a just-so story on how life might have originated – and a leader in OoL quotes him approvingly.
>
> A scientist accomplished in an overlapping field with highly relevant expertise (James Tour) launches a serious, sustained, specific, coherent critique of OoL research progress and claims -- and is dismissed as unqualified to comment.
>
> THE COMPLETE IRONY
>
> The analogy of “a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747” is dismissed as invalid.
>
> The analogy of a tornado in a molecular junkyard is offered as a satisfactory summary of how life may have begun: “...cut in half, or shaken in half, by some rainstorm or environmental disturbance” (the tornado, in case you missed it), acting on “the garbage bag model…little bags of some kind of cell membrane…inside you had a more or less random collection of organic molecules” (you get the idea).
>
> To be clear, swollen bags of garbage divided, resealed, and injected with more garbage produce…only more garbage. AKA, garbage in, garbage out.
>
> The claim that “these things could evolve without any kind of replication. It's a simple statistical inheritance...” is a masterclass in sleight-of-hand. Either that or belief in real magic.

Perhaps you missed the point of the Dyson quote. It is not offered as a "satisfactory summary of how life may have begun." It is offered as an explanation of how macromolecules could get concentrated within membranes. It is an informed guess about one of the earliest steps in a possible pathway towards life, not a summary of how life began.

[Mark]

No. Rather, "how macromolecules could get concentrated within membranes" is offered as a satisfactory explanation of how life may have begun*.

* My lawyers advised me to further qualify this as, "_begun_, referring to an early, though not necessarily first, step, not to imply the immediate and subsequent appearance of _life_, in and of itself, though neither to implicitly nor expressly exclude such a possibility, and notwithstanding several and varied definitions thereof provided forthwith..."

[Mark]

On Wednesday, August 30, 2023 at 10:05:20 PM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:

> On Wednesday, August 30, 2023 at 7:50:20 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
> > David Deamer, an elder statesman of OoL I believe, concludes an article relating to OoL as follows:
> >
> > “I will close with a quote from Freeman Dyson, a theoretical physicist at Princeton University who also enjoys thinking about the origin of life:
> >
> > ‘You had what I call the garbage bag model. The early cells were just little bags of some kind of cell membrane, which might have been oily or it might have been a metal oxide. And inside you had a more or less random collection of organic molecules, with the characteristic that small molecules could diffuse in through the membrane, but big molecules could not diffuse out. By converting small molecules into big molecules, you could concentrate the organic contents on the inside, so the cells would become more concentrated and the chemistry would gradually become more efficient. So these things could evolve without any kind of replication. It's a simple statistical inheritance. When a cell became so big that it got cut in half, or shaken in half, by some rainstorm or environmental disturbance, it would then produce two cells which would be its daughters, which would inherit, more or less, but only statistically, the chemical machinery inside. Evolution could work under those conditions.’”
> > https://www.science20.com/stars_planets_life/calculating_odds_life_could_begin_chance
> >
> > (Note: I’m not commenting on the content of the article itself.)
> Yes, I noticed that your comments actually ignore everything that Deamer wrote. And, indeed, this blog post is in no way a summary of current thought on OoL, simply an attempt to refute one of the ID movements arguments that OoL is impossible in principle. If you are interested in learning about the science in the field, you're stuck reading an actual book.

It's entirely my prerogative to not address the body of Deamer's article -- I clearly have a separate, demonstrated purpose in referencing it. Suggesting that *not* addressing amounts to dishonesty or avoidance is a cheap attempt at casting aspersions.

And relax, I'll get to addressing Deamer's book in good time.

[broger...@gmail.com]

Sure, explaining how macromolecules can get concentrated is an attempt to explain one, of many, necessary early steps. It also does suggest a way in which evolution can happen without replication, at least without accurate replication. To be explicit, these protoprotocells would reproduce better if they accumulated those monomers most likely to polymerize when concentrated. To be more explicit, the monomers equilibrate across the membrane, the polymers are two big to do so. The polymers, however, create an osmotic gradient which draws water in. As long as lipids are around to insert into the membrane, the protoprotocells will grow and divide. There will be a selection for those containing the most readily polymerizable monomers. That's a form of chemical evolution, without genes. If it turns out that one of the polymers that works well is RNA or something like it, then you are at the start of a pathway leading to genetics.

[broger...@gmail.com]

On Wednesday, August 30, 2023 at 8:35:20 AM UTC-4, Mark wrote:
> On Wednesday, August 30, 2023 at 10:05:20 PM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Wednesday, August 30, 2023 at 7:50:20 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
> > > David Deamer, an elder statesman of OoL I believe, concludes an article relating to OoL as follows:
> > >
> > > “I will close with a quote from Freeman Dyson, a theoretical physicist at Princeton University who also enjoys thinking about the origin of life:
> > >
> > > ‘You had what I call the garbage bag model. The early cells were just little bags of some kind of cell membrane, which might have been oily or it might have been a metal oxide. And inside you had a more or less random collection of organic molecules, with the characteristic that small molecules could diffuse in through the membrane, but big molecules could not diffuse out. By converting small molecules into big molecules, you could concentrate the organic contents on the inside, so the cells would become more concentrated and the chemistry would gradually become more efficient. So these things could evolve without any kind of replication. It's a simple statistical inheritance. When a cell became so big that it got cut in half, or shaken in half, by some rainstorm or environmental disturbance, it would then produce two cells which would be its daughters, which would inherit, more or less, but only statistically, the chemical machinery inside. Evolution could work under those conditions.’”
> > > https://www.science20.com/stars_planets_life/calculating_odds_life_could_begin_chance
> > >
> > > (Note: I’m not commenting on the content of the article itself.)
> > Yes, I noticed that your comments actually ignore everything that Deamer wrote. And, indeed, this blog post is in no way a summary of current thought on OoL, simply an attempt to refute one of the ID movements arguments that OoL is impossible in principle. If you are interested in learning about the science in the field, you're stuck reading an actual book.
> It's entirely my prerogative to not address the body of Deamer's article -- I clearly have a separate, demonstrated purpose in referencing it. Suggesting that *not* addressing amounts to dishonesty or avoidance is a cheap attempt at casting aspersions.

Of course, you can talk about whatever you like. It is though, I think, less than totally forthright to accuse Deamer of "sleight-of-hand" for including Dyson's quote without making any attempt to deal with the point Deamer was making. And, as I said, I don't think you quite got Dyson's point. It is a long way from proposing a model of a single early step in the origin of life to a tornado in a junkyard.

>
> And relax, I'll get to addressing Deamer's book in good time.

I've already read it, I'm in no hurry. Just as I'm not in the least concerned about whether James Tour takes down his Youtube videos.

[Mark Isaak]

On 8/30/23 4:49 AM, MarkE wrote:
> David Deamer, an elder statesman of OoL I believe, concludes an article relating to OoL as follows:
>
> “I will close with a quote from Freeman Dyson, a theoretical physicist at Princeton University who also enjoys thinking about the origin of life:
>
> ‘You had what I call the garbage bag model. The early cells were just little bags of some kind of cell membrane, which might have been oily or it might have been a metal oxide. And inside you had a more or less random collection of organic molecules, with the characteristic that small molecules could diffuse in through the membrane, but big molecules could not diffuse out. By converting small molecules into big molecules, you could concentrate the organic contents on the inside, so the cells would become more concentrated and the chemistry would gradually become more efficient. So these things could evolve without any kind of replication. It's a simple statistical inheritance. When a cell became so big that it got cut in half, or shaken in half, by some rainstorm or environmental disturbance, it would then produce two cells which would be its daughters, which would inherit, more or less, but only statistically, the chemical machinery inside. Evolution could work under those conditions.’”
> https://www.science20.com/stars_planets_life/calculating_odds_life_could_begin_chance
>
> (Note: I’m not commenting on the content of the article itself.)
>
> THE IRONY
>
> A scientist from an unrelated field rattles off a just-so story on how life might have originated – and a leader in OoL quotes him approvingly.
>
> A scientist accomplished in an overlapping field with highly relevant expertise (James Tour) launches a serious, sustained, specific, coherent critique of OoL research progress and claims -- and is dismissed as unqualified to comment.

The two are not really comparable. Dyson was offering speculation on a
single step which might be involved in the origins of life. His
knowledge of thermodynamics qualifies him in that area. Tour was not
speaking about the origin of life at all, but about the *state of
research* in the origin of life. He has no experience in that area.

> THE COMPLETE IRONY
>
> The analogy of “a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747” is dismissed as invalid.
>
> The analogy of a tornado in a molecular junkyard is offered as a satisfactory summary of how life may have begun: “...cut in half, or shaken in half, by some rainstorm or environmental disturbance” (the tornado, in case you missed it), acting on “the garbage bag model…little bags of some kind of cell membrane…inside you had a more or less random collection of organic molecules” (you get the idea).
>
> To be clear, swollen bags of garbage divided, resealed, and injected with more garbage produce…only more garbage. AKA, garbage in, garbage out.
>
> The claim that “these things could evolve without any kind of replication. It's a simple statistical inheritance...” is a masterclass in sleight-of-hand. Either that or belief in real magic.

You really, REALLY need to learn the theory of evolution.

The problem with the tornado in a junkyard is not that messy occurrences
such as that do not occur in evolution, but that they are not the *only*
thing that occurs in evolution. Evolution also has inheritance and
selection, or what you call magic.

--
Mark Isaak
"Wisdom begins when you discover the difference between 'That
doesn't make sense' and 'I don't understand.'" - Mary Doria Russell

[Gary Hurd]

On Wednesday, August 30, 2023 at 5:05:20 AM UTC-7, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Wednesday, August 30, 2023 at 7:50:20 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
> > David Deamer, an elder statesman of OoL I believe, concludes an article relating to OoL as follows:
> >

"Calculating The Odds That Life Could Begin By Chance"
By Dave Deamer | April 30th 2009 01:00 AM
https://www.science20.com/stars_planets_life/calculating_odds_life_could_begin_chance

Read it again. Start with the publication date 0ver 14 Years Ago.

[Mark]

Not relevant, as per my comment to Bill: https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/Ki5fLxziHos/m/lTHwD434AQAJ

[Mark]

Think about what's happening in this scenario. Random polymers are forming using racemic monomers, with cross-linkages, interfering products, etc: i.e., garbage. The result is the most successful tar concentrators consume available building blocks at an increasing rate. A wave of the selection wand won't help here.

[Mark]

Random polymers are forming using racemic monomers, with cross-linkages, interfering products, etc: i.e., garbage. The result is the most successful tar concentrators consume available building blocks at an increasing rate.

Steven Benner on the Asphalt Paradox (quoted in an EN article):

"An enormous amount of empirical data have established, as a rule, that organic systems, given energy and left to themselves, devolve to give uselessly complex mixtures, “asphalts”… Further, chemical theories, including the second law of thermodynamics, bonding theory that describes the “space” accessible to sets of atoms, and structure theory requiring that replication systems occupy only tiny fractions of that space, suggest that it is impossible for any non-living chemical system to escape devolution to enter into the Darwinian world of the “living.” ... Such statements of impossibility apply even to macromolecules not assumed to be necessary for RIRI [replication involving replicable imperfections] evolution. Again richly supported by empirical observation, material escapes from known metabolic cycles that might be viewed as models for a “metabolism first” origin of life, making such cycles short-lived. Lipids that provide tidy compartments under the close supervision of a graduate student (supporting a protocell-first model for origins) are quite non-robust with respect to small environmental perturbations, such as a change in the salt concentration, the introduction of organic solvents, or a change in temperature…"
https://evolutionnews.org/2023/05/hello-professor-dave-james-tours-criticisms-of-ool-research-echo-those-of-other-experts/

[broger...@gmail.com]

There's no way for me to evaluate that without references to the "enormous amounts of empirical data," and the "richly supported by empirical observation." I'll be around whenever you get around to reading Deamer's book.

[RonO]

The origin of life is one of the weakest of any scientific endeavor.
Currently about the only thing that we can expect is to figure out the
most likely scenario of how life came to be, but everyone knows that, it
would only be the most likely scenario, and that since it only seems to
have happened once, it could obviously have occurred in some less
probable manner. What you have to deal with is what is around the gap,
but you run from doing that. Life arose somehow, and that is what you
have to deal with. You can claim that your designer did it, but is that
the designer that you want to believe in? For the vast majority of
anti-evolution biblical creationists the god responsible for the origin
of life on earth is not the Biblical god. End of story. Until that
changes the Top Six best evidences for IDiocy that killed IDiocy on TO
(the origin of life is #3 of the Top Six) just means that you and most
other bibilcal creationists are just out of luck. Science denial isn't
going to do you any good when it is what is around the gaps that you
really can't deal with.

Ron Okimoto

[Mark]

In terms likelihood of arriving at an accepted theory? Yes, possibly.

But one of the strongest for questioning the adequacy of natural causes alone, because by definition it excludes natural selection. Which is the main point of my OP.

"You can claim that your designer did it, but is that the designer that you want to believe in?

What sort of designer do you believe is implied/demonstrated by this claim?

[Dexter]

----------------------------------

The search for the origin of life does exclude natural selection. It also
excludes the germ theory of disease, the theory of gravity, and the
reason men can't stand to see women cry.

While the religious have been stuffing god into gaps for millenia,
many of those gaps have been eliminated, one by one, using science.
Yet many still remain.

Origin of life research merely highlights yet one more gap into which
to shoehorn god. There's nothing particularly special about that gap.

Scientists admit they don't know the answer but are studying it and
creationists assert the problem is solved but present no evidence.
So, what else is new?


--
The Lord works in ways indistinguishable from the null hypothesis.

[Mark]

My point wasn't clear: the particular appeal with OoL is that removing NS from the equation takes out of the discussion the presumption that NS can do anything, will do anything, QED. (The question of the veracity of NS is a separate discussion).

>
> While the religious have been stuffing god into gaps for millenia,
> many of those gaps have been eliminated, one by one, using science.
> Yet many still remain.
>
> Origin of life research merely highlights yet one more gap into which
> to shoehorn god. There's nothing particularly special about that gap.
>
> Scientists admit they don't know the answer but are studying it and
> creationists assert the problem is solved but present no evidence.
> So, what else is new?

The contention is this is not a case of the god-of-the-gaps, but growing research results (i.e. lack of) revealing a God-of-the-widening-gulf.

James Tour stumbled into this with sufficient related expertise to say, hang on a minute, you guys are blowing smoke. You could show that you're not also blowing smoke by addressing my argument:

Deamer endorses Dyson: “When a cell became so big that it got cut in half, or shaken in half, by some rainstorm or environmental disturbance” acting on “the garbage bag model…little bags of some kind of cell membrane…inside you had a more or less random collection of organic molecules”.

Swollen bags of garbage cut in two, resealed, and injected with more garbage produce…only more garbage. AKA, garbage in, garbage out. NS can't help you here, though nice try to appeal to NS-lite ("these things could evolve without any kind of replication. It's a simple statistical inheritance.")

Random polymers are forming using racemic monomers, producing cross-linkages, interfering products, etc: i.e., garbage. The result is the most successful tar concentrators consume available building blocks at an increasing rate.

Over to you.

