In America, atheists are still in the closet

HTS wrote:

There is no scientific reason to believe in abiogenesis.

Coming from you, that means... absolutely nothing. You're as reliable a judge of abiogenesis as a rock of geology.

HTS wrote:

There are a lot of scientific reasons to conclude it's impossible.

Name one.

HTS wrote:

What reason would anyone have to embrace a scientifically illogical theory with the idea that "maybe it's true and I just don't understand it.". Give me a reason to have such faith without reference the unproven theory of evolution.

Hmmmm. What?

I'd suggest attempting to understand something before subscribing to it. If you can't understand it, or have some reason that prevents you from understanding it, that has no bearing on the idea itself.

Buck Crick wrote:

You don't get to accumulate the individual rolls of the dice that direct things toward the 747.

Yes, and that's what makes a junkyard tornado assembling a 747 a fallacious analogy for the incremental evolution of a complex organism.

Hidingfromyou wrote:

<quoted text>
Yeah - it attacks viruses based on enzymes that almost all viruses use but are not used by humans (and almost all non-viruses).
I cannot find the original source now for that, sorry. This is the closest I could come:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/03/ff_...
(I found some highly technical papers, but they didn't quite address the general antiviral drug I'd read about - I can paste these, or you could do a google scholar search for "general antiviral drug")

Good article ... thanks. It takes understanding at a molecular level to figure this stuff out ... I'm glad there's people out there that can do it!! Exciting times! Of course, there's always the possibility that these compounds (or enzymes?) might destroy the friendly virus's that keep us from becoming FLESH EATING ZOMBIES!!!!!!

<sorry ... it's happened too many times in the movies to discount it as a real possibility>

Clark Griswold wrote:

<quoted text>
Dave?

Dave's not here.

Tide with Beach wrote:

<quoted text>
There's no argument here.
A bigger planet provides more opportunities for the "just right" conditions to culminate.
It's not less possible just because you don't understand it. Sorry.

Take 20 ball bearings, with two of them magnetized, and put them into a quart jar.

Now take an identical 20 ball bearings, two magnetized, and throw them into Lake Michigan.

In which will the two magnetized bearings most likely stick together?

I'm sorry you don't understand the answer.

Hedonist wrote:

<quoted text>
The number of reports of miracles is inversely proportional to the number of camera phones available.

lol

It aint necessarily so wrote:

<quoted text>
Yes, and that's what makes a junkyard tornado assembling a 747 a fallacious analogy for the incremental evolution of a complex organism.

No, that's what makes it a proper analogy.

You don't get to accumulate the lucky rolls of the 150-sided dice that lead to the complex organism.

Buck Crick wrote:

<quoted text>
I don't believe a spark ignited the whole earth.
I have seen lightning strike a tree, and the tree two feet away be untouched.
Unless you are speaking of a "divine spark". In that case, you have a case.
By the way, self-replicating is not a small hump to get over. So far, nobody knows of life coming from anything but life. And life has been around a long time.

The "spark of life" ... a metaphor, I guess (I damn near flunked English). That transitory instant between non-living matter and living, replicating lifeforms. You know ... we're lucky the planet didn't simply crystallize into some kind of giant RNA/DNA snowflake.

Tide with Beach wrote:

<quoted text>
Coming from you, that means... absolutely nothing. You're as reliable a judge of abiogenesis as a rock of geology.
<quoted text>
Name one.

You should read more. And not those comic books.

Name one?

How about inability to produce the necessary compounds in sufficient concentrations required to construct the first living organisms. These compounds must be sufficiently stable to insure that the balance between synthesis and degradation favors synthesis (Levy and Miller, 1998). The warm pond and hot vent theories also have been seriously disputed by experimental research that has found the half-lives of many critically important compounds needed for life to be far “too short to allow for the adequate accumulation of these compounds”(Levy and Miller, 1998, p. 7933). Furthermore, research has documented that “unless the origin of life took place extremely rapidly (in less than 100 years), we conclude that a high temperature origin of life... cannot involve adenine, uracil, guanine or cytosine” because these compounds break down far too fast in a warm environment. In a hydrothermal environment, most of these compounds could neither form in the first place, nor exist for a significant amount of time (Levy and Miller, p. 7933).

Ohhhhh I see I touched a nerve big time there!! Damn dude you have some weird gay fantasies! Learned those in prison eh schizophrenic?

Buck Crick wrote:

<quoted text>
Go back to your street corner and sell your ass.

