Timeline of Materialism, Spontaneous Generation, and BlindwatchmakingViews
david ford
The philosophy of materialism holds that all is material-- only material
things exist: there is no immaterial God or gods, no spirits, no souls,
no angels, no devil, no demons. Materialism claims that matter was in
existence before mind/intelligence originated, in humans. An adherent
of materialism thinks that the first biological lifeform arose via
non-intelligence-directed-at-any-level, totally-mindless processes from
non-living matter ("spontaneous generation"). A materialist does not
think that God made physics, and made physics such that physics would
give rise to life.
Nothing that could be interpreted as an instance of spontaneous
generation has been observed in biologists' and chemists' laboratory
experiments, for life has not been observed arising from non-life.
Question: Upon what basis/grounds does a materialist think that
spontaneous generation occurred?
I submit that materialists accept the hypothesis of spontaneous
generation because their philosophy of materialism dictates that life
_must_ have been the result of spontaneous generation. (A materialist
would, of course, like to have the option of saying that life is an
infinite number of years old, but since it is now known that our
universe began to exist in the Big Bang, that means life inside the
universe consequently must have begun to exist. This is the case even
if you believe in an infinite-number of universes.)
The pronounced absence of confirmatory laboratory experiment results for
100+ years doesn't shake the faith of the materialist, because he or she
"knows" that somehow, some way, life "must have" originated from
non-life totally apart from the input of any mind/intelligence
whatsoever. This absence of confirmatory lab experiment results hasn't
stopped materialists from professing their devotion to the hypothesis of
spontaneous generation.
Below appears a timeline of some professions of faith in the discredited
hypothesis of spontaneous generation, professions of faith in the
philosophy of materialism, and professions of faith in the hypothesis
that all biology is the end result of processes that are
totally-mindless/blind/unintelligent at-every-level--
"blindwatchmaking." (A detailed explication of the concept of
"blindwatchmaking" is at
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=b1c67abe.0401101006.38dc8f17%40posting.google.com
_A priori_ acceptance of the faith of materialism is the basis/grounds
for acceptance of spontaneous generation (and blindwatchmaking). It is
not the case that observations of and experiments in biology, chemistry,
physics, and paleontology provide solid grounds/reasons for adopting
materialism. Materialists allege that materialism is supported by the
observations made by biologists and paleontologists, however that
allegation is erroneous. Moreover, repeated failures to observe life
coming from non-life in 100+ years' worth of experiments provides
evidence _against_ materialism. For some doses of reality regarding
spontaneous generation, see
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=dford3-33arf3F3vjdggU1%40individual.net
1985 A.G. Cairns-Smith, 1986 Andrew Scott, 1999 Freeman Dyson
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=dford3-33bltcF3rgbovU1%40individual.net
Timeline of Materialism, Spontaneous Generation, and Blindwatchmaking Views
Question: Nobody knows _how_ life could have come from non-life via
non-intelligence-directed processes, and nobody has seen it or something
remotely like it happen, yet Haeckel, Goodrich, J.S. Huxley, Simpson,
Sagan, and Dawkins "know" that life came from non-life. What exactly
leads these guys to this "knowledge"?
How do materialists "know" that the first biological lifeform arose
totally apart from any involvement of any mind/intelligence? Is it from
the data and observations obtained by biologists, chemists, and
physicists? Or is these materialists' belief in spontaneous generation
a deduction from their philosophy of materialism?
materialism, spontaneous generation, blindwatchmaking
1962 Oparin: "embittered war which has been waged between the two
irreconcilable philosophic camps of idealism and materialism"
Oparin, A. I. 1962. _Life: Its Nature, Origin and
Development_ (New York: Academic Press Inc., Publishers),
translated from the Russian by Ann Synge, 207pp. From the
section "The Conflict Between Idealism and Materialism as to
the Essential Nature of Life," the opening paragraph and a
sentence on 4:
From the earliest times, even until the present day, this
problem of the essential nature of life has always been a
battle-field in the embittered war which has been waged
between the two irreconcilable philosophic camps of
idealism and materialism.
The representatives of the idealist camp see, as the essence
of life, some sort of eternal supramaterial origin which is
inaccessible to experiment.
On 5, the last two paragraphs of the section "The Conflict
Between Idealism and Materialism as to the Essential Nature
of Life":
Materialists approach the problem of the essence of life
from a diametrically opposite viewpoint. Basing their
arguments on the facts obtained by science they assert that
life, like all the rest of the world, is material and does not
require for its understanding the acceptance of a spiritual
origin which is not amenable to experimental study. On
the contrary, objective study of the world around us is, for
the materialist, not only a hopeful way of leading us to an
understanding of the very essence of life, but it also
enables us to alter living nature purposefully in a way
favourable to mankind.
Wide circles of biological scientists, either consciously or
intuitively, base their investigations on a materialistic
concept of living nature and, in following this line, they
are always enriching the science of life by their work and
bringing us closer to an understanding of the essence of life.
On 36-37, the last four paragraphs of the chapter:
It is now becoming more and more obvious that a
knowledge of the essential nature of life is only possible
through a knowledge of its origin. Now, too, this origin no
longer seems so puzzling as it did not long ago. We are
sketching out in more and more detail the actual ways in
which life arose on the Earth. It could only have happened
as an integral part of the general historic development of
our planet. The facts at our disposal indicate that the origin
of life was a gradual process in which organic substances
became more and more complicated and formed complete
systems which were in a state of continual interaction with
the medium surrounding them.
Following the path of the emergence of life in this way we
encounter neither the 'almighty hand of the Creator' nor
machines which made their appearance at a far later stage
in the development of matter. We do, however, discover in
this way how and why it is that the particular original
systems which existed were transformed, in the process of
evolution, into those which are characteristic of life instead
of into others and how, in that same process of the
establishment of life, there arose new biological laws
which had not existed before, and also how the
'purposiveness' which we notice in all living things came
into being.
In this way our knowledge gives us a real understanding of
the essential organisation of the most primitive forms of
life and, on that basis, we can easily follow the further
evolution of these forms by applying the precepts of
evolutionary theory. We can trace the formation of new
features characteristic of highly organised living beings,
including man, who is the culmination of the biological
stage of the development of matter.
Thus we arrive at the main idea underlying this book which
had already been formulated by Heraclitus of Ephesus and
was included in the works of Aristotle:-- "One can only
understand the essence of things when one knows their
origin and development."
materialism
Sagan, Carl. 1980. _Cosmos_ (NY: Random House), 365pp. Chapter
1's first line:
THE COSMOS IS ALL THAT IS OR EVER WAS OR EVER WILL BE.
Compare
Revelation 1: 8 (The Message): "The Master declares, 'I'm A to Z. I'm
THE GOD WHO IS, THE GOD WHO WAS, AND THE GOD ABOUT TO ARRIVE. I'm the
Sovereign-Strong.'"
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=revelation%201;&version=65;
Revelation 1: 8 (King James Version): "I am Alpha and Omega, the
beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and
which is to come, the Almighty."
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=revelation%201;&version=9;
See also Revelation 1: 4.
materialism
Epicurus (341-270 BC). In Forrest E. Baird, ed., _Ancient
Philosophy_ (NJ: Prentice Hall, 1997), 558pp., 455:
The first principle is that nothing can be created from the
non-existent.... Truly this universe has always been such
as it now is, and so shall always be; for there is nothing
into which it can change, and there is nothing outside the
universe that can enter into it and bring about a change.
....there is nothing that we can grasp in the mind, either
through concepts or through analogy with concepts, that has
real existence and is not referred to merely as a property
or an accident of material things or of the void [the
void/space being what matter exists in and moves through].
materialism
Lucretius (ca. 99-55 B.C.)
===================================================.
MARXISM
materialism
Marx, Karl. _The Essential Marx: The Non-Economic
Writings-- A Selection_, edited, with new translations, by
Saul K. Padover (New York: New American Library,
1978), 438pp., 300-301, which in turn came from Marx's
_The Holy Family_, with Engels (1845, Moscow 1956),
167-177. On 301:
Since only what is material is perceptible, knowable,
nothing is known of the existence of God. .... Man
is subject to the same laws as nature; might and
freedom are identical.
On 300:
Pierre Bayle not only prepared the reception of
materialism and the philosophy of common sense in
France by shattering metaphysics with his skepticism.
He heralded atheistic society, which was soon to
come to existence, by proving that a society consisting
only of atheists is possible, that an atheist can be a
respectable man, and that it is not by atheism but by
superstition and idolatry that man debases himself.
_Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism: Manual_ Date unknown,
probably very early 1960s. (Moscow: Foreign Languages
Publishing House), 890pp., translated from the Russian, edited
by Clemens Dutt. On 27, the first four paragraphs of the section
"Materialism-- A Progressive Philosophy":
Unlike spontaneous or naive materialism, philosophical
materialism _scientifically_ substantiates, elaborates and
consistently applies materialist conceptions based on the
findings of progressive science and social practice.
Materialist philosophy is an effective weapon against the
pernicious influence of spiritual reaction. It provides a
guide throughout life, showing the correct way of solving
the philosophical problems that agitate men's minds.
For centuries the Church has tried to instil contempt for
earthly life and fear of God. It taught people, and above all
the mass of oppressed humanity, that their destiny was to
toil and pray, that happiness was unattainable in this "vale
of tears," that it could be achieved only in the next world,
as the reward for obedience and meekness. The Church
threatened with the wrath of God and torment in hell those
who dared rise against the divinely established rule of the
exploiters.
The great historic service rendered by materialist
philosophy is that it helped man to break free of all
superstitions. Ever since ancient times it has taught him
not to fear death, not to fear gods and other supernatural
forces.
Stephen Jay Gould, John Maynard Smith, J.B.S. Haldane, and Richard
Lewontin were Marxists; 2004 R.J. Rummel's "The killing machine that is
Marxism"
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=dford3-32gfjsF3l6o15U1%40individual.net
H.J. Mueller was a communist [Shapiro, 141, Poundstone, 18]
Oparin was a Marxist [Shapiro, 148-9]
spontaneous generation
Merridale, Catherine. 2000. _Night of Stone: Death and
Memory in Twentieth-Century Russia_ (USA: Viking), 402pp.
A paragraph on 89:
The most important spur to atheism, however, was
probably the power of science. In that respect, there was a
link, in terms of inspiration, between the radicalism of
unbelief and Marxism, with its faith in progress and its
"science" of dialectical materialism. Kanatchikov, for
instance, remembered his conversion from religion in terms
of his friend Savinov's demonstration of "scientific"
creation. The atheist worker suggested that anyone who
was skeptical of Darwinian theory, who insisted on
adhering to the church and Genesis, should collect some
earth in a box. "You'll see that without fail worms or little
insects will begin to appear," he continued. "And in the
course of four, five, or maybe even ten thousand years,
man himself will emerge." Kanatchikov was so impressed
with this idea that he used it later when he became a
propagandist, calling it "one of the most convincing
arguments in my debates."^50
===================================================.
T.H. HUXLEY
materialism, blindwatchmaking
1860 T.H. Huxley on knowing "all the consequences to which all possible
combinations, continued through unlimited time, can give rise"
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=b1c67abe.0402142040.31d13e07%40posting.google.com
spontaneous generation
Huxley, T.H. "philosophical faith" 256-257.
===================================================.
WEISMANN
blindwatchmaking: last paragraph
Weismann, August. July-Dec 1893. "The All-Sufficiency of Natural
Selection" _The Contemporary Review_, 309-338. Weismann is replying
to Herbert Spencer's "The Inadequacy of Natural Selection" _The
Contemporary Review_ (Feb-March 1893). Spencer rejected the Darwinian
mechanism and was a Lamarckian, while Weismann accepted the theory of
NS. Four paragraphs on 311-13, the end of a paragraph on 327, and the
next paragraph:
The following is a summary of Herbert Spencer's argument: If a
transmission of acquired characters does not occur, then all
enduring variations must rest on natural selection; but again,
most, if not all useful variations of any one part must be
connected with variations of other parts, if they are to be in
any degree effective; and often these co-operative changes are so
numerous that it is difficult to understand how all, at one time
and independently, should possibly arise through spontaneous
variations and natural selection. We cannot believe, on the
other hand, that all vary together; that, for instance, the
enlargement of the antlers of the stag is always necessarily
connected with a thickening of the skull and a strengthening of
the neck ligament and the muscles of the neck and back; for we
know numerous examples which prove that co-operating parts
undergo quite distinct, even opposing, variations. How, if it
were otherwise, could the great differences between the fore and
bind feet of the kangaroo appear; or how could the powerful
nippers of the common lobster arise on the pair of limbs that in
the rock lobster bear simple little claws; and so on? One must
then, Mr. Spencer thinks, believe that the co-operative parts
vary independently of one another. But if this be assumed, then
the process of change becomes not only protracted and complicated
to an unlimited degree, but simply impossible; for how should all
the co-operating parts offer at the same time suitable variations
to be preserved by natural selection? Yet the enlargement of the
antlers, for instance, requires a simultaneous strengthening of
the ligament and the muscles that support the more heavily
burdened head; even the processes of the dorsal vertebrae must
vary in conformity with the increase; and so must the bones,
muscles, ligaments, nerves, and vessels of all these parts, and
of the whole anterior extremity. Can these hundreds of
individual parts be supposed, independently of one another and
simultaneously, to be modified in due proportion, and preserved
by, natural selection? But if they do not vary _simultaneously_
then the variation of individual parts is of no avail; a
strengthening of the muscles and ligaments of the neck, without
an increase of the antlers avails nothing, and an increase of the
antlers unaccompanied by a strengthening of the ligaments,
muscles, &c., would be dangerous and highly disadvantageous.
There is thus no apparent alternative but to believe with Mr.
Spencer that functional variations are transmitted, and that in
this way all co-operative parts remain in harmony; _i.e._, the
variation of _one_ part,-- as, for instance, the antlers-- is
always accompanied by an exactly proportionate variation of the
others, so far as is beneficial for the general efficiency of the
parts. If this be so, belief in the transmission of acquired
characters is unavoidable; and Herbert Spencer is so thoroughly
convinced of the strength of his argument that he goes the length
of saying: "Either there has been inheritance of acquired
characters, or there has been no evolution."
I am of a different opinion. Since I expressed the belief ten
years ago, that functional variations (acquired characters) could
not be transmitted, I have not ceased to test that view, and
whenever I have been able to get a more thorough understanding of
the facts, I have found it confirmed. But I freely grant that
Mr. Spencer's objection is a tempting one; and I should not be
surprised if many who read his essay, and are familiar with the
enormous difficulties, which, according to his view, stand in the
way of an explanation of the facts in question through natural
selection, should be carried away by the strength of his skilful
representation, and hold the _easier_ explanation of the facts--
by the inheritance of acquired characters-- to be the _correct_
one.
I hope to show, however, that it _cannot_ be the correct one, and
that we must, here, as in the case of the degeneration of disused
parts, set aside the apparently simple and almost matter-of-
course explanation, and seek another.
.... As soon as an attempt is made to think out in detail the
process of selection by which, perhaps, the little bristles or
the small baskets of the worker-bees have arisen, it is seen that
all and every one of the data are wanting. Moreover, in my
opinion we cannot hope that we shall ever possess them, either in
these cases or in any yet simpler process of natural selection.
Not only would it be necessary to form an estimate of the
smallest variations, so as to know whether and how often among
1000, 100,000, or millions of individuals there is a variation
which gives verdict over life and death: but much more that we
can never determine is required; for instance, the number of
individuals of a species living at one time, the degree of their
mingling with one another in their own domain, and the percentage
[of] occurrence of the variation in question. All which, I am
convinced, cannot be ascertained; and so we shall never be able
to establish by observation the progress of natural selection.
What is it then that nevertheless makes us believe in this
progress as actual, and leads us to ascribe such extraordinary
importance to it? Nothing but the power of logic; we must assume
natural selection to be the principle of explanation of the
metamorphoses, because all other apparent principles of
explanation fail us, and it is inconceivable that there could be
yet another capable of explaining the adaptations of organisms,
_without assuming the help of a principle of design_. In other
words, _it is the only conceivable natural explanation of
organisms regarded as adaptations to conditions_.
===================================================.
HAECKEL
spontaneous generation
Haeckel, Ernst (1834-1919). 1868. _The History of Creation_, 348-9.
Cited in Michael Ruse, "The Origin of Life: Philosophical Perspectives"
_Journal of Theoretical Biology_ 187: 473-82 (1997):
If we do not accept the hypothesis of spontaneous generation, then
at this one point of the history of development we must have
recourse to the miracle of a _super-natural creation_. The Creator
must have created a first organism, or a few first organisms, from
which all others are derived, and as such he must have created the
simplest Monera, or primaeval cytods, and given them the capability
of developing further in a mechanical way. I leave it to each one
of my readers to choose between this idea and the hypothesis of
spontaneous generation. To me the idea that the Creator should
have in this one point arbitrarily interfered with the regular
process of development of matter, which in all other cases proceeds
entirely without his interposition, seems to be just as
unsatisfactory to a believing mind as to a scientific
intellect.
spontaneous generation
Haeckel, Ernst. 1900. _The Riddle of the Universe: At the Close of the
Nineteenth Century_, translated by Joseph McCabe. (NY: Harper & Brothers
Publishers), 391pp. On 257-8:
I restrict the idea of spontaneous generation-- also called
abiogenesis or archigony-- to the first development of living
protoplasm out of inorganic carbonates.... Naegeli has also
treated the hypothesis in quite the same sense in his
mechanico-physiological theory of descent (1884), and has
represented it to be an indispensable thesis in any natural theory
of evolution. I entirely agree with his assertion that "to reject
abiogenesis is to admit a miracle."
materialism, blindwatchmaking
1900 Haeckel ("the law of the persistence of matter and force; that law
knows nothing of a beginning"), and 1987 Dawkins reject the position
that intelligent design is responsible for common descent
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=b1c67abe.0401311740.48df353%40posting.google.com
===================================================.
MATERIALISM'S ASCENDANCY AMONG BIOLOGISTS, SOCIETY AT LARGE
materialism
Jammer 25, Weikart 11 and 12, Goldschmidt (1956), 34, Ingersoll in Edwords.
materialism, spontaneous generation
Prenant, Marcel. 1938. _Biology and Marxism_, 53, 80, 150-152.
materialism
Hayes, Carlton J. H. 1941. _A Generation of Materialism: 1871-1900_, 115.
Barzun, Jacques. 1941. _Darwin, Marx, Wagner: Critique of a Heritage_
(Boston: Little, Brown and Company), 420pp.
===================================================.
materialism, blindwatchmaking, spontaneous generation
Loeb, Jacques. 1912. _The Mechanistic Conception of Life: Biological
Essays_, 3, 5-6, 26, 30-31.
materialism
Delage, Yves and Marie Goldsmith. 1913. _The Theories of Evolution_,
345-346, 351-2.
blindwatchmaking
Bateson, William. 1922. "Evolutionary Faith and Modern Doubts"
_Science_ 55: 55-61. The last paragraph:
I have put before you very frankly the considerations which have
made us agnostic as to the actual mode and processes of evolution.