[Mark Isaak]

And what makes you think that is the only scenario? Organic chemistry
is very good at doing non-random.

[Öö Tiib]

It is just plain statistics. Likelihood of auto- and cross-catalytic polymer
sets forming in such tar garbage bag is very low. But. Once formed in any
the presence is gradually becoming higher by spreading to other containers.
Whatever other polymers just form and decay randomly. So those lack
sustainability. The auto- and cross-catalytic reactions have sustainability.

[RonO]

This is your major problem. Science denial isn't going to do you any
good in this case because you do not want your god to fill this gap.
Science has obvious limits. You have to deal with what science can do
within those limits. Have you read the Origin of Spcies? Natural
selection can happen once you have a lifeform that replicates
imperfectly. Natural selection is a fact of nature. No one should deny
that it exists in nature at this very moment. There is no reason to
deny natural selection when it has been occurring for over 3 billion
years since the origin of the first lifeforms.

What you want to deny is materialism. Science is stuck with the fact
that it can only deal with things that exist. The ID perps claimed that
they could do the same science as everyone else and demonstrate the
existence of their god. In order to do that, the ID perps needed to use
the same functional materialism that science has to use in order to
work. Science just can't deal with things until you can demonstrate in
some way that it exists.

It is stupid to use the origin of life in order to deny the science that
you need to deny because the designer of the origin of life on earth is
not your Biblical designer. That is what finally killed IDiocy on TO.
Most of the existing IDiots on this planet do not want to believe in the
designer responsible for the Top Six god-of-the-gaps IDiotic evidence.
The god that fills those gaps is not Biblical enough for most Biblical
creationists.

>
> "You can claim that your designer did it, but is that the designer that you want to believe in?
>
> What sort of designer do you believe is implied/demonstrated by this claim?
>

All I claim is that the God that I believe in is responsible for the
creation. The Bible is obviously not anything that can be used to
understand the creation. Science is just the best means for
understanding nature that we have come up with. Whatever we eventually
find out is what the creation is likely to be. Saint Augustine pointed
out that it was stupid to use the Bible in order to deny things that we
could obviously figure out about nature by ourselves. Your type of
denial has been known to be stupid for millennia. The Bible was written
by young earth creationists. They had adopted the flat earth geocentric
cosmology of their neighbors who had been civilized for a longer period
of time. Just imagine what the description of the creation would be
like if the Bible were written today. Even if we wrote the Bible today
we could be wrong about a lot of what might be put into it due to
incomplete knowledge and the authors ignorance of what the creation
actually is.

Humans wrote the Bible. "Inspired" is the term that you need to
acknowledge as it is applied to what is written in the Bible.

Ron Okimoto

[Mark]

Do you mean that nucleotides spontaneously forming a polymer have chemical affinities which influence their ordering, thus making the sequence non-random?

[Mark]

My point wasn't clear: the particular appeal with OoL is that removing NS from the equation takes out of the discussion the presumption that NS can do anything, will do anything, QED. The question of the veracity and scope of NS is a separate discussion. I'm not questioning the mechanism per se, but rather its limitations. I've written computer simulations modeling mutation and selection evolve "bugs", quite fun to watch on the screen, and a demonstration of bounded adaptation, aka microevolution. As for science denial--I'm appealing to science and its discoveries about the mechanisms and complexities of life, alongside science's demonstrations of how this cannot be reproduced or explained. Science? I'm a fan--and prepared to go where the evidence leads.

Swollen bags of garbage cut in two, resealed, and injected with more garbage produce…only more garbage. AKA, garbage in, garbage out. NS can't help you here, though nice try to appeal to NS-lite ("these things could evolve without any kind of replication. It's a simple statistical inheritance.")

Random polymers are forming using racemic monomers, producing cross-linkages, interfering products, etc: i.e., garbage. The result is the most successful tar concentrators consume available building blocks at an increasing rate.

Feel free to address my argument if you're able.

[Öö Tiib]

I already did above, you just can't read.

[Mark]

Good grief, there's more to Dyson's flight of fancy, which Deamer no doubt read. Imagine the apoplexy if a creationist offered the following kind of "explanation" (emphasis is mine):

“Yes. Which we do know exist. That's stage one of life, this garbage bag stage, where evolution is happening, but only on a statistical basis. I think it's right to call it pre-Darwinian, because Darwin himself did not use the word evolution; he was primarily interested in species, not in evolution as such.

“Well then, what happened next? Stage two is when you have parasitic RNA, when RNA happens to occur in some of these cells. THERE'S A LINKAGE, PERHAPS, BETWEEN METABOLISM AND REPLICATION IN THE MOLECULE ATP [in a garbage bag!]. We know ATP has a dual function. It is very important for metabolism, but it also is essentially a nucleotide. You only have to add two phosphates and it becomes a nucleotide. So it gives you a link between the two systems. PERHAPS ONE OF THESE GARBAGE BAGS HAPPENED TO DEVELOP ATP BY A RANDOM PROCESS. ATP is very helpful to the metabolism, so these cells multiplied and became very numerous and made large quantities of ATP. Then by chance this ATP formed the adenine nucleotide, which polymerized into RNA. You had then parasitic RNA inside these cells, forming a separate form of life, which was pure replication without metabolism. RNA COULD REPLICATE ITSELF. IT COULDN'T METABOLIZE, BUT IT COULD GROW QUITE NICELY.”

“Then the RNA invented viruses. RNA found a way to package itself in a little piece of cell membrane, and travel around freely and independently. Stage two of life has the GARBAGE BAGS STILL UNORGANIZED AND CHEMICALLY RANDOM, BUT WITH RNA ZOOMING AROUND in little packages we call viruses carrying genetic information from one cell to another. That is my version of the RNA world. It corresponds to what Manfred Eigen considered to be the beginning of life, which I regard as stage two. You have RNA living independently, replicating, traveling around, sharing genetic information between all kinds of cells. Then stage three, which I would say is the most mysterious, began when these two systems started to collaborate. IT BEGAN WHEN THE INVENTION OF THE RIBOSOME, WHICH TO ME IS THE CENTRAL MYSTERY. There’s a tremendous lot to be done with investigating the archaeology of the ribosome. I hope some of you people will do it.”

“Once the ribosome was invented, then the two systems, THE RNA WORLD AND THE METABOLIC WORLD, ARE COUPLED TOGETHER AND YOU GET MODERN CELLS. That's stage three, but still with the genetic information being shared, mostly by viruses traveling from cell to cell, so it is open source heredity. As Carl Woese described it, evolution could be very fast.”

https://www.edge.org/conversation/freeman_dyson-freeman-dyson-life-what-a-concept

[Lawyer Daggett]

On Wednesday, August 30, 2023 at 7:50:20 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:

First, I repeat a prior request. Please stop with the run-on line length.
Hit the return key every 60 or so characters. Otherwise, the quoting and
indentation mechanism screws up replies and things become quite
unreadable very quickly. It isn't just me. Usenet has had this standard
for decades. Please put in this minimal effort to improve communication.

Next, your point here seems to be to draw some contrast between those
who have pointed out that Tour lacks solid bona fides regarding OoL
research and Deamer citing someone else who doesn't have solid bona
fides in OoL research. Context is not your friend.

In your other thread, you reference Tour and you asserted that he has
expertise that is especially relevant to OoL research. Based on that
assertion of your, others responded that he actually doesn't have
especially relevant expertise in that field in as much as he has not
published in that specific field. It's a fair retort to your initial assertion,
and it's being made by people with arguably better qualifications than
Tour who nevertheless disclaim that their own expertise makes them
"experts" in OoL research.

You, and one insistent other, tried to paint refutations of your assertion
about the relevance of Tour's expertise as intellectual snobbery.
Nonsense. It was a refutation of your specific assertion. It is necessary
to ignore the context of your claim to paint their words the way you
do.

Further, you misrepresent the point of the above quote by Dyson. Deamer
isn't citing Dyson as an authority on OoL research. Rather, he is citing a
particular line of reasoning that contradicts an assertion that you and
others like to make. Specifically, you try to claim that there can be no
cases of the mechanism of natural selection prior to the emergence of
the first recognizable living cell. The author of the piece isn't the point,
so your claims about irony misfire. The point, which you really ought to
consider, is that the mechanism of natural selection can have a role in
changing the "odds" of a seemingly daunting combination of events.

There are many other scenarios relevant to possible steps in OoL that
can also involve differential reproductive success. And these can possibly
happen for stages prior to what most would consider to be the emergence
of the first recognizable living cell. I happen to think that the other lines
I have in mind are better, and think that Dyson's example is misleading
even though possibly involved in a modified way. Regardless, it succeeds
at illustrating the falsity of proclamations that NS can't happen prior
to the emergence of life.

[Mark]

You said:

"Likelihood of auto- and cross-catalytic polymer sets forming in such tar garbage bag is very low."

The opposite is true. The vast majority or reaction products in this random, messy mixture of chemicals will be anything but the necessary chains without branching or 2'-5' linkage.

[Mark]

On Friday, September 1, 2023 at 10:40:22 PM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
> On Wednesday, August 30, 2023 at 7:50:20 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
> > David Deamer, an elder statesman of OoL I believe, concludes an article relating to OoL as follows:
> >
> > “I will close with a quote from Freeman Dyson, a theoretical physicist at Princeton University who also enjoys thinking about the origin of life:
> >
> > ‘You had what I call the garbage bag model. The early cells were just little bags of some kind of cell membrane, which might have been oily or it might have been a metal oxide. And inside you had a more or less random collection of organic molecules, with the characteristic that small molecules could diffuse in through the membrane, but big molecules could not diffuse out. By converting small molecules into big molecules, you could concentrate the organic contents on the inside, so the cells would become more concentrated and the chemistry would gradually become more efficient. So these things could evolve without any kind of replication. It's a simple statistical inheritance. When a cell became so big that it got cut in half, or shaken in half, by some rainstorm or environmental disturbance, it would then produce two cells which would be its daughters, which would inherit, more or less, but only statistically, the chemical machinery inside. Evolution could work under those conditions.’”
> > https://www.science20.com/stars_planets_life/calculating_odds_life_could_begin_chance
> >
> > (Note: I’m not commenting on the content of the article itself.)
> >
> > THE IRONY
> >
> > A scientist from an unrelated field rattles off a just-so story on how life might have originated – and a leader in OoL quotes him approvingly.
> >
> > A scientist accomplished in an overlapping field with highly relevant expertise (James Tour) launches a serious, sustained, specific, coherent critique of OoL research progress and claims -- and is dismissed as unqualified to comment.
> >
> > THE COMPLETE IRONY
> >
> > The analogy of “a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747” is dismissed as invalid.
> >
> > The analogy of a tornado in a molecular junkyard is offered as a satisfactory summary of how life may have begun: “...cut in half, or shaken in half, by some rainstorm or environmental disturbance” (the tornado, in case you missed it), acting on “the garbage bag model…little bags of some kind of cell membrane…inside you had a more or less random collection of organic molecules” (you get the idea).
> >
> > To be clear, swollen bags of garbage divided, resealed, and injected with more garbage produce…only more garbage. AKA, garbage in, garbage out.
> >
> > The claim that “these things could evolve without any kind of replication. It's a simple statistical inheritance...” is a masterclass in sleight-of-hand. Either that or belief in real magic.
> First, I repeat a prior request. Please stop with the run-on line length.
> Hit the return key every 60 or so characters. Otherwise, the quoting and
> indentation mechanism screws up replies and things become quite
> unreadable very quickly. It isn't just me. Usenet has had this standard
> for decades. Please put in this minimal effort to improve communication.

I've not particularly noticed this using google groups on a laptop, but like many
of google group's shortcomings I've possibly unconsciously learnt to ignore it.

>
> Next, your point here seems to be to draw some contrast between those
> who have pointed out that Tour lacks solid bona fides regarding OoL
> research and Deamer citing someone else who doesn't have solid bona
> fides in OoL research. Context is not your friend.
>
> In your other thread, you reference Tour and you asserted that he has
> expertise that is especially relevant to OoL research. Based on that
> assertion of your, others responded that he actually doesn't have
> especially relevant expertise in that field in as much as he has not
> published in that specific field. It's a fair retort to your initial assertion,
> and it's being made by people with arguably better qualifications than
> Tour who nevertheless disclaim that their own expertise makes them
> "experts" in OoL research.

I'm asserting (and it is only my assertion) that Tour's expertise is based not
on his being published in the field, but by his demonstrated (published) knowledge
of synthetic organic chemistry. This is particularly relevant, because he not
only understands the chemistry, but his work has been to do it himself, thus
giving him an acute understanding of what does and doesn't work, or at least
a keen sense of relative difficulty.

>
> You, and one insistent other, tried to paint refutations of your assertion
> about the relevance of Tour's expertise as intellectual snobbery.
> Nonsense. It was a refutation of your specific assertion. It is necessary
> to ignore the context of your claim to paint their words the way you
> do.
>
> Further, you misrepresent the point of the above quote by Dyson. Deamer
> isn't citing Dyson as an authority on OoL research. Rather, he is citing a
> particular line of reasoning that contradicts an assertion that you and
> others like to make. Specifically, you try to claim that there can be no
> cases of the mechanism of natural selection prior to the emergence of
> the first recognizable living cell. The author of the piece isn't the point,
> so your claims about irony misfire. The point, which you really ought to
> consider, is that the mechanism of natural selection can have a role in
> changing the "odds" of a seemingly daunting combination of events.

No reasonable person would claim Deamer to be citing Dyson as an authority
on OoL research. If I didn't explicitly make that qualification, it was because
I assumed it to be obvious.

Nor do I claim that "there can be no cases of the mechanism of natural selection
prior to the emergence of the first recognizable living cell." Rather, I'm saying that
in this "garbage bag world" scenario, natural selection is not operating. Dyson
agrees: "So these things could evolve without any kind of replication. It's a simple
statistical inheritance."

Thinking about this some more, there's a subtle but important distinction here.
First, "so the cells would become more concentrated" - okay, granted due to
osmotic pressure. Second, "and the chemistry would gradually become
more efficient" - greater "efficiency" of what? Stuffing garbage in at a higher rate?
Okay, I'll grant that.

The distinction then? Dyson's "statistical inheritance" produces increased
concentrations of random polymers (branched, tangled, 2'-5' linked, etc, i.e., garbage).
What is missing is _optimisation_. Natural section is not at work, and so we do
not have evolution leading to greater complexity or function. What we actually have
is merely the growth garbage concentrators, gobbling up monomers at an
accelarating rate. Dyson uses the word "evolution", but on closer examination it
means only change, but not improvement or the accrual of information.

> There are many other scenarios relevant to possible steps in OoL that
> can also involve differential reproductive success. And these can possibly
> happen for stages prior to what most would consider to be the emergence
> of the first recognizable living cell. I happen to think that the other lines
> I have in mind are better, and think that Dyson's example is misleading
> even though possibly involved in a modified way. Regardless, it succeeds
> at illustrating the falsity of proclamations that NS can't happen prior
> to the emergence of life.

And that is precisely what Tour is asking: show me, I mean actually show me,
the "many other scenarios relevant to possible steps in OoL".