Buck Crick wrote:

David Berlinski; "The Devil's Delusion- Atheism and it's Scientific Pretensions" (I recommend it)

"In many respects, the word 'naturalism' comes closest to what scientists regard as the 'spirit' of science - the source of its superiority to religious thought. But what reason is there to conclude that everything is, to quote philosopher Alexandar Burne,'an aspect of the universe revealed by the natural sciences?' There is no reason at all".

I agree.

Unfortunately, we are limited to studying the physical aspects of reality perforce. We will begin studying the supernatural as soon as anybody develops a method to identify that it exists and to quantify it.

Buck Crick wrote:

Materialists, atheists, Darwinists like to pretend they have some sort of exclusive access to the material world.

I thought that you were referring to the supernatural, and why assumed that there was only a natural world. Actually, I had no idea what aspect of that quote you were referring to, or what it meant to you - just what Berlinski was referring to.

Bit regarding the natural world - aka the physical or material world - science has the monopoly. No other method of examining the natural world has produced anything of use, including astrology, phrenology and chiromancy.

We have conceived of the word may ways - controlled by the stars, interpreted by the Ouija board, and by the Magic 8-Ball. And thought they have been useful for making a living at a carnival, they have revealed nothing about reality.

Religion, too, with its faith and authority (bible) method, which has revealed that god would be taking Oral Roberts home if he didn't come up with eight million dollars for a new satellite, and that pi is three.

But methodological materialism has generated - well, just about everything we know about nature.

Buck Crick wrote:

Terms like "materialist" and "naturalism" really have no meaning under them. They are spongy. "Natural" is supposed to be something "good", so science propagandists love to use it. In reality, it means nothing at all.

Is that what you thought the author meant? Or did you think the author supports that? Why did you post this with the quote above?
They don't seem related.

Here's where making an explicit statement that links them helps. I really don't know what your point is here, or how you think that quote relates to it. So I guessed.

And here's where you tell me that I guessed wrong - that's not the point that you were trying to make, or that's not how you interpreted Berlinski - and I tell you that you needed to say that up front, and not waste our time making me guess what your point was, nor expect me to answer you twice because you left out information that you needed to include up front.

This should serve as an incentive to make your point clearly, explicitly, and the first time. Let em know what you mean the first time, or have me guess and answer what I think you are addressing with what I think is your point. It's your choice. Mine is to let you make it only once per issue.

Buck Crick wrote:

<quoted text>
OK, Punk.
For the first replicating molecule, which would still be short of life, it would take about 1,000 steps of chemical interaction.
Lets consider a prebiotic earth, with this event required to happen. The atmosphere would be deleterious, as the chemical compounds are unstable. Cytosine, in particular, is unstable, and we are not sure it existed. Without it, RNA or DNA cannot exist.
To avoid quick degradation, all these elements had to line up in close proximity.
Based on a geochemical assessment, Thaxton, Bradley, and Olsen concluded that in the atmosphere the “many destructive interactions would have so vastly diminished, if not altogether consumed, essential precursor chemicals, that chemical evolution rates would have been negligible” in the various water basins on the primitive earth. They concluded that the “soup” would have been far too DILUTED for direct polymerization to occur.
So for any chance, you needed CONCENTRATED chemicals, with short exposure to atmospheric disturbance, which means the probability is much better with a smaller, more localized set of conditions.
With a wider spatial distribution of chemicals, some of which were sparse, some likely extremely negligible, such as cytosine, it does not help to claim that wider dispersal gives more potential opportunities. It gives less.
The smaller the earth, the better chance for abiogenesis.

Decreasing the size of the Earth would have had untold side effects to the history of this planet and the solar system. It might be the case that if the Earth were just 5% smaller, it might not still be here. We don't know what a change in size would have meant for the possibility of life on Earth.

Maybe a smaller Earth would have had a proportionately smaller amount of the "right stuff" for life. Who knows all the "what ifs"?

Let's deal with reality. I think life arose here due to natural processes, and those processes likely took place multiple times, to different extents. At least one time, our line of life came about because of them.

If abiogenesis does require a very rare combination of circumstances and resources, the variability of planet like Earth is helpful, and perhaps necessary.