When such confessions are made the enemies of science see their
chance. If we cannot declare here and now how species arose, they
will obligingly offer us the solutions with which obscurantism is
satisfied. Let us then proclaim in precise and unmistakable
language that our faith in evolution is unshaken. Every available
line of argument converges on this inevitable conclusion. The
obscurantist has nothing to suggest which is worth a moment's
attention. The difficulties which weigh upon the professional
biologist need not trouble the layman. Our doubts are not as to
the reality or truth of evolution, but as to the origin of
_species_, a technical, almost domestic, problem. Any day that
mystery may be solved. The discoveries of the last twenty-five
years enable us for the first time to discuss these questions
intelligently and on a basis of fact. That synthesis will follow
on an analysis, we do not and cannot doubt.
spontaneous generation
Goodrich, Edwin S. 1924. _Living Organisms: An Account of Their Origin
& Evolution_ (England: Oxford University Press), 200pp. Goodrich was
Fellow of Merton College and Linacre Professor of Zoology and
Comparative Anatomy in the University of Oxford, and a fellow of the
Royal Society. On 23-4, 25:
So far as we know, living organisms at the present day do not
develop spontaneously, but are all derived from pre-existing
organisms. We must, however, suppose that at some period in the
earth's history, when conditions were favourable and perhaps very
different from those of the present time, living protoplasm made a
first appearance. Possibly these conditions will never be
repeated, either in nature or in the laboratory, and the first
stages in the evolution of life may never be discovered. .... For
many reasons it seems probable that life originated in the sea;
protoplasm contains the same salts of calcium sodium and potassium
as sea-water, and in much the same proportions.
blindwatchmaking
Osborn, Henry Fairfield. 1925. _The Origin and Evolution
of Life_ (New York: Scribner's). According to the
creationist Phillip Johnson, Osborn was "head of the
American Museum of Natural History at the time of the
[1925] Scopes trial, [and] was the leading public antagonist
of William Jennings Bryan, although he did not go to Dayton
for the trial. Osborn was a fervent supporter of the
discredited Nebraska Man and Piltdown Man fossils as
proofs of evolution." See Phillip E. Johnson, _Defeating
Darwinism By Opening Minds_ (Illinois: InterVarsity Press),
131pp, 121. This quotation from ix-x of Osborn's book
comes from Johnson, 121-122:
In contrast to the unity of opinion on the _law_ of
evolution is the wide diversity of opinion on the
_causes_ of evolution. In fact, the causes of the
evolution of life are as mysterious as the law of
evolution is certain. Some contend that we already
know the chief causes of evolution, others contend that
we know little or nothing of them. In this open court of
conjecture, of hypothesis, of more or less heated
controversy, the great names of Lamarck, of Darwin, of
Weismann figure prominently as leaders of different
schools of opinion; while there are others, like myself,
who for various reasons belong to no school, and are as
agnostic about Lamarckism as they are about Darwinism
or Weismannism, or the more recent forms of
Darwinism, termed Mutation by de Vries. In truth, from
the period of the earliest stages of Greek thought man
has been eager to discover some natural cause of
evolution, and to abandon the idea of supernatural
intervention in the order of nature. Between the
appearance of _The Origin of Species_, in 1859, and the
present time there have been great waves of faith in one
explanation and then in another: each of these waves of
confidence has ended in disappointment, until finally we
have reached a stage of very general skepticism.
blindwatchmaking
Watson, D. M. S. 1929. "Adaptation" _Nature_ 124:231-4. Article was
first presented in Johannesburg in a presidential address to Section D
(Zoology) of the British Association[?]; Watson was a professor and
F.R.S. From 233, a paragraph: "The extreme difficulty
of obtaining the necessary data for any quantitative estimation
of the efficiency of natural selection makes it seem probable
that this theory will be re-established, if it be so, by the
collapse of alternative explanations which are more easily
attacked by observation and experiment. If so, it will present a
parallel to the theory of evolution itself, a theory universally
accepted not because it can be proved by logically coherent
evidence to be true but because the only alternative, special
creation, is clearly incredible."
For historical context, see
historical background to rise and fall of the Synthetic Euphoria; 1936
A. Franklin Shull
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=b1c67abe.0403271329.1e569adf%40posting.google.com
[rework URLs within]
===================================================.
JULIAN HUXLEY & H.G. WELLS
materialism
re: 1923 J. Huxley: Can anybody think of data that would lead a devout
materialist to cease to [1923 J. Huxley]"reject any explanation which
proceeds... by miracles"?
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=Pine.SGI.3.96A.990818214806.410371A-100000%40umbc9.umbc.edu
materialism
1957 Julian Huxley on _Religion without Revelation_
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=b1c67abe.0407270344.53d3af56%40posting.google.com
Wells, H.G. 1934. _Experiment in Autobiography_, regarding himself:
58, 70-71, 139.
regarding his generation: 147.
Born in 1866, Wells became an atheist before 1884, i.e. before the age
of about 18.
spontaneous generation
Wells, H.G., Julian S. Huxley, and G.P. Wells. 1934. _The Science of
Life_ (NY: The Literary Gild), 1514pp. On 649, 650, two paragraphs and
two sentences:
The actual origin of life must always remain a secret: even if man
succeeds in artificially making life, he can never be sure that
nature did not employ some other means. Some thinkers have
supposed that life was carried to this earth in a dormant state
within meteorites. But this is to think timorously and to balk
[at] the issue; it only removes the problem of life's origin one
step farther back. It does not absolve us from asking how and when
life originated, but merely introduces an extra difficulty.
It is much more likely that at one moment in earth's cooling-down,
the warm seas provided an environment never afterwards to be
repeated, an environment differing in temperature, in pressure, in
the salts within the waters, in the gases of the atmosphere over
the waters, from any earlier or any later environments. The earth
at that moment fulfilled all the conditions which the alchemists
tried to repeat in their crucibles. It was a cosmic test-tube,
whose particular brew led to the appearance of living matter as
inevitably as an earlier and different set of conditions led to the
formation of rocks and seas and clouds.
.... In any case, the great majority of biologists agree in
thinking that probably all the life upon the earth had its origin
from the matter of the earth at a definite time in the earth's
history. Where opinions differ is as to the form in which this
primordial living matter appeared.
===================================================.
OPARIN
[Richard Crawford]"it really opened my eyes to how scientists can
bring their own doctrines and agendas to science"
Did the scientist Oparin [RC]"bring" his [RC]"own doctrines and
agendas to science" when speaking of [Oparin]"the gradual formation of
living things from non-living matter"?
Did the scientist Oparin [RC]"bring" his [RC]"own doctrines and
agendas to science" when claiming that [Oparin]"a definite
protoplasmic organization and fitness of its inner structure to carry
out definite functions could easily be formed in the course of [the]
evolution of organic matter"?
Oparin, A.I. 1938. _The Origin of Life_, translated by Sergius
Morgulis (USA: Dover Publications, Inc.), 270pp. This is the
1938 English edition (translated from the 1936 Russian edition)
with a new introduction by Morgulis, and republished by Dover
in 1953. On 61, half of a paragraph followed by a paragraph:
Unquestionably, a factory could never originate through
some natural phenomenon and independently of man,
simply because every factory is constructed in accordance
with some set, previously worked out plan. Everything in
the factory, beginning with the erection of the building and
machinery down to the arrangement of different sections,
has been calculated by the engineer with a view to fulfill
definite and foreseen aims. The natural elements could not
accomplish such human objectives or fulfill a previously
laid-down plan.
It is inconceivable that such a preconceived plan of
protoplasmic structure could exist unless one assumes a
creative divine will and a plan of creation. But a definite
protoplasmic organization and fitness of its inner structure
to carry out definite functions could easily be formed in the
course of [the] evolution of organic matter just as highly
organized animals and plants have come from the simplest
living things by a process of evolution. Later we shall
attempt to trace this evolution and to picture the gradual
formation of living things from non-living matter. In this
evolution more and more complex phenomena of a higher
order became super-imposed upon the simplest physical
and chemical processes; new properties developed
ultimately resulting in the emergence of systems which are
already subject to biological laws.
===================================================.
HALDANE
1940 Haldane on materialism
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=s0c890946imhfig6q7uq1cid7hhj68ppbs%404ax.com
Haldane, J.B.S. 1940. _Adventures of a Biologist_ (New
York: Harper & Brothers Publishers), 281pp. From the
chapter "Unsolved Problems of Science: 4. Can We Make
Life?" a paragraph on 25:
The fossil record is like the third volume of a Victorian
novel. We know a lot about the recent adventures of our
hero, Life, but we do not know where or when he was
born. Many people are content to give up the quest, and
to say that the origin of life is a mystery beyond the
range of science. This may prove to be true. Some
scientists think so. But others are not so modest. They
say that if life once originated from dead matter it ought
to be possible to repeat the conditions, and make life in
the laboratory. If they fail, that will be a triumph for
believers in tradition. It will show that some things are
beyond human power. But they must be allowed
another hundred years or so of attempts before they are
adjudged as failures. Men had tried to fly for several
centuries before the Wright brothers succeeded. And
making life will be a harder task than flying, because the
machinery of a living thing is on a scale too small to be
seen even with a microscope.
===================================================.
spontaneous generation
summary of portion of 1954 George Wald article on spontaneous generation
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=Pine.LNX.4.44L.01.0310021326030.23080-100000%40linux3.gl.umbc.edu
spontaneous generation
Shapley, Harlow. 1958. _A Stars and Men: Human Response to an
Expanding Universe_, 157.
Compare
1985 A.G. Cairns-Smith: "The early fifties were a high point of optimism."
1985 A.G. Cairns-Smith, 1986 Andrew Scott, 1999 Freeman Dyson
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=dford3-33bltcF3rgbovU1%40individual.net
===================================================.
SIMPSON
materialism
Simpson, George Gaylord. 1978. _Concession to the Improbable: An
Unconventional Autobiography_, 28-29, 30.
materialism
1949 Simpson: "man is the result of a purposeless materialistic process
that did not have him in mind":
Simpson, George Gaylord. 1949. _The Meaning of
Evolution: A Study of the History of Life and of Its
Significance for Man_ (New Haven: Yale University Press),
364pp., from the chapter "Epilogue and Summary" on 344:
Man is the result of a purposeless materialistic process
that did not have him in mind. He was not planned. He
is a state of matter, a form of life, a sort of animal, and a
species of the Order Primates, akin nearly or remotely to
all of life and indeed to all that is material.
On 343:
Although many details remain to be worked out, it is
already evident that all the objective phenomena of the
history of life can be explained by purely materialistic
factors.
spontaneous generation
Simpson, George Gaylord. 1949. _The Meaning of Evolution: A Study of
the History of Life and of Its Significance for Man_ (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press), 364pp. On 340:
Studies on other bases demonstrate not only the possibility but
also the probability that life arose from the inorganic
spontaneously, that is, without supernatural intervention and by
the operation of material processes, themselves of unknown origin,
sometime during the first half billion years or so of the earth's
existence in about its presence condition.
spontaneous generation
Simpson, George Gaylord. 1960. "The World into Which Darwin Led Us"
_Science_ 131: 966-74. On 969:
The consensus is that life did arise naturally from the nonliving
and that even the first living things were not specially created.
The conclusion has, indeed, really become inescapable, for the
first steps in that process have already been repeated in several
laboratories. There is concerted study from geochemical,
biochemical, and microbiological approaches. At a recent meeting
in Chicago, a highly distinguished international panel of experts
was polled. All considered the experimental production of life in
the laboratory imminent....
spontaneous generation
Simpson, George Gaylord. 1964. "The Nonprevalence of Humanoids"
_Science_ 143: 769-75. On 771:
There are wide differences of opinion as to the particular course
followed [in the origin of life], but here again there is near
unanimity on the essential points. Virtually all biochemists agree
that life on earth arose spontaneously from nonliving matter and
that it would almost inevitably arise on sufficiently similar young
planets elsewhere. That confidence is based on chemical
experience.
blindwatchmaking
Simpson, George Gaylord. 1964. _This View of Life: The World of an
Evolutionist_ (NY: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.), 308pp. On 26, 40:
SUPPOSE that the most fundamental and general principle of a
science had been known for over a century and had long since become
a main basis for understanding and research by scientists in that
field. You would surely assume that the principle would be taken
as a matter of course by everyone with even a nodding acquaintance
with the science. It would obviously be taught everywhere as basic
to the science at any level of education. If you think that about
biology, however, you are wrong. Evolution is such a principle in
biology. Although almost everyone has heard of it, most Americans
have only the scantest and most distorted idea of its real nature
and significance. I know of no poll, but I suspect that a majority
doubt, disbelieve, or violently oppose its clear truth without a
hearing and on no basis more rational than prejudice, dogma, or
superstition. Many school and not a few college teachers either
share that irrationality or evade teaching the truth of evolution
from other motives. .... Evolution underlies every aspect of
biology and is one form of explanation for every biological fact,
from protein synthesis to, say, zoogeography. ...._all_ the facts
of biology are evidence of evolution....
===================================================.
DOBZHANSKY
blindwatchmaking
Dobzhansky, Theodosius. 1967. _The Biology of Ultimate
Concern_ (USA: The New American Library), 152pp. From
the last chapter, a paragraph on 120:
If evolution follows a path which is predestined
(orthogenesis), or if it is propelled and guided toward
some goal by divine interventions (finalism), then its
meaning becomes a tantalizing, and even distressing,
puzzle. If the universe was designed to advance toward
some state of absolute beauty and goodness, the design
was incredibly faulty. Why, indeed, should many
billions of years be needed to achieve the
consummation? The universe could have been created
in the state of perfection. Why so many false starts,
extinctions, disasters, misery, anguish, and finally the
greatest of evils-- death? The God of love and mercy
could not have planned all this. Any doctrine which
regards evolution as predetermined or guided collides
head-on with the ineluctable fact of the existence of evil.
blindwatchmaking
Dobzhansky, Theodosius. March 1973. "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense
Except in the Light of Evolution" _American Biology Teacher_, 125-9. On
129:
Evolution as a process that has always gone on in the history of
the earth can be doubted only by those who are ignorant of the
evidence or are resistant to evidence, owing to emotional blocks or
to plain bigotry.
===================================================.
FUTUYMA
materialism, blindwatchmaking
Futuyma, Douglas J. 1979. _Evolutionary Biology_ (MA: Sinauer
Associates, Inc.), 565pp. On 9-10, the first paragraph of the
section "The Impact of Darwinism":
The Darwinian view that evolution not only had occurred,
but was caused by the impersonal process of natural
selection met strong opposition in both scientific and
nonscientific circles, because of its perceived threat to
theological doctrine and to the unique position in nature
that humans would like to arrogate to themselves. The
view offered by Darwin-- of a purposeless universe in
which life changes, to no ultimate purpose, by the survival
of the fittest of random variations; a material world from
which we have arisen and with which we are one; a
universe that does not care about us and is not going to
save us from our follies-- such a vision is far less
reassuring and less flattering to the ego than the notion of a
world created to serve us, the apples of God's eye. It is a
view distasteful not only to the theologically inclined, but
to the literary tradition that opposes materialism with more
transcendent values (see, e.g., Barzun 1958). Seldom are
the positive implications of Darwinism acknowledged: that
it forces us to view ourselves not as prisoners of a static
world order, but as the masters of our fate; that our
salvation lies not in Providence, but in ourselves.
materialism
For a Futuyma comment linking materialism with Freud's psychologising,
Darwin's theory of evolution, and Marx's materialism, see
Futuyma, Douglas J. 1986. _Evolutionary Biology: Second Edition_
(Massachusetts: Sinauer Associates, Inc.), 600pp., 2.
===================================================.
STEBBINS
blindwatchmaking
1982 Stebbins: "evolution [i.e. blindwatchmaking] was opportunistic and
devoid of purpose"
Stebbins, G. Ledyard. 1982. _Darwin to DNA, Molecules to
Humanity_ (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman and Company),
491pp., 4:
The evolutionist's [i.e. blindwatchmakingist's] answer is
that all these millions of different kinds of organisms
evolved [i.e. blindwatchmaked] from common ancestors
during the thousands of millions of years since the first
appearance of life. Their evolution [i.e.
blindwatchmaking] was opportunistic and devoid of
purpose.
===================================================.
blindwatchmaking
1982 Francois Jacob: "The importance of Darwin's solution was to
explain by the selection of already formed structures something that
very much looks like instruction."
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=dford3-320ufsF3grelkU1%40individual.net
materialism, spontaneous generation
Cairns-Smith, A.G. 1985. _Seven Clues to the Origin of
Life: A Scientific Detective Story_ (Great Britain:
Cambridge University Press), 131pp., ix, 2, 6, 7, 8.
materialism, spontaneous generation
Shapiro, Robert. 1986. _Origins: A Skeptic's Guide to the Creation of
Life on Earth_, 118-119, 130.
===================================================.
DAWKINS
spontaneous generation
Dawkins, Richard. 1987. _The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of
Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design_. On 147, 166, from the
chapter "Origins and Miracles":
The basic idea of _The Blind Watchmaker_ is that we don't need to
postulate a designer in order to understand life, or anything else
in the universe. .... The present lack of a definitely accepted
account of the origin of life should certainly not be taken as a
stumbling block for the whole Darwinian world view, as it
occasionally-- probably with wishful thinking-- is.
blindwatchmaking
1987 Dawkins: "the whole _point_ of the theory of evolution by natural
selection was that it provided a _non_-miraculous account of the
existence of complex adaptations"
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=b1c67abe.0407280430.4459fca3%40posting.google.com
blindwatchmaking
Dawkins vs. an atheist philosopher
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=dford3-b1c67abe.0411180756.6c069f04%40posting.google.com
===================================================.
blindwatchmaking
1988 Crick: "Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see
was not designed, but rather evolved."
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=b1c67abe.0407251846.6acacaef%40posting.google.com
===================================================.
E.O. WILSON
materialism
Wilson, Edward O. 1994. _Naturalist_, 43-44, 45.
materialism, blindwatchmaking
1997 Edward O. Wilson: "scientific materialism explains vastly more of
the tangible world.... Its discoveries suggest that, like it or not, we
are alone. We must measure and judge ourselves, and we will decide our
own destiny.":
Wilson, Edward O. Winter 1997. In "Why I am a secular
humanist" _Free Inquiry_ v18 n1 p18(5). Reprinted at
http://www.world-of-dawkins.com/Dawkins/Work/Interviews/1997-winterhumanist.shtml
_Free Inquiry_ describes Wilson as "Emeritus Professor of
Entomology at Harvard University and author of numerous
widely acclaimed books including _Sociobiology_." The entire
Wilson section:
I was raised a Southern Baptist in a religious environment
that favored a literal interpretation of the Bible. But it
happened that I also became fascinated by natural history
at an early age, and, as a biology concentrator at the
University of Alabama, discovered evolution. All that I
had learned of the living world to that point fell into place
in a wholly new and intellectually compelling way. It was
apparent to me that life is connected not by supernatural
design but by kinship, with species having multiplied out
of other species to create, over hundreds of millions of
years, the great panoply of biodiversity around us today. If
a Divine Creator put it all here several thousand years ago,
he also salted Earth from pole to pole with falsified
massive, interlocking evidence to make scientists believe
life evolved autonomously. I realized that something was
terribly wrong in this dissonance. The God depicted in
Holy Scripture is variously benevolent, didactic, loving,
angry, and vengeful, but never tricky.
As time passed, I learned that scientific materialism
explains vastly more of the tangible world, physical and
biological, in precise and useful detail, than the Iron-Age
theology and mysticism bequeathed us by the modern great
religions ever dreamed. It offers an epic view of the origin
and meaning of humanity far greater, and I believe more
noble, than conceived by all the prophets of old combined.
Its discoveries suggest that, like it or not, we are alone. We
must measure and judge ourselves, and we will decide our
own destiny.
Why then, am I a humanist? Let me give the answer in
terms of Blaise Pascal's Wager. The seventeenth-century
French philosopher said, in effect, live well but accept
religious faith. "If I lost," he wrote. "I would have lost
little: If I won I would have gained eternal life." Given
what we now know of the real world, I would turn the
Wager around as follows: if fear and hope and reason
dictate that you must accept the faith, do so, but treat this
world as if there is none other.
===================================================.
blindwatchmaking
1995 Christian de Duve: "Foresight Excluded"
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=dford3-325tvsF3i3t01U1%40individual.net
materialism
Lewontin, Richard. 9 January 1997. "Billions and Billions of Demons"
_NY Times Book Reviews_. At
http://www.csus.edu/indiv/m/mayesgr/Lewontin1.htm
A paragraph:
Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are
against common sense is the key to an understanding of
the real struggle between science and the supernatural.
We take the side of science _in spite_ of the patent
absurdity of some of its constructs, _in spite_ of its
failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of
health and life, _in spite_ of the tolerance of the
scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories,
because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to
materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions
of science somehow compel us to accept a material
explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the
contrary, that we are forced by our _a priori_ adherence
to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation
and a set of concepts that produce material explanations,
no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that
materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine
Foot in the door. The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck
used to say that anyone who could believe in God could
believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is
to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature
may be ruptured, that miracles may happen.
blindwatchmaking
Williams, George C. 1997. _The Pony Fish's Glow: And
Other Clues to Plan and Purpose in Nature_, 152-3.
blindwatchmaking
1997 Robert Dorit
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=dford3-b1c67abe.0411180714.f671793%40posting.google.com
===================================================.
GOULD
blindwatchmaking
Gould, Stephen Jay. 2001. Introduction to Carl Zimmer's
_Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea_ (Japan: HarperCollins
Publishers), 364pp. Two paragraphs on xi:
No scientific revolution can match Darwin's discovery
in degree of upset to our previous comforts and
certainties. In the only conceivable challenge,
Copernicus and Galileo moved our cosmic location from
the center of the universe to a small and peripheral body
circling a central sun. But this cosmic reorganization
only fractured our concept of real estate; Darwinian
evolution, on the other (and deeper) hand,
revolutionized our view of our own meaning and
essence (insofar as science can address such questions at
all): Who are we? How did we get here? How are we
related to other creatures, and in what manner?