[Mark Isaak]

On 9/1/23 4:32 AM, Mark wrote:
> On Friday, September 1, 2023 at 2:45:22 PM UTC+10, Mark Isaak wrote:
>> On 8/30/23 3:42 PM, Mark wrote:
>>> On Thursday, August 31, 2023 at 1:20:22 AM UTC+10, Mark Isaak wrote:

>>>> [...]

>>>> The problem with the tornado in a junkyard is not that messy occurrences
>>>> such as that do not occur in evolution, but that they are not the *only*
>>>> thing that occurs in evolution. Evolution also has inheritance and
>>>> selection, or what you call magic.
>>>
>>> Think about what's happening in this scenario. Random polymers are forming using racemic monomers, with cross-linkages, interfering products, etc: i.e., garbage. The result is the most successful tar concentrators consume available building blocks at an increasing rate. A wave of the selection wand won't help here.
>> And what makes you think that is the only scenario? Organic chemistry
>> is very good at doing non-random.
>
> Do you mean that nucleotides spontaneously forming a polymer have chemical affinities which influence their ordering, thus making the sequence non-random?

I'm saying, first, organic chemistry forms lots more than polymers.
Second, polymers it forms can take many different forms, including some
that don't readily form cross-linkages. Third, random is never a
warranted assumption in chemistry. It happens, of course, but you need
to establish that it is happening before you claim it.

[jillery]

On Friday, September 1, 2023 at 9:25:22 AM UTC-4, Mark wrote:
> On Friday, September 1, 2023 at 10:40:22 PM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
> > On Wednesday, August 30, 2023 at 7:50:20 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
> > > David Deamer, an elder statesman of OoL I believe, concludes an article relating to OoL as follows:
> > >
> > > “I will close with a quote from Freeman Dyson, a theoretical physicist at Princeton University who also enjoys thinking about the origin of life:
> > >
> > > ‘You had what I call the garbage bag model. The early cells were just little bags of some kind of cell membrane, which might have been oily or it might have been a metal oxide. And inside you had a more or less random collection of organic molecules, with the characteristic that small molecules could diffuse in through the membrane, but big molecules could not diffuse out. By converting small molecules into big molecules, you could concentrate the organic contents on the inside, so the cells would become more concentrated and the chemistry would gradually become more efficient. So these things could evolve without any kind of replication. It's a simple statistical inheritance. When a cell became so big that it got cut in half, or shaken in half, by some rainstorm or environmental disturbance, it would then produce two cells which would be its daughters, which would inherit, more or less, but only statistically, the chemical machinery inside. Evolution could work under those conditions.’”
> > > https://www.science20.com/stars_planets_life/calculating_odds_life_could_begin_chance
> > >
> > > (Note: I’m not commenting on the content of the article itself.)
> > >
> > > THE IRONY
> > >
> > > A scientist from an unrelated field rattles off a just-so story on how life might have originated – and a leader in OoL quotes him approvingly.
> > >
> > > A scientist accomplished in an overlapping field with highly relevant expertise (James Tour) launches a serious, sustained, specific, coherent critique of OoL research progress and claims -- and is dismissed as unqualified to comment.
> > >
> > > THE COMPLETE IRONY
> > >
> > > The analogy of “a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747” is dismissed as invalid.
> > >
> > > The analogy of a tornado in a molecular junkyard is offered as a satisfactory summary of how life may have begun: “...cut in half, or shaken in half, by some rainstorm or environmental disturbance” (the tornado, in case you missed it), acting on “the garbage bag model…little bags of some kind of cell membrane…inside you had a more or less random collection of organic molecules” (you get the idea).
> > >
> > > To be clear, swollen bags of garbage divided, resealed, and injected with more garbage produce…only more garbage. AKA, garbage in, garbage out.
> > >
> > > The claim that “these things could evolve without any kind of replication. It's a simple statistical inheritance...” is a masterclass in sleight-of-hand. Either that or belief in real magic.
> > First, I repeat a prior request. Please stop with the run-on line length.
> > Hit the return key every 60 or so characters. Otherwise, the quoting and
> > indentation mechanism screws up replies and things become quite
> > unreadable very quickly. It isn't just me. Usenet has had this standard
> > for decades. Please put in this minimal effort to improve communication.
> I've not particularly noticed this using google groups on a laptop, but like many
> of google group's shortcomings I've possibly unconsciously learnt to ignore it.

This is a common problem with the posts from several GG users, not just yours. A solution might be to change the GG window from full screen to something narrower than 70 characters or so, as I did here. That way GG automatically wraps the text. Whether the text appears that way in Usenet readers should be determined by this test post

There is a prebiotic analogue called chemical evolution, where different environmental conditions encourage different chemical processes and products.
<https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18160077/>

There is also the case where different self-reproducing molecules compete for raw materials.

[jillery]

On Fri, 1 Sep 2023 08:30:05 -0700 (PDT), jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>
wrote:

>On Friday, September 1, 2023 at 9:25:22?AM UTC-4, Mark wrote:
>> On Friday, September 1, 2023 at 10:40:22?PM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:

>> > On Wednesday, August 30, 2023 at 7:50:20?AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
>> > > David Deamer, an elder statesman of OoL I believe, concludes an article relating to OoL as follows:
>> > >
>> > > “I will close with a quote from Freeman Dyson, a theoretical physicist at Princeton University who also enjoys thinking about the origin of life:
>> > >
>> > > ‘You had what I call the garbage bag model. The early cells were just little bags of some kind of cell membrane, which might have been oily or it might have been a metal oxide. And inside you had a more or less random collection of organic molecules, with the characteristic that small molecules could diffuse in through the membrane, but big molecules could not diffuse out. By converting small molecules into big molecules, you could concentrate the organic contents on the inside, so the cells would become more concentrated and the chemistry would gradually become more efficient. So these things could evolve without any kind of replication. It's a simple statistical inheritance. When a cell became so big that it got cut in half, or shaken in half, by some rainstorm or environmental disturbance, it would then produce two cells which would be its daughters, which would inherit, more or less, but only statistically, the chemical machinery inside. Evolution could work under those
>conditions.’”
>> > > https://www.science20.com/stars_planets_life/calculating_odds_life_could_begin_chance
>> > >
>> > > (Note: I’m not commenting on the content of the article itself.)
>> > >
>> > > THE IRONY
>> > >
>> > > A scientist from an unrelated field rattles off a just-so story on how life might have originated – and a leader in OoL quotes him approvingly.
>> > >
>> > > A scientist accomplished in an overlapping field with highly relevant expertise (James Tour) launches a serious, sustained, specific, coherent critique of OoL research progress and claims -- and is dismissed as unqualified to comment.
>> > >
>> > > THE COMPLETE IRONY
>> > >
>> > > The analogy of “a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747” is dismissed as invalid.
>> > >
>> > > The analogy of a tornado in a molecular junkyard is offered as a satisfactory summary of how life may have begun: “...cut in half, or shaken in half, by some rainstorm or environmental disturbance” (the tornado, in case you missed it), acting on “the garbage bag model…little bags of some kind of cell membrane…inside you had a more or less random collection of organic molecules” (you get the idea).
>> > >
>> > > To be clear, swollen bags of garbage divided, resealed, and injected with more garbage produce…only more garbage. AKA, garbage in, garbage out.
>> > >
>> > > The claim that “these things could evolve without any kind of replication. It's a simple statistical inheritance...” is a masterclass in sleight-of-hand. Either that or belief in real magic.
>> > First, I repeat a prior request. Please stop with the run-on line length.
>> > Hit the return key every 60 or so characters. Otherwise, the quoting and
>> > indentation mechanism screws up replies and things become quite
>> > unreadable very quickly. It isn't just me. Usenet has had this standard
>> > for decades. Please put in this minimal effort to improve communication.
>> I've not particularly noticed this using google groups on a laptop, but like many
>> of google group's shortcomings I've possibly unconsciously learnt to ignore it.
>
>

>This is a common problem with the posts from several GG users, not just yours. A solution might be to change the GG window from full screen to something narrower than 70 characters or so, as I did here. That way GG automatically wraps the text. Whether the text appears that way in Usenet readers should be determined by this test post.


It didn't work :-(

--
To know less than we don't know is the nature of most knowledge

[RonO]

Your point was clear, you are just wrong about natural selection in
terms of the origin of life. What you are likely claiming about natural
selection is likely just materialistic mechanisms. The materialistic
mechanisms that were needed for the origin of life do not need to
involve natural selection, just natural chemical properties of matter.

As I stated natural selection starts being a factor once you have self
replication with imperfect replication. If the first self replicators
produced identical copies of themselves there would be nothing for
natural selection to work with. Natural selection requires variation,
and differential replication of the variants under the existing
environmental conditions.

What you are describing is natural selection after the origin of life.
In order to evolve bugs, you first need bugs, and you need genetic
variation among the bugs.

>
> Swollen bags of garbage cut in two, resealed, and injected with more garbage produce…only more garbage. AKA, garbage in, garbage out. NS can't help you here, though nice try to appeal to NS-lite ("these things could evolve without any kind of replication. It's a simple statistical inheritance.")
>

It likely wasn't just swoillen bags of garbage. What this requires is a
mechanism to stuff the bags with things. The example was macromolecules
that could not defuse out of the membrane enclosure. You need something
making the macromolecules inside the bag. It would be something making
the same macromolecules. These macromolecules might be used to make
other types of macromolecules. The bag would fill up with
macromolecules while the components used to make the macromolecules
would be defusing in and out of the bag. The proposal was that these
membrane bubbles could break up and form daughter bubbles filled with a
portion of what was in the original bubble.

It is a crude model as to how a really primative self replicator could
get started. It might not even be a self replicator because the
original macromolecule that made other macromolecules may never make a
copy of itself, but it may make more macromolecules that can make other
macromolecules.

My guess is that membranes were not involved in producing the first self
replicators. There are plenty of spaces in sedimentary matrix that
could temporarily confine macromolecules. Currents or flooding could
mix things up once in a while.

> Random polymers are forming using racemic monomers, producing cross-linkages, interfering products, etc: i.e., garbage. The result is the most successful tar concentrators consume available building blocks at an increasing rate.
>
> Feel free to address my argument if you're able.

Beats me why this would matter. I don't think that the bags are
necessary, but the model has a mechanism of getting rid of products that
can choke the system. As the bags divide you can obviously lose things,
and this happens over and over as the bags fill up with the
macromolecules and split with a portion of the contents lost to one
daughter bag or the other. The components to make the macromolecules
can defuse in and out, and some of the macromolecule contents are lost
each division.

Ron Okimoto

[Dexter]

Mark wrote:

------| snip ludicrous garbage bag analogy |-----------

> Over to you.
>
----------------------------------

Back atcha.

[Öö Tiib]

I do not understand how it is opposite.

[Glenn]

On Wednesday, August 30, 2023 at 5:35:20 AM UTC-7, Mark wrote:
> On Wednesday, August 30, 2023 at 10:05:20 PM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:

> > On Wednesday, August 30, 2023 at 7:50:20 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
> > > David Deamer, an elder statesman of OoL I believe, concludes an article relating to OoL as follows:
> > >
> > > “I will close with a quote from Freeman Dyson, a theoretical physicist at Princeton University who also enjoys thinking about the origin of life:
> > >
> > > ‘You had what I call the garbage bag model. The early cells were just little bags of some kind of cell membrane, which might have been oily or it might have been a metal oxide. And inside you had a more or less random collection of organic molecules, with the characteristic that small molecules could diffuse in through the membrane, but big molecules could not diffuse out. By converting small molecules into big molecules, you could concentrate the organic contents on the inside, so the cells would become more concentrated and the chemistry would gradually become more efficient. So these things could evolve without any kind of replication. It's a simple statistical inheritance. When a cell became so big that it got cut in half, or shaken in half, by some rainstorm or environmental disturbance, it would then produce two cells which would be its daughters, which would inherit, more or less, but only statistically, the chemical machinery inside. Evolution could work under those conditions.’”
> > > https://www.science20.com/stars_planets_life/calculating_odds_life_could_begin_chance
> > >
> > > (Note: I’m not commenting on the content of the article itself.)

> > Yes, I noticed that your comments actually ignore everything that Deamer wrote. And, indeed, this blog post is in no way a summary of current thought on OoL, simply an attempt to refute one of the ID movements arguments that OoL is impossible in principle. If you are interested in learning about the science in the field, you're stuck reading an actual book.

> It's entirely my prerogative to not address the body of Deamer's article -- I clearly have a separate, demonstrated purpose in referencing it. Suggesting that *not* addressing amounts to dishonesty or avoidance is a cheap attempt at casting aspersions.
>
> And relax, I'll get to addressing Deamer's book in good time.

> > >
> > > THE IRONY
> > >
> > > A scientist from an unrelated field rattles off a just-so story on how life might have originated – and a leader in OoL quotes him approvingly.
> > >
> > > A scientist accomplished in an overlapping field with highly relevant expertise (James Tour) launches a serious, sustained, specific, coherent critique of OoL research progress and claims -- and is dismissed as unqualified to comment.
> > >
> > > THE COMPLETE IRONY
> > >
> > > The analogy of “a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747” is dismissed as invalid.
> > >
> > > The analogy of a tornado in a molecular junkyard is offered as a satisfactory summary of how life may have begun: “...cut in half, or shaken in half, by some rainstorm or environmental disturbance” (the tornado, in case you missed it), acting on “the garbage bag model…little bags of some kind of cell membrane…inside you had a more or less random collection of organic molecules” (you get the idea).
> > >
> > > To be clear, swollen bags of garbage divided, resealed, and injected with more garbage produce…only more garbage. AKA, garbage in, garbage out.
> > >
> > > The claim that “these things could evolve without any kind of replication. It's a simple statistical inheritance...” is a masterclass in sleight-of-hand. Either that or belief in real magic.

> > Perhaps you missed the point of the Dyson quote. It is not offered as a "satisfactory summary of how life may have begun." It is offered as an explanation of how macromolecules could get concentrated within membranes. It is an informed guess about one of the earliest steps in a possible pathway towards life, not a summary of how life began.

I'd be interested to see the evidence of "one of the ID movements arguments that OoL is impossible in principle."