It aint necessarily so wrote:

<quoted text>
I agree.
Unfortunately, we are limited to studying the physical aspects of reality perforce. We will begin studying the supernatural as soon as anybody develops a method to identify that it exists and to quantify it.
<quoted text>
I thought that you were referring to the supernatural, and why assumed that there was only a natural world. Actually, I had no idea what aspect of that quote you were referring to, or what it meant to you - just what Berlinski was referring to.
Bit regarding the natural world - aka the physical or material world - science has the monopoly. No other method of examining the natural world has produced anything of use, including astrology, phrenology and chiromancy.
We have conceived of the word may ways - controlled by the stars, interpreted by the Ouija board, and by the Magic 8-Ball. And thought they have been useful for making a living at a carnival, they have revealed nothing about reality.
Religion, too, with its faith and authority (bible) method, which has revealed that god would be taking Oral Roberts home if he didn't come up with eight million dollars for a new satellite, and that pi is three.
But methodological materialism has generated - well, just about everything we know about nature.
<quoted text>
Is that what you thought the author meant? Or did you think the author supports that? Why did you post this with the quote above?
They don't seem related.
Here's where making an explicit statement that links them helps. I really don't know what your point is here, or how you think that quote relates to it. So I guessed.
And here's where you tell me that I guessed wrong - that's not the point that you were trying to make, or that's not how you interpreted Berlinski - and I tell you that you needed to say that up front, and not waste our time making me guess what your point was, nor expect me to answer you twice because you left out information that you needed to include up front.
This should serve as an incentive to make your point clearly, explicitly, and the first time. Let em know what you mean the first time, or have me guess and answer what I think you are addressing with what I think is your point. It's your choice. Mine is to let you make it only once per issue.

It was clear.

Buck are the voices telling you to stop taking your medication again? Buck those voices are not Hos and his Angels ok? Do you need to get you a room at your local mental ward? They all know you by now.

Buck Crick wrote:

<quoted text>
You should read more. And not those comic books.
Name one?
How about inability to produce the necessary compounds in sufficient concentrations required to construct the first living organisms. These compounds must be sufficiently stable to insure that the balance between synthesis and degradation favors synthesis (Levy and Miller, 1998). The warm pond and hot vent theories also have been seriously disputed by experimental research that has found the half-lives of many critically important compounds needed for life to be far “too short to allow for the adequate accumulation of these compounds”(Levy and Miller, 1998, p. 7933). Furthermore, research has documented that “unless the origin of life took place extremely rapidly (in less than 100 years), we conclude that a high temperature origin of life... cannot involve adenine, uracil, guanine or cytosine” because these compounds break down far too fast in a warm environment. In a hydrothermal environment, most of these compounds could neither form in the first place, nor exist for a significant amount of time (Levy and Miller, p. 7933).

HTS wrote:

<quoted text>
Evolutionary study inherently has no accountability. I'm not blaming anyone... I'm merely stating that no serious consequences result from erroneous conclusions. This is because it has no bearing on day to day life. Furthermore, it is next to impossible to falsify conclusions, because everything is up for debate. Also, all the peer review of which you speak is conducted by researchers who are all equally committed to Darwinism. That is not unbiased peer review. All of the extravagant claims published about the non functionality of junk DNA got passes, because it all fit with Darwinism.
You have essentially stated that all religions are worthless... In so many words.

False. Evolution is central to biology, unifies all biological sciences under its theoretical framework. As I wrote before, hundreds, if not thousands, of peer reviewed academic journals.

Second, there is no competing theoretical framework with evolution in science. The ID people cannot produce a theoretical framework, despite their efforts (b/c it's an untestable inference).

Third, and I've pointed this out a few times now, Dawkins predicted non-coding sections of the DNA to have function back in 1976. So you are wrong when you claim that all Darwinists claimed that junk DNA backs up evolution.

Fourth, much DNA is both non-coding and not under selective pressure meaning that it contributes no role to an individual's phenotype. I have already listed these segments for you, and so have DS and IANS. If you continue to ignore this information, and number 3 above, your actions speak poorly to your integrity as an intellectual.

Last, As for day to day contributions, evolution provides a framework within which to understand biological phenomena. It tells us, for example, that the "symptoms" of the body when sick are adaptive mechanisms for dealing with invading organisms. Since biomedicine is new to adopting evolutionary theory, it has made multiple mistakes in the past b/c it does/did not have an evolutionary framework. One such mistake is not understanding why patients become iron-deficient when infected with malaria. Initially, Western doctors prescribed iron-supplements to fight anemia. Iron deficiency was seen as pathological because it is not a normal state of the body - biomedicine sees patients as healthy when operating within homeostasis and unhealthy when away from homeostasis - so a healthy body is not iron deficient.

Well the doctors killed a lot of their patients for not having an evolutionary framework. Giving the iron supplements exacerbated their fevers and worsened their condition.

Evolution explains this very well. The body dumps iron as an adaptive strategy when invaded by plasmodium. Malaria requires iron to reproduce. When the body has lots of free iron, the malaria population in the body increases dramatically.

There are countless such examples where an evolutionary framework explains phenomena medicine fails with. Hence, medicine is losing its tradition in dualism and being slowly changed over to evolutionary medicine. This transformation will take place in every country but the US. It will happen in the US, too, but with lots of opposition by people like you who do not understand evolution for religious reasons.