Evolution substituted a naturalistic explanation of cold
comfort for our former conviction that a benevolent
deity fashioned us directly in his own image, to have
dominion over the entire earth and all other creatures--
and that all but the first five days of earthly history have
been graced by our ruling presence. In evolutionary
terms, however, humans represent but one tiny twig on
an enormous and luxuriantly branching tree of life, with
all twigs interconnected by descent, and the entire tree
growing (so far as science can tell) by a natural and
lawlike process. Moreover, the unique and minuscule
twig of Homo sapiens emerged in a geological
yesterday, and has flourished for only an eyeblink of
cosmic immensity (about 100,000 years for our species
and only 6-8 million years for our entire lineage since
our branchlet split from the node of our closest living
relative, the chimpanzee. By contrast, the oldest
bacterial fossils on Earth arose 3,600 million years ago).
Gould here alleges
1) [Gould]"Darwin's discovery" of [Gould]"Darwinian evolution
....substituted a naturalistic explanation of cold comfort for our
former conviction that a benevolent deity fashioned us directly in his
own image," and
2) common descent proceeds [Gould]"(so far as science can tell) by a
natural and lawlike process."
Was the basis of/ the grounds for these Gould allegations Gould's
commitment to materialism-- a commitment he acquired as a young boy
while imbibing Marxism from his father?
Was the basis of/ the grounds for these Gould allegations Gould's
acquired knowledge about biology and paleontology?
If "yes," what data from biology and paleontology supports the Gould
allegations?
blindwatchmaking
Gould, Stephen Jay. May 1981. "Evolution as Fact and Theory"
_Discover_, 34-7. Also appears in Gould's _Hen's Teeth and Horse's
Toes_ (1983). On 35:
....human beings evolved from apelike ancestors whether they did so
by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other, yet to be
discovered.
A spontaneous generation Gould.
===================================================.
blindwatchmaking
1997 Graham Bell
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=dford3-b1c67abe.0411251458.7eded865%40posting.google.com
===================================================.
SAGAN
blindwatchmaking
Sagan, Carl. 1996. _The Demon-Haunted World: Science
as a Candle in the Dark_ (New York: Random House), 327.
Cited in Phillip E. Johnson, _Defeating Darwinism by
Opening Minds_ (Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1997), 131pp.,
47.
I meet many people who are offended by evolution, who
passionately prefer to be the personal handicraft of God
than to arise by blind physical and chemical forces over
aeons from slime. They also tend to be less than
assiduous in exposing themselves to the evidence.
Evidence has little to do with it. What they wish to be
true, they believe is true. Only nine percent of
Americans accept the central finding of modern biology
that human beings (and all the other species) have
slowly evolved by natural processes from a succession
of more ancient beings with no divine intervention
needed along the way.
materialism, spontaneous generation
Sagan, Carl. 1980. _Cosmos_ (NY: Random House), 365pp. Chapter 1's
first line, and material on 30-31:
THE COSMOS IS ALL THAT IS OR EVER WAS OR EVER WILL BE. .... The
first living things were not anything so complex as a one-celled
organism, already a highly sophisticated form of life. The first
stirrings were much more humble. In those early days, lightning
and ultraviolet light from the Sun were breaking apart the simple
hydrogen-rich molecules of the primitive atmosphere, the fragments
spontaneously recombining into more and more complex molecules.
The products of this early chemistry were dissolved in the oceans,
forming a kind of organic soup of gradually increasing complexity,
until one day, quite by accident, a molecule arose that was able to
make crude copies of itself, using as building blocks other
molecules in the soup.
===================================================.
blindwatchmaking
2004. Goodsell, David S. 2004. _Bionanotechnology_, 10.
===================================================.
Mainly anti-materialism remarks from creationists
Johnson, Phillip E. 1997. _Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds_ (IL:
InterVarsity Press), 131pp. On 114:
The beginning of the end will come when Darwinists are forced to
face this one simple question: _What should we do if empirical
evidence and materialist philosophy are going in different
directions?_
Koster: scientific atheism is an idea whose time is gone
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=b1c67abe.0406212033.90a39c1%40posting.google.com
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=b1c67abe.0406230445.7cff0545%40posting.google.com
Ludwig, Mark A. 1993. _Computer Viruses, Artificial Life and
Evolution_, 303: "The scientist who buys into
materialistic naturalism has decided that there are no
supernatural phenomena. He has closed a door that science by
itself cannot close. Then he usually turns around and calls that
decision 'scientific' as if to give it respectability. This is
the height of arrogance."
Which if any of the [Willard]"glittering personalities" quoted above do
you consider "philosophically aggressive scientists"?
I maintain that the materialism/materialistic worldview had by many of
the above individuals played a large role in how they went about
interpreting the biological world.
I don't maintain that the philosophy of materialism adopted by many of
the above individuals has been adopted by all biologists, or all
paleontologists, or all chemists, or all physicists, or all
cosmologists, or all geologists.
Willard, Dallas (a creationist). 2000. Foreword to Phillip E.
Johnson's _The Wedge of Truth: Splitting the Foundations of
Naturalism_ (Illinois: InterVarsity Press), 191pp. Paragraphs on
9-10:
Reason is the human ability to determine what is real or not
real by _thinking_. Just as, centuries ago, the honest
thinker had to be willing to follow the inquiry even if it led
to a godless universe, so today the honest thinker has to be
willing to follow the inquiry even if it leads to a
God-governed universe. This latter possibility today
causes those who think they are in charge of what is only
reasonable and right to become impatient and imperious.
They cannot afford to be wrong about the godlessness of
reality, for now our whole system of education is based on
that assumption, just as some while ago it was based on the
assumption of God.
And so, as Phillip Johnson so beautifully explains and
illustrates, reason is replaced by rationalization.
Rationalization is the use of reasoning to make sure that
one comes out at the right place. Not long ago the
dominant ideal within intellectual circles was to judge the
conclusion by the method through which it was derived. If
the method was good, you were required to accept the
conclusion, at least provisionally. Now, sadly, the method
is judged by whether it brings you out at the "right"
conclusion, as determined by institutional consensus
congealed around glittering personalities. If you don't
come to the "right" conclusion, your method is wrong, and
you are probably a bad person. Derisive terminology will
be used to describe you.
This is of course very old stuff in human history, but it is
always difficult to recognize it for what it is.
Contemporary certainties never look like rationalizations,
or they would not be contemporary certainties. The
character of rationalization is hidden beneath the cloak of
benign authority.
In our case today, the authority is science. _Science_, we
are told, says this or that. We had better believe it.
Unfortunately, science says nothing. It is not the kind of
thing that can say anything. Only scientists say things, and
scientists can be remarkably unscientific and are often
remarkably wrong-- as subsequent events frequently show.
In addition, many who would speak for science are not
scientists or have no qualifications in the area of their
claims. But if they can assume an aura of "the scientific"
in some way, they will be able to rationalize at will and
gain a hearing for it.
Klinghoffer's "Worshipers At The Secular Altar"
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=dford3-b1c67abe.0410120549.37264dde%40posting.google.com
Chris H
> Draft 1.
>
> The philosophy of materialism holds that all is material-- only material
> things exist: there is no immaterial
OK, hands up who read beyoind this point.
[snip]
--
C.
Jez
--
Jez
'Realism is seductive because once you have accepted the reasonable
notion that you should base your actions on reality, you are too often
led to accept, without much questioning, someone else's version of what
that reality is. It is a crucial act of independent thinking to be
skeptical of someone else's description of reality.'-
Howard Zinn
NFS Underground2, Americas Army And MOH-PA
yahoo ID: hellward2004
Dan Luke
"Chris H" wrote:
>> The philosophy of materialism holds that all is material-- only
>> material
>> things exist: there is no immaterial
>
> OK, hands up who read beyoind this point.
Well, shucks, I gotta admit I read this far:
"An adherent of materialism thinks that the first biological lifeform
arose via non-intelligence-directed-..."
...before I bailed out.
--
Dan
"These are exciting times for the Iraqi people!"
- George W. Bush
Bob
<dfo...@gl.umbc.edu> wrote:
>Draft 1.
>
>The philosophy of materialism holds that all is material-- only material
>things exist: there is no immaterial God or gods, no spirits, no souls,
>no angels, no devil, no demons.
>
>Nothing that could be interpreted as an instance of spontaneous
>generation has been observed in biologists' and chemists' laboratory
>experiments, for life has not been observed arising from non-life.
>
>Question: Upon what basis/grounds does a materialist think that
>spontaneous generation occurred?
more ridiculous questions from ford, who USED to ask quite good ones.
first, what NATURAL process in nature has EVER had a NON natural
cause? can ford name any? a single one? from ANY physical science?
nope.
point 2: supernaturalism USED to be 'science'. demons caused disease.
evil spells caused misfortune.
these explanations ALWAYS failed. no demons have ever been observed.
point 3: if supernaturalism is a force in the world, HOW does it work?
how does the NON natural cause NATURAL events to happen?
does ford have an answer?
nope.
>
>I submit that materialists accept the hypothesis of spontaneous
>generation because their philosophy of materialism dictates that life
>_must_ have been the result of spontaneous generation. \\
i submit that ford never read history. i submit that ford does not
know that supernaturalism was a trap that western civilization escaped
from. ford wishes to drag us back 500 years.
>
>The pronounced absence of confirmatory laboratory experiment results for
>100+ years doesn't shake the faith of the materialist\
god of the gaps. this is a cliched argument that is so common it
actually has a name.
to creationists, any unknown concept is answered by 'god did it'.
and god keeps getting smaller every year as the frontiers of knowledge
get pushed back.
and that's one reason why creationists want supernaturalism seen as
science. because they're unhappy that theology is not the answer to
all questions as it used to be.
, because he or she
>"knows" that somehow, some way, life "must have" originated from
>non-life totally apart from the input of any mind/intelligence
>whatsoever. This absence of confirmatory lab experiment results hasn't
>stopped materialists from professing their devotion to the hypothesis of
>spontaneous generation.
hey dave. 100 years ago...did relativity effect exist even though we
couldnt measure them in the lab?
dave seems to think the lab is a god. if the 'lab' cant create it,
then it doesnt exist.
again, more god of the gaps.
>>_A priori_ acceptance of the faith of materialism is the basis/grounds
>for acceptance of spontaneous generation (and blindwatchmaking). It is
>not the case that observations of and experiments in biology, chemistry,
>physics, and paleontology provide solid grounds/reasons for adopting
>materialism.
why not? again, what NON material causes have EVER been seen in ANY Of
these sciences? can dave name a SINGLE one? even ONE instance would
cause the failure of materialism.
>
>materialism, spontaneous generation, blindwatchmaking
>1962 Oparin:
a reference 45 years old...
>On 5, the last two paragraphs of the section "The Conflict
>Between Idealism and Materialism as to the Essential Nature
>of Life":
> Materialists approach the problem of the essence of life
> from a diametrically opposite viewpoint. Basing their
> arguments on the facts obtained by science they assert that
> life, like all the rest of the world, is material and does not
> require for its understanding the acceptance of a spiritual
> origin
again, how does the spiritual work? dave hinges his argument entirely
on the fact that we do not know yet how life started naturally.
so how did it start SUPERNATURALLY?
dave has a double standard. HE doesnt have to explain ANYTHING while
scientists have to explain EVERYTHING.
>On 300:
> Pierre Bayle not only prepared the reception of
> materialism and the philosophy of common sense in
> France by shattering metaphysics with his skepticism.
> He heralded atheistic society, which was soon to
> come to existence, by proving that a society consisting
> only of atheists is possible, that an atheist can be a
> respectable man, and that it is not by atheism but by
> superstition and idolatry that man debases himself.
ford confuses an ATHEISTIC society with a SECULAR society. the former
says there is no god. the latter upholds freedom of religion.
dave, apparently, is a theocrat, arguing for a christian version of
sharia here in the states.
typical creationist.
>HAECKEL
>
>spontaneous generation
>Haeckel, Ernst (1834-1919). 1868. _The History of Creation_, 348-9.
>Cited in Michael Ruse, "The Origin of Life: Philosophical Perspectives"
>_Journal of Theoretical Biology_ 187: 473-82 (1997):
> If we do not accept the hypothesis of spontaneous generation, then
> at this one point of the history of development we must have
> recourse to the miracle of a _super-natural creation_. The Creator
> must have created a first organism, or a few first organisms, from
> which all others are derived, and as such he must have created the
> simplest Monera, or primaeval cytods, and given them the capability
> of developing further in a mechanical way. I leave it to each one
> of my readers to choose between this idea and the hypothesis of
> spontaneous generation. To me the idea that the Creator should
> have in this one point arbitrarily interfered with the regular
> process of development of matter, which in all other cases proceeds
> entirely without his interposition, seems to be just as
> unsatisfactory to a believing mind as to a scientific
> intellect.
here dave is arguing, indirectly, that the bible is not true.
god is either a lawgiver, or he is not. he can not be both
the bible says that he is a lawful god, creating an orderly universe
which operates according to natural law.
creationists say that's not true. creationists say that no natural
forces were involved in the origin of species. thus they say god is
not a lawful god.
if creationism is true, the bible is false.
dave used to have a 'creative' imagination. no more. even his
intellect has been dampened by the heavy, dead hand of religious
fanaticism.
his argument hinges entirely on god of the gaps theology.
he's a failure.
---------------------------
to see who "wf3h" is, go to "qrz.com"
and enter 'wf3h' in the field
Daniel T.
> Nothing that could be interpreted as an instance of spontaneous
> generation has been observed in biologists' and chemists' laboratory
> experiments, for life has not been observed arising from non-life.
What is life? Define it, what isn't alive? You see, when you look
closely, you can't really draw the line between life and non-life, you
can't categorically classify everything into only one of the two groups.
There are grey areas. So, how can there be an instance of spontaneous
generation of life from non-life if, at the border, the two states
cannot be discerned?
The same question holds for speculation. We can look at two different
species (for e.g. the red squirrel and the grey squirrel) and know they
are different species. Yet when we compare a chihuahua to a Mastiff, we
insist they are the same species. If species breaks are so definite, and
it is impossible to morph from one to the other, then why is it so hard
to tell them apart?
Ike
"david ford" <dfo...@gl.umbc.edu> wrote in message
news:dford3-348j...@individual.net...
> Draft 1.
>
> The philosophy of materialism holds that all is material-- only material
> things exist: there is no immaterial God or gods, no spirits, no souls,
> no angels, no devil, no demons. Materialism claims that matter was in
> existence before mind/intelligence originated, in humans. An adherent
> of materialism thinks that the first biological lifeform arose via
> non-intelligence-directed-at-any-level, totally-mindless processes from
> non-living matter ("spontaneous generation"). A materialist does not
> think that God made physics, and made physics such that physics would
> give rise to life.
Of course if there is no God or Gods, then God didn't make anything.
>
> Nothing that could be interpreted as an instance of spontaneous
> generation has been observed in biologists' and chemists' laboratory
> experiments, for life has not been observed arising from non-life.
>
Explain the difference between life and non-life in 26 words or more.
> Question: Upon what basis/grounds does a materialist think that
> spontaneous generation occurred?
>
Which materialist thinks that and why?
> I submit that materialists accept the hypothesis of spontaneous
> generation because their philosophy of materialism dictates that life
> _must_ have been the result of spontaneous generation. (A materialist
> would, of course, like to have the option of saying that life is an
> infinite number of years old, but since it is now known that our
> universe began to exist in the Big Bang, that means life inside the
> universe consequently must have begun to exist. This is the case even
> if you believe in an infinite-number of universes.)
>
An an infinite number of "straw-men".
> The pronounced absence of confirmatory laboratory experiment results for
> 100+ years doesn't shake the faith of the materialist, because he or she
> "knows" that somehow, some way, life "must have" originated from
> non-life totally apart from the input of any mind/intelligence
> whatsoever. This absence of confirmatory lab experiment results hasn't
> stopped materialists from professing their devotion to the hypothesis of
> spontaneous generation.
>
Then he is saying that materialism is some sort of faith. Just like 100+
years of non-evidence of Creation haven't changed his mind. Psychological
Projection.
> Below appears a timeline of some professions of faith in the discredited
> hypothesis of spontaneous generation, professions of faith in the
> philosophy of materialism, and professions of faith in the hypothesis
> that all biology is the end result of processes that are
> totally-mindless/blind/unintelligent at-every-level--
> "blindwatchmaking." (A detailed explication of the concept of
> "blindwatchmaking" is at
>
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=b1c67abe.0401101006.38dc8f17%40posting.google.com
Sorry I haven't time to surf over to your links.
Well, so long. Have a nice future.
--
The argument that everything had a Creator because it's too complicated, is
about as reasonable as saying that it couldn't have been created since it's
too complicated.
It's about like saying that a super flea created a dog. Then
the good fleas go to a great dog in the sky, while the bad unbelieving fleas
are scratched off into a super rug to be forever hungry. If you think dogs
weren't created by a Great Flea then you are an afleaist.
Ian H Spedding
news:dford3-348j...@individual.net...
[...]
> I submit that materialists accept the hypothesis of spontaneous
> generation because their philosophy of materialism dictates that
life
> _must_ have been the result of spontaneous generation. (A
materialist
> would, of course, like to have the option of saying that life is an
> infinite number of years old, but since it is now known that our
> universe began to exist in the Big Bang, that means life inside the
> universe consequently must have begun to exist. This is the case
even
> if you believe in an infinite-number of universes.)
There are two possibilities being proposed here: first, that life
arose spontaneously from inanimate origins and second, that life was
created by a supernatural agent usually referred to as a god. If
there is no god - and there is even less evidence for one than there
is for the "spontaneous generation" of life - then we are left with
natural causes which are, as yet, unknown. However, the fact that
they have yet to be discovered does not mean that they do not exist -
absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
> The pronounced absence of confirmatory laboratory experiment results
for
> 100+ years doesn't shake the faith of the materialist, because he or
she
> "knows" that somehow, some way, life "must have" originated from
> non-life totally apart from the input of any mind/intelligence
> whatsoever. This absence of confirmatory lab experiment results
hasn't
> stopped materialists from professing their devotion to the
hypothesis of
> spontaneous generation.
Guided by the principle of Ockham's Razor, science first investigates
the proposal that invokes the fewest unknown entities. In other
words, the proposal which you call "spontaneous generation" and
science calls abiogenesis assumes that life arose in the universe from
natural causes. It does not invoke the additional "entity" of a god
to account for life. Only if all possibilities of a natural origin
for life have been ruled out should we consider supernatural causes -
although they are, by definition, beyond the reach of science.
Even if we allow that science has been actively investigating the
possibility of abiogenesis for 100+ years, the universe has had around
14 billion years to generate life. We are, therefore, far from being
able to exclude all possible natural causes simply because a small
number of laboratory experiments have failed.
There is another point to consider. The universe as a whole appears
to be governed by a relatively small number of simple "laws". If the
enormous complexity of the observable universe has emerged from the
operation of these "laws" over billions of years, why shouldn't life
also have emerged from the operation of simple rules applied over a
very long time?
What you call "materialism" is not faith in the sense of being
unevidenced belief but an inference derived from observations of
natural causation in the Universe and the absence of any evidence for
supernatural causes.
Ian
--
Ian H Spedding
Ian H Spedding
news:41df190d$0$23058$5a6a...@news.aaisp.net.uk...
I got a *little* further before my eyes sort of glazed over...
Mark K. Bilbo
lept out of the bushes shouting:
You mean there are still people who read Ford?
I mean, without losing consciousness for a week?
--
Mark K. Bilbo - a.a. #1423
EAC Department of Linguistic Subversion
Alt-atheism website at: http://www.alt-atheism.org
-----------------------------------------------------------
"Religion is regarded by the common people as true,
by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful."
-- Seneca the Younger
Ron Baker, Pluralitas!
>
> The philosophy of materialism holds that all is material-- only material
> things exist: there is no immaterial God or gods, no spirits, no souls,
> no angels, no devil, no demons. Materialism claims that matter was in
> existence before mind/intelligence originated, in humans. An adherent
> of materialism thinks that the first biological lifeform arose via
> non-intelligence-directed-at-any-level, totally-mindless processes from
> non-living matter ("spontaneous generation"). A materialist does not
> think that God made physics, and made physics such that physics would
> give rise to life.
>
> Nothing that could be interpreted as an instance of spontaneous
> generation has been observed in biologists' and chemists' laboratory
> experiments, for life has not been observed arising from non-life.
>
> Question: Upon what basis/grounds does a materialist think that
> spontaneous generation occurred?
No other explanation fits the evidence as well.
>
> I submit that materialists accept the hypothesis of spontaneous
> generation because their philosophy of materialism dictates that life
> _must_ have been the result of spontaneous generation. (A materialist
> would, of course, like to have the option of saying that life is an
> infinite number of years old, but since it is now known that our
> universe began to exist in the Big Bang, that means life inside the
> universe consequently must have begun to exist. This is the case even
> if you believe in an infinite-number of universes.)