[Glenn]

On Wednesday, August 30, 2023 at 5:50:20 AM UTC-7, broger...@gmail.com wrote:

> On Wednesday, August 30, 2023 at 8:30:20 AM UTC-4, Mark wrote:
> > On Wednesday, August 30, 2023 at 10:05:20 PM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > On Wednesday, August 30, 2023 at 7:50:20 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
> > > > David Deamer, an elder statesman of OoL I believe, concludes an article relating to OoL as follows:
> > > >
> > > > “I will close with a quote from Freeman Dyson, a theoretical physicist at Princeton University who also enjoys thinking about the origin of life:
> > > >
> > > > ‘You had what I call the garbage bag model. The early cells were just little bags of some kind of cell membrane, which might have been oily or it might have been a metal oxide. And inside you had a more or less random collection of organic molecules, with the characteristic that small molecules could diffuse in through the membrane, but big molecules could not diffuse out. By converting small molecules into big molecules, you could concentrate the organic contents on the inside, so the cells would become more concentrated and the chemistry would gradually become more efficient. So these things could evolve without any kind of replication. It's a simple statistical inheritance. When a cell became so big that it got cut in half, or shaken in half, by some rainstorm or environmental disturbance, it would then produce two cells which would be its daughters, which would inherit, more or less, but only statistically, the chemical machinery inside. Evolution could work under those conditions.’”
> > > > https://www.science20.com/stars_planets_life/calculating_odds_life_could_begin_chance
> > > >
> > > > (Note: I’m not commenting on the content of the article itself.)
> > > Yes, I noticed that your comments actually ignore everything that Deamer wrote. And, indeed, this blog post is in no way a summary of current thought on OoL, simply an attempt to refute one of the ID movements arguments that OoL is impossible in principle. If you are interested in learning about the science in the field, you're stuck reading an actual book.
> > > >

> > > > THE IRONY
> > > >
> > > > A scientist from an unrelated field rattles off a just-so story on how life might have originated – and a leader in OoL quotes him approvingly.
> > > >
> > > > A scientist accomplished in an overlapping field with highly relevant expertise (James Tour) launches a serious, sustained, specific, coherent critique of OoL research progress and claims -- and is dismissed as unqualified to comment.
> > > >
> > > > THE COMPLETE IRONY
> > > >
> > > > The analogy of “a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747” is dismissed as invalid.
> > > >
> > > > The analogy of a tornado in a molecular junkyard is offered as a satisfactory summary of how life may have begun: “...cut in half, or shaken in half, by some rainstorm or environmental disturbance” (the tornado, in case you missed it), acting on “the garbage bag model…little bags of some kind of cell membrane…inside you had a more or less random collection of organic molecules” (you get the idea).
> > > >
> > > > To be clear, swollen bags of garbage divided, resealed, and injected with more garbage produce…only more garbage. AKA, garbage in, garbage out.
> > > >
> > > > The claim that “these things could evolve without any kind of replication. It's a simple statistical inheritance...” is a masterclass in sleight-of-hand. Either that or belief in real magic.
> > > Perhaps you missed the point of the Dyson quote. It is not offered as a "satisfactory summary of how life may have begun." It is offered as an explanation of how macromolecules could get concentrated within membranes. It is an informed guess about one of the earliest steps in a possible pathway towards life, not a summary of how life began.

> > No. Rather, "how macromolecules could get concentrated within membranes" is offered as a satisfactory explanation of how life may have begun*.
> >
> > * My lawyers advised me to further qualify this as, "_begun_, referring to an early, though not necessarily first, step, not to imply the immediate and subsequent appearance of _life_, in and of itself, though neither to implicitly nor expressly exclude such a possibility, and notwithstanding several and varied definitions thereof provided forthwith..."
> Sure, explaining how macromolecules can get concentrated is an attempt to explain one, of many, necessary early steps.

No it is not, scientifically or otherwise. We concentrate macromolecules everyday, but that doesn't explain one step in abiogenesis. What macromolecules, and what is the scientific evidence for their origin? What membranes, and what is the scientific evidence that such membranes would be a step in the direction of self replication? These are just so stories, and more, unbelievable stories.

It also does suggest a way in which evolution can happen without replication, at least without accurate replication.

Horseshit.

To be explicit, these protoprotocells would reproduce better if they accumulated those monomers most likely to polymerize when concentrated. To be more explicit, the monomers equilibrate across the membrane, the polymers are two big to do so. The polymers, however, create an osmotic gradient which draws water in. As long as lipids are around to insert into the membrane, the protoprotocells will grow and divide. There will be a selection for those containing the most readily polymerizable monomers. That's a form of chemical evolution, without genes. If it turns out that one of the polymers that works well is RNA or something like it, then you are at the start of a pathway leading to genetics.

That is all pure fiction. None of it is science.
But it does make one wonder about why life has not already been created in the lab using modern techniques and materials, without regard for how it may have occurred naturally.

[Glenn]

These priests's bullshit, and what they tolerate from their own, is amazing.

"Such site/compound pairs are transmissible to the daughter vesicles leading to the emergence of distinct lineages of vesicles, which would have allowed natural selection."

"If such conditions were present on early Earth, then natural selection would favor the proliferation of such autocatalytic sets,"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis

By the way, the Wiki article made reference to interesting claims I wonder has actually been done...

"Nucleotides in a protocell in a hydrothermal vent can polymerise into random strings of RNA. Any that have even slight catalytic activity will favour the growth and replication of their protocells, a start to natural selection."

>
> As I stated natural selection starts being a factor once you have self
> replication with imperfect replication. If the first self replicators
> produced identical copies of themselves there would be nothing for
> natural selection to work with. Natural selection requires variation,
> and differential replication of the variants under the existing
> environmental conditions.
>
> What you are describing is natural selection after the origin of life.
> In order to evolve bugs, you first need bugs, and you need genetic
> variation among the bugs.

Bugs. Got it.

"Even today Darwinian supporters will downplay the subject of the origins of life as a matter extraneous to the subject of natural selection. It is not. It is absolutely foundational to the integrity of natural selection as a conceptually satisfactory theory, and evolutionary science cannot logically even approach the starting blocks of its conjectures without cracking this unsolved problem, as the late 19th-century German scientist Ludwig Buechner pointed out."

https://evolutionnews.org/2022/04/considering-abiogenesis-an-imaginary-term-in-science/

[RonO]

Why keep going back to the ID perps for IDiotic denial when you do not
want to believe in the designer that fills the origin of life gap?
Denial for denial purposes isn't building anything that you want to
support. Lying to yourself about reality is just stupid. It is just a
fact that no one has to understand how life originated on this planet to
understand how it has evolved on this planet for billions of years since
that event. Descent with modification has left physical evidence of
having occurred. It isn't just the fossils and the physical
morphological relationships between existing lifeforms, but you know we
have the genetic material, and it tells us the genetic relationship
between species and even extinct fossil species that we have been able
to extract DNA from.

When it is what is around the gaps that you can't deal with the Top Six
god-of-the-gaps denial stupidity is just more science that you have to deny.

Ask Kalk why he now considers the Top Six to not be of interest to him.
He was an IDiot for decades, and he knew that the Top Six was the best
evidence for IDiocy that the ID perps had, but now it is just more to deny.

It isn't what is not known about the origin of life that is the issue
for IDiots. The issue that you have to lie to yourself about is that
the designer of the first lifeforms on this planet is not the Biblical
designer, and has to be rejected by the majority of IDiots like
yourself. You could verify this for yourself if you stopped running
from the Top Six and dealt with them in an honest and straight forward
manner. What did your designer do to create life 3.8 billion years ago,
and what has the designer done for billions of years since then to
create the diversity of life we have on this planet.

Ron Okimoto

[Ron Dean]

What does "around the gaps" mean? It describes, for example: what is
unknown between dead matter _(?)__ and life: and within this gap is
where we find evolution - inventing scenarios in a vain attempt to fill
these gaps. The designer's finalized endeavor is _after_ the "gaps". In
this OoL case "after the gap", is where we find the finished labor of
the designer _life_ itself_!
>
> Ron Okimoto

[RonO]

The first time that you encountered the Top Six you could not figure out
why the other anti evolution creationists could not deal with them and
they quit the ID scam. You asked for assistance, but Glenn, Bill and
Kalkidas would not help you out. After a period of absence you again
encountered the Top Six, but you claimed to not remember the previous
encounter and how that turned out. You again asked for assistance from
the other creationists, but no one would help you out. After another
period of absence you again came back and claimed to not remember the
previous encounters with the Top Six, and again you failed to understand
why the other creationists could not deal with them in an honest and
straightforward manner. You have never understood why the others quit
supporting the ID scam and the Top Six.

Do you recall claiming that I was not refuting the Top Six, and that I
had to tell you that I had never been trying to refute the Top Six?

It is just a simple fact that all the other anti evolution creationists
who quit the ID scam did so because the ID perps shot themselves in the
head by presenting them in their logical order of occurrence as to how
they must have happened in this universe. The designer that fills the
Top Six god-of-the-gaps denial arguments is not the Biblical designer
for nearly all IDiotic type creationists in existence. The order of
creation is wrong, and a lot of it isn't even mentioned in the Bible.

The scientific creationists used the same Top Six gap denial arguments,
but just as the ID perps continued to do, they used them as fire and
forget bits of denial that the rubes were supposed to use to lie to
themselves just long enough to forget that gap and lie to themselves
about another. You obviously are a champion at forgetting what your
argument was, and it is why you are about the only anti evolution
creationist still posting on TO.

You can go to the Reason to Believe old earth creationist web site and
see how they can't deal with the Top Six. They use them for denial
purposes, but they then have to deny the denial because they need land
plants to be created before sea creatures, but the Cambrian explosion
occurred long before there were land plants in the ordovician, and the
angiosperms described in the Bible do not evolve until after dinosaurs
had evolved. Even though they use Meyer's claim that a 25 million year
period over half a billion years ago is too short of a time for the
diversification of bilateral animals to have occurred they want land
plants to be created before sea creature. Life had been evolving for
billions of years before the Cambrian explosion, and that fact isn't
mentioned in the Bible.

What you are posting to is MarkE's denial of reality. MarkE could not
give up on the Gap denial even though he, like the other anti evolution
creationists, could not deal with the Top Six in an honest and straight
forward manner. Instead he tried to keep wallowing in the denial of
each one separately. He spent a significant effort defining the origin
of life gap. In doing so, he had to demonstrate what was around the
gap. The Big Bang (#1) had happened over 13 billion years ago, and it
took around 8 billion years to produce the elements that our planet was
made from, as products of dying stars, to create that part of the fine
tuning argument (#2). Really, it took 8 billion years to produce the
elements that made it possible for life to be created on this planet
(#3). MarkE knew that the surface of the earth would have initially
been molten rock before cooling enough for there to be liquid water.
Once there was liquid water there could be the chemistry for abiogenesis
to occur, using the elements that it took 8 billion years to create. The
origin of life likely occurred over 3 billion years ago. This is not
mentioned in the Bible, nor are the billions of years when life was
evolving as microbial lifeforms. The flagellum (#4) evolved over a
billion years ago among the microbes that existed at that time, and it
looks like a flagellum (not identical) evolved independently in archaea
and eubacteria. The Cambrian explosion (#5) occurred within a 25
million year period over half a billion years ago, long before land
plants evolved, and the gaps in the human fossil record occurred within
the last 10 million years of the existence of life on this planet.

MarkE found that he did not want to believe in the god that filled his
origin of life gap. It is not the Biblical designer. He refused to
describe how his Biblical designer fit into that gap. In spite of this
realization he continued to lie to himself that gap denial was at all
useful in maintaining his religious beliefs.

You are just too incompetent to understand what you are doing when you
use the gap denial stupidity. The other anti evolution creationists
were not that incompetent. Did you see the post where Kalkidas claimed
that ID and the Top six were no longer worth thinking about even though
he had probably been an IDiot for decades? I should have saved that
post, but maybe someone else did. Kalkidas is still a Biblical
creationist, but he no longer wants to use the gap denial stupidity to
support his religious beliefs. The designer that fills those gaps in
their logical order of occurrence in this universe is not the Biblical
designer. It turned out that the ID perps never wanted to accomplish
any ID science because any success would have just been more science for
the Biblical creationists to deny. The majority of support for the ID
scam still comes from young earth Biblical "literalists". Even the old
earth Biblical "literalists" at Reason to Believe can't deal with the
Top Six in an honest and straightforward manner, and neither could a lot
of the old earth Biblical creationists that we had posting on TO.

Ron Okimoto

>>
>> Ron Okimoto
>

[Ron Dean]

Prior to your introducing them into TO, I had never heard of the Top Six
.. This caught me completely off guard.

>
> Do you recall claiming that I was not refuting the Top Six, and that I
> had to tell you that I had never been trying to refute the Top Six?
>

Of course, I do recall you saying you were not trying to refute the Top
Six. Yes, and I did not understand your fanatical obsession with these
"top six"....And really, I still don't! Furthermore and since, I had -
had nothing what-so- ever to do, at the time, with these "top six". I
had no desire to defend something I knew nothing about. But the issue
was forced with your persistent obsession.
Nevertheless, I did locate and read these "Top Six". There were some
points, evidences that I did
agreed with, but certain points and claims I did not. IE the Biblical
prospective. I never turned to the Bible for anything, nor did I _ever_
use anything from the Bible in support of my position. I completely
disagreed with the Biblical form of creation. Therefore, I thought your
aim was completely off target, and I still do.

Nothing here applied to me or my views regarding intelligent design.

>
> What you are posting to is MarkE's denial of reality.  MarkE could not
> give up on the Gap denial even though he, like the other anti evolution
> creationists, could not deal with the Top Six in an honest and straight
> forward manner.
>

You're going into all this horse sh_t, in denying the fact that it's
evolution that's in the gaps trying to find fossil evidence to shorten
these gaps, _not_ the designer!

Instead he tried to keep wallowing in the denial of
> each one separately.  He spent a significant effort defining the origin
> of life gap.  In doing so, he had to demonstrate what was around the
> gap.

Moe of the same.

The Big Bang (#1) had happened over 13 billion years ago, and it
> took around 8 billion years to produce the elements that our planet was
> made from, as products of dying stars, to create that part of the fine
> tuning argument (#2).  Really, it took 8 billion years to produce the
> elements that made it possible for life to be created on this planet
>

I agree totally with everything in this paragraph.

> (#3).  MarkE knew that the surface of the earth would have initially
> been molten rock before cooling enough for there to be liquid water.
> Once there was liquid water there could be the chemistry for abiogenesis
> to occur, using the elements that it took 8 billion years to create. The
> origin of life likely occurred over 3 billion years ago.  This is not
> mentioned in the Bible, nor are the billions of years when life was
> evolving as microbial lifeforms.
>

Here you go again with your insane obsession with Biblical Creationism.

The flagellum (#4) evolved over a
> billion years ago among the microbes that existed at that time, and it
> looks like a flagellum (not identical) evolved independently in archaea
> and eubacteria.  The Cambrian explosion (#5) occurred within a 25
> million year period over half a billion years ago, long before land
> plants evolved, and the gaps in the human fossil record occurred within
> the last 10 million years of the existence of life on this planet.
>
> MarkE found that he did not want to believe in the god that filled his
> origin of life gap.  It is not the Biblical designer.  He refused to
> describe how his Biblical designer fit into that gap.  In spite of this
> realization he continued to lie to himself that gap denial was at all
> useful in maintaining his religious beliefs.
>
> You are just too incompetent to understand what you are doing when you
> use the gap denial stupidity.  The other anti evolution creationists
> were not that incompetent.
>

Oh yes, I do understand the nature of the gaps. It's in the gaps, where
we find evolutionist desperately searching for supporting evidence
between supposed ancestors and decedents
and this fossil evidence is not really observed, rather what's claimed
is just an intrepretation
within the ovreaching evolutionary paradigm. . It's not IDest searching
the gaps for anything. The evidence for design is _observed_after_the
gaps. Unlike the observed evidence for ID after the gaps the evidence
between ancestor and decedent is unobserved.