Tide with Beach wrote:

<quoted text>
Decreasing the size of the Earth would have had untold side effects to the history of this planet and the solar system. It might be the case that if the Earth were just 5% smaller, it might not still be here. We don't know what a change in size would have meant for the possibility of life on Earth.
Maybe a smaller Earth would have had a proportionately smaller amount of the "right stuff" for life. Who knows all the "what ifs"?
Let's deal with reality. I think life arose here due to natural processes, and those processes likely took place multiple times, to different extents. At least one time, our line of life came about because of them.
If abiogenesis does require a very rare combination of circumstances and resources, the variability of planet like Earth is helpful, and perhaps necessary.

I will not criticize your beliefs.

Buck Crick wrote:

<quoted text>
Take 20 ball bearings, with two of them magnetized, and put them into a quart jar.
Now take an identical 20 ball bearings, two magnetized, and throw them into Lake Michigan.
In which will the two magnetized bearings most likely stick together?
I'm sorry you don't understand the answer.

I know the purpose of an analogy is to simplify a complex idea, but you've taken it too far. You've made it so simplistic that it no longer relates at all.

If I have to pick this apart you'll be sorry. Drop it like it's hot.

Buck Crick wrote:

<quoted text>
You should read more. And not those comic books.
Name one?
How about inability to produce the necessary compounds in sufficient concentrations required to construct the first living organisms. These compounds must be sufficiently stable to insure that the balance between synthesis and degradation favors synthesis (Levy and Miller, 1998). The warm pond and hot vent theories also have been seriously disputed by experimental research that has found the half-lives of many critically important compounds needed for life to be far “too short to allow for the adequate accumulation of these compounds”(Levy and Miller, 1998, p. 7933). Furthermore, research has documented that “unless the origin of life took place extremely rapidly (in less than 100 years), we conclude that a high temperature origin of life... cannot involve adenine, uracil, guanine or cytosine” because these compounds break down far too fast in a warm environment. In a hydrothermal environment, most of these compounds could neither form in the first place, nor exist for a significant amount of time (Levy and Miller, p. 7933).

That's out of date, Buck.

See Hiding on why that is important. I'm getting sleepy.

Buck Crick wrote:

<quoted text>
I will not criticize your beliefs.

Why not?

I do it all the time. You must be getting sleepy too.

See Hiding for your next lesson.

It aint necessarily so wrote:

<quoted text>
I agree.
Unfortunately, we are limited to studying the physical aspects of reality perforce. We will begin studying the supernatural as soon as anybody develops a method to identify that it exists and to quantify it.
<quoted text>
I thought that you were referring to the supernatural, and why assumed that there was only a natural world. Actually, I had no idea what aspect of that quote you were referring to, or what it meant to you - just what Berlinski was referring to.
Bit regarding the natural world - aka the physical or material world - science has the monopoly. No other method of examining the natural world has produced anything of use, including astrology, phrenology and chiromancy.
We have conceived of the word may ways - controlled by the stars, interpreted by the Ouija board, and by the Magic 8-Ball. And thought they have been useful for making a living at a carnival, they have revealed nothing about reality.
Religion, too, with its faith and authority (bible) method, which has revealed that god would be taking Oral Roberts home if he didn't come up with eight million dollars for a new satellite, and that pi is three.
But methodological materialism has generated - well, just about everything we know about nature.
<quoted text>
Is that what you thought the author meant? Or did you think the author supports that? Why did you post this with the quote above?
They don't seem related.
Here's where making an explicit statement that links them helps. I really don't know what your point is here, or how you think that quote relates to it. So I guessed.
And here's where you tell me that I guessed wrong - that's not the point that you were trying to make, or that's not how you interpreted Berlinski - and I tell you that you needed to say that up front, and not waste our time making me guess what your point was, nor expect me to answer you twice because you left out information that you needed to include up front.
This should serve as an incentive to make your point clearly, explicitly, and the first time. Let em know what you mean the first time, or have me guess and answer what I think you are addressing with what I think is your point. It's your choice. Mine is to let you make it only once per issue.

No other way of examining the natural world has produced results?

Really?

Tell that to Aristotle, Bacon, Hume, Descartes, Foucault, Kant, Mill, Neitzche, Rembrandt, DaVinci, Henry Ford, Leo Tolstoy, Shakespeare,...

Then the logicians, Whitehead, Carrol, Tarski, Bertrand Russell.

The monopoly is in your mind.

Kant told us much more about the material world than Richard Dawkins or Ken Miller.

And he didn't lie nearly as much.