>
> The pronounced absence of confirmatory laboratory experiment results for
> 100+ years doesn't shake the faith of the materialist, because he or she
> "knows" that somehow, some way, life "must have" originated from
> non-life totally apart from the input of any mind/intelligence
> whatsoever. This absence of confirmatory lab experiment results hasn't
> stopped materialists from professing their devotion to the hypothesis of
> spontaneous generation.
>
Wow Dave, you actually spoke for yourself above.
(But then dumped another load of raw quote ore below.)
Say Dave, what can we tell about the designer(s) from his(their)
design? From the design of physics and life what can we
tell about the designer(s)? (I'll use the plural because you
have implied that the designers are a group.)
Do they have hands? How big are they? What structure
do they have?
What was their purpose in designing? What did they intend
to achieve?
Where did they come from?
Where are they now?
> Below appears a timeline of some professions of faith in the discredited
> hypothesis of spontaneous generation, professions of faith in the
<snip tons of raw quote ore.>
--
rb #2187
Double Felix
"Mark K. Bilbo" <alt-a...@org.webmaster> wrote:
> In our last episode <41df190d$0$23058$5a6a...@news.aaisp.net.uk>, Chris H
> lept out of the bushes shouting:
>
> > david ford wrote:
> >> Draft 1.
> >>
> >> The philosophy of materialism holds that all is material-- only material
> >> things exist: there is no immaterial
> >
> > OK, hands up who read beyoind this point.
> >
> > [snip]
>
> You mean there are still people who read Ford?
>
> I mean, without losing consciousness for a week?
[jolts awake] Ah, so that's what happened to me...
I think the last time I tried following a [df] thread, it went something
like this:
[df] "There's no proof for (a). What proof do evolutionists offer?"
[xy] "Well, there's (b) and (c)."
[df] "What is [xy](b)? What does [xy](c) mean?"
[xy] "Do your own research. (b) and (c) are well-established by (d)."
[df] "Where does (d) support [xy](b) or [xy](c)?"
[xy] "You haven't read (d), have you? Just read it and you'll see."
[df] "(quote e, quote f, quote g)"
[df] "What about (e)? That doesn't support [xy](b) or [xy](c)."
[xy] "Who said anything about (e)? We're discussing (a)."
[df] "What is [xy](e)?"
[xy] "Oh, sod off."
It took a week for me just to discover nothing was being discussed.
- Felix
Christopher A. Lee
What bugs me is that the morons can't grasp the difference between
consequential materialism and a priori philosophical materialism.
The imagine everybody needs an -ism and invent one to attack them for
having it.
>Ian
tinyurl.com/uh3t
> Nothing that could be interpreted as an instance of spontaneous
> generation has been observed in biologists' and chemists' laboratory
> experiments, for life has not been observed arising from non-life.
The Miller-Urey experiment showed the very first step of what could be
abiogenesis. It took only a few days to convert several percent of all
the carbon to amino acids. It might have taken tens of millions of
years from that stage of abiogenesis to the first of anything we'd
easily recognize as life. So the lack of the complete process being
observed already in our brief experiments over the past 50 years is not
any reason to believe the long process couldn't have occurred.
Compare that to observing a pregnant woman for a fraction of a second,
not seeing the whole nine-month process of pregnancy and birth
occurring, and concluding anything about pregnancy and birth being
impossible?
Meanwhile we have some viable speculations about how the whole process
could possibly have occurred, and some solid research work to back up
some of the speculations. But if you expect to see the whole process to
occur in the lab, you may need to wait a few tens of millions of years.
It's too early for you to complain about lack of complete results
so-far.
> Upon what basis/grounds does a materialist think that spontaneous
> generation occurred?
By that term do you specifically mean something that goes all the way
from inorganic chemistry to cellular life in less than a week? Or do
you allow for tens of millions of years of intermediate forms from
simple chemical replicators through colonies of such to the first truly
genomic replication and finally something like a cell with a DNA
genome? If the former, you're attacking a strawman. If the latter, we
have natural history showing for the past 3500 million years there has
been biological evolution, without any apparent input ffrom any
supernatural being. It makes more sense that it all started naturally,
than that it started supernaturally then somehow the supernatural power
stopped working. But there's not yet enough basis for a firm decision
as to what to believe. So I regard the abiogenesis hypothesis as worth
investigating, not as something for-sure. So it's not that I think it
definitely occurred, but that I think it probably occurred. So would
you classify me as only a semi-materialist?
> The pronounced absence of confirmatory laboratory experiment results
> for 100+ years
Well it's only about 50 years since Miller/Urey did the first actual
experiment appropriate to this discussion. And their results were
confirmatory of the first big step, from inorganic chemicals (some
containing carbon, but no carbon-carbon bonds, specifically no carbon
chains or rings of the types typical in organic chemicals) to organic
chemicals (amino acids etc. containing lots of carbon-carbon bonds).
Although that doesn't confirm the whole process, it does confirm the
first big step, so I'd regard it as confirmatory.
> ... hasn't stopped materialists from professing their devotion to the
> hypothesis of spontaneous generation.
AFAIK that s.g. term is hardly ever used in regard to abiogenesis,
because it tends to refer to the whole process in one step from
inorganic chemicals to animals crawling out of the experiment which is
not the current idea. Do you have any reason to use that term now?
> repeated failures to observe life coming from non-life in 100+ years'
> worth of experiments provides evidence _against_ materialism.
No it doesn't. It merely shows that abiogenesis doesn't happen all the
way from inorganic chemistry to recognizable life during the very brief
course of a single experiment (a few weeks?). So it's only evidence
against your strawman.
> Nobody knows _how_ life could have come from non-life via
> non-intelligence-directed processes,
A few months ago I speculated about how the first successful chemical
replicator could have formed. Basically, some high-energy source (UV
radiation, undersea geothermal vents, heat from crashed
asteroids/comets) broke apart molecules, those chemical fragments
started chemical cascades, and among those cascades were catalytic
chains of various lengths, whereby eventually one of the chains got
long enough to chance upon exhausting the various kinds of catalysts
thereby duplicating a kind that was already earlier in the chain
thereby forming a catalytic-kind loop. Do you accept that *could* have
happened, or do you claim it was completely impossible?
> the essential nature of life
is replication with fecundity greater than one.
Replication means usurpting non-selflike chemicals from the environment
and converting them to be selflike, thereby increasing the total amount
of selflike chemicals.
Fecundity means the expected/average number of copies of selflike
chemicals that are made before the original self is decoposed.
All evidence to date shows that the ability of DNA to replicate, by
means of the replicatase which is encoded by the DNA itself, is a
purely natural chemical process not requiring any supernatural power to
make it work. The DNA polymerase chain reaction has been used in the
laborary to make many copies of DNA so that statistical chemical
methods can then be used to analyze it, including reading out the exact
sequence of DNA in a few dozen species. There has been no evidence
whatsoever that any supernatural power was required to make the chain
reaction work correctly.
http://www.accessexcellence.org/RC/AB/IE/PCR_Xeroxing_DNA.html
Mark K. Bilbo
Felix lept out of the bushes shouting:
I tried reading along a couple of Ford threads once.
The doctors are still trying to get the vertigo under control...
John Wilkins
To read a ford post, you have to have prophylactic emetics, visual
inhibition and some serious sophorifics.
--
John S. Wilkins jo...@wilkins.id.au
web: www.wilkins.id.au blog: evolvethought.blogspot.com
Barfed, blinded and blanked
Earle Jones
john...@wilkins.id.au (John Wilkins) wrote:
> To read a ford post, you have to have prophylactic emetics, visual
> inhibition and some serious sophorifics.
> --
> John S. Wilkins
*
Those are the kind used by sophomores.
earle
*
Walter Bushell
<earle.jones-C635...@comcast.dca.giganews.com>,
Earle Jones <earle...@comcast.net> wrote:
s/sophomores/sophomorons/
--
Guns don't kill people; automobiles kill people.
Double Felix
Walter Bushell <pr...@panix.com> wrote:
> In article
> <earle.jones-C635...@comcast.dca.giganews.com>,
> Earle Jones <earle...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
> > In article <1gq4muz.d5sy5o2jo9ogN%john...@wilkins.id.au>,
> > john...@wilkins.id.au (John Wilkins) wrote:
> >
> > > To read a ford post, you have to have prophylactic emetics, visual
> > > inhibition and some serious sophorifics.
> > > --
> > > John S. Wilkins
> >
> > *
> > Those are the kind used by sophomores.
> >
> > earle
> > *
>
> s/sophomores/sophomorons/
s/sophorifics/sophist-moron-horrific
- Felix
maff
david ford wrote:
> Draft 1.
>
A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom
http://www.santafe.edu/~shalizi/White/
_The Creationists_ by Ronald L. Numbers
"The best young-earthers can do in response to this book is to call the
author an "apostate" (just see their materials, full of name-calling
and the like). Do most Christians realize that young-earthism traces
its history to cults like Seventh-day Adventists and New Age beliefs
(i.e., no death of life before adam)? Let's rid YEC psuedoscience from
Christianity."
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0520083938/
_Science and Earth History : The Evolution/Creation Controversy_ by
Arthur N. Strahler
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0879754141/
_Scientists Confront Creationism_ by Laurie R. Godfrey (Editor)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0393301540/
_God's Own Scientists : Creationists in a Secular World_ by Christopher
P. Toumey
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0813520444/
_Summer for the Gods : The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate
over Science and Religion_ by Edward J. Larson (Preface)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0674854292/
_Fundamentalism and American Culture_ by George M. Marsden
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0195030834/
_Creationist Movement in Modern America (Social Movements Past and
Present Series)_ by Raymond A. Eve, Francis B. Harrold
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0805797416/
_Tower of Babel : The Evidence Against the New Creationism_ by Robert
T. Pennock
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/026216180X/
_Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common Ground Between
God and Evolution_ by Kenneth R. Miller
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0060175931/
Edwards v. Aguillard: U.S. Supreme Court Decision
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/edwards-v-aguillard.html
Read the U.S. Supreme Court decision dealing with creationism in public
school science classrooms. The majority opinions and the dissenting
opinion by Justice Scalia are provided along with the amicus curiae
brief filed by 72 Nobel Prize winning scientists.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/edwards-v-aguillard/amicus1.html
Biological evolution is a change in the genetic characteristics of a
population over time. That this happens is a fact. Biological evolution
also refers to the common descent of living organisms from shared
ancestors. The evidence for historical evolution -- genetic, fossil,
anatomical, etc. -- is so overwhelming that it is also considered a
fact. The theory of evolution describes the mechanisms that cause
evolution. So evolution is both a fact and a theory. See the Evolution
is a Fact and a Theory FAQ, the
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolution-fact.html
Introduction to Evolutionary Biology FAQ
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-intro-to-biology.html
and the Five Major Misconceptions about Evolution FAQ.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-misconceptions.html#proof
Science in Simple Steps
http://forums.about.com/ab-atheism2/messages?msg=91.4 -
"What Is This Thing Called Science? : An Assessment of the Nature and
Status of Science and Its Methods" by A. F. Chalmers - Paperback -
288 pages 3rd edition (July 1999) Open Univ Pr; ISBN: 0335201091
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0335201091/
"Science is the true theology" -- Thomas Paine
(as quoted in Emerson: The Mind on Fire page 153)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0520206894/
Talk Origins Archive FAQ
http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-qa.html
Suspicious Creationist Credentials FAQ
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/credentials.html
Talk.Origins Archive's Creationism FAQs
http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-creationists.html
Creationism and Pseudo Science
http://members.home.net/fsteiger/creation.htm
IS CREATIONISM FOR REAL?
http://www.enconnect.net/rjtolle/
Greene's Creationism Truth Filter
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Thebes/7755/
Glenn Morton's Creation/Evolution Page
http://home.entouch.net/dmd/dmd.htm
Many people of Christian and other faiths accept evolution as the
scientific explanation for biodiversity. See the God and Evolution FAQ
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-god.html
and the Interpretations of Genesis FAQ.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/interpretations.html
Statements from Educational Organizations
http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/articles/9438_statements_from_educational_o_8_8_2003.asp
Statements from Religious Organizations
http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/articles/5025_statements_from_religious_orga_12_19_2002.asp
Table Of Contents:
American Jewish Congress
American Scientific Affiliation
Center For Theology And The Natural Sciences
Central Conference Of American Rabbis
Episcopal Bishop Of Atlanta, Pastoral Letter
General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) (2002) *
The General Convention Of The Episcopal Church
Lexington Alliance Of Religious Leaders
The Lutheran World Federation
Roman Catholic Church (1981)
Roman Catholic Church (1996) *
Unitarian Universalist Association (1977)
Unitarian Universalist Association (1982)
United Church Board For Homeland Ministries
United Methodist Church
United Presbyterian Church In The U.S.A. (1982)
United Presbyterian Church In The U.S.A. (1983)
Statements from Scientific and Scholarly Organizations
http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/articles/344_statements_from_scientific_an_12_19_2002.asp
"Often a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens,
and the other parts of the world, about the motions and orbits of the
stars and even their sizes and distances,... and this knowledge he
holds with certainty from reason and experience. It is thus offensive
and disgraceful for an unbeliever to hear a Christian talk nonsense
about such things, claiming that what he is saying is based in
Scripture. We should do all that we can to avoid such an embarrassing
situation, lest the unbeliever see only ignorance in the Christian and
laugh to scorn."
-- St. Augustine, "De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim"
(The Literal Meaning of Genesis)
Ian H Spedding
news:dford3-348j...@individual.net...
[...]
> I submit that materialists accept the hypothesis of spontaneous
> generation because their philosophy of materialism dictates that
life
> _must_ have been the result of spontaneous generation. (A
materialist
> would, of course, like to have the option of saying that life is an
> infinite number of years old, but since it is now known that our
> universe began to exist in the Big Bang, that means life inside the
> universe consequently must have begun to exist. This is the case
even
> if you believe in an infinite-number of universes.)
There are two possibilities being proposed here: first, that life
arose spontaneously from inanimate origins and second, that life was
created by a supernatural agent usually referred to as a god. If
there is no god - and there is even less evidence for one than there
is for the "spontaneous generation" of life - then we are left with
natural causes which are, as yet, unknown. However, the fact that
they have yet to be discovered does not mean that they do not exist -
absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
> The pronounced absence of confirmatory laboratory experiment results
for
> 100+ years doesn't shake the faith of the materialist, because he or
she
> "knows" that somehow, some way, life "must have" originated from
> non-life totally apart from the input of any mind/intelligence
> whatsoever. This absence of confirmatory lab experiment results
hasn't
> stopped materialists from professing their devotion to the
hypothesis of
> spontaneous generation.
Guided by the principle of Ockham's Razor, science first investigates
the proposal that invokes the fewest unknown entities. In other
words, the proposal which you call "spontaneous generation" and
science calls abiogenesis assumes that life arose in the universe from
natural causes. It does not invoke the additional "entity" of a god
to account for life. Only if all possibilities of a natural origin
for life have been ruled out should we consider supernatural causes -
although they are, by definition, beyond the reach of science.
Even if we allow that science has been actively investigating the
possibility of abiogenesis for 100+ years, the universe has had around
14 billion years to generate life. We are, therefore, far from being
able to exclude all possible natural causes simply because a small
number of laboratory experiments have failed.
There is another point to consider. The universe as a whole appears
to be governed by a relatively small number of simple "laws". If the
enormous complexity of the observable universe has emerged from the
operation of these "laws" over billions of years, why shouldn't life
also have emerged from the operation of simple rules applied over a
very long time?
What you call "materialism" is not faith in the sense of being
unevidenced belief but an inference derived from observations of
natural causation in the Universe and the absence of any evidence for
supernatural causes.
Ian
--
Ian H Spedding
Ian H Spedding
news:41df190d$0$23058$5a6a...@news.aaisp.net.uk...
>
I got a *little* further before my eyes sort of glazed over...
Ian
--
Ian H Spedding
John Wilkins
> david ford wrote:
> > Draft 1.
> >
> [...]
>
> A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom
> http://www.santafe.edu/~shalizi/White/
A terrible bit of historical chicanery with no real regard either for
historical context or a desire to find out what really happened. The
relation between religion and science is way mor einteresting that this
piece of tripe.
<snip otherwise useful regurgipost>
--
John S. Wilkins jo...@wilkins.id.au
web: www.wilkins.id.au blog: evolvethought.blogspot.com
God cheats
TomS
<1gq598h.1mkhfrqcmrou5N%john...@wilkins.id.au>, John Wilkins stated..."
>
>maff <maf...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> david ford wrote:
>> > Draft 1.
>> >
>> [...]
>>
>> A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom
>> http://www.santafe.edu/~shalizi/White/
>
>A terrible bit of historical chicanery with no real regard either for
>historical context or a desire to find out what really happened. The
>relation between religion and science is way mor einteresting that this
>piece of tripe.
>
><snip otherwise useful regurgipost>
>
I recommend that White's book be placed on Mark Isaak's list.
Along with John William Draper: A History of the Conflict between
Religion and Science.
--
---Tom S. <http://talkreason.org/articles/chickegg.cfm>
"If intelligent design is creation theory, it's creation theory through a P.C.
filter. It's like teaching that babies are delivered either by storks or ladies,
while swapping out the word 'stork' for 'some bird' just to make it sound
objective." <http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/morris/041130>
Robin Levett
> maff <maf...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> david ford wrote:
>> > Draft 1.
>> >
>> [...]
>>
>> A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom
>> http://www.santafe.edu/~shalizi/White/
>
> A terrible bit of historical chicanery with no real regard either for
> historical context or a desire to find out what really happened. The
> relation between religion and science is way mor einteresting that this
> piece of tripe.
>
> <snip otherwise useful regurgipost>
>
I'm currently reading "The Hedgehog, the Fox and the Magister's Pox";
judging by the title of White's book, HFMP would be a useful antidote to
it.
--
Robin Levett
rle...@rlevett.ibmuklunix.net (unmunge by removing big blue - don't yahoo)
Mark K. Bilbo
Wilkins lept out of the bushes shouting:
I thought Ford posts *were serious soporifics. I know I had to quit trying
to read Ford threads because of the "missing time" incidents...
Walter Bushell
Mark K. Bilbo
Walter Bushell lept out of the bushes shouting:
Oooo. That actually physically *hurt...
Lt. Kizhe Catson
[snippabunch]
> To read a ford post, you have to have prophylactic emetics, visual
> inhibition and some serious sophorifics.
I can't tell if that's an accidental typo, or a deliberate word-play.
The obvious reconstruction would be "soporific". However, I suppose a
"sophorific" might be a prophylactic medication taken to preserver one's
higher brain functions against exposure to an environment of
elaborately-constructed obfuscation, confusion, and misunderstanding.
-- Kizhe
John Wilkins
Which is cleverer? It's that one.
--
John S. Wilkins jo...@wilkins.id.au
web: www.wilkins.id.au blog: evolvethought.blogspot.com
I need sleep. Really I do.
John Stockwell
put forth by good Christians, deriving the idea from the
"...let the Earth bring for life..." statement of Genesis.
>Draft 1.
>
>The philosophy of materialism holds that all is material-- only material
>things exist: there is no immaterial God or gods, no spirits, no souls,
>no angels, no devil, no demons. Materialism claims that matter was in
>existence before mind/intelligence originated, in humans. An adherent
>of materialism thinks that the first biological lifeform arose via
>non-intelligence-directed-at-any-level, totally-mindless processes from
>non-living matter ("spontaneous generation"). A materialist does not
>think that God made physics, and made physics such that physics would
>give rise to life.
>
>Nothing that could be interpreted as an instance of spontaneous
>generation has been observed in biologists' and chemists' laboratory
>experiments, for life has not been observed arising from non-life.
>
>Question: Upon what basis/grounds does a materialist think that
>spontaneous generation occurred?
>
>I submit that materialists accept the hypothesis of spontaneous
>generation because their philosophy of materialism dictates that life
>_must_ have been the result of spontaneous generation. (A materialist
>would, of course, like to have the option of saying that life is an
>infinite number of years old, but since it is now known that our
>universe began to exist in the Big Bang, that means life inside the
>universe consequently must have begun to exist. This is the case even
>if you believe in an infinite-number of universes.)
>
>The pronounced absence of confirmatory laboratory experiment results for
>100+ years doesn't shake the faith of the materialist, because he or she
>"knows" that somehow, some way, life "must have" originated from
>non-life totally apart from the input of any mind/intelligence
>whatsoever. This absence of confirmatory lab experiment results hasn't
>stopped materialists from professing their devotion to the hypothesis of
>spontaneous generation.