So, you set yourself up as absolute authority, so when I disagreed with
you, it's your evidence of you arrogance, not my incompetency.

Did you see the post where Kalkidas claimed
> that ID and the Top six were no longer worth thinking about even though
> he had probably been an IDiot for decades?  I should have saved that
> post, but maybe someone else did.  Kalkidas is still a Biblical
> creationist, but he no longer wants to use the gap denial stupidity to
> support his religious beliefs.  The designer that fills those gaps in
> their logical order of occurrence in this universe is not the Biblical
> designer.  It turned out that the ID perps never wanted to accomplish
> any ID science because any success would have just been more science for
> the Biblical creationists to deny.  The majority of support for the ID
> scam still comes from young earth Biblical "literalists".  Even the old
> earth Biblical "literalists" at Reason to Believe can't deal with the
> Top Six in an honest and straightforward manner, and neither could a lot
> of the old earth Biblical creationists that we had posting on TO.
<

Like most of what you wrote, Absolutely nothing here applies to me!
>
> Ron Okimoto
>
>>>
>>> Ron Okimoto
>>
>

[RonO]

When the Top Six were first put out by the ID perps at the Discovery
Institute you started putting them up one at a time in individual
threads, just as they had previously been presented by the scientific
creationists, and then the ID perps that came later. You were not
dealing with them as related to each other. It turned out that almost
none of the IDiots still posting at that time could deal with them as
they related to each other. Nature is just not the Biblical creation.

>
>  Did you see the post where Kalkidas claimed
>> that ID and the Top six were no longer worth thinking about even
>> though he had probably been an IDiot for decades?  I should have saved
>> that post, but maybe someone else did.  Kalkidas is still a Biblical
>> creationist, but he no longer wants to use the gap denial stupidity to
>> support his religious beliefs.  The designer that fills those gaps in
>> their logical order of occurrence in this universe is not the Biblical
>> designer.  It turned out that the ID perps never wanted to accomplish
>> any ID science because any success would have just been more science
>> for the Biblical creationists to deny.  The majority of support for
>> the ID scam still comes from young earth Biblical "literalists".  Even
>> the old earth Biblical "literalists" at Reason to Believe can't deal
>> with the Top Six in an honest and straightforward manner, and neither
>> could a lot of the old earth Biblical creationists that we had posting
>> on TO.
> <
>  Like most of what you wrote, Absolutely nothing here applies to me!

It obviously applies to you because you still do not want to understand
why the other IDiots quit, and you still want to use the god-of-the-gaps
stupidity as independent bits of denial. They do not support your anti
evolution religious beliefs. Pretending that they do does not change
that reality. MarkE likely realizes that fact. The universe is over 13
billion years old. The Biblical geocentric universe never existed. Our
planet formed out of elements that it took 8 billion years to produce
out of dead star remains. Life existed on this planet soon after it was
cool enough to form liquid water. This life has been evolving for
billions of years. Life was limited to microbial lifeforms until around
a billion years ago. By around a half billion years ago multicellular
life had evolved to the extent that we could have a rapid
diversification of bilateral animals over half a billion years ago.
Land plants did not evolve from fresh water algae until the Ordovician,
and the crop plants described as being created before sea creatures did
not evolve until dinosaurs were the dominant land animal on the planet,
so these plants were not created before the land animals as described in
the Bible. The sun and moon were not created after land plants were
created. Even most old earth creationists cannot deal with this reality.

Ron Okimoto
>>
>> Ron Okimoto
>>
>>>>
>>>> Ron Okimoto
>>>
>>
>

[jillery]

Since the Top Six twists your knickers so, here's a link to another
collection of common Creationist claims aka PRATTs:

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQOQgDHISh8>
**********************************
There are no transitional fossils.
Use of "evolutionist" as epithet.
Why humans exist.
2LoT.
There are no beneficial mutations.
Common design not common descent.
*********************************

You repeatedly insist that your arguments have nothing in common with
PRATTs from Biblical Creationists and cdesign proponentsists from
Discotut. So what is your explanation for why I and others recognize
that your arguments are so often so similar to theirs?

[Ron Dean]

You are confusing me with someone else. I knew nothing of Discovery
Institute until you introduced it. In fact, it's not a site would never
have referenced, because it's Biblical creationism, which I do not
accept. Nor is it the same as Intelligent Ddesign.

>
  It turned out that almost
> none of the IDiots still posting at that time could deal with them as
> they related to each other.  Nature is just not the Biblical creation.
>

I agree!

>>
>>   Did you see the post where Kalkidas claimed
>>> that ID and the Top six were no longer worth thinking about even
>>> though he had probably been an IDiot for decades?  I should have
>>> saved that post, but maybe someone else did.  Kalkidas is still a
>>> Biblical creationist, but he no longer wants to use the gap denial
>>> stupidity to support his religious beliefs.  The designer that fills
>>> those gaps in their logical order of occurrence in this universe is
>>> not the Biblical designer.  It turned out that the ID perps never
>>> wanted to accomplish any ID science because any success would have
>>> just been more science for the Biblical creationists to deny.  The
>>> majority of support for the ID scam still comes from young earth
>>> Biblical "literalists".  Even the old earth Biblical "literalists" at
>>> Reason to Believe can't deal with the Top Six in an honest and
>>> straightforward manner, and neither could a lot of the old earth
>>> Biblical creationists that we had posting on TO.
>> <
>>   Like most of what you wrote, Absolutely nothing here applies to me!
>
> It obviously applies to you because you still do not want to understand
> why the other IDiots quit, and you still want to use the god-of-the-gaps
> stupidity as independent bits of denial.  They do not support your anti
> evolution religious beliefs.  Pretending that they do does not change
> that reality.  MarkE likely realizes that fact.  The universe is over 13
> billion years old.  The Biblical geocentric universe never existed.  Our
> planet formed out of elements that it took 8 billion years to produce
> out of dead star remains.
>

I question that I'm dealing with a living breathing human being here.
I'm thinking that Ron O is a machine, a computer that's programed with a
bank of stock responses to what the programmer anticipated which was
thought to be commonly beliefs and dogmas held by what the programmer
labeled "religious anti-evolutionist". This is evidenced by the
repeating of the same responses and arguments to statements by
"anti-evolutionist", as well as unnecessarily repeating over and over
what's agreed upon and accepted natural phenomenon. So, when new issues
are raised which deviate and are not in compliance with standard
anticipated religious motifs, the computer program is limited and
cannot relate to unanticipated comments of non religious issues. In such
cases the programs miss the mark entirely and are completely off target.
In such cases a normal and rational communication is impossible.

[broger...@gmail.com]

........

> I question that I'm dealing with a living breathing human being here.
> I'm thinking that Ron O is a machine, a computer that's programed with a
> bank of stock responses to what the programmer anticipated which was
> thought to be commonly beliefs and dogmas held by what the programmer
> labeled "religious anti-evolutionist". This is evidenced by the
> repeating of the same responses and arguments to statements by
> "anti-evolutionist", as well as unnecessarily repeating over and over
> what's agreed upon and accepted natural phenomenon. So, when new issues
> are raised which deviate and are not in compliance with standard
> anticipated religious motifs, the computer program is limited and
> cannot relate to unanticipated comments of non religious issues. In such
> cases the programs miss the mark entirely and are completely off target.
> In such cases a normal and rational communication is impossible.

It's quite frustrating to interact with someone who simply repeats the same arguments over and over in virtually the same words and pays no attention to anything your write.

[Ron Dean]

I agree, "Ron O." comes across as a robot, a computer program, a
machine. It's not the purpose of the programmer to change the mind of
anyone with whom, he or she disagrees, you do not "win friends and
influence people", by abuse, insults and slandering people. That is,
_if_it's your purpose to convince them they are wrong and change their
mind. But this apparently is not the programmers objective, but rather
it comes across as Ron O s only purpose is to insult and vilify people
with whom he disagrees.>

[broger...@gmail.com]

Whoosh......

[Ernest Major]

On 06/02/2024 01:12, Ron Dean wrote:
>>
>> When the Top Six were first put out by the ID perps at the Discovery
>> Institute you started putting them up one at a time in individual
>> threads, just as they had previously been presented by the scientific
>> creationists, and then the ID perps that came later.  You were not
>> dealing with them as related to each other.
>>
> You are confusing me with someone else. I knew nothing of Discovery
> Institute until you introduced it. In fact, it's not a site  would never
> have referenced, because it's Biblical creationism, which I do not
> accept. Nor is it the same as Intelligent Ddesign.

The Discovery Institute is "Intelligent Design Central". If you identify
the Discovery Institute as a Biblical creationism site you are making
the case that Intelligent Design and Biblical creationism are
indistinguishable.

Your hero Denton is/was a Fellow of the Discovery Institute.

--
alias Ernest Major

[jillery]

On Mon, 5 Feb 2024 20:12:53 -0500, Ron Dean
<rondean...@gmail.com> wrote:

>RonO wrote:
>> When the Top Six were first put out by the ID perps at the Discovery
>> Institute you started putting them up one at a time in individual
>> threads, just as they had previously been presented by the scientific
>> creationists, and then the ID perps that came later.  You were not
>> dealing with them as related to each other.
>>
>You are confusing me with someone else. I knew nothing of Discovery

>Institute until you introduced it. In fact, it's not a site [I] would []

>have referenced, because it's Biblical creationism, which I do not

>accept. Nor is it the same as Intelligent D[]esign.


The folks at Discotut explicitly say the promote Intelligent Design.
That you don't "reference" Discotut doesn't inform this discussion.
The point you continue to misunderstand is, your arguments are very
similar to those from Discotut and other cdesign proponentsists as
well as from other Biblical Creationists. A charitable understanding
is, you conveniently forget your sources and so imagine your arguments
are original to you.

[Ron Dean]

That goes to show that I know nothing about Discovery Institute. It was
an erroneous assumption that I made.

>
> Your hero Denton is/was a Fellow of the Discovery Institute.
>

I did not know, nor do I care that he is/was a fellow at Discovery
Institute. I'm uncertain as to his stand on evolution today. When he
wrote the book, "crisis" he pointed out problems he saw with evolution.
This book changed my mind. BTW I very reluctantly read this book on a
challenge by a friend. Before reading Denton's book, I firmly believed
and was convinced that evolution couldn't be challenged and was
unassailable.

[broger...@gmail.com]

You keep saying this, but I'm confused. It's very hard to see on what basis you firmly believed and were convinced that evolution couldn't be challenged and was unassailable. You clearly did not believe it based on any evidence, because you seem to have only the vaguest notion of what the evidence supporting evolution actually is. You should not, however, assume that other folks' conviction that evolution is true is based on such a weak foundation as yours apparently was.

[Ron Dean]

jillery wrote:
> On Mon, 5 Feb 2024 20:12:53 -0500, Ron Dean
> <rondean...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> RonO wrote:
>>> When the Top Six were first put out by the ID perps at the Discovery
>>> Institute you started putting them up one at a time in individual
>>> threads, just as they had previously been presented by the scientific
>>> creationists, and then the ID perps that came later.  You were not
>>> dealing with them as related to each other.
>>>
>> You are confusing me with someone else. I knew nothing of Discovery
>> Institute until you introduced it. In fact, it's not a site [I] would []
>> have referenced, because it's Biblical creationism, which I do not
>> accept. Nor is it the same as Intelligent D[]esign.
>
>
> The folks at Discotut explicitly say the promote Intelligent Design.
> That you don't "reference" Discotut doesn't inform this discussion.
>

I did not know that! I made a bad assumption, driven because of the bad
press I see at TO.

>
> The point you continue to misunderstand is, your arguments are very
> similar to those from Discotut and other cdesign proponentsists as
> well as from other Biblical Creationists.
>

Not that I believe you, but if what you say were true, since I arrived
at my arguments and conclusions independently of any and all else -
except Michael Denton's book "crisis".
It demonstrates the obvious flaws and defects in evolution is obvious to
anyone who dares
examine the evidence and question the claims in respect to evolution.

[Ron Dean]

I watched this entire video. There was very little here that described
my position. I've never argued humans descended from monkeys, then why
are there still monkeys. I never claimed there are no
transitional fossils, I argue that transitional fossils are
interpretation made within the evolutionist paradigm. I have argued that
most species appear abruptly in the strata, remain in a state of stasis
then disappear from the record Gould - Eldredge. I do not support
Biblical 6 day 10 k years ago creation. I do not insist that creationism
be taught along side science in schools. If this woman presented this
video as claims of ID, then she is seriously and deliberately
misrepresenting intelligent design and this applies to you as well!

[Mark Isaak]

Except you don't know any of those "obvious" flaws and defects, at least
not well enough to state them yourself.

My conclusion, based on available data, is that you became convinced
that evolution was false solely because you *wanted* to be.

[Ron Dean]

Quite the contrary! I accepted evolution without question, during my
years at the university. However, later, on a challenge by a friend, I
very reluctantly read, "Evolution a Theory in Crisis" by Dr. Michael
Denton. Then I read books by S.J. Gould and N. Eldredge. This is why I
changed my mind. Have you read Denton etc? If not what books, critical
of evolution have you read? Frankly, I doubt you know any evidence
contrary to evolution. I strongly suspect you just accept evolution
without question?

[Ernest Major]

I've read Denton. It was quite forgettable. As I've said before, it's
notorious for its refutation of Lamarckism ("the great chain of being")
misrepresented as a refutation of evolution.

https://ncse.ngo/review-evolution-theory-crisis

PS: From your posts here, I doubt that you know any evidence contrary to
evolution; if you do you're signally bad at presenting it.

--
alias Ernest Major

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

While it is true that Lamarck believed in the great chain of being, I
think "Lamarckism" usually refers to the inheritance of acquired
characteristics.

>
> https://ncse.ngo/review-evolution-theory-crisis
>
> PS: From your posts here, I doubt that you know any evidence contrary
> to evolution; if you do you're signally bad at presenting it.

Yes. He's constantly claiming that this evidence exists, but he never
says what it is.


--
athel cb : Biochemical Evolution, Garland Science, 2016

[Ernest Major]

On 07/02/2024 10:39, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
>> I've read Denton. It was quite forgettable. As I've said before, it's
>> notorious for its refutation of Lamarckism ("the great chain of
>> being") misrepresented as a refutation of evolution.
>
> While it is true that Lamarck believed in the great chain of being, I
> think "Lamarckism" usually refers to the inheritance of acquired
> characteristics.

Back in the day most everybody believed in the inheritance of acquired
characteristics, while the great chain of being was Lamarck's specific
contribution.

--
alias Ernest Major

[jillery]

On Tue, 6 Feb 2024 18:26:36 -0500, Ron Dean

<rondean...@gmail.com> wrote:

>jillery wrote:
>> On Mon, 5 Feb 2024 20:12:53 -0500, Ron Dean
>> <rondean...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> RonO wrote:
>>>> When the Top Six were first put out by the ID perps at the Discovery
>>>> Institute you started putting them up one at a time in individual
>>>> threads, just as they had previously been presented by the scientific
>>>> creationists, and then the ID perps that came later.  You were not
>>>> dealing with them as related to each other.
>>>>
>>> You are confusing me with someone else. I knew nothing of Discovery
>>> Institute until you introduced it. In fact, it's not a site [I] would []
>>> have referenced, because it's Biblical creationism, which I do not
>>> accept. Nor is it the same as Intelligent D[]esign.
>>
>>

>> The folks at Discotut explicitly say they promote Intelligent Design.

>> That you don't "reference" Discotut doesn't inform this discussion.
> >
>I did not know that! I made a bad assumption, driven because of the bad
>press I see at TO.

That you "did not know that!" doesn't inform this discussion. A
charitable understanding is, you're incapable of following even your
own line of reasoning.

>> The point you continue to misunderstand is, your arguments are very
>> similar to those from Discotut and other cdesign proponentsists as
>> well as from other Biblical Creationists.
> >
>Not that I believe you, but if what you say were true, since I arrived
>at my arguments and conclusions independently of any and all else -
>except Michael Denton's book "crisis".
>It demonstrates the obvious flaws and defects in evolution is obvious to
>anyone who dares
>examine the evidence and question the claims in respect to evolution.

Name one.

[jillery]

On Tue, 6 Feb 2024 19:08:48 -0500, Ron Dean
<rondean...@gmail.com> wrote:

[...]

>> Since the Top Six twists your knickers so, here's a link to another
>> collection of common Creationist claims aka PRATTs:
>>
>> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQOQgDHISh8>
>> **********************************
>> There are no transitional fossils.
>> Use of "evolutionist" as epithet.
>> Why humans exist.
>> 2LoT.
>> There are no beneficial mutations.
>> Common design not common descent.

>> *********************************
>> You repeatedly insist that your arguments have nothing in common with
>> PRATTs from Biblical Creationists and cdesign proponentsists from
>> Discotut. So what is your explanation for why I and others recognize
>> that your arguments are so often so similar to theirs?
> >
>I watched this entire video. There was very little here that described
>my position. I've never argued humans descended from monkeys, then why
>are there still monkeys. I never claimed there are no
>transitional fossils, I argue that transitional fossils are
>interpretation made within the evolutionist paradigm. I have argued that
>most species appear abruptly in the strata, remain in a state of stasis
>then disappear from the record Gould - Eldredge. I do not support
>Biblical 6 day 10 k years ago creation. I do not insist that creationism
>be taught along side science in schools. If this woman presented this
>video as claims of ID, then she is seriously and deliberately
>misrepresenting intelligent design and this applies to you as well!

Whichever doppelganger is responsible for the above, I strongly
recommend, before it posts anything again, it makes an effort to
become familiar with the claims of ID, of evolution, and of Ron Dean.
Despite the risk of some idiotic troll accusing me of doxxing, here
are cites from just this past year, of posts from "Ron Dean" claiming
there are no transitional fossils:

*************************************
From: Ron Dean <rondean...@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: What happened to TO
Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2023 22:15:00 -0400
Message-ID: <EQagM.202$31I...@fx45.iad>

>As, a matter of fact, it's in the gaps where we find evolution, where
>trying hopelessly to find transitional fossils to fill the gaps between
>species.
> Evolution has failed to find the gradual step by step intermediates
>that Darwin hoped future searches would fill the gaps.
***************************************

***************************************
From: Ron Dean <rdhall...@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: A riposte of fine-tuning
Date: Sun, 01 Jan 2023 14:50:46 GMT
Message-ID: <a5hsL.223524$8_id....@fx09.iad>

>It requires _faith_ to believe the fantasy that transitional (intermediate)
>life forms had to have been there.
>This absolutely falsifies and undermines evolution.
****************************************

***************************************
From: Ron Dean <rondean...@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: DNA PROOFREADING AND ?REPAIR MECHANISMS ~ REVISITED
Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2023 18:47:13 -0500
Message-ID: <6eS6N.57922$_Oab....@fx15.iad>

>Transitional or intermediate fossils between major groups
>of organisms is not observed.
*************************************

*************************************
From: Ron Dean <rondean...@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: DNA PROOFREADING AND ?REPAIR MECHANISMS ~ REVISITED
Date: Sat, 4 Nov 2023 23:08:06 -0400
Message-ID: <qGD1N.267898$rbid....@fx18.iad>

>There are the so called transitional fossils such as archaeopteryx
>which, in reality are isolated animals with no linkages to ancestor or
>descendants.
**************************************

**************************************
From: Ron Dean <rondean...@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Origin of Life Challenge
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2023 14:54:36 -0400
Message-ID: <MfMHM.669741$TCKc....@fx13.iad>

>And if one goes strictly by the fossil record, it supports the IDest
>argument that intermediate fossils do not exist.
***************************************

***************************************
From: Ron Dean <rondean...@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: RANDOM MUTATIONS & NATURAL SELECTION UP TO THE TASK
Date: Tue, 8 Aug 2023 23:42:17 -0400
Message-ID: <tWDAM.67435$O8ab....@fx40.iad>

>Furthermore, there has to be
>evolution in the vital organs in tandem at different points in time, in
>order for newly
>evolved transitional animals to survive
> I think this is impossible.
*************************************

I could cite posts from Ron Dean arguing each of the other claims I
listed, but based on the comments quoted above, that would be a
complete waste of time.

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

Perhaps I should have written "'Lamarckism' as understood today usually

refers to the inheritance of acquired characteristics."

More important, I find it almost incredible that anyone with any
knowledge of biology (which Denton certainly is) could think that
refuting the great chain of being amounted to refuting evolution. The
only reasonable explanation is dishonesty. I tried (unsuccessfully) to
see if I could could find the relevant passage quoted on the web (I'm
not going to put money in Denton's pocket by buying his book!)

[Jim Jackson]

On 2024-02-07, Ron Dean <rondean...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I watched this entire video. There was very little here that described
> my position. I've never argued humans descended from monkeys, then why
> are there still monkeys.

Is that serious question? Genuine question?

> I never claimed there are no
> transitional fossils, I argue that transitional fossils are
> interpretation made within the evolutionist paradigm. I have argued that
> most species appear abruptly in the strata, remain in a state of stasis
> then disappear from the record Gould - Eldredge.

Gould has argued for periods of rapid (in a _geological_ sense)
evolution followed by longer periods of little change. The problem is
the sense of time scale - "abrupt" geologically and in evolutionary
terms can still be a long long time to mere humans.

There is a genuine discussion to be had about whether evolution is
punctuated (again we are still talking about long time scales) or
gradual or a bit of both depending on circumstances :-)

[Ron Dean]

Jim Jackson wrote:
> On 2024-02-07, Ron Dean <rondean...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I watched this entire video. There was very little here that described
>> my position. I've never argued humans descended from monkeys, then why
>> are there still monkeys.
>
> Is that serious question? Genuine question?
>

According to the video, that was referenced, it was an woman
evolutionist "representing" intelligent design/creation, or rather
misrepresenting.

>
>> I never claimed there are no
>> transitional fossils, I argue that transitional fossils are
>> interpretation made within the evolutionist paradigm. I have argued that
>> most species appear abruptly in the strata, remain in a state of stasis
>> then disappear from the record Gould - Eldredge.
>
> Gould has argued for periods of rapid (in a _geological_ sense)
> evolution followed by longer periods of little change. The problem is
> the sense of time scale - "abrupt" geologically and in evolutionary
> terms can still be a long long time to mere humans.
>

True, but tine is not a factor when stasis is norm for most species
regardless of long time periods, IE millions or 10's of millions of years.

>
> There is a genuine discussion to be had about whether evolution is
> punctuated (again we are still talking about long time scales) or
> gradual or a bit of both depending on circumstances :-)
>

IF a species appears abruptly in the fossil record, this punctuated.
However, Gould's position was species evolved at the edge of the range,
separated by a natural barrier, then migrated to the location where
found. Gould called this "peripheral isolates".

[Jim Jackson]

On 2024-02-07, Ron Dean <rondean...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Jim Jackson wrote:
>> On 2024-02-07, Ron Dean <rondean...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> I watched this entire video. There was very little here that described
>>> my position. I've never argued humans descended from monkeys, then why
>>> are there still monkeys.
>>
>> Is that serious question? Genuine question?
> >
> According to the video, that was referenced, it was an woman
> evolutionist "representing" intelligent design/creation, or rather
> misrepresenting.

You said (see above) "I've never argued humans descended from monkeys,

then why are there still monkeys."

I asked if that was a serious question?

You didn't answer.

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

It makes more sense if you put an "if" in it, as do most people who use
the argument: "If humans descended from monkeys, then why are there
still monkeys?"

Even if it now makes sense, it's still a ridiculously silly question.

[Ron Dean]

This was _not_ my statement, but rather a quote from the Jillery
referenced video. So, you asked: "was it a serious question?" I don't
know, I cannot read the mind of the lady in the video.

[Ernest Major]

A surprising number of people think of evolution as a ladder (and
themselves as the pinnacle of evolution). One would hope that a
biochemist would know better, but I expect that one can function as a
biochemist without a good understanding of evolution.

--
alias Ernest Major

[Ernest Major]

On 07/02/2024 14:52, Jim Jackson wrote:
> On 2024-02-07, Ron Dean<rondean...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I watched this entire video. There was very little here that described
>> my position. I've never argued humans descended from monkeys, then why
>> are there still monkeys.
> Is that serious question? Genuine question?

It's been seen in the wild as a creationist argument. It also gets
attention as being a stupidly stunning argument. (If I recall correctly,
it's one of the arguments Answers in Genesis told creationists not to use.)

--
alias Ernest Major

[Jim Jackson]

Sorry. It wasn't obvious that were quoting the video. I thought it was
your thoughts.

[Ron Dean]

I do not have access to this book at the present, so I cannot confirm
anything, but I do not recall Denton taking issue with Lamarck, nor do I
understand why he would.

>
> https://ncse.ngo/review-evolution-theory-crisis
>
> PS: From your posts here, I doubt that you know any evidence contrary to
> evolution; if you do you're signally bad at presenting it.
>

As I said, I suspect you just accept evolution without question. Have
you ever?

[Ron Dean]

I understand. This happens when someone response to some aspect of a
comment, but removes or deletes the preceding or related statement. This
places people who join in at some point during the thread at a
disadvantage.

[broger...@gmail.com]

You keep asking this question. The answer is, yes, all of us on the "accept evolution" side questioned (and question) evolution. We always ask for the evidence supporting a given claim, look at alternative explanations, etc. You, however, by your own accounts, firmly believed in evolution without ever questioning it. That's why you are so unfamiliar with the evidence supporting it. And when you read a book like Denton's you also do not ask for the evidence or evaluate the arguments. That's one reason you cannot actually remember any of the arguments in his book. You went from unquestioningly accepting evolution without understanding the evidence or arguments supporting it, to unquestioningly accepting ID. But please stop projecting that lack of questioning onto everybody else.

[Side note, what you did when you were reluctant to read Denton's book was not "questioning ID," you were simply slow to trade in one idea you didn't really understand for another].

You seem to think that claiming to have once believed firmly in evolution and then rejected will somehow add credibility to your arguments. It won't, especially since you show no evidence of ever having understood the evidence supporting evolution and cannot remember the arguments against it that you say you found convincing in Denton's book.

[Ron Dean]

Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
> On 2024-02-07 11:26:06 +0000, Ernest Major said:
>
>> On 07/02/2024 10:39, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
>>>> I've read Denton. It was quite forgettable. As I've said before,
>>>> it's notorious for its refutation of Lamarckism ("the great chain of
>>>> being") misrepresented as a refutation of evolution.
>>>
>>> While it is true that Lamarck believed in the great chain of being, I
>>> think "Lamarckism" usually refers to the inheritance of acquired
>>> characteristics.
>>
>> Back in the day most everybody believed in the inheritance of acquired
>> characteristics, while the great chain of being was Lamarck's specific
>> contribution.
>
> Perhaps I should have written "'Lamarckism' as understood today usually
> refers to the inheritance of acquired characteristics."
>
> More important, I find it almost incredible that anyone with any
> knowledge of biology (which Denton certainly is) could think that
> refuting the great chain of being amounted to refuting evolution. The
> only reasonable explanation is dishonesty.
>

I question this! Exactly how did Dr. Denton address this "great chain of
being", whatever that mean?

I tried (unsuccessfully) to
> see if I could could find the relevant passage quoted on the web (I'm
> not going to put money in Denton's pocket by buying his book!)
>

There are still public libraries.
>

[Ernest Major]

On 07/02/2024 21:02, Ron Dean wrote:
>>
>> I've read Denton. It was quite forgettable. As I've said before, it's
>> notorious for its refutation of Lamarckism ("the great chain of
>> being") misrepresented as a refutation of evolution.
>>
> I do not have access to this book at the present, so I cannot confirm
> anything, but I do not recall Denton taking issue with Lamarck, nor do I
> understand why he would.

Denton probably didn't mention Lamarck by name. What he did was observe
that the patterns of difference and similarity among cytochrome C
proteins from different taxa were not as would have been predicted by
Lamarck's model of evolution (and were as would be predicted by Darwin's
model of evolution) and claim that the observations were evidence
against the modern theory of evolution.

PS: "Denton taking issue with Lamarck" is strained reading of what I wrote.

--
alias Ernest Major

[Ron Dean]

As I've explained numerous times and again above, there are no
transitional (intermediate) fossils: it's simply a matter
interpretation. Examples offered are interpreted to conform to a world
view, IE the evolutionist paradigm. The fact of the matter is according
to S.J. Gould and Niles Eldredge _most_ species appear abruptly in the
fossil record. Both Gould and Eldredge are hard-wired and
dedicated evolutionist, so they represented the fossil record as it
actually is observed, honesty and truthfully.
Gould wrote: "The extreme rarity of transitional form in the fossil
record persist as the trade secret paleontology. The evolutionary trees
that adorn our text - books have data only at the tips and nodes of
their branches the rest is interference, however reasonable, not the
evidence of the fossils.

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7838107-the-extreme-rarity-of-transitional-forms-in-the-fossil-record

As I recall another scientist Ernst Myer discussed this in his book "One
Long Argument" also pointed out these gaps in the record. Furthermore,
Darwin was made aware of this by his contemporaries. He wrote:
"Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of
such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such
finely-graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious
and serious objection which can be urged against the theory." -- Charles
Darwin, 1859, Chapter 9 "On the Imperfection of the Geological Record",
On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.

Gould referred to this as a secret.It's one of the issues that brought
me to my current position. It was a secret. The question I asked how
many more are known by evolutionary scientist, but they remain silent.
From what you write, it appears that either you know nothing about this
or else you reject it on some grounds.

[RonO]

On 2/5/2024 7:28 PM, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Monday, February 5, 2024 at 8:18:01 PM UTC-5, Ron Dean wrote:
>> RonO wrote:

>>> When the Top Six were first put out by the ID perps at the Discovery
>>> Institute you started putting them up one at a time in individual
>>> threads, just as they had previously been presented by the scientific
>>> creationists, and then the ID perps that came later. You were not
>>> dealing with them as related to each other.
>>>
>> You are confusing me with someone else. I knew nothing of Discovery

>> Institute until you introduced it. In fact, it's not a site would never

>> have referenced, because it's Biblical creationism, which I do not

>> accept. Nor is it the same as Intelligent Ddesign.
>>>
>> It turned out that almost
>>> none of the IDiots still posting at that time could deal with them as
>>> they related to each other. Nature is just not the Biblical creation.
>>>
>> I agree!