>
>Below appears a timeline of some professions of faith in the discredited
>hypothesis of spontaneous generation, professions of faith in the
>philosophy of materialism, and professions of faith in the hypothesis
>that all biology is the end result of processes that are
>totally-mindless/blind/unintelligent at-every-level--
>"blindwatchmaking." (A detailed explication of the concept of
>"blindwatchmaking" is at
>http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=b1c67abe.0401101006.38dc8f17%40posting.google.com
>
>_A priori_ acceptance of the faith of materialism is the basis/grounds
>for acceptance of spontaneous generation (and blindwatchmaking). It is
>not the case that observations of and experiments in biology, chemistry,
>physics, and paleontology provide solid grounds/reasons for adopting
>materialism. Materialists allege that materialism is supported by the
>observations made by biologists and paleontologists, however that
>allegation is erroneous. Moreover, repeated failures to observe life
>coming from non-life in 100+ years' worth of experiments provides
>evidence _against_ materialism. For some doses of reality regarding
>spontaneous generation, see
>http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=dford3-33arf3F3vjdggU1%40individual.net
>1985 A.G. Cairns-Smith, 1986 Andrew Scott, 1999 Freeman Dyson
>http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=dford3-33bltcF3rgbovU1%40individual.net
>
>Timeline of Materialism, Spontaneous Generation, and Blindwatchmaking Views
>
>Question: Nobody knows _how_ life could have come from non-life via
>non-intelligence-directed processes, and nobody has seen it or something
>remotely like it happen, yet Haeckel, Goodrich, J.S. Huxley, Simpson,
>Sagan, and Dawkins "know" that life came from non-life. What exactly
>leads these guys to this "knowledge"?
>How do materialists "know" that the first biological lifeform arose
>totally apart from any involvement of any mind/intelligence? Is it from
>the data and observations obtained by biologists, chemists, and
>physicists? Or is these materialists' belief in spontaneous generation
>a deduction from their philosophy of materialism?
>
>materialism, spontaneous generation, blindwatchmaking
>1962 Oparin: "embittered war which has been waged between the two
>irreconcilable philosophic camps of idealism and materialism"
>Oparin, A. I. 1962. _Life: Its Nature, Origin and
>Development_ (New York: Academic Press Inc., Publishers),
>translated from the Russian by Ann Synge, 207pp. From the
>section "The Conflict Between Idealism and Materialism as to
>the Essential Nature of Life," the opening paragraph and a
>sentence on 4:
> From the earliest times, even until the present day, this
> problem of the essential nature of life has always been a
> battle-field in the embittered war which has been waged
> between the two irreconcilable philosophic camps of
> idealism and materialism.
> The representatives of the idealist camp see, as the essence
> of life, some sort of eternal supramaterial origin which is
> inaccessible to experiment.
>On 5, the last two paragraphs of the section "The Conflict
>Between Idealism and Materialism as to the Essential Nature
>of Life":
> Materialists approach the problem of the essence of life
> from a diametrically opposite viewpoint. Basing their
> arguments on the facts obtained by science they assert that
> life, like all the rest of the world, is material and does not
> require for its understanding the acceptance of a spiritual
> origin which is not amenable to experimental study. On
> the contrary, objective study of the world around us is, for
> the materialist, not only a hopeful way of leading us to an
> understanding of the very essence of life, but it also
> enables us to alter living nature purposefully in a way
> favourable to mankind.
>
> Wide circles of biological scientists, either consciously or
> intuitively, base their investigations on a materialistic
> concept of living nature and, in following this line, they
> are always enriching the science of life by their work and
> bringing us closer to an understanding of the essence of life.
>
>On 36-37, the last four paragraphs of the chapter:
> It is now becoming more and more obvious that a
> knowledge of the essential nature of life is only possible
> through a knowledge of its origin. Now, too, this origin no
> longer seems so puzzling as it did not long ago. We are
> sketching out in more and more detail the actual ways in
> which life arose on the Earth. It could only have happened
> as an integral part of the general historic development of
> our planet. The facts at our disposal indicate that the origin
> of life was a gradual process in which organic substances
> became more and more complicated and formed complete
> systems which were in a state of continual interaction with
> the medium surrounding them.
>
> Following the path of the emergence of life in this way we
> encounter neither the 'almighty hand of the Creator' nor
> machines which made their appearance at a far later stage
> in the development of matter. We do, however, discover in
> this way how and why it is that the particular original
> systems which existed were transformed, in the process of
> evolution, into those which are characteristic of life instead
> of into others and how, in that same process of the
> establishment of life, there arose new biological laws
> which had not existed before, and also how the
> 'purposiveness' which we notice in all living things came
> into being.
>
> In this way our knowledge gives us a real understanding of
> the essential organisation of the most primitive forms of
> life and, on that basis, we can easily follow the further
> evolution of these forms by applying the precepts of
> evolutionary theory. We can trace the formation of new
> features characteristic of highly organised living beings,
> including man, who is the culmination of the biological
> stage of the development of matter.
>
> Thus we arrive at the main idea underlying this book which
> had already been formulated by Heraclitus of Ephesus and
> was included in the works of Aristotle:-- "One can only
> understand the essence of things when one knows their
> origin and development."
>
>materialism
>Sagan, Carl. 1980. _Cosmos_ (NY: Random House), 365pp. Chapter
>1's first line:
> THE COSMOS IS ALL THAT IS OR EVER WAS OR EVER WILL BE.
>Compare
>Revelation 1: 8 (The Message): "The Master declares, 'I'm A to Z. I'm
>THE GOD WHO IS, THE GOD WHO WAS, AND THE GOD ABOUT TO ARRIVE. I'm the
>Sovereign-Strong.'"
>http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=revelation%201;&version=65;
>Revelation 1: 8 (King James Version): "I am Alpha and Omega, the
>beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and
>which is to come, the Almighty."
>http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=revelation%201;&version=9;
>See also Revelation 1: 4.
>
>materialism
>Epicurus (341-270 BC). In Forrest E. Baird, ed., _Ancient
>Philosophy_ (NJ: Prentice Hall, 1997), 558pp., 455:
> The first principle is that nothing can be created from the
> non-existent.... Truly this universe has always been such
> as it now is, and so shall always be; for there is nothing
> into which it can change, and there is nothing outside the
> universe that can enter into it and bring about a change.
> ....there is nothing that we can grasp in the mind, either
> through concepts or through analogy with concepts, that has
> real existence and is not referred to merely as a property
> or an accident of material things or of the void [the
> void/space being what matter exists in and moves through].
>
>materialism
>Lucretius (ca. 99-55 B.C.)
>
>===================================================.
>MARXISM
>
>materialism
>Marx, Karl. _The Essential Marx: The Non-Economic
>Writings-- A Selection_, edited, with new translations, by
>Saul K. Padover (New York: New American Library,
>1978), 438pp., 300-301, which in turn came from Marx's
>_The Holy Family_, with Engels (1845, Moscow 1956),
>167-177. On 301:
> Since only what is material is perceptible, knowable,
> nothing is known of the existence of God. .... Man
> is subject to the same laws as nature; might and
> freedom are identical.
>On 300:
> Pierre Bayle not only prepared the reception of
> materialism and the philosophy of common sense in
> France by shattering metaphysics with his skepticism.
> He heralded atheistic society, which was soon to
> come to existence, by proving that a society consisting
> only of atheists is possible, that an atheist can be a
> respectable man, and that it is not by atheism but by
> superstition and idolatry that man debases himself.
>
>_Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism: Manual_ Date unknown,
>probably very early 1960s. (Moscow: Foreign Languages
>Publishing House), 890pp., translated from the Russian, edited
>by Clemens Dutt. On 27, the first four paragraphs of the section
>"Materialism-- A Progressive Philosophy":
> Unlike spontaneous or naive materialism, philosophical
> materialism _scientifically_ substantiates, elaborates and
> consistently applies materialist conceptions based on the
> findings of progressive science and social practice.
>
> Materialist philosophy is an effective weapon against the
> pernicious influence of spiritual reaction. It provides a
> guide throughout life, showing the correct way of solving
> the philosophical problems that agitate men's minds.
>
> For centuries the Church has tried to instil contempt for
> earthly life and fear of God. It taught people, and above all
> the mass of oppressed humanity, that their destiny was to
> toil and pray, that happiness was unattainable in this "vale
> of tears," that it could be achieved only in the next world,
> as the reward for obedience and meekness. The Church
> threatened with the wrath of God and torment in hell those
> who dared rise against the divinely established rule of the
> exploiters.
>
> The great historic service rendered by materialist
> philosophy is that it helped man to break free of all
> superstitions. Ever since ancient times it has taught him
> not to fear death, not to fear gods and other supernatural
> forces.
>
>Stephen Jay Gould, John Maynard Smith, J.B.S. Haldane, and Richard
>Lewontin were Marxists; 2004 R.J. Rummel's "The killing machine that is
>Marxism"
>http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=dford3-32gfjsF3l6o15U1%40individual.net
>H.J. Mueller was a communist [Shapiro, 141, Poundstone, 18]
>Oparin was a Marxist [Shapiro, 148-9]
>
>spontaneous generation
>Merridale, Catherine. 2000. _Night of Stone: Death and
>Memory in Twentieth-Century Russia_ (USA: Viking), 402pp.
>A paragraph on 89:
> The most important spur to atheism, however, was
> probably the power of science. In that respect, there was a
> link, in terms of inspiration, between the radicalism of
> unbelief and Marxism, with its faith in progress and its
> "science" of dialectical materialism. Kanatchikov, for
> instance, remembered his conversion from religion in terms
> of his friend Savinov's demonstration of "scientific"
> creation. The atheist worker suggested that anyone who
> was skeptical of Darwinian theory, who insisted on
> adhering to the church and Genesis, should collect some
> earth in a box. "You'll see that without fail worms or little
> insects will begin to appear," he continued. "And in the
> course of four, five, or maybe even ten thousand years,
> man himself will emerge." Kanatchikov was so impressed
> with this idea that he used it later when he became a
> propagandist, calling it "one of the most convincing
> arguments in my debates."^50
>
>===================================================.
>T.H. HUXLEY
>
>materialism, blindwatchmaking
>1860 T.H. Huxley on knowing "all the consequences to which all possible
>combinations, continued through unlimited time, can give rise"
>http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=b1c67abe.0402142040.31d13e07%40posting.google.com
>
>spontaneous generation
>Huxley, T.H. "philosophical faith" 256-257.
>
>===================================================.
>WEISMANN
>
>blindwatchmaking: last paragraph
>Weismann, August. July-Dec 1893. "The All-Sufficiency of Natural
>Selection" _The Contemporary Review_, 309-338. Weismann is replying
>to Herbert Spencer's "The Inadequacy of Natural Selection" _The
>Contemporary Review_ (Feb-March 1893). Spencer rejected the Darwinian
>mechanism and was a Lamarckian, while Weismann accepted the theory of
>NS. Four paragraphs on 311-13, the end of a paragraph on 327, and the
>next paragraph:
> The following is a summary of Herbert Spencer's argument: If a
> transmission of acquired characters does not occur, then all
> enduring variations must rest on natural selection; but again,
> most, if not all useful variations of any one part must be
> connected with variations of other parts, if they are to be in
> any degree effective; and often these co-operative changes are so
> numerous that it is difficult to understand how all, at one time
> and independently, should possibly arise through spontaneous
> variations and natural selection. We cannot believe, on the
> other hand, that all vary together; that, for instance, the
> enlargement of the antlers of the stag is always necessarily
> connected with a thickening of the skull and a strengthening of
> the neck ligament and the muscles of the neck and back; for we
> know numerous examples which prove that co-operating parts
> undergo quite distinct, even opposing, variations. How, if it
> were otherwise, could the great differences between the fore and
> bind feet of the kangaroo appear; or how could the powerful
> nippers of the common lobster arise on the pair of limbs that in
> the rock lobster bear simple little claws; and so on? One must
>
> then, Mr. Spencer thinks, believe that the co-operative parts
> vary independently of one another. But if this be assumed, then
> the process of change becomes not only protracted and complicated
> to an unlimited degree, but simply impossible; for how should all
> the co-operating parts offer at the same time suitable variations
> to be preserved by natural selection? Yet the enlargement of the
> antlers, for instance, requires a simultaneous strengthening of
> the ligament and the muscles that support the more heavily
> burdened head; even the processes of the dorsal vertebrae must
> vary in conformity with the increase; and so must the bones,
> muscles, ligaments, nerves, and vessels of all these parts, and
> of the whole anterior extremity. Can these hundreds of
> individual parts be supposed, independently of one another and
> simultaneously, to be modified in due proportion, and preserved
> by, natural selection? But if they do not vary _simultaneously_
> then the variation of individual parts is of no avail; a
> strengthening of the muscles and ligaments of the neck, without
> an increase of the antlers avails nothing, and an increase of the
> antlers unaccompanied by a strengthening of the ligaments,
> muscles, &c., would be dangerous and highly disadvantageous.
>
> There is thus no apparent alternative but to believe with Mr.
> Spencer that functional variations are transmitted, and that in
> this way all co-operative parts remain in harmony; _i.e._, the
> variation of _one_ part,-- as, for instance, the antlers-- is
> always accompanied by an exactly proportionate variation of the
> others, so far as is beneficial for the general efficiency of the
> parts. If this be so, belief in the transmission of acquired
> characters is unavoidable; and Herbert Spencer is so thoroughly
> convinced of the strength of his argument that he goes the length
> of saying: "Either there has been inheritance of acquired
> characters, or there has been no evolution."
>
> I am of a different opinion. Since I expressed the belief ten
> years ago, that functional variations (acquired characters) could
> not be transmitted, I have not ceased to test that view, and
> whenever I have been able to get a more thorough understanding of
> the facts, I have found it confirmed. But I freely grant that
> Mr. Spencer's objection is a tempting one; and I should not be
> surprised if many who read his essay, and are familiar with the
> enormous difficulties, which, according to his view, stand in the
> way of an explanation of the facts in question through natural
> selection, should be carried away by the strength of his skilful
> representation, and hold the _easier_ explanation of the facts--
> by the inheritance of acquired characters-- to be the _correct_
> one.
>
> I hope to show, however, that it _cannot_ be the correct one, and
> that we must, here, as in the case of the degeneration of disused
> parts, set aside the apparently simple and almost matter-of-
> course explanation, and seek another.
>
> .... As soon as an attempt is made to think out in detail the
> process of selection by which, perhaps, the little bristles or
> the small baskets of the worker-bees have arisen, it is seen that
> all and every one of the data are wanting. Moreover, in my
> opinion we cannot hope that we shall ever possess them, either in
> these cases or in any yet simpler process of natural selection.
> Not only would it be necessary to form an estimate of the
> smallest variations, so as to know whether and how often among
> 1000, 100,000, or millions of individuals there is a variation
> which gives verdict over life and death: but much more that we
> can never determine is required; for instance, the number of
> individuals of a species living at one time, the degree of their
> mingling with one another in their own domain, and the percentage
> [of] occurrence of the variation in question. All which, I am
> convinced, cannot be ascertained; and so we shall never be able
> to establish by observation the progress of natural selection.
>
> What is it then that nevertheless makes us believe in this
> progress as actual, and leads us to ascribe such extraordinary
> importance to it? Nothing but the power of logic; we must assume
> natural selection to be the principle of explanation of the
> metamorphoses, because all other apparent principles of
> explanation fail us, and it is inconceivable that there could be
> yet another capable of explaining the adaptations of organisms,
> _without assuming the help of a principle of design_. In other
> words, _it is the only conceivable natural explanation of
> organisms regarded as adaptations to conditions_.
>
>===================================================.
>HAECKEL
>
>spontaneous generation
>Haeckel, Ernst (1834-1919). 1868. _The History of Creation_, 348-9.
>Cited in Michael Ruse, "The Origin of Life: Philosophical Perspectives"
>_Journal of Theoretical Biology_ 187: 473-82 (1997):
> If we do not accept the hypothesis of spontaneous generation, then
> at this one point of the history of development we must have
> recourse to the miracle of a _super-natural creation_. The Creator
> must have created a first organism, or a few first organisms, from
> which all others are derived, and as such he must have created the
> simplest Monera, or primaeval cytods, and given them the capability
> of developing further in a mechanical way. I leave it to each one
> of my readers to choose between this idea and the hypothesis of
> spontaneous generation. To me the idea that the Creator should
> have in this one point arbitrarily interfered with the regular
> process of development of matter, which in all other cases proceeds
> entirely without his interposition, seems to be just as
> unsatisfactory to a believing mind as to a scientific
> intellect.
>
>spontaneous generation
>Haeckel, Ernst. 1900. _The Riddle of the Universe: At the Close of the
>Nineteenth Century_, translated by Joseph McCabe. (NY: Harper & Brothers
>Publishers), 391pp. On 257-8:
> I restrict the idea of spontaneous generation-- also called
> abiogenesis or archigony-- to the first development of living
> protoplasm out of inorganic carbonates.... Naegeli has also
> treated the hypothesis in quite the same sense in his
> mechanico-physiological theory of descent (1884), and has
> represented it to be an indispensable thesis in any natural theory
> of evolution. I entirely agree with his assertion that "to reject
> abiogenesis is to admit a miracle."
>
>materialism, blindwatchmaking
>1900 Haeckel ("the law of the persistence of matter and force; that law
>knows nothing of a beginning"), and 1987 Dawkins reject the position
>that intelligent design is responsible for common descent
>http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=b1c67abe.0401311740.48df353%40posting.google.com
>
>===================================================.
>MATERIALISM'S ASCENDANCY AMONG BIOLOGISTS, SOCIETY AT LARGE
>
>materialism
>Jammer 25, Weikart 11 and 12, Goldschmidt (1956), 34, Ingersoll in Edwords.
>
>materialism, spontaneous generation
>Prenant, Marcel. 1938. _Biology and Marxism_, 53, 80, 150-152.
>
>materialism
>Hayes, Carlton J. H. 1941. _A Generation of Materialism: 1871-1900_, 115.
>
>Barzun, Jacques. 1941. _Darwin, Marx, Wagner: Critique of a Heritage_
>(Boston: Little, Brown and Company), 420pp.
>
>===================================================.
>
>materialism, blindwatchmaking, spontaneous generation
>Loeb, Jacques. 1912. _The Mechanistic Conception of Life: Biological
>Essays_, 3, 5-6, 26, 30-31.
>
>materialism
>Delage, Yves and Marie Goldsmith. 1913. _The Theories of Evolution_,
>345-346, 351-2.
>
>blindwatchmaking
>Bateson, William. 1922. "Evolutionary Faith and Modern Doubts"
>_Science_ 55: 55-61. The last paragraph:
> I have put before you very frankly the considerations which have
> made us agnostic as to the actual mode and processes of evolution.
> When such confessions are made the enemies of science see their
> chance. If we cannot declare here and now how species arose, they
> will obligingly offer us the solutions with which obscurantism is
> satisfied. Let us then proclaim in precise and unmistakable
> language that our faith in evolution is unshaken. Every available
> line of argument converges on this inevitable conclusion. The
> obscurantist has nothing to suggest which is worth a moment's
> attention. The difficulties which weigh upon the professional
> biologist need not trouble the layman. Our doubts are not as to
> the reality or truth of evolution, but as to the origin of
> _species_, a technical, almost domestic, problem. Any day that
> mystery may be solved. The discoveries of the last twenty-five
> years enable us for the first time to discuss these questions
> intelligently and on a basis of fact. That synthesis will follow
> on an analysis, we do not and cannot doubt.
>
>spontaneous generation
>Goodrich, Edwin S. 1924. _Living Organisms: An Account of Their Origin
>& Evolution_ (England: Oxford University Press), 200pp. Goodrich was
>Fellow of Merton College and Linacre Professor of Zoology and
>Comparative Anatomy in the University of Oxford, and a fellow of the
>Royal Society. On 23-4, 25:
> So far as we know, living organisms at the present day do not
> develop spontaneously, but are all derived from pre-existing
> organisms. We must, however, suppose that at some period in the
> earth's history, when conditions were favourable and perhaps very
> different from those of the present time, living protoplasm made a
> first appearance. Possibly these conditions will never be
> repeated, either in nature or in the laboratory, and the first
> stages in the evolution of life may never be discovered. .... For
> many reasons it seems probable that life originated in the sea;
> protoplasm contains the same salts of calcium sodium and potassium
> as sea-water, and in much the same proportions.