>>>>
>>>> Did you see the post where Kalkidas claimed
>>>>> that ID and the Top six were no longer worth thinking about even
>>>>> though he had probably been an IDiot for decades? I should have
>>>>> saved that post, but maybe someone else did. Kalkidas is still a
>>>>> Biblical creationist, but he no longer wants to use the gap denial
>>>>> stupidity to support his religious beliefs. The designer that fills
>>>>> those gaps in their logical order of occurrence in this universe is
>>>>> not the Biblical designer. It turned out that the ID perps never
>>>>> wanted to accomplish any ID science because any success would have
>>>>> just been more science for the Biblical creationists to deny. The
>>>>> majority of support for the ID scam still comes from young earth
>>>>> Biblical "literalists". Even the old earth Biblical "literalists" at
>>>>> Reason to Believe can't deal with the Top Six in an honest and
>>>>> straightforward manner, and neither could a lot of the old earth
>>>>> Biblical creationists that we had posting on TO.
>>>> <
>>>> Like most of what you wrote, Absolutely nothing here applies to me!
>>>

>>> It obviously applies to you because you still do not want to understand
>>> why the other IDiots quit, and you still want to use the god-of-the-gaps
>>> stupidity as independent bits of denial. They do not support your anti
>>> evolution religious beliefs. Pretending that they do does not change
>>> that reality. MarkE likely realizes that fact. The universe is over 13
>>> billion years old. The Biblical geocentric universe never existed. Our
>>> planet formed out of elements that it took 8 billion years to produce
>>> out of dead star remains.
> ........
>> I question that I'm dealing with a living breathing human being here.
>> I'm thinking that Ron O is a machine, a computer that's programed with a
>> bank of stock responses to what the programmer anticipated which was
>> thought to be commonly beliefs and dogmas held by what the programmer
>> labeled "religious anti-evolutionist". This is evidenced by the
>> repeating of the same responses and arguments to statements by
>> "anti-evolutionist", as well as unnecessarily repeating over and over
>> what's agreed upon and accepted natural phenomenon. So, when new issues
>> are raised which deviate and are not in compliance with standard
>> anticipated religious motifs, the computer program is limited and
>> cannot relate to unanticipated comments of non religious issues. In such
>> cases the programs miss the mark entirely and are completely off target.
>> In such cases a normal and rational communication is impossible.
>
> It's quite frustrating to interact with someone who simply repeats the same arguments over and over in virtually the same words and pays no attention to anything your write.

It is quite frustrating to interact with someone that can't remember
what happened previoiusly. Dean sill doesn't remember his previous
encounters with the Top Six, nor does he want to understand why the
other IDiots quit the ID scam due to the Top Six. He has forgotten, and
is in denial of the simple fact that he never was able to deal with the
Top Six as the other IDiots understood them. He still wants to use them
as independent bits of denial like MarkE wants to continue to do, but it
is likely that neither one can deal with them in the order that they
must have occurred in this universe according to the ID perps. MarkE
could not deal with the fact that the designer of the origin of life gap
that he was defining was not his Biblical designer. Like Dean, MarkE
first tried to deny that he was using the origin of life gap to support
his religious beliefs, but everyone that knows him understands that,
that is a lie. He knows that the designer of the origin of life gap
that Tour keeps putting up is not the Biblical designer. The Bible
never mentions life being created billions of years ago as some type of
microbial life, and then evolved over a couple billion years into
microbes that could evolve into multicellular lifeforms. The Top Six
are not the Biblical creation. That is why Bill, Kalk, and Pagano quit
supporting the ID creationist scam.

Dean claims to have been fooled by Denton's first book, when Denton
claims that anyone that uses that book to support their anti evolution
beliefs, misinterpreted what he was doing, and Denton claims that
biological evolution is a fact of nature in the forward to his second
book. Dean is just an anti-evolution creationists like MarkE, and like
MarkE likely cannot stand the Top Six as presented by the ID perps as a
whole instead of the individual bits of denial, as they were used by the
ID perps and the scientific creationists before them. None of the Top
Six were supposed to be used to develop a coherent notion of the
creation. The ID perps shot themselves in the head when they put them
out as a whole in the order in which them must have occurred in this
universe. That order is not Biblical.

Ron Okimoto


>
>
>> Life existed on this planet soon after it was
>>> cool enough to form liquid water. This life has been evolving for
>>> billions of years. Life was limited to microbial lifeforms until around
>>> a billion years ago. By around a half billion years ago multicellular
>>> life had evolved to the extent that we could have a rapid
>>> diversification of bilateral animals over half a billion years ago. Land
>>> plants did not evolve from fresh water algae until the Ordovician, and
>>> the crop plants described as being created before sea creatures did not
>>> evolve until dinosaurs were the dominant land animal on the planet, so
>>> these plants were not created before the land animals as described in
>>> the Bible. The sun and moon were not created after land plants were
>>> created. Even most old earth creationists cannot deal with this reality.
>>>
>>> Ron Okimoto
>>>>>
>>>>> Ron Okimoto
>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Ron Okimoto
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>

[Mark Isaak]

Yes, I have read Denton's "Theory in Crisis". I found it to be a rehash
of many of the same, tired arguments that many other creationists appeal
to again and again, despite their having been refuted many times over
the decades.

A small sampling of other creationist books I have read are ones by
Morris, Whitcomb & Morris, Gish, Denton, MacBeth, Johnson, Behe, Kenyon,
Wells, Dembski, and the Watchtower society. And you are right on one
point: I know many claims contrary to evolution, but no evidence
contrary to it.

[Mark Isaak]

An important side note: Many people forget that Darwin's theory of
evolution has, in fact, been falsified. The blended inheritance that
Darwin postulated could not have allowed evolution. But the replacement
of Darwin's theory, with genes instead of blending, still retains so
much of Darwin's work that it is still identified with Darwin.

Darwin was falsified once again with the discovery of horizontal
transfer of genes. For most cases, that effect is negligible, leaving
Darwin's theory of evolution still dominating the landscape, but it
revolutionized how people look at prokaryotic evolution, especially in
its early epochs.

With these and other revolutionary ideas (jumping genes, nearly-neutral
theory, etc.), only a fool would not question evolution. And only a
fool would expect that new discoveries would expose anything that looked
drastically different from what Darwin himself envisioned. Evolution
has a ton of evidence behind it, and no new discovery is going to erase
that evidence.

[John Harshman]

On 2/7/24 1:44 PM, Ron Dean wrote:
> Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
>> On 2024-02-07 11:26:06 +0000, Ernest Major said:
>>
>>> On 07/02/2024 10:39, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
>>>>> I've read Denton. It was quite forgettable. As I've said before,
>>>>> it's notorious for its refutation of Lamarckism ("the great chain
>>>>> of being") misrepresented as a refutation of evolution.
>>>>
>>>> While it is true that Lamarck believed in the great chain of being,
>>>> I think "Lamarckism" usually refers to the inheritance of acquired
>>>> characteristics.
>>>
>>> Back in the day most everybody believed in the inheritance of
>>> acquired characteristics, while the great chain of being was
>>> Lamarck's specific contribution.
>>
>> Perhaps I should have written "'Lamarckism' as understood today
>> usually refers to the inheritance of acquired characteristics."
>>
>> More important, I find it almost incredible that anyone with any
>> knowledge of biology (which Denton certainly is) could think that
>> refuting the great chain of being amounted to refuting evolution. The
>> only reasonable explanation is dishonesty.
> >
> I question this! Exactly how did Dr. Denton address this "great chain of
> being", whatever that mean?

It's the most notorious error in Evolution: A Theory in Crisis. He
thought it was a problem for evolution that amphibians weren't
genetically intermediate between fish and mammals.

[jillery]

On Wed, 7 Feb 2024 16:13:46 -0500, Ron Dean

Incorrect. Instead, this happens when someone doesn't know what
they're talking about, and so lies about what was actually said.

Once again, the cited video:
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQOQgDHISh8>

The question in question is a common Creationist PRATT, which not too
long ago became news when Herschel Walker repeated it during a
political rally to become Georgia's senator:

<https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/16/politics/herschel-walker-geogia-senate-candidate-evolution-apes/index.html>

Awhile ago, fellow right-wing retard Rush Limbaugh asked the same
question using other words:

<https://pandasthumb.org/archives/2016/06/rush-limbaugh-w.html>

So the question in question is in fact a common Creationist PRATT,
RDean's claims to the contrary.

More to the point, the question in question is NOT a question jillery
said Ron Dean argued. Once again, here is jillery's list of what
RDean has argued:

**********************************
There are no transitional fossils.
Use of "evolutionist" as epithet.
Why humans exist.
2LoT.
There are no beneficial mutations.
Common design not common descent.
*********************************

So RDean completely misrepresents what jillery said, and what "the
lady in the video" said, RDean's claims to the contrary.

The doppelganger using RDean's account is blatantly dishonest.

[jillery]

On Wed, 7 Feb 2024 14:52:28 -0000 (UTC), Jim Jackson
<j...@franjam.org.uk> wrote:

>On 2024-02-07, Ron Dean <rondean...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I watched this entire video. There was very little here that described
>> my position. I've never argued humans descended from monkeys, then why
>> are there still monkeys.
>
>Is that serious question? Genuine question?
>
>> I never claimed there are no
>> transitional fossils, I argue that transitional fossils are
>> interpretation made within the evolutionist paradigm. I have argued that
>> most species appear abruptly in the strata, remain in a state of stasis
>> then disappear from the record Gould - Eldredge.

The distinction RDean makes above doesn't alter the fact that he
repeatedly denies the existence of transitional forms, as I documented
elsethread. To the contrary, it affirms his denials.

>Gould has argued for periods of rapid (in a _geological_ sense)
>evolution followed by longer periods of little change. The problem is
>the sense of time scale - "abrupt" geologically and in evolutionary
>terms can still be a long long time to mere humans.
>
>There is a genuine discussion to be had about whether evolution is
>punctuated (again we are still talking about long time scales) or
>gradual or a bit of both depending on circumstances :-)

As you say, the distinction between "punctuated" and "gradual" is one
of degree. Of course rapid evolution would tend to leave fewer
transitional forms. However, there is nothing about G&E's Punk Eek
which would deny the existence of transitional forms. To the
contrary, they have publicly affirmed that transitional forms between
higher taxa are in great abundance.

RDean likes to claim G&E supports his denial of transitional forms,
but makes no effort to explain the existence of abundant and
finely-graded transitional forms among hominems.

[jillery]

On Wed, 7 Feb 2024 21:15:56 -0500, Ron Dean
<rondean...@gmail.com> wrote:

>jillery wrote:

[...]

Please explain how your "it's a matter of interpretation" refutes the
evidence above of your repeated denial of the existence of
transitional forms.

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

Yes. Of the (many) biochemists that I know, a substantial proportion
have no interest in or knowledge of evolution. For them, biochemistry
is mainly a matter of collecting facts, with no particular concern for
why the facts are what they are.

Of the others, some have such a confused notion of what molecular
evolution is that their views hardly count. It would be like taking a
class on evolution from Ron Dean. Maybe Michael Denton falls into that
class. He was certainly once a competent biochemist (more significant
than Michael Behe, for example), competent enough to be appointed to
the Editorial Board of the Biochemical Journal in the 1980s.

However, setting these aside, biochemistry can tell us why Penny et al.
(1982) found that similar phylogenetic trees were obtained for 11
species using sequence data from five different proteins. Biochemistry
can tell us why organisms evolve at all (no organism "wants" to
evolve), because base pairing and protein synthesis have inherent
errors that cannot be completely overcome by proofreading, etc. There
are many other points for which biochemistry explains how evolution
occurs, for example why are most genes in diploid organisms are
recessive. (That was satisfactorily explained by Sewall Wright 90 years
ago, but unfortunately his analysis was largely pushed aside by R. A.
Fisher's non-biochemical interpretation: as late as 1981 Richard
Dawkins in The Extended Phenotype was still presenting Fisher's largely
unintelligible theory as the last word.)

On the other hand, what can evolutionary biology tell us about
biochemistry? It is explains, for example, why ATP, NAD, FAD, coenzyme
A and S-adenosylmethionine look like bits of RNA. NAD looks absurdly
complicated for its function, and three-quarters of its atoms do
nothing relevant to its metabolic role; they just make the molecule
much more unstable than one would like. Why is metabolism largely the
same in all organisms, from bacteria and yeasts to humans? An
evolutionary persective can tell us. Why is the "universal" genetic
code almost universal? An evolutionary persective can tell us. And so
on.

--
athel cb : A. Cornish-Bowden, J. Peretó & M. L. Cárdenas (2014)
"Biochemistry and evolutionary biology: Two disciplines that need each
other" Journal of Biosciences 39, 13-27

[broger...@gmail.com]

On Wednesday, February 7, 2024 at 9:18:03 PM UTC-5, Ron Dean wrote:
<snip old stuff>

As I said earlier "It's quite frustrating to interact with someone who simply repeats the same arguments over and over in virtually the same words and pays no attention to anything you write."

Many people have responded to your arguments about the supposed lack of transitional fossils. You keep reposting your argument in essentially the same words and give no evidence that you read or paid any attention to the previous critiques of your argument. You complain abut this when Ron O does it, but seem unable to recognize it in yourself.
<snip old stuff>

[jillery]

On Thu, 8 Feb 2024 04:45:06 -0800 (PST), "broger...@gmail.com"
<broger...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Wednesday, February 7, 2024 at 9:18:03?PM UTC-5, Ron Dean wrote:
><snip old stuff>

FYI, what you snipped included new stuff, stuff which provides context
to R.Dean's reply below, and stuff which applies to the very points
you post. That's what makes it not just new stuff but relevant stuff.
That's what makes your snip thoughtless.

[Martin Harran]

On Wed, 7 Feb 2024 21:15:56 -0500, Ron Dean
<rondean...@gmail.com> wrote:

[...]

>As I've explained numerous times and again above, there are no
>transitional (intermediate) fossils: it's simply a matter
>interpretation.

Hundreds (thousands?) of palaeontologists who have spent years
learning about their craft and directly studying fossils are satisfied
that Archaeopteryx, for just one example, is a transitional fossil. To
the best of my knowledge, you have no training whatsoever in
palaeontology and probably have never directly examined a fossil in
your life, yet you are so much more than them at interpreting such
things. Are there no bounds to this exceptional wisdom and insight
that your designer has bestowed upon you?

[...]

[erik simpson]

Consider that R. Dean may be a troll. He repeats the same nonsense with
little indication that even looks at the replies. His position that
evolution is wrong, but so is creationism leaves little room for
anything. Looks like a troll, sounds like a troll,...

[Ron Dean]

Shooting the messenger!
> [...]
>

[Ron Dean]

You are wrong, this was not my position that was referenced. IOW I never
argued "if we descended from monkeys Why are there monkeys". So to lay
this on me is lying.

>
> Once again, the cited video:
> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQOQgDHISh8>
>
> The question in question is a common Creationist PRATT, which not too
> long ago became news when Herschel Walker repeated it during a
> political rally to become Georgia's senator:
>
> <https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/16/politics/herschel-walker-geogia-senate-candidate-evolution-apes/index.html>
>
> Awhile ago, fellow right-wing retard Rush Limbaugh asked the same
> question using other words:
>
> <https://pandasthumb.org/archives/2016/06/rush-limbaugh-w.html>
>
> So the question in question is in fact a common Creationist PRATT,
> RDean's claims to the contrary.
>

Ok, you proved your point. I'm just not familiar with Biblical
Creationism as you seem to be. But it's a nonsensical statement. As an
IDest, it's not my argument.

>
> More to the point, the question in question is NOT a question jillery
> said Ron Dean argued. Once again, here is jillery's list of what
> RDean has argued:
>
> **********************************
> There are no transitional fossils.
>

I have argued this, my position again it's a matter pf interpretation
such evidence in accordance with the evolutionist paradigm.

>
> Use of "evolutionist" as epithet.
>

Why not?
> Why humans exist.
>
Never asked this question!
> 2LoT.
>
Have argued that the slot applies to more than just closed systems, even
though it was regionally made to describe closed systems IE steam engines.

> There are no beneficial mutations.
>

There may be few beneficial mutations, but they are far exceeded by
deleterious mutations.

> Common design not common descent.
>

This is my position.

> *********************************
>
> So RDean completely misrepresents what jillery said, and what "the
> lady in the video" said, RDean's claims to the contrary.
>

Again I arrived at my position independently of Biblical creationism.
And I defend my own positions not Biblical creationism.

>
> The doppelganger using RDean's account is blatantly dishonest.
>

As an atheist, for you to bear false witness against someone has no
consequence for you.

[Ron Dean]

I looked for evidence supporting evolution. If this is questioning. In
fact, it was searching for assurance in the face of doubt. I knew of no
evidence claimed by anti-evolutionist which was contrary to evolution.
Do you?

That's why you are so unfamiliar with the evidence supporting it. And
when you read a book like Denton's you also do not ask for the evidence
or evaluate the arguments. That's one reason you cannot actually
remember any of the arguments in his book. You went from unquestioningly
accepting evolution without understanding the evidence or arguments
supporting it, to unquestioningly accepting ID. But please stop
projecting that lack of questioning onto everybody else.
>

I'm sorry, but I doubt you are familiar with any evidence contrary to
evolution. In which case you're not questioning.

[broger...@gmail.com]

If you looked for evidence supporting evolution and did not find it, why were you ever a "committed Darwinist"? If you accepted evolution without any evidence, then you did not understand it. And it's a bad sign that you were willing to believe something in the absence of evidence. All you've done is switch to believing in intelligent design in the absence of evidence for a designer.

>> That's why you are so unfamiliar with the evidence supporting it. And
>> when you read a book like Denton's you also do not ask for the evidence
>> or evaluate the arguments. That's one reason you cannot actually
>> remember any of the arguments in his book. You went from unquestioningly
>> accepting evolution without understanding the evidence or arguments
>> supporting it, to unquestioningly accepting ID. But please stop
>> projecting that lack of questioning onto everybody else.

.....

> I'm sorry, but I doubt you are familiar with any evidence contrary to
> evolution. In which case you're not questioning.

There's a logical fallacy there; I wonder if you can recognize it.

[jillery]

On Sat, 10 Feb 2024 12:28:33 -0500, Ron Dean

You are wrong. Nowhere did I say you argued that point. YOU made
that up. Yet despite unambiguous evidence contradicting your lie, you
continue to repeat your lie. Why is that?

>> Once again, the cited video:
>> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQOQgDHISh8>
>>
>> The question in question is a common Creationist PRATT, which not too
>> long ago became news when Herschel Walker repeated it during a
>> political rally to become Georgia's senator:
>>
>> <https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/16/politics/herschel-walker-geogia-senate-candidate-evolution-apes/index.html>
>>
>> Awhile ago, fellow right-wing retard Rush Limbaugh asked the same
>> question using other words:
>>
>> <https://pandasthumb.org/archives/2016/06/rush-limbaugh-w.html>
>>
>> So the question in question is in fact a common Creationist PRATT,
>> RDean's claims to the contrary.
> >
>Ok, you proved your point. I'm just not familiar with Biblical
>Creationism as you seem to be. But it's a nonsensical statement. As an
>IDest, it's not my argument.

One more time; I never said it was your argument. YOU made that up.
Stop lying.

And since you mention it, it's a nonsensical statement based on a
nonsensical understanding of evolution.

>> More to the point, the question in question is NOT a question jillery
>> said Ron Dean argued. Once again, here is jillery's list of what
>> RDean has argued:

That you don't acknowledge the above affirms your lies.

>> **********************************
>> There are no transitional fossils.
> >
>I have argued this, my position again it's a matter pf interpretation
>such evidence in accordance with the evolutionist paradigm.

Your position is meaningless, one that you repeatedly fail to clarify.
More to the point, it doesn't alter the fact that you have repeatedly
denied the existence of transitional forms.

>> Use of "evolutionist" as epithet.
> >
>Why not?

Why not what?

>> Why humans exist.
> >
>Never asked this question!

You have at least twice lied in this thread about what you have
posted, despite cited posts unambiguously showing your lies false.
Even if my recollection on this one is incorrect, you have zero
credibility.

>> 2LoT.
> >
>Have argued that the slot applies to more than just closed systems, even
>though it was regionally made to describe closed systems IE steam engines.

I have no idea how you think the above informs the PRATT in question.

>> There are no beneficial mutations.
> >
>There may be few beneficial mutations, but they are far exceeded by
>deleterious mutations.

Technically correct but entirely irrelevant. Deleterious mutations
are removed, while beneficial mutations are amplified. Not sure how
even you *still* don't understand this.

>> Common design not common descent.
> >
>This is my position.

I know. That's what I said.

>> *********************************
>>
>> So RDean completely misrepresents what jillery said, and what "the
>> lady in the video" said, RDean's claims to the contrary.
> >
>Again I arrived at my position independently of Biblical creationism.
>And I defend my own positions not Biblical creationism.

Again, to arrive at similar correct conclusions independently is
likely, as they are based on reality. To arrive are so many nonsense
PRATTS independently stretches credulity. Far more likely you
conveniently forgot where you heard them and only imagine you came to
them independently.

>> The doppelganger using RDean's account is blatantly dishonest.
>>
>As an atheist, for you to bear false witness against someone has no
>consequence for you.

Yet another willfully stupid ad-hominem. Bearing false witness
carries practical consequences, "worldview" notwithstanding. OTOH
your post above shows you have no problem lying for the sake of it.

[Martin Harran]

On Sat, 10 Feb 2024 11:08:30 -0500, Ron Dean

A messenger who cannot justify their message should not be surprised
when they are shot.

>> [...]
>>

[Ron Dean]

Looking for supporting evidence for evolution is only half. If this is
what you are suggesting then this is allowing oneself to become
brainwashed. Testing also requires questioning and challenging evolution
ie looking at contrary evidence. In a courtroom, if the judge disallows
the prosecutor and allows only the defense to present its case, then
proclaims I've heard enough..... I see this as the same as searching
only for supporting evidence for evolution. I suspect this describes
you. I doubt you know of any arguments against evolution by
intelligent designers.

[Ron Dean]

Maybe I've confuse you with someone else. If so, I sincerely apologize
to you. Please forgive me.

[Öö Tiib]

But these "evidences" are said out lot of times. Basically theory of
evolution does not explain:
* what is good or evil, moral or immoral,
* origins of universe,
* universe's suitability for life,
* origins of life on this planet,
* details of formation of some biomolecules,
* details of evolution of some species,
* good mental capabilities of humans,
* possibilities of afterlife and salvation.

Sorry, but all of these "evidences" are about gaps in our knowledge.

Also there are some other lesser gaps plus random mutations are mostly
bad so good God would not choose such aggravatingly inefficient, slow,
tedious and damaging tool for making something. Therefore evolution
is wrong. Really?

[Burkhard]

Rubbish and other such comments. The entire purpose of TO is to
allow creationists and creationist- adjacent folks to air their
"arguments", so every regular will be well aware of them. They
just happen to be piss-poor, and visibly so. I don't think for instance
that in all the decades you have been posting here, you have
presented an argument that was not either
- internally inconsistent
- obviously factually wrong
- poisoning the well/ad hominem
- mere inceduilty ("I, Ron Dean, can't imagine how..."

All of which, or their forensics equivalents, would indeed be laughed
out of court

[broger...@gmail.com]

I'd say that the point is not to look for evidence supporting evolution or evidence contradicting it. Instead you compare what evidence you would expect to see if evolution were true and what evidence you would expect to see if some specific theory of intelligent design were true. Then you ask whether the evidence you actually have is more like what you expect to see if evolution is correct or if intelligent design is correct. The main difficulty with doing that is that most supporters of intelligent design do not make a specific testable hypothesis about what happened. The simple claim that an unspecified designe of unspecified capabilities unspecified intentions unspecified location unspecified methods is responsible for how life turned out over the course of billions of years is not a specific enough hypothesis to be tested.

So if ID does not make any specific claims about what actually happened or where or when or how it happened, then you are stuck with asking whether the mass of evidence supports evolution and whether there is contrary evidence that is strong enough to put the supporting evidence in doubt. If evolution is in fact true, there will not be strong contrary evidence - that's the case for all true theories, right?, Maxwells equations, gravity, a non-flat earth. Failing to find contrary evidence against a correct theory is not a sign that you did not question it; it's only a sign that the theory stood up to questioning.

As to whether I know the ID arguments...I have many times over the past 10-15 years written posts as though I were an ID supporter and laid out the pro-ID arguments clearly just to demonstrate that I, like most of the evolutionists here, understand perfectly well what the ID folks are saying. We just think it wrong.

[Lawyer Daggett]

On Monday, February 12, 2024 at 5:48:08 AM UTC-5, Burkhard wrote:
...

> Rubbish and other such comments. The entire purpose of TO is to
> allow creationists and creationist- adjacent folks to air their
> "arguments", so every regular will be well aware of them. They
> just happen to be piss-poor, and visibly so. I don't think for instance
> that in all the decades you have been posting here, you have
> presented an argument that was not either
> - internally inconsistent
> - obviously factually wrong
> - poisoning the well/ad hominem
> - mere inceduilty ("I, Ron Dean, can't imagine how..."
>
> All of which, or their forensics equivalents, would indeed be laughed
> out of court

His arguments may have been impeached but they weren't convicted
while president and that makes them immune by the intelligent design
of second article.

[Ernest Major]

Perhaps you should also apologise to atheists in general for your false
witness.

>> --
>> To know less than we don't know is the nature of most knowledge
>>
>

--
alias Ernest Major

[Ron Dean]

Öö Tibet wrote:
> On Monday 12 February 2024 at 06:28:07 UTC+2, Ron Dean wrote:
>> broger...@gmail.com wrote:
>>> On Saturday, Februa

<snip>

I agree, but it does reduce human beings to _animal_ status: since,
we're nothing, but animals, no better than other animals and genetically
different by only 1% from chimps.
>
> * origins of universe,
>
Of course not by Biological evolution, but there is evolutionary
change in the universe from the big bang to star/solar systems.

> * universe's suitability for life,
> * origins of life on this planet,
>

No knows exactly how life originated on this planet. Or if it did:
Spenserian-F. Crick

> * details of formation of some biomolecules,
>

Yes, some bio molecules coming to earth are found from space.

>
> * details of evolution of some species,
>

New DNA information is required. There are many different breeds of
dogs, but these breeds are expressed from the same gene pool, but which
genes are subdued and which genes are not explains obvious differences.
No new information is present.

> * good mental capabilities of humans,
>

This is what makes humans different. Our brains! We have built
civilizations, communications, transportation systems and sent people
to the moon and space vehicles to Mars, Venus and past other planets. If
the human species becomes extinct later in the next decade. How many
millions of years in the future would be necessary or required for
Chimps or some other animal to reach our levels of accomplishment?

>
> * possibilities of afterlife and salvation.
>

This subject is never part of any discussion, in which I'm willing to
participate I have no need for organized religion or religious
discussions. But, I think the _scientific_ evidence implies a designer.
I see evolution as an _alternative_ explanation for what we observe in
nature. Evolution came secondly in a historical context. Design was the
initial universal view, championed by William Paley.
However, he went one step too far and attributed the design he observed,
in the science of his day, to his God. While he saw evidence of design,
there was no evidence pointing to his God.

This was based strictly upon his faith, not scientific evidence. He read
Paley and expressed admiration for the man's work in a letter he wrote
to a friend, but I personally think Darwin, after some thought, set as
his _objective_ to re-write Paley, but to write Paley's God out of the
picture, by removing design and replacing design with what was to become
re-named, "random mutations and natural selection". And this as I see
it, places evolution as an alternative to design.

>
> Sorry, but all of these "evidences" are about gaps in our knowledge.
>

No, this is exactly backwards! In the gaps is where we fine evolution,
just one example of this is the _gap_ between lifeless matter and life.
It's here we find evolutionist, trying to uncover how life originated
from lifeless matter - It's _after_ this gap, where we found the
designer who has just completed the task it set itself up out to do - IE
to create life from non-life.

>

>
> Also there are some other lesser gaps plus random mutations are mostly
> bad so good God would not choose such aggravatingly inefficient, slow,
> tedious and damaging tool for making something. Therefore evolution
> is wrong. Really?
>

Are you asking this of me? Why?

>
>>>>> That's why you are so unfamiliar with the evidence supporting it. And
>>>>> when you read a book like Denton's you also do not ask for the evidence
>>>>> or evaluate the arguments. That's one reason you cannot actually
>>>>> remember any of the arguments in his book. You went from unquestioningly
>>>>> accepting evolution without understanding the evidence or arguments
>>>>> supporting it, to unquestioningly accepting ID. But please stop
>>>>> projecting that lack of questioning onto everybody else.
>>> .....
>>>> I'm sorry, but I doubt you are familiar with any evidence contrary to
>>>> evolution. In which case you're not questioning.
>>>
>>> There's a logical fallacy there; I wonder if you can recognize it.
>

Missed this: In your mind the logical fallacy is: contrary evidence
where there can be no contrary evidence.

[Martin Harran]

On Mon, 12 Feb 2024 20:53:30 -0500, Ron Dean
<rondean...@gmail.com> wrote:

>嘱 Tibet wrote:

[...]

>> Basically theory of
>> evolution does not explain:
>> * what is good or evil, moral or immoral,
>>
>I agree, but it does reduce human beings to _animal_ status: since,
>we're nothing, but animals, no better than other animals and genetically
>different by only 1% from chimps.

The "status" that you refer to seems to be based on your personal
difficulty in coping with the idea of there being no significant
*biological* difference between humans and other animals. It's a
foolish point to get hung up on. The *biological* difference between
humans and other animals is irrelevant, the significant difference
lies in *intellect*.

Some people will argue that intellect is also a product of evolution
but that is pure speculation at this point in time as there is no
direct evidence to show an evolutionary path for the development of
the unique aspects of human intellect.


[...]