>
>blindwatchmaking
>Osborn, Henry Fairfield. 1925. _The Origin and Evolution
>of Life_ (New York: Scribner's). According to the
>creationist Phillip Johnson, Osborn was "head of the
>American Museum of Natural History at the time of the
>[1925] Scopes trial, [and] was the leading public antagonist
>of William Jennings Bryan, although he did not go to Dayton
>for the trial. Osborn was a fervent supporter of the
>discredited Nebraska Man and Piltdown Man fossils as
>proofs of evolution." See Phillip E. Johnson, _Defeating
>Darwinism By Opening Minds_ (Illinois: InterVarsity Press),
>131pp, 121. This quotation from ix-x of Osborn's book
>comes from Johnson, 121-122:
> In contrast to the unity of opinion on the _law_ of
> evolution is the wide diversity of opinion on the
> _causes_ of evolution. In fact, the causes of the
> evolution of life are as mysterious as the law of
> evolution is certain. Some contend that we already
> know the chief causes of evolution, others contend that
> we know little or nothing of them. In this open court of
>
> conjecture, of hypothesis, of more or less heated
> controversy, the great names of Lamarck, of Darwin, of
> Weismann figure prominently as leaders of different
> schools of opinion; while there are others, like myself,
> who for various reasons belong to no school, and are as
> agnostic about Lamarckism as they are about Darwinism
> or Weismannism, or the more recent forms of
> Darwinism, termed Mutation by de Vries. In truth, from
> the period of the earliest stages of Greek thought man
> has been eager to discover some natural cause of
> evolution, and to abandon the idea of supernatural
> intervention in the order of nature. Between the
> appearance of _The Origin of Species_, in 1859, and the
> present time there have been great waves of faith in one
> explanation and then in another: each of these waves of
> confidence has ended in disappointment, until finally we
> have reached a stage of very general skepticism.
>
>blindwatchmaking
>Watson, D. M. S. 1929. "Adaptation" _Nature_ 124:231-4. Article was
>first presented in Johannesburg in a presidential address to Section D
>(Zoology) of the British Association[?]; Watson was a professor and
>F.R.S. From 233, a paragraph: "The extreme difficulty
>of obtaining the necessary data for any quantitative estimation
>of the efficiency of natural selection makes it seem probable
>that this theory will be re-established, if it be so, by the
>collapse of alternative explanations which are more easily
>attacked by observation and experiment. If so, it will present a
>parallel to the theory of evolution itself, a theory universally
>accepted not because it can be proved by logically coherent
>evidence to be true but because the only alternative, special
>creation, is clearly incredible."
>
>For historical context, see
>historical background to rise and fall of the Synthetic Euphoria; 1936
>A. Franklin Shull
>http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=b1c67abe.0403271329.1e569adf%40posting.google.com
>[rework URLs within]
>
>===================================================.
>JULIAN HUXLEY & H.G. WELLS
>
>materialism
>re: 1923 J. Huxley: Can anybody think of data that would lead a devout
>materialist to cease to [1923 J. Huxley]"reject any explanation which
>proceeds... by miracles"?
>http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=Pine.SGI.3.96A.990818214806.410371A-100000%40umbc9.umbc.edu
>
>materialism
>1957 Julian Huxley on _Religion without Revelation_
>http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=b1c67abe.0407270344.53d3af56%40posting.google.com
>
>Wells, H.G. 1934. _Experiment in Autobiography_, regarding himself:
>58, 70-71, 139.
>regarding his generation: 147.
>Born in 1866, Wells became an atheist before 1884, i.e. before the age
>of about 18.
>
>spontaneous generation
>Wells, H.G., Julian S. Huxley, and G.P. Wells. 1934. _The Science of
>Life_ (NY: The Literary Gild), 1514pp. On 649, 650, two paragraphs and
>two sentences:
> The actual origin of life must always remain a secret: even if man
> succeeds in artificially making life, he can never be sure that
> nature did not employ some other means. Some thinkers have
> supposed that life was carried to this earth in a dormant state
> within meteorites. But this is to think timorously and to balk
> [at] the issue; it only removes the problem of life's origin one
> step farther back. It does not absolve us from asking how and when
> life originated, but merely introduces an extra difficulty.
>
> It is much more likely that at one moment in earth's cooling-down,
> the warm seas provided an environment never afterwards to be
> repeated, an environment differing in temperature, in pressure, in
> the salts within the waters, in the gases of the atmosphere over
> the waters, from any earlier or any later environments. The earth
> at that moment fulfilled all the conditions which the alchemists
> tried to repeat in their crucibles. It was a cosmic test-tube,
> whose particular brew led to the appearance of living matter as
> inevitably as an earlier and different set of conditions led to the
> formation of rocks and seas and clouds.
>
> .... In any case, the great majority of biologists agree in
> thinking that probably all the life upon the earth had its origin
> from the matter of the earth at a definite time in the earth's
> history. Where opinions differ is as to the form in which this
> primordial living matter appeared.
>
>===================================================.
>OPARIN
>
>[Richard Crawford]"it really opened my eyes to how scientists can
>bring their own doctrines and agendas to science"
>
>Did the scientist Oparin [RC]"bring" his [RC]"own doctrines and
>agendas to science" when speaking of [Oparin]"the gradual formation of
>living things from non-living matter"?
>Did the scientist Oparin [RC]"bring" his [RC]"own doctrines and
>agendas to science" when claiming that [Oparin]"a definite
>protoplasmic organization and fitness of its inner structure to carry
>out definite functions could easily be formed in the course of [the]
>evolution of organic matter"?
>
>Oparin, A.I. 1938. _The Origin of Life_, translated by Sergius
>Morgulis (USA: Dover Publications, Inc.), 270pp. This is the
>1938 English edition (translated from the 1936 Russian edition)
>with a new introduction by Morgulis, and republished by Dover
>in 1953. On 61, half of a paragraph followed by a paragraph:
> Unquestionably, a factory could never originate through
> some natural phenomenon and independently of man,
> simply because every factory is constructed in accordance
> with some set, previously worked out plan. Everything in
> the factory, beginning with the erection of the building and
> machinery down to the arrangement of different sections,
> has been calculated by the engineer with a view to fulfill
> definite and foreseen aims. The natural elements could not
> accomplish such human objectives or fulfill a previously
> laid-down plan.
>
> It is inconceivable that such a preconceived plan of
> protoplasmic structure could exist unless one assumes a
> creative divine will and a plan of creation. But a definite
> protoplasmic organization and fitness of its inner structure
> to carry out definite functions could easily be formed in the
> course of [the] evolution of organic matter just as highly
> organized animals and plants have come from the simplest
> living things by a process of evolution. Later we shall
> attempt to trace this evolution and to picture the gradual
> formation of living things from non-living matter. In this
> evolution more and more complex phenomena of a higher
> order became super-imposed upon the simplest physical
> and chemical processes; new properties developed
> ultimately resulting in the emergence of systems which are
> already subject to biological laws.
>
>===================================================.
>HALDANE
>
>1940 Haldane on materialism
>http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=s0c890946imhfig6q7uq1cid7hhj68ppbs%404ax.com
>
>Haldane, J.B.S. 1940. _Adventures of a Biologist_ (New
>York: Harper & Brothers Publishers), 281pp. From the
>chapter "Unsolved Problems of Science: 4. Can We Make
>Life?" a paragraph on 25:
> The fossil record is like the third volume of a Victorian
> novel. We know a lot about the recent adventures of our
> hero, Life, but we do not know where or when he was
> born. Many people are content to give up the quest, and
> to say that the origin of life is a mystery beyond the
> range of science. This may prove to be true. Some
> scientists think so. But others are not so modest. They
> say that if life once originated from dead matter it ought
> to be possible to repeat the conditions, and make life in
> the laboratory. If they fail, that will be a triumph for
> believers in tradition. It will show that some things are
> beyond human power. But they must be allowed
> another hundred years or so of attempts before they are
> adjudged as failures. Men had tried to fly for several
> centuries before the Wright brothers succeeded. And
> making life will be a harder task than flying, because the
> machinery of a living thing is on a scale too small to be
> seen even with a microscope.
>
>===================================================.
>
>spontaneous generation
>summary of portion of 1954 George Wald article on spontaneous generation
>http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=Pine.LNX.4.44L.01.0310021326030.23080-100000%40linux3.gl.umbc.edu
>
>spontaneous generation
>Shapley, Harlow. 1958. _A Stars and Men: Human Response to an
>Expanding Universe_, 157.
>
>Compare
>1985 A.G. Cairns-Smith: "The early fifties were a high point of optimism."
>1985 A.G. Cairns-Smith, 1986 Andrew Scott, 1999 Freeman Dyson
>http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=dford3-33bltcF3rgbovU1%40individual.net
>
>===================================================.
>SIMPSON
>
>materialism
>Simpson, George Gaylord. 1978. _Concession to the Improbable: An
>Unconventional Autobiography_, 28-29, 30.
>
>materialism
>1949 Simpson: "man is the result of a purposeless materialistic process
>that did not have him in mind":
>Simpson, George Gaylord. 1949. _The Meaning of
>Evolution: A Study of the History of Life and of Its
>Significance for Man_ (New Haven: Yale University Press),
>364pp., from the chapter "Epilogue and Summary" on 344:
> Man is the result of a purposeless materialistic process
> that did not have him in mind. He was not planned. He
> is a state of matter, a form of life, a sort of animal, and a
> species of the Order Primates, akin nearly or remotely to
> all of life and indeed to all that is material.
>On 343:
> Although many details remain to be worked out, it is
> already evident that all the objective phenomena of the
> history of life can be explained by purely materialistic
> factors.
>
>spontaneous generation
>Simpson, George Gaylord. 1949. _The Meaning of Evolution: A Study of
>the History of Life and of Its Significance for Man_ (New Haven, CT:
>Yale University Press), 364pp. On 340:
> Studies on other bases demonstrate not only the possibility but
> also the probability that life arose from the inorganic
> spontaneously, that is, without supernatural intervention and by
> the operation of material processes, themselves of unknown origin,
> sometime during the first half billion years or so of the earth's
> existence in about its presence condition.
>
>spontaneous generation
>Simpson, George Gaylord. 1960. "The World into Which Darwin Led Us"
>_Science_ 131: 966-74. On 969:
> The consensus is that life did arise naturally from the nonliving
> and that even the first living things were not specially created.
> The conclusion has, indeed, really become inescapable, for the
> first steps in that process have already been repeated in several
> laboratories. There is concerted study from geochemical,
> biochemical, and microbiological approaches. At a recent meeting
> in Chicago, a highly distinguished international panel of experts
> was polled. All considered the experimental production of life in
> the laboratory imminent....
>
>spontaneous generation
>Simpson, George Gaylord. 1964. "The Nonprevalence of Humanoids"
>_Science_ 143: 769-75. On 771:
> There are wide differences of opinion as to the particular course
> followed [in the origin of life], but here again there is near
> unanimity on the essential points. Virtually all biochemists agree
> that life on earth arose spontaneously from nonliving matter and
> that it would almost inevitably arise on sufficiently similar young
> planets elsewhere. That confidence is based on chemical
> experience.
>
>blindwatchmaking
>Simpson, George Gaylord. 1964. _This View of Life: The World of an
>Evolutionist_ (NY: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.), 308pp. On 26, 40:
> SUPPOSE that the most fundamental and general principle of a
> science had been known for over a century and had long since become
> a main basis for understanding and research by scientists in that
> field. You would surely assume that the principle would be taken
> as a matter of course by everyone with even a nodding acquaintance
> with the science. It would obviously be taught everywhere as basic
> to the science at any level of education. If you think that about
> biology, however, you are wrong. Evolution is such a principle in
> biology. Although almost everyone has heard of it, most Americans
>
> have only the scantest and most distorted idea of its real nature
> and significance. I know of no poll, but I suspect that a majority
> doubt, disbelieve, or violently oppose its clear truth without a
> hearing and on no basis more rational than prejudice, dogma, or
> superstition. Many school and not a few college teachers either
> share that irrationality or evade teaching the truth of evolution
> from other motives. .... Evolution underlies every aspect of
> biology and is one form of explanation for every biological fact,
> from protein synthesis to, say, zoogeography. ...._all_ the facts
> of biology are evidence of evolution....
>
>===================================================.
>DOBZHANSKY
>
>blindwatchmaking
>Dobzhansky, Theodosius. 1967. _The Biology of Ultimate
>Concern_ (USA: The New American Library), 152pp. From
>the last chapter, a paragraph on 120:
> If evolution follows a path which is predestined
> (orthogenesis), or if it is propelled and guided toward
> some goal by divine interventions (finalism), then its
> meaning becomes a tantalizing, and even distressing,
> puzzle. If the universe was designed to advance toward
> some state of absolute beauty and goodness, the design
> was incredibly faulty. Why, indeed, should many
> billions of years be needed to achieve the
> consummation? The universe could have been created
> in the state of perfection. Why so many false starts,
> extinctions, disasters, misery, anguish, and finally the
> greatest of evils-- death? The God of love and mercy
> could not have planned all this. Any doctrine which
> regards evolution as predetermined or guided collides
> head-on with the ineluctable fact of the existence of evil.
>
>blindwatchmaking
>Dobzhansky, Theodosius. March 1973. "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense
>Except in the Light of Evolution" _American Biology Teacher_, 125-9. On
>129:
> Evolution as a process that has always gone on in the history of
> the earth can be doubted only by those who are ignorant of the
> evidence or are resistant to evidence, owing to emotional blocks or
> to plain bigotry.
>
>===================================================.
>FUTUYMA
>
>materialism, blindwatchmaking
>Futuyma, Douglas J. 1979. _Evolutionary Biology_ (MA: Sinauer
>Associates, Inc.), 565pp. On 9-10, the first paragraph of the
>section "The Impact of Darwinism":
> The Darwinian view that evolution not only had occurred,
> but was caused by the impersonal process of natural
> selection met strong opposition in both scientific and
> nonscientific circles, because of its perceived threat to
> theological doctrine and to the unique position in nature
> that humans would like to arrogate to themselves. The
> view offered by Darwin-- of a purposeless universe in
> which life changes, to no ultimate purpose, by the survival
> of the fittest of random variations; a material world from
> which we have arisen and with which we are one; a
> universe that does not care about us and is not going to
> save us from our follies-- such a vision is far less
> reassuring and less flattering to the ego than the notion of a
> world created to serve us, the apples of God's eye. It is a
> view distasteful not only to the theologically inclined, but
> to the literary tradition that opposes materialism with more
> transcendent values (see, e.g., Barzun 1958). Seldom are
> the positive implications of Darwinism acknowledged: that
> it forces us to view ourselves not as prisoners of a static
> world order, but as the masters of our fate; that our
> salvation lies not in Providence, but in ourselves.
>
>materialism
>For a Futuyma comment linking materialism with Freud's psychologising,
>Darwin's theory of evolution, and Marx's materialism, see
>Futuyma, Douglas J. 1986. _Evolutionary Biology: Second Edition_
>(Massachusetts: Sinauer Associates, Inc.), 600pp., 2.
>
>===================================================.
>STEBBINS
>blindwatchmaking
>1982 Stebbins: "evolution [i.e. blindwatchmaking] was opportunistic and
>devoid of purpose"
>Stebbins, G. Ledyard. 1982. _Darwin to DNA, Molecules to
>Humanity_ (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman and Company),
>491pp., 4:
> The evolutionist's [i.e. blindwatchmakingist's] answer is
> that all these millions of different kinds of organisms
> evolved [i.e. blindwatchmaked] from common ancestors
> during the thousands of millions of years since the first
> appearance of life. Their evolution [i.e.
> blindwatchmaking] was opportunistic and devoid of
> purpose.
>
>===================================================.
>
>blindwatchmaking
>1982 Francois Jacob: "The importance of Darwin's solution was to
>explain by the selection of already formed structures something that
>very much looks like instruction."
>http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=dford3-320ufsF3grelkU1%40individual.net
>
>materialism, spontaneous generation
>Cairns-Smith, A.G. 1985. _Seven Clues to the Origin of
>Life: A Scientific Detective Story_ (Great Britain:
>Cambridge University Press), 131pp., ix, 2, 6, 7, 8.
>
>materialism, spontaneous generation
>Shapiro, Robert. 1986. _Origins: A Skeptic's Guide to the Creation of
>Life on Earth_, 118-119, 130.
>
>===================================================.
>DAWKINS
>
>spontaneous generation
>Dawkins, Richard. 1987. _The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of
>Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design_. On 147, 166, from the
>chapter "Origins and Miracles":
> The basic idea of _The Blind Watchmaker_ is that we don't need to
> postulate a designer in order to understand life, or anything else
> in the universe. .... The present lack of a definitely accepted
> account of the origin of life should certainly not be taken as a
> stumbling block for the whole Darwinian world view, as it
> occasionally-- probably with wishful thinking-- is.
>
>blindwatchmaking
>1987 Dawkins: "the whole _point_ of the theory of evolution by natural
>selection was that it provided a _non_-miraculous account of the
>existence of complex adaptations"
>http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=b1c67abe.0407280430.4459fca3%40posting.google.com
>
>blindwatchmaking
>Dawkins vs. an atheist philosopher
>http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=dford3-b1c67abe.0411180756.6c069f04%40posting.google.com
>
>===================================================.
>
>
>blindwatchmaking
>1988 Crick: "Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see
>was not designed, but rather evolved."
>http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=b1c67abe.0407251846.6acacaef%40posting.google.com
>
>===================================================.
>E.O. WILSON
>
>materialism
>Wilson, Edward O. 1994. _Naturalist_, 43-44, 45.
>
>materialism, blindwatchmaking
>1997 Edward O. Wilson: "scientific materialism explains vastly more of
>the tangible world.... Its discoveries suggest that, like it or not, we
>are alone. We must measure and judge ourselves, and we will decide our
>own destiny.":
>Wilson, Edward O. Winter 1997. In "Why I am a secular
>humanist" _Free Inquiry_ v18 n1 p18(5). Reprinted at
>http://www.world-of-dawkins.com/Dawkins/Work/Interviews/1997-winterhumanist.shtml
>_Free Inquiry_ describes Wilson as "Emeritus Professor of
>Entomology at Harvard University and author of numerous
>widely acclaimed books including _Sociobiology_." The entire
>Wilson section:
> I was raised a Southern Baptist in a religious environment
> that favored a literal interpretation of the Bible. But it
> happened that I also became fascinated by natural history
> at an early age, and, as a biology concentrator at the
> University of Alabama, discovered evolution. All that I
> had learned of the living world to that point fell into place
> in a wholly new and intellectually compelling way. It was
> apparent to me that life is connected not by supernatural
> design but by kinship, with species having multiplied out
> of other species to create, over hundreds of millions of
> years, the great panoply of biodiversity around us today. If
> a Divine Creator put it all here several thousand years ago,
> he also salted Earth from pole to pole with falsified
> massive, interlocking evidence to make scientists believe
> life evolved autonomously. I realized that something was
> terribly wrong in this dissonance. The God depicted in
> Holy Scripture is variously benevolent, didactic, loving,
> angry, and vengeful, but never tricky.
>
> As time passed, I learned that scientific materialism
> explains vastly more of the tangible world, physical and
> biological, in precise and useful detail, than the Iron-Age
> theology and mysticism bequeathed us by the modern great
> religions ever dreamed. It offers an epic view of the origin
> and meaning of humanity far greater, and I believe more
> noble, than conceived by all the prophets of old combined.
> Its discoveries suggest that, like it or not, we are alone. We
> must measure and judge ourselves, and we will decide our
> own destiny.
>
> Why then, am I a humanist? Let me give the answer in
> terms of Blaise Pascal's Wager. The seventeenth-century
> French philosopher said, in effect, live well but accept
> religious faith. "If I lost," he wrote. "I would have lost
> little: If I won I would have gained eternal life." Given
> what we now know of the real world, I would turn the
> Wager around as follows: if fear and hope and reason
> dictate that you must accept the faith, do so, but treat this
> world as if there is none other.
>
>===================================================.
>
>blindwatchmaking
>1995 Christian de Duve: "Foresight Excluded"
>http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=dford3-325tvsF3i3t01U1%40individual.net
>
>materialism
>Lewontin, Richard. 9 January 1997. "Billions and Billions of Demons"
>_NY Times Book Reviews_. At
>http://www.csus.edu/indiv/m/mayesgr/Lewontin1.htm
>A paragraph:
> Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are
> against common sense is the key to an understanding of
> the real struggle between science and the supernatural.
> We take the side of science _in spite_ of the patent
> absurdity of some of its constructs, _in spite_ of its
> failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of
> health and life, _in spite_ of the tolerance of the
> scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories,
> because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to
> materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions
> of science somehow compel us to accept a material
> explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the
> contrary, that we are forced by our _a priori_ adherence
> to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation
> and a set of concepts that produce material explanations,
> no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how
> mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that
> materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine
> Foot in the door. The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck
> used to say that anyone who could believe in God could
> believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is
> to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature
> may be ruptured, that miracles may happen.
>
>blindwatchmaking
>Williams, George C. 1997. _The Pony Fish's Glow: And
>Other Clues to Plan and Purpose in Nature_, 152-3.
>
>blindwatchmaking
>1997 Robert Dorit
>http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=dford3-b1c67abe.0411180714.f671793%40posting.google.com
>
>===================================================.
>GOULD
>
>blindwatchmaking
>Gould, Stephen Jay. 2001. Introduction to Carl Zimmer's
>_Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea_ (Japan: HarperCollins
>Publishers), 364pp. Two paragraphs on xi:
> No scientific revolution can match Darwin's discovery
> in degree of upset to our previous comforts and
> certainties. In the only conceivable challenge,
> Copernicus and Galileo moved our cosmic location from
> the center of the universe to a small and peripheral body
> circling a central sun. But this cosmic reorganization
> only fractured our concept of real estate; Darwinian
> evolution, on the other (and deeper) hand,
> revolutionized our view of our own meaning and
> essence (insofar as science can address such questions at
> all): Who are we? How did we get here? How are we
> related to other creatures, and in what manner?
>
> Evolution substituted a naturalistic explanation of cold
> comfort for our former conviction that a benevolent
> deity fashioned us directly in his own image, to have
> dominion over the entire earth and all other creatures--
> and that all but the first five days of earthly history have
> been graced by our ruling presence. In evolutionary
> terms, however, humans represent but one tiny twig on
> an enormous and luxuriantly branching tree of life, with
>
> all twigs interconnected by descent, and the entire tree
> growing (so far as science can tell) by a natural and
> lawlike process. Moreover, the unique and minuscule
> twig of Homo sapiens emerged in a geological
> yesterday, and has flourished for only an eyeblink of
> cosmic immensity (about 100,000 years for our species
> and only 6-8 million years for our entire lineage since
> our branchlet split from the node of our closest living
> relative, the chimpanzee. By contrast, the oldest
> bacterial fossils on Earth arose 3,600 million years ago).
>Gould here alleges
>1) [Gould]"Darwin's discovery" of [Gould]"Darwinian evolution
>....substituted a naturalistic explanation of cold comfort for our
>former conviction that a benevolent deity fashioned us directly in his
>own image," and
>2) common descent proceeds [Gould]"(so far as science can tell) by a
>natural and lawlike process."
>Was the basis of/ the grounds for these Gould allegations Gould's
>commitment to materialism-- a commitment he acquired as a young boy
>while imbibing Marxism from his father?
>Was the basis of/ the grounds for these Gould allegations Gould's
>acquired knowledge about biology and paleontology?
>If "yes," what data from biology and paleontology supports the Gould
>allegations?
>
>blindwatchmaking
>Gould, Stephen Jay. May 1981. "Evolution as Fact and Theory"
>_Discover_, 34-7. Also appears in Gould's _Hen's Teeth and Horse's
>Toes_ (1983). On 35:
> ....human beings evolved from apelike ancestors whether they did so
> by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other, yet to be
> discovered.
>
>A spontaneous generation Gould.
>
>===================================================.
>
>blindwatchmaking
>1997 Graham Bell
>http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=dford3-b1c67abe.0411251458.7eded865%40posting.google.com
>
>===================================================.
>SAGAN
>
>blindwatchmaking
>Sagan, Carl. 1996. _The Demon-Haunted World: Science
>as a Candle in the Dark_ (New York: Random House), 327.
>Cited in Phillip E. Johnson, _Defeating Darwinism by
>Opening Minds_ (Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1997), 131pp.,
>47.
> I meet many people who are offended by evolution, who
> passionately prefer to be the personal handicraft of God
> than to arise by blind physical and chemical forces over
> aeons from slime. They also tend to be less than
> assiduous in exposing themselves to the evidence.
> Evidence has little to do with it. What they wish to be
> true, they believe is true. Only nine percent of
> Americans accept the central finding of modern biology
> that human beings (and all the other species) have
> slowly evolved by natural processes from a succession
> of more ancient beings with no divine intervention
> needed along the way.
>
>materialism, spontaneous generation
>Sagan, Carl. 1980. _Cosmos_ (NY: Random House), 365pp. Chapter 1's
>first line, and material on 30-31:
> THE COSMOS IS ALL THAT IS OR EVER WAS OR EVER WILL BE. .... The
> first living things were not anything so complex as a one-celled
> organism, already a highly sophisticated form of life. The first
> stirrings were much more humble. In those early days, lightning
> and ultraviolet light from the Sun were breaking apart the simple
> hydrogen-rich molecules of the primitive atmosphere, the fragments
> spontaneously recombining into more and more complex molecules.
> The products of this early chemistry were dissolved in the oceans,
> forming a kind of organic soup of gradually increasing complexity,
> until one day, quite by accident, a molecule arose that was able to
> make crude copies of itself, using as building blocks other
> molecules in the soup.
>
>===================================================.
>
>blindwatchmaking
>2004. Goodsell, David S. 2004. _Bionanotechnology_, 10.
>
>===================================================.
>Mainly anti-materialism remarks from creationists
>
>Johnson, Phillip E. 1997. _Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds_ (IL:
>InterVarsity Press), 131pp. On 114:
> The beginning of the end will come when Darwinists are forced to
> face this one simple question: _What should we do if empirical
> evidence and materialist philosophy are going in different
> directions?_
>
>Koster: scientific atheism is an idea whose time is gone
>http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=b1c67abe.0406212033.90a39c1%40posting.google.com
>http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=b1c67abe.0406230445.7cff0545%40posting.google.com
>
>Ludwig, Mark A. 1993. _Computer Viruses, Artificial Life and
>Evolution_, 303: "The scientist who buys into
>materialistic naturalism has decided that there are no
>supernatural phenomena. He has closed a door that science by
>itself cannot close. Then he usually turns around and calls that
>decision 'scientific' as if to give it respectability. This is
>the height of arrogance."
>
>Which if any of the [Willard]"glittering personalities" quoted above do
>you consider "philosophically aggressive scientists"?
>I maintain that the materialism/materialistic worldview had by many of
>the above individuals played a large role in how they went about
>interpreting the biological world.
>I don't maintain that the philosophy of materialism adopted by many of
>the above individuals has been adopted by all biologists, or all
>paleontologists, or all chemists, or all physicists, or all
>cosmologists, or all geologists.
>
>Willard, Dallas (a creationist). 2000. Foreword to Phillip E.
>Johnson's _The Wedge of Truth: Splitting the Foundations of
>Naturalism_ (Illinois: InterVarsity Press), 191pp. Paragraphs on
>9-10:
> Reason is the human ability to determine what is real or not
> real by _thinking_. Just as, centuries ago, the honest
> thinker had to be willing to follow the inquiry even if it led
> to a godless universe, so today the honest thinker has to be
> willing to follow the inquiry even if it leads to a
> God-governed universe. This latter possibility today
> causes those who think they are in charge of what is only
> reasonable and right to become impatient and imperious.
> They cannot afford to be wrong about the godlessness of
> reality, for now our whole system of education is based on
> that assumption, just as some while ago it was based on the
> assumption of God.
>
> And so, as Phillip Johnson so beautifully explains and
> illustrates, reason is replaced by rationalization.
> Rationalization is the use of reasoning to make sure that
> one comes out at the right place. Not long ago the
> dominant ideal within intellectual circles was to judge the
> conclusion by the method through which it was derived. If
> the method was good, you were required to accept the
> conclusion, at least provisionally. Now, sadly, the method
> is judged by whether it brings you out at the "right"
> conclusion, as determined by institutional consensus
> congealed around glittering personalities. If you don't
> come to the "right" conclusion, your method is wrong, and
> you are probably a bad person. Derisive terminology will
> be used to describe you.
>
> This is of course very old stuff in human history, but it is
> always difficult to recognize it for what it is.
> Contemporary certainties never look like rationalizations,
> or they would not be contemporary certainties. The
> character of rationalization is hidden beneath the cloak of
> benign authority.
>
> In our case today, the authority is science. _Science_, we
> are told, says this or that. We had better believe it.
> Unfortunately, science says nothing. It is not the kind of
> thing that can say anything. Only scientists say things, and
> scientists can be remarkably unscientific and are often
> remarkably wrong-- as subsequent events frequently show.
> In addition, many who would speak for science are not
> scientists or have no qualifications in the area of their
> claims. But if they can assume an aura of "the scientific"
> in some way, they will be able to rationalize at will and
> gain a hearing for it.
>
>Klinghoffer's "Worshipers At The Secular Altar"
>http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=dford3-b1c67abe.0410120549.37264dde%40posting.google.com
>
>
John Stockwell | jo...@dix.Mines.EDU
Center for Wave Phenomena (The Home of Seismic Un*x)
Colorado School of Mines
Golden, CO 80401 | http://www.cwp.mines.edu/cwpcodes
voice: (303) 273-3049
Our book:
Norman Bleistein, Jack K. Cohen, John W. Stockwell Jr., [2001],
Mathematics of multidimensional seismic imaging, migration, and inversion,
(Interdisciplinary Applied Mathematics, V. 13.), Springer-Verlag, New York.
XeNO
"John Stockwell" <jo...@dix.Mines.EDU> wrote in message
news:Pine.LNX.4.58.05...@wenzel.Mines.EDU...
> Actually, David, the original notions of "spontaneous generation" were
> put forth by good Christians, deriving the idea from the
> "...let the Earth bring for life..." statement of Genesis.
Yeah, I had a similar run-in with my college english teacher of all
things... that "evolutionists" believed in SG. He neglected to mention that
it was the theory supported by the church at the time.
--
"For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law
of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret
that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected
with this. "--Albert Einstein
XeNO
Order of the 8th dIgIt
aa# 1901
In order to email me privately, you must remove god from my email address,
and follow the links to get past my spam sheild.
david ford
[snips]
> _Scientists Confront Creationism_ by Laurie R. Godfrey (Editor)
> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0393301540/
"One of the favorite creationist attacks on the concept of biological
evolution concentrates on the improbability of various aspects of a
spontaneous origin of life on earth.... With this essay I have tried to
show that the arguments that are raised about the improbability of the
origin of life, particularly those concerning functional proteins, are
often naive and misdirected. The forerunners of today's proteins were
not formed from a random collection of amino acids anymore than cells
were the result of a simple aggregation of atoms. Life on earth
developed in stages, each of which was built on the stabilizing,
catalytic, or replicative power of the stage before it."[Russell F.
Doolittle, "Probability and the Origin of Life" in _Scientists Confront
Creationism_ (1983), ed. Laurie R. Godfrey, 85, 96.]
Note the "atoms and stars" phrase in the following:
"This is one of the first public occasions on which it has
been frankly faced that all aspects of reality are subject to evolution,
from atoms and stars to fish and flowers, from fish and flowers to human
societies and values--indeed, that all reality is a single process of
evolution.... In the evolutionary pattern of thought there is no longer
either need or room for the supernatural. The earth was not created, it
evolved. So did all the animals and plants that inhabit it, including
our human selves, mind and soul as well as brain and body. So did
religion.... Finally, the evolutionary vision is enabling us to discern,
however incompletely, the lineaments of the new religion that we can be
sure will arise to serve the needs of the coming era."[Julian Huxley
during the 1959 celebration of 100 years of _Origin_ in Chicago. Cited
in Phillip Johnson, _Darwin on Trial_ (1993), 152-3.]
Bob
wrote:
>
>Note the "atoms and stars" phrase in the following:
ever look up the word 'run' in the dictionary? over 100 meanings.
the word 'evolution' has a number of connotations as well
---------------------------
to see who "wf3h" is, go to "qrz.com"
and enter 'wf3h' in the field
maff
david ford wrote:
> maff wrote:
>
> [snips]
>
> > _Scientists Confront Creationism_ by Laurie R. Godfrey (Editor)
> > http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0393301540/
>
But quote mines by Christian fascist David Ford aren't credible in
science.
Bob
ford is not only getting more eccentric, but more difficult to read.
his formatting is illegible.
david ford
> "david ford" <dfo...@gl.umbc.edu> wrote in message
news:dford3-348j...@individual.net...
>
>>
>>The philosophy of materialism holds that all is material-- only material
>>things exist: there is no immaterial God or gods, no spirits, no souls,
>>no angels, no devil, no demons. Materialism claims that matter was in
>>existence before mind/intelligence originated, in humans. An adherent
>>of materialism thinks that the first biological lifeform arose via
>>non-intelligence-directed-at-any-level, totally-mindless processes from
>>non-living matter ("spontaneous generation"). A materialist does not
>>think that God made physics, and made physics such that physics would
>>give rise to life.
>>
>>Nothing that could be interpreted as an instance of spontaneous
>>generation has been observed in biologists' and chemists' laboratory
>>experiments, for life has not been observed arising from non-life.
>>
>>Question: Upon what basis/grounds does a materialist think that
>>spontaneous generation occurred?
>
Sure.
>>I submit that materialists accept the hypothesis of spontaneous
>>generation because their philosophy of materialism dictates that life
>>_must_ have been the result of spontaneous generation. (A materialist
>>would, of course, like to have the option of saying that life is an
>>infinite number of years old, but since it is now known that our
>>universe began to exist in the Big Bang, that means life inside the
>>universe consequently must have begun to exist. This is the case even
>>if you believe in an infinite-number of universes.)
>>
>>The pronounced absence of confirmatory laboratory experiment results for
>>100+ years doesn't shake the faith of the materialist, because he or she
>>"knows" that somehow, some way, life "must have" originated from
>>non-life totally apart from the input of any mind/intelligence
>>whatsoever. This absence of confirmatory lab experiment results hasn't
>>stopped materialists from professing their devotion to the hypothesis of
>>spontaneous generation.
>
> Wow Dave, you actually spoke for yourself above.
> (But then dumped another load of raw quote ore below.)
>
> Say Dave, what can we tell about the designer(s) from his(their)
> design? From the design of physics and life what can we
> tell about the designer(s)? (I'll use the plural because you
> have implied that the designers are a group.)
Re: physics, see
The Search for a Loophole to the Beginning of the Universe
in the Big Bang and to the Seeming-Design of Physics
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=Pine.LNX.4.10A.B3.10005292327160.25513-100000%40jabba.gl.umbc.edu
> Do they have hands? How big are they? What structure
> do they have?
Dunno.
> What was their purpose in designing? What did they intend
> to achieve?
Dunno.
Suppose there was "an omnipotent, omniscient designer" of computers and
computer software.
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=dford3-348naoF46plv5U1%40individual.net
> Where did they come from?
Maybe it/ they didn't [RBP]"come from" anywhere: maybe it/ they exist
yet never began to exist.
> Where are they now?
Dunno.
In laboratory experiments, is this being observed?:
life arising from nonlife.
If such transformations haven't been observed, is it the case that
emerging life is shy, and that's the reason we haven't seen such
transformations?
>>Below appears a timeline of some professions of faith in the discredited
>>hypothesis of spontaneous generation, professions of faith in the
>
> <snip tons of raw quote ore.>
Al Klein
said in alt.atheism:
>In laboratory experiments, is this being observed?:
>life arising from nonlife.
>If such transformations haven't been observed, is it the case that
>emerging life is shy, and that's the reason we haven't seen such
>transformations?
Life CAN'T come from non-life now in the same way it originally did.
We live in an oxidizing atmosphere now, not a reducing atmosphere.
And, if it DID occur, it would be eaten almost immediately by
something many times larger than itself - like a very small bacterium
- LONG before we could detect it.
Use just one cell of common sense, please.
--
"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."
- H. L. Mencken
(random sig, produced by SigChanger)
rukbat at verizon dot net
Glenn
"Al Klein" <ruk...@pern.invalid> wrote in message
news:7njiv0537aatfals9...@4ax.com...
> On Wed, 26 Jan 2005 22:44:24 -0500, david ford <dfo...@gl.umbc.edu>
> said in alt.atheism:
>
> >In laboratory experiments, is this being observed?:
> >life arising from nonlife.
> >If such transformations haven't been observed, is it the case that
> >emerging life is shy, and that's the reason we haven't seen such
> >transformations?
>
> Life CAN'T come from non-life now in the same way it originally did.
Unsupportable statement, since you don't know what it "originally did".
> We live in an oxidizing atmosphere now, not a reducing atmosphere.
Who is "we"? An experiment in the lab?
> And, if it DID occur, it would be eaten almost immediately by
> something many times larger than itself - like a very small bacterium
> - LONG before we could detect it.
What is that, a bigger lab experiment eating smaller ones? Or
contamination?
>
> Use just one cell of common sense, please.
> --
Good grief. I suggest reading "Susie ran up the hill", although I doubt
it will help. Reading research on abiogenesis should be avoided till
after.
Al Klein
<glenns...@SPAMqwest.net> said in alt.atheism:
>"Al Klein" <ruk...@pern.invalid> wrote in message
>news:7njiv0537aatfals9...@4ax.com...
>> On Wed, 26 Jan 2005 22:44:24 -0500, david ford <dfo...@gl.umbc.edu>
>> said in alt.atheism:
>> >In laboratory experiments, is this being observed?:
>> >life arising from nonlife.
>> >If such transformations haven't been observed, is it the case that
>> >emerging life is shy, and that's the reason we haven't seen such
>> >transformations?
>> Life CAN'T come from non-life now in the same way it originally did.
>Unsupportable statement, since you don't know what it "originally did".
Supportable - it came about in an absolutely sterile reducing
atmosphere. It can't come about that way now.
>> We live in an oxidizing atmosphere now, not a reducing atmosphere.
>Who is "we"? An experiment in the lab?
A lab on this planet? Yes. It wouldn't be possible to keep all
traces of oxygen out of the lab for a few million years, and that
seems to be about how long abiogenesis takes.
>> And, if it DID occur, it would be eaten almost immediately by
>> something many times larger than itself - like a very small bacterium
>> - LONG before we could detect it.
>What is that, a bigger lab experiment eating smaller ones? Or
>contamination?
Contamination. There's no such actual thing as "absolutely sterile
except for a single lifeform". To render some volume absolutely
sterile we have to render it inhospitable to life. Even a methane
near vacuum at sub-Antarctic temperatures isn't a guarantee of
sterility.
A lifeless planet was - guaranteed.
--
"I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the harmony of all that exists, but
not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and actions of human beings."
-A. Einstein (1929 -- Einstein Archive 33-272)
Glenn
"Al Klein" <ruk...@pern.invalid> wrote in message
> On Thu, 27 Jan 2005 14:27:38 -0700, "Glenn"
> <glenns...@SPAMqwest.net> said in alt.atheism:
>
> >"Al Klein" <ruk...@pern.invalid> wrote in message
> >news:7njiv0537aatfals9...@4ax.com...
> >> On Wed, 26 Jan 2005 22:44:24 -0500, david ford <dfo...@gl.umbc.edu>
> >> said in alt.atheism:
>
> >> >In laboratory experiments, is this being observed?:
> >> >life arising from nonlife.
> >> >If such transformations haven't been observed, is it the case that
> >> >emerging life is shy, and that's the reason we haven't seen such
> >> >transformations?
>
> >> Life CAN'T come from non-life now in the same way it originally
did.
>
> >Unsupportable statement, since you don't know what it "originally
did".
>
> Supportable - it came about in an absolutely sterile reducing
> atmosphere. It can't come about that way now.
Life can never come about in an absolutely sterile environment. Your
claim is a contradiction of terms, and irrelevant terms at that. Sterile
only means no life. But the fact remains that you don't know how it came
about.
>
> >> We live in an oxidizing atmosphere now, not a reducing atmosphere.
>
> >Who is "we"? An experiment in the lab?
>
> A lab on this planet? Yes. It wouldn't be possible to keep all
> traces of oxygen out of the lab for a few million years, and that
> seems to be about how long abiogenesis takes.
I once seemed to see little pink elephants crossing the road. So much
for what "seems". How ridiculous you sound, making claims based on
alleged knowledge of how long abiogenesis takes.
>
> >> And, if it DID occur, it would be eaten almost immediately by
> >> something many times larger than itself - like a very small
bacterium
> >> - LONG before we could detect it.
>
> >What is that, a bigger lab experiment eating smaller ones? Or
> >contamination?
>
> Contamination. There's no such actual thing as "absolutely sterile
> except for a single lifeform". To render some volume absolutely
> sterile we have to render it inhospitable to life. Even a methane
> near vacuum at sub-Antarctic temperatures isn't a guarantee of
> sterility.
You've just contradicted yourself. You said above that it [life] came
about in an absolutely sterile reducing atmosphere. Now you claim that
if we created an absolutely sterile environment we would render it
"inhospitable" to life. If science can't isolate organisms, why all
these bogus claims?
>
> A lifeless planet was - guaranteed.
> --
You're full of it. Probably a biology textbook editor, eh?
Cary Kittrell
>
>
> "Al Klein" <ruk...@pern.invalid> wrote in message
> news:o4piv0p7g24bc3ob8...@4ax.com...
> > On Thu, 27 Jan 2005 14:27:38 -0700, "Glenn"
> > <glenns...@SPAMqwest.net> said in alt.atheism:
> >
> > >"Al Klein" <ruk...@pern.invalid> wrote in message
> > >news:7njiv0537aatfals9...@4ax.com...
> > >> On Wed, 26 Jan 2005 22:44:24 -0500, david ford <dfo...@gl.umbc.edu>
> > >> said in alt.atheism:
> >
> > >> >In laboratory experiments, is this being observed?:
> > >> >life arising from nonlife.
> > >> >If such transformations haven't been observed, is it the case that
> > >> >emerging life is shy, and that's the reason we haven't seen such
> > >> >transformations?
> >
> > >> Life CAN'T come from non-life now in the same way it originally
> did.
> >
> > >Unsupportable statement, since you don't know what it "originally
> did".
> >
> > Supportable - it came about in an absolutely sterile reducing
> > atmosphere. It can't come about that way now.
>
> Life can never come about in an absolutely sterile environment.
Mmmmm? Why not?
-- cary
cub...@aol.com
[big ol' snip]
> Life can never come about in an absolutely sterile environment. ...
Sterile
> only means no life.
"Sterile" means "no life"? Okay -- in that case, your assertion that
"Life can never come about in an absolutely sterile environment" is a
re-phrased version of "Life cannot come from non-life", or, more
plainly, "abiogenesis is impossible". If this assertion is true, it
logically follows that there is no way for life to arise in any
Universe which didn't already come factory-equipped with the stuff.
Therefore, given the observed fact that Life *does* exist, "abiogenesis
is impossible" logically requires that life has *always* existed, ever
since the microinstant of the Big Bang...
Glenn
<cub...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1106870175.7...@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
"Universe" even includes the concept of a sterile environment?
But actually, I didn't bring up the word. I was responding to the
previous poster, who claimed at one point "There's no such actual thing
as "absolutely sterile except for a single lifeform". To render some
volume absolutely sterile we have to render it inhospitable to life."
lab experiments that would evidence life from non-life.
Al Klein
(Cary Kittrell) said in alt.atheism:
>In article <glennsheldon-%qeKd.260$rw1....@news.uswest.net> "Glenn" <glenns...@SPAMqwest.net> writes:
>> Life can never come about in an absolutely sterile environment.
>Mmmmm? Why not?
It not only can, the first life DID (by definition).
--
"A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Al Klein
<glenns...@SPAMqwest.net> said in alt.atheism:
>"Al Klein" <ruk...@pern.invalid> wrote in message
>news:o4piv0p7g24bc3ob8...@4ax.com...
>> On Thu, 27 Jan 2005 14:27:38 -0700, "Glenn"
>> <glenns...@SPAMqwest.net> said in alt.atheism:
>> >Unsupportable statement, since you don't know what it "originally did".
>> Supportable - it came about in an absolutely sterile reducing
>> atmosphere. It can't come about that way now.
>Life can never come about in an absolutely sterile environment.
When there was no life, the planet was absolutely sterile (free from
living organisms). It lost its sterility at the moment life appeared.
> Your claim is a contradiction of terms, and irrelevant terms at that. Sterile
>only means no life. But the fact remains that you don't know how it came
>about.
But I do know that it came about in a sterile reducing atmosphere,
which we don't have now, so it can't come about now the way it did
then.
>I once seemed to see little pink elephants crossing the road. So much
>for what "seems". How ridiculous you sound, making claims based on
>alleged knowledge of how long abiogenesis takes.
We KNOW it takes between a nanosecond and 500 million years. There's
sound reason to lean in one direction.
>You've just contradicted yourself. You said above that it [life] came
>about in an absolutely sterile reducing atmosphere. Now you claim that
>if we created an absolutely sterile environment we would render it
>"inhospitable" to life.
No, that IN ORDER TO create a sterile environment we'd HAVE TO render
it inhospitable to life. What's your problem with that? I never said
that pre-life Earth had to be inhospitable to life to be sterile.
The fact that there was no life on it meant that it was sterile.
>> A lifeless planet was - guaranteed.
>You're full of it.
You're claiming that a lifeless planet WASN'T sterile?
I think you need to learn the meanings of a few words.
--
"To assume the existence of an unperceivable being ... does not facilitate understanding
the orderliness we find in the perceivable world."
- Letter to an Iowa student who asked, What is God? July, 1953; Einstein Archive 59-085
Al Klein
>Glenn wrote:
>[big ol' snip]
>> Life can never come about in an absolutely sterile environment. ...
>Sterile
>> only means no life.
>"Sterile" means "no life"? Okay -- in that case, your assertion that
>"Life can never come about in an absolutely sterile environment" is a
>re-phrased version of "Life cannot come from non-life", or, more
>plainly, "abiogenesis is impossible".
More correctly, "abiogenesis and creation are impossible". Creation
of life would also have to have been done in a sterile environment.
> If this assertion is true, it
>logically follows that there is no way for life to arise in any
>Universe which didn't already come factory-equipped with the stuff.
Exactly.
--
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of
themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts."
- Bertrand Russell
Al Klein
<glenns...@SPAMqwest.net> said in alt.atheism:
>An attempt at Creationism 101? Why should we expect that another
>"Universe" even includes the concept of a sterile environment?
>But actually, I didn't bring up the word. I was responding to the
>previous poster, who claimed at one point "There's no such actual thing
>as "absolutely sterile except for a single lifeform". To render some
>volume absolutely sterile we have to render it inhospitable to life."
>Using your logic, this also renders abiogenesis impossible
What part of *W*E* did you miss?
In order to CURRENTLY render an EXISTING environment sterile, WE would
have to render it inhospitable to life.
An early Earth, hospitable to life, but not yet having any, would be
sterile by definition, but also hospitable to life - by definition.
--
"We should do unto others as we would want them to do unto us. If I were an unborn
fetus I would want others to use force to protect me, therefore using force against
abortionists is *justifiable homocide*."
- "Pro-Life" doctor killer and corpse Paul Hill
Glenn
"Al Klein" <ruk...@pern.invalid> wrote in message
> On Thu, 27 Jan 2005 18:57:27 -0700, "Glenn"
> <glenns...@SPAMqwest.net> said in alt.atheism:
>
> >An attempt at Creationism 101? Why should we expect that another
> >"Universe" even includes the concept of a sterile environment?
> >But actually, I didn't bring up the word. I was responding to the
> >previous poster, who claimed at one point "There's no such actual
thing
> >as "absolutely sterile except for a single lifeform". To render some
> >volume absolutely sterile we have to render it inhospitable to life."
> >Using your logic, this also renders abiogenesis impossible
>
> What part of *W*E* did you miss?
>
> In order to CURRENTLY render an EXISTING environment sterile, WE would
> have to render it inhospitable to life.
Yelling doesn't support the claim. I suppose you would claim that it is
not possible to add a chemical mixture of air in a sterile jar and call
that environment hospitable to life. Or perhaps you are implying a
larger ecological concept. Another thing that you have neglected to do
is read what you responded to: "In laboratory experiments, is this being
observed?: life arising from nonlife." Say Hi to Miller and Urey for me.
>
> An early Earth, hospitable to life, but not yet having any, would be
> sterile by definition, but also hospitable to life - by definition.
> --
Curious. In the lab, if we made *an environment* sterile, it would be
inhospitable to life, but in the early Earth a sterile environment would
be hospitable to life.
cub...@aol.com
Glenn wrote:
> <cub...@aol.com> wrote in message
> news:1106870175.7...@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> > Glenn wrote:
> >
> > [big ol' snip]
> >
> > > Life can never come about in an absolutely sterile environment.
...
> > Sterile
> > > only means no life.
> > "Sterile" means "no life"? Okay -- in that case, your assertion
that
> > "Life can never come about in an absolutely sterile environment" is
a
> > re-phrased version of "Life cannot come from non-life", or, more
> > plainly, "abiogenesis is impossible". If this assertion is true, it
> > logically follows that there is no way for life to arise in any
> > Universe which didn't already come factory-equipped with the stuff.
> > Therefore, given the observed fact that Life *does* exist,
> "abiogenesis
> > is impossible" logically requires that life has *always* existed,
ever
> > since the microinstant of the Big Bang...
> >
> An attempt at Creationism 101? Why should we expect that another
> "Universe" even includes the concept of a sterile environment?
non-life" is a valid statement for the Universe you and I live in, it
logically follows that there was *never* a time -- *could* never be a
time -- when life did not exist in said Universe. Do you find my
reasoning unclear or invalid? If so, could you please explain where I
messed up?
> But actually, I didn't bring up the word. I was responding to the
> previous poster, who claimed at one point "There's no such actual
thing
> as "absolutely sterile except for a single lifeform". To render some
> volume absolutely sterile we have to render it inhospitable to life."
> Using your logic, this also renders abiogenesis impossible...
Until conditions change, sure. Or is it your position that "*once*
inhospitable for life, *forever after* inhospitable for life"?
> ...as well as lab experiments that would evidence life from non-life.
Said lab experiments pretty much have to *start with* a sterile,
life-inhospitable environment, yes. Who says they have to *stay* that
way forever after? If you're tryna work out how abiogenesis happened,
first you sterilize the crap out of your lab equipment so there aren't
any critters lurking in it *to begin with*, then you set up the
conditions you're interested in investigating (which, it should be
needless to say, will *not* be identical to the conditions which
resulted in the *initial* sterility of your lab equipment). Is there
some kind of problem with this general protocol, glenn?
Al Klein
<glenns...@SPAMqwest.net> said in alt.atheism:
>Yelling doesn't support the claim. I suppose you would claim that it is
>not possible to add a chemical mixture of air in a sterile jar and call
>that environment hospitable to life.
Yes, but sterile over very long periods? I doubt it. The jar would
have to be sterilized, the "chemical mixture of air" would have to be
sterilized. How do you propose we do that? Expose them to a UV bulb?
> Or perhaps you are implying a
>larger ecological concept. Another thing that you have neglected to do
>is read what you responded to: "In laboratory experiments, is this being
>observed?: life arising from nonlife."
Not yet. Give it a while. The first time it took about half a
million years.
>> An early Earth, hospitable to life, but not yet having any, would be
>> sterile by definition, but also hospitable to life - by definition.
>Curious. In the lab, if we made *an environment* sterile, it would be
>inhospitable to life
In the lab, *in order to make it sterile* we would have to make it
inhospitable to life.
>but in the early Earth a sterile environment would be hospitable to life.
On early, pre-life Earth, an environment hospitable to life would be
sterile.
But you defeated your straw man very easily, I'll give you that.
--
"A stupid man's report of what a clever man says is never accurate because he
unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand."
-- Bertrand Russell.
Dave
>"Al Klein" <ruk...@pern.invalid> wrote:
>> "Glenn" <glennshel...@SPAMqwest.net> wrote:
>> >"Al Klein" <ruk...@pern.invalid> wrote:
>> >>"Glenn" <glennshel...@SPAMqwest.net> wrote:
>> >> >"Al Klein" <ruk...@pern.invalid> wrote:
>> >> >>
>> >> >> Life CAN'T come from non-life now in the same way it
>> >> >> originally did.
>> >> >>
>> >> >Unsupportable statement, since you don't know what it
>> >> >"originally did".
>> >>
>> >> Supportable - it came about in an absolutely sterile
>> >> reducing atmosphere. It can't come about that way now.
>> >
>> >
>> A lab on this planet? Yes. It wouldn't be possible to keep
>> all traces of oxygen out of the lab for a few million years,
>> and that seems to be about how long abiogenesis takes.
>
> I once seemed to see little pink elephants crossing the road.
> So much for what "seems". How ridiculous you sound, making
> claims based on alleged knowledge of how long abiogenesis takes.
>
So you would support federal funding for this experiment?
Glenn
<cub...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1107046056.8...@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
Thinking you know everything you need to know about this or any other
universe.
>
> > But actually, I didn't bring up the word. I was responding to the
> > previous poster, who claimed at one point "There's no such actual
> thing
> > as "absolutely sterile except for a single lifeform". To render
some
> > volume absolutely sterile we have to render it inhospitable to
life."
> > Using your logic, this also renders abiogenesis impossible...
> Until conditions change, sure. Or is it your position that "*once*
> inhospitable for life, *forever after* inhospitable for life"?
>
> > ...as well as lab experiments that would evidence life from
non-life.
>
> Said lab experiments pretty much have to *start with* a sterile,
> life-inhospitable environment, yes. Who says they have to *stay* that
> way forever after? If you're tryna work out how abiogenesis happened,
> first you sterilize the crap out of your lab equipment so there aren't
> any critters lurking in it *to begin with*, then you set up the
> conditions you're interested in investigating (which, it should be
> needless to say, will *not* be identical to the conditions which
> resulted in the *initial* sterility of your lab equipment). Is there
> some kind of problem with this general protocol, glenn?
Not at all. I don't see the point to your post.
>
Glenn
"Al Klein" <ruk...@pern.invalid> wrote in message
> On Sat, 29 Jan 2005 17:13:01 -0700, "Glenn"
> <glenns...@SPAMqwest.net> said in alt.atheism:
>
> >Yelling doesn't support the claim. I suppose you would claim that it
is
> >not possible to add a chemical mixture of air in a sterile jar and
call
> >that environment hospitable to life.
>
> Yes, but sterile over very long periods? I doubt it. The jar would
> have to be sterilized, the "chemical mixture of air" would have to be
> sterilized. How do you propose we do that? Expose them to a UV bulb?
Don't do science then. If it's not possible to keep things out, it's not
possible to keep things in.
>
> > Or perhaps you are implying a
> >larger ecological concept. Another thing that you have neglected to
do
> >is read what you responded to: "In laboratory experiments, is this
being
> >observed?: life arising from nonlife."
>
> Not yet. Give it a while. The first time it took about half a
> million years.
The invisible pink "time argument".
>
> >> An early Earth, hospitable to life, but not yet having any, would
be
> >> sterile by definition, but also hospitable to life - by definition.
>
> >Curious. In the lab, if we made *an environment* sterile, it would be
> >inhospitable to life
>
> In the lab, *in order to make it sterile* we would have to make it
> inhospitable to life.
No, only without life.
>
> >but in the early Earth a sterile environment would be hospitable to
life.
>
> On early, pre-life Earth, an environment hospitable to life would be
> sterile.
That's deep. LOL.
>
> But you defeated your straw man very easily, I'll give you that.
> --
You like using that term, don't you. I did no such thing, as my intent
was to play with you and see how long it took you to comprehend what you
originally replied to.
Glenn
"Dave" <gal...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1107052225.3...@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
Bob
>
><cub...@aol.com> wrote in message
>> Therefore, given the observed fact that Life *does* exist,
>"abiogenesis
>> is impossible" logically requires that life has *always* existed, ever
>> since the microinstant of the Big Bang...
>>
>An attempt at Creationism 101? Why should we expect that another
>"Universe" even includes the concept of a sterile environment?
>But actually, I didn't bring up the word. I was responding to the
>previous poster, who claimed at one point "There's no such actual thing
>as "absolutely sterile except for a single lifeform". To render some
>volume absolutely sterile we have to render it inhospitable to life."
>Using your logic, this also renders abiogenesis impossible, as well as
>lab experiments that would evidence life from non-life.
??? what does 'inhospitable' mean? an environment is inhospitable only
until it's not. the right type of chemistry operating in an
environment can, and did, form the basic pre-biotic structures
necessary for life to eventually happen, and to evolve.
Bob
>
>"Al Klein" <ruk...@pern.invalid> wrote in message
>>
>> Supportable - it came about in an absolutely sterile reducing
>> atmosphere. It can't come about that way now.
>
>Life can never come about in an absolutely sterile environment. Your
>claim is a contradiction of terms, and irrelevant terms at that. Sterile
>only means no life. But the fact remains that you don't know how it came
>about.
saying we dont know how life came about, and life can not happen in a
sterile environment are 2 different things. the latter is false since
life did happen on a sterile earth
wcb
> On Thu, 27 Jan 2005 16:10:48 -0700, "Glenn"
> <glenns...@SPAMqwest.net> wrote:
>
>>
>>"Al Klein" <ruk...@pern.invalid> wrote in message
>
>>>
>>> Supportable - it came about in an absolutely sterile reducing
>>> atmosphere. It can't come about that way now.
>>
>>Life can never come about in an absolutely sterile environment. Your
>>claim is a contradiction of terms, and irrelevant terms at that. Sterile
>>only means no life. But the fact remains that you don't know how it came
>>about.
>
> saying we dont know how life came about, and life can not happen in a
> sterile environment are 2 different things. the latter is false since
> life did happen on a sterile earth
If science is right, it most certainly did, the Earth in the beginning was
molten rock and took a while for the surface to cool down.
If religion is right, the earth was sterile in the beginning also.
So teh argument is not was teh earth sterile in teh beginning, its
about why we have two totally contradictory creation schemes in Genesis 1
and 2 and the dolts don't realize that destroys any claims the bible
might have to say anything about anything.
--
Cheerful Charlie
Al Klein
<glenns...@SPAMqwest.net> said in alt.atheism:
>"Al Klein" <ruk...@pern.invalid> wrote in message
>news:lkcov0tkgojoe31jk...@4ax.com...
>> On Sat, 29 Jan 2005 17:13:01 -0700, "Glenn"
>> <glenns...@SPAMqwest.net> said in alt.atheism:
>> >Yelling doesn't support the claim. I suppose you would claim that it is
>> >not possible to add a chemical mixture of air in a sterile jar and call
>> >that environment hospitable to life.
>> Yes, but sterile over very long periods? I doubt it. The jar would
>> have to be sterilized, the "chemical mixture of air" would have to be
>> sterilized. How do you propose we do that? Expose them to a UV bulb?
>Don't do science then.
Why not? Because your way of "doing science" doesn't make sense?
>> > Or perhaps you are implying a
>> >larger ecological concept. Another thing that you have neglected to do
>> >is read what you responded to: "In laboratory experiments, is this being
>> >observed?: life arising from nonlife."
>> Not yet. Give it a while. The first time it took about half a
>> million years.
>The invisible pink "time argument".
Totally nonsensical.
>> In the lab, *in order to make it sterile* we would have to make it
>> inhospitable to life.
>No, only without life.
Which would mean inhospitable to life, since we can't "pick out" all
the life.
>> On early, pre-life Earth, an environment hospitable to life would be
>> sterile.
>That's deep. LOL.
And something you seemed to not understand. Or you were just being
disingenuous.
>> But you defeated your straw man very easily, I'll give you that.
>You like using that term, don't you.
For straw men? Yes. It's SO appropriate.
> I did no such thing, as my intent
>was to play with you and see how long it took you to comprehend what you
>originally replied to.
When, actually, you were only playing with yourself.
--
"To assume the existence of an unperceivable being ... does not facilitate understanding
the orderliness we find in the perceivable world."
- Letter to an Iowa student who asked, What is God? July, 1953; Einstein Archive 59-085
Al Klein
in alt.atheism:
>So teh argument is not was teh earth sterile in teh beginning, its
>about why we have two totally contradictory creation schemes in Genesis 1
>and 2 and the dolts don't realize that destroys any claims the bible
>might have to say anything about anything.
The whole Christian religion contradicts itself all over the place.
Salvation through faith? Through works? Through faith and works?
Judas' cause of death was? Hanging? Splitting open?
*HOW MANY* women went to the tomb that morning?
*WHICH* are the 10 Commandments?
Christianity destroyed any claim to say anything about anything right
from the start.
--
"Christians, it is needless to say, utterly detest each other. They slander each
other constantly with the vilest forms of abuse and cannot come to any sort of
agreement in their teachings. Each sect brands its own, fills the head of its own
with deceitful nonsense, and makes perfect little pigs of those it wins over to its
side."
- Celsus On the True Doctrine, translated by R. Joseph Hoffman, Oxford University Press, 1987
Tukla Ratte
> On Sat, 29 Jan 2005 21:43:41 -0700, "Glenn"
> <glenns...@SPAMqwest.net> said in alt.atheism:
< snip >
>>I did no such thing, as my intent
>>was to play with you and see how long it took you to comprehend what you
>>originally replied to.
Ah, the old "I was only *pretending* to sound like a moron so I could
*test* you" cop-out.
> When, actually, you were only playing with yourself.
Eww.
--
Tukla, Eater of Theists, Squeaker of Chew Toys
Official Mascot of Alt.Atheism, aa 1347
david ford
> maff <maf...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>david ford wrote:
>>
>>>Draft 1.
>>
>>[...]
>>
>>A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom
>>http://www.santafe.edu/~shalizi/White/
>
> A terrible bit of historical chicanery with no real regard either for
> historical context or a desire to find out what really happened. The
> relation between religion and science is way mor einteresting that this
> piece of tripe.
Interesting.
> <snip otherwise useful regurgipost>
maff
david ford wrote:
[...]
But you're a scientifically illiterate Christian fascist idiot. Your
claims are rejected as being Christian fascist apologetics.